About

odd Conley is a writer and video game developer based just outside Seattle, Washington.

Games have been the through-line of their life since their grandfather handed them an Atari controller. That early obsession eventually became a fifteen-year career across four studios, including senior leadership on Magic: Arena at Wizards of the Coast. The work was technically and creatively interesting.

That career had hard parts too. Burnout. Exploitative conditions. A slow accumulation of stress that eventually became PTSD and depression. Those experiences turned out to be as formative as the good ones. odd came to care deeply about the people inside creative industries, not just the work they produce. They spent years focused on building sustainable team cultures, mentoring others, and fighting the crunch culture that grinds people down. Those values show up in their fiction whether they intend them to or not.

The Play Never Ends is their debut novel. It is set in an arcade where belief has causal weight, released under a Creative Commons license, and dedicated to the idea that creative worlds grow when more people are allowed to participate in them.

odd lives with their spouse and a rotating cast of foster kittens. You can follow the kittens. When odd is not making or playing video games they are most likely to be found listening to a podcast at double speed or watching a horror movie.