Fri, 25 Jun 2010 14:29:02 +0000

[...] around, even if I haven’t posted here in awhile). For those of you who were following this last summer, I ran a free online course on game design. It was a fun [...]

Mon, 21 Jun 2010 02:19:10 +0000

I very much prefer the create your own gameplay style of games. GTA was my first experience with this in GTA 3. I was able to choose my own goals and set challenges for myself. There was enough interactivity in the world that I didn't even need to complete the missions. I rarely ever played a mission in GTA yet I'm sure I logged 100+ hours over the entire series. I'm playing The Sabateur at the moment and it follows a very similar methodology. I can choose to play the somewhat linear missions and complete a set of tasks set up for me by the game developer, or utilize the tools they provided me with to seek out small goals of my own. In The Sabateur you are provided with white icons on your map after you have purchased the appropriate upgrades that show you freeplay targets. These include all of the little Nazi propaganda and armor locations etc. You can set charges and destroy them earning contraband to purchase more items. I often find myself setting up my own little missions. I'll set the goal to take out Object 1 by killing Gaurd A while Gaurd B isn't looking. Then while Gaurd B is investigating the death of his neighbor I can sneak behind him and take out the Object. Sometimes several of these objects are set close together and I will try to take down the whole camp. None of this is controlled by the game itself. There is something about setting up these goals for myself that I love. I think the game would take part of the fun and exploration out of these experiences if I walked up to one of these camps and it set an objective to "destroy the camp". If I die its obvious that I failed, I don't need the game to reinforce the negative feelings associated with that. If I do destroy everything the clearing of the white dots on the map is very satisfying.

Sat, 19 Jun 2010 17:08:02 +0000

You've just inspired me to get my notepad out and design a game. I haven't done that in a couple of years -- thanks :)

Sat, 19 Jun 2010 07:36:09 +0000

I'm glad you wrote about this, because it's something that I've been nibbling around the edge of lately, and one of the reasons I'm starting to think that perhaps I may take a stab at the wild and wooly life of an indie designer once I'm done with the MFA. I've developed two habits lately, that have been generally improving both my work and my well-being. the first, is scheduling myself semi-rigid downtime into my projects. This has only worked out because I *have* been scheduling my projects. But I've found if I structure myself a 3 hours on/1 hour off cycle, I end up at my most productive. 3 hours of work, one to kick back and work on my game pile or whatever. It's been letting me just let the work mill around my brain a little, and doing other things, playing other people's games, whatever, has a chance of introducing new ideas into the process that wouldn't otherwise get there, or I have some time to sort of regroup and mull over my next problem-chunk so i have a plan in place for when I'm back to work. The other habit is doing a couple of projects in parallel. Frequently when I'm back and forth between a couple of different projects, they start cross-pollinating and solving each other's problems, or producing strange but compelling syntheses that are ultimately better than either were on their own, or any number of other useful things. I don't know that these work for other designers, but the industry at large doesn't seem to really allow for this sort of thing easily, either. Yet, at least in my case, they've been wholly useful exercises to improve my work in the long run. Not to mention I burn out less and sleep better since I started doing it. I dunno; this is what the post made me think about in my own life. I couldn't say if it's useful to the discussion at hand.

Sat, 19 Jun 2010 06:18:28 +0000

The TDD (technical design doc). It contains all the tech specs for the game. The TRC and TCR docs put out by first party stipulate the requirements that video games must have to get on particular systems, and all evolving systems (like Facebook) have similar documents.

Sat, 19 Jun 2010 06:16:32 +0000

Hi Peter, Good to hear from you and sorry it's take a while for my reply. Games have a super wide range, much like any form of art. It depends on what I want going in. I played a game called Loved tonight (http://www.kongregate.com/games/AlexanderOcias/loved), but next to me, Half Life 2 is on a machine. It's a toss up. Perhaps the way you feel now is a direction you need to pursue to see what lies ahead there for you as a designer. brenda

Thu, 17 Jun 2010 10:35:25 +0000

[...] links to a short post by John Sharp in 2009 which asks the following question: If representations of Mary are used as evidence of the [...]

Fri, 04 Jun 2010 06:44:58 +0000

[...] by the response of wide audiences; as Brenda Brathwaite pointed out in her previous blog entry, Deep Critique Without Play, critics and developers are as guilty as anyone else when it comes to trashing a game based on poor [...]

Fri, 04 Jun 2010 06:44:44 +0000

[...] game designer and games researcher Brenda Brathwaite recently posted in her blog some reflections on a once legendary developer’s contemporary “cred” being called [...]

Tue, 01 Jun 2010 07:32:35 +0000

Hi Brenda. I agree, and would like to add: a clumsy or really bad interface is even worse than stale or repetitive gameplay. Add those two up, and you have the most unforgivable combination: Repetitive gameplay, hampered by a clumsy interface. Lots of quests in games are essentially messenger tasks or "FedEx tasks" (like you wrote in one of your level design docs); they are not exactly state of the art in game design anyway, but if the game plays smoothly, they won't keep most players from enjoying it. I guess taking out the trash isn't so bad when you can use a super fast elevator to do it and then shoot the trash bag into the dumpster with a catapult. But walking down the stairs from the fourth floor with crutches and a huge trash bag, knowing that there's 20 more of them waiting in your apartment, is not what most people would consider "fun". Oh, and also I remembered an interesting article on adventure game interface design by Vince Wesselman ( http://xiigames.com/2008/07/19/why-your-game-is-broken-part-one-cursor-confusion/ ) - shows that even such a tiny little flaw as choosing and programming mouse cursors wrong can ruin a game.