tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-62615912012-01-28T14:43:25.989-05:00This blog contains comments by Dr. Lewis Pulsipher about games he is designing or has designed in the past, as well as comments on game design in general.Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.comBlogger3441100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-393952440663176282012-01-27T10:39:00.004-05:002012-01-27T10:39:46.178-05:00

When someone says a game is "elegant", what do they mean?  I'm not sure, so I've done a bit of investigating.Is it used much?  In my Info Select database, which includes my own notes about game design and teaching, and material that I've scraped off the Internet about those same topics in the past seven years, there are 84 notes containing the word "elegant" and another 34 containing "elegance".

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-2572505762117763802012-01-21T14:53:00.002-05:002012-01-21T14:53:28.082-05:00

Recently I came across a new cooperative game related to Fourth edition (4e) Dungeons & Dragons, Castle Ravenloft.  The game lets each player act as a novice 4e character, complete with hit points, armor class, and at-will, utility, and daily powers.  There are replayable scenarios for 1 to 5 players, with the opposition governed by simple rules related by cards drawn from specific decks.For $50

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-69027530960248931132012-01-14T16:36:00.003-05:002012-01-14T16:36:28.319-05:00

    According to a recent tweetdeck, one of the trending:worldwide topics on twitter was 6 word stories.  In the past few months I've asked people to say 6 words about game design, programming, wargames, and casual games.    This time the charge is this: say six words about stories in games (or stories and games, if you prefer).

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-39973623461228643852012-01-11T12:52:00.001-05:002012-01-11T12:52:43.964-05:00

Recently I was discussing via blog posts what depth is in games (http://gamasutra.com/blogs/LewisPulsipher/20111219/9125/What_is_Depth_in_Games.php and elsewhere), and then ran across a discussion of how role-playing games have changed since D&D was first published (http://shirosrpg.blogspot.com/2011/12/i-weep-for-newbs.html#comment-form ).  I’ve realized that there is a connection between the

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-57380253768954860822012-01-08T19:38:00.002-05:002012-01-08T19:38:42.031-05:00

Recently a student in a video game design curriculum posted a note on the IGDA Game Design SIG about an assignment.  The assignment was to describe mechanics for a game and he said his instructor had told him he’d written rules instead, with the result being a poor grade.  I generally emphasize to students that the rules for a tabletop game detail the mechanics of the game, so the question became

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-49455323312474690182011-12-22T10:21:00.004-05:002011-12-22T10:21:28.081-05:00

Periodic notes not individually demanding a separate post:**I gave four one-hour talks about game design at Origins this past summer.  MP3s of the talks, and some wordy slides, are posted on my Web site, along with other MP3s and slides from older presentations.  http://pulsiphergames.com/teaching1.htm**I have two Risk variants that need playtesting (variants of traditional non-mission Risk, not

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-80285338669225127872011-12-14T14:13:00.001-05:002011-12-14T14:13:17.755-05:00

According to tweetdeck, one of the trending:worldwide topics on twitter is 6 word stories.I've asked for 6 words about game designers, 6 about programmers, and 6 about wargames, with interesting results.  Now I want to ask about another type of game.Can you say in 6 words what makes casual games interesting--or not?  (And you'll have to decide what "casual games" are.)

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-86172603287996481362011-12-12T10:08:00.002-05:002011-12-12T10:08:42.267-05:00

I rarely listen to podcasts, I suppose because I think writing provides a more concentrated form of information.  (I don’t read blogs much, either, preferring more formal articles.)  It takes more effort to read something than to listen, but in a given amount of time I think reading something that has been carefully written about a topic is more effective than listening to a podcast, which by its

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-77764936804731853562011-12-08T14:19:00.001-05:002011-12-08T14:19:20.882-05:00

I expect I'll be at PrezCon in late February in Charlottesville, VA.  I'm scheduled to talk about game design at 9PM Friday evening.  This will be an hour of (mostly) me talking, then an hour or more of questions, answers, and discussion.**Another review of Dragon Rage, by Michael Barnes of fortressat.  http://www.gameshark.com/features/871/Cracked-LCD-225-Dragon-Rage-Review.htmYes, it is

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-49910394733605628492011-12-06T08:52:00.001-05:002011-12-06T08:52:23.995-05:00

When I was a teenager one of the best aspects of the new Avalon Hill style board wargames such as Stalingrad and Afrika Korps was that they were games of strategy.  They were not family games, they were not games dominated by chance although chance was involved, they were games of skill where a good grasp of strategy made a big difference.These games were succeeded as my favorite at age 19 by

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-74715461185192260472011-12-01T12:06:00.001-05:002011-12-02T07:57:20.051-05:00

I've posted a long piece about teaching game design in my blog about teaching game design (http://teachgamedesign.blogspot.com/2011/12/teaching-game-design.html )   I decided it was not exactly suitable for this blog. ** I recall reading about someone who claimed to have invented the game Battleship.  That "inventor" was raging at Milton Bradley for stealing his idea.  The only problem is,

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-85305589097474997222011-11-29T17:28:00.001-05:002011-11-29T17:28:18.915-05:00

According to tweetdeck, one of the trending:worldwide topics on twitter is 6 word stories. I've asked for 6 words about game designers and 6 about programmers, with interesting results.  Now I want to ask about a type of game.Can you say in 6 words what makes wargames interesting--or not?  (You'll have to decide what "wargames" are.)

