LucasArts day 112. So, I never followed up on GDC. The weather was beautiful and I had a great time seeing some of my old friends. I only had chance to attend one day of sessions but that meant that I got to see industry-legend Hideo Kojima’s keynote about Metal Gear Solids evolution and Keita Takahashi’s heart-warming talk about Noby Noby Boy. But the session that gave me most was the Experimental Gameplay Sessions. Again, it’s clear that innovation within games is often not coming from the established developers. It almost seems like we are returning to the age of the bedroom coders with very few right and wrongs.

The thing that inspired me most was Daniel Benmergui’s presentation. I’ve always been a fan of truly interactive stories, and he is proving that there is still so much to explore. It’s hard to explain why, but his very simple game/experiment Storyteller gave me such insight that there are other ways to create stories in game than the branching story-line.

Oh, and Blueberry Garden took home the Grand price during Independent Game’s Festival. Congratulations Erik! And Starbreeze released the new Riddick. Yay!

Posted: May 4th, 2009 under Game design, LucasArts.
Comments: 2

LucasArts day 46. I’m starting to count down for Game Developers Conference. Even though I’ve been working in the game industry for over 10 years, I’ve never been there. I guess that having it across town makes it easier than it being 9 time-zones away. Today I got a mail from Nifflas, the maker of Knytt which is one of my favorite independent games, Read more »

Posted: February 27th, 2009 under Game design, Games, LucasArts.
Comments: 4

LucasArts day 36. Last December, LucasArts did something that to my knowledge other companies only dream of. They dedicated a full week for the whole company to go nuts with creating game prototypes. No matter if you were a hardcore programmer or if you were a part of the marketing department; for one week, you got to get your hands dirty and try out that idea that you previously only had been able to talk about over lunch. Read more »

Posted: February 17th, 2009 under Game design, LucasArts.
Comments: none

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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Posted: February 3rd, 2009 under LucasArts, Personal, Projects.
Comments: none

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. Read more »

Posted: January 26th, 2009 under Game design, Games, LucasArts, Personal.
Comments: 1

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:
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Posted: January 18th, 2009 under Games, LucasArts, Personal.
Comments: 1

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.

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Posted: December 25th, 2008 under Games, Personal, Projects.
Comments: none

Something that is very cumbersome (and boring) to do for every developer out there is the software testing. To combat that, you usually develop a number of methods that helps you track down bugs, for example automatic bug-reports and unit-testing.

One of the more interesting ones is automatic testing. For games, this usually means that you have a system that simulates the player and automatically generates input for it. For my latest project Hyena I’ve had the rare opportunity to play around with an application where the controls are so basic that it was actually possible to write a system that played the whole game for me.

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Posted: March 7th, 2008 under Game design, Projects.
Comments: none

I’ve released a new version of Hyena for DS and PC at
http://www.collectingsmiles.com/hyena

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