Snapshot is all about giving you a glimpse into the lives of the people who make the games you play. Think of it as Cribs, but with fewer obnoxious celebs and more development geeks.
Every Snapshot will see us ask five questions of a game developer, hopefully providing you with a little insight into what they do and why they do it. Also, we show you their desk.
Today, we travel all the way over to Perth and squish some orcs with Tim Best from iPhone devs Spinfast.
Who Are You?
Timothy C. Best, Game Designer, Spinfast
What Work Did You Do Today?
A couple of the lads from Karnivool came into the office today, so I did some meeting and greeting and we took some promo photos. This would have been pretty odd, except for the fact we just released Pools of Blood which features their single “Set Fire to the Hive”. It’s all very iPhone-y and convergent.
On the design side, I tested a course in a new prototype, had a discussion about how much we should let players edit character descriptions (Danger, Will Robertson!), then I got back into work of actually cooking up those descriptions and the character attributes to go with them. Should eye-bow guy, who is vaguely like this real-life guy, be faster than than goatee guy based vaguely on those two guys? Lots of numbers, writing and head scratching is involved.
How’d You Get Your Job?
I started with about ten years in games journalism, joined a different Perth game studio as a researcher, then ninja-rolled sideways into an officially unofficial design role there. Finally, I moved across to Spinfast to take up an officially official design role.
What’s The Last Game You Played And How Was It?
Not including work-related stuff, it’d have to be Dawn of War II. I’m battling through the campaign on hard, which turns it into a pretty dig-in, get-down and get-tactical affair. It’s also fearsome pretty. Lasers, missiles trailers and flamers, oh my!
What’s On Your Desk?
Dead centre is a chunky work laptop. Around the edges there’s the mandatory figurine (Magdalena, at the moment*),* miscellaneous papers and CDs, headphones, a glass of water and a bunch of game magazines wedged between bookends shaped like wickets. There’s also a “Super Test Super Stars” hat perched in there too. Did I mention that we have a cricket game?
If you’re a game developer who’d like to be featured in Snapshot, we’d love to hear from you. Just answer the above questions and send us a photo of yourself and your desk to the usual address.
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