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TOM FRANCIS
REGRETS THIS ALREADY

Hello! I'm Tom. I'm a game designer, writer, and programmer on Gunpoint, Heat Signature, and Tactical Breach Wizards. Here's some more info on all the games I've worked on, here are the videos I make on YouTube, and here are two short stories I wrote for the Machine of Death collections.

Theme

By me. Uses Adaptive Images by Matt Wilcox.

Tom’s Timer 5

The Bone Queen And The Frost Bishop: Playtesting Scavenger Chess In Plasticine

Gridcannon: A Single Player Game With Regular Playing Cards

Dad And The Egg Controller

A Leftfield Solution To An XCOM Disaster

Rewarding Creative Play Styles In Hitman

Postcards From Far Cry Primal

Solving XCOM’s Snowball Problem

Kill Zone And Bladestorm

An Idea For More Flexible Indie Game Awards

What Works And Why: Multiple Routes In Deus Ex

Naming Drugs Honestly In Big Pharma

Writing vs Programming

Let Me Show You How To Make A Game

What Works And Why: Nonlinear Storytelling In Her Story

What Works And Why: Invisible Inc

Our Super Game Jam Episode Is Out

What Works And Why: Sauron’s Army

Showing Heat Signature At Fantastic Arcade And EGX

What I’m Working On And What I’ve Done

The Formula For An Episode Of Murder, She Wrote

Improving Heat Signature’s Randomly Generated Ships, Inside And Out

Raising An Army Of Flying Dogs In The Magic Circle

Floating Point Is Out! And Free! On Steam! Watch A Trailer!

Drawing With Gravity In Floating Point

What’s Your Fault?

The Randomised Tactical Elegance Of Hoplite

Here I Am Being Interviewed By Steve Gaynor For Tone Control

A Story Of Heroism In Alien Swarm

One Desperate Battle In FTL

To Hell And Back In Spelunky

Gunpoint Development Breakdown

My Short Story For The Second Machine Of Death Collection

Not Being An Asshole In An Argument

Playing Skyrim With Nothing But Illusion

How Mainstream Games Butchered Themselves, And Why It’s My Fault

A Short Script For An Animated 60s Heist Movie

Arguing On The Internet

Shopstorm, A Spelunky Story

Why Are Stealth Games Cool?

The Suspicious Developments manifesto

GDC Talk: How To Explain Your Game To An Asshole

Listening To Your Sound Effects For Gunpoint

Understanding Your Brain

What Makes Games Good

A Story Of Plane Seats And Class

Deckard: Blade Runner, Moron

Avoiding Suspicion At The US Embassy

An Idea For A Better Open World Game

A Different Way To Level Up

A Different Idea For Ending BioShock

My Script For A Team Fortress 2 Short About The Spy

Team Fortress 2 Unlockable Weapon Ideas

Don’t Make Me Play Football Manager

EVE’s Assassins And The Kill That Shocked A Galaxy

My Galactic Civilizations 2 War Diary

I Played Through Episode Two Holding A Goddamn Gnome

My Short Story For The Machine Of Death Collection

Blood Money And Sex

A Woman’s Life In Search Queries

First Night, Second Life

SWAT 4: The Movie Script

The Podcast Of My Machine Of Death Story Is Out

The stories from the Machine of Death collection are being gradually released as a free podcast, a sort of episodic audiobook. Mine just came out, read rather excellently by Christopher Joseph. Warning! Strong language from the first word.

[audio:http://machineofdeath.net/audio/mod_exploded.mp3]

Not totally sure why I don’t get a mention, I think that might be an oversight. The site makes it clear enough who wrote it so it’s no big deal.

One of many reasons I declined to read my own story was that my narrator is American and I am not, so it’s great to hear it in its pseudo-native tongue. The flipside, of course, is that I’m not perfect at expressing the exact tone of voice characters are using, so inevitably there are parts that aren’t as I’d imagined them. I don’t mind that at all – my narrator is intentionally not me in some important ways, so it’s kind of nice to hear him say things the way I wouldn’t.

It also makes me realise how much clearer I need to be about who’s speaking. Chris always gets it right, but without doing some kind of comedy accent for one of the characters, that’s not enough for the listener to always know. I think I’m meant to write scripts rather than prose, I don’t really care how non-dialogue information is communicated so long as it’s clear.

Here’s the direct MP3 link if you want to download it, or the RSS link to subscribe.

The book is now $12 from Amazon.com or £11 from Amazon.co.uk. You can also get it as an iBook for $5.99 or on the Kindle for £7.29.

The whole thing is also free in PDF form, and the text of my story for it is online here.

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