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 [...]
Prompted by this article over at Bit-Tech on How AI in Games works it made me want to blog about some of the ways you can make your enemy AI appear smarter without having to re-write your AI back end or invest in expensive middleware. SCRIPTING A huge amount of what convinces us a game has [...]
Common sense is wonderful. It only ever gets applied in hindsight or the third person.
So when I tell you that games are at their most fun when your skills are in equilibrium with the Challenge you face you’ll scoff and claim that it’s just Common Sense.
Over There. by San Sharma Continuity Level Design is a school of Level Design predominantly used by Single Player games. Recent examples include Portal, Mirrors Edge and Call of Duty 4. Now it’s worth pointing out that the phrase “Continuity Level Design” is something I’ve just made up (well at least as far as I’m [...]
February 25, 2009 – 2:49 pm
After a quick lunchtime session I can confirm that right now I don’t think the stun effect is Overpowered at all. The difficulty of actually pulling it off versus the lost utility by carrying the Sandman has pretty much balanced it out.
It is however Annoying.
February 23, 2009 – 7:41 pm
So knowing that your players will leave you it’s important that you replace them. Constantly.
How do you replace these players? Advertising. Marketting. Special Offers. Anything. You need to keep your game constantly at the front of the media.
February 21, 2009 – 12:03 am
One thing I’ve learnt in my career is that the best books to read to learn about Game Design are rarely ever books about Game Design. Books about Game Design are a bit like mobile phones; sure they have a camera but when you want to take proper photo you need to reach for something [...]
