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 […]

An aspiring designer asked me if I thought they were good enough for an associate role. I told them, “Not yet, but you’re almost ready for senior roles.” Here’s what I meant: People often think I learn extremely quickly. Nah, I’m a slow learner. I am very bad at rote memorization, I need to understand […]

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 […]

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 […]

Myths about “cold showers at 4am = success” exist because people want to sell you something. They want to promise the secrets of success, or claim that their success is based 100% on effort rather than any luck at all. However, it’d be very inconvenient if you could test this for yourself – so they […]

This post originally appeared on LinkedIn and received 39k views before it was removed for, apparently, violating LinkedIn’s policies on “spam and scams”. I find this very interesting. Because many people said it was a valuable reference for them, I decided to repost it here. 1. Understand that games are hard to make and carry […]

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 […]

“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?” 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 […]

I’ve seen some people in QA, Community Management, Project Management, IT, and other vital roles at game studios be reluctant to take credit for being “game developers”. The test is simple: If we can’t develop or support the game without you, you’re a game developer. It’s that simple.