Game Design

In a time when women are increasingly prominent in fields such as medicine, law and business, why are there so few women scientists and engineers? The situation in Science, Math, Engineering, and Technology fields has prompted a variety of investigations into how we might best...

24 May, 2011

The Indiecade call for submissions is OUT! Submit your game(s) as soon as possible and spread the word Submissions for the 2011 IndieCade Festival are now open! IndieCade is awesome, for it is the only stand-alone international festival of independent games out there. The festival showcases...

03 May, 2011
I've been thinking about this post about Chris Trottier's gameplay models as well as my own experience with casual games in general and Facebook games more specifically. It has become reasonably clear, zeitgeist-wise, that at least the perceived demographic for most Facebook games is the mom demographic.  For many casual games as well (I'm willing to bet that is a big reason for the otherwise inexplicable rise of the "hidden object game."  Highlights magazine is really sad they didn't pioneer that genre and make a mint.)
17 March, 2011
Brian Green (Psychochild) has a recent post over at his place about why he might be changing his mind about the possibilities of User-Generated Content that I think contains a very strong idea: that of [player] intent, and I think it relates strongly to something I’ve been talking about, including this post. I think here it is worth dividing up two concepts that I have been lumping together somewhat: -> dynamic or malleable content being content that is provided exclusively by the game designers and developers but which can be affected in direction or nature by the players.  An example might be the morality systems present in a few games; at its most basic level this could be represented by the kinds of choose-your-own-adventure systems we’ve seen here and there.
08 March, 2011

Naomi Clark and I had a remarkably reasonable discussion in the comments section here the other day, and I've been mulling over it since.  The gist being I was saying I didn't really see the point of describing labor mechanics as a specific thing, and...

03 March, 2011

...in my opinion, little to none of it good.  For the moment, I just want to point out this little gem from Worlds In Motions blog coverage of the "Is The Word 'Gamification' as Stupid as It Seems?" debate at GDC: "[Jesse] Schell spoke at the...

02 March, 2011

Raph Koster has [as usual, certainly] summed up a fair bit about social gaming in his GDC presentation. I wasn’t there, and so I didn’t get to hear it, only read it.  I like that the main additions to his Austin version were to point...

28 February, 2011