Critical Critique straight to the HP
Some multiplayer games have inherent differences between player 1 and player 2. Chess is the classic example of this, the player going first has a slight advantage over the player going second. Counter Strike has Terrorists and Counter-Terrorists. TF2 has Continue reading
As video games have moved to 3d, a number of techniques have emerged to create game animations that are more tailored to the environment, to make game characters feel less like autonomous pawns floating through environments and more like grounded Continue reading
I love picking up new fighting games. The task of learning how to play fighting games at all can seem incredibly daunting, so learning another, or a dozen different games, can seem impossible. Once you ve gotten your foot in the Continue reading
I ve been teaching my third Mastering Game Mechanics course with GameDesignSkills.com and one of the concepts we talk about is Tension. Alex Brazie, my cowriter for MGM and one of the owners of GDS, likes to explain tension like a Continue reading
There is a common misconception in PVP game design that melee attacks should be slow and reactable in order to make it fair for your opponents to play around them. The problem with this is that it fundamentally breaks the Continue reading
For a long time I have been opposed to the idea of immersion in video games, to the idea that people become immersed in fictional worlds. I believe there is no specific mental state that can be referred to as Continue reading
There are 4 categories of knowledge: Known Knowns, Unknown Knowns, Known Unknowns, and Unknown Unknowns. When you are a subject matter expert on something, like a competitive game, or coding, or a lawyer, doctor, or scientist, your knowledge is a Continue reading
A commonly invoked concept for video games is the concept of Agency. In real life, Agency refers to the ability of individuals to act upon the world and shape their life outcomes, especially in relationship to other people. I don t Continue reading
Hollow Knight: Silksong has revived an annoying line of discourse about Artificial Difficulty . Artificial Difficulty is ostensibly things that make a game appear more difficult, without actually engaging player skill. However in practice, most people claiming that a game has Continue reading
Design Space is tricky to define, because it s the water we swim in. Mark Rosewater (who probably coined the term) says that design space is roughly how many new cards can be made from a new mechanic. A mechanic that Continue reading