Ch-ch-ch-ch changes

So, I haven't updated this thing in forever. This is because, over the course of the last two years I have:

• left my job at Obsidian, who I still love dearly and am super happy for!
• began working as a Quest Designer at Blizzard Entertainment on WoW! Holy smokes.
• And then transferred over to making raids and dungeons on the Encounter Design team.

So I've been busy! Also learning a lot, so it felt kind of odd to write stuff up here when I felt like I still needed to internalize the stuff I was learning at Blizzard.

Here's some quick lessons from my first two years at Blizzard:

• Making stuff is fun. Being a lead can be fun, and can be very rewarding, but there's really nothing better than starting, implementing, polishing and finishing something.
• If I do lead work again, I'd want to retain the ability to actually make shit.
• One of the most impressive things about Blizzard design, coming from somewhere else, was seeing how thoroughly the design philosophy and aesthetics are communicated throughout the company, and how internalized they are on the teams as a result. This really feels like something all game companies could learn from.
• Polish at Blizzard means polish, not just fixing bugs. 
• Polish means taking time to ask yourself if you're doing something the right way.
• Polish means taking the huge amount of time to push something the last 20%.
• Polish means talking to other people on the team to get them psyched about what they can make for you! Seriously, you get awesome shit when you do that!
• There is literally no anxiety as a designer quite like the first time testing your first boss on PTR.
• There's no funnier moment of humility than having this happen when you do.
• Raid fights, as complex as they seem from the outside, are way more complex from the inside.
• The WoW team seriously kicks ass and I'm so happy to be a part of it.

More to come soon, I hope!