Deirdra Kiai Productions

PAX: I’m going! Are you?

The Management — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 18:12:00 +0000

This Labour Day weekend, I will once again be making my annual appearance at the Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle. I will also once again be speaking on a panel:

Friday, 3:30 PM – 4:30 PM, Wolfman Theatre
Making Stories Worth Playing
For years, interactive fiction authors have grappled with the often conflicting demands of story, gameplay, interactivity and immersion. Good stories are not always good games, and while simulation and emergent story can ease pressure on designers, they come with their own problems. Interactive fiction authors and graphical game designers unite to discuss their solutions.

And, as if that isn’t exciting enough, I will be showing off demos of Life Flashes By on my netbook! Come find me roaming around the show floor, or check my Twitter feed for updates on my whereabouts.

Hope to see you there!

How privileged is a geek girl, anyway?

The Management — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 00:50:41 +0000

The last time I made a post at the Border House, I got called out on my privilege in flippantly suggesting that writing your own games is way easier than it looks. That really got me thinking, and a post I found today on the Geek Feminism blog brought those thoughts back to the forefront: If you were hacking since age 8, it means you were privileged.

As I’ve likely detailed before, I have indeed benefited from the privilege of exposure to computers at a young age. My father, an engineer and longtime gadgetphile, started bringing them home when I was about three, and before too long, I was typing DOS commands and installing software just like the rest of them. When I was ten years old and suddenly found myself curious as to how video games were made, and was subsequently given a book that taught me how to program in BASIC. These things could never had happened if my family wasn’t affluent enough to afford both the equipment and the education required to use it. That, I’m quite loathe to deny.

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Lend me your voices, part deux!

The Management — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 16:17:27 +0000

So, the voices of Charlotte and Trevin have now been cast, and since they were getting a little bit lonely, I figured it was time to start casting a few of the secondary characters in the game. These parts are a lot less involved than the former two, and as such, won’t be paid roles; however, you’ll be rewarded with indie street cred and a signed physical copy of the game once it’s finished.

The deadline for submissions for the characters listed below is Friday, ~~July 30~~ August 6. Have at it, folks!

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Hidden Features

The Management — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 20:17:43 +0000

Here’s a question that recently came to my mind: is it necessarily good game design to leave your best features hidden, or hard to discover until you do a lot of undirected exploration?

I thought of it because after I played Mory’s latest game (which I recommend!) I was told there’s a lot more in it than I might think. It reads to me like not-so-subtle encouragement to play it again and discover these hidden features, which I’ll make an effort to do, but can’t always guarantee these days. But then, it made me think of how I designed Chivalry is Not Dead and how, while some people were able to figure out what I was getting at because they replayed the game several times, others played it once or twice, didn’t see anything of interest that would compel them to keep trying for new endings, and wound up missing out on what I saw as the essence of the game. In a way, I’ve been trying to combat this tendency with Life Flashes By; it’s a game where it’s relatively easy to find what you’re looking for, and where you can see all the content in one playthrough if you want to.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I’m a fan of games that hold your hand and tell you exactly where you need to go and what you need to collect. I’m not sure I even like tutorials, for that matter. I think being able to explore things is essential to my ideal playing experiences, and I’m far from against hidden features in principle. I just want to make sure that as many people as possible understand what I was getting at when I designed the game in the first place, even though they might not agree with everything I’m trying to express. But maybe it’s just me; maybe some game designers are more than happy to close their best stuff off to only those who are “worthy”. [1]

Footnotes:

Interestingly enough, that sounds suspiciously like the design philosophies of most games of the arcade and NES eras. Not saying that’s a bad thing, of course — there’s something to be said about doing what works, and there’s nothing out there that’s as proven to work as the classics. It can also be argued that I’ve absorbed more design philosophies from casual games than I’m willing to admit. ↩

We Need More Women in Indie Games

The Management — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 22:48:27 +0000

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…

Lend me your voices!

The Management — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 16:26:51 +0000

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.

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Something Slightly Different

The Management — Wed, 26 May 2010 07:11:41 +0000

Tomorrow, I’m starting a spiffy new day job. I’ll be doing some Flash work for Agentic, an awesome local web development company that targets social change organisations. From what I know already, the projects I get to work on are going to be an interesting new use of the skills I’ve already developed in game design and interactive storytelling… obviously, I can’t talk in too much detail just yet, but expect to hear more in the months to come.

For now, it shall suffice to say I’m quite excited and intrigued as to where this will take me. It’s going to be a change, not working in the game industry proper, but it’s the kind of change I feel like I need right now. Let’s hope it all works out.

Yep, I’m still here.

The Management — Thu, 13 May 2010 05:10:35 +0000

My quiet spell on this blog still isn’t quite over yet, by the looks of things. Oh, sure, I’m alive and kicking. The Twitter feed gets updated on a near-daily basis, and I try to keep up with all those things on the internet that matter. I just don’t really have much to say these days that can fill a blog post. That said, I have been feeling that gnawing obligation to keep this place active, so here’s a brief update of sorts.

Right now, I’m at the phase in LFB where the honeymoon period of telling everyone about my awesome new game idea has passed to give way to the sometimes-daunting task of, well, implementing the whole thing. I’d been hoping to do more progress update-y things during this phase, but they’re hard to write (or record) when you’re constantly feeling self-conscious and sometimes a little embarrassed about what you’re putting to paper. [1] I often worry that I come across as too whiny, or not funny enough, or just plain out of touch with how real people think and speak to one another. It’s somewhat of a consolation to know that Charlotte herself is a rather unusual character, but it remains yet to be seen whether anyone other than me really cares about her story.

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Footnotes:

Well, code and pixels, in this case, but yeah. ↩

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. ↩