Game designer at Roblox (ex-Disney, ex-Zynga, etc.) Author of Anatomy of Game Design (https://a.co/d/5NQZAuK) Opinions are my own, not any corporation's.
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I love this analytical take on video game categorization from Antoine Mayerowitz and Julie Belzanne: hushcrasher.substack.com/p/taxonomy-o... Instead of trying to vibe-intuit the definition of an "indie" game, the authors analyzed the data from the perspective of game size and credits length
I like immigrants. I like meeting new people who can bring new cool shit to my life. I like exploring languages. I like learning about different cultures. I like exploring interesting foods. So many fun drinks, dances, clothes, tools, myths, techniques and ideas. Humanity should be diverse.
Three questions no one in corporate media is asking about Tyler Robinson 1. Where was he radicalized? 2. What happened in his church that taught him to kill people? 3. Are fatherless homes causing white male anger? Parody questions answered in detail here: www.qasimrashid.com/p/a-white-ma...
www.reddit.com/r/gaming/s/S...
I have actually done that for sports, years ago. But not Notre Dame, they suck.
Yes, I am aware of the irony of players finding an anti-corporate personal message in a game on a platform owned by a corporation. It's hard to get around that these days. #brainrot #roblox #gamedesign
Upgrades don’t need to be powerful to be valuable, especially in social spaces. Status is just as valuable, if not more, and in a quirky space like Roblox, silly has value. #brainrot #roblox #gamedesign
This is a Melissa Hortman appreciation account for the next 24 hours.
I don’t think single-player computer games are ever going to go away. And social play is going to evolve - the change from deathmatch to Roblox is huge and suggests that we’ve already come a long way. #brainrot #roblox #gamedesign
Now that I have some distance from my GDC talk, I think if I were to boil down my game design advice into a single sentence, it might be something like: Focus less on adding stuff to your game, and more on developing connections between the stuff you already have.
I love Grasshopper dialog!
Your emotional goals are always the most important ones. You usually want them to be your core loop, but this is a good example of how they can be separate but still work. They have to be pretty closely intertwined but don’t have to be the same thing. #brainrot #roblox #gamedesign
This is amazing. Minecraft inspired physical art.
The eye exam is the perfect game design. That big E is a great tutorial that teaches you the basic mechanic. But it doesn't baby you and quickly gets hard as they introduce the small and blurry enemies.
Ayo Edebiri answers question she was purposely excluded from by interviewer. Kudos to Andrew for immediately recognizing the misogynoir, his body language says it all. #BlackSky
Putting the more compelling verb in the title makes sense, even if it’s not the core loop verb. #brainrot #roblox #gamedesign
A core gameplay loop & game economy simulation - made in Machinations. How do you design your game's economy? #gamedev #gamedesign #indiegamedev #indiegames
Americans clearly don’t understand that this line of argument is entirely lost for at least a generation. Talk about the US as representing “democracy” or “the free world” will be met with scorn everywhere. The world has converged to Latin America in that regard.
Game based hiring assessments!
The ability to choose how many routes to take lets Ticket to Ride players do their own risk management. Players are able to actively choose to play it safe or take dangerous risk. That’s a nice design option that many games don’t offer. #gaming #gamedesign
If you’re at #rdc today, come find me at the education booth! Excited to talk about ways to use Roblox for learning, or anything else. For me, RDC is the best way to stay in touch with the pulse of the community.
It’s good to dissect things like progression, but it’s also important to dissect your audience to know if it actually matters to them. #gaming #gamedesign
Rami Ismail unveils 'Australia Did It', a new game blending tactical strategy and bullet hell mechanics. Set in a monster-infested ocean, players defend a train before unleashing chaos. Launching on PC later this year! #AustraliaDidIt #GamingNews
Using other players as a speed bump rather than the enemy is interesting. How else can other players be used? Distractions? Shifting objectives? Resource producers? I’m intrigued by this. #gaming #gamedesign
Every citizen has a job. Every business need employees, and hiring is based on six criteria: Creativity, Manual skill, Technical ability, Organization, Culinary and Customer Service. You need to match candidates to roles based on their strengths. #IndieGame #CityBuilder #GameDev #Unity3D
The third session of the class I teach is about writing. I didn’t originally devote a whole class to this, but after running the class a few times, I found it was necessary. So we work on that a bit as it’s pretty important for a game designer or really any game dev. #gaming #gamedev
Having extra actions on your action list that aren’t used often isn’t a bad thing; it’s often a great idea. But don't count them when you’re thinking about the player’s choices on a turn. #gaming #gamedesign
And cameras are our trickster faeries.
I can tell this is serious game dev because it includes the word “door”.
Super Hexagon is a certified all-timer and I think we should spend more time talking about it.
