One Game Dad is a vlog/podcast about parenting, culture and creativity available on Twitch, YouTube, iTunes and elsewhere. Gregory Pellechi, aka OneGameDad, is a writer, podcaster, rugby player and third culture kid. He lives in Helsinki, Finland with his wife, his daughter and a cat whom he is very allergic to. Visit onegamedad.com for more.
Find your fellow game devs! In Helsinki for Finnish Games Week and looking for a co-founder? Then join Cofounder LFG on Sept. 30 from 17.00-19.00 to network with other game devs looking to form teams and make games! It's free but there are limited spots. Sign Up Here I’ve been looking for co-founders for a while. But given the nature of summer in Finland and the realities of having a family I…
Photo by rawkkim on Unsplash In part cause I need to focus elsewhere A regular,weekly release cadence is quite the thing to keep up. Which is why I’m shifting to a monthly schedule. That’s the short of it. The long version. The one you don’t need to read, but I’ll provide regardless, is that unemployment is starting to drag on me. It’s now been six months since I was laid off, though I had a two…
Photo by Beth Macdonald on Unsplash A brief detour to some old writings What follows is an introduction to a book I was writing about traps. That book came to nothing but what I wrote was still worth sharing. So over the next few weeks I will be posting chapters from it here. - Greg The popularity of shows like Ninja Warrior, Wipeout, Takeshi’s Castle, and Legends of the Hidden Temple stem from…
Photo by Javier Allegue Barros on Unsplash Workshop 3 is February 1, 2024 Register on Here, it’s free! This time we’re talking direction - Narrative Direction. Which of course feeds into and is fed by all other aspects of the game from art direction, UI, setting, game mechanics, and more. The idea is to help participants focus on what is necessary for setting direction of a game. That means being…
Photo by Jo Szczepanska on Unsplash Or what teams do wrong when brainstorming Brainstorming is the best. Sitting around throwing out ideas, shooting the shit, being creative. It’s awesome. Made all the more amazing by the fact you don’t actually have to produce anything! Everyone wants to be the “ideas guy”, and what’s better than an “ideas guy” then an “ideas team”! Teams that make games - that’s…
Photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash This is not about crafting or cosmetics, but it sort of is Shoe-leather is a term from film, though not an official one. It refers to the time it takes a character to cross a room before they speak to another or interact with something in the scene. It can also be answering the phone, saying goodbye, getting dressed, eating, checking the mail, doing chores, all of…
Photo by Quino Al on Unsplash Or your metaphor is all wrong, I don’t know about your processes Scrum. It’s one of those dreaded words in game development. Like Agile. Or Standups. Or Documentation. Or Narrative*. People know it’s necessary. Or they think it is. But they don’t understand what it means and what it takes. Actually if I were to rethink this, I’d cut Agile. I don’t believe it’s…
World ending events be damned I’ve been thinking a lot about God Of War (2018) a lot. In part because I think that style of game is what I want to play right now. By that I mean an extremely well paced action adventure game with a solid story. I’m waiting for the PC release of God Of War: Ragnarok, or an excuse to buy a PS5. The other reason I’ve been thinking about God Of War is because of the…
Photo by Markus Avila on Unsplash Or at least not every jam I’m training to run a half marathon. As you would know if you read my previous post. Or if you met me, as I have little else to discuss at the moment. Though I have been participating in a number of events and doing more mentoring, which is why I’m talking about game jams at this moment. And the aforementioned half marathon. Hear me out.…
Photo by sporlab on Unsplash Find solace in the simple acts I have played sports my entire life. Which means I’ve been running my entire life. Except I’ve always hated just running. Give me a ball, a stick, a team, or a reason not to get caught and I’m running. No problem; happy to. But had you asked me to run for running's sake and I would have said no. Until now. I came to the realization years…
Photo by Pankaj Patel on Unsplash Narrative design variables their effects and impacts That’s a catchy title, if I do say so myself. But one that may be a bit confusing for any programmers reading this as there are no variables with those names. In the narrative design discipline you will use different tools and those tools have no consistency across them when it comes to what they call variables.…
Photo by Mathilda Khoo on Unsplash Here are the questions to ask. Dungeons and Dragons is the go-to paradigm when it comes to roleplaying games, be they tabletop or digital. It means there’s a lot inherited from the ruleset for good and bad. You don’t have to take a system whole-cloth. You can pick and choose what elements to include, and as a narrative designer it’s smart to assess whether or not…
Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash I break them all the time. I have a personal style. Or voice. I use it in my own writing and to a degree I bring it to any writing I do for others. Not to impart my style upon others but because there are certain things I think make for better writing. And as with any art form these are not hard and fast, as you’ll see. Never repeat I never repeat words. Important…
Photo by the blowup on Unsplash It’s rarely if ever fun. I knew for a while it was a possibility. Not because anything was abjectly wrong at the company. Rather we lost our publisher, due to their own internal issues, months ago. Thus I was aware we had a limited runway. But I had hope, as did the entire team. Now though I can talk about the game, Edge Of War. Which is out in Early Access on…
Courtesy of Activision Blizzard Narrative Design & Writing Lessons I’m a little late to the game. Only started it this month, after it’s been out for two months. Don’t even ask how late I’ll be to Baldur’s Gate 3, as I haven’t purchased it. And don’t plan on it for some time. But I did think it would be good to start writing down some of the things I’ve been picking up from the game. Kindness is…
Sometimes you wake up in a video game I recently went on holiday. Something that was booked long before any threat of unemployment reared its head. And rather than cancel it entirely, and lose some money, we went. The other aspect being that both my wife and I deserved a break, and the kid will always benefit from the experience of going someplace new. We went to a resort in the Mediterranean. Not…
Photo by Creaslim on Unsplash This is totally in response to a Bill O’Reilly, Alex Jones or Tucker Carlson level take on game development. Expectations and standards are tricky things. Especially when it comes to artwork, entertainment, and anything complex made by another or a team of people. And video games are very much that. But before we delve into games, perhaps we should define…
Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash Maps, Markers, Theory comes to mind If I’m not doing something regularly then I know I’ll forget certain things. The exception to this comes with physical acts. Muscle memory being what it is I don’t find it hard to recall how to do something, or go someplace. Using a game engine is a little different. I’ve used both Unity and Unreal for work, at different…
Thursday, August 24 · 4 - 6pm EEST Join me online for my second workshop on Narrative Design & Production! This time we’re focusing on Visual Plotting. Sign up here, it’s free ! Don’t worry if you missed the first, there’s no requirement for having attended to participate in this one. But if you want the video is available online. You’ll find it below. As I don’t want to just talk at everyone,…
Photo by Cláudio Luiz Castro on Unsplash Don’t expect a consensus or a simple answer Game development draws most of its terminology from other art forms. Hence we get “verbs” from literature and language, the actions players can take. Things like “Run”, “Jump”, “Shoot”, “Loot” - all the things you can press buttons to accomplish. Those are mechanics. And they’re not. Or it doesn’t include…
Photo by Amel Majanovic on Unsplash Part of its laziness but most of it is for creativity My day is full. Even if I hadn’t been laid off it would be no less full. I do not feel a need to be busy. I have a lot on my plate, as mentioned in my previous post about how I balance work and life. And even without a job the amount hasn’t lessened. As much as I would like it to. The anxiety of needing to…
Photo by Ryan Mobley on Unsplash Hallå Gul Bil There are two phenomena that have occurred concurrently with one another and inadvertently both brought about the decimation of a classic road trip game. The invention of portable visual media be it in-car DVD players or tablets and smartphones, along with the decline in Volkswagen Beetle (bugs in the common parlance) production has seen to The Death…
Photo by Artem Kniaz on Unsplash You don’t know what you’re in for I have come to dislike character creation, both as a designer and as a player. This is especially true when the creation process involves a lot of sliders and variables to change the appearance (where I will inevitably try to make either myself or the fever dream that my daughter demands) as I can never get the nose right. If I’m…
Photo by Daniel K Cheung on Unsplash No system, only constant communication. Last week I wrote about how upset my daughter got when I was late picking her up . The irony is she’s never that happy when I’m early, all cause she wants to keep playing with her friends. A sentiment I can full understand. To keep from disappointing my daughter though isn’t easy with all the competing demands on my time.…
