Here’s a rather appalling blog entry I just read about a woman my age’s personal experience with sexism in the game industry.

All I really have to say is, I am so very thankful that my experience with Telltale was the exact opposite, in that I didn’t experience any sexism. At all. In fact, I’d say I experienced less sexism there than I normally do in the real world. Maybe I’m just lucky because a) I worked as a programmer and not a tester, meaning my skills were potentially perceived as more concrete and valuable, and b) I worked in a tiny company of 25 people making low-profile episodic adventure games, rather than at a huge company making AAA titles. Still, I’m very, very thankful.

Chivalry is Not Dead.

This is the title of the new game I’ve been hinting at for the past little while. It is a game that contains many of your stereotypical fantasy characters on a stereotypical fantasy quest, except something just isn’t quite right about it. For one thing, you play the role of the evil sorcerer’s personal slave and henchman, tasked with assassinating the kind and peace-loving Queen of Everything. But is the Queen really as kind and peace-loving as she seems, or is she actually a manipulative control freak after her own personal gain? Furthermore, is the attractive long-haired hero tasked with saving the world from the clutches of the evil sorcerer really nothing more than an arrogant boy with delusions of grandeur? And finally, is the evil sorcerer truly evil, or simply lonely and misunderstood?

In this game, you will find yourself in a world where good and evil just aren’t as clearly defined as they usually are, where your actions actually make a difference in how others react to you, and where problems often have more than one solution. All wrapped in the same cartoonish style and oddball sense of humour you’d come to expect from Deirdra Kiai Productions, of course.

A short series of articles detailing the making of Chivalry is Not Dead is being planned to appear on Adventure Gamers at some point in the future. I’ll let you know when, of course. Also, a website with more information will probably appear in the future as well… once I actually get around to making one, that is.

Following my trend in recent months of playing around with different adventure game development engines, I’ve been recently teaching myself how to use Wintermute. I’d known about this particular engine for quite a while, but for some reason, I never really got around to actually trying it until a week and a bit ago. But, by God, I’ve been finding it to be my favourite adventure game developing environment ever. It has everything I loved about SLUDGE[1] (i.e. scripting flexibility), and more (i.e. better GUI editors for certain things, better graphics support, gets updated more frequently). I have to say, I’m very impressed.

I’ll be announcing the game I plan on making with this engine sometime soon, so stay tuned…