Red Dead Online, Red Dead Redemption 2’s online sibling, is a remarkable $5 on all platforms until the 15th. It’s also backwards compatible with the PS5 and Xbox Series X. If you’ve always wanted to horse around in the Old West like a GTA gansta, is RDO it worth it? What’s it like and what’s […]
Category Archives: game design
Battlefield V: Infected by SJW Politics, or by Bad Judgment?
Is Battlefield V Marred by Politics? Here’s a question about videogames that I answered on Quora and wanted to share with you. https://www.quora.com/Can-Battlefield-V-be-saved-And-will-it-have-a-long-lasting-player-base-or-just-empty-servers As a game designer, I think this looks more like a stylistic error than a “SJW” political issue. This world has enough Gamergate bullsh*t so I’m loath to see yet more political […]
A Game Designer Who Hates Art Classes?
A game designer hopeful wrote us to get some guidance on coursework. We thought it’d be helpful to everyone to share the response. It’s good that you’re so focused on your goal of game art/design. However, I’m surprised you don’t enjoy classes like sculpture and photography. Most game artists would gladly swap places with you […]
Food for Thought: We Make More with Less
Thought I’d share this interesting macroeconomic article today. The summary, sans cool graphics, is: Since the turn of the century, we mine and drain a lot less resources per dollar of GDP. We spend a lot less of our total energy to make manufacturing basics like steel (the percentage has dropped, but we actually spent […]
Videogame Field of View
I came across an interesting inquiry on Quora recently, and thought I’d share it with you folks. The question: “In 1st person video games, why don’t they introduce peripheral vision? The angle of sight seems to be a lot less than our own angle of vision.” I’ve had this complaint as well, in both first-person […]
Why I Hate Stealth Games, and More
Stealth Games and Why They Suck Just got through playing a fair number of hours of Hitman: Absolution. It’s well-executed (ha ha) and smooth. I love how you can perform the right actions in context that you expect your hero to be capable of. But I hate stealth games. I think we’ve all played our […]
An Indie Game Afternoon
Indie Game Madness at Fantastic Fest Spent a chunk of the afternoon at the “Fantastic Arcade,” something I had no idea existed until a few weeks ago. I was pretty impressed with the polish on most of these games, which are ripe and ready for DLC publication. Some of them are doubtlessly soon to hit […]
Game Wall Decal of the Week
Are Games and Workout Machines Crossing Over?
Will Your Next Game Console Make You Sweat? A recent article about exercise equipment with gaming features caught my eye recently: Nexersys, a new Austin-based workout machine maker, is pointing out that videogames and exercise equipment are reaching convergence. It’s worth taking a look at this crossover phenomenon. Fitness is a huge industry, and entertainment […]
Game Cover Showdown: Motorstorm
Videogame Cover Art One-on-One The MotorStorm team at Evolution Studios just posted their cover art for the new MotorStorm Apocalypse. They’ve got two covers, one for the EU and one for the U.S. Same game, two covers. Why do marketing teams do this? Well, for one, there are different requirements for the labeling and legalese. […]