Keeping a personal blog is hard work that often lack rewards. But it is also very important, especially when you experience as many adventures as I do. Even though for years I’ve menaced myself and the world that I’ll be verbose in this Internetsy sea of information, I never did it, or if I did, I was never constant. Looking back, I realize I should have made the effort of writing a blog, because memories are a precious thing that require work to store and treasure. And because, perhaps somewhere out there, there’s this one soul who might use whatever I have to share.

So this time, I’ll start with the beginning. Hi, my name is Laura and I am a very complex person, just like you. Professionally, I make games, and my job is called a producer, even though the naming varies from studio to studio. I don’t believe in job titles. I see my job metaphorically as a thin white thread I use to tie everybody in the team in, to connect them and to work together towards a common, noble goal, which is making a product of value. This product happens to be games, which surrounded me ever since I grew up, and out of which I generally expect a lot. Before actually making games, I expressed my love for this field by writing, and I earned my living making software. My philosophy was the same back then as it is now: make something of value. Make something you know your users will find useful and/ or enjoy – preferably both

Currently, I make games in Milan, Italy. Before that, I made games in Bucharest Romania, and soon I’ll move my shop in Lidköping, Sweden. I am professionally involved in the video game making industry since 2009. I write about video games since around 2000. I game since my father first got me a HC (the Romanian substitute for a Spectrum). I do not consider myself a gamer, not in the sense this word has been used for the past 10 years, because I am very picky and I played and finished very few notable games. However, I do have frequent periods when I game daily, to the detriment of other stuff I should do.

I am a book and Internet worm and I am extremely interested and excited in many new emerging fields of study, such usability design (which I also do professionally in a freelance manner), gamification, complex design topics all aimed to discover and define the essence of fun, psychology and science of happiness, and the list goes on. I like TED a lot and I participate in the open translation project. I read Gamasutra almost daily and hold a big wish to blog there as well. I read a lot of game-related stuff and I plan to share every single bit of interesting information I find with you. I exclusively read SciFi and Fantasy literature and almost exclusively watch movies and shows of the same genre. I am reading the 5th book from the Wheel of Time series, and as soon as I finish that book, I’ll start my nice copy of A Dance With Dragons from R. R. Martin’s series A Song of Fire and Ice. The most memorable books I read in the last year or so were the Heorot books, the Coldfire Trilogy, the Vlad Taltos series, just to name a few. I am eager for any new EUREKA show, I watched the Babylon 5 series several times, I loved Defying Gravity, Firefly, Battlestar Galactica, again, just to name a few. I watch The Guild and read many game related web comics.  I played World of Warcraft for 6 years and now I am obsessing about Minecraft, even though my shiny new Portal 2 copy awaits me lonely on my Steam account. I love what I understand out of Indie games and philosophy. I am trying to make an indie game myself.

I’m married. I met my husband at 17 and I wake up almost every day finding myself more in love with my husband than I was yesterday. Almost, because sometimes I am just mad he accidentally blew up my newest, coolest Minecraft building or accidentally deleted my epic Morrowind character (true story). My husband and I share the same passions: we game, we digg SciFi and fantasy, we read lots of stuff that most consider pretty geeky, we currently travel the world together and make games. In all those years, we’ve literally been together almost all the time. We write together, begun our video game makers careers together, crunched together and commuted together in Italy. In about a month, we’ll pack our bags together, get our cat Tase and move to Sweden. Hopefully to make games together there too.

With this blog, I want to share whatever I learn throughout my career and life, and since I am so passionate about game making, I intent to make most of it about games. But I want to also write about life in Romania, Italy, Sweden, and wherever I may travel, to describe what I’ve been through so others don’t have to (or have to, if the story is positive ), to shed some light on this life of adventure, at least compared to the lives of those I know. I want to help myself remember my feelings and lessons. I wish that, in the process, I’ll manage to help someone else as well, but this is just a trial for me and an offer and should be perceived as such.