That was someone else's cake (I think it was a "Welcome to Beamdog, Ben" thing, but I could be wrong). I got railroaded into cutting it and wanted to make sure that never happened again, but I think if anything I pretty much cemented my role as Beamdog Cake Massacre Artist for the rest of eternity.
@AndrewFoley - Don't feel so bad about it. My now Ex-wife when she was cutting our wedding cake, made the thing implode. I swear we were looking for some form of explosive in the wreckage afterwards.
@AndrewFoley - Don't feel so bad about it. My now Ex-wife when she was cutting our wedding cake, made the thing implode. I swear we were looking for some form of explosive in the wreckage afterwards.
My wedding cake bled when my wife and I cut it (seriously. We also had the shower attack music from Psycho playing when we did it.)
we cook. we don't bake. cooking is art and baking is chemistry. baking sucks. nevertheless, am recalling a 4-layer chocolate cake we made in the recent past. heck, we even frosted the whole thing, which is more difficult than it sounds as our left hand is partial paralyzed. anywho, we make this beautiful cake and everybody is enjoying, save the one person with (we suspect) debilitating ocd.
"it looks like a crazy person cut it."
in our humble opinion, complaints 'bout cake-cutting skills is more a condemnation o' the critic than they is o' the yutz with questionable knife skills.
written to performance demands that encouraged every clever trick in the book
... I recently found a function that multiplied the contents of two empty variables into a third, then assigned values to the first two variables, then continued to never use any of them ... but I may be off topic
LMAO. Was the function expected to do that at least?
Unless David Gaider was hired because he is an excellent cake-cutter, this topic has veered seriously off-topic, just saying.
Well he *is* the Creative Director, no? And it is not only an art to bake cake, but also to cut it. I am sure @David_Gaider was hired to create new, creative ways to cut it u_u
Nah, they're just both going to be at GX, and I know @liamesler likes to bring people together. There's a lot of writers going, those were just the two whose Twitter handles I could remember.
Here're some details previosly uncovered (about David Gaider joining Beamdog):
"I ran into Trent Oster at my gym, actually," David Gaider explains. Beamdog had recently posted a job listing for a new senior writer, presumably as part of a push toward more original content like the Dragonspear expansion. "We just sort of chatted about it... At first I didn't take it that seriously, you know, I thought 'oh, this is interesting' [but] 'is this something where I would be overqualified?"
"It's kind of a big step -- moving up to that level over a team of 150 [at BioWare] would be pretty daunting, so this is a little more within my reach, perhaps," says Gaider. "It's kind of exciting, going to a small startup company. Shake off some of the dust."
Players might naturally be wondering where Gaider expects to go with his new and improved (you could say enhanced) role. I asked him directly if this meant he was returning to the Baldur's Gate franchise.
"I can't really talk about that until it's announced," Gaider tells me, as I expected him to. "It's not guaranteed to be Baldur's Gate."
But would Gaider like to return to the series?
"Absolutely!" he says, his voice perking up. "I've always loved Dungeons & Dragons. And I think I've been away from it long enough that the sort of ennui that I had built up is gone and new things are rolling around in my head... Who wouldn't want to take on the challenge of being in charge of the next version of that?"
With Gaider now at Beamdog it makes me wonder if more Baldur's Gate would mean a new entry in the series or a starting over with a full on remake with modern gameplay and graphics?
They are working on BG3, using traditional style graphics with a new/rebuilt engine (probably similar to PoE) and 5th edition rules. It will, potentially, be the first episode in a second Baldur's Gate trilogy. It will be set around 100 years later, and will deal with the return of Bhaal and the decendents of the Bhaalspawn (plural).
I think they said in the stream that Adventure Z was cancelled and future project is not set. Though, writers are probably thinking about the concept of the next game and in what direction should sail.
@brus The Adventure Z was cancelled, but it was never about the Forgotten Realms or D&D in general. The idea was to push into Free To Play, but a few months back it became clear that space was already pretty full and the decision was made to focus on the Beamdog's core strengths, which is RPGs.
But the fact they've been actively hiring new people after the WotC meeting, and, as Andrew Foley and Amber Scott have both said in tweets, they've found out the long-term plans at the end of 2015, leads me to a clear understanding the future project has already begun. Maybe they don't know the name and all the details, but the direction is known to them (and one of its traits is the 5E). I think they spoke with the WotC about it in the end of 2015.
I'm sure they know exactly what they are working on, and are hireing acordingly. But experience from the SoD forum tells them that some people don't cope very well with the idea that an anounced project may still be years away from release, so we are unlikely to have an official anouncement this side of 2018.
Alberta Venture: How did you make the leap from hotel manager to game writer? David Gaider: I didn’t even know there was a video game company in Edmonton, but a friend worked there. The company had just started Baldur’s Gate II and had a lot of writing to do. I had run some live-action role-playing games and written a fairly complicated rule book. My friend showed BioWare my rule book and out of the blue I got a call. I was leery because the BioWare office on Whyte Avenue looked like a fly-by-night operation. I turned down the offer because I ran a hotel and their offer was for less money. But that weekend my boss called to say the management company I worked for had been bought out and I was laid off. So the timing was perfect.
AV: So why leave BioWare? DG: It wasn’t because they were mistreating me. They were awesome and have always been really good to me. But I spent 17 years in the place and I needed to try something different. I’m 45 years old and if I don’t try something now I probably never will.
One day I ran into Trent Oster, one of the founders of Beamdog, at the gym. We started chatting and the idea came up of having a creative director position which would give me a little more say over what I’m working on. I was lead writer on the projects at BioWare, but had a lead designer and creative director over me. This means I have a little more input on what I’m working on.
