I'll admit it: I don’t like MMOGs. I’ve done trials for World of Warcraft, City of Heroes, Maple Story, and EVE Online. I’ve also played Second Life, Habbo Hotel, and Kaneva. I find them to be repetitive and time-consuming, and I use that as my means to justify not playing them even though I'm currently addicted to iPhone Sudoku, which probably embodies those traits more than any online game. Hopefully I'll figure it out one of these days and get the full MMO experience, but as a designer, I'm already excited about the breakthroughs this genre has made in our... Continue reading

This class provided a context for everything else I've learned in the Computational Media program. It was the first time I've had the opportunity to make a game without considerations for how many copies it could sell or how much it would cost. My team found an idea we could be passionate about and ran with it. I found it to be a much less stressful environment to work in compared to professional game development, and as a result, I was able to give more thought to what I could learn from the experience each step of the way. I... Continue reading

Valkyria Chronicles is a tactical RPG that was released in 2008 for the PlayStation 3. Critics considered it to be unique in its genre because of its innovative battle system that had the player switching between an overhead map view of the action and third-person control of each unit on the field. It was unique among all games for its clever integration of gender and culture into its gameplay mechanics. The player assembles a squad of 20 units from a large pool of recruits before going to battle. The characters have “potentials” that can affect their performance on the battlefield... Continue reading

This isn't directly related to any assignment, it's just something I wanted to share with the class. Over the summer, I was introduced to "game deconstruction nights" at Pandemic Studios. Every week, one member of the team would pick a game and give a presentation on its strengths and weaknesses. There's a lot to be learned about design by paying attention to the details that many players may overlook at first glance, or even how players interact with particular mechanics. Since coming back to Tech, I'm trying to write one game deconstruction every month in the form of a blogpost.... Continue reading

Competition is the most common concept in multiplayer games. Whether it's competing on your own or working with a team, the compulsion to perform better than other live players is too powerful for many games to ignore. Rather than ignoring them, though, many games have offered new spins on competition and redefined how players think about games. SpaceWar! is commonly regarded as the first video game, so it must have traditional game mechanics, right? It was originally designed as a competitive multiplayer game with each player controlling a spaceship on the screen. Players fired cosmic torpedoes at each other in... Continue reading

My first console was an NES, but I really grew up on the Sega Genesis. Between Sonic the Hedgehog, ToeJam and Earl, and Streets of Rage, I had everything I needed to be in my own personal gaming euphoria. Then my family got a PC, and I was introduced to a much larger library of entertainment. I didn't have a lot of money to buy games, so I spent a lot of time playing shareware releases. One of most influential shareware games for me was the Jazz Jackrabbit series. Jazz Jackrabbit, created in 1994 by Epic MegaGames (now known plainly... Continue reading

Today, chess is associated with daytime professional competitions on ESPN2 and nerds in the back of the high school lunchroom. It's hard to imagine a time when the game was considered a serious element of social status and even an allegory for society as a whole. Such a time existed in the game's advent in Europe. The role of chess in Spain dates back to the 8th century in Spanish Muslim culture. The Book of the Games of Chess, Dice, and Boards from the 13th century illustrates the game's relevance during the height of its influence across Europe. Women were... Continue reading