Lazy Designer on the Web

Books 1, Book 2 and Book 3 of the Lazy Designer are now available!

Or purchase direct from the author.

For over ten years, Brent Knowles worked as a designer with the RPG game developer, BioWare. Along the way he wrote dialog, scripted levels, wrote design docs and ended up being a Lead Designer on Neverwinter Nights and Dragon Age. He also learned a few things.

The ‘Lazy Designer’ is a collection of his posts related specifically to gaming or game development. These posts are snippets of what will become larger, more detailed chapters — Brent is keeping these posts relatively short to facilitate consumption on the web.

New posts are still being added: subscribe to Brent’s newsletter or follow this blog’s feed to keep up to date.

Book 1 – Getting Started

Getting into the Gaming Industry
Teaching Yourself
Getting Hired in the Game’s Industry — Technical Skills
Meeting Etiquette
E-mail Etiquette the CC vs BCC
Sorry I can’t read your story
Task Management
Loving the Crunch
When People Ignore Email
The Product
Game Development Positions Part 1 – Design
Being Organized
Providing Useful Feedback
Receiving Feedback

Book 2 – The Second Game

Data Generation
Building a Shed
Changing Designer Data
Designing Frustration
Designing Frustration Part 2
Designing Frustration Part 3
Accountability

Book 3 -In Between Projects

Keep Yourself Busy
Cross-Platform Experimenting
Documentation

Book 4 – Specialists

Give them tools
Creating Emotion in Games – Guilt as Gameplay Mechanic
Pee Happens
Hidden Features versus Growing Features
Videogame Level Design
Writing Videogames
Writing Videogames — Getting the Job
Making Monsters
Do Gamers Want Dungeons?

Book 5 – The Manager

Design Expectations
Secret Keeping
The Design Manager
You are Not Smarter Than Them
Videogame Franchises… the slow death?
Pay Pal – Use it please
Harnessing Change and Responding to Change
Save Games
Hard Decisions
Building a Team – Passion

Extra Info

More on Guilt

Main, Unsorted List
[catlist name=the-lazy-designer numberposts=100 order=asc]

All posts are copyrighted by Brent Knowles 2009-2010. Excerpts may be posted elsewhere without permission though attribution would be appreciated. Full posts should not be duplicated, without permission.

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