Posts by Zacker

I'm currently playing Company of Heroes (2006) and much enjoying it! Definitely one of the better games from my pile of "oh this game is not super recent but everyone says it is an absolute must to play it".

Not sure if I am derailing the topic here, but I damn I was surprised to see Valve laying off a bunch of people! To analyse things a bit, it is my impression that layoffs happen for either a) financial reasons, b) personal reasons), or c) restructuring.

Financial reasons really should not be the reason as their revenue has been steadily increasing (even per employee) over the past years and they have no kind of investors to make any demands. Lay offs due to personal reasons tend to hit individuals and not groups. That leaves us with c) the management deciding another direction for the company which leaves some projects to be closed down. Valve not having much of management makes this one seem a bit off also, in particular when the presumably super skilled and dynamic people at those projects apparently could not move to other projects.

What am I missing in my thoughts?

If I were to hire a level or game designer I would definitely be interested in reading theoretical work. When evaluating a the competences of a level designer the very most optimal is naturally to play a level designed by him. As this is not particularly practical, at least not for rough scanning, we stick to indirect measures of how well this guy can design levels. Typically this includes screenshots, videos or short descriptions of the levels created by him. As a recruiter is already dealing with indirect measures of level design quality I would not see any issues with evaluating other indirect work such as a theoretical analysis.

Also, as a lecturer I have evaluated a bunch of level designs with accompanying theoretical work and I have found there to be a pretty good correlation between quality of the level design and quality of the theoretical analysis.

Being a huge fan of Mass Effect 1 I finally got around to pick up ME2. With everyone saying it is even better than ME1 I am much looking forward to playing it

I have just made some updates both in terms of layout and content. Feedback welcome!

Launch trailer was just released along with a few more review scores. Everything looks top notch

I'm only an hour into this but I'm totally loving it! The visuals look a bit dated but the overall experience and attention to details is amazing. Bringing toilet paper to that dude was awesome

As Frie explained, ESE is pretty much in hibernation by now. I have re-opened my consulting firm (design/tech/management) and have since the beginning of August been helping out at Threaks, another cool indie studio here in Hamburg - check out our game BeatBuddy!

So I guess you can also file me under freelance contractors. Feel free to add my linked also: http://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelzacker

This comic from The Oatmeal sums things up nicely:

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/working_home

Quote from insta

So you want to be an associate producer? I guess if you want to show how you've problem-solved parts of projects with your holistic approach you could do a writeup on specific things you've fixed, and maybe get some uuh....testimonies? (is that the right word?) from the people that were helped by your problem-solving skills.

I see that I one thing I need to improve at least is communicating what kind of positions I believe to be fit for, as associate producer is not exactly what I am going for. Not that I know entirely what title that suits me though imagineer or just consultant comes fairly close. But yeah more text describing my work or some testimonials might be a good idea. Thanks for the feedback!

At first I didn't understand why an experienced guy as Andrew (Wacko) accepted a job at a fairly unknown f2p studio but these things definitely prove why

Quote from Marvin.Star

What are you trying to show you can do with your portfolio then? It's hard to help you when you haven't told us what you want to do with it.

Solve problems is what I do. The resulting product (ie. solution) might touch upon one or more of the existing site categories but tend to be hard to place in just one of them. I prefer working with a holistic approach to a project instead of just having responsibility for some sub-section of it. So I would like the focus of my portfolio to be on the projects and what problem they solve instead of having the focus on what particular work areas and tools that was used in the process.

Hey Mapcore, my portfolio site has not seen a design update in about six years so I believe it to be about time. Before setting out to revamp it I would love some feedback from you guys both on the current design and as general comments about how portfolio design has evolved over the past years.

I have a few thoughts myself:

• Get rid of splash screen. I don't think these were a good idea in 2006 and they still aren't.
• Collapse level design, programming and art sections. None of the work I have done over the past years and expect to do in the future falls directly into any of those categories.
• Add some kind of lightbox for all images. Those are pretty much considered mandatory these days, aye?

Makes sense?

I loll'ed.

I ended up grabbing just The Longest Journey and Dawn of War II this year, each one for 2.49€, so not exactly ruined this time around. Now just for the usual issue of when I am going to actually get to play these games.

Looks very good indeed! Kinda reminds me of Doom3 though?

Call me a hippie, but if I were you I really would not care too much about if a certain activity leads to clear portfolio material or not. Do what you enjoy doing and what is the best for the project.

Career wise you also need to remember that in addition to your portfolio you also have a résumé and a cover letter to explain yourself. Not all work done can be explained in a screenshot.

Congrats man!

This new trailer does not have any of the class that previous IO trailers usually do. The Hitman E3 2011 trailer was totally awesome while the NunsWithGuns trailer lacks any sign of intelligence.

This is pretty damn cool. For a long while I have been unable to understand that Valve didn't prioritize their tools higher, as seen with Source which by far has most ineffective work flow of any engine. This new initiative definitely shows that they still care