Gregory Avery-Weir is an American
game designer
Game design is the art of applying design and aesthetics to create a game for entertainment or for educational, exercise, or experimental purposes. Increasingly, elements and principles of game design are also applied to other interactions, in ...
and writer, best known for the 2009 browser game ''
The Majesty of Colors''. Avery-Weir lives in
Charlotte, North Carolina
Charlotte ( ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of North Carolina. Located in the Piedmont region, it is the county seat of Mecklenburg County. The population was 874,579 at the 2020 census, making Charlotte the 16th-most populo ...
,
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
.
Early life and education
Avery-Weir received little formal art training, other than occasional art and cartooning classes while growing up.
At college they produced a weekly comic in their college newspaper called “The Absolute Sum of All Evil”.
Career
Up until 2008, Avery-Weir worked as a web developer for RealEstate.com.
Prior to their fully released games, Avery-Weir developed hobby game projects in Logowriter, Hypercard, DOS batch scripts, Megazeux, and Inform 6 and 7.
Avery-Weir wrote most of their games in the language
ActionScript 3
ActionScript is an object-oriented programming language originally developed by Macromedia Inc. (later acquired by Adobe). It is influenced by HyperTalk, the scripting language for HyperCard. It is now an implementation of ECMAScript (meaning i ...
for the
Flash
Flash, flashes, or FLASH may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media
Fictional aliases
* Flash (DC Comics character), several DC Comics superheroes with super speed:
** Flash (Barry Allen)
** Flash (Jay Garrick)
** Wally West, the first Kid ...
platform.
Avery-Weir takes responsibility for the graphics, the programming, and the design of the games.
They funded their work through a bid-based model, where casual gaming portals such as
Kongregate
Kongregate is an American web gaming portal and video game publisher. Its website features over 110,000 online games and 30+ mobile games available to the public. The company also publishes games for PC, mobile, and home consoles. It was purchase ...
or
Armor Games
Armor Games is an American video game publisher and free web gaming portal. The website hosts over a thousand HTML5 (and previously Flash) browser games. Based in Irvine, California, the site was founded in 2004 by Daniel McNeely.
Armor Games ...
bid to sponsor Flash projects in exchange for privileges such as their logo appearing in the final game, site exclusivity, or other benefits. Avery-Weir's games are developed start to finish, and then offered up for sponsorship as a complete product. Says Avery-Weir, "That means that I get to maintain creative freedom, although it does introduce uncertainty. I’m never quite sure if a game is going to get sponsors interested at all."
Influences
Among the games that Avery-Weir has suggested influence their work is ''
Shadow of the Colossus
''Shadow of the Colossus'' is a 2005 action-adventure game developed by Japan Studio and Team Ico, and published by Sony Computer Entertainment for the PlayStation 2. It takes place in a fantasy setting and follows Wander, a young man who ente ...
'', ''
Planescape: Torment'' and
Knytt
Nicklas Nygren (born 6 January 1983), better known by the handle Nifflas, is an independent Swedish video game developer. He is known for his freeware ''Knytt'' series and along with another freeware game, ''Within a Deep Forest''. He has lived ...
.
They have also mentioned
H. P. Lovecraft as an influence.
Writing
During 2008 and 2009, Avery-Weir undertook paid work writing for game website
GameSetWatch
''Game Developer'', known as ''Gamasutra'' until 2021, is a website founded in 1997 that focuses on aspects of video game development. It is owned and operated by Informa and acts as the online sister publication to the print magazine '' Game ...
. They also maintain a blog on games called Ludus Novus.
Games
* ''
Necropolis
A necropolis (plural necropolises, necropoles, necropoleis, necropoli) is a large, designed cemetery with elaborate tomb monuments. The name stems from the Ancient Greek ''nekropolis'', literally meaning "city of the dead".
The term usually im ...
''
* ''
The Majesty of Colors''
* ''
Babies Dream of Dead Worlds''
* ''Bars of Black and White''
* ''
Exploit
Exploit means to take advantage of something (a person, situation, etc.) for one's own end, especially unethically or unjustifiably.
Exploit can mean:
*Exploitation of natural resources
*Exploit (computer security)
* Video game exploit
*Exploitat ...
''
* ''Sugarcore''
* ''How to Raise a Dragon''
* ''
Silent Conversation
Silent may mean any of the following:
People with the name
* Silent George, George Stone (outfielder) (1876–1945), American Major League Baseball outfielder and batting champion
* Brandon Silent (born 1973), South African former footballer
* ...
''
* ''
The Mold Fairy
''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the ...
''
* ''The Bryant Collection''
* ''
Backup
In information technology, a backup, or data backup is a copy of computer data taken and stored elsewhere so that it may be used to restore the original after a data loss event. The verb form, referring to the process of doing so, is "back up", w ...
''
* ''
Looming
''Looming'' is a term found in the study of perception, as it relates directly to psychology. Looming occurs when an object begins moving closer to the eye. As the resulting image becomes increasingly larger on the perceiver's retina, i.e., when ...
''
* ''
The Day The Day may refer to:
Film and television
* ''The Day'' (1914 film), an Australian silent film
* ''The Day'' (1960 film), a short film
* ''The Day'' (2011 film), a Canadian film
* ''The Day'' (2022 film), a Bangladeshi–Iran joint production ...
''
* ''
A Ride Home
A, or a, is the first letter and the first vowel of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''a'' (pronounced ), plural ''aes'' ...
''
* ''Beneath the Waves''
* ''
Passing the Ball Passing may refer to:
Social identity
* Passing (sociology), presenting oneself as a member of another sociological group
** Passing (gender), presenting oneself as being cisgender
** Passing (racial identity), presenting oneself as a member of ...
''
* "
The Whispering Thing"
* FutureProof
See also
*
Anna Anthropy
Anna Anthropy is an American video game designer, role-playing game designer, and interactive fiction author whose works include ''Mighty Jill Off'' and '' Dys4ia''. She is the game designer in residence at the DePaul University College of Comp ...
References
External links
Ludus Novus Avery-Weir's blog, with playable versions of many of Avery-Weir's games
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Avery-Weir, Gregory
Living people
American video game designers
Writers from Charlotte, North Carolina
Place of birth missing (living people)
Year of birth missing (living people)