Groundhog Day
“And maybe we’ll get lucky and we’ll both live again, well I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know, don’t think so.” I am sitting in front of my computer trying to write an article. I am confident that…
Challenge and Consequence 2: The Reckoning
The Challenge Challenge in competitive games is a tricky beast. While it’s largely the case that the challenge of your experience is determined by the skill of the players you’re competing against, the game design itself contributes to the challenge…
Challenge and Consequence
Game Over. Two words that strike terror into the heart of every gamer. Except they really don’t, any more, because that concept has fallen by the wayside long ago. It seems that nowadays games don’t end when a player fails,…
The Future
It’s Saturday and I’m still alive. I’ve managed to do a thousand word essay a day for four days in a row now, sufficient to make this site meaty enough that a first-time reader will have something to sink their…
Butterflies
Today is the day I start trying to promote the Problem Machine, to spread awareness of it beyond my immediate circle of friends and family. I’m basically terrified. Some things come easily to me. I’ve always been creatively inclined, probably…
Cardboard Cutout Massacre 2012
Yes. It’s an article about violence in video games. How terribly cliche. I’m going to start here by stating my opinions on violence in games, and then work backwards to explain the reasons why I feel the way I do.…
Acknowledgement
I don’t know where achievements started. I know they achieved mass popularity with the XBox 360 and its GamerScore system, which has become ingrained enough in the identity of that console that it is now impossible to release a game…
Exploring Design Space
“Oh my god, what- how did I do that? I just threw a fireball! Am I a wizard?” Street Fighter 2 was a pretty big deal. It more or less created a genre, of course, and is probably indirectly responsible…
The Problem Machine
Yes. I’m going to write a few words now about why I’m creating this blog and what I hope it will become. You will read these words. It will be swell. This is the Problem Machine. It makes problems, it…