Vampire: The Masquerade was released in the middle of the most goth period of all time, the early 90’s, meaning that monsters were most definitely in vogue and that vampires in particular were interesting. We had left the "vampire as a monster" concept behind and started to look at vampires as something else, something desirable,... Continue Reading →
The Perfect Woman
Mass Effect 2 introduces the player to the perfect woman. Her name is Miranda Lawson. The back story of Miranda Lawson is this. She was genetically engineered by her father to become the perfect woman. Everything about her is designed, but as we shall discover, Miranda’s perfection is not everything it’s hyped up to be.... Continue Reading →
Tales from the Trenches – Process
I used to be a producer. I also used to be a game designer. Now I’m a UX designer with the experiences of a game designer and a producer. I’m pretty sure there are producers at companies that I’ve worked that are supremely pissed at me because I ask for processes, reviews and accountability. I... Continue Reading →
Tales from the Trenches – Feature breakdown
I’ve noticed, in my 20.000 odd years as a developer, that some designers have a harder time figuring out how to describe a feature in a way that makes sense to a programmer or a tech designer or just in general. I figured, since this happens to be one of my strong skills - or... Continue Reading →
Tales from the Trenches – Localization
If you have a desire to annoy art directors, terrify UI artists and make producers sigh, I recommend mentioning localization. Loc is the process of translating your game into several languages, some which won’t use a Latin alphabet. Some which aren’t even read from left to right. Also every word costs to be translated, which... Continue Reading →
Sometimes texts aid biases
I have in my possession several books on game development and game creation. Honestly, I rarely read most of them, but recently I’ve made some inroads in my pile of unread or half read books. There’s a pandemic on, after all. A discovery I did make that made me both sad and a tiny bit... Continue Reading →