Halo 2 Changed The Way I Look At Games

Halo 2 is special game to me for many different reasons. It provided hours and hours of immeasurable fun and it pushed me to be more creative by allowing me ...

YouTuber Razbuten discusses how experimentation with custom modes in Halo 2 taught him to see games differently - not just as products to be passively consumed but toyboxes to be actively explored, resulting in limit-testing to find ways to play that can be even more fun than anything the designers came up with.

I wish I’d had this available to reference when I wrote my article about going beyond intended experiences - I absolutely would have quoted and linked to it.

What Games Are Like For Someone Who Doesn't Play Games

About a year ago, my wife asked if she could play a game. Instead of simply saying yes, I decided to run an informal experiment where I had her play a sampli...

YouTuber Razbuten watched his non-gamer wife try several popular games and the results were fascinating. There are useful implications for game designers (regarding tutorials, player feedback, and how and when to present information to the player) as well as for anybody trying to help a non-gamer get into games.

It’s easy for those of us who’ve been playing games for a long time to take our game literacy for granted. But many common UX conventions are explained poorly if at all in modern titles, putting up an immediate wall for new players and making it hard to get into games without help.

The Decade-Long Quest For Shadow of the Colossus' Last Secret

a mystery which will never happen again, a miracle which has never happened before- and shining this our now must come to then

A thought-provoking look at faith, knowledge, and fandom through the lens of video game classic Shadow of the Colossus.

Inviting Player Creativity Through Game Mechanics

In this 2017 GDC talk, Matheson Marcault's Holly Gramazio provides an overview of a dozen different techniques that games can use to encourage player creativ...

Holly Gramazio takes a detailed look at player creativity and expression - why it’s valuable, what gets in the way, and how to get around the barriers and encourage it.

Rules of the Game: Five Further Techniques from Rather Clever Designers

In this 2018 GDC session, game designers Richard Rouse III, Erin Hoffman-John, Soren Johnson, Raph Koster, Josh Sawyer, and Stone Librande go into detail abo...

Five game designers each talk about a rule they follow when creating games. There’s good advice and useful concepts here, made even more interesting by each talk clearly being a glimpse at a distinct philosophy and approach with its own goals - some of them even conflict with each other. The varying perspectives are interesting and I’d love to hear more similar talks from people who make very different kinds of games.

A Difficult Subject (The Jimquisition)

http://www.patreon.com/jimquisition http://www.thejimquisition.com https://www.thejimporium.com Okay... let's wade into this debate again. It's raged for yea...

Jim Sterling takes a comprehensive look at the game difficulty debate. While I think he could bring a little more empathy to bear, he raises virtually every point that I think is important in this debate and handles them well. After all, as he points out, this is not a new debate and we’ve been over these issues multiple times before.

Hareraiser (The Worst Game Ever) - Stuart Ashen - Norwich Gaming Festival 2017

Organised by our Educational Partner, Norwich University of the Arts, Stuart Ashen joined us at the Gaming Festival in 2017 to talk about Hareraiser and expl...

In this 2017 Norwich Gaming Festival talk, Stuart Ashen tells the amazing story of Hareraiser, a 1984 computer game (of sorts). I wasn’t expecting much based on the hyperbolic video title, but the events surrounding this game are actually layered with intrigue and Ashen’s expert storytelling makes the thirty-six minutes fly by. In the end, I am persuaded - Hareraiser is quite possibly the worst game ever published and sold, but not for any of the reasons you likely expect.

Building Games That Can Be Understood at a Glance

In this 2018 GDC session, developer Zach Gage explains how to make games desirable to someone looking over a player's shoulder on the subway, sitting next to...

Zach Gage takes a look at how to make games so readable that someone looking over your shoulder on the subway as you play on your phone can tell what’s going on and get excited to download the game themselves. The key is the principle of The Three Reads, an approach which ensures that useful information is prominent at the right time and in the right order - first the core of the experience that draws people in, then the key details that convey the high-level rules, then the contextual information that conveys less-central rules.

Detroit: Become Human - The Review (2018) [No Spoilers]

Honestly, I had such low expectations for this, but it completely blew me away. It's such an amazing experience, and its greatness is only unveiled through c...

While I haven’t yet played Detroit: Become Human myself, I’m always excited when someone talks sense about David Cage. Here, Skill Up takes a fair look at Quantic Dream’s latest, acknowledging its flaws but illuminating how it’s the most successful realization yet of Cage’s vision for what games can be.

Nintendo Labo and Theories of Edutainment

Further readings: Architect Edwin Heathcote connects dots between the toys architects play with as children and the buildings they design as adults: https://...

A lot of non-parent, non-child gamers seem nonplussed by Nintendo Labo. Super Bunnyhop takes an in-depth look at why Labo is really exciting for the children lucky enough to grow up with it.