Tag: For Everyone

A background image used throughout the blog website. It is a map. It shows a castle on a bluff above a lake, with a small walled town around it. The lake has rivers flowing out on either side, and is surrounded by forests. The castle is rendered in high detrail and as you go to the edges of the image the map gets sketchier and sketchier
Posted on Misc

Growing Taste and Literacy

Someone posted about how gaming culture’s narrow musical tastes feels alienating. The thread was thoughtful, but a lot of replies (from game industry folks) have gone into the “insulting people for having basic tastes” territory.

So let’s talk a little bit about “taste” and literacy in a medium.

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A background image used throughout the blog website. It is a map. It shows a castle on a bluff above a lake, with a small walled town around it. The lake has rivers flowing out on either side, and is surrounded by forests. The castle is rendered in high detrail and as you go to the edges of the image the map gets sketchier and sketchier
Posted on Content Design

Class Prompt: Engaging the senses

One of the ways to create a sense of place and make environments more memorable is to engage more of the player’s senses. As game creators we don’t always have a lot of avenues to do this! We can’t actually provide smells, for instance. If you’re working on a pen and paper game, as some of you are, you may not have direct access to ANY of the player’s senses, and need to instead evoke them with words.

So some useful angles to look at this from:

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A background image used throughout the blog website. It is a map. It shows a castle on a bluff above a lake, with a small walled town around it. The lake has rivers flowing out on either side, and is surrounded by forests. The castle is rendered in high detrail and as you go to the edges of the image the map gets sketchier and sketchier
Posted on Content Design

Twitter Thread: The World-as-Mystery Genre

One of my favorite story archetypes is the “world as a mystery”. I love it when there’s a big unknown about the setting’s mechanics or history that deeply impacts the story + characters. And the story is then structured like a mystery novel.

I love that excitement of learning a setting’s history and, as we learn more, it re-contextualizes everything we thought we knew about that world. Of course, major revelations about the world must coincide with major character moments for maximum impact!

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Art of A Link to the Past Link handing the Master Sword over to Breath of the Wild Link.
Posted on Game Design

Ocarina’s Image: Freedom in Breath of the Wild

Fifteen years after Ocarina of Time, the Zelda team finally retired its time-worn solutions to the problems of 3D. They shifted their philosophy, drew from the inspiration for the first Legend of Zelda, and rebuilt the beating heart of the franchise from first principles.

Previously we examined the challenges of building the first 3D Zelda, and the tradeoffs that Ocarina made to maintain approachability. These compromises attempted to balance two unsolved problems: decreased readability, and greatly increased complexity. In this final article, we’ll see how Breath of the Wild found new solutions to those problems.

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