Hey. I kinda dived right into suggestions and IRC, but I guess I'll make an into thread...
I'm Level 5 Pidgey, real name Zanda - a college student 18 years of age from Australia.
I attend the Academy of Interactive Entertainment where I am in my first year of Professional Game Development - Programming Major.
I plan to enter the game industry through programming, but I aim to be a designer rather than a programmer.
Anyway, I have contributed a lot to other game projects, most notably my revision of the Dead Ringer in Team Fortress 2 (a build currently still functioning in game), and my total redesign of the flagging system in the European MMO Darkfall Online.
I also won a national game design competition called 'Gameface' - with my entry 'The Undeadables'.
I want to help this project mainly through attacking Pokemon's large content redundancy, and I have a range of methods to attempt. I'm still trying to work out what will be most effective.
Right now I'm creating a program that will effectively compare Pokemon's base stats as derived stats, that can help us individually balance various pokes.
Anyway, if you want to see some of my work:
http://zandagamedesign.blogspot.com/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YL294g3svr0I hope you like it
Anyway, I'll just rattle off some facts:
Favourite Films:
No Country for Old Men
28 Days/Weeks Later
Children of Men
Tekkon Kinkreet
Blood Simple.
Reservoir Dogs
Wall-E, Ratatouille, Up, The Incredibles
Sin City
Zombieland
District 9
Inglourious Basterds
Up In the Air
TV Shows:
Heroes
Burn Notice
Avatar: The Last Airbender
Dexter
Music:
The Protomen
Les Miserables
Ayreon
Guilt Machine
Cog
Mindless Self Indulgence
65daysofstatic
Deftones
Games:
Team Fortress 2
Pokemon Snap
Pokemon R/B/Y/G/S/C
Golden Sun 1, 2
Pikmin 2
Zack and Wiki
Tales of Symphonia
Borderlands
Cloud
World of Goo
The World Ends With You
Okami
Braid
Harvest Moon
Opinions of Pokemon:
I'm a giant fan of the first 2 generations, and I love them to bits - but I am less than impressed by the newer games. In fact, I'm trading all my newer games for the remakes of the older ones.
I believe a great flaw in Pokemon is its 80% content redundancy - and I aim to try and fix that.
I also loved the immersion of Pokemon Snap (seeing a world full of wild Pokemon) - and I want to see more of that in future Pokemon games. I think the turn-based game play might be getting a little stale, so a more immersive environment should be encouraged.