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My First Interview?
Stumbled across this interview with me over at IGN. I’m not entirely sure if this is my absolute first interview as a designer with BioWare but I think it is. One of the cool things with BioWare is that they tried to make sure everybody, especially in the early days, had a shot at doing interviews and sharing the development spotlight. Of course reading the interview I’m scratching my head, especially at this: One day I plan to return to University and complete my masters degree, which will probably involve building robots and other AI related interests. I totally don’t remember wanting to go back to university. I must have…
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Dragon Age 2 Demo
Several visitors to this blog asked me to check out the Dragon Age 2 demo and I finally had the chance to do so last night. (Note: I played it on the xbox360… for comparison I never played Dragon Age Origins on a console, only the PC) Please keep in mind that this is only my opinion based on playing the demo. And that I’m keeping this short, I’m too busy with the novel to go into any kind of detailed analysis. Overall: I thought the demo showed promise — without playing the full game I can’t say whether that promise was fulfilled. Some Good Things I am impressed at…
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BioWare Employees
I’m getting a lot of cool folks stopping by here and thanking me for games I worked on in the past with BioWare. But I really can’t take all the credit for the games you have all loved, heck I can hardly take any of the credit. Few BioWare folks seem to have websites (or at least websites I’ve stumbled across easily) but here are some of them if you want to go check out what other BioWare employees (both ex- and current) are doing. And if there’s more BioWare sites out there please let me know. Rob Bartel (co-lead designer Neverwinter Nights, BioWare live community and more) http://robbartel.blogspot.com/ Trent…
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Auroras, Stories, and More
Just a reminder that my story ‘Digital Rights’ is free right now as part of a Smashword promotion. If you are Canadian and enjoy it please consider nominating it for an Aurora reward. If you are not Canadian and liked it please consider writing a Smashword’s review (and if you are on Empire Avenue let me know and I’ll go buy a wack of shares in you). Smashword Stories Amazon Stories And my latest story, ‘Stealing Death’ is in Necrotic Tissue. Fantastic magazine, check it out. And for those of you who are here looking for game design advice or my thoughts on Dragon Age 2, check out the Lazy…
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So How Do I Get a Job Writing in the Videogame Industry?
In an earlier post I suggested I would eventually explain how an aspiring video game writer might actually go about getting a job in the industry. And then I forgot about it. But I was kindly reminded today about that post and so here goes. Sadly I don’t have too many tips. This is because there are not that many video game companies that actually hire writers on staff. Most use freelance writers, under contract. The stable game writing career with benefits, free breakfasts, and sports cars is a rare beast. I don’t know much about freelance game writing, as I have never done that nor have I worked with…
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Writing Videogames
Just a short observation but I get asked the question of whether its worthwhile to work, as a writer, for a videogame developer, like BioWare. Most often I am asked this by other writers I have met. So here goes. A disclaimer: I was never really a writer at BioWare (other than a bit of dialog in Baldur’s Gate 2 and item descriptions and other misc text throughout my career) but I worked with and managed writers. As well what advice I offer is in the context of writing strong narrative games like those that BioWare creates… plots, subplots, followers and so on. I have no experience, say, writing a…
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Retirement… A year later
A little over a year ago was my last day of work at BioWare. I had always planned to wrap up my ten year summary of my BioWare career with a one year ‘life after BioWare’ post. Since leaving BioWare I’ve sold several stories, finished writing a dozen new stories and a sci-fi novel and managed a first place finish in the Writers of the Future contest. The contest win had been a goal of mine for over ten years and one I was not certain I’d ever achieve… I had kind of assumed I’d eventually disqualify myself with a novel sale. Boy am I glad that didn’t happen. Had…
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BioWare-Brent Year 10 (Fall 2008 – Summer 2009)
This is the last of ten posts, one for each year that I worked for BioWare. Talk to me Spent the early fall participating in several interviews for Dragon Age. Not as much as when I was on Neverwinter Nights though this time around more of these Dragon Age interviews were in person or on the phone (the Neverwinter ones were often e-mail interviews). Doing interviews was certainly not my favorite thing but I believe that they generally went well even given that a couple times the interviewer attempted to ambush me. No hard feelings, that’s their job :) The most disturbing event that happened during these interviews was when…
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Dragon Age Wins Big At Canadian Videogame Awards
Just noticed that Dragon Age won both Game of the Year and the best writing award at the Canadian Videogame Awards — see the Edmonton Journal article for details. Sending a huge congrats to the Dragon Age team. Well done!
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The Anthology Project
Check out The Anthology Project if you’re looking for something new and interesting. From their website: The Anthology Project collects the comics of artists unified by their delirious pursuit of compelling narrative and notable artistic work in the medium of sequential art. Its humble intent is only to delight. Several of the artists involved work for BioWare — which is how I found out about it originally. I ordered my copy today and I’ll let you all know what I think of it when it arrives.
