GENESIS OF THE GAME
The Hay Bales game series came to be because of a new cross country course that we had our sophomore year. The course was super flat so there was a decision to add hay bales around to spice up the race. This 
was our only race on hay bales and although we knew it wasn't unheard of in cross country it still blew our minds to jump over some in a race setting.
Jacob and I have always enjoyed coding and drawing together, so we thought it would be fun to make a computer game where we jump over these hay bales and play as people from our (high school) team. So we made Hay Bales, a computer game with nine characters and three levels which was a ton of fun and our team really liked it.
VIDEO GAME NERDS
As kids we didn't really have video games until we got our Wii when we were about 8. We played a ton of Wii Sports, Mario Kart, and Wii Play. And while we still play games we are starting to see games differently now that we have made some ourselves. We notice things like how easy a menu is to navigate or how smooth controls feel. Making games has made us even nerdier!
EVOLUTION OF HAY BALES
We thought that would be it, but later around the start of our junior year (at LCC) we found out how to make apps for the iOS AppStore. We thought it could be fun to make a Hay Bales 2, this time on phones so they 
didn't need a disc like in the original. So we got to work and one year later, we finished Hay Bales 2, which had 14 characters, and a bunch of mini games which are references to cool things that our team has done.
Hay Bales 2 is a cross-country video game that features the La Costa Canyon XC team! Jump, Duck, and even Attack to avoid various obstacles and achieve a new PR!
Hay Bales 2 also had promises for newer stuff to come later, because we really enjoyed working on it. After continuing to make the update to Hay Bales 2, we thought the update was big enough to call it Hay Bales 3. We also decided to focus only on the characters so the game file size wasn't too big. We released Hay Bales 3 earlier this year with 38 characters.
(We) have no plans currently on making another update but are thinking of a new video game series to start.
We have a website haybales3.com and you can find Hay Bales 3 on the Apple AppStore!
DEVELOPMENT TIME
Hay Bales 1 on the computer took around four months of work, but took around six months to release because we got distracted with a particular video game from spring 2017 called Breath of the Wild.
Hay Bales 2 took just under a year to release. It took a long time to figure out how to make touchscreen controls and upload to the App Store.
Hay Bales 3 originated as a Hay Bales 2 update but because it was so big we decided to cut some content from Hay Bales 2 and turn it into a new game. This basically means that Hay Bales 3 took 2 1/2 years to complete, but with a lot of breaks in between and cut content.
COMPLICATIONS
Hay Bales 2 was the first game in the series to go on the AppStore and it was a real difficult process because we weren't 18 yet, which is required to be an Apple Developer, so we had to use our parents' IDs as we developed. That is why still it says the game was made by Cynthia Stanford, our mom! That has been a running joke with our friends that we didn't actually make it.
Actually, it was one of our best friends, Nelson Rader, who suggested after playing the original on the 
computer that we should make an app version. We looked into it and realized we might be able to do it.
(Rader is two years older than us and was the person who introduced us to cross country. He is currently serving a mission in Vancouver Washington. We got to see him when we traveled to NXN.)
The biggest thing we took from the first two games was difficulty. The first two are waaaay too difficult and not fun. Because of this we added many features to give the player a better chance of getting a good score which made it a much better user experience. We also had to cut content from Hay Bales 3 so that the app size wasn't too big. Hay Bales 2 has more content than Hay Bales 3 with six different mini games to try. But because the app size was too big some people couldn't get it on their phones. Hence, we decided to cut them out so more people could play.
WHAT'S COOL ABOUT HAY BALES 3
Hay Bales 3 is free and there are no ads. We don't make any money off the game. It also doesn't need wifi or data to play once you've downloaded it. We wanted to put as few barriers to entry as possible, and even though tons of people tell us that we should put ads in, we always wanted Hay Bales to be more about enjoying the game.
DEVELOPMENT BETWEEN THE TWINS
For Hay Bales 3, we majorly split the workload in half, but there are certainly aspects that one person did more than the other. (Garrett) did a larger portion of the coding and Jacob did more of the animations and music. Thankfully, we have similar artistic visions so when we collaborated we were able to come together into a single consistent piece. One might not even be able to tell that the art was made by two people. Overall we both were very passionate about making it and found it fun and exciting every session of creating, which we think is important.
ABOUT THE RESPONSE
The response from our friends has been so awesome! The overall reception to Hay Bales 3 has been really 
great and we feel so lucky to have such supportive friends. Seeing people play as the character versions of themselves for the first time and seeing all of the funny little details we put in was our favorite part. We don't think anyone will be able to understand all of the references except us!
Hearing from strangers who have played our game has been one of the coolest experiences. Having people tell us they played it, the strategies they found, and who they think the best character is has been so much fun. We love talking with people about how they think the game works and what strategies they have discovered.
WHO WINS BETWEEN GARRETT AND JACOB?
I'm pretty sure that we are equal in Hay Bales. We are both pretty good at the game because we know all of the ins and outs so we purposely die at a reasonable score so that our leaderboard doesn't get all skewed.
In terms of other games, we love competing in Super Smash Bros and Mario Kart. We think it's fair to say that Jacob is better at Super Smash Bros and Garrett is better at Mario Kart but it changes all the time. Having each other to compete against, we usually are the best in our group of friends, too. LOL!
HAY BALES AND THE NCAA
(The twins are listed as freshmen on the BYU cross country roster but did not compete in 2019 while serving a church mission.)
To release it as NCAA athletes, we knew there might be things to work out with promoting our game. We decided when we were making Hay Bales 2, the first one on the AppStore, that we didn't want ads or any way to make money. We kept this with Hay Bales 3 and don't make any money off it. We prefer the clean look of having no ads and want as many people as we can to play it so we made it free.
Having no monetization has really helped our situation as NCAA athletes, but (we) still had to be careful. In the game we could not call any attention to our NCAA status, and we couldn't make any references to that. We met with a NCAA compliance director to talk about what we can and can't do. That was super helpful.
GAMES' IMPACT ON YOUR FUTURE
We both enjoy coding and art and have enjoyed our computer science courses in college. We are exploring different options and would really like to pursue something involving business management somehow in there too.
Making these games has absolutely changed our opinions. We both want to have jobs that interact with others. Our favorite part of the whole project was spreading the word and chatting with others about our game. Marketing is something we both enjoy.
UPTICK IN USERS DURING QUARANTINE
Yes, our daily sessions have gone up since quarantine! Hay Bales 3 is a great game when you are bored in shutdown and can't do any real races!
WHAT'S NEXT?
Right now our plan is to go back on our missions when possible, but the timing for that at this point is still unknown. What is likely is we will be given new missionary assignments in the United States. If were lucky before January 2022, we can go back to our original missions (Garrett in Buenos Aires, Argentina and Jacob in Santiago, Chile.) In the meantime, we are trying to see if taking independent study courses are available but we don't know about that yet.
ABOUT RUNNING
To stay in shape, we are on light mileage right now. We aren't planning on rejoining our college team for 
another two years because of our mission. Having this time back here has been nice to really enjoy our sport. For me its a blessing to see my brother again when I thought I wouldn't be in the same country as him for two years.
Since we haven't had any chances to run on our missions for the last three months being able to go on fun runs with (Jacob) has been a blast!
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Jacob Stanford (6895) and Garrett Stanford (6894) placed 1-2 in the 2018 San Diego Section Division 2 cross country championships leading La Costa Canyon to the section title. (Credit: Clark Kranz)