Category Archives: Personal

From Indy back to Indie

Colors!, LucasArts, New Projects, Personal

Today marks my official “File > New Project” day. It’s with deep gratitude that I’m handing back the Design Director baton to MachineGames and am returning to my previous role as a design consultant.

Working alongside Jerk and the rest of the Uppsala crew on Indiana Jones and the Great Circle (DLC drops September 4!) has been a privilege – and, of course, an Adventure (Daa-da-da-DAAAAAAA!). I’m incredibly thankful for the chance to contribute to such an iconic IP together with my “forever” dev family. And hey, the game turned out alright! Phew.

So going from Indy to Indie, I’m now eager to focus on some of my other passions for a while. First some love to colorslive.com (Switch 2 obvs…) and then onto something a little bit bigger. Too early to say where it will all lead, but I genuinely believe we’re living in the golden age of video games – there’s so much to create and I’m here for it!

Jens

Call to a AAA adventure

LucasArts, New Projects, Personal

It’s been 12 spectacular years for me as an independent developer. Since leaving LucasArts in 2010, I shipped one of the best rated 3DS titles of all time with Colors! 3D, had the honor of receiving a BAFTA for our lovely open-world pinball game Yoku’s Island Express, and even built custom hardware through our Kickstarted game Colors Live (a perfect Christmas present hint hint).

But I’ve now taken the next big step, which is to join MachineGames as Design Director on Indiana Jones. This is also redemption. When I went accepted the offer to go to San Francisco in 2009, it was to lead the design on an Indiana Jones game, but that game got cancelled before I even got there. Now, I get a chance to do what I original hoped to, but this time with I get to do it with some of my oldest and best friends. Joining MachineGames is like coming home — amazing people I worked with during Riddick and Darkness, but also teeming with new ones, whose talent daily blow me away.

I’m so excited about what we are building, and the way get to do it — featuring one of most iconic characters ever, in collaboration with my friends at Lucasfilm, published by one the biggest publishers in the world, and doing it at an amazing studio like MachineGames.

This will be something very special.

Jens

Yoku@BAFTA

Personal, Yoku's Island Express

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 →

Power of 2

Personal

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.

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Leaving Lucas

LucasArts, Personal

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.

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Celebrity visits

LucasArts, Personal

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.

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Stop 5: Roskilde

Personal

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 →