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Alto's Adventure wants me to wait

I hate how Alto’s Adventure won’t let you keep playing until it uploads your score to the leaderboards, even if the server is slow to respond.

At least, that’s what I assume is going on here. I don’t know what else it could be. I don’t have this problem on PC where I have my firewall set to block the game from connecting to the internet. On Switch, you can’t set that per-game so I have to put the Switch into airplane mode to prevent this.

I wouldn’t even notice this was happening if it didn’t block me from playing. Like how it’s easy to forget how commonplace day-one patches have become until one gets delayed, this problem in Alto’s Adventure makes me realize how bizarre it is that it’s become routine for games to connect to remote servers and upload information without any kind of permission. I never agreed to share my scores and there don’t appear to be any in-game settings to disable this behavior. I have absolutely zero interest in the leaderboards for this game, but it’s acting like there’s nothing the least bit rude, presumptuous, or problematic about it disrupting my play in order to go online and use my bandwidth to broadcast my scores without my consent.

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A Story of Boxes, and How Players Can’t Think Outside of It – GD Keys

A Story of Boxes, and How Players Can’t Think Outside of It – GD Keys

If you read my previous articles or have been hanging around our Discord, you know how much human psychology is of interest to me. One beautiful facet of it is this "game" that players and designers are playing together, for as long as games exist, where both try and trick the other, pushing on their level of control. Designers create playgrounds, full of possibilities, limitations, and challenges, for players to express themselves in it, while players, coming with their experience and expectations, will try and break free from these artificial chains.

Site icongdkeys.com — December 29, 2020

Players approach in-game challenges in ways informed by what the game (and other similar games) have already taught them - in some cases, this can lead to missing seemingly-obvious solutions because the game’s affordances are pointing in another direction. (I ran into this during my playthrough of Right Click to Hack.)

This write-up illustrates that principle by taking a look at how playtesters approached a particular environmental puzzle in Immortals Fenyx Rising - and encourages designers to support more freedom and creative thinking in designing their challenges and to not be afraid of the opportunities this can create for “breaking” the game, as that’s often more satisfying for the player anyway!

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My Top Ten Games of 2020

Based on how much joy they brought me, not on objective greatness.

  1. Animal Crossing New Horizons
  2. Lego City Undercover
  3. One Piece: World Seeker
  4. CrossCode
  5. Mario Kart Tour
  6. Murder by Numbers
  7. Mana Spark
  8. The Alto Collection (not yet reviewed)
  9. Spyro Reignited Trilogy (not yet reviewed)
  10. Stay?

Honorable mentions to games I’m happy about but that are difficult to quantify:

  • Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning (a buggy-but-slowly-improving port of a game I loved)
  • Super Mario 3D All-Stars (I’ve only played Super Mario 64 so far)
  • Divinity: Original Sin 2 (had a blast playing this co-op with PartialCharge, but scheduling those sessions became difficult)
  • The Jackbox Party Pack games, which I’ve enjoyed a couple of with Allie (we mostly like Fibbage)
  • Sorting Therapy (more of a meditative tool than a game)
  • Colors Live (an art tool, not a game)

The game that brought me the most frustration, rage, and aggravation:

  1. CrossCode
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The Design Philosophy Of Battletech 2

The Design Philosophy Of Battletech 2 Link preview image

The Event System

Site iconMedium — Nov 17, 2020 at 7:21 PM

Game designer kiva’s blog has some fascinating war stories. This particular write-up, part of a series about her work on Battletech, discusses her somewhat-failed attempt to create an event system that would create a bond between the player and their characters - what it tried to do, and why it didn’t achieve those goals.

If you find it interesting, I do recommend her other posts - she has fascinating thoughts on a game designer’s role (in a nutshell: empathizing with the players) and skill set (another nutshell: internalized understanding and intuition from deeply examining many games).

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Mass market, mystery boxes and metric-driven design: The legacy of FarmVille

Mass market, mystery boxes and metric-driven design: The legacy of FarmVille Link preview image

With the original FarmVille shutting down after 11 years, we explore the impact the hit social game had on the industry

Site iconGamesIndustry.biz — December 18, 2020

As I wrote about myself a bit recently, FarmVille’s impending shutdown closes the book on an incredibly influential game (for better and worse) and a huge part of gaming history. This article takes a closer look at FarmVille’s legacy, discussing its role in bringing games to mass market and early steps in metric-driven design and what we might today call loot boxes.

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The Not so Secrets to Success in the Game Industry

The Not so Secrets to Success in the Game Industry

The game market continues to change and grow, and for today, I want to slow things down and talk about the three things that any developer needs to have to give their game the best chance at success.

Site iconwww.gamasutra.com — December 9, 2020

With so many quality games coming out all the time, the bar for success has raised considerably from where it used to be. It’s harder than ever to get and keep the attention of players, especially for indie developers. Here, Josh Bycer puts together a list of what he sees as the minimum requirements in game feel, presentation, and marketing for a game to succeed in the modern landscape.