Zen Of Design

The design and business of gaming from the perspective of an experienced developer

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On Disagreeing with Scott and Kotaku Simultaneously

November 12, 2008 /

Scott seems to think that the Call of Duty boys went a little too far.  Okay, so maybe “No Fear” and “No Rules” is a bit much.  That being said…

I’m an advertising major.  When I went to school, there were no game design degrees, and when I came out of school, We were still shaking off the Bush 41 recession (funny how history repeats itself). The first thing that happens in a recession is that companies cancel their advertising contracts, because then you can cut budget without laying people off.  So no ad companies were hiring junior guys, and through just plain blind luck I got into games for a living instead of writing toothpaste jingles. Continue reading

November 4, 2008

November 4, 2008 /

I’m liberal on social issues, but fiscally conservative.  This usually pushes me towards the democrat side of things, given that they agree with me on one of those two things, whereas the modern republican party agrees with me on neither.

Still, I think there is a better reason to vote for Obama than that: to me, it is important to punish incompetence, and the GOP has been incompetent for the last eight years, between 9/11, the war, Katrina and the current financial meltdown.  If there is one thing that I’ve learned as a game designer, it is that if you reward incompetence, you only get more incompetence in return.

But don’t let me change your mind – but do vote.  I think that the 2000 election alone has proven that voting matters.

Original comments thread is here.

Designing Choice

October 19, 2008 /

A version of this article first appeared in the October 2008 issue of Game Developer magazine.

Sid Meier once said that games are a “series of interesting choices”.   I’ve always liked this definition – it speaks well to what is unique about our craft.  For all of the progress that we’ve made in graphics, audio, physics, AI, and storytelling, interactivity remains the defining feature of our genre.  And interactivity, when you think about it, just means ‘your decisions matter’.

In this light, the true job definition of the game designer becomes clear: we are tasked with creating these interesting choices.  So what makes decisions engaging?  Understanding this has the capacity to turn a shallow game experience into a deep and engaging one. Continue reading

The Long Console Wars

September 19, 2008 /

A brief console wars history.

Incidentally, we’re now nearing the 3 year milestone of this generation. How soon until the companies start talking about the next round?

And do you consider Wii the winner if it has the best selling hardware, but isn’t selling games at the same pace?

And even though PS3 is the clear loser here, does the expertise they’ve built on PS3’s hardware give them an advantage on the next generation?

Original comments thread is here.

The Psychology of “Free”

September 19, 2008 /

While at GDC, I heard a lot of people who were pitching free games that, well, aren’t. Most of them are free trials of games that hope to monetize quickly. You are only a free game if your evangelists say you are.

Free play games depend on evangelism of the players (usually kids without access to credit cards), in order to build larger and larger audiences. Free play games work by shovelling in as many customers as is humanly possible, and often get any cash at all from a very small percentage of them (I’ve heard percentages in the 1-3% range for some games). But they work because a kid says to his friend, “Yeah you can play for free!” — even if, at a certain point, the player hits a roadblock he has to pay to surpass. Continue reading

Writeups of the Endgame Talk

September 16, 2008 /

At ADGC yesterday, today and tomorrow.  Preparing for AGDC and some hard time at work is what I choose my relative lack of posting on.

Here’s a writeup of my talk. And another.  And a third. Slides can be found here.

Overall, I think it went pretty well, especially considering there was danger of Ike knocking out my power before the talk was completely done.  As it is, Ike didn’t slow things down at all.  Sunday’s release of Rock Band II, now that’s another story

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