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Key Posts on Game Design

Reverse chronological order

  • Metagame vs Structure
  • Game Inventories (five part serial)
  • The Craft of Game Design Cannot Be Measured By Any Metric
  • Successful Game Design
  • The Politeness of Tutorials
  • The Voices of the Heretic Kingdoms
  • Treacherous Play
  • Echoes of Genre
  • Curiosity and the Play of Explorer Games
  • Neuromythology for Game Design
  • The Rules of Game Worlds
  • War and Peace: Regimes of Play
  • Does Overjustification Hurt Games?
  • Dungeon and Village
  • The Grind Mystery
  • Game Design is Dead
  • Optimal Game Demos
  • Testosterone and Videogames
  • Positive Game Design
  • Time & Punishment
  • Grip: The Biology of Compulsion
  • Why You Play Games
  • Freedom to Fail
  • Emotions of Play Revisited
  • Game Literacy
  • Process without Goals
  • Kinaesthetic Mimicry
  • À la mode (Game Modes)
  • Structural Specifications
  • Play Specifications
  • Toru Iwatani's Escalator
  • Performance Metrics
  • Co-operative Play
  • Riddles of Difficulty
  • Quantum Items
  • Ratcheted Progress
  • Designing Rewards in Games
  • A Model of Game Designers

 

Key Interviews, Game Critiques, and Post Mortems

Reverse chronological order

  • The Greatest Detective Game Ever Made (Article about Discworld Noir on Kotaku)
  • Sunset
  • Steve Crow: Thirty Years in Games (Interview)
  • Kult: Heretic Kingdoms Post Mortem, Part One and Part Two
  • Interview with Chris Bateman at First Person Scholar, Part One and Part Two
  • Almost Summer (Bientôt L'été)
  • The Epic Simplicity of The Lords of Midnight
  • Ed Key on Proteus (Interview)
  • The Thin Play of Dear Esther
  • Drop 7 and Volatility in Puzzle Games
  • Sicart and Bateman (Interview/Argument from 2010):
    I: Blackbox Rules
    II: Solitary Play
    III: Game Ethics
    IV: Morality and New Media
  • Nicole Lazzaro on Choices in Games
  • Pixeljunk's Dylan Cuthbert (Interview)
  • Sheri Grainer Ray (Interview)
  • Tale of Tales interviews Chris Bateman
  • Noah Falstein on Insult Swordfighting
  • Play with Fire Post Mortem
  • Ghost Master Post Mortem, Part One and Part Two (hosted at Only a Game)

 

Key Posts on Game Philosophy & Aesthetics

Reverse chronological order

  • The Liberation of Games Will Not Be Streamed On Twitch
  • Player Practices
  • The Essence of RPGs
  • The Aesthetic Flaws of Games
  • Four Questions
    I: Is Gordon Freeman a Character?
    II: Is a Jigsaw Puzzle a Game?
    III: Is Fiction Just a Wrapper for Games?
    IV: Is the Interface the Game?
  • Implicit Game Aesthetics (7 part serial)
  • Digital Dominance (2 parts): Guns and Goals
  • A Play Set for Game Design/A Toy Chest for Game Design
  • Towards Videogame Aesthetics (3 parts)
    I: Aesthetic Concepts
    II: Unit Operations
    III: Against Interpretation
  • What is Game Addiction?
  • The Power of Games (on Noël Carroll's philosophy)
  • Avatar and Doll: Entering Fictional Worlds
  • Slaying the First Colossus
  • Game Design as Make-Believe (on Kendall Walton's philosophy)
  • Ebert's Fence and Games as Art
  • What is Game Aesthetics?

 

Key Posts on Game Narrative

Reverse chronological order

  • Why Study Game Narrative?
  • Implicit Contracts and Game Narrative
  • Is Gordon Freeman a Character?
  • Stories and Games (3 part serial)
  • Why There Are No Great Game Stories
  • The Inefficiency of Games as a Narrative Medium
  • The Sins of Game Stories
  • Dramatic Role Proxies
  • The Role of Extras (Guest Author)
  • Dynamic Narrative: FreeSpeak
  • TV Episodes in Games
  • Fractal Stories?
  • Between Stories and Games

 

Key Posts on the Games Industry

Reverse chronological order

  • The Craft of Game Design Cannot Be Measured By Any Metric
  • Successful Game Design
  • Forty Hours
  • Games, Guns, and Gender
  • Game Duplicators and Derivative Game Design
  • Move vs Kinect: The Future of Console Controllers?
  • Blockbusters & Diversions: The New Digital Games Market
  • The Life and Times of Dungeons & Dragons
  • Gold, Platinum and Diamond Games
  • Ten Game Development Vices, Part One and Part Two
  • Top Ten Role-playing Game Franchises
  • The New Gender Agenda
  • The Future of Game Consoles
  • The Market Value of Violence
  • Game Literacy
  • EA Admits to Being Boring
  • Curse of the Ring of Death
  • 360 vs Wii vs PS3
  • Will the Market Segment?
  • Virtual Worlds vs Games
  • The Role of the Indie Market
  • Specialist Developers
  • Why Publishers Flourish and Developers Wither
  • On Branding
  • Lessons from Hollywood
  • There's a Hole in My Game Bucket, Dear Liza...
  • Culture, Gender & Games

