On the morning of 14 November 2008, a 15 year-old boy was rushed to hospital in Laholm, Sweden. He was suffering from an apparent epileptic fit, brought on by exhaustion and dehydration. Investigating doctors discovered that the cause of his illness was self-inflicted. The boy had been playing Wrath of the Lich King, an expansion of […]
Read more "The Three Fundamentals of Powerful Interactive Communications"My thoughts about game design have been stirred lately by the creative opportunities afforded by Bungie’s Halo: Reach. As well as being an excellent game in its own right, Reach includes a very powerful level editor with quite easy controls. The learning curve is steep but very short, and it’s entirely possible to be creating […]
Read more "Level Building in Halo: Reach"Here’s something really cool. lose/lose is a video game the plays like an old-school space shoot-’em-up. It’s got your vertically scrolling spacescape, full of presumably hostile aliens. It’s got your lone gunship out to destroy them all. And it’s got one hell of a twist. Each little alien sprite you encounter on your deadly cruise […]
Read more "Backup your hard drive: it’s lose/lose"Why are really good games fun? Here’s an attempt to deconstruct one in detail. PopCap’s Peggle: a Masterpiece of game design. I tend to like a certain kind of game. Half-Life, Call of Duty, Halo . . . See a pattern there? A lot of my friends play similar games. You know – hard-core gamer […]
Read more "Anatomy of Fun: Why Peggle is a Masterpiece"The Norman invasion of England. It seems like the perfect topic to approach with gaming. It’s history, it’s dramatic, and best of all it’s about battles. The game was developed by Preloaded and published by Channel 4, to go along with the drama series of the same title. I’m a huge fan of Channel 4’s […]
Read more "1066 – Game Design FAIL"Here’s a great little example of a game where aesthetic design and innovative game mechanics all come together to make something really special. Daniel Benmergui’s Today I Die is a poetic experience, very much a genre on its own. The experience of playing it is all the more valuable because it’s intrinsically interactive – this […]
Read more "Today I Die"This is too cool for words. An apartment designed to be a real-life adventure game, full of secret compartments and hidden messages. The Post family in New York got a posh apartment. They hired an architect as an interior designer. The father commented in an off-hand way that he’d like a message hidden for his […]
Read more "Not Just an Apartment – It’s an Adventure Game"
Philip Trippenbach 