Christmas Looms, Work Pervades, Sega Game is Awesome

Things have been slow around here (the blog, not the studio) over the last couple of months, and that's something I hope to correct in the new year. The reason for it is that Sept - Jan has been just about the busiest period of my career. There are good I've-had-lots-of-jobs-come-in reasons for that, but I've also been teaching the story design module at Southbank uni again, as well as taking the first step towards my PhD in the form of a Philosophy MA at King's College. I actually have to be out of bed by 8am four days a week.

Of most interest, though, is probably the secret project that's taking up most of my time. I'm currently narrative designer for a major new Sega IP for Playstation Vita being developed up at Sega's new 'boutique' studio outside of Birmingham. Boutique, for once, is actually being applied quite fairly - this is a bunch of around 15 highly talented chaps and chapesses producing what Sega sorely needs: new, ambitious, home-grown intellectual property. The studio's creative team is headed by Simon Woodroffe of Simon the Sorceror and Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth fame, and we're working on what is probably only the second game I've worked on which I felt might really do something great with its writing. (The first was the ill-fated Hydravision zombie game.)

The game's being designed from the ground up with narrative as its focus, and right now myself and another designer are knee deep in fleshing out the gameplay scenarios and producing a vertical slice. We're hoping to be able to announce details Q1 next year. Story development is actually in large part being informed by the aesthetics and philosophy of mind that I'm researching at King's, and I'll probably bore you to tears with some details on the latter some time soon.

In the meantime don't give up, stay chirpy, and we'll talk again very soon.