Life in Transition

So much has happened since my last blog post! Life has been keeping me busy and I suppose that’s why it has nearly been six months since my last update.

The biggest game changer was becoming a father to a beautiful boy who Yuki and I have named Ryusei. If you’re not familiar with Japanese then it will likely be a challenging name to say; you can just cheat by saying “Roo say”, which isn’t quite right, but close enough. He’s bringing a lot of joy to our life and it is really great to see him learning and growing.

Here is a video of him when he first learned how to roll over:

Just before Ryusei was born I took a full time design job at SEGA Studios San Francisco where I designed enemies for the forthcoming Iron Man 2 game for PS3 and Xbox 360. I worked directly under Dedan Anderson and learned a lot from him about enemy design, boss design, and level design.

I left my position with SEGA a week ago to join Unity Technologies—makers of the Unity game engine which I have reported on in the past. Many people think the name of the product is “Unity 3D”, because of the URL, but it’s not—it’s just “Unity”. In a surprise move, I took a marketing job! It is really exciting because it gets me closer to the business side of things and I feel like my actions have some bearing on the direction and success of the company, and there’s tons to learn and do, but I’m still a game designer at heart!!!

Despite these transitions, some things remain constant; Sirlin and I have continued to work on Yomi and it is making great progress. The art from Udon is coming in and we have continued to revise the card layout, design data, and rules based on feedback from our playtesters who have an amazing amount of enthusiasm for Yomi!