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-56456248429956548552011-11-27T15:11:00.001-05:002011-11-27T15:11:15.201-05:00

A young friend of mine asked me if I was interested in going to a mutual friend's house one evening to play Munchkin.  There were several reasons I could not, but one was "it's too silly".  Munchkin is a deliberately silly game.  This is amusing for a little while, but after that it just gets in the way.Yet, when I was playtesting one of my zombie games I said to the players, "it's a silly zombie

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-20743683888357462472011-11-16T10:25:00.001-05:002011-11-16T10:25:35.475-05:00

Miscellaneous thoughts:There is a longer version of my blog post "Too Many Choices?", called "How Many Choices are Too Many" on Gamasutra.com.  http://gamasutra.com/blogs/LewisPulsipher/20111025/8731/How_Many_Choices_is_Too_Many.php**Dragon Rage was recently near the top of "The Hoteness" on Boardgamegeek (#3 that I saw), MUCH to my surprise given the niche nature of the game.  I was even more

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-66664564360369327662011-11-09T14:50:00.002-05:002011-11-09T14:50:38.285-05:00

Many old school D&D adventures from back in the day were written with the clear assumption that a party would go up to a door, make little effort to discover what might be behind it, open it, and all bumble into the room beyond the door.  I say "bumble" because this is a good way to get dead, whether you're clearing houses in the Middle East or exploring dungeons in a fantasy setting.It's also

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-51933882597268082602011-11-04T08:10:00.002-04:002011-11-04T08:10:29.340-04:00

(You may have seen this on BGG or Gamasutra already.) According to tweetdeck, one of the trending:worldwide topics on twitter is 6 word stories.  Those can be amusing, and I once asked Britannia fans to write the story of Britannia in 6 words with good results.But this time I have something harder in mind: say what a game designer does, or what he is, in 6 words.  Or if that's too challenging,

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-25816649074696817382011-10-30T16:35:00.001-04:002011-10-30T16:35:18.369-04:00

Blogs are informal, and occasionally allow the writer to indulge himself, as in discussing his pet peeves.  One of my pet peeves is the misuse of the terms analog and digital to represent non-electronic games and electronic games.  I prefer the terms tabletop and video because they are more mellifluous and more directly address what people typically mean when they say analog games or digital

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-51899894430051181632011-10-28T10:46:00.000-04:002011-10-28T10:46:20.328-04:00

I’ve observed D&D players for more than 35 years, and one consistent observation is that the majority of them play characters who are essentially Chaotic Neutral thugs.  This is particularly true if they’re not in a long-term campaign.  They’re happy to go around beating up other creatures, killing the ones that they can get away with killing (that is, the monsters or the evil types), mugging

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-42273686013080499722011-10-26T12:56:00.001-04:002011-10-26T12:56:20.437-04:00

Dragon Rage is available in the US for a limited time from Fun Again Games:http://www.funagain.com/control/product?product_id=024826 A review of Dragon Rage appeared in a British blog.   http://rivcoach.wordpress.com/2011/08/08/review-dragon-rage-from-flatlined-games/ Also on BGG.  http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/684165/boardgames-in-blighty-reviews-dragon-rage A review of Dragon Rage on

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-12632374772489605982011-10-11T16:40:00.002-04:002011-10-11T16:46:45.348-04:00

This is something that should be obvious, yet despite everything I’ve written about beginners designing games I have not said it explicitly.  And I know from my teaching experience that to many people it isn’t obvious.  It is especially important for people who want to design video games rather than tabletop games.  When you set out to design a game it’s important to know what you want that

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-41480740307199864232011-10-05T14:08:00.000-04:002011-10-05T14:08:16.293-04:00

Several people have pointed out that a major difference between wargames and Euro-style games is the number of (plausible) choices presented to a player when it is his turn.  Wargames, especially the old-style (“traditional”) Avalon Hill hex and counter wargames like Stalingrad, Afrika Korps, Waterloo, and their descendants, offer vast numbers of choices to a player when it's his turn and he can

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-53428858220063088332011-10-02T20:46:00.002-04:002011-10-02T20:46:23.050-04:00

At the UK Game Expo this summer I was part of a four-person panel of “RPG designers”.  This was a little funny, because I’ve not actually designed an RPG from scratch, though I wrote a lot about them in White Dwarf and other magazines back in the day.  (I was not on the game designers’ panel, but that was just as well as the British designers amounted to 10 or so people.)One of the questions to

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-17398550327364670952011-09-25T08:23:00.001-04:002011-09-25T08:26:55.415-04:00

The Britannia "game system" has been used in other published games such as Maharaja (Avalon Hill), Hispania (Azure Wish), Rus, and most recently Italia (Phalanx) and China: the Middle Kingdom (Decision Games).  Some people categorize these and other games such as History of the World as “sweep of history” games.  The original game of this category may have been Ancient Conquest, which was

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-34247065635615026582011-09-22T10:16:00.001-04:002011-09-22T10:16:19.646-04:00

There are some typical questions that come to mind in people who want to design games but haven't really done so yet.  One of these is "how do you actually start a game"?I have written about how games originate, what element starts the thought process.  http://www.gamecareerguide.com/features/662/idea_.php  This time I want to focus on questions you can ask yourself, lists you can make,

