Often when people have asked what exactly I do I have replied that I play computer games for a living. I meant that metaphorically of course, playing actual computer games I’ve tended to avoid because of how insanely time usurping any good game easily becomes.

Well, yours truly has joined the team at Trafficonomy where my main focus is game augmentation, development and a fair bit of good old fashioned hacking. This is all just a little bit ironic. Anybody who has lectured graphic design students will know that the lion’s share of any class when asked what they want to do on completion of their studies will reply ‘get into gamming development’. My carefully measured response has always been something along the lines of: ‘… that’s very nice, but know that that gaming is a hard scene to get into, a relatively small industry in South Africa blha blha etc, etc…’

Well that is all true, but as someone who was originally trained for the high-stakes world of advertising, apart from all the obvious factors another aspect that appeals to me is that the gaming genre, especially online gaming, is one of the very few contexts in which advertising doesn’t bother me, morally nor in most cases aesthetically. In fact it is one of the few places where advertising actually makes sense. Maybe I’ll write more about that at some later point.

For now, I’ll place on the record that I started at the beginning of October and find the environment a fabulously dynamic and stimulating place. The people are great, diverse enough to be interesting and all seem dynamic and pretty damn intelligent. (Great thing about small head-count organizations is that there is simply no space for dead-wood.) We work in a close relationship with Forge Corporation (of which we are a subsidiary) and specifically OfferForge SA – which if you don’t know the scene is synonymous with state of the art affiliate marketing. (Enter the realm of advertising with accountability)

(Aside: great to be working for and with people who not only know what blogs are, but actually keep their own, e.g. Mark van Diggelen my boss, keeps Gamezboost, then there is also the Forge Affiliate Marketing Blog, and Revenews by Jonathan Miller.)

Practically what all of this means in my life is that I have bid farewell to lecturing and freelancing. (Will update my sites to reflect this a bit later.) I will miss some of what all that involved, the bonds with students and some of the more exciting aspects of by-the-seat-of-your-pants freelance-design – but the timing couldn’t be more perfect. My new schedule and it’s improved reliability and order means more reliable quality family time – and probably a bit more time and energy to invest in making art. (Yay!!!:-)

For a sneak peak of some of what I’m getting into have a sqwiz here. It’s the classic old Collapse-down game, but with a brand-new graphic treatment. You will also notice that our (I think pretty sleek) new preloader displays a banner served up from an advertising server. As soon as we’ve sorted out some language filtering issues it will also show my seriously hacked version of FlashChat – it, convinced to fit into a 220 x 450 pixel area with slightly modified functionality, allows socializing amongst gamers across the various games and sites that present them, in the same browser window while they play. (Weeee!)

The latest site to launch our gaming engine is IOL, check out IOLgames.co.za.

Who knows, I might just be able to find a bit of time for blogging again :-)

Later.

PS. There is space for a web-designer who knows their stuff on the Forge side of things.