Posted: January 8th, 2007 | Author: Simon | Filed under: Noteworthy | Comments Off
Just a small (picture) update on the progress with getting our new apartment finished for our big move-in January 28, 2007.
It sure is hard work as you can see from these gloves
But all in all I’m very proud of the work I’ve done so far, considering I’ve never done anything like this before.
Like going from this
to this (filling the gap)
and ending up with this
Or this one
to this (no more old kitchen)
to this (new floor)
and lastly ending up with this
Posted: January 1st, 2007 | Author: Simon | Filed under: Noteworthy | 1 Comment »
Oh, I’m not dead… just very (very) busy… read on…
Man, has 2006 been a crazy year or what? It has without doubt been one of the most hectic years in resent memory. But all in all it has been a very good year, but I would very much like if 2007 came out just a tad less hectic.
It all started very well with us (me and my co-game designers) winning the Nordic GameJam 2006 in January which eventually landed us a position as in-house thesis writers at IO Interactive here in Copenhagen.
But I’m getting a little ahead of myself here. From January to June I held a job as level designer at GuppyWorks helping them finish the Hans Christian Andersen game that later was released in October. It was great job and I still find it funny when I’m down in the local game store and seeing the huge cardboard displays of the game I helped to create. It makes it just so much more real in some sense (and much easier to explain to your non-gaming friends and family what exactly it is you’re doing). I quit the job to focus 100% on my master thesis which I do not regret one moment.
Ah, yes, the master thesis. As a student of the IT-University of Copenhagen where I’ve specialized in computer games, writing my thesis together with IO Interactive is certainly a dream come true. It’s feels like being nominated to play for the national soccer team, and the fact that they asked us to do and not the other way around just makes it feel so much better. I could not in my wildest dreams imagine a better way to finish of my (endless) years of education.
The topic for our master thesis is how to test out ideas for gameplay and game mechanics in a more “organic way”. My initial plan was to keep posting about or finding and progress on this blog by lack of time and NDAs made it very hard to keep that promise.
In other news, we have bought a new apartment, just 100 meters down the road. On December 1st we signed the deal and since then I’ve been working around the clock to renovate it so it’s fit for living (which it’s not by far at the moment). We plan on moving in around February so I still have to time to go on. It sure is hard work to tear down an old kitchen, trowel walls, paint and at the same time write a master thesis and still have hours left in the day to sleep. But it’s going to look great and we’ll be moving from 56 to 91 square meters, which is not only great but essential when you have a small kid running around the house. I’ve uploaded some images on Flickr for you to gaze upon.
It was also the year my weblog turned six. Don’t worry if you missed it, so did I. But I still take pride in the fact that this is the second longest running weblog in Denmark. It might not be the most read one (not by far), but still…
And speaking of birthdays, my wonderful son Carl turned one back in May. He is without doubt the shining light of my life. Together with my beautiful and clever wife they keep me afloat when things seem bleak.
Condensed to a single blog post one whole year seems to have gone by too fast, and as said in the beginning I hope the tempo 2007 might be a little slower.
Happy new year everyone.