October 2015 Patreon Q&A #1
In this chat, Mike talks about Development Hell and what playing games is like as a game developer. Patreon Credits As always, these articles wouldn’t be possible without my supporters…
September 2015 Patreon Q&A
Topics this time include "How Mike got into making games," "balancing economies like in Ratchet and Clank" Patreon Credits As always, these articles wouldn’t be possible without my supporters on…
Chen Diagrams
This picture does not match the content around it. It is merely here to give the impression that this article is not all about words. Stupid words! In my fourth…
Learning from other Media
About five years ago or so, I felt like I needed to improve my game design skills, so I looked around to see what kind of books there were out…
Reward Schedules
Carnival games are a great example of reward schedules. Since we've now established the best way to influence player behavior is via rewards, I want to talk about the ways…
Changing Player Behavior
previous article | next article One thing I need to do a lot as a game designer is come up with ways to get players to do what I want them…
Mike’s August 2015 Patreon Q&A
Watch Mike get flustered setting up new gear. He then thinks his fancy new equipment is recording high quality audio, but the awful camera mic was recording awful audio instead.…
A Morality Tale
This week I'm going to tell the story of how I learned one of the most important things I ever learned about game design: As a designer, it is not my job…
Enemy Attacks and Telegraphing
Intro Like most things when it comes to video game design, I think of enemies in terms of: The Questions the enemy is asking players The Tools I need to…
Trinity 9 – Why I Call it Trinity
Intro This is one in a series of blog posts/articles I’m writing to describe my game design methodology. In the first article, I named the system “Trinity” – but I…