Gregory Weir

Gregory Avery-Weir
Photo of Gregory Avery-Weir
Residence	Charlotte, North Carolina
Nationality	United States
Occupation	Game developer, writer
Known for	Developer of Flash Games / writer for GameSetWatch

Gregory Avery-Weir is an American game designer and writer. He is known for creating short Flash games. He lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, United States.

Avery-Weir received little formal art training, other than occasional art and cartooning classes while growing up.

At college he produced a weekly comic in his college newspaper called “The Absolute Sum of All Evil”.

Up until 2008, Avery-Weir worked as a web developer for RealEstate.com. Prior to his fully released games, Avery-Weir developed hobby game projects in Logowriter, Hypercard, DOS batch scripts, Megazeux, and Inform 6 and 7.

Avery-Weir writes most of his games in a language called ActionScript 3 for the Flash platform, with the intent that they be played in a web browser. He takes responsibility for the graphics, the programming, and the design of the games.

Avery-Weir funds his work through a bid-based model, where casual gaming portals such as Kongregate or Armor Games bid to sponsor Flash projects in exchange for privileges such as their logo appearing in the final game, site exclusivity, or other benefits. Avery-Weir's games are developed start to finish, and then offered up for sponsorship as a complete product. Says Avery-Weir, "That means that I get to maintain creative freedom, although it does introduce uncertainty. I’m never quite sure if a game is going to get sponsors interested at all."

The advertising and sponsorship money Avery-Weir receives from his games, in combination with his work writing for website GameSetWatch, is enough to fully financially support him.

Among the games that Avery-Weir has suggested influence his work is Shadow of the Colossus, which he praises as "an incredibly emotional work", drawing attention to that game's schism between the goal of killing huge creatures while at the same time feeling ambivalent about the morality of those actions.

He also speaks fondly of Planescape: Torment, which he says "continually asks the question, 'What can change the nature of a man?'" He adds, "It gives a lot of answers over the course of the game, but never holds one up as the correct one."