im working on 6 projects. 2d/3d game, a series of 4 prototypes/minigames, and a game event.
with the eventual addition of a 7th in due time.
but RIGHT now im only working on 2.

you'll see.

finally got my etrian odyssey on.
game is HARD.
but there's something strangely fun about drawing my map as i go.
i could do without the boring static menu-fights tho.

also, i cant type, it seems.

http://www.microsoft.com/surface/

HOOOOOORAAAAY!

I am SO inquiring about goo getting on this.

this is long overdue.
i CANNOT wait for this to get widespread.
i cannot wait to see what apple does with that. besides the iPhone.
i cannot wait to see a multi-touch DS.

i cannot wait.

hopefully, this wille eventually comp,etely replace the mouse.
fucking mouse, i hate you. go die.

odin sphere!
puzzle quest!

i work with my collective, mostly.
Damien Di Fede does all code and music.
Heather Kelley shares design duties and does all sorts of producery stuff.
and do design and all art.
we have no animator, so we try to take care of that in design and not have anything with complex animation.

but we all itterate on the design together.

you're getting a lot of press for this.
nice.

maybe id have something more constructive to say if maybe...lets say...there was a mac version available? maybe? yes.

i usualy start with...an idea.
a concept. a high concept.
a feeling, an ambience, a style.
all vague stuff like that.
which usualy eventualy evolves into some high concept mechanic.
but everything is related. the idea, the mechanics, the visuals, everything is part of this mysterious higher concept that i saw in a dream or in some drug induced haze.

infact, the moment an idea hits me, i pretty much know exactly how the game is gonna look, feel and play at a high level. then i just need to sit down and untangle the whole thing. figure out exactly how stuff works, see if it makes any sense.

once we start prototyping, ill of course frequently be proved wrong about a bunch of my calls. but thats design. we itterate, and in the end, the final product shouldnt be too far from the original visions.

yeah, thats it.
vision.
literaly. a vision. i see it in a dream or something, and i know what it is.
then i just stick to it.

i know this all sounds very esoteric but for me design is half brains and half guts.
it starts off being very visceral. a very rough feeling, emotion.
then the brain has to concretise it and make sense of it all.

My two step game design method:
step 1: smoke a joint
step 2: take a refreshingly hot shower

i liiiike your style.

ideas come to me, in my sleep, when bored at work, when in an altered state, whenever. ideas come to me and i doodle them down. on anything.

ill write words in big letters a bit all over, just putting stuff out there. ill sketch out mechanics, draw little puzzles, whatever.

for some reason i always obcess about finding a cool name imediatly. only if its just a working title.

then ill think about some more. whenever i can think about something else.

then when the idea is starting to take shape, ill open photoshop, take my shitty wacom and start drawing a "design doc".

now im a level designer full time, im expected to write very clear, very neat, very professional design documents. and i hate that. they are tedious, they take forever to write and NOBODY reads them. ever.

so what i started doing is develop a kind of personnal style when it comes to design docs. ill re-doodle all the big ideas in photoshop, and then directly anote them with the wacom. i take a very large image and i just put down all my ideas, little clusters of text and drawings all over. there's no real order to things and its a bit chaotic, but i sometimes have the hardest time putting down so many ideas in a linear fashion.

so in the end, that PSD file contains all the ideas and designs in a very visual kind of way. then i just give that to my team, and we talk about. from there on, most communication is oral. but to present or pitch concepts and mechanics, i found that my "design doodles" work great.

i am still playing crackdown.

my design docs are napkins.

you should give napkins a shot.

> disable bono

my balls,
1 to 2 player fun for all.
powered by havok.
coming soon.

myst was fucking awesome.
had a HUGE impact on me.
cant say enough good things about myst.
myst is great!

Just wondering how B.O.B. ended up on your list?  I played the game, and enjoyed it; but to me it was just another 16-bit platformer in the sea of them avaliable at the time.  What aspects are you referring to?

and how can a game that isnt even out yet be considered influential?!?!

lots of potential!
lots of garbage!

games are bad art.

most influencial games ever:

5- Brute Force
4- Billy hatcher and the giant egg
3- REALmyst
2- B.O.B
1- Halo 3

> have sex