Igor Simić has always maintained a penchant for dark commentary on the world around him. One of his earliest games, called Children's Play, asked the player to run a factory staffed by children and keep them from falling asleep on the assembly line while a mutated teddy bear spouted critiques of sweatshops.
It was while he recorded music for Child’s Play that he met his future collaborator on Golf Club Wasteland, Shane Berry. In the studio break room Simić heard Berry's voice for the first time, and immediately cast him as the horrifying teddy bear.
From there, the two began a working relationship that spanned several videos and short films, with Golf Club Wasteland ultimately their first commercial attempt at a game. They and their fellow collaborators all had day jobs at its onset, so they began brainstorming something they could easily make in the evenings after work.
"I remember a couple of us were watching TV, and [Donald] Trump was becoming more likely a viable [presidential] candidate, and it was becoming reality," Simić says. "And also, Elon Musk on the other hand was more in the zeitgeist not only as an entrepreneur, but as a public figure. And also, Bernie [Sanders] was talking about the 1%, and somehow all of that coalesced in my head, and I realized, 'If Earth undergoes a massive climate change catastrophe, from the perspective of someone like Trump, who is a real estate guy in golf courses, that's a clean slate, because then the whole Earth can be a golf course.'"
