So… I have a blog. Not that I’ve forgotten about it. Obviously. I haven’t even forgotten to post to it. I just haven’t posted… anything… in quite some time. Because I haven’t felt like it. While I was never prolifically active online, I was reasonably so at one point in my life. When I was trying to build a career as a writer. That came to a crashing halt a couple years ago when my then-wife left me. Between transmogrifying into a single dad (after 15+ years of marriage), reentering the workforce (after ‘retiring’ to pursue my dream of becoming a full-time writer), and spending time figuring myself out… I…

Last December I did not do a year-in-review about my writing, as I generally do. Mostly I avoided this because the holidays were a rough time for me — first Christmas without my kids, etc. But also, because I did not accomplish a lot in 2015. The past year and a half I have been in survival mode. When my ex and I initially separated, I moved out and established a new (much smaller household) and found work remotely (and a few weeks, on location in Florida). This alone was a huge adjustment, after several years of being the stay-at-home spouse. I also started volunteering a lot more, with my…

I’ve been working at Beamdog for several months now and have been enjoying my time with the studio. Last week the team hit a huge milestone — the release of Siege of Dragonspear, an expansion set between Baldur’s Gate and Baldur’s Gate 2. They’ve devoted significant time and energy to the expansion and I’ve had the privilege of playing through their new content a few times. A huge congratulations to the team, for all their effort. Many of the team members are very long-term fans, some working in our office, others around the world. It has been very cool to watch this distributed team work — the same enthusiasm as…

First, many apologies for the delay between posts. I am not yet ready to promise more regular postings but interesting things are afoot. If you are even vaguely interested in game development you have probably already learned that I’ve joined Edmonton-based game developer Beamdog. I’ve been working for them for the past few months. I can not really speak towards what I’m currently doing but in general I’m hoping to provide direction and the benefit of my experiences to the talented crew at Beamdog — lessons learned from my years BioWare as well as my time freelancing. Read the Beamdog announcement here: http://blog.beamdog.com/2016/02/beamdog-achievements.html And for those interested in the writing…

This is a post I had hoped I would not have to write. I’ve been avoiding it, out of fear that writing this out, will make it real. (And yes, this post is entirely personal and has nothing to do with game development or writing… but it explains my silence here.) After eight months of separation my wife and I are divorcing. I can’t explain how writing those words makes me feel. She’s been my best friend for sixteen years and I still wake up in the middle of night wanting to talk to her. And I know I can’t. On the positive side, this has been a year of…

Sorry for the long delay! This has been a challenging year and I intend to talk more about what’s going on… But probably not until the fall. Right now I’m helping out some friends down here in Orlando, and yes, I will explain more about that in a future post. This is the second time I have been here and really enjoy the weather, the city, and the team I am assisting. Orlando is an exciting place!  What else is going on? Well, I have not been writing a lot this year but have been editing my previous work. Several of my novels have been published and I’ll devote some…

Just a quick note that “How to be a lead designer” is available for $0.99 (today only, I think though it will be at a lower price for about a week before climbing back to its normal price point). http://www.amazon.com/Lead-Designer-Lazy-Game-Design-ebook/dp/B00JUYRB18/ Also a story reprint of mine, ‘The Monastery’, is now free to read over at Amazon. It was originally published in ‘Not One of Us’. http://www.amazon.com/Monastery-Sabriel-Book-1-ebook/dp/B0052OJAZ0/ I have a bit longer of a post in the works describing what I’m up to and such but for now a quick summary will suffice: – I have a couple weeks left on the current novel (rough draft) – I’d like to start…

Welcome to Part 3 in my new series describing my “Hauler” prototype. Links to the web and PC version are at the bottom of this post. (And you can read Part 2 here, if you haven’t). Note: This is a repost (originally appeared on Gamasutra). Prototype 2 (build# 0.0.3.0) The two main issues brought up in the previous version (aside from the obvious like art and sound) were both related to gameplay. The first issue was that the tails were too long. This version doesn’t overly address this, but it does try to solve the second issue (which helps mitigate the first). The second issue? There was no gameplay. Effectively…