If you make games that are expressive, mediate novel interactions between people, or improve skills that are applicable outside of the game itself, I’d like to work with you. Maybe you’d like to work with me, too. I have AAA, indie, entrepreneurial, and academic experience. You can read more about my thoughts and work in games below. If you want to give me a label, I’ve been told that “Technical Game Designer” suits me best.
The first game that I designed from start to finish is PongVaders (video, App Store), a co-op ‘mashup’ of some classic arcade games. It was produced from start to finish in under 5 weeks with fellow developer Cole Krumbholz. Anna Anthropy and Nullsleep contributed art and music. It generated strong sales after launch, peaking in the top 20, plus peoplelike it.
Mandala
At the third TIGJam, I teamed up with Rich Vreeland to create a meditative experience making a sand drawing of a Sri Yantra Mandala. The player slowly, rhythmically traces the constituent shapes of the mandala to drop colored sand while a calming soundtrack plays. When finished, the player shakes the iPad to scatter the sand and start anew. (Nothing lasts forever). It is available in the AppStore and you can play with the source on GitHub. The game received praise from Brandon Boyer and entered the top 100 in top Free Entertainment downloads.
RocketSquid
The second game by Koduco is code-named ‘RocketSquid’ (excuse the trochee-noun), an iPad game intended to have emergent multiplayer opportunities since the squid’s 10 limbs of articulation map nicely to varying numbers of fingers belonging to varying numbers of hands belonging to varying numbers of humans, and would probably produce fun ‘finger twister’ scenarios necessitating verbal coordination to solve.
Prototypes
The first image is of a music sequencing toy that uses physical objects in a snowy scene as metaphors for ‘tracks’. Repositioning the objects in relation to the player ‘remixes’ the tracks. Synesthesia will be emphasized via layering of various full-screen shaders.
The next image is a research photo for a mobile game that simulates working in the sort of factory that produces smartphones. The preliminary title is ‘Confoxx’
The last image is from an exercise in developing my skill of creating a positive ‘game feel’. I wanted to take a simple concept, a shmup, with simple graphics (boxes and spheres) and use graphical effects, camera shakes, and sound to create an engrossing experience with clear sensory language to reinforce the game’s rules and expectations of the player.
Interaction design and physical interfaces
While at Harmonix Music Systems, I helped design the music store menus, to minimize clicks-to-purchase.
In March 2010, Babycastles and Create Digital Motion teamed up to host a workshop where people built their own controllers. I built an antagonistic controller out of a vice grip, some wire, and an old mouse to create a single-button controller for the one-button Gamma competition. It’s an inversion of a controller – normally people perform work to trigger a button. With this controller, the wire leads will complete a circuit unless the vice grip is held open. Effort is required not to trigger the button, which makes simple games like Canabalt positively laborious.
Games
If you make games that are expressive, mediate novel interactions between people, or improve skills that are applicable outside of the game itself, I’d like to work with you. Maybe you’d like to work with me, too. I have AAA, indie, entrepreneurial, and academic experience. You can read more about my thoughts and work in games below. If you want to give me a label, I’ve been told that “Technical Game Designer” suits me best.
I think about games.
You can read an interview with me in EDGE where I talk about multiplayer and touch games. There’s also an article I wrote about design considerations for multi-touch devices (iPhones, iPods, iPads, Androids).
I make games.
PongVaders
The first game that I designed from start to finish is PongVaders (video, App Store), a co-op ‘mashup’ of some classic arcade games. It was produced from start to finish in under 5 weeks with fellow developer Cole Krumbholz. Anna Anthropy and Nullsleep contributed art and music. It generated strong sales after launch, peaking in the top 20, plus people like it.
Mandala
At the third TIGJam, I teamed up with Rich Vreeland to create a meditative experience making a sand drawing of a Sri Yantra Mandala. The player slowly, rhythmically traces the constituent shapes of the mandala to drop colored sand while a calming soundtrack plays. When finished, the player shakes the iPad to scatter the sand and start anew. (Nothing lasts forever). It is available in the AppStore and you can play with the source on GitHub. The game received praise from Brandon Boyer and entered the top 100 in top Free Entertainment downloads.
RocketSquid
The second game by Koduco is code-named ‘RocketSquid’ (excuse the trochee-noun), an iPad game intended to have emergent multiplayer opportunities since the squid’s 10 limbs of articulation map nicely to varying numbers of fingers belonging to varying numbers of hands belonging to varying numbers of humans, and would probably produce fun ‘finger twister’ scenarios necessitating verbal coordination to solve.
Prototypes
The first image is of a music sequencing toy that uses physical objects in a snowy scene as metaphors for ‘tracks’. Repositioning the objects in relation to the player ‘remixes’ the tracks. Synesthesia will be emphasized via layering of various full-screen shaders.
The next image is a research photo for a mobile game that simulates working in the sort of factory that produces smartphones. The preliminary title is ‘Confoxx’
The last image is from an exercise in developing my skill of creating a positive ‘game feel’. I wanted to take a simple concept, a shmup, with simple graphics (boxes and spheres) and use graphical effects, camera shakes, and sound to create an engrossing experience with clear sensory language to reinforce the game’s rules and expectations of the player.
Interaction design and physical interfaces
While at Harmonix Music Systems, I helped design the music store menus, to minimize clicks-to-purchase.
In March 2010, Babycastles and Create Digital Motion teamed up to host a workshop where people built their own controllers. I built an antagonistic controller out of a vice grip, some wire, and an old mouse to create a single-button controller for the one-button Gamma competition. It’s an inversion of a controller – normally people perform work to trigger a button. With this controller, the wire leads will complete a circuit unless the vice grip is held open. Effort is required not to trigger the button, which makes simple games like Canabalt positively laborious.