Failure – I Choose You!: The Rise of Self-Enforced Hardcore Modes

 Very rarely does one consider the power of failure.  Yet, our shared desire to avoid failure is often integral in the direction we take our lives. It greases the wheels of our existence, keeps us drudging through the monotony of work,

Aiming for the Head in The Walking Dead

If you’ve ever spoken to an opinionated man in a vintage Night of the Living Dead shirt at a college party, you’ve likely had the concept that zombie movies aren’t really about the zombies firmly drilled into your head. For

Ed Del Castillo and The Next Evolution in Fight Games

Edward Del Castillo likes to play things close to the chest. When his PR rep read my query about implementing reactive audio in fighting games Castillo’s first thought was “did this guy get a leak?” Without revealing the title, the man behind the Command

Pongs: Video Game Criticism as Game

Genres are frequently marketing tools that help buyers know what kind of game to expect. Genres help form player expectations. Much like a pop song repeats its chorus at some point, puzzle-platformers always have players jumping around. A haiku has

Feedback Loop: Many choices, or none, make a game.

Is just one choice all it takes to turn a novel into a video game? Before you say yes, consider when a game is created out of many choices and when we are left with none.

Richard Eisenbeis looks at Katawa Shoujo in an April 24 Kotaku article. Eisenbeis holds up the dating sim/visual novel as proof that one choice is all it takes to turn a novel into a game. It is a shallow analysis and the implication that one can stick a choice in a novel and have a game is just false.

If we step away from the screen with only Eisenbeis’s assertion, we lose out on understanding what developers have to do to take a story and turn it interactive.

Creating a good game means understanding the times when a million choices create an interactive work and the instances where no choices are required.

"Unlocks" and the gamification of gaming

  “LEVEL THE PLAYING FIELD INSTANTLY!” I blinked. I had just launched Battlefield 3, and for some reason there a pop-up promising me…fairness? “Tired of fighting an uphill battle against Battlefield veterans?” it continued.  “The Ultimate Shortcut Bundle unlocks 119

10 Things I Want In The Elder Scrolls Online

Within hours of Game Informer’s announcement  that The Elder Scrolls Online would be the feature story for their upcoming June edition, scans of the entire article had been leaked, and with it came information that enraged some and excited others

Put Mario back on the slippery slope

We recognize theme with all our senses: the sights, the sounds, the heavy rumble in our hands, the font used to display text. Forgotten in this equation are the game’s mechanics. What the buttons you press do determines how the

After Pressing Start: Bioshock's Elevator Pitch

If you go to an entrepreneurship lecture, you are sure to hear about an elevator pitch: the concept of communicating a value proposition to someone in 30 seconds. If you ever meet Bill Gates inside an elevator, you only have

Feedback Loop: Playing To Win

I must be one insufferable little prick. As I navigate the Inception-like hallways of Halo: Reach’s Reflection map, a grin spreads slyly across my face. I’m armed only with a DMR, a score of 49 to 49, and a genuine