This weeks Developer Diary comes from the newest member of the PoxNora team. You might recognize him as a player, but his experience goes far beyond that as you’ll see below. Today you’ll get to meet the man behind the CorpsE and hear about just what he’s working on for the game.

How I Started Working in the Gaming Industry:

I was playing an Real Time Strategy game called Battle Realms hardcore. I played a lot. I posted on the game forums in a constructive manner, never flamed anyone, and always tried to help out. I was also one of the top players in the game. One day out of the blue the game producer contacted me and asked if I was interested in a job as a game designer for the upcoming expansion. So I left my tiny hometown of Galion, Ohio and booked it out to L.A.

Games I’ve Worked On:

POXNORA!

Company of Heroes: Tales of Valor (2009), THQ Inc.
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II (2009), THQ Inc.
Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts (2007), THQ Inc.
Company of Heroes (2006), THQ Inc.
Company of Heroes (Collector’s Edition) (2006), THQ Inc.
Dungeons & Dragons: Dragonshard (2005), Atari, Inc.
The Lord of the Rings: War of the Ring (2003), Sierra Entertainment, Inc.
Battle Realms: Winter of the Wolf (2002), Crave Entertainment, Inc.

What My Role is at Sony Online Entertainment Tucson:

Most of my role here at SOE Tucson is heading up the design and balance for future expansions of PoxNora.

How I Design:

This is a hard one but I feel it’s worth talking about so the community understands the direction PoxNora is headed. I am not a fan of nerfs. I loathe them and believe they are a last resort to something that cannot be fixed any other way. I would rather introduce counters to runes that are considered a problem. A good example of this was the ‘Predator’ ability we put on Doombringers. Harbingers have long been a sore spot with the PoxNora community so instead of nerfing the rune directly, we introduced a strong counter to them. This makes sense from both a business perspective and it also gives the players the capacity to make the choice to upgrade that ability. PoxNora will most likely continue in this direction since it helps grow the game and gives you the player choices.

My Hobbies
I love cigars, Scotch, baseball, my Jeep, working out, PoxNora and my sweet, sweet Dachshund, Rose.

Discuss this on PoxNora Forums

CorpsE Senior Game Designer

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 6th, 2009 at 11:42 am and is filed under PoxNora Ramblings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.