Deirdra Kiai Productions

What if I’d gone to Poland?

The Management — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 18:11:36 +0000

I’ve been going through a bit of a quiet spell lately, in terms of updating this here blog. A lot has been going on in my life lately, but it’s been difficult to put it all into words in such a public space. I hope you’ll all understand.

Last month, I lost my job. It was something I knew would happen to me one day, eventually — nobody ever said a career in the video game industry would be stable and secure. Still, given that this was the first time anything of this sort had ever happened to me, I was unprepared for the stress and anxiety that resulted from such a significant life change. I’ve since recovered somewhat, and am doing the best I can to keep my chin up and look forward to what the future will bring. Of course, it’s also been an opportune time to reflect on how I got to this point in the first place…

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A picture means I don’t have to write as many words.

The Management — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 22:12:04 +0000

I’ve been showing off various pretty Life Flashes By-related images to my Kickstarter backers, but I thought it wouldn’t hurt to make at least one available for the general public to see. Here is the LFB title logo, created by my good friend Lee McIlmoyle:

Also, because all the cool kids are doing it, I went and got a formspring.me account, so you can now ask me silly anonymous questions [1] and see how I respond. It’s like a Livejournal meme, but Web 2.0-ified!

Footnotes:

But nothing blatantly offensive, or else I’ll just ignore you. ↩

Life Flashes By on the iPad?

The Management — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 22:08:38 +0000

One of my big goals for Life Flashes By is to have it be playable on as many platforms as possible. So far, thanks to the efforts of a handful of awesome people working on the OpenSLUDGE engine, there will be Mac, Windows, and Linux versions, which means practically anyone with a PC will be able to enjoy the game, even if said PC is five years old or is a tiny little netbook. I would try to target consoles, but am not doing so because the hurdles needed to develop for them are really not an option for me at this point in time, so I try to console myself [1] instead with the notion that most console gamers have a PC with which they could play my game, so all is not lost.

A few days ago, Apple announced the iPad. I’ve been waiting for this announcement ever since I started hearing rumours about an Apple tablet a few months ago, convinced that the form factor of a tablet — particularly given that it’s small enough to curl up on the couch with, yet has enough screen real estate for cartoon characters to move around comfortably — would be perfect for Life Flashes By. Learning about the feature set makes me even more convinced. The majority of geeks I know have been deeming the iPad a great disappointment, claiming it to be underpowered and overhyped. While I can see where they’re coming from, I’m not too worried about their reservations. The iPad isn’t really made with them in mind. [2]

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Footnotes:

That was a terribly pun. I apologise. ↩
And as someone said to me over Twitter, with such a low price, many of the detractors are likely going to buy one anyway. ↩

Whoosh!

The Management — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 08:06:56 +0000

The Life Flashes By funding deadline has now passed, and 54 backers have pledged $1,357 to help me turn this fanciful little idea of mine into something real and (hopefully) better than anything else I’ve created up until now. I’m quite pleased with this outcome; sure, a part of me wonders if I could have tried for a higher goal amount and/or timed the funding period better so that it didn’t fall smack in the middle of a busy period at work and a just-as-busy holiday break, but for the scope of this project, I’m satisfied by what I did manage to achieve. As I’ve said before, this is the first time I’ve attempted anything quite like this, and while my project is a labour of love first and foremost and not a means to make a profit, part of that love is the ability to communicate with an audience, and so far, this Kickstarter experiment has helped with that in a way more significant than I could have anticipated otherwise.

So, what happens next? Well, right now, I’ve recruited two artists to work with me: one doing background art, and one doing UI and promotional materials. I won’t say who just yet, but will say that if you’ve been following my stuff for a while, you might recognise one or both of them. I’ve also had several people volunteer to be voice actors, who I’ll be sure to audition and put to work once I have enough of the script ready. As for me, well, I still have to wrap up the work I’m doing on DeathSpank before I can really do much else other than plot and scheme and daydream. But definitely stay tuned for more updates of both the Exclusive Video™ and the plain old text variety in the coming months!

Until then, thanks to everyone for coming along for the ride, and very special thanks to my backers — I’d give you all a big hug if I could. Meanwhile, if you’re looking for another great indie game project at which to throw your wads of moolah, may I suggest former Telltale designer Heather Logas’s “Dreamtime” game? Her project is similarly interactive story-like to mine, though interestingly different at the same time, and she’s still got a ways to go before she meets her goal and only 11 days to do so.

My Rather Eclectic “Top 10 Games of the Decade” List

The Management — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 20:15:44 +0000

Ah, the 2000s: the decade I came of age, wherein I started out as an eccentric, socially awkward teenager who liked to make her own games and finished as an equally eccentric, slightly less socially awkward young adult who now gets paid to make games. Now that said decade is over, [1] everyone and their dog is making top 10 lists, so I figured it’d be fun to create one myself. Of course, coming from me, it’s inevitably a highly personal and subjective list, so hopefully no one takes it as anything other than that. I have included the games I could think of that inspired and affected me most, but that I did not work on in any way myself. So, here goes, in some random order that only makes sense to my subconscious mind…

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Footnotes:

Or is it? Shouldn’t it go from 1 to 10, instead of 0 to 9? Isn’t that how we count centuries and millenia? I’m confused. ↩

Are women “too smart” for a career in the game industry?

The Management — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 21:09:54 +0000

Crossposted from The Border House. I’m probably going to do this with everything I write there from now on, because this blog doesn’t get updated enough as it is.