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-86099889993771518432011-09-12T09:01:00.000-04:002011-09-12T09:02:28.727-04:00

For a couple decades I regularly taught graduate computer management classes.  One of the most important themes of those classes was that a manager/supervisor has to recognize what reality is, not what he would like reality to be or what he thinks it ought to be.  If you don’t know what’s really going on, how can you make it work better?  Yet a great many managers lose track of reality, and the

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-9022726678140960322011-09-10T09:00:00.002-04:002011-09-10T09:03:08.128-04:00

Last year I was asked to write a blog post for Buffalo Games, a maker of family games. This was originally posted on their Facebook page.           What’s important in board and card game design Game design is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration.  Don’t think that the idea is important.  What makes a marketable game is the execution, the creation of a complete game, not the idea.  Some ideas

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-91437292526504492472011-09-03T13:51:00.005-04:002011-09-03T13:51:19.318-04:00

Someone I was corresponding with mentioned Risk Legacy to me, and I found the rules online and read them. The idea is that you a series of games (beginning as more or less standard Risk) are connected together, and as you play the board and other parts of the playing environment change, and rules change, from one game to the next. In the process you write on the board, destroy cards, stick

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-83257987886800453172011-09-02T11:12:00.002-04:002011-09-02T11:12:55.721-04:00

This is the first of a series of historical novels about Anglo-Saxon England facing Viking attacks, especially the Great Army. Some of the Britannia players at WBC put me onto this, though it was sheer luck that I passed by it in the library stacks while browsing the other day. I haven't read an historical novel in 35 years, but this one feels kind of like fantasy without the magic; in any

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-80314120481753937372011-08-30T15:55:00.005-04:002011-08-30T15:55:32.226-04:00

As some of you know, I recently signed a contract with McFarland & Co, Publishers, for a book about learning to design (video) games. I have just finished the "next-to-final" draft, which is being commented on by some people, and will need to submit the final draft by Oct 15. With luck it will be available next year. (Keep in mind how long these things can take.) The title I favor is "

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-43353923953143504922011-08-28T08:50:00.001-04:002011-08-28T08:50:30.699-04:00

All games have an interface, whether it’s pressing a button or moving a joystick, or manipulating cards and pieces. A poor interface can ruin a game; if you’ve played many video games you’ve surely been frustrated when the game made it hard for you to tell it what you wanted to do, a failure of the interface. We’d all like to just think what we want the game to do, and have it act accordingly,

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-17871253120702273752011-08-24T13:14:00.002-04:002011-08-24T13:14:57.332-04:00

"Playtesting is sovereign", I like to say to students. But it has taken a long time for videogame companies to recognize this, and there're still examples of complete failures to do playtesting right even when they play test. An example from last year is Final Fantasy XIV. Final Fantasy games are normally praised but this one has been trashed by reviewers. It's score on Metacritic (an

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-26970015923709389072011-08-22T19:30:00.001-04:002011-08-22T19:30:10.429-04:00

Gamers are often surprised at how long it takes for games to be published. Mayfair recently published a game that one of the principles thought they had had for eight years. Once I decided to revise the Britannia took three years to revise it and get it published. The Dragon Rage reissue took a similar time, though much of that was because it was a startup publisher. I have a game with

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-11583322742727287962011-08-15T11:13:00.003-04:002011-08-15T11:13:18.494-04:00

At conventions this summer I’ve watched two multiplayer fantasy wargames with many similarities but perhaps different philosophies of design. At the UK Game Expo in Birmingham England I watched Wizards of the Coast’s new game Dungeons and Dragons Conquest of Nerath being played, and at WBC in Lancaster Pennsylvania I watched a not yet published (P500) game called War Party. Both games can

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-55426971673647869512011-08-09T16:54:00.001-04:002011-08-09T16:55:37.892-04:00

I was at WBC in Lancaster PA for three days recently. My Thursday night talk about game design had a pretty good attendance, perhaps slightly less than when it is on the weekend (I couldn't be there at the weekend this year). A review of Dragon Rage appeared in a British blog: http://rivcoach.wordpress.com/2011/08/08/review-dragon-rage-from-flatlined-games/ Also on BGG: http://

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-18107832748743280812011-07-29T20:06:00.000-04:002011-07-29T20:06:14.904-04:00

A follow-up (that I actually started first) to Why Empires Last. Historians have always been interested in why great nations fail and fall. The first historian, whether you regard him as Herodotus or Thucydides, was concerned with the failure of a great nation, Persia and Athens respectively. One of the most famous of all historical works is Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. I

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-70379452658960765292011-07-28T13:18:00.005-04:002011-07-28T13:18:47.283-04:00

At one of my game design talks at Origins I said that designers should avoid requiring players to do math, because so many younger people are very poor at doing math in their heads. One member of the audience let out odd shrieks of laughter: he just couldn't believe me. Yet as I have played "D&D Encounters" the past six months, I've seen more and more examples, right down to an (adult-aged) kid

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-41030421823163250162011-07-26T09:10:00.002-04:002011-07-26T09:10:48.035-04:00

I'll be at the World Boardgaming Championships next week from Wednesday about noon through Friday (wedding to attend at the weekend). Looking especially for people to play Assyria and perhaps Eurasia. (Not Brit-like but Sweep of History for sure.) I'm giving a talk about game design Thursday night at 8.

