“War never changes” was immortalised by Ron Perlman in the original Fallout. It holds true for video game depictions of war as well. Video games often gloss over the worst elements of armed conflict, or what Dan Carlin of Hardcore History would call “the human experience.” The mud, the fear, the terrifying opportunism, and theContinue reading “High Emergence, Low Micro”
Category Archives: Game Design
Complexity and Player Agency
There’s sometimes an idea that a systemic game is inherently complicated to play. If you simulate a world, you must simulate everything that can potentially exist in that world. If you don’t want to constrain the player, and you want to lean strongly into player agency, this seems to lead naturally to a high degreeContinue reading “Complexity and Player Agency”
Analogue Prototyping
There is a lot to say about prototyping. Chris Hecker talked about advanced prototyping at GDC 2006, and provided a hierarchy of priorities that goes like this: Analogue prototyping comes in right away at Step 1: Don’t. By not launching straight into your game engine, you can save giant heaps of time between hypothesis andContinue reading “Analogue Prototyping”
The Playtank Blog Guide
This blog started as a place to gather tabletop role-playing thoughts. Over time, it transformed into an outlet for professional musings. When my focus shifted professionally to systemic design, the blog shifted along. I’m quite proud of this collection of tips, tricks, and practices. It’s come to the point where there’s a consistent monthly readership.Continue reading “The Playtank Blog Guide”
The Systemic Pitch
The past few years prove that there is a market for premium systemic singleplayer games. Few have listened to us (developers) when we tried to pitch such games for the past decade. Or ever. This isn’t because there is some kind of conspiracy against systemic games. Not at all. Systemic designs are very hard toContinue reading “The Systemic Pitch”
Designing Good Rules
This is the second part of two in a short series on how to design Your Next Systemic Game, and this time, we’ll dive into designing rules. A few years ago, I was demonstrating a system to a friend. Look here, you can do this, and when you activate these things, see what happens! ItContinue reading “Designing Good Rules”
Your Next Systemic Game
This is the first part of two in a short series on how to design your next systemic game. The second part deals with Designing Good Rules. This is how the magic happens! This post lays out a process in three very broad steps for how to put the principles on this blog into practice.Continue reading “Your Next Systemic Game”
Maximum Iteration
Here’s a nuclear generalisation for you: the quality of your game is directly proportional to the number of iterations you have time to make. The adage is that game development is an iterative process. We know we should be tweaking and tuning our game until it feels and runs great. To make it the bestContinue reading “Maximum Iteration”
Game Balancing Guide
This post is all about what game balancing is and how to do it. Just remember that every game has its own unique needs and challenges, so cherry-pick whatever sounds reasonable for your game. This post will become a “living” post of sorts, added to over time. Tell me about your own balancing tools andContinue reading “Game Balancing Guide”
Definitions in Game Design
“We’re making an ARPG with survival and roguelike elements,” begins the pitch. “It also has some light platforming, is made with Godot, and intented for release on Steam in Early Access.” For the business-minded person in the crowd who just played Path of Exile 2, they may focus on the ARPG bits or conjure upContinue reading “Definitions in Game Design”
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