Links to articles or videos made by other fine folks that we found interesting.
A look at 10 great video game dungeons
Good dungeon design isn’t universal - it depends on what verbs are available to the player, what the UI is like, and what the game’s core loops involve. Here, Felipe Pepe illustrates this by taking a look at several great dungeons and what makes them great in their respective contexts.
Three years ago, the designer Jennifer Scheurle started a very interesting Twitter thread on “brilliant mechanics in games that are hidden from the player to get across a certain feeling“. In this thread, she invited designers to share the design secrets they have used, which should not be seen by the players in order to trigger specific behaviors, feelings, or reactions while experiencing their games.
Many games deliberately mislead players in subtle ways to create a better experience. This write-up takes a close look at several examples and discusses why they work. Some key takeaways are (1) the perception of fairness is more important than actual fairness (2) fail states break flow.
Valve maintains its signature silence as wayward developers code-swap games on Steam, leaving users frustrated and confused
This story starts with a game in Steam’s Early Access being completely replaced by a different game, but it opens a lot of questions about the nature of ownership and fair dealing in an age of digital delivery, automatic updates, and games as a service. When it’s commonplace for games to change after they’ve already been paid for, where is the line? Aside from the preservation question, how do you allow games to grow and improve while stopping bad faith consumer-exploiting changes?
Frankly, I expected this to be more of a problem - ads were being patched into high-profile games over a decade ago. I can only assume that nobody’s wanted to risk triggering consumer rights investigations and legislation here, so the steps taken have been pretty small.
Go to https://BuyRaycon.com/razbuten for 15% off your order! Brought to you by Raycon. In this episode of Gaming For A Non-Gamer, I finally had my wife try o...
In the latest episode of YouTuber Razbuten’s series in which he watches his non-gamer wife play various games, the focus is on so-called “casual” life sim games.
Many of the lessons and takeaways echo those that have come before (intuitive theming, low pressure, good tutorials, recoverable failure states, and optional co-op features all help new players learn, cheats/modes that let players focus on what they enjoy are good, etc.) but a couple new ones stood out to me. First, that sandbox games can be downright unapproachable if you don’t already have basic familiarity with what you can do and what kind of goals make sense, so early-game directed progression can be vital for new players. Second, that being part of a shared culture moment can be a powerful draw even if it’s not the kind of culture you normally take part in.
This article explores how we can use psychology to strengthen players’ emotional bonds with NPCs in order to give them a more fulfilling experience and keep them playing for longer.
This writeup discusses a study showing the unsurprising result that group dynamics make people care more about others, whether they are real or fictional - we want good things to happen to our allies and bad things to happen to our enemies. This is relevant to game design because caring more about a game’s characters is a recipe for improved engagement. But what I found particularly interesting about the study was that it implies that a good way to make players care even more about their allies is to have them suffer setbacks and losses together, and a good way to make players care even more about their enemies is to make their rivalries as evenly-matched as possible.
Right now I’m playing Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch Remastered on PC. I love it. It’s gorgeous, heartfelt, sincere, and touching. It’s also absolute rubbish. Movement is just too slow. Combat is uninteresting and offers low chance of reward. It’s a huge grind, and it’s a boring one at that. Only one thing is keeping me playing to experience the wonderful story, one tool giving me the patience to slog through the frankly terrible combat: Cheat Engine. Cheat Engine is a longstanding tool that lets users actively edit the code of a game while it’s running. If […]
I’ve been beating this drum for a while, but “cheating” in a single-player game, whether it comes from in-game systems or external modifications, is often a great way to increase player options and make a game experience better.
How the dev team incorporated feedback to change the game for the better.
I love stories of how games improve through playtesting. This look at Moving Out features a few interesting lessons, including dialog changes to make sure players go in with the right expectations (the line about insurance), a mechanic that was added because players expected it to be there (the co-op throw), art changes to improve readability and player communication (color-coding rooms), and the introduction of an Assist Mode to increase accessibility and “help more people enjoy the game”.
Some games, like Cuphead, don't come with many difficulty options. What happens when modders make their own? We interviewed some to find out.
When developers don’t add enough accessibility options to their games, modders can come to the rescue.
This provides an object lesson in one of many reasons why “git gud” is a terrible response to people who want easy modes or other accommodations - as seen in this writeup, the presence of such accommodations is exactly what allows many players to git gud when they otherwise couldn’t.
It’s also worth pointing out that this is only possible when modding is possible - and thus, things that take control away from gamers (such as cloud-based games) are a genuine threat to accessibility.
Before Minecraft, there was another game: Infiniminer. The first 500 people to use this link will get a 2 month free trial of Skillshare Premium Membership: ...
Did you know that Minecraft started as a self-described clone of a game called Infiniminer made by Zach Barth of Zachtronics? I sure didn’t.
This video presents an interesting angle on the history of Minecraft and also a case study in the value that can be unlocked by allowing player freedom away from the game designer’s authorial intent - and how strange it is to have a game you created get changed into the most successful game of all time.
An analysis of Animal Crossing as a playful space during the pandemic lockdown.
A look at how Animal Crossing's strong sense of place, playfulness, and generosity work and are especially relevant in the current environment.