• My biggest coding takeaway

    Hours Categories Game talk
    Comments 11 Comments

    Rigid programming philosophies are the devil.

    Look, I am upfront about the fact that I am not an amazing programmer. I am not even a really competent one. I hack. I didn’t go through a CS degree, I don’t actually know a lot of the lingo, etc.

    On the other hand, I have in fact been credited as a programmer on published games. I have programmed in quite a lot of languages, I prototype my own stuff regularly, and my name is on several technical patents. I seem to have a knack for seeing architectural solutions to problems, and for inventing technical solutions. (I generally prefer to partner with a genius coder for the actual implementation thereof — and have been lucky enough to work with many of them!).

    So take everything I am about to say with the appropriate grain of salt.

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  • Making games more cheaply

    Hours Categories Game talk
    Comments 31 Comments

    There are basically two big things that drive a lack of innovation in games.

    The first of them is risk minimization. The second of them is risk minimization.

    The reason I say “two” is because some forms of mitigating risk are undertaken with intentionality: purposely making a game that is a clone, for example. This isn’t always a bad thing — sure, sometimes it is done in order to capitalize on a market trend, but other times it’s done to learn how a given genre works, and in that scenario it’s a common and vital tool in a designer’s toolbox.

    But this post is about the second sort of risk mitigation, which primarily centers around the fact that as games get more ornate, they get more expensive to make. High upfront costs push you naturally and inevitably towards incremental changes, with the biggest risks being taken on content rather than game systems. This is a pattern that leads inevitably towards “genre kings” — and the stage after genre kings tends to be stagnation and loss of audience reach.

    So how can we as an industry keep costs down? Well, here’s my take, somewhat more elaborated from my now long-ago presentation on “Moore’s Wall.”

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  • Good design, Bad design, Great design

    Hours Categories Game talk
    Comments 17 Comments

    Good design is familiar.
    Bad design is boring.
    Great design is exciting.

    Good design embraces human nature.
    Bad design exploits human nature.
    Great design is humane and humanistic.

    Good design guides.
    Bad design controls.
    Great design invites.

    Good design drives habit.
    Bad design drives frustration.
    Great design drives passion.
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  • Rules versus mechanics

    Hours Categories Game talk
    Comments 15 Comments

    Ian Schreiber posted on Twitter asking

    Game designers: in your everyday use of the terms, is there a difference between “rules” and “mechanics”? If so, what?

    I do make the distinction, and I had to think a bit about how to even phrase it. So here’s a quick thousand+ words on it. 🙂

    First off, I think these are both terms that will feel different to a player vs a designer.

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  • The Sunday Song: Alice

    Hours Categories Music
    Comments 8 Comments

    I wrote this song quite a long time ago, for one of my favorite webcomics, entitled Alice! The comic hasn’t updated since 2006, but I actually own the print collection that was available for a while. The vibe of it was somewhere between Peanuts and Calvin & Hobbes — except it was about an overimaginative teen or tween girl. Glancing at it now, it makes me think of my daughter, who similarly dives into roleplaying and doesn’t come out for days.

     

    An Alice comic strip
    An Alice comic strip

    – download

     

    The tablature and sheet music have actually been posted up for ages and ages in the Music section of the site. It’s in standard tuning, but uses a partial capo on the 4th fret covering only three of the strings — strings 3, 4, and 5, numbered from the high E as the first string.

    Hope you like it!