In game design, knowing what you need is a lot more powerful than knowing what you want. Here’s an example from a raid we made in Destiny.

We were working on Wrath of the Machine— a Mad Max inspired adventure. In several encounters we were going to have something new to Destiny, balls you could pick up and throw at things.
Since these balls were going to be in a bunch of different places in the raid, and we needed a device to make them appear.
Basically we wanted one of these.
But then comes along our Art Director and he’s like hey these objects seem like they’re going to be in the raid a lot. Let’s concept them.
And he didn’t ask us what we wanted for the device (A bowling ball dispenser) he asked us what we needed.

So we told him well really we just need a thing to make a ball, it needs to be about this big, and it needs to take about this long.
So he told us to work with Sung Choi, a new concept artist, to get an illustration.
And in my mind it seemed like a total waste of time to concept a bowling ball machine but I wasn’t going to say no.
Then Sung starts sending messages like “Hey fallen are like machine spider people, and these guys are the mad max versions, thinking about how they would make these balls.”
And he’s also sending like no context pictures of circus food?
Then he drops the bomb. Hey what if the machine looked something like this?
And sweet Jesus what we wanted was just a dumb bowling ball machine.
By telling Sung what we needed instead of what we wanted, we got to leverage his amazing mind to create something way more inspired.
These devices were planned to just be forgettable non-sense but because the developer understood the box they could play in, we ended up with one of the coolest animated objects in the game.

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I'm going to do two history threads on Ethiopia, one on its ancient history, one on its modern story (1800 to today). 🇪🇹

I'll begin with the ancient history ... and it goes way back. Because modern humans - and before that, the ancestors of humans - almost certainly originated in Ethiopia. 🇪🇹 (sub-thread):


The first likely historical reference to Ethiopia is ancient Egyptian records of trade expeditions to the "Land of Punt" in search of gold, ebony, ivory, incense, and wild animals, starting in c 2500 BC 🇪🇹


Ethiopians themselves believe that the Queen of Sheba, who visited Israel's King Solomon in the Bible (c 950 BC), came from Ethiopia (not Yemen, as others believe). Here she is meeting Solomon in a stain-glassed window in Addis Ababa's Holy Trinity Church. 🇪🇹


References to the Queen of Sheba are everywhere in Ethiopia. The national airline's frequent flier miles are even called "ShebaMiles". 🇪🇹
The chorus of this song uses the shlokas taken from Sundarkand of Ramayana.

It is a series of Sanskrit shlokas recited by Jambavant to Hanuman to remind Him of his true potential.

1. धीवर प्रसार शौर्य भरा: The brave persevering one, your bravery is taking you forward.


2. उतसारा स्थिरा घम्भीरा: The one who is leaping higher and higher, who is firm and stable and seriously determined.

3. ुग्रामा असामा शौर्या भावा: He is strong, and without an equal in the ability/mentality to fight

4. रौद्रमा नवा भीतिर्मा: His anger will cause new fears in his foes.

5.विजिटरीपुरु धीरधारा, कलोथरा शिखरा कठोरा: This is a complex expression seen only in Indic language poetry. The poet is stating that Shivudu is experiencing the intensity of climbing a tough peak, and likening

it to the feeling in a hard battle, when you see your enemy defeated, and blood flowing like a rivulet. This is classical Veera rasa.

6.कुलकु थारथिलीथा गम्भीरा, जाया विराट वीरा: His rough body itself is like a sharp weapon (because he is determined to win). Hail this complete

hero of the world.

7.विलयगागनथाला भिकारा, गरज्जद्धरा गारा: The hero is destructive in the air/sky as well (because he can leap at an enemy from a great height). He can defeat the enemy (simply) with his fearsome roar of war.