MetaFilter posts tagged with design and game

Aspiring Animators & Game Designers, Study Your Calculus & Combinatorics

zarq — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 13:20:49 -0800

Every film Pixar has produced has landed in the top fifty highest-grossing animated films of all time. What's their secret? Mathematics. Oh, and 22 Rules of Storytelling. Dr. DeRose has recently been giving lectures about the Pixar formula ("story, concept art, modeling, rigging, shading and lighting") around the country. On Youtube: Movies, Math and Making. PDFs of his papers are archived at Pixar's website. Vimeo: Math in the Movies: Making It All Add Up

Being broken pays

the man of twists and turns — Sun, 30 Sep 2012 22:36:06 -0800

Broken on Purpose: Why Getting It Wrong Pays More Than Getting It Right - 'It doesn’t end with Facebook, either. Being broken pays off, so social media is often deliberately broken. In fact, nearly every major social network, site or app has greedily pursued this logic.' How To Read A Blog: 'When you see a blog being with "According to a tipster... ," know that the tipster was someone like me tricking the blogger into writing what I wanted.'

The "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" game

Egg Shen — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 13:13:29 -0800

How do you make a computer game out of "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream"?

Too Long; Do Read

howling fantods — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 08:22:34 -0800

The complete story of the collaboration between Asher Vollmer and Greg Wohlwend on Puzzlejuice.

"Any tips on how to go about making an entirely abstract game about squares on a grid attractive? (cc: @aeiowu )"

With that tweet, student and indie developer Asher Vollmer reached out to game developer and artist Greg Wohlwend, setting off a chain of e-mails that turned his game Puzzlejuice from summer project into smash hit. Greg took all their e-mails, which were their only form of communication, and compiled them into one epic post. It's long, very long, but it gives a unique insight into the game's evolution from programmer art phase to final polished product.

Concentration on hue and saturation

hat_eater — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 13:57:59 -0800

It's just another clever colour matching game. It seems to be getting trickier and trickier, but don't let that confuse you - it's all about matching the colours perfectly.

"For truth! For beauty! For art!"

hellojed — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 15:09:13 -0800

In 1992, influential game designer Chris Crawford left the game industry to further pursue his vision of interactive story telling. But not before giving a little speech at that year's CGDC. Topics include the future of game design, the genesis of art, and slaying dragons. Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 (previously 1, 2)

The Cruel Mathematics

hellojed — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 05:44:44 -0800

Tim Rogers has written a long piece about the evils of social gaming and the mechanics of getting players to pay for virtual items. This, in reaction to certain mechanics in the new facebook mega-game, The Sims Social, which Tim has also reviewed, calling it "A Love Letter from a Computer Virus"

A series of essays of esteemed boardgame veterans

Cogentesque — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 07:16:34 -0800

Tabletop: Analog Game Design - A commons licenced book containing a series of essays about digital and non-digital games from some esteemed boardgame veterans: "Much has been written about the videogame revolution, [...] In a scant thirty some-odd years, we’ve grown from nothing to one of the world’s largest entertainment forms, grossing tens of billions annually [...] Works that discuss the evolution of the game industry from an historical perspective generally talk about the connection between the pre-digital arcade and the earliest digital games; I’ve even heard some claim that “without the arcade, videogames would not exist.” This is, of course, bosh..." http://www.etc.cmu.edu/etcpress/content/tabletop-analog-game-design A diverse set of essays by game designers, both digital and tabletop, as well as by game studies academics. Some discuss tabletop game design, others analyze games they admire, and others talk about other things that impinge on tabletop games. Stone Librande talking about the games he designs every year as Christmas presents for his kids; Lew Pulsipher on the difficulties in designing three-player games; John Sharp on Pandemic and why most serious games suck; and Ian Schreiber has a piece on Settlers of Catan to name a few.

Dude. MOVE ALREADY.

bayani — Mon, 23 May 2011 10:45:45 -0800

"Challenge: Create a game. The game can be of any theme or genre you desire, but there is one restriction: You're creating a 'new classic,' like Chess, Tag or card games. So, create a game to be enjoyed by generations of players for a thousand years. Prize: $1,000 to the winning entrant, to be announced and awarded January 1, 2012." Daniel Solis' Thousand-Year Game Design Challenge. Game entries have been posted in the comments below the rules in the last link.

