Category Archives: Game Design

The most consistent pushback I get when presenting my case for systemic design is against the idea that authorial games are not as interactive as more emergent games. “They surely are interactive,” says the typical critic, “because you are pressing buttons; there’s gameplay.” Which is true at face value, since you are certainly pressing buttonsContinue reading “The Interaction Frontier”

Something that has been missing from this blog is how players will experience playing your systemic games. What the inputs and outputs represent and what kind of game they help make. So that’s what this post is about. Also, please, if I’m wrong about something or you want to book a talk or just chatContinue reading “Systemic Building Blocks”

Note: this post has been revisited and expanded a few times, going from four scales to six to provide a more holistic set of scales. A big part of what makes systemic design work is your own design mindset. The relationship you imagine between yourself as the designer and the player who will be playingContinue reading “The Systemic Master Scale”

This post is a continuation on a previous combat design post. How to build a gun has already been discussed. We’ll now explore what happens after the trigger has been pulled and who you are shooting. We’ll be touching on projectile simulation and game physics, since those are systems that will solve (or cause) yourContinue reading “Combat Gunplay”

This post is a continuation on a previous combat design post. Shooting, stabbing, strangling nazis; or just quick-meleeing with knives to humiliate PvP opponents that didn’t see us coming. Melee combat is a big deal in video games and has been since forever. This post will try to break down how you turn a traditionallyContinue reading “Combat Melee”

The biggest difference between designing a systemic game and designing its opposite (a content-driven game) is that you can’t know the exact outcome of every system and you must consider this state of mutability a strength. You must be willing to let go of your authorial control. You can certainly define interesting interactions in advance,Continue reading “Designing a Systemic Game”

This is an unplanned Part 3 in my series on gamification and goes into loot. Itemised rewards. Maybe the most compelling of all reward systems that games have yet to use, so it’s possible that it was simply too obvious to be included the first time around. Designing a reward system is a ton ofContinue reading “Gamification, Part 3: Loot”

This blog is primarily dedicated to musings around systemic design. How we can give more power to the players and generate emergent experiences. One of the things that countless games have done in various ways is combat. Yet, no matter how many combat-driven games gets made, we’re likely to see more of them. Before weContinue reading “Combat Design Philosophy”

Systemic design isn’t really where most of game development traditionally puts its effort. Instead, a word you often hear repeated, rather than “system,” is content. Yelled from the battlements and printed on the plaques. I’ll quote randomly from comment threads, reviews and interviews to illustrate what I mean. Each of them grabbed from the firstContinue reading “The Content Treadmill”