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-27613738453439882212011-07-22T09:27:00.004-04:002011-07-22T09:31:42.925-04:00

Sweep of history games, such as Britannia and its spinoffs, History of the World, and others (Eurasia and Rise and Fall of Assyria are two of my prototypes), are never far from my mind. I have two all-of-Europe games as well, and have dabbled with several all-of-China games. (China's current boundaries, and Europe, are close to the same size.) A problem in an all-of-Europe sweep of history

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-58516645030956124582011-07-17T10:03:00.004-04:002011-07-17T10:03:30.653-04:00

(This originally appeared in "Against the Odds" Magazine.) While I don't believe a game designer can deliberately set out to design a "great" game, I DO believe a designer can set out to create an “epic” game, though this effort is just as subject to failure as any other game design. I'm interested here in game designs that most players would call "epic", not in an individual play of a game

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-4388368949699738032011-07-16T08:10:00.000-04:002011-07-16T08:10:53.430-04:00

Here are a couple of maxims/truths about game design. “Don’t Panic”. When you’re playtesting a game, don’t let an odd result in one game bother you too much. If it looks likely to happen again and again, once people know about whatever happened, then you need to fix it. But “whatever happened” may be just an outlier, something very unlikely to happen. On the other hand, you need to see what

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-81330056981514508112011-07-14T13:00:00.004-04:002011-07-14T13:02:06.881-04:00

A while ago I wrote some tips for those making a game for the very first time. (http://pulsiphergamedesign.blogspot.com/2011/05/so-youre-going-to-make-game-for-very.html and elsewhere.) I assumed that you were not, at that point, making a game with realistic expectation of commercial publication-because it’s most unlikely that the first game you ever make will be published. Now I want to

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-55738760803437418612011-07-13T10:22:00.005-04:002011-07-13T10:22:53.949-04:00

In early June I was a "featured guest" at the largest tabletop game convention in Britain, the UK Game Expo, in Birmingham England (second largest city in the UK). The Game Expo is modeled after the big game convention in Essen, Germany in October: the objective is to give ordinary gamers the chance to play games and buy games they enjoy. So while there were lots of exhibitors, much of the

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-6642484438830153532011-07-11T16:05:00.005-04:002011-07-11T16:05:48.350-04:00

My monthly (sometimes) compilation of brief comments on games. It's fairly easy to make a game that people will play once or twice, it's harder to make one they'll play five times, and it's really hard to make one they'll play a hundred times. In a sense, video game design is "easier" than tabletop design because the expectation is that people will play only once or twice. The drawback is that

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-85802231482208009112011-07-08T09:30:00.001-04:002011-07-08T09:30:59.733-04:00

While my favorite game is "the game of designing games", I do occasionally try to find commercial publishers for them. (Not nearly as often as I "should," however.) But there are lots of reasons to design games, ways for designers to look at their role as game designers. Games as a way to make money. Perhaps this is obvious, yet I don't think many people started to design games because they

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-91068784381015867372011-07-07T10:16:00.002-04:002011-07-07T10:16:22.066-04:00

I have been doing a lot of traveling, attending the (fifth?) annual UK Game Expo in Birmingham, England, and the 36th annual Origins Game Fair in Columbus OH. I attended some of the very early Origins, and have been going again since 2004, but I skipped it last year. That was to save money, and because the convention seemed to be "diminishing", with some well-known game publishers not coming

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-83176979957353527682011-07-03T20:02:00.000-04:002011-07-03T20:02:07.640-04:00

Those interested in video game design might find the following compendium useful: http://www.videogamedesignschools.net/40-helpful-independent-game-design-forums/ You can click on the title of this post. The omission (as far as I can see) is gamecareerguide.com, perhaps because it is not *only* about design?

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-17965171754746705212011-07-02T20:40:00.000-04:002011-07-02T20:40:32.214-04:00

While I was a "featured guest" at the UK Game Expo early in June, I was interviewed for the Yog-Sothoth (Yog Radio) podcast. I was in my best form, I have to say, so I think it's worth listening to. You can obtain it at: http://www.yog-sothoth.com/content/1028-Yog-Radio-48-The-Lawnmower-Man (You can click on the post title to get there.) My bit is from about :55 minutes to 1:16 (yes, it's a

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-2364229889112190442011-06-20T08:37:00.001-04:002011-06-20T08:37:50.101-04:00

Almost always, when I talk with groups of people about game design, I quote Antoine de Saint-Exup'ery: "A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." Recently as I answered questions after a session, someone told me about a RPG he'd designed and tested, that all the testers said was too complex. "How do I

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-34854734998131355142011-06-19T12:00:00.000-04:002011-06-19T12:00:12.824-04:00

As we all know, dividing groups of people into two more or less opposites can be illuminating, certainly in the context of games. It can also be divisive of course, but I hope that will not prove to be the case here. Video gamers have made me realize that there are different ways to approach game playing as a part of your life. "Escapist Magazine" likes to talk about "the gamer lifestyle".

