Dismantle Repair

So, like the little box on the side says, my day job is teaching at Columbia College Chicago in the Interactive Arts and Media Department, Game Design Major. (Yes, it really should be called the Game Development Major, but Game Design is apparently so much more sezzy…) The program is new, and the spring that just passed saw the graduation of our first crop of seniors. The capstone of the program is a two-semester game production class, where the fall semester is focused on pre-production, prototyping, and groundwork (with some initial production) and the spring semester is all about getting the damn thing done, hopefully by following the plan established in the prior semester. (Hah!)

There were twenty-seven students in the class, divided up between art/animation, design, programming and sound, and we tried to structure the experience to be as close to the “industry experience” (insert snark here) as we could, given the academic environment. You can get a look at it – a 16-player LAN resource gathering/base building-defending game – and download a copy from here.

All things considered, I think they did a hell of a job.

Welcome!

So, how on earth do you people do it? For a variety of reasons – some of which I will get to at some point – I decided it was time to dive in and start a blog… or at least create a place where I could pull trains of thought together into something vaguely coherent. Success, ultimately, is in the eye of the beholder.

Getting back to my first sentence – how do you people do it? In getting this together, I dove into some game development related blogs and sites in earnest – rather than just in Google Reader – and was amazed at the depth and breadth, and volume of thought out there. It is intimidating, to say the least. (You can find the links to some of them in the usual place on this page.)

What am I going to talk about? Story. Design. Games. Stuff… like the masthead says. Will it be regurgitation of the obvious? Hopefully not. Will anyone care? No clue. With luck someone, including me, will find this useful.