Writings on Game Design

 

Lectures & Presentations

At the Game Developer's Conference in 2008 I led a panel entitled Stories Best Played. On the panel, four designer/writers (Steve Meretzky, Marc Laidlaw, Ken Rolson and myself) each picked our two favorite storytelling games and discussed them with the group. The link below will lead you to more information about the panel including a link to the PowerPoint slides.

At the Game Developer's Conference in 2007 Marty Stoltz and I presented a sequel to our popular Cinematic Game Design talk from 2006 (for the original, see below). This entirely new talk focused on cinematic storytelling techniques and how they can be applied to game. We did an encore presentation at the fmx Conference in Stuttgart and I did a solo version at GDC China in Shanghai. Like the previous talk, this featured a lot of movie and game clips which can be posted here, but the slides are below.

In 2006 I gave a presentation at the Game Developer's Conference titled Cinematic Game Design. The talk benefited greatly from the movie and gameplay clips we showed (which can't be included here) and from my co-presentor, Marty Stoltz. Nevertheless, I hope these powerpoint slides will still be interesting.

I gave a revised (and solo, sorry Marty!) version of this talk at the FAAP iNOVA, in Sao Paolo, Brazil. These slides contain a bit more history on the whole movies vs. games debate. And still, on this site, no video. The third and final version (called v1.5) of this presentation was given by Marty and myself at the Montreal International Game Summit. Included a few new examples (still no video).

I gave a presentation at the inaugral ACM SIGGRAPH Sandbox Symposium titled "What is a Cinematic Game?" It bares some relationship to the "Cinematic Game Design" presentation below, but less than you might think. It's a little hard to understand without my lecturing, but this should give you some sense of what it was like.

Game Design:  Theory & Practice

The most rambling about game design I have ever done is contained in my book, Game Design: Theory & Practice, available from Wordware Publishing.  This book has proven quite popular among both aspiring and established game developers, and has served as the text for numerous college courses in game design. Indeed the book was popular enough to warrant a second edition, which has just been released. Click here to read all about it.
 

The Suffering - Ties That Bind

Game sequels are strange beasts, particularly when you don't have a lot of time to completely reinvent your game. The Suffering: Ties That Bind was on a pretty tight schedule, but had some very specific goals that we mostly met. Below are some of the articles I wrote and interviews I did related to that particular strange beast.

The Suffering

For The Suffering I wrote/talked about the game's development quite a bit in various places. Here are some of the more interesting bits, for those who want to learn what the heck we were thinking.

I also wrote some fiction pieces that were used for various promotional purposes. These were carefully crafted to still fit in with The Suffering's game-world fiction, providing some interesting back story not available in the game itself. Fans (established or potential) should enjoy checking them out.

Game Developer & Gamasutra

I have written a few pieces for Game Developer magazine and its sister web site Gamasutra, with a few more pieces in the works.


SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics

I also write a colum for SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics, where I still ramble on about design issues, but with a bit more of a focus on the graphical end of things.  The column is quite descriptively called Gaming & Graphics, though the first of these was actually written as a special item for their gaming-oriented issue.

I have also been fortunate to work with talented guest columnists who write the column from time to time.  Though I only functioned in an editorial capacity on these columns, they are included here since they are definitely worth reading.


Inside Mac Games

Paranoid Ramblings also happens to be the name of the column I wrote for Inside Mac Games magazine in 1997 and 1998. They've been gracious enough to allow me to reprint my writings here so they can continue to be read by interested parties.


Feedback to any of these articles is encouraged at paranoid@paranoidproductions.com.
 
 

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