Highlighted Posts
Sponsored by:
Categories
Articles by Author
Keep In Touch
Category Archives: Design
Beginner’s Luck and Expert’s Intuition
We’ve all grouped with great healers. It’s not really very hard to be a great healer: just keep track of all the little health meters and make sure nobody dies. But have you ever been in a group where the … Continue reading
Posted in Design
3 Comments
Joust is Not Coming Back
One hard lesson that new developers have to learn is that not all game difficulty is equally fun. Some types of difficulty are perceived as fair, but other types are perceived as unfair… or worse, buggy. The classics can teach … Continue reading
Posted in Design
16 Comments
There Shouldn’t Be A Signup Form
When I buy a AAA game from the store, I have a vested interest in liking the game. I’ve plonked $60 down for it, so there’s less of a chance I’ll abandon it just because the installer is annoying, or … Continue reading
Posted in Design
15 Comments
Don’t Reverse Your Conventions After Six Years
I’ve been fascinated with Cataclysm, the latest World of Warcraft expansion, since I first heard about it. In many ways this expansion is a live team’s dream: an opportunity to fix the whole goddamned mess that the previous teams have … Continue reading
Posted in Design
11 Comments
How To Balance an MMO, And How To Stop
Can you perfectly predict the weather? No, because it’s too complex — the “chaos factor” makes it impossible to perfectly predict. The same holds true of the balance of any modern MMO. This may be surprising. We create every aspect … Continue reading
Posted in Design
9 Comments
Being Aware of Genre Conventions
It is December of 2002, and Asheron’s Call 2 has been launched for a month. It is already clear that the game is not going to be a huge success, but I still want to work on it. I have … Continue reading
Posted in Design
26 Comments
This is How Systems Designers Think
I make fun of systems designers a lot because I am one. I wear a lot of hats, and I actually love to code, but deep down, it’s all about the game systems. People who think like me are really … Continue reading
Posted in Design
7 Comments
Deathtrap Design and the Invisible Gorilla
It was a viral video going around for a while — the Invisible Gorilla experiment. (If you never saw it, you can watch it here… the rest of this blog-post is a spoiler!) (Although to be fair, just saying the … Continue reading
Posted in Design
34 Comments
Indie Games, Prototyping, and Fun Finding
Our indie MMORPG development continues! Together, Sandra and I are able to put about 20 hours a week toward the game, which isn’t much, but makes continuous progress. It’s coming along well, and it’s been very exciting to get past … Continue reading
Posted in Design
15 Comments
Fun Verbs First, Problems Second
Blizzard has been revealing newly-revised classes recently. The Priest has a new power that sounds pretty fun: Leap of Faith (level 85): Pull a party or raid member to your location. Leap of Faith (or “Life Grip”) is intended to … Continue reading
Posted in Design
7 Comments
