Gearing up for GDC

Alright, I’m gearing up for this year’s GDC, which means two things for this blog.

The first thing is that, just as last year, I’m planning to update this blog with daily information on lectures from the conference. I’m not sure I can do this on time since I’ll be quite busy but I will eventually put up at least a short review of every single session I attend. For one thing because I want to for myself and then again because it’s kinda my job. I’ve been promoted to Team Lead Game Design here at Gameforge recently and with power comes responsibility or something. In short I have to hold a presentation on the GDC for my left behind co-workers (which I will be happy to do). So that said look forward to some writeups soon.

And while I’m on the topic of the GDC: If you’re attending and for one reason or another want to meet up feel free to get in touch with me, which shouldn’t be that hard. If possible I’ll also try to post my schedule ahead of time but I’ll have to figure that thing out first. There’s just too much good stuff to see.

The second thing is that this means GameArch is now officially one year old. It’s a good reason to take a look back at the past year: I’ve started this blog as a place for me to talk about and share my passion about games with the internet as a whole. My plan was to write about game spaces and occasionally do bigger articles that provide some value to the developer community as a whole. I’ve started out with the GDC reviews and eventually wrote a lot of smaller articles. I used to mirror most of the bigger posts over at my Persional Gamasutra Blog. I got some good feedback and discussions started over there which eventually motivated me to submit a big article to the site. Titled No More Wrong Turns (blog link, gamasutra link) it originally started as a post for this blog but outgrew it in scope. I’m still pretty happy with that article as I feel it was the one article that best fulfilled my initial vision. Admittedly after that activity on the blog kinda dropped off with only a few smaller articles now and again.

I’m hoping to get a little bit more impetus into this project though. Don’t expect any miracles but I’ve still got a couple of post ideas written up that I’m itching to write. And from those I’ve got one already as good as finished: My previously mentioned article on Boss Mob Design. Granted it’s again veering a bit off the game spaces idea but I believe it’s an interesting article and can be helpful for fellow designers. Because of it’s size though it might again end up at Gamasutra first. Let’s see how that goes.

Still here – just busy.

Shadow of the ColossusHey everyone. I’m still around and I’m sorry it’s been quiet again for so long. The usual excuse of being busy applies, but it’s not just life and work:

I’ve started working on another bigger article. It started out as a small work related piece of research and has grown into a bigger article about Bosses and Boss Fights in video games. I hope to be able to post it this month.

Maybe I’ll be able to do a few smaller pieces in the meantime, but don’t count on it.

And we’re back…

Sorry for the technical difficulties there but the old server was retired and all stuff migrated to a new one. Gamearch has been offline for the last 2 days but it’s all back and running properly now.

There might be some difficulties with my other websites, especially my RPG gaming downloads. The download service backend will most likely be entirely redone and the downloads are offline for the time being. If you need something from there really badly, get in touch with me and I’ll try to get it to you.

Game on.

Welcome to Game Architecture, my new blog about analog and digital games their spaces and the design of both with the occasional personal tidbit mixed in.

Since I’m visiting the GDC in San Franciso for the first time this year, it’s as good a reason as any to finally start this long planned project. I’ll begin this blog by writing about my experiences at the GDC in the form of short reviews of the lectures and workshops I visit. If you are interested in more informaion about these events, just get in touch with me.

As for the blog itself, it’s still a bit rough around the edges but that shouldn’t stop you or me.