I’ve remarked on this peculiar attitude among players and amateur designers before, but it’s worth bringing up again. People seem to think that game designers are wizards and can ignore the laws of… Well, maybe not physics but common sense. When a designer cuts a mechanic that’s proving impossible to balance, players often respond “you should […]

With the release of Dark Souls 3, I find my thoughts turning to the original in the series. Dark Souls is in many ways an underrated game. That might sound absurd considering the game’s titantic presence in the minds of game designers, but I feel that much of the game’s true genius is overlooked due […]

Tomorrow I begin my long crisscrossing journey back to Belgium. Because of the attack on Brussels airport, I’ll be hopping trains until I get back to Abrakam headquarters and back to working on this great game. Thought I’d mention what I’d be listening to along the way Podcasts: The Winning Agenda, Drive to Work, Limited Resources, […]

With the rise of the Game of Thrones series, more and more stories I stumble across seem to be ending unhappily. It’s always been a bit of an issue. For some reason I think that the one thing an author hates more than anything else is being predictable. I’ve seen stories shifted entirely because an audience […]

I love talking about villains. It’s often a major productivity issue in my projects. I probably spend more time on villains than I should. They’re fascinating. It’s easy to make a solid hero, we can understand why someone would want to be good and why we’d enjoy spending time with them in a game or […]

People often ask me what resources I use to learn new tricks. I’m going to start posting great articles, posts, videos and so on that I come across. Today I’m planning to re-watch this excellent lecture I’ve talked about before. It’s an hour-long analysis of the process behind changing the time between shots of a […]

If someone thinks something is “meh” or even straight-up bad they don’t usually bother to memorize the creator’s name. There’s lots of bad art, writing, design and so on out there and we’re just browsing. Meanwhile, if someone thinks your work is good they’re much more likely to put the extra effort in to remembering […]

You know how I sometimes enthusiastically ramble about stuff? Normally I edit it down a lot and take out a lot of the life in the process for the sake of the busy listener. Today I just go wild. Dan Unedited and Uncut talkin’ about creating great villains. Check out this awesome podcast at: http://danfelder.libsyn.com/

At GDC I got the new title from White Wizard Games. These guys made the jaw-dropping brilliance that is Star Realms, a game that spread through game design circles like a sentient virus that preys on free time. Now they’ve released their take on the competitive fantasy cardgame genre, their answer to Magic the Gathering and […]

One theme I keep returning to in Magicka is how the core design of the initial levels is set up to encourage experimentation. Enjoying Magicka requires a very specific mentality different from a lot of other games. Progression is based on experimenting with inventing new spells. This is a huge issue for level designers. In […]