Designing Meaning in Games
Often, many of the choices we make when designing games can be made unconsciously or based on intuition – which might be on the mark, but also might result in experiences that are uneven, subject to...
View ArticleSet your content creators free with scripting
The roles of technical artist, technical designer, and technical sound designer capture the rare breed of individuals who have a combination of artistic and technical talents. With a bit of structure...
View ArticleWhat can story-driven games learn from sports games?
Sports games take a lot of flack for not being inventive, and year-on-year iterations may not be as glamorous as the latest AAA-blockbuster, but Sports games are amongst the largest franchises in...
View ArticleCool Doesn’t Cut It: Ideas for Generating Creative Solutions
Generating ideas on a project can often be a haphazard process, and I’m always looking for ways to improve and focus this activity. I’m a big proponent of drawing on expertise and inspiration from a...
View ArticleInteractive Audio Fundamentals – Part 1
Audio for games has come a long way from the iconic single sample sound effects of the 8-bit era. Modern AAA games have audio that rivals the biggest Hollywood blockbusters, and in many ways exceeds...
View ArticleInteractive Audio Fundamentals – Part 2
Last time we looked at layers and how we can massively increase the variation in our sounds and give ourselves more control and more dynamic options by breaking our sound into layers. We saw that...
View ArticleInteractive Audio Fundamentals – Part 3
Well, it’s been awhile since our previous installment, but we’re back with the third and final part in our Interactive Audio Fundamentals series. In Part 1, we took a look at the power of layers to...
View ArticleIs “Fun” Really What We Mean?
Fun is probably one of the most (over) used words in game design discourse. It’s also a broad, non-specific, subjective term that actually doesn’t actually tell us anything meaningful about a game...
View ArticleA few conceptual prototyping tips
Staring at a blank canvas (or an empty doc – much like starting to write one of these posts!) can be intimidating. Once you start, it’s also easy to get sidetracked from solving the hard problems, or...
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