Category Archives: The Lazy Designer

Lazy Designer Book 2

The second book in the Lazy Designer series is now available. This title explores how to build designer-powered game engines and pipelines as well as prototyping and testing. It can be purchased from Amazon. Later in the year I will make it available on other sites as well (Kobo, Nook, iOS, et cetera). A section …

February 9, 2012 – 9:02 am | By Brent Knowles | Posted in The Lazy Designer, Writing Resources | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (0)

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 …

January 26, 2012 – 11:36 am | By Brent Knowles | Posted in Game Reviews, The Lazy Designer | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

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 …

January 23, 2012 – 2:22 pm | By Brent Knowles | Posted in Game Reviews, My Life, The Lazy Designer | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

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 …

January 16, 2012 – 3:25 pm | By Brent Knowles | Posted in Game Reviews, The Lazy Designer | Tagged , , , , | Comments (1)

The Lazy Designer Book 2 – Update

When I released book 1 of the Lazy Designer I had said that if it met certain financial goals I’d take some time away from my fiction writing to write a second game design book. Now that I’ve met the goals (thank you to everybody who has bought a copy!) I’m revisiting the outline I …

December 22, 2011 – 10:59 am | By Brent Knowles | Posted in The Lazy Designer | Tagged , , , , | Comments (2)

Rules of Play

Rules of Play (by Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman). To be honest I was a little concerned when I started reading this book. I’m always uncomfortable when people need to go out of their way to start justifying ‘games as art’. As a practical designer I really could care less what others think of games. …

December 10, 2011 – 1:18 pm | By Brent Knowles | Posted in The Lazy Designer | Comments (0)

Giving the Gift of Programming (or: How did you learn to code?)

So I’ll start right away with a question for the programmers reading this: How did you learn to program? The reason I’m asking is that I was assembling a ‘programming package’ for my nephew… basically a bit of a programming tutorial to get him started with coding… but then I realized that operating systems don’t …

December 9, 2011 – 2:33 pm | By Brent Knowles | Posted in The Lazy Designer | Tagged , , | Comments (36)

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 …

October 5, 2011 – 8:16 am | By Brent Knowles | Posted in Game Reviews, The Lazy Designer | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

Freebies

For those of you who have purchased a copy of my Lazy Designer game design handbook I’d like to encourage you to check out some of my fiction as well. I have numerous short story reprints available. I’m offering a free copy of any of my stories for those of you that have purchased a …

September 8, 2011 – 10:30 am | By Brent Knowles | Posted in The Lazy Designer | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

Free and Lazy

If you’d like a chance to read the Lazy Designer for free please head over to my Facebook Page and read the instructions on my latest post there.

September 4, 2011 – 10:03 am | By Brent Knowles | Posted in Game Reviews, The Lazy Designer | Tagged , , | Comments (0)