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Danc at Lost Garden has another take on the utility (or lack thereof) of game reviews in today's gaming landscape, this one looking at the 'expertise bias.' He points out the disparity between reviewers and players when it comes to looking at new games — especially ones that have a gentle difficulty curve. His basic operating premise is that because game reviewers have plowed through so many titles and mechanics, they're looking at 'difficulty' in an entirely different light than vast portions of the audience. What will the future look like? He posits observation of other players is going to become increasingly important to developers, and if reviews can't keep up with that, they will really fall by the wayside: More »
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I do love Lost Garden's prototyping challenge, though I will never in my life prototype any game, even simple and super cute ones. However, I always love seeing what other people come up with — it's an interesting exercise in observing the design process with playable prototypes. The latest is a cute idea that takes advantage of 3D engines and real-time shade. The basic idea is that you play a farmer who has to save his haul from the scorching sun: More »
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I love the essays put together by Daniel Cook (aka Danc) of Lost Garden - they're frequently complex, but always enlightening. This week at Gamasutra, he tackled the challenge of creating strong emotional experiences via game design: it's a powerful aspect of media and one that has been discussed in a lot of forums. He pins down the (general) problem of game design when it comes to evoking emotion - designers tend to rely on one of two methods. Either games fall back on other forms of media ("And then we show a movie of the faithful heroine being stabbed by the evil villain!") or what he terms 'copious handwaving' ('"See, this pink pulsating blob represents 'Feelings'", explains the designer to the confused player.'). His solutions? Taking a look at several different methods (most with a long history of other applications), their uses and limitations, and how technology can help. Some general thoughts?: More »
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Another month, another Lost Garden prototyping challenge: this time, the theme is 'god games' like Populous on a "smaller, more casual scale." More »
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Danc from Lost Garden has an interesting (and non-SpaceCute related) article up on Gamasutra talking about the whys and hows of game life cycles. "In 1994, encyclopedic game site MobyGames lists that 20 graphic adventure games were released. By 2002, the number of titles had plummeted to 3." It's all part of a much larger trend, and has a lot of components. This isn't anything new, mind you: More »
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In the same vein as yesterday's "prototyping for fun and profit" (and their wonderfully low-fi, "we're game designers not artists" graphics), Danc over at Lost Garden has tossed up some tools for those of you who are good at designing game mechanics, but not so great at the whole "graphics" thing. The theory is use these building blocks, spending less time trying to make your game prototype attractive, more time making the game play fun. The set is in the same vein as the graphic set for his prototyping challenge, SpaceCute, so it's, well, cute. Painfully so, perhaps. More »
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Last month, Danc over at Lost Garden, one of my favorite ways to spend a few hours reading stuff that just flies over my head, posted a "prototyping challenge" entitled SpaceCute. He says, "Over and over again, I've heard the sad tale that there are talented programmers lacking sexy graphics. I, on the other hand, can't program a lick. So here's a thought: I'll provide some quality graphics and a seed of a design idea. All you need to provide is a working prototype of the core game mechanic. " He's posting game prototypes as they come in, and the commentary on some entries is definitely worth reading. More »
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