| 2008 |
| 27 November |
Fallout analysis (the recipe) - I reflect
on Fallout, and how Fallout fits into a recipe for CRPG design. |
| 19 September |
Why allow players choice? - What
can interactive entertainment offer than stories don't? |
| 25 June |
Choices, part 4 - About consequences. |
| 25 June |
Immersion-emotion
feedback loop - Emotion is critical for immersive gameplay. |
| 22 March |
A rose
filled world - Thoughts about worlds based on exploration and change. |
| 22 March |
Making
players forget they're playing a game - Some comments on immersion. |
| 1 January |
Nutritional
game design - Why people play games, using a food analogy. |
| 2007 |
| 18 March |
Multiplayer interactive
fiction - My description and definition of multiplayer interactive fiction. |
| 18 March |
Topographies -
Non-spacial topographies that exist in virtual worlds. |
| 26 January |
Personal
virtual worlds - Some thoughts about how to create small virtual worlds with a small
team. |
| 21 January |
Interactive
fiction equation 2 - A follow-up article to my first Interactive fiction equation. |
| 12 January |
Interactive fiction vs.
games - I thought I'd spend some time discussing how I think interactive fiction,
games, world-like worlds (like Ultima Online), creation-worlds (like Second
Life), and role-playing intensive worlds (RPI) relate to one another. |
| 10 January |
Interactive
fiction equation - Yet another attempt at creating an equation... and I actually wrote
one down! This is about the tradeoff of story and choice. |
| 10 January |
Programmed
intuition - How to allow players more freedom by providing them with intuition. |
| 2 January |
Quests,
stories, and spaghetti - Methodologies for world design and ways of incorporating
story. |
| 2006 |
| 13 December |
IF title design 101
- The 60,000 foot view of how to design an IF title (or CRPG, MMORPG, or FPS). |
| 8 December |
Neverwinter Nights
2 Analysis - An analysis of NWN2's game design. |
| 20 October |
Stickybeaking -
This article contains some thought experiments involving games, puzzles, toys, stories,
socialisation, Choose-your-own adventures, and stickybeaking; You never thought they were
related, did you? |
| 30 September |
Un-designing
Oblivion - The "recipe" to make a game like Oblivion. |
| 20 September |
The hero's journey...
kind of - Some thoughts about the Hero's Journey. |
| 6 September |
My current grand-unified theory
of multiplayer avatar games - Just what is says. |
| 29 August |
The
NPC-conversation wall - More thoughts about where MMORPGs are heading, and where they
can't go. |
| 29 April |
Gates and keys -
Different ways of keeping players out of parts of the world. |
| 29 April |
Emotions - What
emotions are games good at evoking? |
| 2 April |
Oblivion: Full
spectrum content, from hand-generated to procedural - Some thoughts about combining
hand-generated and procedural content. |
| 9 March |
Levels,
friends, and lobbies - How lobby worlds can ensure that friends can play together. |
| 1 March |
Word of mouth - How
word of mouth affects what player types a virtual world needs to cater to. |
| 1 March |
Choices III - Even more
thoughts about choices. |
| 26 January |
Quest design 101
- All you'll ever need to know about designing quests... well, not quite, but it's a
start. |
| 26 January |
Puzzles and
problem solving - Categorising various puzzles. |
| 10 January |
Storylines III -
Some theory about massively single-player games. |
| 2005 |
| 22 December |
Dream factory -
More thoughts about using virtual worlds to fulfil people's dreams. |
| 22 December |
The game loop - A
cycle that continually appears in CRPG game design. |
| 22 December |
Storylines II -
Something about links of sausages... |
| 22 December |
Story arcs and quests
- The advantages of turning quests into (C++) objects. |
| 15 November |
Personal NPCs - How
to create NPCs that players actually care about. |
| 15 November |
When I was a child
- The evolution of CRPGs. |
| 15 November |
Avoiding elves, orcs,
and hobbits - Some ideas about how to avoid cliche fantasy worlds. |
| 15 November |
More thoughts on the
strengths of text - Back to the old question, "In what ways is text better than
graphics." |
| 20 October |
Analysis of Peter
Molyneux's Fable - This isn't a game review; it's an attempt to
analyse the game to identify why it "works". |
| 16 October |
The peacock - I discuss
a way to provide for multiple endings in a game. |
| 2 October |
A tangle - A way to
visualise my current grand unified theory. |
| 2 October |
The four pillars - A few
more thoughts about what makes a successful MMORPG. |
| 2 October |
My current grand unified theory
of avatar games - I think that CRPGs, adventure games, MMORPGs, and first-person
shooters are all fundamentally the same. |
| 2 October |
The law of new
inventions - Some cynical thoughts about the acceptance of new inventions. |
| 2 October |
Sub-games with
variation - How Dungeons & Dragons combat includes variations in the game. |
| 2 October |
Cost cutting - Some
common cost cutting techniques found in game design. |
| 13 September |
Sympathetic goals
- You can lead a horse to water but can't make it drink; you can give players goals, but
can't make them accept them. |
| 13 September |
Fractured reality
- Breaking some fundamental assumptions about reality in a multiplayer game. |
| 13 September |
Choice and
consequences - How not only choice is important, but the consequences of the choices
