Keeping Players Awake

“Wait a minute…go back.” I was doing my best to explain Portal to one of my old college friends.

“Ok, so what I did was create a portal on the floor, and then another one up on the wall. When I fall out of the wall, then I go through the one on the floor, so it’s like I’m falling continuously.”

With a zap I fired the portal gun twice, and then illustrated my point, sailing through the air. ”Got it?”

“Uh…wait…” he said, scratching his chin. ”So….”

Augh…this was going to be a long discussion.

The 10 Minute Rule

For those who may read my upcoming dissections of the games I play, there’s a vital rule that I will always respect. I call this my “10 minute rule.”

The rule is very simple:

If I am not engaged within 10 minutes of starting playing, the game is crap.

MMO paralysis part #2 – A brief history review

This is the second part of the MMO paralysis series (that started here). On this occasion we’ll talk about the history of MMORPGs, of course, even if I am talking of a few decades the scope exceeds this blog post so I’ll concentrate on the few ones that somehow played an important part in the genre,  by innovation, a unique concept, by raising the bar or by number of players.

MMO paralysis part #1 – Introduction

On this occasion I’ll be writing a series of articles that analyze that situation by going to the past first (“Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it”), observing the limitations of that era and when I mean era, I’m exactly referring to 15 years in the past, as crazy as it sounds, and then getting back to the present and taking a bird’s eye view at the current situation, from a social and game design perspective.

Play it: Bastion

First post of the Play it! series, in which i will recommend new,old,dusty,odd,good,bad,known and unknown games that are a must for every one of you to play.

First post: Game Designer Etiquette

First, welcome to my blog. My name is Francisc and I decided to start up this blog to talk about new and upcoming games, stuff I'm playing, stuff I used to play, and basically any rants about video games and Game Design.I'm interested to hear your thoughts too. Not all your thoughts, obviously. That would be weird. Also a friend of mine, Max, will be posting as well, same rants, different approach. Because of him I will also post debates on different games.

I just read a post that is an attempting to add a bit more specificity to the title of 'game designer'. I liked the post, but I would like to indulge myself and go in to a bit more detail, and really dig into what it means to me to be a Game Designer.

Preparing the first post

Some people ask themselves "What should I write in my first post?” Well of course something about me, and a little about what's coming up in the blog.

And no, this is not the first actual post. It is a first post to announce the first post. Why? It’s simple; if you are one of these people that went through making a blog, you most probably stumbled over the problem of how you should start writing your first post.