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 #3 – Technological perspective

Here we are, the third part of the “MMO stagnation” series. If you missed them, you can read Part #1 and Part #2.
This time it’s about the underlying technology. Those parts and bits that nobody knows but are definitely there, powering these monsters. You see, Massively Multiplayer Online Games are huge beasts to tame; they are as docile as a caged and hungry lion. Really, I couldn’t find a more stretching analogy.
Let’s get to it, shall we?

The Game Design Process part 3: Punishment and Reward

You have many choices in your everyday life. Wake up and jump out of bed, or hit the snooze button? Eat chicken, beef, or vegetables? Do some work, or go out with friends? These choices, these actions that you can take are the different colors you use to paint the landscape of your day, your week, and your life. It is through these choices that you experience and express yourself in the world.

If life were a game, these actions that you can take are examples of the Basic Mechanics of life. They are actions that you can perform, that you have the ability to perform, and that you may choose or not choose to perform them. They are the inputs into the system from you. You can freely choose from all the possible abilities you have and perform them to your liking.

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.

The Game Design Process part 2: Basic Mechanics

Basic Mechanics are the building blocks of a game, but they are also heavily dependent on the other aspects of the Game Design Process. While they do make up the actions that the player is taking and constitute nearly 100% of the player’s playtime, a game made up of only Basic Mechanics would be a boring game indeed.

Games as art

Firstly before going into my thoughts a little I wanted to make one distinction up front. Regardless of what you think about games as 'art' or otherwise, many of the people making them are very much talented artists, be it with words, images, animations, meshes, mechanics or code.

Limbo Review

You rise and shine in a forest, the world around you is a mix of black, gray, and white. Armed with nothing but your own courage, you must begin your extremely far-fetched journey without any knowledge of how you arrived to your current location, or where your final resting-place is. All you know is that you must face the fear of the unknown and continue forward.

Game Design Process part 1: Introduction

Do gigantic successful games just happen, or can their approach be explained? Are the games that make us laugh, feel, and enhance our lives with the results of the developers getting lucky, or careful making a game? Is there a way to describe successful games to understand where their strengths and weaknesses lie, and then apply them to our own game design process?