Remember Left 4 Dead? It’s highly likely you do; its 2008 release was heralded with tons of fanfare and a $10 million marketing spend that showed Valve meant business. The push paid off – as of October 2012, the game,…
Monthly Archives: January 2013
The Discomfort Zone: The Hidden Potential of Valve’s AI Director
Tagged with: game design, left 4 dead, narrative, procedural, valve
Posted in game design, narrative
Posted in game design, narrative
Is the World Ready for Game Criticism?
Maybe 2012 will be the year that games grew up. After all, it was the year that the Smithsonian presented The Art of Video Games, “one of the first exhibitions to explore the forty-year evolution of video games as an…
Preparing for the Next Big Games Controversy
In the wake of national tragedies, games are back in the spotlight as the scapegoat. And while it’s tiresome to once again be on the defense against clueless pundits slinging unwarranted blame in the name of higher ratings, there’s something…
Tagged with: carmack, controversy, game design, oculus rift, virtual reality
Posted in future, game design, press
Posted in future, game design, press
Using Narrative and Gameplay Congruency to Enhance Meaningful Play
Everyone loves to talk about immersion in games. The act of submerging the player (or yourself) into a game world, impossible though it may be, remains an unobtainable goal that many developers strive for. But this pursuit is shortsighted –…
Tagged with: desire, dys4ia, Half-Life, motivation, narrative, Shadow of the Colossus, The Walking Dead
Posted in game design, game dev tips, narrative
Posted in game design, game dev tips, narrative
How Gamifying Blood Donations Can End the Shortage
It’s a fact of the modern world that games are creeping into everyday life. Games and “gamified” applications (of varying levels of quality) follow us on phones, haunt our social networks and even sneak into public bathrooms, taunting would-be players…
I'm Ben Serviss. I design games for hire and write about game design, narrative and NYC developers. New posts every Thursday.