Ryan Rigney

Malcolm Gladwell is passionate about many things unrelated to proper hair care.

Note: This is the final entry in a four-part series of blog posts discussing the lessons we learned while making our first game, FAST FAST LASER LASER. It’s intended to be useful for other game developers or for people merely interested in the perspective of a game designer. It was originally posted on the Utah Raptor Games blog.

It may come as a surprise to some of my previous employers that I am (still) a college student. I recently turned 21, yet have been writing about video games for magazines and prominent websites for something like five years. I got started early, I guess.

Many college-age kids are also getting started early in game development, these days. The Independent Games Festival (IGF) has a category specifically for student developers, which Utah Raptor Games has entered. FAST FAST LASER LASER is competing against a whopping 302 other games developed by student teams in this year’s competition—a record for the IGF. I’m certain that many of those teams have learned some of the hard lessons we’ve learned in the development of our first game. Next year a whole new batch of students will show up, and they’ll learn those same lessons themselves.

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Everything Ira Glass does tries to be crap, but he just won’t let it.

Note: This is the third entry in a four-part series of blog posts discussing the lessons we learned while making our first game, FAST FAST LASER LASER. It’s intended to be useful for other game developers or for people merely interested in the perspective of a game designer. It was originally posted on the Utah Raptor Games blog.

We’d just installed code for artificially intelligent computer opponents (bots) in FAST FAST LASER LASER, and I was having great fun parrying attacks and dodging lasers from the AI players. Finally, after months of one-on-one matches against the game’s lead programmer, FFLL was being played the way it was always mean to: with four players dashing around the screen, filling the arena with multi-colored lasers.

Suddenly, the green guy stopped in his tracks. He stood still for a moment, and then turned to face a wall near the edge of the arena. Ignoring other dangers around him, he began firing rapidly at the wall, where his laser blasts immediately dissipated. After 10 or so shots, he holstered his blaster and ran at the wall–and passed right through it.

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“We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.” – Steve Jobs
Full quote here

Note: This is the second entry in a four-part series of blog posts discussing the lessons we learned while making our first game, FAST FAST LASER LASER. It’s intended to be useful for other game developers or for people merely interested in the perspective of a game designer. It was originally posted on the Utah Raptor Games blog.

There is no secret formula for coming up with great game ideas. If there was, there would be at least one game designer in the world who has never had trouble coming up with great games, and to my knowledge there is no such person in existence. The fact that Peter Molyneaux just put out a glorified, collaborative version of Cow Clicker is evidence enough of that.

However, with FAST FAST LASER LASER, we came up with a very specific creative process that guided us in designing its various mechanics–stealing from other game designers. I like to call it “creative stealing.”

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You don’t have to be lonely like this guy to be a game designer. The fancy facial hair is also pretty unnecessary.

Note: This is the first entry in a four-part series of blog posts discussing the lessons we learned while making our first game, FAST FAST LASER LASER. It’s intended to be useful for other game developers or for people merely interested in the perspective of a game designer. It was originally posted on the Utah Raptor Games blog.

“Hey guys, wanna make a video game?”

Lee Dubose and Jonathan Broom were sitting on a couch, watching bad daytime television. Jonathan (we call him JB) was sprawled out with his tiny Acer laptop sitting on his chest, his face only inches from the screen. Neither of my two friends bothered to look up to respond to my question.

“Alright,” JB said. Lee grunted something that sounded remotely like approval.

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