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Shay Pierce's Blog
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Shay Pierce was a professional games PC and console games developer who worked for such companies as Midway Austin, Blizzard Entertainment, and Sony Online Entertainment during his seven years experience in that industry. In 2010 he chose to leverage his knowledge of Flash programming while simultaneously learning iOS programming, in order to make the jump into the exciting new spaces of mobile and social games. Shay worked as a independent contractor for such companies as NewToy, Inc. (now "Zynga With Friends") and Whole Foods. He currently holds the role of Lead Game Developer at OMGPOP, Inc.'s Austin studio, developing social games.
Shay also works on his own indie game projects as a designer/programmer; his indie micro-studio is Deep Plaid Games, and he blogs about game design thoughts at http://DeepPlaid.com/ as well as on Gamasutra.
Shay resides in the world's capital for cool geeks, Austin, TX. Shay enjoys long runs on the beach in the moonlight; long transmogrifying sessions in the moonlight; and attacking unsuspecting teenagers taking shortcuts through the woods in the moonlight. His dislikes include pitchfork-wielding villagers and silver. |
Expert Blogs
All Games Are About Choices  |
| Posted by Shay Pierce on Sun, 25 Sep 2011 05:00:00 EDT in
Game Design,
Console/PC,
Serious,
Indie,
Social/Online,
Smartphone/Tablet
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| A reply to Chris DeLeon's post "Not All Games Are About Choices"; I touch on my "Unified Theory" of fun gameplay as I take Sid Meier's "Interesting Decisions" definition and relate it to all gameplay genres - including ones that may surprise you! |
| Read More... | 25 Comments |
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Why Connectrode costs $.99 (...and why it shouldn't have to) |
| Posted by Shay Pierce on Wed, 06 Jul 2011 08:23:00 EDT in
Business,
Smartphone/Tablet
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| We're not just eroding prices, we're eroding the public perception of the value of what we do. |
| Read More... | 16 Comments |
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Towards a Rule-Based Game Engine |
| Posted by Shay Pierce on Tue, 21 Jun 2011 02:52:00 EDT in
Game Design,
Programming,
Console/PC,
Serious,
Indie,
Social/Online,
Smartphone/Tablet
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| Half-baked ideas on a topic I'm a bit obsessed with: creating a game engine that accurately models Rules and their fundamental role in gameplay... possibly creating a workflow in which Designers could implement games without the need for programmers. |
| Read More... | 16 Comments |
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FlxTweaks, and Rapid Iteration in Your Gameplay AND Workday |
| Posted by Shay Pierce on Mon, 06 Dec 2010 10:35:00 EST in
Game Design
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| I just added a new feature to the Flixel engine allowing for rapid iteration of game "tweaks." I thought I'd use this as a chance to talk about the importance of rapid iteration in game development workflow AND within your gameplay experience! |
| Read More... | 2 Comments |
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Games Can Create Empathy... So Why Don't They? |
| Posted by Shay Pierce on Sat, 03 Jul 2010 10:01:00 EDT in
Game Design
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| Yes, it's inspired by Roger Ebert's latest rant. But he had one good point, which I'd like to elaborate on: can games be used to create empathy? |
| Read More... | 28 Comments |
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In Defense of Major Setbacks |
| Posted by Shay Pierce on Tue, 01 Jun 2010 01:44:00 EDT in
Game Design
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| "...Bizarrely enough, we humans would PAY these machines to crush us: we would insert coin after coin into the machine, and - in a dramatic proof of humanity's masochism - the more the machine punished us, the more we would feed it coins!" |
| Read More... | 6 Comments |
[More Shay Pierce Blogs]
Shay Pierce's Comments
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Comment In: Opinion: An indie marketing story [News - 02/01/2012 - 06:06]
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This was pretty much my ... This was pretty much my experience with developing a small iOS title. I did always feel that if I was more of a forceful promoter-type personality, and had more time and energy for it, I could probably have gotten more traction in the Twitters and the Facebooks. But that was ... |
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Comment In: What the Copycat Saw: Creative Theft in Mobile and Social Games [Feature - 01/05/2012 - 04:30]
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But the first big no-no ... But the first big no-no in my book is to copy a game or take a big degree of influence from a game that's currently available on a platform that you're going to deliver to. That's what's hurtful to the industry. It seems like an even bigger problem is when ... |
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Comment In: Fresh Perspectives- A Google talk on Natural Language Processing [Blog - 01/04/2012 - 12:58]
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Really interesting read. Somehow I ... Really interesting read. Somehow I do find it disappointing that, as you say, we're still so far from the computer actually being able to understand the meaning of a sentence. Of course what that statement about meaning even means is hard to define but one can imagine a comprehensive internal ... |
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Comment In: Microsoft eases restrictions on XBLIG development [News - 01/04/2012 - 05:28]
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Now will they make it ... Now will they make it possible to actually find good games Or even just the game you're specifically looking for |
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Comment In: Opinion: ESA and SOPA - between a rock and a hard place [News - 01/04/2012 - 08:15]
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I just love that Anonymous ... I just love that Anonymous exists and can give us quotes like that one. Makes me feel like I'm living in a William Gibson novel. |
[More Shay Pierce Comments]
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