are important. |
| 5 September |
The dating game -
Discussion about a different genre of virtual world. |
| 20 August |
Exceptional
physics - Some more thoughts about multiplayer adventure games. |
| 19 August |
Problem solving -
MMORPGs are about hunting and gathering, and social problem solving. |
| 20 July |
Of mice and
elephants - Thoughts about single-handedly creating a virtual world. |
| 20 July |
The ecology of a
MMORPG - Some more thoughts about player types and genre. |
| 20 July |
The iron law of
reality - Can story and games ever be combined? |
| 17 June |
We don't
always get what we want - Is it a good idea to let players fulfil their goals and
desires? |
| 17 June |
Game
classification - Some thoughts about ways to classify games. |
| 19 May |
The fun in genres - Yet
another way to thing about the genre problem. |
| 19 May |
Why traditional
MUDs/MMORPGs work - A summary of sum of the thought experiments over the last year. |
| 26 April |
The parlour, the
lobby, and the sand box - An alternative genre for virtual worlds. |
| 17 April |
The game with a
thousand faces - How to use the technologies produced for a MMORPG to produce other
genres of virtual worlds. |
| 6 April |
Experience points
- A rant against awarding experience points for killing monsters. |
| 6 April |
Theme in virtual worlds -
How to incorporate morals into a virtual world. |
| 6 April |
Virtual world
equation - Another attempt to understand "what's really happening" in a
virtual world. |
| 6 April |
Player powers - How
players can affect a world and one another, and how this affects world design. |
| 6 April |
Fun factors - Some
thoughts about what makes games fun. |
| 6 April |
Text vs. graphics
- Lists the areas where text MUDs are better than graphical MMORPGs. |
| 16 March |
Intertwined
relationships - The more I try to break a virtual world's design into its fundamental
components, the more complex the relationships between the components get. |
| 9 March |
Differentiation
- What virtual worlds can do to differentiate themselves from one another. |
| 8 March |
Altruism - Some
thoughts about how altruism in virtual worlds is linked to NPCs. |
| 4 March |
Digging their
grave - How a virtual world's attempt to stay alive by adding more features and
content ends up killing it. |
| 29 January |
The player pyramid
- Described an alternative player model. |
| 2004 |
| 20 December |
Activity feedback
- In a virtual world, one activity leads to another. For example: If a player wants to
fight monsters, they must find party members (chat), purchase equipment (trade), travel to
the monsters, and sell their loot (goods). To travel (to find a monster), a player may
encounter more monsters, or enemy players. All the activities produce feedback loops. This
spreadsheet lets you see how each activity feeds into another activity, and to guesstimate
the percentage of time a player will spend on any activity. |
| 9 December |
The toy room - Virtual
worlds are like toy rooms... |
| 9 December |
The authoring
equation - Are stories really about conflict? Are games really about choices? |
| 5 December |
Automatically
generated content - What are the advantages and disadvantages of automatically
generated content? |
| 5 December |
Small VW operators
vs. large - A list of advantages that small VW companies have over large ones. |
| 5 December |
Choice, part 2 - What
high-level choices are available in a virtual world? |
| 5 December |
Player vs. X - Ideas
about the difference between PvP and PvW worlds. |
| 5 December |
Intertwined
storylines - Some thoughts about creating multiple storylines in a virtual world. |
| 24 November |
Build it, and they will come
- Who are "they"? |
| 17 November |
The end - How the need
for an ending of an anti-MMORPG affects the design. |
| 17 November |
The anti-MMORPG - A
virtual world that's not a MMORPG. |
| 17 November |
Choice - Some thoughts
about choices available to players. |
| 17 November |
Steady
state approximation - A few aspects of virtual worlds that may change in the next 20
years. |
| 17 November |
Junk food
entertainment - How to get something out of a virtual world than just entertainment. |
| 31 October |
Stop the buffet -
A theoretical approach to VW sub-games and activities. |
| 19 September |
The really big
VW problems - Issues that are even more important to solve than class vs. classless
advancement. |
| 5 September |
Virtual world
as platform - What sub-games a virtual world can support. |
| 20 August |
Virtual world
spectrum - The stages an entertainment goes through as it transitions from a story to
a virtual world. |
| 6 July |
The attraction of
impossibility - What experiences and activities attract people to a virtual world. |
| 25 June |
Virtual worlds and
virtual holidays - Comparing virtual worlds to holidays. |
| 1 June |
Why text adventures
aren't commercially viable - Examining the reasons why text adventures can't be sold. |
| 1 June |
Story and plot vs. freedom in
virtual reality -Some bizarre thoughts about the nature of plots. |
| 4 May |
The trouble
with explorers - Some thoughts about building virtual worlds for explorers. |
| 2003 |
| 8 November |
Evolutionary
explanation for entertainment - An evolutionary view about what makes things fun. |
| 19 August |
Asheron's Call 2
Critique - Review of the MMORPG game. |
| 2002 |
| 15 October |
Eagle Eye -
Web site for my house. |
