Make Games
Raph's Website
Ludology.org (Gonzalo Frasca)
Dirty Coding Tricks
[When the schedule is shot and a game needs to ship, programmers may employ some dirty coding tricks to get the game out the door. In an article originally published in Gamasutra sister publication Game Developer magazine earlier this year, here are nine real-life examples of just that.] Programmers are often methodical and precise beasts who do their utmost to keep their code clean and pretty. But when the chips are down, the perfectly-planned schedule is shot, and the game needs to ship, "getting it done" can win out over elegance. In a case like this, a frazzled and overworked programmer is far more likely to ignore best practices, and hack in a less desirable solution to get the game out the door. - Brandon Sheffield [If any readers have any dirty coding tricks of their own to share, please email them to Brandon Sheffield at bsheffield@gdmag.com. Around four years ago I was working as a programmer on a multiplatform PlayStation 2, Xbox, and GameCube release. - Mark Cooke "Ship it!"
DiGRA | Digital Games Research Association
L’histoire des jeux vidéo : sexe, drogue et armes à feu
Olivier Mauco, docteur en science politique, s’attaque dans cet ouvrage aux questions politiques et morales qui font souvent l'objet de controverses dans l’industrie du jeu vidéo. Sa position de consultant et de game designer, mais également de joueur, lui confère une place de choix pour traiter de ces problématiques : l’auteur, à la manière des « aca-fans » est impliqué et distancié dans sa recherche. Cette analyse diachronique et évolutive de l’histoire politique des jeux vidéo en France se place du côté des industries créatives, des récepteurs, mais également des médias (généralistes et spécialisés). Ce triple terrain permet de confronter les points de vue et de dessiner les contours de mise en place de régulations, et des enjeux sous-jacents qui ne sont pas toujours dans l’intérêt des joueurs. Dès l’apparition et la commercialisation des premiers jeux vidéo et des consoles de salon, la publicité a joué un rôle dans la perception par le grand public de ces produits de divertissement.
Evolve Your Hierarchy
Refactoring Game Entities with Components Up until fairly recent years, game programmers have consistently used a deep class hierarchy to represent game entities. The tide is beginning to shift from this use of deep hierarchies to a variety of methods that compose a game entity object as an aggregation of components. This article explains what this means, and explores some of the benefits and practical considerations of such an approach. I will describe my personal experience in implementing this system on a large code base, including how to sell the idea to other programmers and management. Different games have different requirements as to what is needed in a game entity, but in most games the concept of a game entity is quite similar. Some example entities: MissileCarTankGrenadeGunHeroPedestrianAlienJetpackMed-kitRock Entities can usually do various things. As development progresses, we usually need to add various points of functionality to the entities. Why so long? Resources
Game-Studies.fr - Game Studies à la française Game-Studies.fr
Action Adventure Level Design: Kung Fu Zombie Killer
[This is the second part of a three-part series of articles by veteran designer and Lara Croft/Tomb Raider creator Toby Gard, dealing with level design in action adventure games. Part 1 described Level Flow Diagrams, which act as the core of the level brief provided to a team by the leads. Part 2 describes a process of expanding that brief into a detailed level plan of the awesomely named Kung Fu Zombie Killer.] This stage of the process is most often carried out by a cross-discipline team of designers, artists and coders, who will expand the level brief into a detailed level plan, but this process can equally be the next step that an individual designer takes when designing a level solo. Delegation and teamwork are vital given the scale of modern console development. The current trend is towards agile development whereby scrums are given ownership of individual problems. The psychology goes this way: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. There are two potential solves to this: 1. 2.
Game UI By Example: A Crash Course in the Good and the Bad
How easy is it for your player to put their intention into action, or to understand what's going on in your game? In this tutorial, you'll learn how to build a better game UI by examining both good and bad examples from existing games, and end up with a checklist of questions to guide you through designing them. As gamers and game developers we know that immersion is everything. When you're immersed you lose track of time and become involved in what the game is presenting. A major factor in what makes or breaks immersion is how easy it is for your player to convert an idea into an in-game action -- that is, how fluid your game's User Experience (UX) is and how well-designed its User Interface (UI) is. A game hurts itself by providing too little information or too much, requiring too many inputs, confusing the player with unhelpful prompts or making it hard for a new player to interact. A composited screenshot from Honey Bee Match 3. So what makes Oblivion's UI so bad? Really helpful.
Game Studies - Home
Welcome to the official site of the ICA Game Studies Division (GSD)! The study of games and the game experience offers opportunities for the study of human communication that involve multidisciplinary approaches that merge the disciplines of conventional communication studies and research, arts and visual design, cognitive studies, computer sciences, cultural studies, engineering social sciences, health sciences, and information design. Although the common ground for the Game Studies Division is digital and video games, the group encompasses a broad range of inquiry topics and methods. The group serves as fertile meeting ground for the exchange of ideas among a very broad spectrum of disciplines and hosts a number of activities at ICA's annual conference. As the 2015 ICA Puerto Rico conference has passed, the Division is not actively accepting paper or panel proposals. Join us! Recent News Call For Papers - Game Studies Special Issue: “WAR/GAME”
Ludology Episode 79: The Magic Circle | Ludology
United StatesCambridgeMassachusetts A really excellent episode with some of the most interesting ideas about games that there are. The discussion of the sociologist who studied children playing marbles raised a few ideas. This made me think that there various different ways which people understand the role of players in keeping the rules of the game which would influence what games would work in those contexts. A different standard would be that each of us is responsible for 'policing' our own self, and making sure we don't cheat. Just a thought.
CompoHub
Game Studies 2015
Self-Reflexivity and Humor in Adventure Games by Krista Bonello Rutter Giappone This article focuses on the “adventure game” genre, its metafictional humor, and tendency towards self-parody in both its formative stage and its more recent ensuing nostalgic turn, with particular reference to Zork (Infocom, 1980), LucasArts’ Monkey Island games (1990-2000), and Telltale’s parodic-nostalgic “Reality 2.0” (Sam and Max, 2007). [more] The Demarcation Problem in Multiplayer Games: Boundary-Work in EVE Online's eSport by Marcus Carter, Martin Gibbs, Michael Arnold Informal rules are fundamental to multiplayer game play. Me and Lee: Identification and the Play of Attraction in The Walking Dead by Nicholas Taylor, Chris Kampe, Kristina Bell This micro-ethnographic account of gameplay in The Walking Dead examines the shifting nature of players’ relationship with Lee Everett, the game’s protagonist. No Mastery Without Mystery: Dark Souls and the Ludic Sublime by Daniel Vella Book Reviews Call for Papers
