Joe Weaver ’23

Valpo alumnus Joe Weaver ’23 values authentic education, believing in “bringing your whole self” inside and outside the classroom. With a background in physical therapy and architectural drafting, he pursued a creative writing degree to become a novelist. However, after meeting Professor Martin Buinicki, Weaver shifted his focus to the gaming industry. Alongside Professor Buinicki, he helped found Valpo’s first role-playing game (RPG) club, Rolling with RPGs, to encourage student involvement in gaming through play, design, or writing. Weaver has also founded his own game publishing company, Advent Chaos LLC.

Weaver’s favorite part of game design is the development process: “It’s taking your own idea and bringing it to life. … There’s a lot of fulfillment that comes from writing for other people, too.” For Weaver, the writing process is as much about formation as it is interaction with other creatives and players. When writing, he focuses on immersion and “letting the player truly experience the story.” To achieve this, he understands that the process of refining a narrative is just as important as the initial creation. As a writer, he recognizes that peer review and revisions are essential in crafting the best, most beautiful products. Weaver declares, “If a pen were a sword, then criticism is the whetstone that sharpens it.” His advice for creators overcoming their protective, precious instincts is to recognize that “if you don’t tell me what you honestly think of my work, someone else will. If it can be fixed, you want somebody to be critical so that it can be the best product that it can be.”

For aspiring game creators, Weaver suggests attending the forthcoming Center for Games and Interactive Entertainment to be a valuable resource, offering aspiring gaming professionals hands-on experience and rich opportunities to further their expertise. Another illuminating path is attending gaming conventions, as owners and developers attend and are open to discussion, with Weaver describing them as “archives of information.” Finally, Weaver suggests creating an artist portfolio – digitally for convenience – showcasing the creator’s biggest strengths.

Looking forward, Weaver’s plans are full of new, creative projects. As a contributing writer for Imagining Games, Weaver has one game planned to be released with them, and a different, independent game currently in development. With two games set to be released next year, Weaver’s schedule is packed with activity and innovation. Long-term, he plans to write a novella, To Feast with Wolves, a Renaissance-period novel which he describes as a “Pirates of the Caribbean meets Indiana Jones sort of story, where a pirate chases down the Big Three Christian relics of legend.”

As Weaver continues writing and publishing, he wants future and current artists to remember that: “Words matter. They carry weight and can affect someone you’ll never meet in ways you don’t expect. It’s the very essence of what makes writing an art form, and art requires patience. Making good revisions requires you to exercise that patience. Know that ‘perfection’ is usually in the eye of the beholder, but remember that something doesn’t have to be perfect to be beautiful.”

Written by: Carmen Hernandez ’26

Originally published in the fall 2024 edition of The Lodestar, Valparaiso University’s English department newsletter. Since this article was published, Joe has continued to shine – his work with Imagining Games was honored as a Judges’ Spotlight Winner at the 2024 ENNIE Awards, one of the tabletop RPG industry’s largest recognitions.