General mind-dump of Jonas Wæver
This... is not okay. No way am I going out there. I'm the King of the Savannah, guys, not the goddamn tundra.
You there! With the camera! I hold you personally responsible for this dismal white stuff! Come in here so I can claw your face off.
Why is my territory still covered in snow? Do I look like a polar bear to you? I want to file a formal complaint. Get me the manager at once!
– February 6, 2010
I wasn’t sure whether to post this. Since I only got a 7 for it (a C on the ETCS scale, roughly a B on the U.S. grading scale), it’s the lowest marked university paper I’ve ever turned in, and sadly I think that’s completely fair. I prioritised Game Design over Game Theory, but most of all I got lazy.
I wrote the paper in literally a couple of days before it was due, I didn’t meet with my advisor at all, and I spent next to no time searching out material to base it on. As an academic work, it’s piss poor. There are barely any references, the structure is weak, the problem itself is poorly stated and even more poorly answered, and the conclusion is completely rubbish – my usual Achilles heel.
All that said, as a sort of super-extended blog entry, I really rather like it. I think I make some good points, I cover the most important aspects of the topic, and I explore three carefully selected examples of games that have approached the concept of Embedded Narrative in different ways. I’m strongly considering to write my master’s thesis about this topic, and just do a proper job of it next time – Embedded Narrative is a concept that interests me to no end.
So take this for what it is: an embarrassingly lazy academic paper narrowly redeemed by proficient writing, but worth a read for game design enthusiasts.
You can download it here shaped like a PDF:
Embedded Narrative in Games 
It’s 8 pages and weighs a mere 212 KB. By all means drop any thoughts you might have on the topic or other feedback to the paper as comments on this thread.
Posted in Articles and stories, Game design.
– January 29, 2010
This post is a preparation for my next post, wherein I publish my Game Theory paper. I feel compelled to write this first in order to clarify how the Danish grading scale compares internationally, because misunderstandings are most likely to lead to a more negative than necessary impression of my academic level. In other words, I feel that unless I explain this to you first, you will think that I suck more than I do, and I can’t allow that.
Posted in Personal.
– January 22, 2010
Today (well, yesterday, truth be told, as it is currently approaching 2 am) was my Game Design exam. I felt well prepared and I was defending a project that had gone really well, so all in all I had a pretty good feeling about it. On the other hand, Game Design is my thing. It’s inextricably tied to my identity. It’s the one subject I have to ace. It’s like being examined in Being Jonas – it would be incredibly embarrassing to get anything but the best grade.
That’s how I felt, at least. And happily, it went as well as I could’ve expected. I got 12, as did my three group mates. The Danish equivalent of an A+, and it doesn’t get any higher than that.
By way of celebration, here is my individual report about the project , in a handy PDF file of 6 pages spiced up with a few screenshots for easier public consumption. You’ll be happy to know that it’s actually written in English this time.
The hand-in consisted of 4 parts:
On top of that, today’s examination had three parts to it:
It’s safe to say it’s the most elaborate exam I’ve ever had to do, but because I basically live and breathe game design, and in no small part thanks to the excellent collaboration in our group and my awesome group mates, I sort of had the home court advantage on this one.
Hopefully this will be enough to soften the inevitable blow to my ego when I get graded on the no doubt dreadful Game Theory paper I turned in before Christmas. But I’ll worry about that when the time comes.
As for the game… our plan is to polish it up, eliminating the remaining interaction issues, add another 30 or so levels to the current 12, code in a proper level progression mechanism, add sound effects, and then publish it on the App Store and see what happens. Rest assured I will pimp it here if we get that far.
Posted in Articles and stories, Game design, Personal.
– January 19, 2010
I don’t mind that it’s basically impossible to die in combat in Assassin’s Creed 2.
It has been put forth that AC2 is very easy – too easy, even. That’s not quite accurate in my experience, I have died several times from making a poorly aimed jump across a very deep chasm, and I have had to restart many timed jumping puzzles over and over again as I repeatedly failed to complete them within the allotted time limit.
It’s just that you are pretty much immortal in a sword fight. It takes an incredible amount of hits to bring your health down to empty, and the final point of health just seems to last forever. Even then, you can carry enough medicine with you to single-handedly retcon the Black Plague out of history. The only way to lose a fight in this game is to leave the game running while you get the groceries.
But I don’t mind.
Posted in Game design, Games.
– January 5, 2010
As you may have noticed by now, depending on your location, patch 2010 was released some hours ago. This was a scheduled update and it’s fully backwards compatible so there’s absolutely no need for concern. We worked really hard on 2010, and we figure it’s in a good enough condition to release.
You don’t have to download anything, it was / will be installed automatically when the clock hit/s midnight in your time zone. 2010 has been in alpha for quite a while so we’re confident the major bugs have been squished, but you may consider it to be in a sort of open beta, so please keep an eye out for glitches or other weirdness. We’ll probably put the finishing touches on it throughout January and then we’ll call it a day and start planning the 2011 update.
On a side note, we realise the Mayans have claimed we’re going to stop updating after patch 2012, but that is not based on an official statement and we can neither confirm nor deny that we have any plans to stop updating at any point in the near or far future, so please stop emailing us or making terrible disaster movies about it.
Posted in Humour.
– January 1, 2010
You know what would make sense to blog about today? The presents I’ve received. That’s what I’ve done all previous years. So let’s not do that today, yeah? It’s nice not to be too predictable. Instead, let me tell you about something you will find blindingly obvious if you’ve ever spent more than 5 minutes contemplating game design: narrative-driven design.
Posted in Game design.
– December 25, 2009
I bought Tomb Raider: Underworld in the Steam weekend sale. I skipped it originally because I didn’t want to pay full price for it, but at 75% off, it was time to make the purchase. Here are some random thoughts from the first couple of missions.
It seems to have no built-in screenshot key that I could find, which is why this post has no pictures.
Posted in Games.
– December 7, 2009
I can’t believe how good Dragon Age is.
This post is going to gush a lot. You may want to take it all with a grain of salt because I’m quite the fan of BioWare, and I have a high tolerance for some of the flaws their games tend to have, especially the way they stick so close to the same plot template that you can rightfully accuse them of remaking the same game over and over again. Then again, that goes for Besthesda or id Software or lots of other studios, and I just happen to enjoy BioWare’s template much more than others.
It’s also going to have SPOILERS.
Posted in Games.
– November 26, 2009
Holy long post title, Batman! You know what that means? It’s time to put up my first English-language university paper! Yay! This is an exercise in comparative analysis for our Game Theory course, and I wrote it – er – yesterday; it was due today. It’s just short enough to make me want to make it a normal post, but way too long to actually work well as one.
Since I prefer to spare you the download, I’m posting the entire paper here, but I have also uploaded it in PDF shape in case you prefer to read it with more sensible margins and page divisions and all that jazz. Note that this paper wasn’t an exam project, it was just an exercise, so I’ve basically not bothered with references, and it’s only 5 pages long. Oh, one more thing: the conclusion is extremely weak. My conclusions always are. Enjoy!
Posted in Articles and stories, Game design.
– November 2, 2009
