Time to live in Interesting Times

19 September 2012

At the beginning of October, I’ll be leaving Hide&Seek.

I’ve had a great time working here – on everything from phone-powered poetry games to web-based catechisms on death; consultancy and prototyping for major corporations and media companies, to a huge gallery installation of interlinked games built out of hardware, software, the network, and good-old physical manufacture. And throughout, working alongside some hugely talented and lovely colleagues (all of whom I will miss dreadfully). The company’s in great shape – with an NY studio recently established, and Mark coming on board – and I’m really excited to see what will emerge from them in the coming years. I’m grateful for all the opportunities I’ve had here.

What’s next, then?

What’s next is: working for myself. I’ll still probably continue to work on games – I can’t really ever stop writing about them or playing them, for starters and I’ve got one of my own I’d like to spend some time exploring – but I’m returning a bit closer to my technology-and-design roots, whilst bringing my experience of the playful interactive space to bear on that.

What will that work look like? Well: thinking through making; continuing my efforts to work with technology as a material; sitting at the intersection of design and technology. Some space to work with a whole host of interesting people, across a host of sectors – which includes you, if you’re reading – and also to develop my own practice and understanding. A bit more writing. For now, it’s best explained as “I am available for freelance work, doing the thing I do“, and I hope over time I’ll refine the proposition and explanation. (I will find somewhere to blog weeknotes, too.)

On the immediate horizon, I have an upcoming piece of work in October, through Caper, with the Royal Shakespeare Company: a small technological intervention with a theatre company to make interesting and beautiful things. It’s a lovely project, writing software to make art, and letting me tap into my liberal arts roots. There’s some early code and documentation on Github (from some spare evenings) and I’ll write more about the project in due course here when I’m working ont it in earnest.

Otherwise, though: I’m available for hire from mid-October. I am not interested in a fulltime position; I’m probably not your CTO or technical cofounder. I like short projects with defined goals; exploration, iteration and prototyping; straddling design and technology. I work on the full stack of the web as well as increasingly doing more things you might call “physical computing”. Of course, if you read this site, you have a good idea of what I do or am interested in. And I’ll hopefully have more work to show to explain what it is I do in the near future.

If you have interesting problems, or are curious as to what I could do for you, do drop me a line. It is time to live in Interesting Times.

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Playing In Public

04 September 2012

Quick work note, because it’s well worth pointing to:

On Monday 17th September, at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on London’s South Bank, Hide&Seek are running Playing In Public: a conference about the present and future of play in public spaces.

It’s exciting to see such a focused lineup of speakers exploring this topic. I’m excited to see Bennett Foddy, Ricky Haggett, Kerry Turner and Leanne Bayley dive into what games makers make of sport post-Olympics; I’m looking forward to having my brain tickled and expanded by Pat Kane’s keynote; and it’s always a pleasure to see Kars Alfrink speak.

It comes after three days of actual public play at the Hide&Seek Weekender, which should be a lot of fun of all shapes and sizes, and you can just drop into most events at the South Bank Centre over the weekend of the 14th-16th.

Tickets for the conference – which are very reasonably priced – are available from the South Bank Centre. Perhaps see you there!

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  • "This TV is playing a built-in MPEG of static, instead of just displaying solid blue or solid black like they used to do. I think that's kind of awesome. The map has become the territory." Blimey.
    (tags: tv static livinginthefuture )
  • "When I started writing this post, I didn’t have a conclusion in mind, but now that I’ve got to the end, the thing I want us to remember next time is just that: all the scales matter. Every part is important. The two days Sarah and Brian spent moving small pieces of vinyl, Ivan’s 4am printing-and-cutting, FOUND’s jumping-up-and-down to see if crowd movement broke their tech, last-minute shopping trips for slightly larger balls, all the things. Worry about it all. Fix everything." Lovely write-up from Holly of the big thing we did in Edinburgh. Also: good about the nature of the huge, and good about the nature of work. Worry about it all. Fix everything.
    (tags: newyeargames hideandseek hollygramazio work games fixeverything polish )

Charabanc

27 July 2011

So, I’ve designed a game.

