Hello
Hi there. This is a new fresh blog for me to talk about game design and development.
Let me briefly give my background, and why I'm talking here. It'll sound cocky -- it's hard to talk about yourself without sounding cocky -- but bear with me.
In college I was very successful at ACM programming contests, and went to the international level twice (which is the maximum number of times you are allowed to go). After that, I became a coach for future ACM programming contestants. This taught me about speed coding, pair programming, and formal whiteboarding... and more importantly, it taught me when to use each! I would recommend college programming contests to anyone who wants to be a coder.
Since then I have been an engineer for well over a decade, often as a lead. I've been in the games industry for about five years, and in the past three or so years, I've branched out into other roles:
- I've been a producer for the MMORPG "Asheron's Call 2"
- I've been a lead systems designer for AC2's expansion pack
- I've been a designer on other game titles (which didn't launch or have not yet launched)
I'm not the most experienced designer or producer in the world -- but I'm learning fast. I've always been a self-study sort of person, so I've been picking them up quickly.
So why am I writing this blog? It seems like the games industry doesn't really think about what it's doing a lot of the time. And thinking about what you're doing -- that's the most important thing when you're planning any sort of project.
One of the worst things about the game industry (and the MMORPG industry in particular) is that it seems to create a permanent rush sensation. Everything has to be done now! There's no time to think! But because we don't think, we end up making mistakes which really do set us back considerably.
I've recently started my own personal game company -- it's just me and remote contractors at the moment -- and I've been trying to THINK before I do something. I can't say my thinking has yielded amazing insights -- but I've had some good ideas I want to share. And I've found various research I'd like to talk about, too.
The goal of this blog is to share my thinking with other game designers and developers. Since I've been thinking about lots of game design topics, I wanted to share my thoughts with other designers.
Let me briefly give my background, and why I'm talking here. It'll sound cocky -- it's hard to talk about yourself without sounding cocky -- but bear with me.
In college I was very successful at ACM programming contests, and went to the international level twice (which is the maximum number of times you are allowed to go). After that, I became a coach for future ACM programming contestants. This taught me about speed coding, pair programming, and formal whiteboarding... and more importantly, it taught me when to use each! I would recommend college programming contests to anyone who wants to be a coder.
Since then I have been an engineer for well over a decade, often as a lead. I've been in the games industry for about five years, and in the past three or so years, I've branched out into other roles:
- I've been a producer for the MMORPG "Asheron's Call 2"
- I've been a lead systems designer for AC2's expansion pack
- I've been a designer on other game titles (which didn't launch or have not yet launched)
I'm not the most experienced designer or producer in the world -- but I'm learning fast. I've always been a self-study sort of person, so I've been picking them up quickly.
So why am I writing this blog? It seems like the games industry doesn't really think about what it's doing a lot of the time. And thinking about what you're doing -- that's the most important thing when you're planning any sort of project.
One of the worst things about the game industry (and the MMORPG industry in particular) is that it seems to create a permanent rush sensation. Everything has to be done now! There's no time to think! But because we don't think, we end up making mistakes which really do set us back considerably.
I've recently started my own personal game company -- it's just me and remote contractors at the moment -- and I've been trying to THINK before I do something. I can't say my thinking has yielded amazing insights -- but I've had some good ideas I want to share. And I've found various research I'd like to talk about, too.
The goal of this blog is to share my thinking with other game designers and developers. Since I've been thinking about lots of game design topics, I wanted to share my thoughts with other designers.
posted by Eric Heimburg | 4:33 PM
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