Just before sixth grade, I moved from rural New Hampshire to the planned suburbs of Columbia, Maryland. The environments could not have been more different. It took a while to make new friends, but within a year or so, I started to settle in and find “my people.” It was in those formative middle-school years …
Thin Red Lines: The Problematic and Evocative War Game Read More »
I am really bad at Hunt: Showdown. Crouched on the top floor of the rusted-out stairwell in the ruins of the old prison – a place that always feels like a trap – I feel like have all the approaches covered. I’d placed a concertina trap at the bottom of the stairs, a nasty trip …
Bullets in the Bayou: Design Lessons in Hunt: Showdown Read More »
When I worked at Ensemble, the studio was fortunate to have a dedicated balance team. The team included some of the best competitive real-time strategy players around; their full-time job was to balance the real-time strategy games that made the studio famous. No matter the genre, developers talk about balancing their game a lot. It’s …
Thumb on the Scales: When to Toss Game Balance Aside Read More »
A freelance consultant’s days are busy but unpredictable. For any given week, I might have work for multiple clients, or I might be tinkering with my own game, or I might be seeking out new contracts for a future quarter. Most likely it’s a mix of all three. Consulting doesn’t have anywhere near the security …
Those of us of a certain age will remember the old commercials for Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. It’s an easy-to-understand idea – a candy that combines two flavors to produce something entirely new and tasty. Never mind that Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups (love them or hate them) don’t taste much like an actual chocolate bar …
Peanut Butter and Chocolate: Mixing Genres in Game Design Read More »
The story has to start with The Wheel. I am not a gamer who buys a lot of hardware and peripherals. I eventually get around to getting a console or two every generation, but I’m never first in line and I wait for the price cuts. I’m primarily a PC gamer, but I’ll go five …
East Bound and Down: A Love Letter to Euro Truck Simulator 2 Read More »
Spoiler warning for several older games, including the Bioshock series and Silent Hill 2, as well as the movie Memento. Memento, an early Christopher Nolan movie, is a well-executed example of a familiar writing trope: the unreliable narrator. The audience experiences the events of the movie from the point of view of the main character, …
I had a tight group of friends in high school and college who were all, to one degree or another, gamers like me. We had a few places where we hung out, including the local shopping mall (it was the eighties, after all) and the basement of one friend’s house, where we spent hours playing …
My fourteen-year-old son likes games. I guess it’d be hard for him not to; most of the time, if his old man isn’t working on games, he’s playing them. He grew up in a house filled with toys – Lego, board games, Warhammer miniatures, and D&D books. He’s seen both his dad and his mom …
What’s Old is New: Games and the Nostalgia Factor 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, …