How often do you exercise your game development muscles? Are you a game design heavyweight, or just a scrawny wannabe?
Every few days I challenge myself: I choose a random word and charge myself to come up with 3 scales of design centered around that abstraction - a web-game, a casual game, and an medium-scale indie […]

There’s no question the Casual Games market is inundated with cheap remakes and shameless immitations, but does this behavior actually hurt the industry? Does it actively damage the future of what could otherwise be a bright future for gaming?
Nintendo’s Wii console is unabashedly winning over the hearts of non-gamers with its poignant originality; “casual” gaming […]

A lot of confusion surrounds the (sometimes erroneously) interchangable use of “independent,” and “indie.” I think it’s more a problem of lexical conventions than anything else. Nevertheless, heated debates often arise because of this disparity, and I think it’s an unnecessary side effect of two facets of an industry struggling to find their respective identities.
“Independent” […]

If you’ve been hanging out in the wings, waiting for a sign so you can take your gaming passion and turn it into a real game development business, I’ve got one word for you: Don’t. If I can’t disuade you, then perhaps I can offer some advice to make the transition as painless as possible:
The […]

Frequently, the most undervalued facet of game development is music. Nobody would disagree that gameplay is paramount. A boring game, no matter how fancy the presentation, is still a boring game. Then, most developers would suggest graphics as a secondary importance. But I’m going to challenge that.
When I was in college, I headed a psychological […]

1. Look at problems in many different ways, and find new perspectives that no one else has taken (or no one else has […]

Try-before-you-buy may have been around for 20+ years, but it’s on its way out. In an effort to maximize returns, it has gotten a lot more restrictive over time. What were once given away as full-featured programs with nag screens are now often time and content limited, and even those limitations have become more strict […]

When was the last time you were confronted with a choice of difficulty in a game? And how many of you didn’t know what to select? It’s a tough call, especially if you’ve never played the game before. You haven’t yet developed an understanding of the developer’s definition of “Easy,” or “Experienced.” For all you […]

I am selling a derivative game.
There exists no facilitation for the financial support of an independent, small-budget game developer. Since the health of my investment lies entirely in the market’s hands, and since the market has shown a preference for that type of game, it is a perceptually less risky investment for someone to which […]

Certainly, money will be the primary consideration in any business. But it is not — nor should it be — the only.
Ignorance of the broad consequences of a self-centered industry is what lead to the destruction of our field in 1984 and will likely again. And we’re not the only creative industry who has […]