Inspiration
Inspiration is everywhere. Nobody works in a vacuum, certainly not me.
I am inspired by everything around me and by each and every one of you who are crossing my path.
Creative collaboration lets us go down a road we would not have discovered walking alone.
The best collaborators for me are my friends, and you. I continue to be surprised and inspired by the ideas
that are out there, for all of us to share.
The seeds that will become ideas are everywhere. Listening to a conversation
of strangers passing by, or a piece of wood found on the beach may become your next design or song,
or the core of your video game.
Creativity needs nurturing. So does friendship. Thank you all for being part of my creative growth.
Inspiring People I have worked with
Salvia Dhall, for her gentleness and incredible design talent
Matt Schroeter, for countless great design ideas and his blue eyes
Dave Marhal, Bryan Clarke, and Bryant Drew Jones,
for teaching me all about video games
Ryan Nadel, for his wit and razor sharp intelligence, and for being my
first MDM friend
Fouad Hafiz, for his incredible motion graphics skills, and his kindness
Ken Pratt, for making programming sound like fun, and bringing me pizza
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Train - how a board game can make you cry
Brenda Brathwaite is one of those people that can change how you look at things. Her talk
How I dumped electricity and learned to love design at the Game Developers Conference in San Franciso this Spring
truly inspired me, one of the few female participants in a crowd of mostly male video game developers.
She talked about the fact that there is no reason that video games have to
be fun all the time. She suggests that game designer should start to express difficult emotions just like any
other artistic medium. Just imagine that only fun and entertaining books and movies were available. Or only
happy songs played on the radio. Absurd, right?
After creating video games for years, Brenda decided to take some time off to focus on developing board games.
The trail of tears, or the life of
illegal Mexican kitchen workers in the US, are just two of the emotionally difficult issues she wanted to tackle.
But the game she mostly talked about in her GDC talk is
Train, a boardgame that is based on the story of
the Holocaust. It was a very moving and most engaging talk, and Brenda deserved her standing-ovation at the end.
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I love, love books!
I simply can't get enough of them, I read everything I can get my hands on. From
the classics to novels, from books on mathematics to poetry. Their numbers seem to
steadily increase, and there is no stopping me. Moving is a heavy task, no matter if from one end of the world or one part
of the city. Here is a very small selection of books that have inspired me over the years.
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