The last 3 years have been the hottest in around 125,000 years. CO2 levels are their highest in MILLIONS of years. But most people have no idea this is happening, let alone what it means for our kids’ futures. Our politics & media have failed our children. We should be furious.
This is the meme I was looking for
Some players expect loss, and some players don’t. This is a key differentiator between different player types and a key thing to understand about your player targets before you get too far into the design of your game. #gaming #gamedesign
I hope they make Broom Boy into Obi Wan’s grandchild. We don’t need another Skywalker.
I mostly use my digital Solitaire app when I need to pass time and I don’t want to expend any mental energy by reading or playing a more complex game, such as when I’m on a plane and I’m tired. So the lack of progression and complexity is more of a feature than a flaw. #gaming #gamedesign
When playing Solitaire, I know I should double-check more often, and it feels good when I catch something. But I still don’t do it. I think it’s because it feels like a waste of time when I do it and don’t find anything. It’s an interesting mental fallacy. #gaming #gamedesign
Players are like Jedi - trust their feelings. Do not expect them to have practical solutions.
Unlike most Tuesdays, I don’t teach today - I’m dropping my kid off at college. So I’ll be in Portland at Reed instead of in Moorpark as usual. The teacher who handles the other game classes has kindly offered to keep an eye on my class so they can do some project work. Thanks! #gaming #gamedesign
How is the President declaring “a lot of people are saying maybe we'd like a dictator" not the headline of every newspaper in America? And don’t say, what are newspapers?
What the fuck happened to this country? Stand up, speak up. Do not submit! We are a nation of immigrants and rebels!! Wake the fuck up! We are under attack!!
While the standard 52 card deck has been around for over 500 years, the Klondike version of solitaire has only been around for a bit over 100 years. So if you see your favorite Jane Austen character arranging cards in that little triangle, you get to shout “anachronism!”. #gaming #gamedesign
The crowd at Stop One of the Mamdani scavenger hunt!
The game is afoot. Or atrain. Or abus. Post along the way with #ZcavengerHunt
There is wisdom in his words.
Games in politics!
Biden quietly passed good legislation for four years and look where that got us. We need more. Can he rally people together against fascism? I will 100% support him if he shows more signs of that.
Hunter! I worked on this!
The idea that 'AI can speed up dev cycles' would require a premise that dev cycles are long because people are taking forever to make assets (so you could replace them with shoddy slop and it'd go faster), which you could only believe is true if you've never actually tried to make a video game
"By far the biggest expense when making games is salaries."
Papers Please is one of the games I dissect in detail in my book, Anatomy of Game Design. If you like these sorts of analysis, pick up a copy! #gaming #gamedesign
Their memorials are history. Ours are political. Because as always, there are two sexualities - straight, and political. Two genders - male, and political. Two religions - Christian, and political. Two races - white, and political.
The core concept of Papers Please only works if theres’s some tedium. Tedium is part of the vision. So centering the gameplay around a loot box style semi-random approach makes a ton of sense - you need to cycle through a lot of people before you find an interesting one. #gaming #gamedesign
I believe games have more potential than any other genre to make people consider other points of view. Even more than a book or a movie, a game is about interactively taking on a role and thinking about choices. If you like my Papers Please analysis, there's more in my book! #gaming #gamedesign
They already had a turn. Let’s do Sri Lanka.
Today is my second class of the semester. I don’t dig into theory quickly, despite it being a theory class, as I want to give them some practical foundations for the projects. So week two is process, which talks a bit of business and roles and agile, including a big LEGO activity. #gaming #gamedesig
As a game designer, Papers Please is a great game to dissect. There is a clear vision throughout every decision in the game, and those decisions combine to evoke responses in the player that really mean something. This is a masterclass in how to use games to make people think. #gaming #gamedesign
Yeah, frats just make for clear structures and conflicts so they’re good for movies.
It varies wildly from school to school. At some schools, frat life is the basis of socialization but nowadays I’d say that’s the minority. Most schools have some frats but it’s not a big deal to completely ignore them.
Evergreen, and applicable to game design as well: go out there, look at other artforms, experience things, live life. That's how you get inspiration and knowledge to make the really cool things.
If you’re interested in writing for games, this is the book to buy!
Ordered!
I love seeing game design in the news.
I love crazy combination games. The crazier and more chaotic the better. As a game designer, I know how dangerous this can be, so I’m always excited to see new ways to manage this danger - safety valves that give game balance an out when things get too crazy. #gaming #gamedesign
I feel like tower defense level design has room for more experimentation. The player has lot of power to respond to extremes, so why not push their build ability to the limit? Why not have a map where all balloons are camo after level 10? Why not constant 1hp balloons? #gaming #gamedesign
I’m not saying support Newsom for president or anything given his overall record. But I’d like to see more people standing up like this so I think it’s good to call out good actions, even from bad or questionable people.
