In ten years of games development I have never worked on a game where the resulting product paid more than a passing resemblance to what was originally designed. Such is the way with an inherently creative process like videogame design.
February 18, 2010 – 10:34 am
I’ve been reading The Paradox of Choice again. It’s one of those books that has actually caused me to try and change the way I live my life and so far it’s turned out for the better. The argument put forward is that when faced with too much choice people will often choose nothing at [...]
December 21, 2009 – 10:54 am
Good morning! This is in danger of becoming a regularity but don’t worry! I’m away for the next 2 weeks so there is no danger of this becoming a regular feature just yet. Lets start with the video: The most notable addition this week is a new enemy called a “Bumble”. Bumbles are so named [...]
November 19, 2009 – 1:29 pm
So a couple of weeks ago now Epic released the Unreal Development Kit and lots of people rushed to download it (some 50,000 apparently). They all then rushed to the forums to ask how you make a game. Fortunately I’m an old hand with Unreal, starting back in 2000 modding Deus Ex and then progressing [...]
The Conclusions are very convincing and I finished the book happier in the knowledge that I could apply what I had just learnt not just to my work (more on that in a moment) but to my everyday life.
Normally it’s the other way around. You lay out a level and a concept artist will create an impression of what it might look like for the Enviroment artists to work from. However Damnation are apparently going a different way and basing their Level Designs on Concept art.
There is a belief that a good game never punishes players and only rewards them. It’s a belief that often causes debate amongst Designers because the phrase is usually reinterpreted to mean “The player must never fail.” and this couldn’t be more wrong. Failure does not equal Punishment and in fact Failure is an intrinsic [...]
March 20, 2009 – 10:44 am
This managed to pass me by when it first appeared but Andreas Zecher made a series of Flash Games called Understanding Games which try to explain the fundamentals of Game Design via Game Play. It is to Games as Understanding Comics is to Comics. The games clearly take alot from Raph’s Theory of Fun and is a cool grounding for anybody [...]
March 18, 2009 – 11:05 am
I’m always keeping an eye out for good Level Design resources to recommend to people as I believe that it is a hideously under-documented topic and what documentation does exist is often buried deep in forums, wikis or blogs. The remainder I find isn’t actually useful documentation that Designers can learn from. A large part [...]
I am currently reading Gut Feelings: Short Cuts to Better Decision Making by Gerd Gigerenzer. If you’ve ever Read Blink (or even if you haven’t) then I recommend this book as it deals with the concept of intuition, instinct and the unconscious in a much more detailed way. I’d argue that you can completely bypass Blink [...]
