One of the games I’ve worked on that I’m most proud of was the first Orcs Must Die! game. It was a modest title built by a small team that achieved commercial success and great user reviews. Orcs Must Die! started life as a prototype built from the bits and pieces of another scrapped project. …
Once More With Feeling: Building Game Sequels and Remakes Read More »
My fourteen-year-old son just finished eighth grade, which means next year I’ll have a high schooler in the house. I’m finding the prospect hard to process. He’s no longer a kid, and he’s interesting, unique, and opinionated – rapidly becoming his own person, with his own ideas (and, in typical teenage fashion, rejecting a lot …
Hot Elf Summer: The Return of Family Dungeons & Dragons Read More »
I spent a little time over the weekend playing Ker Nethalas. It’s a solo-focused pen-and-paper dungeon crawler, thematically dark with a heavy emphasis on dice-chucking combat. There’s not a lot of story to the game. If you’re looking for the great narratives that systems like Ironsworn generate, you won’t find them wandering through the endless …
Spring Cleaning: Tidying-Up Time for the Game Industry Read More »
Game design was a less specialized vocation when I first entered the industry. Teams were smaller and most designers wore all the hats – systems, content, and narrative. Still, my previous experience as a writer and editor meant I often got tapped for narrative work. My first contract job was creating single-player campaign story content …
Hand in Hand: Building Better Narratives for Games Read More »
In 1997, as the Blade Runner game at Westwood was winding down and getting ready to ship, the core team was tired. The project had been a long haul, with many ups and downs. We were proud of the final product, but none of us relished the idea of starting on a sequel – and …
Nautical by Nature: Breaking the Curse of the Pirate Game Read More »
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 »
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 …
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 »
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 …