Thanks to all of the great comments in the previous threads, I decided that I wanted to do one more final analysis of the entirety of Portal after the previous two articles, mainly so that I could either convince myself one way or the other regarding my theory on why GLaDOS tortures Chell (and therefore [...]

[Read more →]

Just about every game hits a point where they need to start talking about fine tuning the balance of how their combat works, and oftentimes, guns are usually brought up as the proper way to get the balance ball rolling. Normally, this is a pretty good argument to base a balancing conversation on, but [...]

[Read more →]

One of the more satisfying results of the Game Design Workshop I took was the elective for the Three Musketeers.  We were asked to come up with an alternative 3 or 4 player version of the game, one where the ruleset would remain consistent, and maintain as much of the “fiction” as possible.
For those who [...]

[Read more →]

Today was the first official conference/Expo day, and I managed to hit a few talks and walked around the show floor.
First I hit Ken Levine’s Bioshock talk, which was (in retrospect) a really amazing speech.  He discussed how he made the narrative passive in Bioshock, which forced the player to engage in it as much [...]

[Read more →]

Awhile back I mentioned that my number one rule in game design is: Gameplay is King. It will always be king. There is nothing that should ever trump it. Not the art, not the license, nothing.
Except for one thing: Jedi.
It goes without saying that Jedi are extremely popular in geek/nerdlore/culture. [...]

[Read more →]

Rock Band has moved into my #1 “must have” slot this past week. A co-worker started bringing it into the office at lunch, and we played it in one of the conference rooms on a 12 foot wide 1080p screen.
Holy Jebus.
This game seriously captures the feel of being in a band. I mean, [...]

[Read more →]