[Update] I’m back in Seattle and (mostly) recovered. Thanks to everyone that came to either of my User Research or Game Design talks. Special thanks to all the readers that introduced themselves; it seems like I am reaching my intended audience of “veteran game designers”. A narrow demographic, to be sure. Unfortunately, I spent too much … Continue reading
How do you develop your sense of balance for paper designs? It can be done, you can look at a paper design and have an intuition about how it will work. You are looking for the role, and for a couple key factors that are the results of the role. The first thing you are … Continue reading
The first step in Halo 3 was the paper design. This is one of about 4 slides for Producers. The Paper Design should happen in Pre-production. You need to do paper designs first so you don’t have 40 artists sitting around while you do it. On the other hand, if you leave it too early, … Continue reading
In order to develop a sense of balance, you need to understand how your brain works. You have an Orbito-Frontal Cortex; It’s called that because it is located behind your eyes, but it’s really your Gut. When you learn something new, it goes through a process where it builds a model of the world and makes … Continue reading
I’m going to be in San Francisco for GDC where I’ll be giving a talk called Design in Detail: Tuning the Muzzle Velocity of the Plasma Rifle Bolt on Legendary Difficulty Across the Halo Franchise. It is a follow-up to last year’s talk,which EDGE called “one of the most fascinating sessions of GDC“. The slides … Continue reading
Ok, so when I gave this talk at GDC I didn’t have time to finish, even though I was talking very fast. I did better when I gave it at Blizzard, until my voice ran out and I could barely speak. So I probably should have cut some ideas out and saved them for this … Continue reading
Push on the wall. This is not a metaphorical encouragement to seek innovative solutions. Literally, place your hands against a wall and give it a shove. Now, assuming that you are not working in a cubicle, you have just experienced what physicists call a normal force. The wall pushed back against your hands with the … Continue reading
Habituation The gradual reduction in sensitivity to a repeated stimulus I got my teeth professionally cleaned this morning. (One cavity, apparently I need to floss more.) Now I cannot stop running my tongue back and forth over the newly polished enamel. When I woke up today, my teeth were the farthest thing from my mind, … Continue reading
Throughout my career I have been a strong proponent of User Research and have taken advantage of every opportunity to investigate the desires, expectations and reactions of actual gamers. Designing from a single perspective leads to a one-dimensional game, which is why honest answers to authentic questions is so valuable. I don’t see that writing … Continue reading
Here is the paper design I wrote for for the Halo 3 Sniper Rifle: Sniper Rifle Role: Long-range instant-kill sniper rifle, but reloading makes it hard to use Two zoom levels (2x – 7x) Reloading unzooms Magazine of four quick shots, with slow reload Does headshots, even through shields kills any biped in one shot (even … Continue reading
We touched on how paper designs are required for the first balance pass, but what exactly is a paper design, and how are they written? A solid paper design streamlines the design process, focuses the team’s effort, and results in a tightly integrated game. A poor one, however, can send the design team into a tailspin as … Continue reading
