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This post has two goals. One, I want to share with you something amazing; a thing that according to most views of the tech universe should not exist. Two, I want to talk about a coming revolution in application design.
Lost Garden: Ribbon Hero turns learning Office into a game
Plagiarism is defined in dictionaries as the "wrongful appropriation," "close imitation," or "purloining and publication" of another author's "language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions," and the representation of them as one's own original work, but the notion remains problematic with nebulous boundaries. The modern concept of plagiarism as immoral and originality as an ideal emerged in Europe only in the 18th century, particularly with the Romantic movement, while in the previous centuries authors and artists were encouraged to "copy the masters as closely as possible" and avoid "unnecessary invention. The 18th century new morals have been institutionalized and enforced prominently in the sectors of academia and journalism, where plagiarism is now considered academic dishonesty and a breach of journalistic ethics, subject to sanctions like expulsion and other severe career damage... If you follow these patterns, you are likely a plagiarist.
Lost Garden
On a cool, clear Austin weekend, a group of experienced game designers gathered for their yearly retreat . At night they swapped stories of an industry in turmoil. As social games and mobile games rewrite the landscape, power struggles between business and design dominate and designers find themselves being sidelined or abused. And the products they work on suffer horribly as a result. It is a time when musty old assumptions are questioned.
Lost Garden: The Declaration of Game Designer Independence
Michael Jungbluth's Blog - Adding Weight to Your Game Design Part 1: Squash & Stretch
Weight is a physical and emotional sensation that people feel everyday. And conveying that in a visual way can be incredibly challenging. But it is something animators do all the time, and the principles they use can be applied to game design. In fact, it needs to be, as many of these principles are sacrificed by the animator for the good of playability. Thankfully, since both animators and designers have to juggle multiple disciplines to bring their creations to life, they speak much of the same language. They just use a slightly different alphabet.
The Game Maker's Companion
So here we are, about to embark on another journey into the world of game development. You may have joined us last time in The Game Maker’s Apprentice: Game Development for Beginners (Apress, 2006), or perhaps you taught yourself the basics of Game Maker under your own steam. Either way, we invite you to dust off your trusty keyboard and loosen up your mouse-arm as you join us in The Game Maker’s Companion . The path ahead is an exciting one and we have a host of new challenges in store to enhance your skills as a game developer.
WebGL playground is a straightforward idea: type in your WebGL script and see the results. But the cool part is that the editor and the results are just on the same page and that you get a handful of features that make your life easier.... Read More » | 0 Comments
GameDev.net
Current Rules Master List
Fight Player Fatigue Games are a challenge, and playing takes effort — actively work to keep the player involved, and make sure the appeal of your game always exceeds its difficulty. (The Flow idea, where the designer neatly guides players between boredom & frustration, is a subset of this rule.) Make Subgames Players want to participate in the course they take through your game -- so give them plenty of opportunities to voluntarily take up ancillary challenges Provide Clear Short-Term Goals
Even great games can include design errors. Here’s a list of things not to do. These are all the Twinkie Denial Conditions described in my “Bad Game Designer, No Twinkie!” Designer’s Notebook columns . Each one is an egregious design error, although many of them have appeared in otherwise great games. I’ve organized them into general categories.
The No Twinkie Database!
The videogame equivalent of “ show, don’t tell “ is often said to be “ do , don’t show .” It’s good advice, and when applied it can make for some very powerful experiences, e.g., Braid’s ending . Unfortunately, it’s also a difficult guideline. Gameplay elements are rarely designed with narrative in mind.
Significant Bits
Features - Lifting The Designer's Curse
[ Relic Entertainment studio design director Alexandre Mandryka outlines a framework for looking at how game design is handled, which he argues will both allow the discipline to grow in value and expertise while ensuring it serves the needs of projects .] Over my 10 years in the video game industry as a designer, including three years as studio design director for Ubisoft Montreal, I've had the opportunity to collaborate on numerous projects from different companies and cultures. While visuals and programming are better controlled, difficulty in anticipating, analyzing, and generally understanding the added value resulting from game design persists.
"The intrinsic reward for knifing dudes is knifing dudes." I waded into the debate on game achievements with my lecture at the 2010 Game Developers Conference titled Achievements Considered Harmful? , with a strong emphasis on the " ?
Achievements Considered Harmful? - Chris Hecker's Website
“THE PRESIDENT HAS BEEN KIDNAPPED BY NINJAS! ARE YOU A BAD ENOUGH DUDE TO SAVE THE PRESIDENT?” To our younger readers, that might read like the text to a nonsensical animated .gif posted on a message board, but there was a time when that was all the story a game needed (in this case, the arcade classic Bad Dudes).