In the game of Risk the main resources are easily identifiable: armies, lands and cards are represented by actual playing pieces, positions on the board and playing cards. However, sometimes resources can be more abstract.

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Philippe Ringuette-Angrignon has returned to grace the IB with more insight, today dealing with two related topics.  Firstly being that of immersion, some important do’s and don’ts for this all too important goal of game design.  The second topic on the agenda is a theory on increasing the sense of agency in the game through [...]

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Veteran designer Pascal Luban is back again on Industrybroadcast.com, today we read his thoughts on the puzzle of puzzles,particularly in adventure games.  A topic that is undercovered and vitally important to the quality of experience players have in these games. Title: “Designing and Integrating Puzzles in Action-Adventure Games“ – Original Article Written by: Pascal Luban (www.gamedesignstudio.com) Read [...]

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The number of modes will drive how many times you need to fine tune the UI, camera controls, and character controls. Every UI element in the game needs to consider player mode to decide if that UI element can appear in all modes unmodified or if it needs to be customized for one or more modes. If you are trying to build a game on the cheap, find a design that works with only one player mode. A second mode won?t double your budget, but it will increase it substantially.

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Daniel Cook indulges his evil side in today’s article as he details how game designers, breaking away from the traditional packaged goods model of making disposable games will play a more relevant role in more more of the sales process and how their designs will start reflected the actions of not just good game designers [...]

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The Gamedev.net book collection is back with more business insight, this time looks at those silent killers that doom your average startup and what to avoid if you plan on being more than just another casualty in the games industry Title: “Lone Wolf Killers“ Book: Business and Production: A GameDev.net Collection – click to purchase Publisher: Course Technology [...]

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Games are necessarily limited, although cyberspace is potentially without limits. However, in all games there are resource restrictions and content restrictions. Still, it is often preferable for the player to think he is in control and that the world is very open-ended. The key to creating a sense of freedom in games, however, does not necessarily mean making the game bigger. A larger game environment can certainly seem freer, but only if it is well designed.

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Chris Bateman finishes off his thoughtful trilogy on Play Styles.  We’ve covered Strategic Play, we’ve explored Logistical Play and now the Coup de grâce: Tactical Play. With this final installment we complete our understanding of the major play styles representational of our player base.  With this understanding we are better able to cater a game [...]

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Josh Sutphin is back to share a bit more insight into game design, this time talking about how we can look differently at failure, using it as a necessary tool and design it into our players experience. Title: “Failure for Fun and Profit“ – Original Article Written by: Josh Sutphin(thirdhelix.wordpress.com) Read aloud by: Ryan Wiancko on Oct [...]

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If you cannot influence the game state in any way (as opposed to being unable to influence it in the right way), you are not playing a game. The difference between a real-time abstract game and a turn-based abstract game is simply that in the latter case the game state only changes when the player takes a turn. In a real-time game, not doing anything also has consequences. Additionally, turn-based games do not specify the amount of play time that the player can use on a specific move. (Though this may be specified by tournament rules or social pressure.)

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