For the New York City game scene, IndieCade East was a milestone. Never before had an event mobilized all the disparate groups in NYC’s game community, gathering academics and students, indie developers, experimental designers and regular people just interested in…
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,…
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 –…
Games love to make a big deal about choices. Unfortunately, most of the time your only options boil down to either saving the helpless baby lamb from starving wolves or punting it to the pack leader, with nary a shade…
One of the most widespread discussions in games today is the distinction between game narrative and game writing. While they can certainly overlap, they are definitely two separate things: A game’s narrative is the actual story that happens when you…
I'm Ben Serviss. I design games for hire and write about game design, narrative and NYC developers. New posts every Thursday.