What went right and what went wrong

hellojed — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 13:03:02 -0800

For the 25th Game Developers Conference, organizers hosted several postmortems for classic games such as Out Of This World, Doom, and Maniac Mansion. They are now free to view online. Games Included are: Out of This World / Another World Doom Bejeweled Elite Maniac Mansion Marble Madness Pac-Man Pitfall! Populous Prince of Persia Raid on Bungeling Bay

Man, I thought they were just cribbing from D&D...

juv3nal — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 11:59:37 -0800

"We put in a level system because that led you out of the class system," he says. "There was nothing stopping you from going up a level because you were a girl, or because you were slightly socially inept, or because you are from the North of England. It was a kind of meritocracy where everybody could succeed." Richard Bartle talks about the design of the original MUD. Some background: Richard Bartle, the first MUD, & MUDs on wikipedia. Richard Bartle previously.

Bad Game Designer, No Twinkie!

Joe Beese — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 12:51:08 -0800

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.

What's in a game?

ersatz — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 16:38:32 -0800

What can one learn from the design choices of past games? John Harris discusses different game aspects, 20 games at a time, at Game Design Essentials. You can read on 20 Open World Games (where generally the player is left to his own devices to explore a large world), see your destroyed controllers in a new light with 20 Difficult Games or check out 20 Mysterious Games (that rely on algorithmically-generated content or emphasize secret-hunting), 20 Unusual Control Schemes and 20 Atari Games. What about roguelikes, you say? Harris also maintains a column called @Play at GameSetWatch, discussing old and new roguelikes. And if that wets your appetite for some Nethack, but you prefer having graphics and mouse control in your games, the most recent post might help. On the other hand, if you don't care about such novelties, an interview with the developer of Dwarf Fortress (previously) may be of interest. The games are chosen for their instructive qualities and general interest, not to compare them using a meaningless yardstick. They're here because I could illustrate something important using them as examples. Older games tend to have more elemental designs, presenting their mechanics strongly rather than submersing them between a sea of what a game is "supposed to be." This is particularly useful for explaining and highlighting design conventions.

magic places

dhruva — Mon, 05 May 2008 23:19:04 -0800

The incredible landscapes of game designer Daniel Dociu.

Tryangle

Cecily — Thu, 01 Dec 2005 16:23:23 -0800

Tryangle cannot be defined, but it's way fun. Use it to easily create angular art pieces, then share your creation with the teeming masses on the Tryangle Flickr pool.

Game design essays

Tlogmer — Fri, 23 Sep 2005 07:26:20 -0800

A whole bunch of great game design essays.

Well, you know, we all want to change the world.

Fourmyle — Thu, 15 Sep 2005 21:47:21 -0800

You say you want a Revolution? This morning at the Tokyo Game Show, Nintendo President Satoru Iwata unveiled the unique controller for the company's upcoming video game console, code named Revolution. Legendary game designer Shigeru Miyamoto demonstrated the device to the press with a series of hands-on demos. While no full games have yet been shown on the system, the controller offers many possibilities for novel, accessible, and compelling game experiences.

Saaay, aren't you?

Smedleyman — Thu, 04 Aug 2005 06:59:06 -0800

I always thought Bruce Campbell would be perfect to play the guy from Doom. And yeah, Howie Long is a dead ringer for Duke Nukem. But looking at how much Mr. T looks like Barrett from Final Fantasy 7 and Winona Ryder looks like Vice from King of Fighters I have to wonder how much of this is on purpose? Of course there are the exceptions.

Evil Pupil.

Joey Michaels — Mon, 09 Sep 2002 03:58:10 -0800

Evil Pupil. A game? A work of art? Something entirely different? Welcome to the weirdly beautiful world of Quebecois Interweb designer Yohan Gingras. You can click and drag various elements on nearly all of his pages (I recommend "Evil Pupil / V.2" as a starting point) to discover, well, new things to click and drag. Just don't ask him what you are supposed to do or he will call you a dumbass.