Stop-Motion session with my Kids!

I'm only a Game Developer for a small part of my time. For another big part of my time, I'm a homeschooling father of two amazingly creative kids. There is Boy (4) and a Girl (7) and with two artsy parents around, interesting projects are often quickly improvised. I received a tripod for our camera last Christmas and during a daily arts & crafts session making paper toys with the kids, I set it up for a quick stop-motion test on the kitchen's table.

Boy and Girl were eager to try for themselves and the result is pretty cool!

(animations after the break)

The things we do

The point is not to fill our days with what we like,
But to fill our days with what feels right.

What we like pleases the body now and leaves us craving later, even ashamed.
What feels right is hard to do and require courage but leaves us with a pleasant feeling of joy and pride.

What are those things that we like?
What are those things that feel right?
Too broad for definition, you have to look for them in your life yourself.

About courage and perseverence

Imagine you are building a boat. This is the first time you're doing this. It's very hard to do and you don't quite know how to but you have a slight idea anyway. So you spend a lot of time and effort working on the boat and when you are done, it looks ok but not quite good and there's a few leaks.

Now you try to sell that boat but nobody wants to buy it because it looks ugly and dangerous. You're very disappointed because you spent a lot of time on that boat, you invested yourself and bit of money for materials too and you don't get anything back for it.

We're still young

Nowadays there is a real cult of the youth. Advertisement makes us believe we should look young forever and could if we used their products. The star system goes in the same direction with ever younger singers, actors and other "young talents". It is commonly believed that we are in our top years when we are in our twenties and that it is at this moment that we build our life (getting out of school, getting a career, car, house, kids, boat, lodge, and blah blah blah...). By our thirties all we are supposed to do is work and enjoy these things until we retire. And then we just enjoy these things.

Young, young, young. What a boring song.

All of this is just bullshit. "Young" (as in 24 and under) is just a tiny part of our life.

Why getting a job as a game designer sucks

Being employed sucks... big time! Even in the game industry. Maybe even more so in the game industry. Actually, working as a game designer was the worst job I ever had. I'd much rather go back to delivering pizzas than to get another job in the game industry (ok, I don't think it's true but mostly because being a designer pays much better than delivering pizzas).

Yeah, I know, the game industry is so glamorous, games are so great, it's a creative industry, surely what I'm saying is non-sense. It MUST be great to be a game designer! Well... tough luck kid. It ain't. Here is a few reasons why:

How to become a Game Designer? - My career story

Since writing my article on “How to Become a Game Designer”, I've received many comments and e-mails asking me what one should study to increase it's chance of becoming a game designer. Well I've thought about that for a loooong time, and I've came to this very conclusion: I DON'T KNOW!!

I can't pretend to give THE good advice that would make anyone a game designer because there is just so many ways that one can become one. In fact, game designers are probably the one position in the game industry (if that's the game industry you are interested in) that have the widest range of possible backgrounds. I've heard many differents and none the same. But for my own background, THAT I can tell you!

Gaming habits and creative freedom: where did my time go??

How much time do you spend playing games every week? Every day? As I previously said, I found myself with a lot of enjoyable free time this summer. This is an experiment I'm finding most enlightening and that I am bound to do again next summer. However, when I found myself spending increasing amount of time playing games every day (mostly on kongregate's website), I began questionning myself on the use of that much anticipated free time.

Characters, meaning and magic

Corvus Elrod at Man Bytes Blog has some good thoughts on the use and misuse of character's backstories in games. Read it in these two posts.

This reminds me of important thoughts that were brought to me lately: namely that objects or beings are not as powerful as the connection between them.