I was recently pointed to a post on Slashdot where it is suggested that women are “too smart” for tech careers, rather than “not smart enough”, as common and misguided wisdom seems to suggest. To wit, “only ‘boys’ are stupid enough to go into a field that’s globally-fungible, where entry-level salaries are declining, and it’s common to think that staying up all night for a company-paid pizza is a good deal.” This is actually a suggestion I’ve heard more than once regarding the unicornification of women in the game industry; maybe, just maybe, it’s not a matter of women actively being denied entry, they say, but a matter of them simply having better things to do with their lives. Right?

Read the rest!

Awesome New Group Blog of Awesomeness

The Management — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 07:13:16 +0000

I just wanted to let all you wonderful folks know that there’s a new video game blog in town called the Border House. It’s feminist and progressive in tone, and aims to be friendly to marginalised groups of all kinds, which is exactly the sort of thing that we need in the young white male-dominated gaming blogosphere. Oh, and I will sometimes be writing for it.

Anyway, do poke around and see if it tickles your fancy. I, personally, look forward to seeing how it evolves. After all, with a reference to an old, well-known adventure game in the title, how could one possibly go wrong?

OMG I’m being funded!

The Management — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 19:58:18 +0000

Yesterday evening, I was pleased to discover some very, very good news: the $1000 goal line for the Life Flashes By Kickstarter drive has been crossed! This means that no matter what people pledge from this point forward, this project is definitely going to be funded. And with 62 days left, at that!

To celebrate this occasion, I’ve decided to make a new reward available for backers: anyone who pledges over $50 gets a devastatingly witty T-shirt, along with the handwritten postcard and boxed copy of the game I’m already offering. Those who know me in real life will no doubt know how fond I am of devastating wit in the form of clothing, so I figured, why not offer up a clever shirt of my own with a Life Flashes By theme? Hence, if you’ve already pledged over $50, do feel free to edit your pledge and select this reward, and if you would, by any chance, like to bump your pledge up… well, I certainly won’t complain!

Updates Flash By

The Management — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 20:56:51 +0000

So far, the support I’ve gotten for putting Life Flashes By up on Kickstarter has been impressive and overwhelming. At this point in time, I have $595 pledged from 26 backers, and I simply can’t express how much it means to me that there are actually people out there who would pay money to see me make a new game. Thank you all so much!

Those of you who have backed the project and/or follow me on Twitter have likely already seen this, but in case you haven’t, I’ve started posting Exclusive Video Updates™ on the Kickstarter project page, as a means to let people know how the game’s progressing and what’s going on behind the scenes. I’ve never done project updates in anything other than text form before, so this is rather new territory for me, but I thought it might be fun to experiment with this more personal approach, particularly in this age where watching videos online has become ubiquitous. So, if you’re interested in hearing a little bit about the thought processes that went into the creation of Life Flashes By, getting a sneak peek at what the game looks like so far, or simply want to make fun of my Canadian accent, do check out the video! [1]

Finally, my friend Corvus just wrote a lovely blog post of his own about my project and his thoughts on indie game patronage in general, which I suspect accounts for the slight spike in backers I received early this morning. He’s got some great things to say about the subject and how we as consumers can make an impact in creating more of the games that we want to play, rather than what huge, monolithic corporations with ad campaigns tell us we want to play. Definitely a sentiment I can get behind, and not just because I’m trying to fund a game this way myself.

Footnotes:

A bit of a disclaimer: I did the entire video in one take, and though I made notes on what I wanted to talk about beforehand, there’s still a fair share of rambliness and pregnant pauses. Instead of editing, I left them as-is, because I wanted to give the video a more conversational feel. Oh, and I’m sure laziness is a factor too, but don’t tell anyone. ↩

Not Cool

The Management — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 19:31:32 +0000

There’s been a lot of talk these past couple days about a certain promotional video for a certain upcoming video game that uses certain derogatory slurs towards women and gay men for a certain comedic effect on a certain predominantly young male audience. I won’t talk about it in detail here, because quite a few people have already done so, and to be honest, there are a lot of games these days that are being marketed in a similar way — a lot of media in general, even. However, what I do have a few choice words for is the overarching trend for “edginess” that’s altogether too prevalent in today’s society. You know what I’m talking about: the excuse that “we’re saying it to be ironic; nobody’s REALLY sexist/racist/homophobic anymore”, where people perceive that progressives — or what they call the “PC police” — have “taken things too far” with “limiting free speech”, meaning that if anyone’s in the least bit outraged by what one has to say, it’s become some kind of a badge of honour. It’s a view so prevalent, in fact, that marketing executives apparently think they’ll sell more copies of whatever it is they’re peddling if they appeal to it.

Of course, the problem is, no one’s really being edgy. Edginess is biting social commentary. It’s supposed to change the way we think about the world, make us feel uncomfortable, turn us into better, more informed people in the process. What I describe above does nothing of the sort — the people who are made uncomfortable are those of groups the slurs in question are directed towards: slurs that, regardless of what we want to believe, still have power to harm and ostracise and even lead to violence. The only ones laughing are those with the luxury of never having experienced anything remotely similar. No one is experiencing any kind of paradigm shift or seeing the world from a new vantage point. Instead, everyone gets to continue holding their ground, staying in a place that’s easy and familiar. That’s not edgy to me. It’s the status quo.

As for irony? Well, let’s just say that if the people you’re purportedly mocking are able to laugh at your joke and continue to inflict pain on others with a clear conscience, then you’ve pretty much failed to convey your message.