Don't miss...
A brief history of game design
In this series of article, we’ll explore how the gaming paradigm has evolved over the last 30 years, era by era, from the early days of the arcade to the next generation of consoles.
The concept of attention
In today’s society, games must battle with all kind of media and entertainment means to conquer an audience. The goal of the good game maker is not to present games that fulfill some publisher-friendly quality criteria, but to reach the player personally through the game and to create a strong and positive relationship.
What’s a good game, anyway?
This article describes a quality framework to evaluate a game as early as possible in its lifecycle.
Latest articles
This article sums up the contribution that the Final Fantasy games made the the RPG genre and gaming in general. In the last part, we talk about how the production of FFVII changed the rules of the industry.
An analysis of Killer7, of its many innovations and the reasons of its lack of success.
A recurring problem with modern videogames is that they don’t handle failure well. The player has to complete level after level, mission after mission... and don’t have the possibility of being less than perfect. The flipside is that to beat such games, the player imagination is not challenged, and winning is not as significant than in games that require the players to be creative thinkers, like the Mortville Manor we are discussing here. Beyond that, we’ll see how allowing the player to fail can in fact add value to games.
A comparative look at much anticipated but very disappointing games: Daikatana, Enter the Matrix, Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness, Devil May Cry 2 and Bad Day L.A.
Last year, the direction in which the industry was heading seemed uncertain. What has changed since then?
Over the last 30 years, the price of creating the various game assets has increased at a mind-boggling rate. Except one: story. Still, considering how much impact a good story has on a game, game developers are not spending enough on this essential component.
A comparison between open-ended games and closed games (with a beginning and an end).
In this analysis of this Nintendo instant-classic, we’ll focus on:
how the game addresses casual and expert players,
game design choices that ensure that the game is always fair,
and finally, can there be a newer Super Mario Bros?
Should the ideal game designed to be played forever, again and again? Choosing replayability as a game design objective means according less attention than necessary to the game ending, which is a unique opportunity to give the player a lasting impression of the game.
What, exactly, is at the very origin of a game project? This article review six categories of ideas that can trigger a concept - game genre, theme, graphical style, activity, interface and technique.
The use of random and trial-and-error gameplay are among the design choices that can make games unfair. It is still ok to use them, but only in specific situations and in any case, the player must be aware of that and not be taken by surprise.
Players interact with your game and are rightly entitled to feedback, which is why interfaces are necessary. They do not dispell immersion or consume valuable screen real estate.
How to make cutscenes that work? this articles provide a few guidelines. Cutscenes should have subtitles, the player should be able to skip them and the game should be playable without them.
RSS 2.0