Game Design

Article: Bleszinski: "Gamers Exist in a Wired World Where Ignorance is Inexcusable"

Former Epic Games Design Director Cliff Bleszinski gave a keynote presentation at the 2013 East Coast Game Conference (ECGC) Wednesday, April 24th. His keynote speech reached twenty years into the game designer's past, explored the once-emergent shareware distribution model, and then bridged those experiences with the future of gaming and its charted trajectory.

Article: Star Citizen Technology Interview: Gaming for HW Enthusiasts

When left uncorrupted by the technologically-crippling nature of consoles, PC gaming's propensity for visual and mechanical immersion provides an unrivaled entertainment medium for gamers. Even the cheapest, most stripped-down budget gaming PC has technology that far-and-away surpasses the capabilities of the current-gen consoles. Transistor count alone is indicative of the vast leaps made in the last 7 years: the...

Article: Thoughts: FORCED, An Arena-Styled Action Brawler

We were originally drawn to FORCED by its promises of four player co-operative arena engagements, and in a top-down action RPG, it's tough to beat tactical co-op. In theory, the idea is to mix the best of strategy, teamwork, and pure, lovely, murderous action, hopefully creating a fast-paced game that still challenges the ability to think on your feet.

Article: Level Design 101 for Mapping & Modding

Level Design is probably the most important production stage of any game: The environment of a level is what the player directly interacts with -- visually and physically -- and determines what, how, when, and why all of the different elements come together. This design can hopefully provide the player with an...

Article: Technology in BlackSpace: Quad-Core Utilization, 3D Vision, More

Given the opportunity, we always explore the technology behind upcoming games; understanding GPU specifications is great, but it's important to put that knowledge to practical use. We were able to talk with the developers of BlackSpace (originally covered here) and ask them about how, exactly, the visual...

Article: A Shallow Attempt: Smithsonian's Art of Video Games Exhibit an Embarrassment

With the Smithsonian's tasteful artistry and with the dexterous footwork of a drunken stumblebum, the Art of Video Games exhibit's Washington incursion crumbles under its own ambitious, unfocused mass. Teetering undecidedly between "user's choice awards" -- a result of crowdsourced voting -- and "a brief history of games," the exhibit feels almost rushed, or perhaps...

Article: How KOTOR Laid the Groundwork for the Mass Effect Trilogy

Recently BioWare responded to the outcry for a more complete and comprehensive ending to Mass Effect 3. Most people appear to be satisfied with this new iteration, but there are still suggestions that the new ending remains inadequate because it's just a series of cinematics with a voiceover. Taking previous games into account, though, it's always been apparent as to what the new revision would be, and using the game story analysis skills...

Article: Heat Signature: Offspring Fling! Gameplay Analysis & Hands-on

The much-awaited Episode 9 of Heat Signature is now here! That's right, we're resuming the series, but with a twist: Heat Signature episodes will now offer more in-depth gameplay analysis and a run-down of what game design elements are at play that make the games so entertaining. The series will continue to focus on up-and-coming games.

Article: Game Story Design: Predicting a Game's Story Outcome

Video games in recent years have seen a trend toward greater depth in story development. Gaming has become more about immersion in a different world as technology advances and for most gamers this is best accomplished with a deep and encompassing story. While the gameplay mechanics of the Assassin's Creed franchise, or games in the Elder Scrolls universe (which we made even more...

Article: Revitalizing The Game Industry's Ecosystem with New Tech

Very little is original in modern entertainment outlets, but there's always a new approach to design - it just needs to be discovered; the best ideas, hopefully, remain just beneath the surface, and many of our future advancements in the gaming industry will rely heavily on design/development ingenuity and technological advancements. The not-yet-included design features are everywhere, we're just waiting for the strategy and equipment to...

Article: In-Depth Diablo 3 Analysis & Review

Ah, fresh meat. No, wait... When Blizzard held the 2008 fan convention in Paris, I stood up early each day to gorge myself on the daily-shifting artwork that heralded some grand revelation or announcement that was soon-to-come. I frothed over these teasers, engaging in active study – even going so far as to maintain active threads that served as a condensed source of speculation, debates, and upvoted opinions by prominent members o...

Article: Diablo 3's Story is Lazy, Passive, and Careless

"I have to kill the injured -- how could I kill my own wife?" pleaded Haedrig, the town's stereotypical blacksmith whom I'd just met -- his voice was melancholic and filled with fear; his wife, having been injured by one of the interloping zombies, was now condemned to death to prevent spread of the disease. My character interjected: "She'd want you to do it. Here, I'll help you." Well, that's probably not what I'd say to someone I'd just...

Article: Most Memorable Moments of the Diablo Franchise

Delving back into the reaches of the past, among a clutter of Age of Empires and Command & Conquer boxes, I found my original Diablo discs. Upon this discovery, I was instantly flooded with key moments in Diablo -- almost as if my virtual life had flashed before my eyes. Working with Brandon "Tribar" Jones on GN, we were able to ascertain some of the most memorable moments in Diablo 1 and Diablo 2, including cut...

Article: What can Video Game Devs Learn from … Plants?

Video games and plants have a long, intertwined, rich history together. Actually, that’s a lie. Almost everyone would probably agree that they are completely unrelated entities altogether, and that would be mostly true; however, video games and plants do share some interesting properties that plants have had 475 million years to perfect, while video games in comparison have only had about 30 years. So to help video games evolve and become a...

Article: Gears of War 3’s Visual FX Were Made by 2.5 Artists

For a game so known for its deep, emotion-provoking story, Gears of War 3 has had phenomenal artistic direction and functionality as well; Epic has proven that games don’t need to pick between mechanics, graphics, and writing and can instead focus-down all three core elements in a much more efficient manner.

Article: Turning Death into a Useful MMO Game Mechanic

Imagine this scenario: You’ve been playing an MMO title since its launch. You are now a level 40 warrior, or some equivalently generic class, and are about to tackle a little-known dungeon; the closest town and respawn point are both over thirty minutes of travel away via mount. To get there, you have to pass numerous mobs at higher levels than you, but your group is prepared and you are ready to roll. Reaching the dungeon was the easy p...

Article: Game NPC Design - Why We Relate to A Pile of Code and Pixels

Designing a relatable non-player character for games isn't easy: As proposed in our "save your own damn world" post, NPCs and game stories in general can take a back seat to the mechanics-focused button-fest of modern design, sacrificing the emotive connection that is required to delve into a story.

Article: Singleplayer and Multiplayer CAN Co-Exist, Damn it!

There has been some growing concern in the gaming community - a theory that disheartens hardcore, originalist gamers like myself: are single-player games being superseded by multiplayer frag-fests? In an industry that prides itself on community interaction and the vast quantities of titles and genres, are single-player games actually becoming obsolete? Damn. I really should stop reading those forums. It's all preposterous!...

Article: What is a voxel, anyway? Voxels vs. Vertexes in Games

With all the talk whirling around voxel games like Cube World, a self-described Zelda-Minecraft hybrid, and Castle Story, a voxel RTS, we've been asked numerous times to explain what voxels are and what their implication is on future games. To do that, let's start by better understanding the commonplace approach to...

Article: Preventing Video Game Burnout - Getting Too Bored, Too Fast

Members of the Gamers Nexus team will unanimously agree on one thing: We get bored of games faster than companies can make them. It's a problem we've opted to call "game burnout," and has side effects of empty wallets, rivers of tears, and wasted gigabytes. Thought Skyrim was good? Twenty hours was enough for me. Liked Battlefield 3? Eh, it was all the same after eighteen hours.