• Game Reviews

    Mass Effect 3 and Day-One DLC

    So a few of you involved in the gaming community are probably aware of some flack BioWare was (is?) getting for releasing day one DLC for Mass Effect 3. For those who are not familiar with gamer lingo this basically means that there was add-on content available for Mass Effect 3 the moment it was released… for which players had to pay extra. This annoyed some people. There’s a decent summary over here along with some user comments if you want more exposure to the incident as it happened. I’ve had a few readers ask me my thoughts on this and given that I’ve finally found a few moments between…

  • Game Reviews

    Good Luck Drew!

    As some of you may know Drew Karpyshyn, one of BioWare’s writers, has announced his retirement. He will be focusing on his own writing projects and I wish him all the luck! You can read Drew’s blog post about this or check out his impressive bibliography. He already has an extensive body of work, including several Star Wars and Mass Effect novels. Also I want to give congratulations to the Mass Effect 3 team for going gold. A huge accomplishment and a long, exciting journey for many on the team. I can still remember when the franchise was just a “what if”… pleased that it has had such success. And…

  • Game Reviews,  The Lazy Designer

    Lazy Designer Book 2 Rough Draft Complete

    So I have finished the rough draft for the second book in the Lazy Designer series. I’m going to take a couple days off from it and get back to some stories that have been pestering me to be written. Editing will start next week. The current length is 46 000 words. The first book was about 22 000 words. One of the main things I will be doing during editing will be trimming some of the fat from the book and reorganizing the chapters (they are too long right now and need to be subdivided). Despite the doubling in size I intend to release it at the same price…

  • Game Reviews,  My Life,  The Lazy Designer

    Lazy Designer 2: Feedback on Tools Section

    If you have the time to review this section from my forthcoming game design book, I’d appreciate it. Basically I am looking for examples of design tools; I’ve filled in the ones I remember using but I’m sure I have missed some. Tools To assess the types of tools you will need look at similar games, either internal to your studio or games made by other studios. If those other games shipped with tools it is easier to assess their tools (though be aware that sometimes the toolset shipping with the game are not the same tools that the developers used, or might not include all the tools). If you…

  • Game Reviews,  Technology,  Writing Resources

    Priced to Die

    “Why We Should Fear Ourselves More Than Pirates” So now that I’m seeing reports of SOPA and PIPA having been defeated by overwhelming negative opinion many are breathing sighs of relief. And others are cursing violently (but generally silently). Among game developers and writers, my two primary areas of interaction, opinions are mixed. Many are worried about piracy eating into their revenues. For freelance writers and indie game developers it does not take a lot of piracy to put a stranglehold on their revenue stream. Still I think there’s a larger concern than pirates for content creators. Why We Should Fear The $0.99 App and Novel One interesting thing I’ve…

  • Game Reviews

    Lazy Designer Book 2 – Progress Update

    Pleased! I have just finished up writing a section on focus testing dos and donts, which also happens to be the last section of the current chapter I’m writing for the second Lazy Designer book. This leaves one more chapter to write and then the first draft of the book is complete. After that it is goes to editing. I have also decided that the scripting section, which will be a significant part of the next chapter, will also be released as a stand-alone chapbook of sorts. More details on that later. For those who are curious I’m now estimating this second volume to be close to 40 000 words…

  • Game Reviews,  The Lazy Designer

    Gamifying Government, an Example of Designer Bias

    This is an excerpt from the upcoming second volume in the Lazy Designer series. In the section on deciding which type of game to make I suggested that the bias of the designer, the managers and other key stakeholders in the company, all interact to influence the game. What follows are my thoughts on how to recognize your own bias, how to use your understanding of expectations to build a better game, and how to control your own bias so it does not negatively impact the project. Basically it comes down to knowing yourself. So how do you go about doing this? You can start by looking at the games…

  • Game Reviews

    Dragon Age Redemption

    I’ve finally gotten around to watching the six episodes in the web series “Dragon Age Redemption” starring Felicia Day. What did I think? Well I’ll qualify what follows with two points: I don’t like web series. I find they have too much preamble and postamble for a few minutes of entertainment. I don’t generally go out of my way to watch them. Having been involved with the development of Dragon Age Origins I cringe a bit when I see the Dragon Age world used by outsiders. But… Overall I enjoyed it. It was less campy than I feared (though still somewhat campy). The production values were higher than I had…

  • Game Reviews,  The Lazy Designer

    My Years at BioWare

    Somebody came by today asking to read the little write ups I did for each year I had worked at BioWare. I had assumed I had created a functional table of contents somewhere but could not find it (talk about Lazy…) Anyways I’ve modified the first journal entry, the one describing my first year with BioWare working on Baldur’s Gate 2 and I’ve included links to the other journal entries. You can find it here: http://blog.brentknowles.com/2009/08/25/bioware-brent-year-1-1999/ Let me know if its not working correctly.

  • Empire Avenue,  Game Reviews,  Writing Resources

    Hathead

    So I’ve come to recognize that I wear many hats. I’m a retired game designer, a writer, a software developer, and a consultant. I also blog and I’m (somewhat) active on various social media sites. While wearing the vast majority of my hats I truly want to encourage others to connect with me. I enjoy talking about writing, or engaging with other users on Empire Avenue, or passing on game design advice. However many people seem interested in only one thing: for me to talk about my time at BioWare! Again, I like taking my experiences and generalizing them to pull out useful bits of game design advice. And in…