As a direct follow-up to my 2012 talk “Player Stories and Designer Stories”, this GDC lecture delves deeply into the oft-repeated, but rarely explored game design concept of “interesting decisions”. Meaningful choice is the foundation of good game design, but there is a surprising amount of ambiguity surrounding the topic. This lecture explores when decisions…
My 2013 GDC lecture explores computer games’ place in the cultural landscape. As developers and players, we hear comparisons between movies and games all the time, and we are still heavily influenced by the way in which movies (and books) have shaped our expectations for storytelling, authorship, and even our very patterns of thinking. But…
Games are inherently participatory. That interactive nature is the reason for why we play games, and it’s how computer games are powerfully different from all other media. But whose story does a game tell? That of the player, the game character, or the designer? The answer lies somewhere in the middle, and this lecture provides…
Who is the actor in a game? Is it the person holding the controller in the real world, or the player-character who moves through the game-world? The answer is Both, and the game designer must work carefully to keep the interests of these two consciousnesses aligned. This GDC talk looks at how we reconcile developer-defined…
This in an introductory look at the world of level design that I presented at the first Level Design in a Day tutorial at GDC 2010. It looks at what a level designer does and how she does it. The material is entry level, but I tried to provide a good overview of the disciplines….
This lecture, which I presented together with Harvey Smith at the GDC 2010, examines the game environment as a narrative device, with a focus on further involving the player in interpreting (or pulling) information, in opposition to traditional fictional exposition. Harvey and I provide an analysis of how and why some games in particular create…
