Who are you, and what do you do?
My name is Nina Freeman. I'm a level designer at Fullbright, working on Tacoma. I also work on games on my own time, including the recently released Cibele. Cibele is a game based on a true story about a young woman and a young man who meet up to have sex after forming a relationship in an online game. I'm interested in making video games that are focused on concise stories with complex and honest characters. I want these games to support player-character embodiment and performance, because I strive to help players come away from the games I work on with a sense that they were able to perform as a character, or at least better understand their experience in an intimate way.
What hardware do you use?
I have a home PC, a work PC and a MacBook Air. At Fullbright, I work in Unity on PC at a nifty standing desk. That PC has two monitors, and I have one of them positioned vertically. I do most of my scripting on the vertical monitor and other Unity stuff on the horizontal one.
My home PC is getting pretty old, as it was built for me by some friends when I was in college in 2010-ish. They made it from scratch with nice parts we bought on NewEgg. I use it primarily to make Windows builds and for playtesting my personal work. I also sometimes work on Tacoma from home using my home PC. However, for some reason I bought a black keyboard with black letters so... sometimes it can be hard to type, haha. It was probably not the best choice, but otherwise the setup works fine.
For my personal work, I usually work on my MacBook Air. My MacBook Air is my pride and joy, as I have slowly completely covered it in cute stickers. There's also an old, holographic Pikachu sticker I found in my parents attic gracing the front of it, as a centerpiece. I also almost always work with a mug in my hand. For personal work, I often work out of cafes, so I drink a lot of chai lattes out of cute mugs at a local shop!
Oh yeah, and I always have a lot of plushies on my desks, both at home and at work. Being surrounded by plushies while working all day is definitely a good thing!
And what software?
Unity has been my main game making platform this year. Before Unity, I primarily worked in ActionScript 3 using the Flixel library and Adobe Air. I sometimes use Adobe Photoshop to make temp graphics or in-game text. For these Flash games, the text editor I use is Sublime Text 2. I have also dabbled in Audacity in order to make simple sound effects and record scratch dialogue.
Outside of Flash and Unity, I have dabbled in Twine and Ruby/Rails.
What would be your dream setup?
My dream set up would be a new MacBook Pro and a new custom built PC. It's always been pretty important for me to develop and test simultaneously on both platforms, so being up to date with the hardware is important. I also think, perhaps even more important than the hardware, is the desk and chair. I don't have a very comfortable place to sit and work at home, and I find myself getting sore a lot. Whereas, at the Fullbright office, my setup is very comfortable. As someone who makes games all day every day, having a comfortable place to do it is really important. So, some kind of comfy desk and chair situation with new Mac and PC hardware would be my dream setup.