Does 'games as art' have to mean 'games as metaphor'?
I may as well open the writing here with a fairly weighty topic! Comments welcomed. In recent times there has been growing recognition of “games as art”, a term which is necessarily as vague as the...
View ArticleDissecting a 'simple' game
Apologies in advance for the length of this entry; there’s a short summary in the last paragraph if you’re pressed for time! A few weeks ago, in a moment of extreme boredom, I stopped to watch the...
View ArticlePitfalls of using wikis for game design documents
I recently made a post on this issue over at Gamedev.net, and thought I’d clean it up a bit to post over here, as I think it’s worth talking about. Designers are often looking for new and better ways...
View ArticleCrossover games and explaining them to the audience
This post is long overdue, for which I apologise. I hope to resume a more regular service before the year is out! There’s a post on Penny Arcade from a few weeks back which is complaining that a...
View ArticleUnderstanding what facilitates meaningful strategy in games
Often we invent games by taking an existing game that works and adding a twist to it, or changing some aspect of its behaviour or theme to something different. But how would we create a game from...
View ArticleThe importance of abstraction
(Long time, no post. I could start by explaining and making excuses, but no – let’s get down to business.) From the late 90s to the present day, many commercial games have been focused on some sort of...
View ArticleThe 10 Games You Should Have Played
This is a belated response to Brian’s post (which is a response to Adam’s post).I’m going to speak as a designer rather than a gamer, and list some titles which I think teach us something about game...
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