Every game, even the most linear of them, has some degree of exploration. This is a fundamental part of the interactive experience whereas something such as a book or movie is all about explanation and telling (or showing) the user what is going on. But in the world of...
Nitpicking
Nit: Cheat codes and F2P – Part 2: Pay to Cheat
In this continuation from part 1, we’re going to dive into how cheating relates to Free 2 Play (F2P) games. To set expectations, I do not wish to imply that purchasing things in F2P games is inherently cheating. There are even some ways that people may, generally rightly, call...
Nit: Cheat codes and F2P – Part 1: Cheating in my world
iddqd. dnkroz. it is a good day to die. And of course any of the many other ways to say /god. For some small number of people, these little phrases will map to enabling God mode in different old games (for reference, Doom/Doom 2, Duke Nukem 3d, Warcraft 2,...
Nit: Motivation and Progress – Why are we all here?
We play games for a number of reasons. For some, there’s the allure of a good story. For others, its for power and glory and the virtual battle field. But for plenty, it’s an idea that they have when they start a game which quickly fades and results in...
Nit: Dialog – An Important Second-Class Citizen – Part 2: Social Order
In our conclusion to discussing dialog in video games, we dive deeper into actual game examples of dialog. In particular, I want to look at what makes good use of dialog in games much more than what doesn’t, though I have devised a little test to figure out how...
Nit: Dialog – An Important Second-Class Citizen – Part 1: Mechanics
When a game has a story and involves sentient creatures, it is inevitable that dialog will arise in some form. But there are different forms of dialog and different ways to handle the dialog in more or less respectful ways to the dialog itself. But if there is effort...
Nit: Difficulty – Labels and the Spectrum
The challenge a player faces in a game is extremely important to consider. After all, video games are an interactive medium and the challenge really frames how that interaction will go. So how can a game find the ideal challenge? Maybe first, what is the ideal challenge? And truly,...
Nit: Value – Everything has a price
Nit is my series of posts that will nitpick minor or very specific details relating to one very scoped aspect of video games. Our purpose is to always come up with a series of rules or suggestions to guide developers to make even better games in the future. Today we start...