My Cardography Interview was just uploaded. Listen to me get grilled on common design mistakes, tricks of the trade and all sorts of design topics. Click here for the link.

My family tells a story about a meatloaf. Apparently my cousin once asked my grandmother why shy cuts the ends off the meatloaf before putting it into the oven. My aunt thought about it and said, “It’s how my mother always made it. Her meatloaf was wonderful, so there must be a reason.” When they […]

The more design you do, the more you get the joke. The more mass-produced something is, the less remarkable it seems. However, the economies of scale mean that more money is riding on its success. You can bet that more thought went into the shape of your pen’s cap than most of the final papers […]

We all see these “intelligence tests” whizzing around facebook. Naturally they’re puzzles designed to make you feel smart, like many good puzzles in games are. You feel smart, so you share the puzzle. I design puzzles as part of my job, so I thought I’d dig into the design of a recent one that showed […]

Likely the most important thing to understand about design is that there’s no such thing as a universally bad design choice. You might be wondering, “Really? What about if your mechanic makes your audience panicked, paranoid and wanting to run away from the computer?” Congratulations, sounds like you’ve created the next great horror game. Design choices are […]