• The Lazy Designer,  Writing Resources

    The OTHER Solution in Game Design

    The Other Solution For the most part throughout my Lazy Designer series I focus on what I believe is the right way to implement particular design tasks. Based on my experience I have a recipe book, so to speak, of design solutions to specific problems. Throughout the books I make reference to these. The other day I was wondering if there was a different way to go about solving problems. What if you selected a random, or rather bizarre, solution? (Admittedly I hadn’t slept much the night before). Low Morale Some early RPG games (including Baldur’s Gate 1) allowed enemies to flee once their morale broke. The players basically kick…

  • The Lazy Designer,  Writing Resources

    Table of Contents: Lazy Designer Book 2 – Making the Next Game

    The other day I posted the table of contents for the first book, so I figured I should do the same for the second! Tomorrow I’ll post the table of contents for Book 3. Here’s the blurb: Practical advice for designers already working in the games industry and wishing to hone their skills as well as for those aspiring to such a career. The author, an industry veteran with over ten years experience (lead designer Dragon Age – Origins) explains how companies decide which videogames to make, how to build designer-friendly game engines and pipelines and how to prototype and test. Along the way the author explores his own experiences…

  • The Lazy Designer

    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 copy of the Lazy Designer! Just send an e-mail to me with the story of your choice and the e-mail address associated with your Amazon account (I need that so that I can gift the story to you). Want to know which stories are available? Just check out my Amazon profile. p.s. the same offer…

  • Game Reviews

    The Lazy Designer

    I realize that most of my blog post have been writing related of late and to rectify that I’m going to try to focus, for July, mostly on Lazy Designer ‘video game’ content. I have several half-written articles and will try to finish as many as feasible. There will be a bit of writing news during that time but mostly game design stuff, if all goes to plan. So if you’ve been hanging around here waiting for some more game design insight, it is just around the corner. If there’s specific topics you would like covered, leave a comment here and I’ll dig through my notes and see if I…

  • Game Reviews,  The Lazy Designer

    BioWare-Brent Year 4 (2002 – 2003)

    This is the fourth of ten posts, one for each year that I worked for BioWare. Neverwinter Nights Expansion Packs So it was around this time that we started working on the expansion packs for Neverwinter Nights, specifically Expansion Pack #2. Yes, you read that correctly. The team I was leading was focused on the second expansion pack. The intent was to have a third-party developer create the first expansion pack, giving my development team more time to work on the second expansion pack. That was the plan anyways. My team was small. I don’t really remember who was with me on the expansion pack from the beginning other than…