Well, I’ve nearly finished designing it. Needs a little more work. But:

Next week, you’ll be able to play it, as part of Hide&Seek’s Southbank Seaside Sandpit.

It’s called Charabanc:

Ah, the race for the last seaside parking space: Mum’s tired, Dad’s lost, the kids need the loo, and EVERYONE’S COMPLAINING. A noisy, competitive role-playing team game for two or more groups of four.

It involves a deck of cards I’m still balancing, and groups of four pretending to be in a people carrier. The Clore Ballroom will be reverberating to cries of “I’M REALLY HUNGRY”, “I FEEL SICK”, and “ARE WE NEARLY THERE YET?” next Thursday night. Maybe. Or it might break quite badly. Either way: it should be fun, and there are loads of other games on that night, some of which I can tell you are definitely really good.

This is my first game for the Sandpit; given I work at H&S, thought I ought to dip my toes into the more pervasive and theatrical end of game design. Charabanc is the result. We’ll see how it turns out next week…

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Rogue On The Sofa

01 April 2011

I’ve been playing a lot of Torchlight recently.

This is not the first time I’ve played a lot of Torchlight. I played a lot of it on Windows, at a desk. I bought it again and played a lot of it – mainly on trains – when it came out on the Mac. And now I’ve bought it a third time, on the Xbox, and am playing it from my sofa.

I know why I’m quite so engrossed. It’s not just that Torchlight is a fine iteration of the dungeon-crawler, walking the tightrope between light-hearted entertainment and dense inventory management just so. It’s something more personal, that takes me right back to the dawn of Tom-as-a-gamer, embedded in the core of my gamer DNA.

I’m playing a lot of Torchlight, because, when I play it, in my heart, I know I’m really playing Rogue.

My first post over at the Hide & Seek blog, in which I write about Roguelikes as casual games, why I love them so, the ways they’re casual (and the ways they aren’t), and what the current state of Roguelikes is.

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The next step on the journey

21 February 2011

Two years ago, I joined Berg – or Schulze & Webb, as it was still called then. I was the first employee not called Schulze or Webb.

Looking back, February 2009 seems like an age away, when it’s only two years. And yet: so much has happened at the company in that time; just being in the studio to experience that work, those people, those moments, has been a privilege.

Sad news: towards the end of this month, I’m leaving. Sad because the studio stereo is always playing good tunes, the work is great, the people – and let’s face it, not “people”, but “my friends” – are genuinely brilliant. I am not leaving because things are bad; I am leaving when things are, by anyone’s standards, great.

I’m going to be joining Hide & Seek. My job title will be game designer. It’s a company brimful with great work, great clients, and brilliant people.

If you know me, or have read this site for a while – and have followed the links, the posts, the ramblings, the talks, my interests – then I’m sure you’ll understand exactly why I’m taking this step. It’s a great opportunity, with a small, growing, exciting company, that taps right into my passions, and asks me to put my money where my mouth is. It’s designing games in their broadest and best sense: digital, physical, table, street, paper, plastic. The whole, wonderful, broad church.

In his enormously kind post on the Berg site, Matt quite rightly talks about the way we take culture into the world as we travel between destinations. I’m excited about what Hide & Seek are going to teach me, what I’ll learn every day; I’m also excited by what’s in my travelbag to take to them – my strange mishmash of code and technology and design and books and writing. Who knows what’ll happen when we put the whole shebang together, but I have a feeling it’ll be good.

And so, happysad for the past but looking to the future – in a manner that feels like there should be a German portmanteau for it – this is the next step on the journey.

I know that I shall miss everyone at Berg dreadfully, and I shall watch them all fondly, eagerly, from afar, excited for their future. I hope it is as brilliant as it deserves to be.

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