Well, this is awkward. I seem to have forgotten to update my blog again for a month. But now I’m back and I have big news.
A symbolic representation of my career move.
I’ve only gone and got a proper job. By which I mean a job involving a commute and a travel card and an office and things. As a games writer/producer at Mediatonic in Covent Garden I seem to have stumbled across the role I was always meant to do- combining not only a great deal of creative freedom in coming up with game ideas, stories and pitches but also that more rigid role of actually designing game mechanics- harking back to my days in secondary school where I would fill exercise books full of pen and paper roleplaying rule-sets that I’d inflict upon my long-suffering friends for playtesting.
I’ve recently revisited my limited skills in computer programming by playing around with the iPhone SDK and doing so reminded me of the satisfaction of creating something that is fully, 100% right. There’s an elegance to creating a program that works in the minimum number of lines of code that you do miss when writing fiction because in the medium of prose there’s simply no ‘end point’. You decide to stop when something’s good enough in the time available, or when your editor is happy, which is fine- but it’s never quantifiably complete.
Whilst programming isn’t part of my job in any way, creating rule-sets for games is, and it’s a similar moment of euphoria when you find out that you can link this aspect with that aspect through this points system and in doing so cut the number of stats the game needs to keep track of in half. Does that make sense? No? Well that’s a shame, because it’s fun.
And that’s all I’m going to say about my current job at the moment- apart from the fact that I’m working with an intimidatingly talented bunch of people who’ve been really good at helping me get to grips with it all (which is a big deal when you’ve been sitting at home alone mostly for the last two years- winging it). I’ll update the blog on how things are going as soon as something I’ve worked on is released and in the mean time I’ll be returning to writing my fancy opinion pieces on games I like, which I hope people enjoy.
Finally, the freelance question. Whilst I’m obviously not taking on any freelance work as I throw myself into the new job, there are still a couple of loose ends that were completed last month and have yet to see the light of day (apart from my Moshi Monsters game guide which is out in summer).
The first is a Doctor Who audiobook entitled Blackout which will be out in September. That’s all I can say about it right now, except that in my opinion it’s one of the best things I’ve written and also one of the darkest. I’m very proud of this.
The second is more mysterious- a freelance video game script for a project which I can say even less about. But it’s funny, and more details will be available in a couple of months.
Games take a long time to make don’tcha know.
