A little something I wrote for The Border House:

Whenever I find myself in discussions about women in games, it seems like it’s always about getting women into more positions in the mainstream game industry. That’s all well and good and useful, but I have a better idea: why don’t we just get more women to develop indie games? It’s arguably far easier than what we’re led to believe are the traditional methods of “breaking in” — you can find free or cheap development tools for nearly any genre or style of game you fancy creating, so the only thing you need to do is make something cool and post it online. That’s it. No need to worry about getting the right degrees or jumping through dude-controlled corporate hoops. Just write a game. How hard can it be, right?

Read the rest…

UPDATE: Added some headshots of the characters, for quick and easy reference. Also added a Friday, June 18 deadline for submissions.

So, here’s what’s going on. While I’m still nowhere near finished Life Flashes By, I have been able to complete a significant-enough chunk of the game to confidently say it’s somewhere between 25-33% done, at least at a level I’m happy with. As such, I feel it’s time to start looking for some fabulous people to do the voices. I’ll give some specifics in a bit, but first, a slight disclaimer.

This is going to be the first time I will ever work on a game on my own with voice acting, but certainly not the first time I’ve thought about it. Usually, in games developed by professionals, voice recording starts after ALL of the dialogue has been written. I’m going to do it a little differently, because I can, and because every time I’ve waited until I’ve finished all the dialogue, I’ve always been like “oh, to hell with it, I won’t bother with voices and just release the game as-is”. This way, aside from it being a way to force myself to do it, there will be the added benefit of having voice actors be a more significant part of the creative process; much in the way that visual art can prompt me to insert additional dialogue lines, so can the actual voices of the characters inspire me to do similar things, which makes for a richer, more integrated game all around. In theory, anyway.

But wait! There’s more…