So first, a quick refresher on recent events: In late spring of 2023, a major funding deal between the Swedish company Embracer Group and Savvy Games – a group backed by money from the Saudi government – spectacularly collapsed. The deal was supposedly worth two billion dollars in development funding over six years and had […]
Dangerous Roads: Carnage in the Game Industry Read More »
After my parents divorced, I spent summers and holidays with my dad and stepmom for several years. Since my dad lived in an Atlanta suburb and I lived with my mom in the northeast, I became an early frequent flier. Air travel was different in those long-before-9/11 days. I’d travel alone on a two-hour flight,
Game Retrospective: The Year of Dark Tower Read More »
At several places I’ve worked, I developed a reputation as a “fun farmer.” I was the guy who’d play almost any game, regardless of the review scores, and try to find the nuggets of goodness in them. I could usually find something that made the effort worthwhile – a single feature, a great cinematic moment,
Monkey Business: Who’s To Blame for Skull Island: Rise of Kong? Read More »
I flew from California for my first visit to Dallas late on a sunny afternoon in early September. I had left my job a couple of months earlier, quitting a toxic work situation without an immediate backup plan for the first time in my career. I’d been in California for a couple of years, and
Dallas Developer: Twenty Years of Making Games in North Texas Read More »
Phantom Liberty, the recently released DLC for Cyberpunk 2077, is great. The story is compelling and lengthy, a masterclass in how to seamlessly add post-ship content into the middle of an existing narrative. The 2.0 patch for the game, which launched shortly before the DLC, overhauls and improves many of the game’s core systems, including
The Price of Redemption: When Bad Games Go Good Read More »
Here we go again. Last week, the game industry was rocked by 800 layoffs at Epic Games, nearly 16% of their total workforce. The announcement is just the latest in a string of “reductions in force” across the game industry – Striking Distance, Relic, Amazon, and Probably Monsters among them. I can’t remember a more
Destructive Imbalance: The Need for Game Developers to Organize Read More »
I’ve finished Starfield’s main story and one of the faction lines, and I think I’m done with the game for the moment. I’m intrigued by their clever NG+ gimmick, and I’ll revisit it after a patch or two. Overall, I’d rank it as a solid game – perhaps an 8/10 – but it never got
Finding the Thread: Building Strong Narrative in Games Read More »
Warning: spoilers for the midgame of Starfield, including some companion details. The first game I can remember playing where I cared about a player-centered romance storyline was Bioware’s Baldur’s Gate 2: Shadows of Amn. The romanceable companions each had a deep storyline that ran in parallel with the main plot. Though there were a few
Equal Measures Tragic and Creepy: A Starfield Love Story Read More »
Warning: light spoilers for the first several hours of Starfield. I have a lifetime of fond memories of Bethesda games. I say this to provide full context for my criticisms below. After the first fifteen hours or so, I’m critical of aspects of the game and its design, but this shouldn’t be read as a
Yep, a Bethesda Game: Starfield First Impressions Read More »
For my entire career, I’ve been an advocate of procedural systems in games that generate endless content. Procedural generation has been a design pillar of some of my favorite titles – going all the way back to my early days playing Nethack and the original Civilization, with its evocative random maps. From a production perspective,
Berries on the Hill: Lessons in Procedural Game Design Read More »