“Gaming” can mean many different things; for example, the American Gaming Association has, as their purpose, “Building a better understanding of casino entertainment through education and advocacy”. On this blog, of course, I mostly talk about computer games, or occasionally dice-and-pencil games like Dungeons & Dragons. I’ve been seeing some articles recently about how games [...]

Games can be thought of as tests that require physical ability, mental insight or time.

Failure is not a bad thing because it helps people learn. The problem is that sometimes people fail in such a way that you really have to question how they’re thinking; sometimes you just feel like their entire way of thinking has to be torn down and started from scratch. In this blog post I’ll go through the various ways that Braid failed, and what made me angry enough to want to punch someone.

Games involve social contracts between the designer and the player(s).

This might work as a Flash game or a console game; it requires multiplayer. The idea is that it’s an ordinary racing game, say like Burnout, Gran Turismo et al..  Or it could be a simpler top-down game like 4×4 Off Road or even RC Pro-Am way back in the NES days.  There is one [...]

Certain games allow players to customize aspects of their character or in-game situation.  Consider Cosmic Encounter; each player has a special power representing their particular alien species.  Classically these powers are randomly selected, in the form of cards dealt out to the players at the beginning of each game.  Of course, some play groups might [...]

I recently had a bit of an insight into game design.  Perhaps it’s something that other people know about, but I’ve never heard it articulated before.  In any case, it’s important enough to me that I’ve started thinking of it as “the Chaoseed Principle”. (Because this is my blog, so why not?) First, let’s think [...]

Equipment.  Why do games have it?  Is it to give the fantasy a bit more realism, or at least plausibility?  Is it because all the other games have it?  The truth is that there are solid design reasons to have equipment in your game.  However, it’s possible some developers don’t even know the good reasons, [...]

After writing my previous article on leveraging user-created content, I’ve been thinking about the subject some more.  I had one more insight I felt I should share.  But first let’s back up a bit… A lot of times in games you work with sets of data.  Data is just information, 1s and 0s, the contents [...]

I recently picked up Zoo Tycoon: Complete Collection in the bargain bin and I’m having fun with it.  I love games where you get to create and develop things, and Zoo Tycoon does its job well.  (It has isometric 2D instead of 3D, which means less processor load, brighter colors and more visibility!)  However, playing [...]