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-11322631518938657672011-06-12T07:51:00.000-04:002011-06-12T07:51:14.085-04:00

(Warning: Spoilers for George R. R. Martin's Song of Fire and Ice (Game of Thrones) series below!) I was exposed to Game of Thrones: the Boardgame before I read the Song of Fire and Ice books. I have the minor curse of thinking like a game designer whenever games are discussed. When I originally wrote this I was in the third book of Song of Fire and Ice as I write, both Robb and apparently

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-80097459418511259252011-06-10T09:39:00.000-04:002011-06-10T09:39:00.176-04:00

I have tried a couple of my simpler games with my wife (who has been a game player, but isn’t nowadays) and her octogenarian parents, who play Bridge but not other games. One of the games, involving cards and pirates, was recently played for the first time by a precocious six and a half year old, so the comparisons were interesting. Aside from that session, no one else had played the game. It

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-83857721445441930032011-05-23T14:26:00.000-04:002011-05-23T14:26:09.963-04:00

One way to get plastic tanks and other land units, warships, and planes is to buy a used copy of Axis & Allies. But the latest version, 1942, seems to go for quite low prices. I recently received a copy from "NWS ONLINE GAMING STORE 1-407-925-7782 nws-online@nws-online.net" (you can click on the article title above) for $19.99 plus shipping, all told less than $33. While there are places

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-77812909711716122011-05-16T14:13:00.000-04:002011-05-16T14:13:05.777-04:00

(I posted this May 12, but Blogger had a big hiccup and apparently lost it (Blogger was down for many hours). I used Wordle (http://www.wordle.net/advanced) to create a word cloud of aspects of games. In the word cloud, words are in a larger font as they are more numerous or more important. The list I used was: Playtesting: 100 Ideas: 15 Conception: 10 Framework: 10 Prototype: 30 Feedback: 25

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-56522768794658225412011-05-16T09:50:00.002-04:002011-05-16T09:50:16.861-04:00

Sometimes I have observations that don't require a separate post. As below... ** I have been reading about the "Lone Wolf" series of books, which I had not heard of, which were the same kind of thing as "Fighting Fantasy" and "Choose Your Own Adventure". These books were interactive puzzles, not games. There was no semblance of intelligent opposition. And it's not surprising that the

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-42955203721010748492011-05-13T12:44:00.000-04:002011-05-13T12:44:53.703-04:00

(You can click on the post title to go to the original article.) Maxims of Game Design [02.04.10] - Lewis Pulsipher In the age of "instant gratification" -- of the sound bite or video clip -- we often look for shortcuts to understanding. "Maxims" are one form, each one a brief "expression of a general truth or principle". As part of teaching young adult beginners about game design, I've

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-62275379054523582192011-05-11T08:13:00.002-04:002011-05-11T08:13:30.827-04:00

I’m probably not the best person for finding playtesters, but I can give you some ideas. A friend of mine thinks that when Facebook finally gets its act together about groups then there will be lots of regional/local game groups to choose from. Until then Meetup groups are all over the United States, and usually cost nothing to joining (the organizers have to pay a monthly fee) http://

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-16140635715395319412011-05-08T19:15:00.003-04:002011-05-08T19:20:55.239-04:00

So you’re going to make a game for the very first time You’ve thought about making games for a long time, but you haven’t seriously pursued it. Until you get serious about it, you’ve accomplished nothing, you’re a mere dilettante. So today you’ve decided to make a game. How are you going to go about it? First, unless you have well-developed programming skills you’re going to have a much

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-29600362896766953612011-04-07T14:19:00.002-04:002011-04-07T14:19:14.229-04:00

. Every game has an essence, what makes it the game it is, what comes to mind when people think about it, what people are doing (or contending with) when they play. The essence characterizes the game, and can be quite brief. For example Diplomacy is about negotiation and simultaneous tactical movement. Chess is about positional play with perfect information, and about looking ahead several

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-10336578101058978812011-04-04T11:15:00.000-04:002011-04-04T11:15:44.127-04:00

. That phrase, "take no prisoners", makes sense in some contexts, but D&D (Dungeons & Dragons) players seem to take it to extremes. I have almost never encountered a D&D group that takes prisoners (just as I rarely encounter D&Ders who run away). It doesn’t seem to matter which edition is being played. I like to get information about what I'm going to fight (or avoid); prisoners are sometimes

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-21071473867884807902011-03-22T16:45:00.002-04:002011-03-22T16:45:58.285-04:00

. Those who dislike kingmaking, who feel people shouldn't talk about what others are doing in the game while playing, who want to turn it into individual manipulation of the system, really want puzzles (multiplayer solitaire) rather than games. ***** What I haven't seen discussed much about wargames is the number of players in a typical wargame. Traditionally, it is two. In Euros, it is

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-16203421319416436002011-03-15T07:58:00.001-04:002011-03-15T07:58:57.065-04:00

I'm going to be at the UK Game Expo in Birmingham this June 3-5. While checking out some exhibitors, I discovered that the China Britannia-like game The Dragon & the Pearl is evidently back in print (for 19.99 pounds, though shipping to this country would be expensive). Seehttp://www.spiritgames.co.uk/gamesin.php?UniqueNo=1969I have a copy of this game, though I haven't played it. It appears

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-88767821190417524852011-03-12T10:19:00.003-05:002011-03-12T11:44:30.209-05:00

. I was asked to write something for the blog of Buffalo Games, a smallish mass-market game company that, I confess, I had not heard of. They have since abandoned the blog, and posted it on their Facebook page.They also published a "Q&A" with me. Game design is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration. Don’t think that the idea is important. What makes a marketable game is the execution, the

