JESPERBYLUND.COM - LIFESTREAM
04-27-09
PS3 sales skyrocket as Final Fantasy Advent Children complete is released with the playable demo of FF13.
This is quite probably one of 2009s biggest releases on the PS3 and points to the outcome of this generation in the console war.
There will be no #1 gaming platform.
The Wii has outsold everything x2 and but still has poor support from and to third parties. The Xbox 360 has a clear lead over the PS3 but is clearly not a winner though Microsoft has made both a ton of money and millions of new customers. The PS3 continues to stagnate with good support but far from the great support of the golden PSX days.
In conclusion I miss those days, there was a clear winner, a clear platform that every developer aimed for and a wide spectrum of games.
Maybe the next generation will see a renaissance of games development. Maybe we’ll see total domination by Adobe Flash or OnLive.
04-03-09
Last night I saw Macbeth at the Swedish royal opera house. It was stunning. My first opera and live Shakespeare. Very intriguing.
In the intermission my friend, a producer at EA DICE, said an interesting thing: While opera is clearly far behind most other media in terms of storytelling the music holds up the experience making it excel as an art form.
First I just thought he had a fair point. Then I realised the same can be said for most games, which I’m sure was a thought he shared.
So what can we use to hold up storytelling in games? Interaction is what holds games as experiences up to a level of excellence but can it be used to save storytelling?
JESPERBYLUND.COM - PORTFOLIO
JesperBylund.com remake
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.
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.
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.
JESPERBYLUND.COM - ABOUT ME
who am I?
what do I do?
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
