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 all [...]
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 because they [...]
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.
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 feature [...]
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 unfamiliar [...]
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 good AI [...]
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.
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 [...]
