The End of the Beginning

Well, that went quickly! About a year ago I was traveling to Brunel University for the first time, ready to start my MA in Digital Games and now all of a sudden it's over. I haven't got the grade yet, that doesn't come until November-ish but my dissertation is in and now... What?

Dissertation Games Design Document

 

Well, it's time to start job hunting again. It's a daunting prospect. I haven't looked for a job for about 8 years and before that I was lucky enough to cascade from one thing to the next. I've never really used job-sites and this whole linked in malarkey is new to me as well! None the less it's an exciting prospect and was always the aim - that I would do the course and then try to find work... And here I am!

 

So my LinkedIn profile has been spruced up (I can be found here) and I've updated my cv as well. Knowing where to start is a bit more tricky but I've done some website trawling and I suppose we'll see what happens next...

 

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An Awesome Encounter (not mine)

I read this while at my desk this morning and consider it to be awesome! It's from the blog of Joel Runyon which is a blog about various things.  One day he met up with an exciting person while having coffee.  I'll let you read it yourself here but do go and have a read!

Good news for Brunel

Dissertation is moving on a-pace, but in other news I thought I'd share this article about Brunel.  Good going Brunel :)

Summer's almost here

Summer's Here!

Well, sort of.  It's warm, the rain has mostly abated.  Well, apart from when it hasn't and my PC occasionally shuts down coz it gets too hot!  The Steam Summer Sale has happened as well, which means that, once more I  have some games that were on sale that I want to play when there's time.  I still have a few of those from last year but I'm sure this year will be different... right!?



What summer also means is that I'm sat infront of my PC tapping away at my dissertation.  I have to write a Games Design Document and produce a prototype for the piece I am producing and it's due in on the 21st September.  All systems are go.  This weekend has seen the first 'break through' of work - I've been pottering about doing bits on it for ages but quite a lot of it all came together in my first draft and that's good.

One of the things that I've found difficult is getting started on the numbers.  I got a bit obsessed with this until I did quite a lot more reading on 'Game Theory' and balancing and things.  These were all very interesting, and relevant but in the end a lot of them came down to the suggestion that 'it doesn't matter: start and balance correctly, which is what I did and I think it's working so far.  I guess it's rather geeky to admit that I rather enjoyed my weekend which partially involved me tapping numbers into Excel and watching it create graphs for me.  Not to mention the wonders of Visio which enables me to produce effective flow charts of how events link together.


September moves ever closer and the time to look for a job is looking.  It's a daunting prospect, starting something new is both exciting and nerve-wracking at the same time.  Having to convince people that I can do what they want me to is going to be the challenge, but challenges are good things in some ways, and I am determined to push forward with it.  In some ways I look forward to it.

I've been playing quite a bit of The Secret World and I'm enjoying it a great deal.  I'm not quite sure where the game is going as yet, but I'm liking it and it's conspiracy theory plot-lines a great deal.  It's the games first update tomorrow and I look forward to what they bring.  At £11.50 per month it sort of needs to be good.  Not that £11.50 is much, but it's more than a lot of monthly subscriptions and is £138 per year... Sadly what this also means is that Star Wars: The Old Republic has lost my attention.  It just didn't keep up with the excellence that was the levelling up.  I enjoyed that process very much, the story worked, the journey was fun but the destination was very poor.  Maybe it will get better, maybe it will go Free to Play (it's apparently lost 23 percent of users already which is a lot and I know there's been job changes at Bioware.  It's a real shame, because it had so much promise. 


I've also been playing a lot of Civilisation V - I know I'm behind the times a bit with that, but it's a very good game and the recent Gods and Kings expansion was great, but possibly that's because it added religion and I'm a sucker for that, not to mention adding new nations, which just gives a different feel to your games.


The other thing that has really caught me is the iPad version of Magic by Stainless Games which is extremely playable and addictive.  I haven't played much magic for many years (although played a lot of it in the early days).  I am shocked at the power of some of the cards (Primordial Hydra anyone!) but it remains a fun game and this version is a very good one.  Give it a go!  


I am a proud owner of an iPad.  That's an iPad 1.  I have had it since the early days and I love it very much.  Increasingly though it's finding it harder to keep up with recent releases and that makes me a bit sad.  I look forward to being able (to afford) to upgrade to a new generation, but they're still amazing bits of kit.  I feel like I should be on their sales team as I know how many people have bought iPads directly and once removed because of mine.  Although I did fall asleep with it on my face on Saturday night - that's not a good look for anyone!  So, yes, my iPad is a bit of a dinosaur but I still love it.

It is also the season of LARP and I've done a few events so far, but they have been rather rainy it has to be said.  Still good fun though and I look forward to more as the season goes on.  Some where I don't have to scrub everything of mud afterwards would be nice now!  

Oh it's the Olympics too - and finally people are starting to get behind them in a more public fashion, just as it always seemed likely they would.  Yes there are still nay-sayers.  Yes they often have loud voices and are quite vocal, but there seems a good spirit about it and that's a good thing.

Enjoy the summer folks.

Onwards Upwards: Dissertation Time

Well, essays are in, Game Design Projects are done, marks are back and term II is over.  That puts me in a peculiar position now: Dissertation time.