Photo by Aftab Asghar on Unsplash My daughter (6) had a breakdown because I came late one time, by that meaning she was the last child at her school to be picked up. Being late was my fault, I got caught up in a call that I just couldn’t end. Though I did give multiple warnings/notices that I needed to go. Still my commute to the school is approximately 30 minutes via a combination of walking and…
There’s a meme within game development circles about Jira cards. Actually there are a lot of memes about it, and most come from software development. Everywhere you turn, whether it’s your company’s slack, social media, or some obscure forum you’ll find these memes. And all of them come down to either two issues with Jira, and similar systems: 1) People don’t understand why they’re using this…
By Nick Fewings on Unsplash I’ve been mentoring other teams for over a year now. My focus, unsurprisingly, is on narrative. That’s a big scope, because like narrative it can touch on anything and just about everything when it comes to game development. If you’re a programmer you’re probably screaming at the screen right now about it having no impact upon the system architecture. And you’re right.…
Photo by Bogdan Karlenko on Unsplash Starting a newsletter and posting regularly So things begin, again. It certainly has been some time since I’ve written anything that isn’t for work. But now I have returned with purpose. For those who don’t know me, my name is Greg. I’m a Narrative Designer and Writer based in Helsinki, Finland, with 6+ years in the games industry. Been writing for far longer…
Courtesy of Maja Savic This essay will be finished. In a sentence. Or 100. But it will come to an end and the conclusion I have been writing towards will be there. Whether or not it has the intend effect is a different matter. I will write it all the same. And that right there is the crux of: Try not! Do or do not. There is no try. - Yoda, The Empire Strikes Back Yoda said that during a training…
This is part of a series of posts tracking the development of a personal work in progress (WIP). The Player Controller In the previous post I wrote briefly about the player controller and how it’s meant to be stationary. This post is going to focus on its design and functionality. To create a stationary player controller there are two blueprints that need to be created - The Stationary Pawn and…
This is part of a series of posts tracking the development of a personal work in progress (WIP). A new work in progress and unannounced personal project, but first a flashback This is the first post in what I’m planning to be a series about the development of a personal project. In it I’ll document my game design and development process, writing, and creative journey. The first entry is a…
Making an interactive narrative, whether a video game or other type of game, play, or other art has a number of questions that need to be addressed. Those questions end up creating more questions. But I’ll try to cover the basics here, with the expectation there’ll be need for follow-up. There’s a couple of core concerns you’ll need to address when starting any sort of interactive project. But…
Its title speaks to what many video games want to be. Its structure repeats and repeats and repeats. Its characters change little to not at all. And it’s long, really long. Some would say needlessly so, with lots of hidden details in the form of footnotes and endnotes. It is quite literally a video game in book form. I could, and probably should, end my arguments there, but I won’t. Not like this…
There are certain pop cultural characters that come across as tragic - Darth Vader, Loki, Doom Guy. Some are quite obvious in their tragedy, their inability to get what they truly want and their scramble for it. They're characters that become their own worst enemy. Darth Vader wants to be loved and pushes everyone away, Loki wants to be in charge but undermines himself, and Doom Guy just wants…
I’ve been playing some games of late. As I’m want to do. Not as many as I would like nor as much as one would think given the world’s situation. My situation prevents that. But two games I’ve been dipping my toes into have me thinking about one thing - doors. Doors in video games are innocuous things. They’re everywhere. They’re omnipresent. And they pose a lot of challenges. But that’s all been…
The corpses were piled around me. Some still moaning. Their weapons fallen. Their armor struck in twain. And my axe dripped with their blood. I was covered in gore, and sweat, and mud, and the gods know what else. And it was glorious! We had clashed with with the Crewn twice that day. First at the Lithune Redoubt. They took that before we had even arrived. We merely provided a safe retreat,…
Everything roared. The waves. The hooves of the horses. The wind. The sound of her breath. The panting of her comrade. The creak of leather. The flurry of sand. It all flew past and got pulled out to sea. But in as it swept by it shook in Esmila’s ears. Her head swam with the onslaught. Yet she couldn’t slow, couldn’t stop, couldn’t breathe to let it pass. Ahead lay her destination. And even at…
