Tag Archives: design

On The Max Payne Franchise

Posted on 05/14/2013 by

I’m in that weird interstitial period between semesters, and I have somehow managed to keep deadlines at bay enough to do something that I’ve wanted to do since last November: play all of the Max Payne games back-to-back-to-back. What follows is a … Continue reading →

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Preliminary Thoughts on The Knife of Dunwall

Posted on 04/18/2013 by

I’ve played through roughly half of the first “stage” or “chapter” or “section” or whatever the hell it is called in the new DLC for Dishonored called ”The Knife of Dunwall“. My main interest in this DLC stems from the fact that it … Continue reading →

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In Praise of the Worst Design Moment in Final Fantasy 7

Posted on 09/20/2012 by

Final Fantasy 7. Cloud, Tifa, and Barret have to save Aeris from Shinra. To do so, they have to make their way from the lower level of two-tiered Midgar to the top of “the plate.” The plate hangs over the lower … Continue reading →

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Designing Horror: All Of Our Friends Are Dead

Posted on 09/12/2012 by

An explanation of the “Designing Horror” series. Game: All of Our Friends Are Dead by Amon26 1. Why Is It Horror? This game is horror because it slaps an aesthetic onto a shooter frame. There is a focus on scrambled … Continue reading →

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A Design Interview with Edmund McMillen

Posted on 06/18/2012 by

Edmund McMillen, one half of Team Meat, posted an interview that he did at some point in the past to his blog this weekend. It is an hour and a half long, which is pretty long, but he also touches … Continue reading →

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On Rise of the Videogame Zinesters

Posted on 04/11/2012 by

I finally got around to reading Anna Anthropy’s Rise of the Videogame Zinesters over the past week. I liked the book. That should come as no surprise. I have written extensively about the power that video games have to erode our … Continue reading →

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Tim Cain’s GDC 2012 Talk: Fallout

Posted on 04/09/2012 by

I’m not sure who this post is for, really, but I think that someone might get some use out of it, so I am going to make it. Tim Cain, one of the design and programming leads on one of the … Continue reading →

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A Thing We Do With Video Games

Posted on 03/27/2012 by

I read Ian Bogost’s How To Do Things With Video Games on a plane last weekend. I think it is a really smart book that acts as a really great introduction to video game studies, and more particularly, I think … Continue reading →

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On the Efficacy of Design “Truth Teams”

Posted on 03/18/2012 by

At a SXSW panel last week, Matthew Armstrong of Gearbox talked about how video game testing should really be. Griffin McElroy at Vox wrote what appears to be the “definitive” article on the panel, and you should check it out … Continue reading →

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What Do Gamers Want to Feel?

Posted on 03/15/2012 by

This week has been pretty busy, and next week I will be in the Seattle area all week, so if the post quality drops a little, don’t hate me. I am just busy, and a 5-a-week, original-content blog is a … Continue reading →

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