Yep. Not defending past actions. He’s done many things I disagree with. But I’ll give credit when credit is due and this specific action (counter-gerrymandering with mocking press releases) I agree with.
I'm not sure how visible these are without digging, so if you're looking for indies to follow and support, check below 🙌🏻 Indie Studios: go.bsky.app/EbnyA2d Solo Indies: go.bsky.app/46HSs4C
I agree that Newsom isn’t my favorite, but I give him credit for this. This is better than the sternly worded letters we usually get from establishment Dems.
I would like to move to Iowa just to vote for him. And then immediately move back.
A key determinant of the difficulty of a game is the lengths they go to provide information. “Easy” games make sure players know things before they need the information. The hardest games will allow players to be punished before they even had a chance to know something. #gaming #gamedesign
So, what about the Epstein Files?
In case you need a little inspiration today. 💖
My class starts up today. The first class always kicks off with a discussion of the definition of game. I don’t really care about the definition, but it’s an excuse to bring up the key concepts that are the framework of the class: interactivity, goals, systems, imagination. #gaming #gamedesign
Rampart is generally considered the originator of the “place a tower and let me do the shooting for you” concept. If you haven’t played, give it a try. Not only is it an arcade game that is still (exploding) barrels of fun, it’s also unusually strategic for the time. #gaming #gamedesign
Truth.
When I teach, we always dissect, I always do a section on non-gameplay factors that influence the game design - things like monetization and narrative. When I was setting up my social media, =I picked dynamics instead because it’s a good starting concept to introduce systems. #gaming #gamedesign
Where are the major party candidates who run on severe enforceable personal penalties for execs up to the death penalty for this? I’d vote for them.
When I teach, we always dissect, but I don’t always focus on progression like this. We sometimes cover it, but sometimes hit different game design ideas outside of the core loop. But for social media, I wanted to pick just one for consistency and progression felt like the best. #gaming #gamedesign
Rewriting my lectures on these topics, I’m finding that there are some good common themes that make it easy to expand on each of the verb/goal/challenge family. There are common why, what, how questions that tie things together nicely. #gaming #gamedesign
When I teach dissections, I originally started out with verbs and then wandered around. But I found that goals and challenges were pretty consistently worth talking about. That core loop of motivated interactivity against uncertainty is important. #gaming #gamedesign
I’m rewriting the class I teach because I’ve found that these social media experiments have helped me reframe my thinking around these core game design concepts in ways that I think are easier to understand. Now I’ll have a class on verbs, another on goals, and so on. #gaming #gamedesign
This is great framing, A++ Also I am the kind of goblin who is looking forward to using absolutely unhinged lenses to look at games *with complete seriousness* bc I really do think you can learn cool things that way And also it makes me laugh
It’s ok to play by the current rules while trying to fix the current rules. (I make rules for a living.)
If there's one thing about level design I keep forgetting, especially for platformers, is that you can start with a map layout in mind and have to completely change it as you go because things you though would work don't at all with the actual gameplay. #gamedev #gamedevelopment #indiedev
Any tips on how we can help the next generation?
Hammer time in Donkey Kong is also a great example of my favorite dynamic in Pac-Man. Inverting the predator/prey power structure in a game creates a really powerful emotional moment that players love. #donkeykong #gamedesign
Oh, you want some anti-Hitler controls on your counting machine? That’s really going to up the price.
I always thought if it as more of a Gex-like.
Yes, this game has lots of ways to buy things with micro-transactions. Nothing is terribly essential to play and appreciate the game, but it’s there.
I just talked about this! Isn’t it great when games make no sense!
I feel like we don’t talk enough about how elitist old arcade games were. Sure, you could play for a quarter but you couldn’t get good for a quarter. If you weren’t well off, arcades were often a form of passive entertainment where you watched other, richer people play. #donkeykong #gamedesign
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Disappointing. As an alum, I expected better.
I was taught formal logic, in a debate class, and it has made me successful in many things (relationships excluded - that took a while to unlearn).
This is a good sign. I need a sign like this.
I love when old arcade games just jam random things together that make no sense. And I especially love when players don’t care. Players love meticulously crafted stories where everything fits perfectly. And they also love plumbers jumping over fire elementals for no reason. #donkeykong #gamedesign
The glow-up is real! ✨ So satisfying to see the evolution of #TowerOfCreation from a basic prototype to the polished version. Indie games deserve a chance! #gamedev #indiedev #beforeafter #puzzlegame
I guess they answered “what it’s like to be a teen right now” clearly, if unintentionally
Damn you mean itch didn’t actually just abandon these creators but has been working hard with its limited resources to figure out how to continue supporting them? How surprising
1000xRESIST is 30% off on steam right now, do with that information what you will