A blog about game design and development & randomness.
Remember when you were a kid and your parents went to IKEA and they put you in the ball pool and then you were like “oh man, there’s a million colored balls! And I can swim in them! Wheeeeeeee!”. Personally I don’t remember that at all, because I have never in my life been in [...]
At the Game Designers Rant, Jane McGonigal held an inspiring rant about the need for game designers to approach real-life experiences with a game design mindset. The real world, she argued, is often boring and/or broken, and there’s a lot that game designers can do to make people more engaged and happy in everyday life.
The [...]
How is it that Valve can imbue a game with more personality than other games could ever hope to dream of USING ONLY A COMPUTER VOICE AND A STEEL BOX WITH A LITTLE HEART ON IT?! Does that mean Valve is amazing, or just that everything else is depressingly bad? Maybe both.
It’s ironic and awesome [...]
As a kid I once I had an unusual boyscout camp experience that, in retrospect, seems almost like a game design parable.
After we’d set up our tents in the woods, the camp leaders revealed to us a steel box. Inside was a large pile of rusty old keys painted in different colors. These keys would [...]
Some of my friends were talking about how much they love SingStar. I’ve never played it, and I said I was curious how I’d score in this game as I usually don’t sing unless I’m in the shower.
Hmmm. Many people sing in the shower. It is a widespread phenomenon. I know this because I looked [...]
Free Bird is my favorite song in Guitar Hero II. It’s the last song in the playlist, the one with that ultimate five minute solo that nearly has your fingers bleeding and convulsing at the end. I play Free Bird at least once whenever I play Guitar Hero II. A few days ago the loading [...]
I love reading non-fiction books. Sometimes I’ll blast through one just so I can look at myself in the mirror and exclaim “I… Know… EVERYTHIIIIIING!!!” just like former astronaut Jack Austin did. Then inevitably I find out that my newfound knowledge has affected my life by only a mere fraction of a percentage and [...]
Many game industry terms are still poorly understood. Alex recently blogged about the problems with “fun”. Another problematic term is “casual”.
What’s a casual gamer? Someone who plays easy games? Someone who plays hard games, but infrequently? How about someone who plays casual games in an extremely hardcore fashion — is that still casual?
There are no [...]
Hey, my name is Marek Bronstring and I'm Head of Content at Sega. You're looking at my rarely-updated game design blog. I think this sidebar needs some more text so let me tell you what my top favorite animals are: 1) meerkats 2) mimic octopuses 3) miniature horses (particularly when used as assistance animals).
Excellent gaming podcast hosted by some of my friends in the US. Intelligent yet meme-tastic... check it out.
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