News

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The Selfish Story model
A model for designers and writers in developing stories for games. And how to differentiate traditional storytelling compared to games.
March 30, 2020
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Understanding LiveOps, Doing LiveOps
Trying to nail down the sometimes slippery concept of LiveOps and define what exactly it means and how it's done.
March 28, 2020
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Showcasing on Steam's Game Festival: the real numbers! 2
Luciano Iurino from Spanish dev The Troglobytes, who have Hyperparasite, their “relentless twin-stick shooter/roguelite set in the roaring ‘80s”, discussed the positive effects of having their game in the new Steam Game Festival.
March 28, 2020
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Making Games to Learn Programming with Pico-8
Making games to learn programming is both practical and fun. Almost all Pico-8 games are open source which also make it easy to get started.
March 26, 2020
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Game Discoverability: The Steam & Epic Stores, Circa Early 2020 2
And we’re back, as the world gets a little bit odder every day, with some notable game discoverability updates for the month of March, particularly looking at the Steam and Epic stores.
March 24, 2020
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LUNA The Shadow Dust developer Beidi Guo on how lore and environmental storytelling increase replayability in puzzle games
Beidi Guo of Lantern Studio discusses the team's debut title LUNA The Shadow Dust: gaming conventions; running a Kickstarter campaign; puzzle design and difficulty curve; replayability of puzzle games and how lore and backstory can improve it.
March 24, 2020
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Game Devs, The World Needs You Right Now
The world changed in the course of a week. As we lock down in an attempt to slow the spread of COVID-19, game developers have a new role in all this: to provide agency to people when they largely have none.
March 23, 2020
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Video Game Deep Cuts: Animal Crossing, Animal Crossing, DOOM 2
The latest 'best article/video' highlights include plenty of Animal Crossing neatness, plus DOOM Eternal, Roundgard, death loops, Tony Hawk & conspiracy theories, social distancing & lots more.
March 22, 2020
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Storytelling in Games: It's Dangerous to Go Alone
About the various types of disciplines a video game writer collaborates with on a day-to-day basis, and how those disciplines' perspectives impact a game's narrative and story.
March 21, 2020
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How Doom Eternal Owns the "Contrivances" of Video Games
1UPs floating in midair? Bright, colorful weapons and ammo boxes? To evolve on Doom 2016's formula, id Software's developers fully embrace the medium of video games for Doom Eternal.
March 21, 2020
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VR/AR: A Renaissance Art Form (Google Tech Talk)
An introduction to 'Interactive Empathy and Embodiment' framework, and sensory-design for game design, virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and cross reality (XR), as presented in my Google Tech Talk.
March 19, 2020
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Rethinking Progression in Mobile Puzzle Games
Dylan breaks down the saga-map progression system, why it's great for some games like Match-3s but awful for skill-based games like Bubble Shooters. He describes his implementation of a radical new model for Bubble Shooters designed specifically for them
March 19, 2020