Posted by: Karl Bunyan on: September 25, 2010
Playful‘s own description of itself as “a one-day event all about games and play” doesn’t really do it justice, but I can’t think of a better summation either so I’ll leave it at that one. It was a day of short (twenty minute) talks on a diverse range of subjects without the only real requirements [...]
Posted by: Karl Bunyan on: September 17, 2010
This talk by Matt Leacock, the designer of the board game Pandemic, is fascinating both for the insight into the board game development process itself but also for generally applicable game mechanics. I’m doing it a great injustice by drawing a few points out, but hopefully the below acts as a teaser so you’ll watch [...]
Posted by: Karl Bunyan on: September 15, 2010
Soren Johnson has produced another post, previously published in Game Developer magazine, called The Social Revolution. In it he takes a look at some of the trends in social games such as Farmville and starts to think about how these might change the role of the game designer both in social and other games. I [...]
Posted by: Karl Bunyan on: September 10, 2010
A TEDtalk from Seth Priebatsch of Scvngr introducing some ideas of game dynamics applied to the real world. In the middle of the talk Seth claims there are seven game mechanics that “can get anyone to do anything”, and lists four of them: The Appointment Dynamic Players have to do something at a predefined time, [...]
Posted by: Karl Bunyan on: August 10, 2010
There’s a board game coming out of Sid Meier’s “Civilisation” computer game. Looking at this review on Fantasy Flight Games, it appears to be rather complicated. I wonder if it’s more a case of a game being able to sell based on the license rather than being a good model for a board game, and [...]
Posted by: Karl Bunyan on: July 10, 2010
I’m an addict of the biggest bike race in the world: the Tour de France. I’m a relatively new convert as this is only my third year of following it avidly, but my late arrival to cycling fandom is mostly down to my not appreciating just how subtle and varied an event it is. If [...]
Posted by: Karl Bunyan on: June 30, 2010
When people reflect on how it feels when their experience is most positive, they mention at least one, and often all, of the following. First, the experience usually occurs when we confront tasks we have a chance of completing. Second, we must be able to concentrate on what we are doing. Third and Fourth, the [...]
Posted by: Peter on: June 16, 2010
Great article about skill in gaming. Let’s make a graph. The horizontal axis is player skill. On the far left is no skill – just random button-pushing. On the far right is perfect videogame godhood, always doing exactly the correct thing at the correct time in the correct way. The first time you play a [...]
Posted by: Karl Bunyan on: June 15, 2010
A while back I briefly wrote about Soren Johnson’s presentation “Theme is Not Meaning“, which was based on an article he’d written for Game Developer magazine. Now Soren has started putting the article into a blog post, so if you’d rather digest it in that form (and hear the analysis straight from the author) then [...]
Posted by: Karl Bunyan on: June 15, 2010
“The New Social Grind: Begging as Gameplay” is an interesting post on how social games are currently in a state of being “viral” by making players literally beg their friends for help. “That’s not viral except in the meanest, ugliest sense. Like Ebola”. It ties in with the analysis of Farmville as a web of [...]
