• The Lazy Designer

    Exploration and Gameplay

    As was probably obvious given the posts earlier in the month, the third book in the Lazy Designer series is now available for Kindle. I was a bit distracted with talking about a couple stories I’ve had published recently — which, if you have not read my story ‘Slaying Dragons’ in Plasma Frequency Magazine, you still can — and vote for it, if you enjoy it! Anyways, here’s a link to the table of Contents. And here’s the blurb: Brent Knowles continues his Lazy Designer series with a look at exploration and gameplay. From environment design to combat to building rule systems, Brent examines how to craft quality design. And…

  • Game Reviews

    Road/Kill

    A car combat skirmish game played at a fast and furious pace. Loaded with sweet customizable high quality miniatures. My former BioWare colleague has a Kickstarter for his tabletop car combat game! Check out his Kickstarter page!

  • Game Reviews

    Baldur’s Gate Enhanced Edition

    My friends over at Overhaul Games have released Baldur’s Gate, the Enhanced Edition! If you were a fan of the original or just want to see what Baldur’s Gate was all about I encourage you to check this out. I’ve played the PC version over the past few months and it certainly brought back a lot of memories (and humbled me a little, given how many times I had my butt kicked). It is available for PC and the iPad and there looks to be Android and Mac versions coming down the road. Click here to head over to Overhaul’s page.

  • Writing Resources

    Star Wars: Annihilation

    Drew Karpyshyn’s latest novel is now available! Here’s the blurb for Annihilation: The Sith Empire is in flux. The Emperor is missing, presumed dead, and an ambitious Sith lord’s attempt to seize the throne has ended fatally. Still, Darth Karrid, commander of the fearsome Imperial battle cruiser Ascendant Spear, continues her relentless efforts to achieve total Sith domination of the galaxy. But Karrid’s ruthless determination is more than matched in the steely resolve of Theron Shan, whose unfinished business with the Empire could change the course of the war for good. Though the son of a Jedi master, Theron does not wield the Force—but like his renowned mother, the spirit…

  • Writing Resources

    Back at it

    Over the weekend I attended STARFest, a literary festival in St. Albert. There, I had the opportunity to interview former BioWare coworker Drew Karpyshyn. I think the interview went well. The main focus of the presentation was exploring how to write evil characters, specifically his work with the Darth Bane novels, but extending to Mass Effect and other properties he’s worked with. There was also time for some great questions from the audience. I do not believe there was any recording of the interview but there were pictures taken and I’ll let you know when those are available. Also, one specific question that I asked was whether Drew was going…

  • Game Reviews

    What BioWare Has Learned

    Okay, I originally started writing this earlier in the week after receiving several queries, in regards to Dragon Age 3 – Inquistion. So, I didn’t know when I began writing this that Ray and Greg were retiring from BioWare. So I want to start this post with wishing Ray and Greg good luck in their future endeavors. Without Ray and Greg’s passion for game development there never would have been a BioWare and consequently I probably never would have entered game development. For ten years I worked and learned and thrived in an environment that is really impossible to describe. It was Ray and Greg who made that possible. If…

  • 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…

  • The Lazy Designer,  Writing Resources

    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 of this book (a game scripting tutorial) is currently available free. As always any reviews/likes/feedback are very much appreciated!

  • 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…