I was hoping to put up several blog posts before now, but as it often does, life got in the way. Nevertheless, I thought I’d put something here just in case anyone comes checking out my side in the near future. Here’s my little “State of the Justin” update:
Overdrive City
At the time of my writing this, Overdrive City (formerly Car Legends Tycoon and a whole bunch of other names internally) was officially released to the world yesterday. It the first major title I’ve shipped as a game developer, so naturally I’m very excited. Honestly this project has been a blast to work on and never before have I had the privilege of working with such a capable team. I’ve learned a tremendous amount and have gone through a bunch of trials and tribulations, and I think I’m much better off for it. It’s not like my work is done either. If anything, now that the game is live I’ll have my work cut out for me. After all now I’ll have data pushing me to keep things on track and a whole bunch of players to keep me accountable.
One of the posts I wanted to write here was a compilation of lessons and stories of my time working at Gameloft, perhaps to give those of you interested in knowing what it looks like on the inside of a studio a bit of a glimpse. It can at times be both a wondrous and torturous thing, sometimes simultaneously. But it’s never quite so black and white as some people might think. There are politics and hassles and interpersonal challenges like anywhere, but there’s almost always a reason for why things are like this, and when you understand that, it becomes much easier to understand why sometimes the reason a project will succeed or fail is a lot more complicated than it might seem.
That being said, I’m hesitating a bit about getting fully into that post for the simple reason that there are a lot of things I will need to run past legal people to make sure I don’t break my NDA. As much as I might want to share information, there are things I have to be careful about from a professional standpoint. I’ll probably still write that post at some point (I already have a chunk of it written and most of it outlined) , but at a later date.
Oh, and if you want to try the game out, you can find it here. If you do, please give it five stars if you liked it (that really does help us) and if you didn’t, please give me your feedback!
Tabletop Stuff
I’ve noticed that there are a bunch of people that found my side because of my DM Tip post. Apparently it even shows up as the top result if you look up that subject, which is kind of baffling to me. I’m very humbled and happy to know that it’s been useful to people. I’m happy to say that I haven’t stopped running tabletop games. In fact, quite the opposite! I’ve been running a game of War for the Crown that I’ve heavily modified with my regular table (they’ve just beaten the second book after a staggering 41 sessions and counting). There are plenty of lessons I took from my own post when running this one, and I dare say it’s done wonders for my performance. I hope to be able to write more about the subject soon, but I still need to nail down the subject.
Oh, and I haven’t stopped working on my tabletop projects either. FateWeaver has gone through a couple local playtests and I’m in the process of finishing up the core rulebook. Hell’s Rebels Redux is on pause but mainly because I’ve been working on War for the Crown Redux (which is what I’m calling the version of the game I’m running now with the many revisions and additions I’m making to the game and systems). Once WftC Redux is done I’ll likely be porting a lot of the mechanics and ideas to the other two projects.
Travel
I’ve gone on a couple notable trips since my last post as well. In spring of 2019 I was sent to Barcelona for training as a Game Economy Designer (other companies might call that job a “Systems Designer”; basically it’s the person who manages the flow of resources and overall balancing of the game). It’s a lovely city and I really enjoyed my time there. Honestly it made me realise just how much I missed visiting Europe.
The other trip of note was that I did a long anticipated road trip along the West Coast, starting from Vancouver and passing through Seattle, Eugene, Santa Rosa, Los Angeles, and finally ending in Las Vegas before returning home. It was a very interesting trip. I got to meet many friends I only knew through voice, got to try out all sorts of things I would never get to normally, and I gained a lot of perspective about various West Coast cultures. Unfortunately there was some drama at the tail end of everything that got pretty stressful, but that’s life for you. I’d like to think at the very least I learned some important things in the process that I won’t soon forget.
Road bumps aside, I honestly can’t recommend travelling enough. But more specifically, doing so with an open mind and observant eyes. There’s a lot you can learn from taking a step outside of your usual environment, and in times like these perspective is all the more valuable.
Conclusion
This is already getting to be on the long side so I’ll cut myself off. There are of course plenty of other things that have happened in the last year and a bit, but frankly I don’t imagine anyone needs or wants to know the details of my personal life (though you are reading this blather, so who knows). I’ll finish up by saying there’s plenty more stuff I’d like to write and share with whomever is reading these. I’ll be writing an article about effective Excel formatting for work that I’ll probably share here as well, so if you’re a spreadsheet nerd like me maybe you’ll like that. I have a post percolating in my mind about how to do a successful game jam. I probably should have written that one before the Global Game Jam that just passed… Oh well.
There is a myriad of other things I could and would talk about and maybe some day I’ll put them all here. But in order to do that I first need to convince myself that it’s worth doing, and then convince myself that it’s worth doing over all the other things I keep adding to my unending to-do list. But hey, if you got this far into this self-indulgent wall of text, feel free to tell me what you’d like to see me write about. Even an audience of one should inspire me enough to get on it!
Anyway, all that to say, I’m not dead, I haven’t forgotten about this site, and I still have things to say!