A few months ago, I posted a thread on /r/gamedesign about how we should make 2017 a year with more game design blogging. Since then, a few Dinofarm Forums members have talked about starting up a game design writing career (or re-starting one). The last few days have had a huge uptick in interesting, quality …
What are the criteria that make something a good “Clockwork Game”? The Clockwork Game Design model is something I have been working on for the last five years or so. It is specifically an effort to figure out how to make the most elegant and effective strategy games possible. There are certainly practical reasons why …
Clockwork Criteria: 6 Guidelines for Ideal Strategy Game Design Read More »
One thing to think about when designing a game is trying to figure out what “degree of virtuosity” you want to allow. I mean this in a bit of a prescriptive way, which I’ll explain. Some games offer you a huge number of possible choices per “turn” or per “moment”. Having a high degree of …
Let’s start from scratch. You’re a game designer. How can my work help you? If you’re the kind of designer who wants to tell a good story, create a lush immersive atmosphere, express a social value, or just embrace the latest in graphics technology… this article – and most of my game design-specific work – …
I have described the four essential “forms” of interactive entertainment, based on four distinct values that these four types of play produce. You can get a more in-depth introduction on these forms by reading this, but I’ll quickly break it down here. First, you start off with a “bare interactive system” – this is an …
In Episode 6 of the Clockwork Game Design Podcast, I had a discussion with Richard Terrell (@KirbyKid) that was largely about the game design discussion itself. People may not know, that we had a discussion about three years ago, and back then, I think we both thought that we could just dive right into the …
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