“ Dust is the work for which I am best known. I wish it was due to my brilliance, intelligence, level design knack and astonishingly good looks, but actually, the main element was luck. It was all the right bits in the right place at the right time. The result far exceeded anything I could have imagined or planned to make - Dust just 'happened'.

 Some say the reason for Dust's success was its simplicity. Others say it's due to how balanced it is. In reality, the two are closely linked - the simpler a map is, the easier it is to balance. In essence, it's hard to make a simple map play badly. ”

“

Many small details of the game were designed to generate some emotional response. For instance, I really like the airport map. It's a wide empty area with nothing but some strange guy waiting for you behind a shadow. I wanted that to be discomforting and slightly intimidating.

Another aspect which was deliberately planned was to have those "mash buttons 1/2" moments with some torture devices. I wanted players to DO something during the torture and I believe there's an actual physical effort in pressing buttons as fast as possible. I wanted this small effort to be the equivalent of something that felt violent... like choking someone, repeatedly stabbing, or something. I wanted the player to feel "I AM DOING THIS". I also wanted the torture scoring (and therefore the reviews) to be initially frustrating, so the player would know what Verge feels.

There are tons of small details designed with such purposes. Not all of them will provoke reactions with everyone. But I expect them to, as a whole, succeed in making the game a disturbing experience.

”

“ We’re not the only designers who think that computer technology has a lot more to offer than dress up games. But we’ve been a bit scattered so far, and whenever we communicate our ideas in public, or even show our work we meet with the brick wall of intolerance of the games industry and the gamers audience. People like games, and they like them so much that they don’t want anybody to make anything else but games.

Rather than continue those endless debates with the fiero junkies, we have decided to join forces. We’re calling this project the Notgames Initiative… the idea is to explore the potential of digital entertainment and art that is not games. By explicitly rejecting the typical game elements of rules and goals and challenges and rewards, we hope to discover new ways to delight and enlighten our audience. Ways that give us more freedom in terms of subject matter and emotional response. It’s important to point out that notgames is not a category of entertainment or art. Instead, it is a method to design, a challenge to designers and artists.

Notgames is not an ideology, either. It’s not necessary to radically choose to never makes games again. We can make a game one day and a not-so-game another. It’s about broadening the spectrum, not narrowing it down. A few weeks ago we started a web forum where we are discussing this new form of design…

We hope and believe that our pioneering work with our little group will inspire and encourage more mainstream designers to create digital entertainment for all the hungry people out there who are not enchanted with videogames the way they are now. ”

“ [...] ein bedrückendes Mahnmal menschlicher Hybris. Es handelt davon, wie der Mensch seine Grenzen überschreitet und damit alle Regeln außer Kraft setzt, von einem Tag auf den nächsten die Zivilisation wegfegt. Ein anomischer Zustand, in dem alte Regeln von neuen, wilden, ungezügelten Gesetzen ersetzt werden. Die Stalker, und damit auch der Spieler, sind Zeugen des Unglücks, Pioniere und Siedler in einer neuen, pervertierten Welt - die doch nur die alte ist: Eine finstere Metapher für die zuweilen gesetzlos wirkenden Trümmer der Sowjetunion. ”

“ the big question of level design is: how do i teach the player these rules? an unfortunate trend in contemporary games is to spell out every detail in a hand-holding “tutorial” session at the outset of a game – unfortunate because it shows both a great deal of contempt for the player’s intuition and a lack of confidence in the designer’s own design. but more than that, it’s a design failure because it tells the player the rules instead of allowing her to learn them. ”

“

Search for the core gameplay loop

Core gameplay loop, called core combat loop in the case of FPS, is the kernel, the most inner part of the gameplay. It can stand on itself, independent of any other game elements, it is the part that the player will be repeating over and over again and all the other game elements will generally build upon and reinforce this foundation. In Bulletstorm the CGL is “disable enemy with a body move, finish him off in a crazy way with a weapon or another body move” and it includes the mechanics of movement, weapons and body moves (kick, slide, thumper, leash). In Gears of War it would be “take cover, take shots at enemies in the firing range, find another cover with better firing range, change cover” and it includes the mechanics of movement, weapons and taking cover. In Mount and Blade it is the melee weapons combat system. In Fallouts it would be the tactical combat and dialogue systems.

When designing a game it is crucial to identify its core gameplay loop as soon as possible – probably it should be the first thing you do after you stop patting yourself on the back because of how brilliant the idea is. Find what it is. Then ask yourself some questions about it. Have you really thought that part through? Does it sound fun and engaging? If not, what can be done to make it so? How is it different from CGLs of other, similar games? If it is not different, then how do you want to differentiate your game as a whole? How flexible is it? Take a notebook and try to sketch out some simple gameplay scenarios – essentially mini level designs. How many can you come up with? What are the risky (difficult to implement, possibly not fun) parts? How much work will it take to implement it?