I have until the 21st September to write my Dissertation project.  I have chosen to do the practical route of the dissertation module, which involves me doing a Game Design Document and a prototype of a game.  With what feels like a long time before hand in it can be difficult to self motivate but I am now working on it (having had a long period of procrastination and actual thinking) most days and trying to pummel energy into the work.  I want to create a game that I am proud of and essentially I'd like to have something I can show at interview and the like.



It also means that I am beginning to think solidly about the future.  The course has confirmed that I definately want to work 'in the industry', either as a designer or more possibly as a producer.  All of my experience for a lot of my career has been in production / company management and so with the extra background knowledge the course has given me I hope to be able to transfer my skills to the games sector.  Of course now that means convincing someone that I am capable of doing the job, but that's the next step isn't it!

In terms of applying for jobs I think I want to get my dissertation done and out of the way before committing to jobs, although I am passively looking to see if things come up that are ideal (it would be foolish not to).  In the meantime I am aware that I should probably get my twitter feed running (I am so bad at twittering! - follow me at: @Frailtimes ) and I should probably sort out my Linked In Page, which I have but have never filled in the details of.

Playing Stuff: I have been playing a lot of Star Wars: The Old Republic over the last few months but it's sort of going a bit stale at the moment - people are busy, the content a bit samey now and so it's on a hiatus.  On the other hand I am enjoying playing a lot of Civilisation V (which I missed when it first came out) and playing it multi-player is great fun too - it's quite a relaxed multi-player game which is pleasant.  I had a brief sting on Diablo III but it got old quite quickly.  It's too much of a halfway house for me - not enough variables, not simple enough to be trivial - odd game.  It is very pretty but prettiness just isn't enough for me.
I'm looking forward to The Secret World coming out (next week) as it looks like the sort of game that will peak my interests (the idea of the skill wheel is very appealing).  I haven't played any of the beta weekends - I sort of want to experience it when I can throw myself into it properly, not having to stop when they tell me to!!

So for now back to work...  Hopefully you'll be hearing more of me soon :)

Questions and Answers

My next essay for my MA is about characters in roleplaying games, be they tabletop, live action or digita.  I am interested in what people look for in their games, how they play them and if they play different sorts of roleplaying games in different styles.

I posted a survey out using Survey Monkey on Tuesday morning (well, just after midnight) and so far as of 18:00 Wednesday I have 337 response, which is absolutely fantastic.

It's getting some really interesting responses and I can't wait to collate them and examine them in more depth.

People like me (I think) like talking about their hobby but I hadn't anticipated so many people would take the time out of their schedule to answer in the comments boxes I included (I deliberately suggested people skip them if they didn't have time and thought that most people would) but there have been a large amount of comments given in all of the questions, which is wonderful and fascinating to see people's responses about something which they clearly feel passionately (as I do) about.

I look forward to sharing some of the results (it's all anonymous and so on) and sharing what people have said. 

Thanks if you've filled out the survey so far and if you haven't... well - I'd love you to.  It can be found here

A special mention goes to Esther MacCallum-Stewart, who lectures at the University of Chichester and writes on all things games, and to Ian Knope at Having a LARP for posting this on for me.  Also of course to anyone who has shared this and that I don't know has passed it on.  Please do, the more responses the merrier!

De De De De De-de-de-dah... boom

March 2nd.  I even missed the pinch pinch first of the month opportunity (that's probably bullying or harrassment though so for the best avoided).

It's pretty amazing to believe that we've finished our design lectures for the year and on;y have a few weeks left of theory classes.  We spend our third term on dissitation / project work so much of my formal teaching is over.  I was last at 'school' quite a few years ago so being back again has been an interesting experience.

My essay for this term is going to be something about building characters / identity / affect or some combination thereof.  I'm still working on the title, but I know that's the thing that is intertesting me on the theory side at the moment.  I'm waiting for Game Feel to arrive, although my mountain of books has enough to keep me going in the meantime! I've been particularly enjoying the First / Second / Third person books (that's a link to one of them, the others are all there too) as they have been addressing some of the practical aspects of what I am focussed on - creating good games.

We had a pitch to 4 industry professionals and three of our lecturers on Wednesday.  This was a nervous week.  Mediatonic, Creative Assembly, Super Massive and a gentleman ex EA and very well connected were all there and they all gave fantastic feedback for us all, it was a great experience and the whole class pulled it out of the bag really, which was great to see.  My personal effort was called "When It Was Over" and I was reasonably pleased with it.  I learnt a lot from the pitch itself and from the process.  The next stage is to finish the deign document for it and make a prototype of some of it in MMF2, so that's going to be coming over the next few weeks.  I made a little trailer / mood board for it, which if you were interested you could watch it below - the intention was to give a feel of an adventure set on an island after the world collapses.  Naturally I don't own the rights to any of it etc etc.

All in all I learnt a lot from the pitch and the project leading up to it, so that was good.

Things happen in ironic ways and this week at my job in my 'other life' (I work as a production manager for a training / theatre company) things have been more hectic than ever.  We get people pull out of work for us at the last minute every so often for auditions or other stuff, but in this last week 3 nights this has happened which leads to late nights working at the office rather than on my MA stuff.  It happens, it's just been particularly unlucky!  It's made it all exciting and a challenge so I am, I have to admit, excited that it's over and looking forward to the weekend now!

In other news I've been working on another project which has started well, and am enjoying it very much.  There we go - that's a little bit of mystery for you!

 And now... back to work.