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-37755590015955463202011-03-10T15:48:00.000-05:002011-03-10T15:49:30.334-05:00

.Some people go to PrezCon to play games for days on end, last year my roommate played something like 19 games of Roborally. This year he was focused on Merchant of Venus, long out-of-print pickup and deliver Avalon Hill game. So he played at least all three heats of the tournament as well as the final, winning two heats and finishing second in the other but not doing as well in the final. He

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-58170489766024666122011-03-09T07:31:00.000-05:002011-03-09T07:32:44.908-05:00

.I bought two items at the PrezCon auction store. Those who know me will be unsurprised to learn that they were the same item, because I was buying for pieces, not for a game to play. On my second walk-through of the auction store (later in the afternoon when the prices were sometimes cheaper) there were two copies of Exalted: War for the Throne. I could not place the game in my mind, so I

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-57098676171031493482011-03-08T07:24:00.000-05:002011-03-08T07:25:20.637-05:00

Once again I attended PrezCon in Charlottesville, VA. Organizer Justin Thompson says "600 players attended PrezCon 2011 which is a record! We ran 90 boardgames [tournaments] which was a record! Dominion had 84 players which is a non [-standard deck] card game record! We had our 1st Auction store in which we sold over 600 items." As usual PrezCon took place in the last full weekend of February

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-7546015845640775202011-02-22T10:00:00.000-05:002011-02-22T10:02:24.639-05:00

A few years ago I was listening to taped lectures about the Roman Republic. The lecturer was a young man who recounted the experience of a much older scholar who was an expert on the Roman Republic’s constitution. The Roman constitution is an unwritten and often puzzling mishmash of traditions. The lecturer said the older scholar described his experiences: when he was young he thought he

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-91942515659691765342011-02-21T13:37:00.002-05:002011-02-21T13:38:34.870-05:00

* We often say that the essence of a game is player interaction. If so, what is the essence of a puzzle? I'm at a loss.* I say I like cooperative games (D&D) but I don't go for cooperative boardgames. Why not? Because cooperative boardgames are puzzles, there's no semblance of intelligent opposition.* I have been thinking I should write an article about game myths. Maybe "10 myths about

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-73115522028030091602011-02-21T12:50:00.000-05:002011-02-21T12:51:29.215-05:00

.I've been reading the rules of some of the "strategy" and wargame category games on thegamecrafter.com. There are dozens of games in this category. (You may not have heard of this site, it's as close as we come to Print on Demand for board and card games.) Many of these games are designed by first-timers who have no editor or publisher to assist them.Elementary "rules" of writing rules are

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-53099473804381463862011-02-18T14:23:00.002-05:002011-02-19T11:00:34.203-05:00

I was at a local game shop the other day to try out 4th edition D&D seasonal adventures. One of the players had played Warhammer 40,000 but had never played D&D. I discovered on further acquaintance that she likes to write fiction. This seems to be the most common hobby cum professional objective of people in their late teens or early 20s, after wanting to make video games, though that

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-24035058162806350932011-02-16T12:38:00.002-05:002011-02-16T12:40:55.923-05:00

Nomenclature varies; what many people call games (such as card Solitaire) I call puzzles. Most single-player video games are puzzles, some (such as Pac-Man) with an exact but sometimes very difficult solution. Many Euro-style games are much more puzzles than games, such as the ones called "multi-player solitaire". Players are playing against the non-sentient system, not against each other. At

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-8182349646850573672011-02-14T11:18:00.001-05:002011-02-14T11:19:16.758-05:00

I expect to be at PrezCon in Charlottesville VA from Wednesday to Sunday (Feb 23-26). I'll have some games to playtest, of course, both Brit-like and much, much different. You can see many of my projects at:http://pulsiphergames.com/projects.htm

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-75105260547767407832011-01-12T17:37:00.000-05:002011-01-12T17:38:14.100-05:00

I have been thinking about what characterizes the broader market in games, both tabletop and video. I haven't come to any generalized theory yet (if I ever will), but I have some observations."Twitch games" are games requiring a player to move and react very quickly. This is the most common form of hard core video game, as epitomized by shooters, but can also be seen in many casual games such as

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-15135190810331135032011-01-07T11:00:00.001-05:002011-01-16T08:34:09.951-05:00

One of the fascinations of game design is seeing how differently people play the same game. And that includes how differently people play games that I've played solo. I am by nature a minimaxer and a strategy gamer, which is different from most game players nowadays. In a sense game hobby playing is become more casual than it used to be. And in any case, any game designer has to recognize

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-76052844189736259462010-12-10T08:36:00.003-05:002010-12-15T19:26:27.647-05:00

I have been trying to write a description/definition of "game designers" in 50 words or less. This is my latest:“A game designer conceives the framework for a series of interesting challenges in the form of a ‘game’, devises mechanics (rules), creates or helps create a working prototype, and repetitively and incrementally modifies the design in the light of playtesting until it is a good game

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-90335616313968102502010-12-08T20:28:00.001-05:002010-12-08T20:29:59.648-05:00