”

“ I love Bulletstorm’s kinetics, the feel of its weaponry, the sheer comic book absurdity of the men you’re fighting. I believe there’s an art to designing a good shooter, and that Bulletstorm is probably state of that art.

Even so, I can also separate out that art from the delirious stupidity of the scoring system, and the sadistic joy it aims to create in players. I’d encourage all reviewers to do the same. And then apply an appropriate score that takes into account how they feel about high-scoring extended brutal torture. ”

“

“Violent video games like Bulletstorm have the potential to send the message that violence and insults with sexual innuendos are the way to handle disputes and problems,” Weichman said.

[...]

“The increase in rapes can be attributed in large part to the playing out of [sexual] scenes in video games,” she said.  ”

“

I don’t know how many games I actually completed in the dark DOS days before GameFAQs, but I diligently explored them all as thoroughly as I could, with a sense of wonder and excitement. Games got better, and my excitement only grew.

It changed with Half-Life, a remarkable game that showed the world how cinematic and atmospheric the medium could be. The world, broadly, got the wrong end of the stick. ‘Games can be like films!’ The world decided. ‘We can script exactly what happens!’ The world decided. ‘We can play out whole scenes with digital actors just the way we want, and the player will happily stand there and watch!’

Not really, world. The player, in my case and the case of the legions of dicks like me, will beat your digital actors in the face with a crowbar six times for every word they speak. We’re not watching your expensively acted conversation, we’re punching the words ‘SHUT UP’ into the wall with bullet holes. Not everyone sat quietly through that long tram ride – people like me were crawling over the chairs in crouch mode and trying to stick their heads out of the windows.

”

“ 1. FOLLOW HEAVY ARMORED KNIGHTS!!!. Players like Fedor are people who you should be looking for to follow. You are there to leech xp/gold off of his killing frenzies. Just look around for guys in full plate at the start of the match and see where they are taking you. Following good players in their charge will also keep you from being flanked by the enemy's charge.[...]

2) DON'T FOLLOW NINJAS By this I mean players who do those wide flanking maneuvers. [...]

3) STAY WITH YOUR ALLY This might seem simple but sometimes we all feel like we have something to prove, so we take chances and try to get a kill ourselves. [...]

4) DON'T STAY IN A GROUP OF PEASANTS Us peasants are scared and simple folks so we tend to hide somewhere we think is safe but near the fight.[...]

5) BUY A SHIELD I don't care if your build is invincible-plated-he-man-knight or elf-ninja-warbow-master.[...]

6) DON'T BE USELESS You are a peasant, you are helpless but not useless.[...]

7) MOB FORMATION There are times when you are unlucky or your team is loosing and you have to face an armored opponent while you and your friends have only sticks and stones. [...]

BE KIND If you see one of your ally being outclassed by someone else and is busy back pedaling then go and stab that enemy then run away. ”

“

By digging a bit deeper for what wishes are really being fulfilled, rather beginning at the superficial layer of how it’s presented, we can start to see seemingly disparate games in the same category, and understanding innovation seems a little less like a shot in the dark. If what the player finds thrilling about violence in many games is the level of empowerment, influence, and control that it affords – a sense of power – elements of that same empowerment may be found by having mayoral control over a city (SimCity), being able to summon nearly anything one can think of into existence (Scribblenauts), or having control over time (Prince of Persia: Sands of Time or Braid).

Guitar Hero, Ace Attorney, and Trauma Center all appeal to the same deeply rooted, “I want to feel great at something difficult” wish fulfillment which has been around in pro sports videogames from the beginning. NBA Jam, NFL Blitz, Wipeout, and Tony Hawkidentified that core desire, and exaggerated the fulfillment to a comically extreme degree.

”

“ Games mechanics are almost always complex systems that operate on the fuzzy boundary of our limited human ability to predict their behavior. If an unexpected behavior of your prototyped system delights you, it will likely delight players if wrapped in a proper set of feedback and rewards. ”

“

Back in the 1990s Microprose got me fired from a job and almost caused me to flunk out of college. The addictive nature ofCivilization, X-COM and Pirates! meant that playing games became more important than going to work or attending class. But now, since playing games is work, I can safely confess that I've been totally captivated by Firaxis's remake of the old C64 classic.

(...)

I've been playing the final version of the game for a few days now and I can barely tear myself away long enough to write the review. Over the past few days I've gone from being the insignificant captain of a small ship to become the most powerful and influential pirate in the Caribbean. Along the way I've sacked towns, hunted down rival pirates, explored for treasure, rescued long lost family members, amassed a vast personal fortune, climbed the ranks of high society, wooed the attractive daughters of wealthy governors, found lost cities and revenged myself on the evil bastard who originally split up my family.

To put it simply, I've been pretty busy.

”