Getting Here

Hey there. Welcome to my blog. I'm Isaac, though some of my friends call me Ike, and I believe that videogames have emerged as the premier storytelling medium. Yes, greater than novels and film, and comparable to live theatre and (you're gonna laugh) tabletop roleplaying games at their best.

All of these are some of my favourite things, and I don't want to take away from any of them—I'm well aware that each has informed the videogames I love to play today.

I've wanted to be a professional storyteller for as long as I've had direction in my life, and I figured that writing novels and scripts (for my very own one-hour weekly television drama) would be the best way to make a living as a storyteller. Could be. Hard to do.

After graduating from Edmonton's Grant MacEwan University (then a college) with an applied communications degree, I thought I had hit it big by scoring two enviable titles—I was both a Creative Writer with Codebaby, a software company with ties to BioWare, and I was also a Scriptwriter with a tiny startup film production company. Both of these contracts dried up, and I found myself taking a technical writer job at another software company in Edmonton.

There I stayed for four years, somewhat content to make money and put off my creative needs (which I fulfilled somewhat unprofessionally through running several tabletop roleplaying campaigns, writing the occasional short story or game "design" document, and launching a website dedicated to those TRPGs I loved so much. I had dreams of success in e-business, but I was in turns lacking the skills or the drive to make make them a reality.

And then I was laid off. I applied for a lot of jobs and had some interviews, but what proved most effective was the research I did into learning game design (or, more accurately, where to learn it). As a field, game design is somewhat misunderstood, and only now is the career path being explored and defined by industry professionals and academia. As a new game design student, I look forward to being a part of that process.

So, that's the short version of why I'm writing. I plan to cover many related topics over my upcoming very intense year of studies. I plan to address real-world concerns like choosing a school and student loans, but I am most excited about covering topics like game design in education, storytelling in games, game art, sound, and aesthetics. I want to talk about the effects of innovation in games and whether the term "gamer" really holds any meaning anymore. If I have time, I'm also hoping to talk about the games I am playing or the games I have played, and the reasons those games are good, bad, or in between.

But for now, I want to welcome you to my blog. Best wishes and happy gaming.