Economy Balancing Models
When you have a game system that involves the player using loot to buy rewards, I usually start calling that system an "economy." (Note: This isn't how some people use the word,…
October 2015 Patreon Q&A #2
Mikes second monthly Patreon Q&A for October. 0:20 - How to communicate with players 0:50 - User testing 1:50 - Other types of feedback 3:10 - Users want everything to…
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…
The Other Side
It was April, and things were still cold when I found myself in front of the offices of Insomniac Games' old offices, near Universal City Walk. I was on the…
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…
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…
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…
Questions
What you call gameplay, I call 'Questions.' As in, "The game is asking the player questions, and the player answers the questions with play." For you to have a solid…