Thursday night was such a huge night. We won a BAFTA with Yoku’s Island Express for Best Debut. Getting up on the stage in from of the world completely threw me off in a way I didn’t expect, and I didn’t manage utter more than some quick thanks from my memorized list of all the amazing people that was part of its development. I’ll try to correct that here instead.
Continue reading Yoku@BAFTA
Nope. Despite the semi-nerdy name, this is not a technical post. Now that Colors! 3D is finally announced, I wanted to talk about all the fun I get to have now, talking to various entities who are interested in all that we’re doing at Collecting Smiles. And one thing I have learned in the process is that it helps to have a buddy.
For the last year, my friend Shara has been helping me take Collecting Smiles from the loose organization that I started so long ago into a proper company. Just like me, Shara also spent time at LucasArts –and managed to pull off some great feats while she was there. I felt very fortunate to be able to work with her there, and so much more to have her with me at Collecting Smiles.
LucasArts day 572. Last Friday was my last day at LucasArts. It’s been a fantastic time, but now it’s time for me to move on. During my time there I got to lead a design team working on experimental games focused on creating new IPs. As a designer and programmer having worked on both small and big this was an amazing opportunity to really focus on rapid prototyping and building things ground up. It’s surprising how similar and different things are when you work on 6 month projects versus 2 year projects. As we are constantly reminded nowadays, the games and entertainment industry is in rapid transition and it was a luxurious opportunity to be able to touch some of the fronts of that from within the hallowed halls of Lucasfilm.
LucasArts day 22. I’m slowly starting to get settled in here. After a move into a permanent apartment last week, almost all the stuff related to my big move has been taken care of. I got my Social Security Card, all the benefits form are filled out, my banking needs are taken care of, and yeah… I bought an iPhone. I would estimate that about 80% of the LucasArts employees have that thing. Now I do as well. Imagine that, being a developer for it and all.
LucasArts day 13. Before I started working at LucasArts, almost every game I had been working on has started off with a full team. This is not to say LucasArts is doing things differently, it’s just that I’ve always been in the situation where we as quickly as possible must go from nothing to a full-fledge game-prototype in minimal time. Continue reading In pre-production
LucasArts day 5. First week on the job is over. And what a job that is: Lead Designer at LucasArts. Who would have though back in the days when I got my kicks playing Manic Mansion that I would work at this legendary company that has developed so many great games over the years. I just browsed through them and just look at this list:
Continue reading Donut Day
My two year sabbatical is coming to an end. I’m starting as Lead Designer at LucasArts in San Francisco this January which is the beginning of a new phase for me. In September I released Colors! for iPhone and iPod Touch. This has turned Collecting Smiles into a full-fledged independent developer, and I wanted to write a few words of thanks to Apple for that.
Mud and plenty of wind can turn a tent into a flying dragon!
Oh sweet mud. I had the pleasure of attending the Roskilde Festival and watch a few bands like BJÖRK-INFLAMES-ROKYERICKSON-BEASTIEBOYS-DIZZEERASCAL-CSS-QUEENSOFTHESTONEAGE-MUSTASCH-BONDEDEROLE-FLAMINGLIPS-CULTOFLUNA.
But since this is a gaming-blog I will not bore you with that. Instead I’d like smoothly move the topic over to licensed music in games. In The Darkness we did a pretty cool thing. We crammed the disc full with video content that ran on the in-game TVs that were scattered all over the game. Continue reading Stop 5: Roskilde
As a final US stop, San Francisco was really perfect and took the top spot of my favorite city ever. I got to hang out with Jordan from Irrational as well as Steve from Perpetual which was really cool.
San Francisco is also the home of GDC (apart from a year in San Jose). I’ve never been there myself, but it seems to have become bigger and more interesting every year. Still, it seems a bit on the hefty side to charge so much for a conference ($1450 for a classic pass), and of course the total becomes much higher for people traveling from Sweden.
I think I’ve been to Los Angeles about 10 times and have spend about two weeks per year here the last 5 years. Mostly due to E3 of course and this will be the first time for a long time that I’m not going. E3 is quite different this year as well since they have moved it from being in the main convention centre into a couple of hotels in Santa Monica. It’s probably not a bad idea. Still, Leipzig seems like a very good replacement for E3 and is maybe more interesting since it’s for most part open for consumers as well. And you don’t have to fly for 15 hours to get there, of course.