• The Lazy Designer

    Tips: Teaching yourself Game Development

    Overview I’m occasionally asked for pointers on how newcomers to the gaming industry can get up to speed on building games. The answer to this question really varries based on the skill level of the asker. Still I’ve attempted to suggest some high level activities that can help a newcomer understanding game development. There are two key activities to help train a newcomer — Modding and Building It Small. Modding If you have done little or no game building I suggest modding existing games. Find games that have toolsets (i.e., Dragon Age, Neverwinter Nights, various RTS games and many person shooters) and try building maps and short scenarios. I’m biased…

  • My Life

    Drawbacks to being your own boss

    Just to balance out my earlier post about the benefits of being self employed I will list some drawbacks (you know, so those of you who I made jealous with my pizza-eating, beer drinking lunches can feel better). Here are some drawbacks: – I have to make my own breakfast (at BioWare we had breakfast brought in every morning — I miss chocolate chip laden muffins) – As I’m not a bestselling author yet a significant chunk of my income comes from investments on the stock market (the real one, not Empire Avenue) so when there are downturns I get grumpy — which then leads to more beer and pizza,…

  • Pitch

    Pitch – Pastlives Social Network

    Okay so imagine a social networking site where not only do people interact with one another as they are today but that they also maintain multiple ‘pastlife’ accounts. Basically you would log on and scroll through time and space, finding where and when your alter-egos lived, from prehistory, through Roman times, the Medieval world and more. Then you’d connect with others in those time periods, perhaps resuming relationships that have been on hold for a few hundreds years. Interaction would include messaging, like today but could be themed by the communications standards of the day (i.e., if your long lost cousin lived in a nearby town your messages might take…

  • Empire Avenue

    Congratulations to the Empire Avenue team

    I’ve blogged occasionally about Empire Avenue and up until today it was an invite-only beta. Now it has opened its doors to everyone — yes, that means you, everyone. Please encourage the hard working team to continue to, well, work hard, by signing up. Let me know you joined and I’ll buy a piece of you (non icky translation — I’ll buy some shares in you). Why am I enjoying Empire Avenue so much? It is the ease of making connections with people I don’t know but with whom I am destined to get along with (or argue with, but respectfully). I love putting a score to people, in regards…

  • Writing Resources

    Adverb Hunter

    Thought I had posted this earlier but couldn’t find it. I’m about halfway through doing revisions to the novel (proofreading, improving phrasing, that sort of thing). Over at yourothermind.com (my software for writers blog) I noted that I had added a simple adverb detection system to YOM a few months ago. And then promptly forgot about it. Well in the course of doing the novel edits I have started using it. And I wasn’t expecting much from it. Wow was I wrong. It seems I am an insidious (ab)user of adverbs. I sprinkle them profusely throughout my writing. In a 4000 word chapter I have removed as many as 40…

  • Empire Avenue

    Empire Avenue – Stop me from Selling you. Please.

    I spoke a while back about why I sell people on Empire Avenue. Now that the game has matured I’m trying to adopt a bit more casual of a gameplay style… still want to make the big bucks but want to focus my time on producing content rather than winning the game. To achieve that I’d really like to spend less time updating my portfolio. Normally I do this each morning — trimming the dead weight and finding sweet dividend paying seeds to plant. This is time consuming even considering how the new interface changes (the Dublin release) have improved my workflow. So please here’s two simple tips that makes…

  • The Lazy Designer

    BioWare-Brent Year 8 (Fall 2006 – Summer 2007)

    This is the eighth of ten posts, one for each year that I worked for BioWare. Chaos Another year of solid work on Dragon Age. Good progress was made but there were new difficulties popping up, aside from just technical and creative ones. Throughout the project there were always many team changes with team members moving onto higher priority projects or people simply leaving. This happened more often than on any other project I had worked on. At the time it was worrisome though in hindsight I think this happened simply because Dragon Age took so many years to finish. Life happened — people wanted to spend more time with…

  • My Life,  The Lazy Designer,  Writing Resources

    Sorry I can’t read your story

    Overview The other day I received my first message from a stranger asking me to read their game script. I was flattered. But also alarmed. I really can’t read other people’s work or help them get it published. I have neither the time nor do I want to get involved in any kind of legal dispute later (i.e., if someone feels I stole their idea). I did not want to be abrupt or discouraging and so I sent them a fairly detailed reply. I’ve decided to post a cleaned up version of the reply in case I ever need to direct people to it again. The following is intended for…