Lucca wrapped almost a month ago, you say? Well, it's true, but when I got back I was tired, and in no time I got sucked into a frenzy of deadlines and urgent projects that really have plunged me in a kind of perpetual twilight, where I enter my studio in the morning and resurface only when it's dark already. It's probably an experience shared by many western-world workers, and it's certainly not the worst...
Especially for one reason: I am basically doing something I like. I read and reference books, I look at pictures, I write and I play and I rewrite what I wrote, I discuss and brainstorm and argue with fellow game designers. In time I see something take form, and eventually be physically created. Every time it happens I marvel at the beauty of having played a part in the birth of that something, a new set of dice, a boxed game, miniatures, pieces of artwork that I didn't draw myself but that recreate something I described...
Prototype Feat die and final one compared
My map of Wilderland, after my daughter Anita
started using it as a pirate treasure map...
Someone might argue that I am not making a lot of money out of what I do (and I know some of those someones...!); especially since it seems I reinvest a lot of that money into books and games that someone else designed! But wouldn't I do that anyway, as any self-respecting gamer out there? I think so.
So, no, I am not complaining, just thinking out loud. And it's very easy to feel comforted in my persuasion: all I need is to take a look around the studio here, and see all the prototypes of maps, and dice and counters I have lying around in heaps, or laid out on the table, and then look at the shelves where the final things sit, in all their production glory. Almost everyone I described my job to has commented what I do in the same way, even if with differing intentions: "You just never stopped playing games since you were a kid! Do you call that a job?" Well, yes, I do. But I do see what they mean... :)
