Stone Soup
When thinking about storytelling in gaming, I often think of the folk story about stone soup.
The designer provides the pot, the fire, the water, and drops in the stone to get it started. But the player is also on the hook for bringing their own ingredients and making this into a soup worth eating.
A Macabre Wrapper - Fear in Gaming
When the rest of the family is asleep, and I have a couple hours of quiet darkness alone, there are few things I love more than nestling into the couch and scaring the everlovingchrist out of myself with a scary videogame or movie. But in all of my boardgaming, there are very few, if any, experiences where I've genuinely felt fear.
Game Dynamics, Jim Croce, and Michael Bay
"And you can keep the dime."
From Jim Croce's Operator, I think this is one of the saddest lyrics in music.
Bumping the Lamp
Kristian Williams has a fantastic video discussing the aspects of blending live-action movie footage with animation, and why Who Framed Roger Rabbit? is maybe the best example of the art.
Game Distillation
If you're in to solo gaming at all, you've probably run across Morten Monrad Pedersen in one way or another. You may have read his insightful blog or played some of the solo variants he's created.
Badly Expressed
Stephen Fry once wrote: “A true thing badly expressed becomes a lie.” Readers of these posts, in the past, future, and at this precise moment in time, will be experienced with the proof of this theorem in regards to language, but I think the idea holds true when broadened to just about any other medium or craft. Including games.
The Jasper Effect
A curious thing happened when I released Until Dawn into the public’s hands. Players started playing poorly on purpose. Their backs to the wall, their shotguns empty, their cabin breached, they would look down at their faithful German Shepherd, teeth bared in anticipation of ripping some zombies to dusty shreds, and say “No, Jasper. Sit. Down. Stay.”
The Dreaded Grind
Most people who do any amount of videogaming will be familiar with the word "grind." Wikipedia defines it as "performing repetitive tasks for gameplay advantage." It's a contentious topic.
Friction on Ice (Cool)
Friction is a term I've stolen from a friend to describe the parts of a game that unnecessarily burden playing it. It could be an ungodly terrible rulebook, forced repetitive component manipulation, overly picky and ultimately useless rules regarding card location, or even a bizarre VP schedule broken out by the area of the board the VP comes from rather than the player allowed to earn the VP in question.