LOSTGARDEN

For this year’s Project Horseshoe, an annual game designer think tank, our workgroup investigated small-scale MMOs. You can read the other reports here: https://www.projecthorseshoe.com/reports/ Our group consisted of: Alexander Youngblood, Game Designer at ArenaNet Amy Jo Kim, Chief Executive Officer at Shufflebrain Crystin Cox, Principal Program Manager at Microsoft Daniel Cook, Chief Creative Officer at Spry Fox Erin Hoffman-John, Lead Prototyper at Google Isaiah Cartwright, Game Director at ArenaNet Kyle Brink, Director of Production at […]

For this year’s Project Horseshoe, an annual game designer think tank, our workgroup dug deep into how to design cozy games. What a productive, happy group of people! You can read the other reports here: https://www.projecthorseshoe.com/reports/ Our group consisted of: Tanya X Short Anthony Ordon Dan Hurd Chelsea Howe Jake Forbes Squirrel Eiserloh Joshua Diaz Daniel Cook Ron Meiners: Moderator Overview Coziness is a common aesthetic in popular games such as Animal Crossing or Stardew Valley, yet […]

In November of 2016, a small group of veteran game designers got together in a remote portion of Texas for a think tank called Project Horseshoe. Our workgroup dug deep into how design can help build meaningful relationships within games. You can read the other reports here: https://www.projecthorseshoe.com/reports/ Our group consisted of: Daniel Cook, Spry Fox Yuri Bialoskursky, Electronic Arts Bill Fulton, Microsoft Michael Fitch, Betterrealities.com Joel Gonzales, Wargaming.net Introduction The issue In many online multiplayer […]

To play a game well, a player must master a mental model of cause and effect.  You learn that pressing a specific button moves you forward.  You figure out that a sequence of controller moves lets you dodge a fired rocket.  You observe a slight pause before an enemy attack and theorize that you could fire off a headshot at that exact moment.  At each stage of learning, you create a hypothesis, test it via […]

Here are two tools I’ve been using lately to better understand the functionality of my game designs.  The first is the loop, a structure that should be very familiar to those who have looked into skill atoms.  The second is the arc. Loops The ‘game’ aspect of this beast we call a computer game always involves ‘loops’. The player starts with a mental model that prompts them to… Apply an action to… The game system […]