Who are you, and what do you do?
I'm Mario von Rickenbach, a digital generalist, game designer, and developer. I often work on games in small teams and create other playful interactive things, often in the context of Playables, a small games studio I co-founded. I worked on games like KIDS and Plug & Play and toys like Coin or Keys. Most of the game projects I have been involved in are made in very small teams. I have also helped others turn their vision into a finished game, like My Exercise and TET. Next to some exploratory projects, I also do client work, often for projects that use digital elements in a physical space. In these projects, I do things like embedded engineering for robotics, interactive installation development (often web-based), sound editing, and art direction. Since I'm not an expert in any field, I'm more interested in consistency than virtuosity.
What hardware do you use?
I use a MacBook Pro 2021 M1 Max and if I'm at my studio I'm attaching a recently purchased LG UltraWide 40WP95CP-W to it. I was hesitant to buy such a wide and curved screen and I found it quite ridiculous when I first saw it. But after using it for a while now, I really like to have enough space when working with software with many tabs, like Unity. For input, I use an old A1243 Apple Keyboard and a Magic Mouse 2 that I love and hate. I tried many mice, but nothing comes close to the scrolling behavior of the Magic Mouse. The cable placement makes me hate it every time I have to charge it. As headphones, I use my good old AKG K550 if it's not too hot (I don't like sweaty ears), or my AirPods Pros (1st gen). As a secondary computer to run other OSes, I use a Zotac ER51070, which I bought from MuDA when they had to close. I start it about once every two months or so – if I really need to. For sketching, I use my good old iPad Pro 2017 (10.5") and an Apple Pencil (1st gen). My phone is an iPhone 13 mini. On the shelves nearby there are boxes with Raspberry Pis, ESP32s, Arduinos, Jetsons, and custom game controllers I built.
All this is happening on a nice, self-sanded, Lineseed-oiled beech table top mounted on a no-name height-adjustable frame, which I both really like. Other than a small plant, a glass of water, and a (probably empty) espresso cup, I try to have nothing on my table. My chair is a Vitra ID Mesh, which I got at an office liquidation nearby almost for free. It's really great.
And what software?
Difficult topic. The boring basics are Apple Mail, Calendar, and Terminal. I really liked sketching in Apple Notes on my iPad. But since they broke the functionality, where you could just drag and drop a sketch as a PNG to your desktop a few versions of macOS ago, it's much less fun. For collaboration, I use Google Docs and Sheets and whatever other people want to use. Firefox is my main browser. I don't leave any tabs open when I stop using my computer. A closed tab is a good tab. Not closing a tab is like breathing in without breathing out.
Other software I like or don't hate:
- Git GUI: Tower (really good.)
- Code: Rider, WebStorm, VSCode, Sublime Text 3
- Design: penpot
- 3D: Blender
- Video Editing: DaVinci Resolve (free)
- Audio Editing: Audacity, Logic
- Organized Notes: Craft for live docs, Markdown files for archiving
- Utilities: MediaInfo, Angry IP Scanner
- Screen Recording: Screenflick
Software I would like to replace, but all the alternatives are also not really good enough from my point of view:
There's also one self-made tool that is worth mentioning: When working on creative projects, I like to document the process to have a visual overview of older versions of a thing. It's usually just images or videos, but it could occasionally be a web-based prototype or some other file. With this tool, I just drop some files in a folder at the end of the day, add the date with some basic info as the filename, and rsync it to my web server. There, a PHP script (yes, PHP still has the best small-scale web workflow that ever existed) generates a nice little website that makes it possible to go through the process archive. The result looks a bit similar to what we did for the KIDS Process documentation.
What would be your dream setup?
Except that I would like to replace some of the software mentioned, I can't think of anything that would substantially improve my work setup. Maybe there's some room for improvement on my way to the studio – I could use definitely use a better bicycle that doesn't fall apart every now and then.