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Posts Tagged ‘game balance’

 
 

Basic Instinct

Sunday, October 18th, 2009

As promised, I’m here today to talk about the Instinct system that I glossed over at the end of yesterday’s post. Before I get into the nitty-gritty of exactly what the system does, I feel it’s beneficial to give a bit of background for comparison, as the final system (at least as far as I’ve [...]

 

Dancing with the details

Saturday, October 17th, 2009

Emergence, the concept of several small systems interacting to form a complex system that is “larger than the sum of its parts” is something we’ve discussed briefly before, but which I’d like to bring up for discussion once again, today. I find emergence to be one of the most fundamental elements of game design theory; [...]

 

Judge a book

Saturday, October 10th, 2009

What strange alternate dimension have I wound up in, in which it is apparently unacceptable for a game reviewer to review an MMO based on their experience for the first 10 levels of play? There’s a problem that exists somewhere in the gulf between the game design philosophy for your standard MMO and the expectations [...]

 

Revised Office Hours

Friday, October 9th, 2009

It should be quite apparent by now that I’m no longer making daily posts. The reason? I’m actually working on the game. It might seem a bit ridiculous that I write less about the game development process when I’m doing more along the lines of actual, bona fide development, but there you have it. I’ve [...]

 

Sandboxing

Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009

I’ve seen a  lot of discussion lately, regarding the dichotomy between “sandbox” and “theme park” MMORPGs. The conversations boil down to this: nearly all MMOs are like theme parks; they’re carefully constructed experiences that funnel everybody through the game in the same way and ensure that every player is exposed to the same content. It [...]