I should have been a pair of ragged claws

Where to start? Brave New World , the next expansion for Civilization 5 , has been wrapped up and is ready to go. I've was able to fulfill a development dream and design a trade system to be added to the game. Something about caravans and trade ships moving around the screen delights me to no end and I hope other people enjoy it as well. After much discussion with Bessie, I've decided this would be the best time to leave my position at Firaxis Games and work with Todd and Derek at Gopherwood Studios . My seven years (!) at Firaxis have been wonderful and I'm proud that I got to work with such great people on such great products. I will miss my team tremendously; they are my second family and, while I'm not moving away from Baltimore, I'll miss talking to them daily and being a part of their lives. That said, I'm both nervous and excited about working at Gopherwood Studios. I'll be a contractor, largely responsible for pulling in my own clients, a...

After wrapping up core development a few months ago, Civilization Revolution (CivRev) is finally being released in the US this week on the Xbox 360, PS3, and Nintendo DS. I have been thrilled by the response to the demo on various message boards; CivRev is quite a different game than most console experiences and it was never completely clear to us how the public would respond. Thankfully, most have understood what we've tried to with the series and embrace it as its own thing rather than Civilization 5. I've been particularly proud of the responses of players who have never played a strategy game like this before. The sort of wide-eyed "there can be games like this?!" response makes me feel like we helped expand what people think of games by a little bit. Developing CivRev was quite a challenge for me because it was the first time that I was a lead in charge of other developers, the first time I developed a console title, and the first time we used Scaleform's GFX...

While wandering around the Atlanta Airport this Christmas, we found an ad for Todd's first game as a lead designer. Brain Challenge has received great reviews even though it had a tumultuous (and extremely brief) development cycle. I've only seen advertisements for the games I've worked on inside gaming stores or magazines; seeing something you developed advertised in an international airport has got to be a treat.

Going through photos tonight, I found a picture of Todd and Vicki that I think captures them both pretty well. The photo was taken by Vicki without my permission.

All the stars aligned for a week of gaming: the Nintendo Wii was released with the latest Zelda game the week before Thanksgiving and I had vacation days to burn, and my brother, Todd, was in a similar situation. So he took the bus from Manhattan on Monday and we tag-teamed the game, swapping between each dungeon, until it's completion last night. Todd and I have done this a number of times many years ago, but the change to act like children again and play (and complete) a game in one of our favorite series together made this week one of my most enjoyable vacations. No small credit can be given to Bessie who demonstrated saint-like patience with the bleary-eyed bums in her basement yammering on about heart containers, master keys, and the saddening absence of Tingle. She did indulge in some some light jeering, saying that Link is such a cute elf and wondering where Legolas could be. I have a good bit to say about Twilight Princess, the Nintendo Wii, and the Zelda series in general,...

My favorite shot with our new camera.

Untrustworthy fellows.

My family resting in the National Art Gallery. You can tell a lot about people's current emotions by their facial expressions.

The latest installment of ESPN's recent sport series on American football in the US discusses the sport at Georgia Tech. Sorta. The article is more about how few students at Tech (in particular undergrads) care about football because they are simply too busy doing their work to goof off. From my experience, the article is largely accurate. I think the overall intelligence of the students is a bit overstated. There are quite a few geniuses, but Tech was largely populated by mere mortals like me. The overwhelming volume of nerdiness, though, was perfectly conveyed by the article. From my time there, I feel Georgia Tech presents a relatively unique college experience. Most people I talk to speak of the "good times" in college, the parties, the excessive drinking, and what not. I don't drink, I'm not very good at parties, and I really wanted to get something out of college rather than watch it pass by in a chemically induced stupor. (Most of my four years were indeed...

Serendipity! Last weekend I was doing the dishes singing FreezePop's " Science Genius Girl " and Bessie said that she wanted to play Karaoke Revolution to sing it with music. I immediately tried to defuse the situation. I dearly love my wife, but I must either be out of the apartment or unconscious when she dons the KR headset. So I humbly recommended Harmonix's sublime Frequency as an alternative, because the "Science Genius Girl" appears in that game as well. Shockingly she agreed and I got her in front of the PS2 sans headset. Bessie had some difficulty completing the initial few songs in Frequency. Her opinion of the game was not improved when the game actually booed her if she failed a level. Frantically struggling to keep this dim light of gaming interest glowing, I hastily replaced Frequency with its successor, Amplitude . Harmonix mentioned in its post mortem that they did significant usability testing on Frequency in order to make Amplitude a m...