Pro Tip for Reading Industry News

Pro tip: You can basically ignore any headline with the word “could” in it. Examples: “Bloodborne could be coming to PC as early as August 2020!” “Activision could be starting plans for a Call of Duty theme park!” “Crash Bandicoot battle royale could be in the works!” “Valve could be about to make a full […]

Strategy vs. Values

Strategy is what you do because its good for business. Values are what you do even if it’s bad for business. If your company nickels and dimes their values against other metrics, they aren’t really values. They’re slogans. Strategy and Values are both incredibly important, whether building a game or a studio. Even if you’re […]

The Big NFT Lie

No, you will NEVER be able to take your NFT from one game and bring it to a bunch of other games. Here’s why: Imagine you’re running a game studio, and as always you don’t have time to build everything you want. Your team has prioritization meetings every few weeks, estimating the time it will […]

Lost at Sea? Good.

There’s a step in the creative process when you reach a point of near-panic, unmoored from well-known places, where your understanding of the problem outstrips your knowledge of solutions. You’re lost at sea, surrounded by gliding monsters. Then, one by one, you chart the stars. This is not a failure of the creative process, this […]

A Brief Tutorial on Tutorials

I recently got asked about my thoughts on how to create a great tutorial. This is something I’ve talked a lot about but never written a post on. That time has come. Summary Make them Curious: Curiosity is the motivation to learn something. Lots of people talk about the need to provide an obvious value […]

How to be a Great Collaborator

“You want to be someone that people are excited to share their ideas with.” Whenever a new designer asks me for mentorship, this is the first thing I tell them. Many people instinctively point out problems with ideas, and problems often don’t have easy solutions that can be invented in the moment. If you do […]

How Do You Win a Creative Debate?

“How do you win a creative debate?” I got asked this once during an interview and my brain just froze. I didn’t know how to answer. I finally said, “By asking questions.” My proudest moments in development are when we make something that’s better than any of our individual visions. On Faeria, I pitched an […]