AV: And what are you going to be doing? DG: I know, but can’t talk about it because it’s not announced yet.
AV: Edmonton has a small but elite ecosystem of game developers. Where does the talent come from? DG: A lot of different places. You do need specific education for some of the disciplines, like art or programming. But like a lot of professions, if you can show that you have the skills, then great, although I don’t think anyone would get a job as a writer the way I got a job as a writer.
AV: Is there room for the industry to expand in Alberta? We’re always looking to diversify. DG: Yes. Look at Montreal. It’s Canada’s largest hub for game development right now and that’s mostly because the Quebec government has incentives for game companies to move there. Montreal has turned into this super hub, and once you have enough people in a city, you’ll get spinoffs. That’s how Beamdog got started.
AV: What’s it like to go from a developer with more than 300 employees to one with fewer than 30? DG: Being at a smaller company is really interesting. You get used to things being a certain way in a big corporation and there are so many layers of bureaucracy. Now, in a small company, if something needs to be done, you just do it. It’s like shaking off the dust. It’s exciting times for me.
He's actually sitting in Amber's workspace in that photo. It'd be near impossible to get a shot like that in his space; his desk is set up so his back's to the wall.
Comments
That cake had it coming. It knows what it did.
"it looks like a crazy person cut it."
in our humble opinion, complaints 'bout cake-cutting skills is more a condemnation o' the critic than they is o' the yutz with questionable knife skills.
HA! Good Fun!
I am sure @David_Gaider was hired to create new, creative ways to cut it u_u
I wonder, if that is a hint by Dee? ...being in the same room... like it could be the case in Edmonton, right?
"I ran into Trent Oster at my gym, actually," David Gaider explains. Beamdog had recently posted a job listing for a new senior writer, presumably as part of a push toward more original content like the Dragonspear expansion. "We just sort of chatted about it... At first I didn't take it that seriously, you know, I thought 'oh, this is interesting' [but] 'is this something where I would be overqualified?"
"It's kind of a big step -- moving up to that level over a team of 150 [at BioWare] would be pretty daunting, so this is a little more within my reach, perhaps," says Gaider. "It's kind of exciting, going to a small startup company. Shake off some of the dust."
Players might naturally be wondering where Gaider expects to go with his new and improved (you could say enhanced) role. I asked him directly if this meant he was returning to the Baldur's Gate franchise.
"I can't really talk about that until it's announced," Gaider tells me, as I expected him to. "It's not guaranteed to be Baldur's Gate."
But would Gaider like to return to the series?
"Absolutely!" he says, his voice perking up. "I've always loved Dungeons & Dragons. And I think I've been away from it long enough that the sort of ennui that I had built up is gone and new things are rolling around in my head... Who wouldn't want to take on the challenge of being in charge of the next version of that?"
http://www.zam.com/story.html?story=36653
Though, writers are probably thinking about the concept of the next game and in what direction should sail.
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/655153/#Comment_655153
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/655165/#Comment_655165
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/655235/#Comment_655235
But the fact they've been actively hiring new people after the WotC meeting, and, as Andrew Foley and Amber Scott have both said in tweets, they've found out the long-term plans at the end of 2015, leads me to a clear understanding the future project has already begun. Maybe they don't know the name and all the details, but the direction is known to them (and one of its traits is the 5E). I think they spoke with the WotC about it in the end of 2015.
We all now can look at the working place
Alberta Venture: How did you make the leap from hotel manager to game writer?
David Gaider: I didn’t even know there was a video game company in Edmonton, but a friend worked there. The company had just started Baldur’s Gate II and had a lot of writing to do. I had run some live-action role-playing games and written a fairly complicated rule book. My friend showed BioWare my rule book and out of the blue I got a call. I was leery because the BioWare office on Whyte Avenue looked like a fly-by-night operation. I turned down the offer because I ran a hotel and their offer was for less money. But that weekend my boss called to say the management company I worked for had been bought out and I was laid off. So the timing was perfect.
AV: So why leave BioWare?
DG: It wasn’t because they were mistreating me. They were awesome and have always been really good to me. But I spent 17 years in the place and I needed to try something different. I’m 45 years old and if I don’t try something now I probably never will.
One day I ran into Trent Oster, one of the founders of Beamdog, at the gym. We started chatting and the idea came up of having a creative director position which would give me a little more say over what I’m working on. I was lead writer on the projects at BioWare, but had a lead designer and creative director over me. This means I have a little more input on what I’m working on.
AV: And what are you going to be doing?
DG: I know, but can’t talk about it because it’s not announced yet.
AV: Edmonton has a small but elite ecosystem of game developers. Where does the talent come from?
DG: A lot of different places. You do need specific education for some of the disciplines, like art or programming. But like a lot of professions, if you can show that you have the skills, then great, although I don’t think anyone would get a job as a writer the way I got a job as a writer.
AV: Is there room for the industry to expand in Alberta? We’re always looking to diversify.
DG: Yes. Look at Montreal. It’s Canada’s largest hub for game development right now and that’s mostly because the Quebec government has incentives for game companies to move there. Montreal has turned into this super hub, and once you have enough people in a city, you’ll get spinoffs. That’s how Beamdog got started.
AV: What’s it like to go from a developer with more than 300 employees to one with fewer than 30?
DG: Being at a smaller company is really interesting. You get used to things being a certain way in a big corporation and there are so many layers of bureaucracy. Now, in a small company, if something needs to be done, you just do it. It’s like shaking off the dust. It’s exciting times for me.
http://albertaventure.com/2016/05/celebrated-video-game-writer-david-gaider-left-bioware-joined-startup/