Glass broke. The gloss shook. Neon flared. People screamed. Then they fled. Naomi was left wondering, was her cover blown. But no one seemed to be paying her any mind. Still she slid her service weapon from her holster, and clicked the safety off. Finger off the trigger, she crept to the corner and looked around. Nothing. Just steam from the vents and the cries of people as they ran. But from…
Journeyman. Journey, man. I’m on a journey to become the man I am. I am a man on a journey to become… employed by some noble or attached to some hero so that I may write a song or saga of their deeds and thus be remembered. They’ll be remembered. Maybe I will too. But really it’s creating a song for others to sing about someone else, doing things that I was there to witness. Or was hired to write.…
Or What Should Rather Be Entitled In The Rough . Perhaps this should be called Balls To The Wall and Other Obstacles . Alternatives include Hacking It , Teed Up to Fail , etc. etc. etc. Earth was left behind. Not so much at my doing. More at the insistence of the inhabitants of that one small rock. A place I used to call home. But I was sent skyward for other reasons, for other purposes. Just none…
Hold on. Hold on, hold on! Come on, just one more pass. You can take the g’s. Keep it together, and stop talking to yourself. “You know we can hear you over the comms, Jasper 3.” Great, ridicule from the other side. Just what we need. Not exactly ridicule. Just a game. As if one weren’t enough for them. Tango inbound. Parabola analyzed. Destination capital. “Really now, Jasper 7, would it be that…
We gathered it. We gathered it all. Or as much as we could muster. I put all I had into it. My entire life went towards filling that void. Yet it remained an empty table. Worn, homely, wooden it would look right near the hearth of any of us. It’s planks full of grooves and chips, the paint long gone, but it was clear someone had once used a table. Or one like it. And yet the gods had placed it…
Ice and water bit at his eyes. Salt ravaged his wounds. Ropes bound him to his boat. And waves fought against his intents. But the craft continued to carry Roland towards his destination, a lone rock sectioned from the land. Isolated by the sea, and scorned by all life save the trolls the singular stone is said to home. Roland seeks it with his heart. Though his eyes, his mind, wish their didn’t…
The storm ended sometime in the early morning. But it was too dark to make use of the lull. Everyone remained inside, taking the time to get some sleep where before they sat huddled against the forces being thrown at them. They knew the sun would bring its own problems. In the form of a massively misplaced head. Not of some one or even a creature caught up in the wake of the storm. It was…
I take a breath and push it out through my teeth. Then I begin, before I even reach the microphone. My face is still. I try to keep a hard, composed look, though I want to smile. I naturally want to smile but it doesn’t serve my purpose. It rarely has in my line of work. So I keep my lips tight over my teeth and grunt through my opening lines. Lines designed to catch the attention of the audience.…
These suits are meant to assist you. But running for your life was never what they were intended for. They’re meant to protecting you from the dangers of hostile environments, not hostile and fast approaching fauna. Actually I’m not sure this can even be classified as fauna and not flora, or something else entirely. I’m not exactly in a position to stop and ask questions. But who is when you’re…
Bids flew in silence. They came in nods and taps of a finger, flapping of paddles and raising of hands. Your attention was elsewhere. What the others were after was not your concern, nor were you bound to profit from it. Few artists do at such a stage. Still you wanted to attend. You said you wanted to know your value. I questioned going to such a place, to be amongst such people, to ascertain…
Mama said I need to get out. To experience some fresh air and stretch myself. Little did I truly know what that meant. Beyond the portals of our home there was and had always been a wider world. It just never held much interest. Until I met her. Varmie was jubilant from the beginning. She seethed with positivity and inquisitiveness. It’s her presence that drew me out. It’s her friendship that…
Home turf should have been a sight of relief. It wasn’t. Instead it was a road sign indicating how far was still to go before the team could really wash off the grime of the road and the realities of what they’d been doing. Work didn’t end just because they had returned. Work only continued. And now it meant recounting and recognizing what had happened and how it didn’t go according to plan. Tanja…
Enough has been written about humanity’s decision to make monsters or weapons in their likeness. Our media is saturated with such commentaries. Most popular culture at some point asks this question. And yet our weaponsmiths, those assigned to protect us, and the people who develop policies regarding warfare seem purposely ignorant of those very lessons. It is with that in mind that I am reporting…