Monthly Archives: March 2010

Let me adjust difficulty during play!

One thing I didn’t men­tion a cou­ple weeks ago when talk­ing about what game design­ers can do bet­ter with dif­fi­culty is: let the player adjust his game dif­fi­culty after he plays. Why should we pre­sume as game design­ers that our def­i­n­i­tion of “medium” or “nor­mal” is the same one that the player is ready for.

Another Year, Another GDC

I don’t have much to say about GDC this year. Wrap-ups at gama­su­tra can do a bet­ter job of what all was there. GDC seemed dom­i­nated by two themes: Naughty Dog takes every­one to school. That’s what one of my cowork­ers called it. Really, I didn’t mind, though, they had a lot of detailed talks

Set Your Difficulty Higher…

Painful lessons seem to be the ones that teach the most, what­ever the sub­ject. Pain pro­vides moti­va­tion to find a path that leads to suc­cess. I remem­ber the first time I waved a bat as a base­ball sailed on by. It was an ugly swing. And my coach let me hear it, in front of