Gulp! – You swallowed 40,000 times.
I hate Achievements. If there was an XBOX 360 setting where you could turn off Achievements for all games then I would choose it. But there isn't, and you're stuck with them and I hate them. There are three main…
Games – Art vs Product
This medium is still maturing away from the purely technical games design (racing games, RTS, sports simulations etc), away from the cliched, pulpy, teenage male wish fulfilment stories (FPS, pretty much any Japanese RPG) and it has a long way…
Cat’s cradle
Just a wee update – something to bear in mind for your string table. For those unsure what a string table is, essentially it's an excel spreadsheet file that contains all the text strings used in your game in all…
Why I stopped playing online FPSs
I can’t wait for Team Fortress 2. Not just because Team Fortress Classic was the first (and only) game I played online in a clan (team FuS ftw!) and not just because it was superbly balanced (when various exploits were…
A little slice of reality
Like 2/3 of PC or XBOX 360 owners, I'm playing BioShock at the moment. I'm not going to review it or anything, other than to say I'm having fantastic fun apart from the occasional and rather severe System Shock 2…
“Explicit” games
The player moves carefully through the undergrowth, but there seem to be no enemies nearby. Suddenly the sky lights up a ghastly green as a bright globule of light pierces the evening sky. A sound like a thousand horses screaming…
The Carnival is in town!
The First Carnival of Game Production over at Gameproducer.net has been published, with eight articles being picked, including one of mine! Go have a look, the other articles are: How one man made an MMO: an interview with Gene Endrody.…
Control… interrupted.
Been evaluating a game recently and it really makes you realise how important the little things are. Also makes you realise that it is almost impossible to think of everything in one go – don't think the first draft of…
Carnival of game production
From one of my favourite blogs at GameProducer.net. They're holding a Carniveal of game production where you can enter your blog articles on anything related to game production/design etc. See the link below for more details. Haven't a clue what…
Learn to love your level designers!
There is no element that goes into creating a game that is so dependant on the people doing it as level design. Yes the programmers have to make the game work as you intend it to: movement systems, combat systems,…