Why we should all embrace the ‘Game Over’ screen — There are a lot of emotions that go into a Game Over screen. Maybe we’re frustrated — we’re mad that we lost or failed whatever task that got us to this screen. …

Why the words we use are important — It’s hard to talk about games. Not because we don’t know how they make us feel. In fact, we often perceive too much from these games to adequately put them into words that make sense for other people. Despite the medium’s infinite potential to evoke unique emotions and communicate ideas…

And accessibility matters too — Difficulty, in a game design sense, is most often associated with pleasure. Whether it be platforming, fighting, or solving a puzzle, overcoming something challenging makes the reward of finally succeeding even sweeter. …

Walking the border between RPG and MMORPG — Hidetaka Miyazaki, the driving force behind the Souls series and now FromSoftware’s president, felt the power of collaboration between strangers during a snowy day. After a heavy snowfall, cars were having difficulty going up a steep hill. They were all stuck. Then something momentous took place: strangers came together to…

A contemporary reinterpretation of a historical debate — In 2005, anti-video game activist Jack Thompson tried to challenge the video game community’s perception of violence. Believing that developers would be too afraid to make themselves the subject of the violence they love to create, he posited his challenge in the form of a game concept, titled “A Modest…

Why regionality in games doesn’t really matter — When we describe developers, we rarely describe where they come from. Not as in their upbringing or the games that influenced them growing up, but physically where they were born and raised. It’s a side note or fun adjective dropped in the introductory sentence and forgotten about in the next.

The art of manipulating procedural generation — Michael Toy’s and Glenn Wichman’s Rogue, released in 1980, was well-renowned for two main things: the stakes that permadeath created and the ability of procedural generation to create unique stories and experiences. …

Why roguelikes shouldn’t be a genre you avoid, but one you should embrace — Roguelikes aren’t for everybody. People who can stomach them — much less enjoy — are the ones who are willing to. Even after dozens of runs, hours of wiped progress, they press play to start it all over again. As a trend, the genre has dominated the indie games industry…