Game talk

This is the catch-all category for stuff about games and game design. It easily makes up the vast majority of the site’s content. If you are looking for something specific, I highly recommend looking into the tags used on the site instead. They can narrow down the hunt immensely.

Consent systems

 Posted by (Visited 7310 times)  Game talk  Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,
Aug 272017
 

I was asked on Twitter recently for references for my mention of “consent systems” in my talk on “What AR and VR can Learn from MMOs.” I didn’t have any handy at the time but today I had some free time so I went looking.

Textual antecedents

The basic concept can be found throughout roleplay social virtual worlds such as MUSHes. (For example: Black Ops MUSH, The Lady’s Cage MUSH, Star Wars Omens). These sorts of worlds typically do not have combat systems, and rely heavily on free-form emotes (though the commands there more often have the syntax “pose” or “emit” or the like). Like any other full roleplay environment, of course, fights and conflicts happen all the time.

This description of how it happens in practice is pretty good: Continue reading »

Slides for my FDG17 talk on Reconciling Games

 Posted by (Visited 3907 times)  Game talk  Tagged with: , ,
Aug 192017
 

I have posted up slides for the keynote talk I gave at the Foundations of Digital Games conference. It was called “Reconciling Games” and it was about fish tanks. Well, fish tanks as an example of a naturally occurring ludic system that offers up surprising lessons for game design, across many disciplines: internal game economics and systems balancing, but also narrative, community design, and more.

Among the key quotes from the talk (based on tweeted comments from attendees) are

Continue reading »

 Comments Off on Slides for my FDG17 talk on Reconciling Games

SDCC Game Creator Connection

 Posted by (Visited 2560 times)  Game talk
Jul 192017
 

This Saturday I’ll be at San Diego Comic-Con as one of the mentors for the Game Creator Connection, a new event this year.

For years, Comic-Con International has brought together comics writers and artists to help them find collaborators to create comics. That program, Comic Creator Connection, has been an ongoing part of our events, including WonderCon and Comic-Con again this year.

New for 2017, Comic-Con is introducing the Game Creator Connection, an opportunity for game developers—whether currently working in the industry or aspiring to do so—to receive valuable advice, insights, and mentoring from seasoned veterans of the game industry representing diverse backgrounds—production, programming, art, business development, and so on.

This will actually be the first (!) time I have ever done a Comic-Con session… even as an attendee (I always just stick to the show floor). Maybe I will see you there! I will also be wandering around on some of the other days of the event.

 Comments Off on SDCC Game Creator Connection

Mailbag: Action Combat

 Posted by (Visited 4007 times)  Game talk  Tagged with: , ,
Jul 182017
 

I was recently rereading your piece Designing a Living Society in SWG (part two) https://www.raphkoster.com/2015/04/22/designing-a-living-society-in-swg-part-two/

And I became curious. You said that you made SWG an RPG because it had a much better retention than FPS games. Which, especially given the tech back then, seems to be a sensible position to take.

But I’m curious, if you were going to make SWG today’s gaming climate, with seemingly every MMO moving to action combat, would you still make it an RPG? A hybrid? A full blown FPS?

Continue reading »

 Comments Off on Mailbag: Action Combat

The best posts of the last five years

 Posted by (Visited 12728 times)  Game talk  Tagged with: , , , ,
Jun 232017
 

Five years ago, I was asked to put together a list of the best articles on the website. I did, and it’s been linked as “recommended posts” up on the menu under the Blog section for a few years now.

Just the other day, I was asked by Jordan Amaro (@JordanAMAR0) whether I was ever going to update it. Probably at some point, but in the meantime here’s a list of the ones I think are best from the last five years.

Looking over the list, the things that jump out at me are: a lot more posts about the game business and trends, about general topics like creativity, and about the intersection of the virtual with the real — the way tropes from online worlds are impinging upon our daily lives. I also note quite a lot of looking backward in these: game histories, postmortems, etc. Of course, this was also the period that encompassed the Great Formalism Wars of 2012, which seem overblown given hindsight. And lastly… despite my feeling I am hardly posting anything, this is a pretty nice list for five years!

Continue reading »

 Comments Off on The best posts of the last five years
 Older Entries  Newer Entries