Category: Standard Rules Apply
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What Do You Even Mean By Branching Narrative?
There’s a conversation I’ve had more times than I can count, and it usually starts the same way. Someone — a writer, a designer, sometimes an executive — says they want a “branching narrative” for their game. Everyone in the room nods. Everyone thinks they understand what that means. And then, about three meetings later,…
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You Can Do Anything Except That
Some of the most disciplined people I can think of are fiction writers. To assign yourself the task of producing hundreds of pages of compelling original content — consistently, on a schedule, while also being your own harshest critic — seems like it would require not just a creative muscle but a kind of self-discipline…
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The Hypothetical Cost Of A Hypothetical Game
There’s been no shortage of conversation online in recent years about game revenue — new monetization models, rising prices, season passes, microtransactions, the economics of live service. What’s talked about considerably less is the other side of that equation: what it actually costs to make a game in the first place. Most publishers stay quiet…
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Sound High Level Thoughts
A few months back I was given the opportunity to put together and present a talk to the whole studio about game audio. Keeping it under twenty minutes meant staying deliberately high level — which was harder than it sounds, because audio is one of those topics where every thread you pull leads to three…
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Applying Vonnegut To Gaming Pt. 2
(Blogtober Day 10) So picking up from yesterday’s Blogtober entry applying some creative writing tips from the late author Kurt Vonnegut and seeing if I can apply them to game development… “Start as close to the end as possible.” This is an interesting one to try to apply to game development as there can be…
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Applying Vonnegut To Gaming Pt. 1
(Blogtober Day 9) Something I maybe have a bad habit of doing is finding a concept, opinion, or soft guideline talked about in one creative industry and considering how it might be applicable to game design and development. I’ve done this almost subconsciously for a while and I tend to keep it to myself these…
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Generic Can Be Another Word For Useful
(Blogtober Day 7) Generally speaking voice over is recorded in sessions ranging from 2 to 4 hours in length. Typically the aim is to record somewhere in the ballpark of 200+ lines in 4 hours, although depending on the complexity of the lines that number could go down, or even up as high as 400+…
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The “Standard” Rules
It’s unfortunate that one has to state things like this so broadly and clearly, and even still there will undoubtedly be some form or misinterpretation. But here we are. The contents and statements found on this website and blog are the sole opinions of the author. As such they should never be mistaken as the…