Where To Go From Here?
With Bloc finished, I look toward the future of where I want to go. With a number of ideas on my docket, I hope to expand my horizons on multiple fronts, exploring my various interests while building skills to create ever more ambitious projects.
Career
My immediate goal is to find a job out on the West Coast, particularly Portland, preferably working on producing web services for making people’s life and work easier.
From my time in Game Development, I developed a particular fascination with developing interfaces and interaction methods that allow users to learn my games as quickly and efficiently as possible. On Terrachanics, I worked closely with our QA team and test volunteers to ascertain sticking points in their comprehension, and worked to come up with novel solutions to resolve those challenges.
For Web Development, I see the same dynamic in play. Particularly with complex business software, the easier and more efficient one can make software tools, the more the user is able to accomplish. If this can further be done in a way that entertains the user, and allows them to derive pleasure from the experience, then all the better. Analyzing the psychology behind people’s interactions with software and coming up with solutions to satisfy those quirks and inferences is a topic of particular interest to me.
Side Gigs
Web
In terms of personal projects, I intend to continue to build upon DSet and Fatebook to turn them into full-featured apps. With some luck I would love to launch Fatebook as a fullscale platform for aspiring writers and game developers to share and play each other’s adventures.
Games
I fully intend to continue to build games on the side as well. I have been working on a board game called “Rise of the Scion,” a card-based skirmish game combining the card comboing of Dominion with tactical positioning of games like Chess. I hope to playtest further once I have myself established in my new workplace. I am also interested in exploring the depths of HTML5 game development, perhaps even to create a digital version of my game.
I also intend to port a game I started in Flash called “Love Man: Fallen Love”, a horizontal scrolling shooter where you play as Eros (aka Cupid) fighting against the enemies of love. Think if Cupid looked like Viewtiful Joe and had the intimidating presence of Kratos and you have an idea of what I’m going for.
Social Sciences
Finally, I have been planning to get a youtube channel off the ground called “Pluralisys.” From watching shows like the “Rubin Report” I have become drawn to the contentious debates of the day, such as those relating to Islam, Freedom of Speech, and Trigger Warnings. Rather than fan the flames on either side, I instead want to do a meta-analysis to explore the thought process behind both sides of seemingly intractable arguments, in the hopes that some solutions can be uncovered to break the stalemate.