 

Developing the DGD2 Audience Model

In chronological order

  • How Do You Play Games?
  • Genre Skeleton Key
  • Game Tests
  • Measuring Play
  • Aphorisms
  • Profile of an Average Player
  • Profile of Game Genre Fans
  • Nine (Update on DGD2)
  • The Nine Basic Players (Maybe)
  • Game Literacy
  • Ultimate Game Player Survey
  • Gamers ♥ Stories (and other titbits)
  • Top Ten Videogame Emotions
  • Female Players
  • Player Skills
  • Redefining Hardcore & Casual
  • The results of this study are published in the paper "Player Typology in Theory and Practice"

 

Republished Blog Posts

Roger Caillois' Patterns of Play
Introduction to posts on Patterns of Play
The Challenge of Agon
Patterns of Play: Agon, or games of competition.
The Rituals of Alea
Patterns of Play: Alea, or games of chance.
The Imagination of Mimicry
Patterns of Play: Mimicry, or games of simulation.
The Joy of Ilinx
Patterns of Play: Ilinx, or games of vertigo.
The Anarchy of Paidia
Paidia refers to improvisation.
The Complexity of Ludus
Ludus refers to rules.
Strategic Play
Strategic play relates to mastering complex game systems and problem solving.
Logistical Play
Logistical play relates to following rules and pursuing acquisition.
Tactical Play
Tactical play relates to improvisation, and competence with all manner of tools.
Diplomatic Play
A brief discussion of what Diplomatic Play may entail.
Kinaesthetic Mimicry
What is the secret that makes the Wii such a hit? And how does it relate to earlier games?
Between Stories and Games
Where is the line between what makes a story and what makes a game?
Designing Rewards in Games
What makes a player keep playing a game? Why do they come back for more?
A Model of Game Designers
What does psychology tell us about the kinds of personalities suited to working in game design? This tentative model explores some of the different skills involved in designing videogames.

 

Republished Magazine Articles

Zen Game Design
What is the secret of game design enlightenment? First published Develop 27, April 2003 as 'My Karma Ran Over Your Dogma'
Just Who Are Our Consumers?
First published in MCV (Market for Home Computing & Video Games), issue 191 (21st June 2002)
Piracy is Not Black and White
First published in MCV (The Market for Computer & Videogames), issue 190 (14th June 2002)
The 40 Hour Millstone
First published in CTW (Computer Trade Weekly), issue 877 (1st February 2002)
Golden Rules of Interface Design
First published in Develop, issues 11 & 12 (October & November 2001)
Ban The Boss
First published in Develop, issues 7 & 8 (June & July 2001)
Cut Scenes - Friend or Foe?
First published in CTW (Computer Trade Weekly), issue 840 (11th May 2001)
Games Businessmen Play: Tokyo 2001
First published in Develop, issue 6 (May 2001).
Call in the Cavalry
First published in Develop, issue 4 (March 2001)

Downloadable Articles

Demographic Game Design: How to make game design as valuable as marketing
Available in online readable PDF format (3,442 KB) and also as a zipped PDF (1,792 KB) for those with narrower bandwidths.

Card Games

Guild of Thieves
Compete with other trainee thieves to open the jewelled box. It's like Cluedo (or Clue, if you're from the US) only you just need a deck of cards and a little stage magic to play.
Life
A simple but compulsive game for 2 or more players.
Underwear
A game of strategy and intuition for devious minds.

Old Surveys/Play Style Models

DGD2 Questionnaire: Ultimate Game Players Survey
Take part in an extensive study of how and why people play games - and win the game of your choice!
DGD1 Questionnaire: What Play Style Do You Prefer?
Learn something about your play style with this quick and simple quiz! (Please complete the DGD2 questionnaire first!)

Legacy CFAQs

CFAQs
These are ihobo's way of breaking a game apart and showing how things could have been done differently at a design level. These are ihobo's Critical FAQs

Coming Soon!


  • Revised and Expanded!
    A brand new edition of the original Game Writing how-to guide, out in paperback, hardback, and ebook on 28th January 2021
  • Evan Skolnick
    "Comprehensive coverage of writing for games. Other books have been published since the first edition came out, but none have surpassed it."

Praise for ihobo founder Chris Bateman

  • Raph Koster
    "always has interesting stuff to say! one of my favourite people to argue with"
  • Jane McGonigal
    "the most thoughtful respondent in games, barring none"
  • Kendall Walton
    "wonderfully refreshing and inventive"
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