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…
How different regions approach the same concept
In every game, there exists the metagame, or meta for short; the game of playing the game. Small advantages and imbalances of power exist everywhere within a complex game. Perhaps the mechanics inherently reward aggressiveness and proactive gameplay, or a character deals more damage than others in a specific instance…
Why developers can’t seem to beat cheaters
If you ask any multiplayer gamer what they want whenever they load into a match, the number one answer will always be fairness. It’s why we love to complain about RNG, about smurfs, and everything ranging from server locations to netcode. …
For many, browser-based games were their gateway to the full spectrum of gaming as a hobby
A significant part of Generation Z’s school culture, to me, has always been computer class. It was the only time, for many kids, where they could get a computer all to themselves — the first real exposure to the online world, albeit through the filtered lens of a school firewall…
