As you may have surmised from reading some of my other posts, I’m a huge Borderlands fan. I love the game, I love the tone, I love the stories, and I love the unique world Gearbox has created. So, when Tales from the Borderlands was announced I bit my tongue […]
Design and Development
106 posts
For years we have been talking about learning to write code through game play with things like Gamestar Mechanic and Double Fine’s Hack and Slash (which requires you to change the code of the game’s assets in order to win), but the recent attention that folks like YouTuber SethBling has gotten […]
Last week, I wrote about the revelation that Mass Effect’s Commander Shepard was originally conceived as a woman, at least in visuals (not necessarily in terms of game content), a piece that sparked a bit of discussion on my Facebook page about the nature of the industry and reality. “Reality” […]
This Christmas Pea received a Lego Fusion kit for Christmas. When it was time to choose which kit she should get it was a tough choice. I took the time and looked through the videos of gameplay online and made the decision that despite my hatred of the Lego Friends […]
This week I’m following up on a discussion of game mechanics started last week. To read part I, check here. So a quick recap: Mechanics are a special subset of game rules. Rules are the foundations of games, and they do all sorts of things. In poker, for example, hand […]
In this series we’ll be looking at some principles of game design, particularly as they relate to analysis and criticism. Check out the first part, about genre in gaming, here. While calls for objectivity in games reviewing have been with the media for quite some time, Gamergate seems to have […]
I know that it’s a bit early for sweeping comments 2014 seems to be the year of a lack of female character creation options. Or, more specifically, the removal of female character creation options for the sake of the game’s “quality.” This not so pleasant instance in this year’s list […]
It’s no secret that I have a real interest in games for educational purposes. And this interest extends to games that might be both fun and educational to my own 6 year old. So when I got the chance to review The Counting Kingdom by Little Worlds Interactive for iOS […]
In this series we’ll be looking at some principles of game design, particularly as they relate to analysis and criticism. Genre is a useful concept for consumers and producers of media- identifying and classifying various texts as being part of a certain genre creates a set expectations. Of course, genre […]
I feel like all of our blog posts lately have started with something along the lines of “in the wake of recent conversations”. Nonetheless, here I go: in the wake of recent conversations, I’ve been thinking again about what seems to be an eternal debate among gamers and in game […]