(This was originally published on Gamedev.net, 25 Jan 10. You can click on the post title to go to that version.Some Game Playing Styles, and How Games Match One Style or AnotherLewis PulsipherA big obstacle for beginning game designers is the common assumption that everyone likes the same kinds of games, and plays the same way, that they do. If they love shooters, they think EVERYone loves

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-24440902513242158772010-11-24T07:49:00.001-05:002010-11-24T07:49:36.382-05:00

Branding is becoming very important in the world (or at least, the US). There's the classic experiment where young kids were given two sets of fast food to evaluate. One was marked McDonalds, the other not. The food was identical, but the kids significantly favored the branded food. And a famous pinball machine designer said that you just couldn't succeed without a tie-in to some IP or other

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-63471988528633597522010-11-22T17:23:00.001-05:002010-11-22T17:24:49.447-05:00

The most unusual game I saw at MACE is called ex illis. It is a miniatures game played on a 4x4 square grid with units of several troops and occasional individuals. It's supposed to reflect some non-historical 13th century European situation, but is obviously fantastical. The striking part, however, is that can only be played in conjunction with software that tracks many of the complexities of

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-8194597984175819442010-11-18T08:58:00.001-05:002010-11-18T11:56:51.049-05:00

MACE (Mid-Atlantic Convention Expo), proclaiming itself "the largest gaming convention in the Carolinas", met for the 14th year on November 12-14 in High Point, NC. I was at MACE only on Saturday.MACE is an offshoot of science fiction and fantasy conventions. There are lots of SF/F conventions, often with comics and costuming and lots of other things including games thrown in. I haven't been

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-66226027077709082432010-11-07T20:56:00.003-05:002010-11-07T20:59:50.239-05:00

This originally appeared (with the title "Game Curricula: Differences in Focus" on GameCareerGuide 4 Aug 09. You can click the title of this post to go there. Education: what are the major differences in focus between various kinds of game curricula?Lewis PulsipherThere seems to be a lot of confusion–some of it deliberate, unfortunately–about several categories of academic programs devoted to

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-33662720911239143792010-11-05T14:50:00.001-04:002010-11-05T14:50:33.609-04:00

Last night at the NC State tabletop gamers meeting, a large group was playing a "game" called "Dawn of Worlds". (Google the title with quotation marks for the PDF.) I put game in quotation marks because it's actually a cooperative--or mostly cooperative--way for a group of people to create a world for a role-playing game. The brief rules provide guidelines for using power points to create

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-48925187072338387282010-10-11T12:07:00.001-04:002010-10-11T12:07:28.429-04:00

One of my recently devised prototypes is a nameless game ("Colonial Scramble", maybe) that I think of as my gateway card wargame. Roughly speaking it's set around 1890, a time when the great European powers were still grabbing colonies in Africa. With five players, the most successful players are likely to work together, it's not a game where you can "go it alone". Yet some of the players are

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-32972235350237882442010-10-05T10:16:00.001-04:002010-10-05T10:16:37.986-04:00

After a partial session of Arthuria on Thursday, I am reminded once again how bloody difficult it is to get balanced sides in a Britannia-like game. On the basis of one playing, many people will say that Britannia itself is unbalanced--then pick any one of the colors to be one that has a big advantage or disadvantage--but we know from statistics that it is in fact quite well-balanced. Part of

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-19818630942949631182010-10-04T08:44:00.000-04:002010-10-04T08:45:25.772-04:00

In high school, the teacher is expected to think for you, to package everything in small digestible bits that can be memorized for multiple-choice tests. For the most part, you are trained, not educated, taught to memorize how to do something, rather than understand how to do something, or to memorize facts instead of understanding how systems work. Problem-solving is not part of that package,

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-9090295761617786792010-10-03T10:47:00.001-04:002010-10-03T10:51:37.918-04:00

Farmville and similar social "games" are in fact very simple continuing puzzles. Contrast this with real games and with the typical traditional single-player "interactive puzzle".Let's face it, puzzles are more popular than games. Crossword puzzles, physical puzzles, jigsaw puzzles. The venerable "Games" magazine is more about puzzles than games, and if you look in the "Games" section of a

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-73896311046554978992010-10-02T13:42:00.001-04:002010-10-02T13:42:53.176-04:00

If so many social games and other free-to-play games depend on voluntary expenditure of funds by the players, will we see over time that players become more resistant to such expenditures, the way people have become more and more indifferent to advertising? (Yes, advertising still works; but it requires a higher volume/greater frequency to be effective, I believe.)

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-71694948729973959322010-10-01T19:58:00.002-04:002010-10-02T14:22:58.627-04:00

Customization seems to be very attractive to young people who play video games. Perhaps they feel more of a need to express their individuality than someone of my generation (baby boomer) might feel.Does this desire for customization spill over into the ranks of tabletop game players? And if so, how can we accommodate the desire? Role-playing games can do it, of course, through multiple

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-56812328211537095252010-09-29T14:11:00.000-04:002010-09-29T14:12:16.596-04:00

I read the following quote and then tried to find an analog for video games: “In a G-rated film, the hero gets the girl, in an R-rated film, the villain gets the girl, and in an X-rated film, everybody gets the girl.” - Michael DouglasHere's the best I've been able to come up with: "In an E rated game, no one bleeds, in a T rated game the bad guys and bystanders bleed a little, in an M rated

