Star Wars Galaxies: Dev Diary: Jeff "Jaskell" Haskell

Dev Diary - Jeff "Jaskell" Haskell

My name is Jeff Haskell (AKA Jaskell) and I am a new addition to the Star Wars Galaxies design team. For the past 3 years I have been working on SWG as part of the SWG QA Team. I was a tester, a QA tool scripter, and now my dreams of becoming a SWG designer have become a reality.

A long time ago, in San Diego...

In 2003 I first read about SWG in Game Informer and PC Gaming. Being a huge Star Wars fan I clearly remember fantasizing about being a part of the development team but I really didn't take the dream seriously until I was laid off as a computer consultant. As fate would have it I inherited a home in San Diego, California and moved in. I had to find a job locally and had forgotten that SOE was a stone's throw away.

I was a perfect match for SOE, but SOE didn't know it. I sought to remedy this by hanging out in their parking lot with résumés until security booted me.

I did finally get a job at 989 Studios testing PlayStation 2 games but I wasn't finished trying to get into SOE and eventually scored an interview for the PlanetSide QA team. I was turned down but I didn't take "no" for an answer. I received a second interview for the Champions of Norrath PS2 game and made the team. Ten months later I finally got the chance to be a part of the Star Wars Galaxies team.

The moral of this story might be to follow your dreams, but don't stalk Smed in the parking lot. He's got a long memory.

So what have I done for you lately?

My live game contributions thus far have been the treasure maps, the treasure map guardians, the serving droid as well as the treasure map loot. Re-scripting the treasure map system has been a goal of mine since...well, since I first saw the system as a player back in 2004. I hope you like the new system, the NPCs, and the rare loot.

For Chapter 7 I worked with a small team to create the various collection systems. I spent several days researching Star Wars artifacts to find cool collectibles that exude Star Wars . The result was collections like the Comlink, Dejarik Table and Holomonster, and Aurebesh tile collections just to name a few. I also spent some time brainstorming non-combat oriented collections and the result was the new fish and fish tank collectibles.

And if it wasn't fun enough watching my ideas materialize I got to do some world building too. If you come across a new point of interest with a click collectable in the center, there is a strong possibility I had something to do with it.