Sorry for the lack of updates. Redesign and a new job makes my time short and the tech buggy as hell.
I just saw the first trailer from Deathspank… yeah, thats right!
It’s Ron Gilbert’s (anyone else who has no clue?), accoring to kotaku, “long awaited” episodic RPG/adventure.
Now re-read the previous paragraph a few times and close your mouth.
It’s supposed to be a mix between Diablo and Monkey Island, and judging from the trailer I saw they seem to have hit the spot dead on.
I’m excited, and not because another good game might be in the works. There are in fact a whole bunch of good games on the horizon. I’m excited because this game looks like it’s really, truly, funny.
Not entertaining. Funny.
A sitcom of games if you will. Can anyone say “main-stream hit”?
Readers of this blog will know that I love easy fun and that, at least I, find such entertainment really hard to find these days. Go on Guy, make a wonderful game!
As you’ve probably noticed my blog is moved and redesigned (not final yet) because I needed to speed up my site updates. Sadly my domain host is restricting me from completing the change faster but it will be done in a couple of weeks.
Which is ironically very similar to the Moore’s Wall phenomena that Raph Koster has previously talked about. Moore’s Wall is basically states that because new, better and faster technology is usually thought to be the same as visual improvement (graphical in games) developers are implicitly forced to focus harder on visual representation then on interactivity or function. As technology improves this will become more and more work until development is so expensive that taking chances is never profitable.
Sound familiar? It’s basically the current state of the games industry. Not until technological innovation has matured so far that new technology is not leaps and bounds faster or better then the previous tech or when the leaps between tech grow longer can we really focus on creating better gameplay.
Anyway, it’s a great read and the basic idea is perforating my day to day life so check it out.
Here is a short thought that you might want to consider expressing next time someone near you doesn’t understand just how significant games are as a medium.
Please think about how the people near you consume media. They watch movies, read books and so on and then share their experience with others. Possibly as humor or as tips for others to try, but essentially media is a connective experience.
Media connects people.
Games are interactive media. Not all interactive media are games, but all games are interactive media. And games are in majority multiplayer.
Games will therefore make the normal use of media more effective and/or easier.
Because of this, I believe that games will become not a mainstream medium. But quite possibly the mainstream media.
Please feel free to disagree, but I’m not all wrong am I?
I redid jesperbylund.com, finally hosting it myself.
It includes my portfolio and blog and was designed to be an interactive information sheet about me and my work.
Since all design is iterative I can't be sure this first version will work as intended. Only testing will tell. But since it's based on cognitive processes it should be an interesting website to most visitors.
2009
Tele2.se remakes 09
Tele2.se was relaunched with a new design in Febuary of 09. The new design was created by Cordovan Digital and implemented into the CMS Reddot by myself, Jakob Neander and Tobias Lindman.
The black top was a redesign of the Business part of the site in the summer of 09. Designed once again by Cordovan Digital.
Shattered Alliance
This was my third year project at the University of Skovde. Together with a team of 18 third and fourth year students we designed and implemented everything from the engine up. We had planned a 8 player cooperative shooter with online ranking.
The game was bought by the University and was intended to be used for PR purposes at LAN parties.
Sadly, the engine development was delayed due to changing demands from the University and in the end lighting and core gameplay progression was never fully implemented.
The game was however a great success as in it's final stages it did support online ranking and up to 8 players cooperating over LAN. The University even hosted a compitition in which new students downloaded the games and ranked for most kills during a week. A price was awarded and over 200 students did compete.
2008
Dreamlords the Reawakening
Dreamlords the Reawakening was the follow up on the critical success Dreamlords. Dreamlords never had monetary success and to reboot the brand and still retain the community Lockpick Entertainment created Dreamlords the Reawakening which was something of a cross between a sequel and an extension.
The lore was the same but the game play was not.
Dreamlords the Reawakening was picked up by several publishers and published in three territories. It was commercially successful for about a year before the economic crisis hit us and bankrupted the company.
Dreamlords the Reawakening is still being developed by active community members and former devs.
Dreamlords
Dreamlords was the brain child of a group of student from the university of shoved. It was a unique mix of RTS gaming and web based long term strategy.
The game was released to critical success but we never broke even. Dreamlords also lost a number of developers as the profitability shrank at the same time as interest from other game developers grew.
Grim Breed
Grim Breed was my second year project at the University of Skovde. It was a RTS game designed to be simplistic but offer a unique UI that let players issue complex orders to troops with ease.
The game was severely hampered by an external pathfinding library that we found out to late was not up to the challenge of guiding such a large number of units. The game was a great success for the members of the team and is to this date one of the most successful game projects to come out of UoS.
I'm just a really tall guy who happens to love to understand what people do and why.
I fell in love with what engages people early on and decided digital entertainment and products were the way of the future.
I work smart, not hard, to find the details that matter. And I love to see people feel my work without really percieving it.
IF you need this knowledge or the effects of it, I'd be happy to share it with you. Follow or contact me:
I design for interaction. No matter what the product or service.
And I make that interaction fun. Interaction and fun are closely connected, it's harder to create fun without interaction, most people just don't know why.
Ease of use and simplicity is a side effect of designing for interaction, and all my work echo this effect.
Download my CV