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-7367225227251408352010-09-27T16:54:00.001-04:002010-09-27T16:54:40.005-04:00

I am struck by the difference between the video game industry and tabletop game industry with respect to game "post-mortems". A postmortem examining what went right and what went wrong in the production of a video game is very common. I don't recall ever seeing something called a post-mortem for tabletop game, and rarely see anything like one.Why the difference? Is it because for tabletop

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-85279854697237227662010-09-26T09:42:00.002-04:002010-09-28T07:02:35.074-04:00

I have much-belatedly begun to read George R. R. Martin's Song of Fire and Ice series.You know the novelist has succeeded in his craft when the characters take on a life of their own in the mind of the reader, as though they were real people, the reader thinking about how a character might react in a particular situation (not in the book(s), perhaps imagining conversations with the character,

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-26777991367355728092010-09-16T12:35:00.001-04:002010-09-16T12:35:38.027-04:00

The past several days, despite a bout of flu when it’s still 90+ degrees highs outside, I have been playing for the first time a World War II naval development of my science fiction game Doomstar, which in turn descends ultimately from Stratego/l’Attaque. It uses a hexagonal board rather than squares, pieces can ordinarily move two hexes (or more) in a straight line, fighters and bombers can

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-44629537192109432362010-09-15T16:42:00.002-04:002010-09-15T16:43:12.616-04:00

Recently I went to a local game shop to recruit playtesters and play in a Pathfinder game. But that game wasn’t coming together, and I had a chance to play a form of 4th edition D&D with ready-made characters. So I decided to try it. This was part of Red Box Day, and we were playing an adventure that was only available to be run that day through official channels, Sun Peak Temple or something

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-57714489275575149782010-09-13T11:29:00.001-04:002010-09-13T11:30:36.076-04:00

A couple years ago I ran across an English university that advertised a video game design degree, but I quickly discovered that only one or two of the classes were in game design, and the rest in art and 3-D modeling. The school claimed that this was a program that would lead to game design opportunities. My reaction was, first, I can't think of anybody who comes from the art side to be a game

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-54406311822328562312010-09-06T13:47:00.002-04:002010-09-06T13:50:02.315-04:00

Paid to Play by Keith A. Meyers. Self-published through iUniverse, Inc. 2008. 89 pages 9" by 6" (yes, a very small book). About $20 as I recall,click the article title for the link. Also, there is another book of the same name, except different subtitle, about video games. Don't get confused.As the subtitle indicates, this book is not about how to design a game but about the process that

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-40653303757657856572010-09-05T15:47:00.000-04:002010-09-05T15:48:09.586-04:00

A friend is designing a post-apocalyptic game. After a game club session (there are references to games played during that session) I sent him this advice:Something to recognize as a big difference between some games and other games, is the fundamental nature of the game, is it a game or is it a puzzle? A puzzle is something that you can solve, and once you’ve solved it then there is not much

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-42024204772808357972010-09-03T08:34:00.002-04:002010-09-03T08:37:45.166-04:00

This originally appeared on GameCareerGuide on 7 July 09. You can click on the article title for the GCG version. I'm posting my original text. While it was written with video games in mind, much of it applies to tabletop games as well.Hundreds of thousands of young people want to be part of the game industry. Yet relatively few succeed. There are many reasons for that, but the most common

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-1103343200835727222010-09-02T10:43:00.002-04:002010-09-02T10:48:42.132-04:00

This originally appeared on GameCareerGuide 7 May 09. You can click on the article title to reach the published version.Here is a list of illusions and delusions of beginning game development (especially game design) students, with a brief description of WHY it isn’t so.Briefly, what this list amounts to is, “grow up and recognize what life is like, kid”. Wildly unrealistic expectations are

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-30909005978013362252010-09-01T12:59:00.001-04:002010-09-01T13:06:35.349-04:00

This originally appeared in Against the Odds magazine #18, late 2006. This is my version rather than the text published in the magazine.Ways to reflect the "fog of war"--designing in uncertainty in conflict boardgamesLewis Pulsipher(All game titles in the following are trademarks of their respective designers or publishers.)I want to discuss how uncertainty can be introduced into wargames,

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-13412538575004764262010-07-28T08:34:00.000-04:002010-07-28T08:35:23.931-04:00

Games are awkward and inefficient for telling stories, yet video game players are often quite story-oriented. Why? In any case, the consequence is more and more games where the player has a human-like avatar, an often-customizable "I".The heart of a novel is characterization, though there's more to it than that (such as plot, dramatic tension, etc.). The heart of a game is gameplay, though

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-72262523581115242222010-07-19T15:30:00.001-04:002010-07-19T15:30:26.258-04:00

Sometimes we see things, and express our perceptions without trying to "prove" anything. I don't offer proof for the following, and of course, nothing I could say could be proof, if you think about it. So take this as an opinion or whatever you want to call it.Clearly, a major reason for people to play video games is escape. Kids are escaping from a monitored world, from the "prison" of K12

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261591.post-67583483322599200542010-07-14T20:57:00.001-04:002010-07-14T20:59:20.510-04:00

(I wrote this for the college Web site, to help prospective students and parents understand the difference between simulations and games (our program is called "Simulation and Game Development"). It may not get onto the Web there, but I can use it here.)People who can make good video games are also likely to make good simulations. Many video game makers who tire of the highly intense

Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com0