Game designers diary Day 1
I want to start this diary with a little insight about me. Like many of you, I have always loved games and gaming. I lived in a small beach town in Florida, well I lived outside of town with very few neighbors. My brother, whom was much older, spent a lot of time and energy to educate me and entertain me. Eventually when I was old enough, he introduced me to Dungeons and Dragons with his college aged friends.
A new world opened up for me, I was never much of a reader, and my math skills were subpar at best, but this game changed everything for me. I do not think I will ever be able to thank him enough for that. It exposed me to some very intelligent, very different, people I would never had the opportunity to meet. I eventually started high school and my own RPG group.
I mentioned that it was a small town (and this was in the late 80’s) so we didn’t have as much access to RPG material as I would have liked, so the best solution was to make my own material. And so it began, I made several of my own Dungeons and Dragons adventures, and eventually expanded to make my own game systems for several different games.
Then college, full time jobs, girlfriends and drinking slowly sucked away my time until there was no more time for games, or gamming in my life. Although, I had a brief re-kindling of my love for games with Magic the Gathering. I convinced some friends to play and I entered some local competitive events but It lasted only a few years until I got a call some years later from my high school best friend and college roommate.
I was marred now, still juggling my job, and at this time I was doing psych research at the University of Central Florida. My roommate called me and told me that he was diagnosed with cancer. He would have to undergo treatment that started with him losing a lung. He called me, and said he was playing Magic the gathering online because he had so much down time and asked if I would play with him at night when I got home from work, and we did. We played a lot. He liked the idea of playing on days that he was too sick for company but didn’t feel like being alone.
Shawn Jeffery Mattingly and I played magic until he passed away. The last time we played was Sunday night November 2nd 2008 he beat me 5 of 6 games. The next day he went into the hospital and on Wednesday November 5th at the age of 37 Shawn Mattingly passed on. He was a lifelong friend and his passing was very difficult for me. I was grateful for the time we had together playing games, but I did not take this well and at the risk of public vulnerability I lost more than a best friend, I lost a bit of myself. I have never played MTG again, and I would not play games for quite some time.
About 6 months later, I received a phone call from my mother, she was in the hospital, and she had been diagnosed with cancer. She had a Colon cancer and a good bit of it was to be removed. She started Chemo and slowly began to get better, the colostomy bag, and Chemo where challenging at first, they definitely took some getting used to.
I was working a 70 hour a week job. It took up all of my time, I would drive down to see my family as often as I could but my days off were canceled a lot. In fact, my boss even called me at 11pm one night when I was driving home, it was my turn to buy groceries for them, and he told me that I had to get back to the shop right away and my day off would have to be put off for another time. I got in to my home town around 1 am, bought groceries and got back to work by the next morning by 8a.m. I was very proud of myself.
I came home for Christmas in December of 2010, and she made a Christmas dinner like when I was a kid. I had to make the mash potatoes like when I was a kid, and we sat on the kitchen floor and talked for a few minutes, like when I was a kid.
One week later on January 2nd I received a call at 10am. My mother was back in the hospital and she asked me to come back to town. I spent the next 5 days at her side in hospice, I only left one time to go home, take a shower and shave. She never really regained consciousness but if she did I wanted someone to be there and let her know what was going on.
On January 7th 2011 at the age of 70 Joni Talbert passed on. She was more than a mother she was a lifelong friend and her passing was very difficult for me. I was grateful for the time we had together but I did not take it very well. I lost more than a mother, I lost a bit of myself. On that kitchen floor on Christmas day she gave me a little insight to her life. I asked her why she devoted so much of her life to others and she told me that she did it because she enjoyed doing it, that it made her happy.
One of my friends posted on my social media page something I will never forget. He said “To honor my mother’s memory I needed to do what would make me happy. She devoted most of her life to make her children happy and I owed it to her.”
I wanted to make games. I wanted to make games that told a story, no that is not true. I wanted to make games that let others be a part of their own story. Nothing was more engaging to me then to be part of a story and the decisions that influenced the outcome. A few Ideas had been floating around in my head and I started to work on them. I made two adult party games that I will bring to market soon, but I wanted to undertake something that allowed players to use strategy, negotiation, deception and use some moral decision making for better or worse, and one more thing I wanted it to have assassins in it!
I loved risk as a kid, but It really lacked storytelling and I felt that the total random dice influencing the outcome of battle, sucked. I also loved Stratego and its discovery, but I also felt its story telling was limited. Of course I loved magic the gathering because of its story telling ability, but it lacked the visual special relationships that a board game can give. I wanted to make Siege of Verdan.Facebook
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