About
Howdy! I’m Toby Hazes, born, raised and living in the Netherlands. I’ve graduated at the Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Utrecht (HKU) studying Game Design and Development and with fellow graduates we’re setting up our own company to continue developing Hollandia!
Professional
I’m a narrative designer, a game designer specialized in narrative and an emergent field in the game industry. It’s game design with a narrative viewpoint. When creating mechanics, rules and systems it’s about looking at their narrative weight and possibilities. Meaningful play through narrative impact. As it’s stated on the Narrative Design Exploratorium: A narrative designer seeks to craft systems which deliver narremes to a player. (narremes as opposed to the mechanic designer’s ludemes)
Next to game design and narrative design skills, I’m also fairly proficient with scripting and prototyping. I have experience with Unreal Engine 3 kismet scripting, XNA C#, Flash Actionscript and motion sensing hardware.
Personal
Besides games, my foremost interests are history, culture and traveling. I love to explore exotic places. My favorite spot so far is Venice, city of water, with its countless masks. I also like to read a healthy amount about such topics; world history, mythology, folklore and religion from all corners of the world.
While games are my favorite form of fiction, I love others too. Some works that have influenced or inspired me one way or another are the Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter books, the Clannad anime, and the movies Lion King, Lord of War, Casshern and Once Upon a Time in Mexico.
If you would like to know anything else, feel free to drop me a line!