Breaking, Unbroken
Something I used to think about a lot was what we mean when we use the term ‘free will.’ Some people argue a great deal over whether it exists, which has always seemed a bit silly to me: The so-called…
Category Game Design
Multimedia
What’s interesting about games as a medium is that, as I touched on briefly last week, they aren’t a medium in any substantial sense. Yes, there are certain expectations and technical restraints and conventions, but nothing that can’t be easily…
Patrolling the Premises
I recently read this article decrying the famous trolley problem’s newfound fame and ubiquity. While I may have quibbles regarding some of its arguments, I still found it a very interesting and thought-provoking piece. I’d like to, for the moment,…
Dreaming Alone
I love single-player games. Don’t get me wrong, I like all sorts of multiplayer games as well, and I enjoy cooperation and competition as much as anyone, but what really excites me about the medium of games is the possibility…
Minecrafting
The last week or so has been a bit odd as I’ve found myself, at the age of 36, finally getting into Minecraft for the first time. I suppose this is an appropriate time to get started – if we’re…
Systems
Game design is the art of building systems to generate an expressive and aesthetically interesting output. Challenge is often implied, but isn’t a necessary trait of these systems – usually challenge is the product of stated or implied rules of…
Roads
We are surrounded in spirals by the paths we never took. Every choice ever made was a branching point, and just under the surface of our lives lie the possibilities of countless other lives we might have lived. This is…
Leaders
The conceit of strategy games is an interesting one. Most strategy games place you as the general of an army, or some other authority figure, and tasks you with managing an army or other complex system and directing it towards…
Eight Seconds: Manipulated Through Time
For the past month, I’ve been working on my entry to the Idle Thumbs community game jam, Wizard Jam X. This is the final Wizard Jam, due to the Idle Thumbs podcast going into a long-term hiatus from which it…
Luck of the Draw
In August of 1993, Magic: The Gathering was released. I was 10 at the time, and it was a year or so later that I was introduced to the game, I believe somewhere in between the release of the Antiquities…