fbpx

Tag Archive for girl gamer

Close your eyes before you jump….

http://nagademo.com

Sometimes we all just need a swift kick in the ass.  There are a thousand reasons to put something off, to relegate it to the bottom of the wish list, and until you find a way to assign importance, artificial or not, it’s just going to stay there.

I have a laundry list of game concepts in my arsenal.  Some of them are just a paragraph based around a game mechanic I came up in the spaces between the stuff I have to do, some of them are complete design documents.  It’s time I shoved a couple of these suckers to the top of the “must do” list, or I am running the risk of becoming one of those game industry professionals that did some really cool stuff once, but then vanished into the background.

So I went and did something foolish.  Well, not foolish like jumping off a bridge, or parasailing over a lava flow.  That was stuff for when I was still building my resume of batshit crazy experiences.  Foolish because I already have a fairly full existence.  As a parent of 3, as a business woman, both professional and volunteer, there’s a bunch of shit I *have* to do.  I have to do it so my kids education doesn’t suck, I have to do it because I have contractors waiting to be paid, I have to do it because if I don’t the engine in my car will finally seize up from years of neglect.  Have to have to have to.  We *all* have “Have tos” in our lives.  I’ve signed up for this because it’s a “want to”.  Some busy women get their nails done.  Get a massage.  Go shopping.  Go hiking.  Go out drinking with the girls.  Read a book.

This here, the game design and execution, this is my “want to”.  I’m doubly lucky in that my vocation and my avocation are tucked in aside one another.  This is the kind of thing I do for fun, when I have a few minutes in between board meetings, contract work and Little League.  This is where my mind goes when it has a few free brain cells to spare.

So instead of getting a $100 mani/pedi, or reading Shades of Grey I’m doing something for me.  I’m building a game,  in 1 month.  Starting today. I’ll be blogging about the process regularly, so keep an eye here.  I’ll try to be sure to include screenshots and design snippets as I go so you can see how this all works.  I have a textbook out there, so where I can, I’ll tie this process into that, so I can use this blog later as a “real” example of game design, soup to nuts.

Ready.

Steady.

Jump.

Out of the Office (Post #1)

I am currently trapped in the middle seat for a two hour flight to Seattle.

The fact that I am traveling on business is, into and of itself, somewhat unusual, I usually try to restrict my travel to places where I already have a couch to crash on because all of this is out of pocket for me.  I don’t work on high budget products, I don’t work for a big name publisher who is willing to send me out on these little jaunts and foot the bill.  When I do work for a “Big Name” its on a freelance basis these days, which means I have to use the tradesman’s entrance, and my name never appears int he credit.  I am half past indie both in development and mindset at the point, which puts me in the budget hotel and hoofing it categories.

Still this is an exciting trip for me.  I’ve not had the chance to be a panelist or a guest speaker prior to this, sure, I’ve applied to be on one occasion or mother, but my subject matter is a little bit quirky and a little too directed and he introductory crowd.  I’m in this from the artistic side of development and, as such, this means I don’t have a new and nifty way to handle shadows in a mobile environment or a great new powerful graphics engine I developed in my basement.  I have a host of useful information for the artist, how to shave an extra 5kb off your title image, different programs you can use to kill your image down to 64 colors without losing too much in the way of image quality.  I have solutions for design issues and a boost of from the tranches commentary on the process of development but not so much of the newer better faster hard core programming that is such a valuable commodity in this industry.