by Will Hindmarch | Dec 18, 2009 | Design, RPGs, Story, Video Games
Jordan Mechner is among my favorite game designers, not least because I dig the way he integrates stories into gameplay. I played the original Prince of Persia and the later reinvention, The Sands of Time, over and over again, sometimes to sample the story again and...
by Will Hindmarch | Nov 20, 2009 | Story, Video Games, Writing
“Valve’s got a great process. They run through it. They iterate like crazy on stuff. They throw stuff away when it doesn’t work. They find ways to rapidly prototype. I think everything else in games gets iterated a gazillion bazillion times. When I...
by Jeff Tidball | Nov 9, 2009 | Conventions, Story
This past weekend, I was a guest at Nanocon, a convention put on by the gaming club at Dakota State University. As part of the gig, I gave a presentation and did Q&A, along with fellow guests Richard Dansky and Chris Sims, on Friday afternoon. Many of the people...
by Jeff Tidball | Oct 29, 2009 | RPGs, Story
Back in April, I bookmarked a Mark Waid post at Kung Fu Monkey about false suspense in fiction. By false suspense, he means… The kind of “suspense” that disintegrates the moment you give your reader one second to think about it. … The only reader who might...
by Jeff Tidball | Oct 1, 2009 | RPGs, Story
An iconic ethos implies both action and motivation, and is thus an ideal tool for defining player characters in roleplaying games. You guys all read Robin every day, right?
by Jeff Tidball | Sep 17, 2009 | MMOs, Story
In the comments on my post “The Point of Levels and Experience,” Helmsman ended his insightful comment with this: “So I guess my question is, what is it you’re really after in an MMO?” First, a disclaimer: As a distinct type of game,...
