There are those among us who feel games are becoming increasingly predictable – a marketing dominated creative process where developers simply take elements from other successful games, try to throw in some token new thing and call it a day. So I thought I’d just throw out some slightly different ideas, just for the hell …
Archive for the ‘Designer’s Toilet’ Category
Game Concepts – Great ideas of Genius
Thursday, September 10th, 2009 by simonA Tale of Two Revivals
Monday, November 10th, 2008 by christianLately Capcom has been one of the best all around publishers in the business. Their games have mostly been of high quality, and time and again they prove that they listen to and want to please their fanbase. The strange twist to all of this is that Capcom is legendary for relying on sequels …
A design element that deserves to die: The time limit
Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008 by bruceAhh, our old enemy the time limit. Is there a lazier way for a designer to increase the difficulty of a game?
The latest object of my scorn due to this lazy design element is Star Fox Command on the Nintendo DS. Before you get to the Star Fox part of the Star Fox game, you …
Pieces of a Perfect Game: Koei’s arduous slip into mediocrity
Monday, August 13th, 2007 by chrisGood strategy games can be hard to come by on consoles. The only company that reliably produces games in the genre is Koei, and, as I’ve noted before, their recent track record is not so good.
Koei is now widely known for their willingness to recycle old work in …
What happened to competition? From arcades to gamerscores
Monday, June 25th, 2007 by christianRemember high scores. You don’t see them around very much, though they still pop up in some of my favorite new games. But why exactly did they begin to disappear? We generally hear explanations involving the rise of story based games and other such nonsense, but when three of the most popular …
Fillet Mignon with a side of Pork Rinds: Awesome games and their stupid minigames
Monday, June 18th, 2007 by golden jewThe average gamer supposedly plays 7.8 hours a week. That’s an ESA study so I think they rounded down to make gamers seem less crazy. Other studies show more like 20-30 hours a week, which makes more sense to me. For us hardcore gamers, I’m sure the number would …
Some thoughts on “presentation”
Tuesday, June 12th, 2007 by mattI don’t want to brag, but when I’m not writing fantastic and thought-provoking articles on vl, I spend the rest of my time as a game designer at a video game company (which is awesome, btw). And as such, I try to expand my knowledge on the subject of game design as much as …
Turning up the difficulty
Monday, May 7th, 2007 by christianIn my last column I talked about mindless games and whether such a concept actually makes sense. Today, we talk about something else that stems from this debate. Usually when I read a review of a “mindless” game that I myself have played, the first thing to come to me is not “they’re …
Lost in Space: Looking for a worthy 4X Game
Monday, March 5th, 2007 by golden jewI love the 4X genre. It’s most likely a combination of the fact that I’m a huge geek and love space, and the fact I was beat up a lot in middle school and high school and didn’t kiss a whole lot of girls back then (see the first two reasons of my 4X love …
Our favorite game settings
Wednesday, February 14th, 2007 by the gangIf a game has a good setting, you don’t forget it. You may even end up referring to it as if it were a real place – “I wonder what the weather’s like in Midgar this time of year…” However, setting hasn’t really been a prevalent factor in our games until the modern consoles, both …
