Essay Games Footnotes | August
HELLO & HAPPY SUMMER!
I know it’s been a while, but I took a bit of a break since launching Bundle of Joy. I started a new job, which I’m in the process of leaving for another opportunity (more in a moment), took some vacation time, played some video games, wrote some stuff, and even started thinking about what’s next for the studio. So let’s get into some updates!
J.O.B.
I’ll start by sharing that a lot of my “time off” was actually spent trying to pay the bills! I’ve been working as a designer for a VR team developing learning scenarios for future nurses since mid-June. BUT, I am going to be leaving that position soon to start a new one-year, full-time position at Pratt Institute to help coordinate (and teach obvi) the Game Arts program in the Department of Digital Arts!
I’m super excited by this opportunity, and I’m sure I’ll share the news more widely when we get closer to the Fall semester. In the meantime, this new gig also means I’ll be helping with the program’s booth at PlayNYC this year. So if you happen to be going to AnimeNYC, definitely stop by on Friday, August 25th, and I should be there (roughly) all day. Hope to see you there!
Level Up Tuesday Talk AUGUST 19th [NEXT TUESDAY!]
The wonderful IGDA NYC folks invited me to give a talk at Coexist Gaming on August 19th @ 6PM as part of their monthly talk/showcase series.
I’ll be presenting a talk called Right in the Feels: Designing Emotive Games which pulls from lessons learned while making BoJ. I’ll also discuss thinking through narrative design concepts for building emotionally resonant experiences for a range of players.
It should be super fun and light-hearted, and I’m intentionally leaving in lots of time for Q&A.
Playing Games and Writing about them
One thing that I’ve been trying to keep up with is The Essay Games blog. I’ve tried to go through some of my backlog of games that I didn’t get a chance to play while I was working on BoJ, and it’s been delightful to do some “primary research.”
I don’t have a TON to share about this, since I’ve slacked off a little bit over the summer while on vacay, but I have two articles queued up coming out in the next couple of weeks that you should totally check out.
One of the better things I’ve played this summer was Keep Driving. I wrote about how it’s an essential “vibes game” over on the blog.
Odds & Ends
Those are the “biggies” for right now, and I hope I’ll get back into my monthly posting schedule. But before signing off, here’s some other stuff that happened over the summer:
I spoke with Andrew Pappas for the Indie Games Movement podcast!
I deleted my Instagram!
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That’s it for now. Like I said, hopefully now that summer is wrapping up, I anticipate getting back into regular updates.
Your continued support and interest in what I’m doing means a lot to me, and I can’t wait to share more with y’all in the near future.
<3z
Nicholas
Essay Games