Portfolio of Peder Sloth Züricho

Peder Sloth Züricho

Cand.Stud.Scient. Medialogy - Specialization in games

26 years old Master Student at Aalborg University, I have made games since i was little. In aprrox. 2008 i started modding for Warcraft3, And in 2013 I was accpeted to be a participant at UNF - Game Development Camp 2013, Link. I was to be accepted in 2014, but camp was cancelled, as well as accepted again in 2015, In 2016 and 2019 - 2020 i have been an organizer of the camp. And my passion has only grown since. As a kid I spend a lot of time, watching my brother plat on his Nintendo64, mostly when it got too hard for me to play. Even before then in the 90's i spend time on my GrandParrents Windows 3.1 and Commodore computers playing painting games. As my parrents had different workstations growing up ive tried, DOS games like Digger, Privateer, and Commander Keen 4, I played the latter one a lot. GameBoys were a big part of my childhood, but so was my dad's Compaq Pentium2 Windows 98 Computer, as well as his later WindowsXP Pentium3 driven, my moms laptop with Windows95, which gradually kept my appetite for videogames high, I learned PortForwarding for the purpose of Warcraft3, Played countless hours in the play club's Console room, and later computer room, at home i spend my time with either Runescape, Gratis Spil.dk, DanishRadio's HundeParken with a phone on constant dial to my friend's, or alone with my favourite game of all time: Hype ~ The Time Quest. In 2012 i was fortunate enough to get primaryschool internship IO-Interactive. I often took the old computers apart, and had profound interest of the technology, which lead me to my choice of study being Medialogy over Data Science. I love the polytechnical work, which medialogy offers, but my passion still lies with the twist of computer game development.

My Speciality - Core Game Designer


What is a Game Designer really?

When people ask what my dream job is, I often say Game Designer somewhere I have impact for the better. At first much to my surprise, peoples' understanding of the words Game Designer is confusing and even for many people synonymous with game developer. Though I do not see it as such. Its not what I mean. For many designer is asociated with the artistical profession, which is also not what i mean. Truly a designer is someone who makes the decisions both out of preference and feeling, but very much so also the compromises and knowledge based choices that has to be made, in order to reach a certain level of quality. A Game Designer in my opinion is someone who like a user experience designer, designs the experience, but from a gameplay point of view, this includes understanding the things that work well, and things that doesn't work at all. It means communicating and being the bridge between the programmer who wants a solid system integration, with the animator who wants nice animation, the modellist who wants good looking models, but who is so specialised in what they do well, there is no fundamental understanding from the director to the gameplay's manifestation from programming to art. This overview of things and comprehension of the issues from point a to point b, provide a game, which when it reaches Quality Assurance needs to sit well with the feedback. To understand this feedback and understand the scope of the project, and ultimately understand what can be reached with the given budget and time available. The Game Designer's most crucial job is to make sure the Design of the Game, from gameplay to aesthetics gets prioritised best, with the co-workers' assesment in the itterative environment, this makes the Game Designer's ability to communicate with the development team crucial. The Game Designer thus design the game. And the role is not to be confused with the bossy idea possed dictator. But Rather a very team oriented middle-part who makes sure the hard compromises are also the right compromises. At its core understanding what changes should change the perception of the game past QA, what makes the game fun, frustrating etc. is the fundamental key to make these choices. What happens to the gamefeel if you change X, and what happens if you change Y, where X is related to programming, Y is related to Animation etc.


Mistakes and learnings


The Perspective of a Medialogist