Eight Steps for Good Game Design Documentation
1. Write with active verbs in the present tense and use consistent perspective viewpoints.2. Use bullet points. Lots and lots of them. And indented ones. Make the document bulleted as much as possible...
View ArticleVideoplays
According to a recent article on Next Gen, the BBFC have published a report that identifies 11 key things about games and gamers. Many of the points are rather obvious and well-repeated, but a few are...
View Article93% of new IPs Fail
According to Steve Allison of Midway (says Shacknews).Which sounds daunting. But wait, there's more (some via N'Gai Croal's Level Up)"If there were, 'great' games Beyond Good & Evil, Ico, Okami,...
View ArticleThe End of Novelty
As is my wont, I shall now wax lyrical on the subject of novelty.As some readers may be aware, I have in the past taken pains to note that the trend for novelty and innovation is not one that is...
View ArticleDown on the Farm: Barnyard Developers
I'm in the mood for a little Saturday afternoon amusement, so here goes:I met up with a friend for breakfast this morning and we're both games industry peeps. As such, we invariably got around to the...
View ArticleThe Death of Console Generations
Though I am a supporter of a free and open standard console format, I don't think that it's likely to happen any time soon. First we need to get through the Age of Updates.What this means is that the...
View ArticleXbox Live: Release the Hounds
Why are console manufacturers afraid of developers?It's right at the heart of their whole business model that they place developers at arms' length purposefully, first by producing steep barriers to...
View ArticleNew Blood, Old Blood
My old commander-in-chief Peter Molyneux was in the press recently making the case for new blood and new graduates in the industry, as well as advocating passion and communication skills over...
View ArticleWhat are Kongregate etc missing?
I've become quite the fan of "neat gaming" in the last year. Not least because it has become my job (I now work for Sky Games as a development manager of casual games on interactive TV), but also...
View ArticleSudoku Blocks
For those of you who have Sky TV, we've just released a game called Sudoku Blocks, developed by Craftwork. I'm rather proud of this game, so hence the web pimping. You can play it by accessing the...
View ArticleNot At GDC
Another year, another not-going-to-GDC.Last night a friend of mine stopped over at my place, as I live reasonably close to Heathrow Airport. And why, you may ask? Well he's off to GDC of course. Lucky...
View ArticleIs it over for the UK?
In the news today, a petition has been started on the Downing Street website (which I've signed) to basically ask the government to do something about the conditions that the UK industry has operated...
View ArticleAggregation vs Portals: Where Microsoft is going wrong with Xbox Live
In perhaps the most interesting news of the week, Microsoft have announced that they are going to start de-listing games from Xbox Live Arcade based on two criteria: Sales and review scores. In their...
View ArticleWhy is the book world NOT threatened by gamers?
I don't normally do this, but I am moved to write a response to a post on the Guardian Tech blog by the journalist Aleks Krotoski on the subject of book publishing, computer games, and asking generally...
View ArticleA question of value
If I were to ask you what you think the value your game's content was, what would your answer be? I think most developers would answer somewhere between 10 and 25 pounds (or 20 and 50 dollars US). It's...
View ArticleThe conference ritual
There's this ritual that I have: Every year I log onto whichever of the gaming news sites are showing webcasts of the E3 conferences, and in another window I click open British gaming forum...
View ArticleZero Tolerance: The new music in Zero Punctuation
I love Zero Punctuation, the mostly-weekly review video that The Escapist have been running for a while now by British emigré journalist Ben "Yahtzee" Crowshaw. For those three of you out there who may...
View ArticleThe Play Room
I don't know about you, but recently I have become very very bored with the whole blogging scene. Games blogging such as it is had this really high wave of activity about 3-4 years ago when people like...
View ArticleThe Play Room: 24 Hours later
Well things have gotten off to a good start: There are 7 of us in the room now.I've had an interesting day talking to a few friends about it in fact, giving them a link etc. All but one of them didn't...
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