Category Archives: Games and Game Development

Thoughts on games and game development

Musings on Game Design

The Design of Everyday Things

This is one of those books that has been on my “recommended design-related reading” list for ages. It is extremely relevant to designers of any field, game designers included, mainly in the realm of the importance of usability. Aspiring game designers, read this book!

It’s pretty interesting to read now through the lens of the future (the original was written in 1988) and seeing how the author’s predictions about the future have come true. Basically he longed for the iPhone. Thinking about electronics now compared to those of the late 80s, I wonder how many designers “grew up” on this book and came into design with usability as a priority.

Anyway, much of it was reiterating what I had learned about playtesting through other means, while providing a more systematic framework for thinking about usable design. Every time I use a public restroom now I consider whether the automatic faucets have been “playtested,” and I feel like I appreciate a well designed object much more when I run into one. I also finally learned what those weird little gates are in stairwells that lead to the basement level.

Games Played, Musings on Game Design

Thoughts on Okami

People who know me well know that Okami is my favorite game of all time. Recently, when playing through the HD release, I found myself at a particular moment in the game just before I had to stop playing to go get dinner with Nick. I was turning in a side quest, and was mentally time managing what I was going to do next – “I think before doing the next story quest I’m going to train up at the dojo on my way back to Shinshu Field and get the clover that I couldn’t get before, but I need to go to a shop and get more seed because I missed some birds back there. I wonder if I should farm up demon fangs and get that mirror teleport now or wait until after I do the next dungeon…”

It struck me how excited I was about doing ALL THE THINGS in that game. This is unusual for me, because in most games of this nature I tend to be a primary-path sort of girl. Even in Zelda games, which I enjoy very much, I’m never too concerned about finding all the heart containers or whatever. So I got to thinking, what is it about Okami specifically that makes me so excited about doing all the collections and side quests and essentially 100%ing the game?

Theory 1:

In many games, the story artificially drives my sense of urgency. I’m talking about when the story is like “oh no we must rush to the castle before it is too late!” My logic brain knows that I could go out and farm for experience, complete the secret side quest in the first area, AND finish the entire chocobo minigame series or whatever before going to the castle (and when I got there I’d still arrive just in the nick of time).

However, emotional brain doesn’t quite understand this. Emotional brain feels I need to book it to the castle as fast as I can, because something very serious is at stake. I think my tendency is to let myself get engaged in the experience to the point where emotional brain is sort of guiding things, so I readily go from story point to story point.

In Okami, the story has a lot of exciting moments, but when you get to a new place it tends to frame things as not being in too much of a rush. Your companion, Issun, will be like “you’re gonna love exploring the city, there’s so much to do! I guess we should investigate the weird thing about the queen at some point…but the city is so happenin!”

It is an ever so slight encouragement to do whatever the hell you please, framing the next story point as “yeah, we’ll get around to it.” Possibly this setup sets emotional brain at ease, and makes me much more enthusiastic about feeding all the bunnies along the coastline before actually going into the city.

Theory 2:

It’s possible that the only thing compelling me to do so much of the extra stuff in Okami is that I’m so starved for a game experience that speaks to me. I know in the back of my mind that it’ll probably be over 10 years before someone else makes a game of this scope with this amount of whimsy and personal Lisa Brown appeal, so I become desperate to squeeze every last drop out of the experience before leaving it.

What about you, internet? What games compel you to do all their extra things when comparable games do not?

Conferences, Games Played

Indiecade 2012

I was starting to think that I had been cursed to never again attend Indiecade, as 2 years ago I came down with the flu this time of year*, and last year it was Nick who was let's-go-to-the-hospital sick right over Indiecade.  But this year we were both in good health, and ventured down to Culver City to check out all the games.  There was lots of cool stuff, but here are some of my favorites:

Continue reading Indiecade 2012 →

Musings on Game Design

Calling out Good Behavior in LoL

League of Legend’s new Honor system lets you call people out for positive behavior.  It’s a bit like reporting only for positive things.  I’m unclear on whether any action is going to be taken on this data (like for matchmaking or whatever), but I still think it’s a good idea.  Apparently Dota 2 has something similar, but I had not read about it.

Musings on Game Design

Resistance 3 inspiration images

I thought some people might find this interesting.

When I was first assigned the boat level in Resistance 3, we had a very vague idea of what it was going to be.  I'd been thinking about a mostly standard ride-down-the-natural-river experience until one of the concept artists did some drawings of a boat floating through a flooded city.  Immediately I thought of my hometown of Louisville, KY, and the great flood that devestated the area in the late 30s.  My good friend, Scott, had a scrapbook of newspaper clippings about the flood, and generously lent it to me to bring back to California and share with my team as a source of inspiration.  The environment artists were delighted!  Here are a few of the more influential newspaper clippings that inspired us.

Google+: https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/102954115822334585421/albums/5790481371840515313
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.591872072054.2047400.59300542&type=1

Musings on Game Design

Battle.net RealID

http://us.battle.net/en/realid/

In spite of all the hooplah about using real names on the forums, one thing that RealID does EXTREMELY well is makes it way easier to find people you know who are playing the game.  Because you can view the friends of people in your friends list, you can easily find mutual friends that you didn’t otherwise know played, and adding them is very simple.
I know more than once I’ve been on Starcraft 2, and none of my friends have been on, so I browsed THEIR list of friends to see if I knew anyone, added somebody, and boom, someone to play with that I knew!