The study of a Schoon
You can accomplish anything you don’t mind someone else taking credit for.
Many pleasant salutations to you and yours. My name is Michael Schoonmaker, and this is my little corner of the massive structure we call the Internet. I’ve been known to respond to many names; from Mike and Michael to Schoony and Schooner, Schoonology to Schoonboggle, Snoopdoggle to Schoonnomen, but please — just call me Schoon.
Now, if you must know…
Insofar as I consider someone who values the construction, evaluation, and dissemination of ideas as an activity an intellectual; I consider myself an intellectual.
Insofar as a technically-minded, just-creative-enough individual who invests his days in improving the experience of other people can be considered a UI engineer (and then some); I consider myself a UI engineer (and then some).
Oh yeah, and I climb rocks for kicks.
Cheers,
Credits are a complicated beast. They can be a good indicator of someone’s skill at their job, but they definitely produce false positives. We as an industry need to acknowledge that. And what about missing credits, or those unavailable online? Here’s my “Developer” page on MobyGames. Even at 24, I have more credits than just Indianapolis 500 Legends. Or the fact that the MetaCritic “Details” page for Fullmetal Alchemist: Trading Card Game contains incomplete credits, excluding the QA team entirely!
Even though you won’t find all these credits online, I have witnesses / references for each. So, take this as my:
Finally, cancelled titles. Developers put months and years of their life into the development of amazing and even revolutionary titles that never “see the light of day”. We have no way of officially tracking this effort and expertise. That’s a factor of relying so heavily on credits as a form of measuring experience, and a shame. While I was only there for a few months, I did some great work on the 360 and PS3 versions of Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings, and other engineers built up some game-changingly-incredible technology on that project. None of it is accounted for in the context of official game credits, since the game was cancelled due to poor project management. A shame, indeed.
Now, I’m working at a company with an amazing ethos, wonderful project management practices, and equally game-changingly-incredible stuff. I’m an engineer on the Copernicus MMO at 38 Studios, and I love my job. But what would happen if I left, even on the best of terms, before the game was finished? Three years on an in-development MMO is rare and outstanding experience, and I’d have no official credit to show for it. Not going to happen, as my work is too cool, but something I think we need to, as an industry, think about. Do it for the children.
This website is built on WordPress, and is completely dynamic. As an engineer by habit, I spent some time trying to clean up the output from this theme, and I think I did all right. (If you’re using IE, sigh with me a moment and click here to join in the fun.) However, I could never bring myself to actually use this site like a traditional blog. Instead, I kept going back to just using Pages like a CMS. Finally, I came to my senses and realized that’s all this needs to be: a dynamic site built on WordPress as a CMS. Apparently, I’m not the only one who thinks this is a good idea.
When it came to the site’s design, I wanted to retain the verticality of a “normal” blog design, while not making the site “feel” like it was built on a blogging platform. Now, it should be said that I’m not a professional web designer, and don’t plan on becoming one any time soon. Procedurally, then, I set about designing the site as I would solving any other problem — with the first step being framing the problem the right way. I decided the best way to frame it was with a set of requirements. A set of discrete, trackable goals, if you will:
Any seasoned designer will tell you three out of those four are key to any good design, but that seasoned designer should know that the thresholds I set to meet each of these is significantly more intense than the requirements for a “good design”. The first few concepts were rough and difficult; you’ll notice the goals allow for a lot of variation, and I wasn’t sure what I wanted. It took me several iterations, spanning an “8-bit grunge” concept, hand-drawn looks, and Art Deco styles. After lots of feedback from my wonderful wife, I finally tossed together the composition of vectored circles you see in the Page headers, and I got the “wow!” I was looking for. The rest, as they say, is history, almost literally falling into place around it.
I have to thank Soh Tanaka for his awesome project Design Bombs, which is a great design gallery resource I used to find inspirations early on, particularly Authentic Style, with its interstitial nav blocks inline with page headers. Brilliant.
My thoughts are completely my own. Regardless of my employer’s motto of "World Domination Through Gaming," my mind has so far escaped their domination. It could have something to do with the culture at 38, I’m not really sure. Either that, or the good old "Don’t touch that, you don’t know where it’s been" has been keeping them at bay. ;)
One way or another, consider this the standard disclaimer of: The thoughts and views expressed within this website and all websites under the schoonology.com domain are solely those of their author, Michael Schoonmaker. They do not necessarily reflect the view of his employer; 38 Studios, LLC; his family; his friends; or any artificially-intelligent creations thereof that may take over the world. So there.