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.

Naughty Dog and Nonlinearity

A look at the history of Naughty Dog's Action Adventure games and their different approaches to non-linear gameplay. Support: https://www.patreon.com/thegami...

Charlie Cade takes a look at how Naughty Dog’s approach to linearity has changed over the years, examining the tradeoffs made in each of its major franchises. To me, the most interesting point is that nonlinearity enables riskier design, as a frustrating moment is much more likely to cost you a player if the player can’t try doing something else for a while.

Failing to Fail: The Spiderweb Software Way

In 1994, Jeff Vogel founded Spiderweb Software, one of the oldest continuously operating indie game companies. This is the story of the company, the tricks it used to endure and make money for decades in this brutal business, the history of indie...

My favorite curmudgeonly developer Jeff Vogel of Spiderweb Software talks at GDC about the near-quarter-century he’s been professionally developing and selling games. He offers a very useful perspective focused on long-term sustainability and how to succeed while staying small.

Why Dragon Quest Builders is a better building game than Minecraft

Dragon Quest Builders succeeds where Minecraft and LEGO Worlds have failed. It's the first video game in the "building" genre to create a system of interesti...

A look at how the mechanical design of Dragon Quest Builders incentivizes the act of building in ways that no other building game does.