Apr 3I Love The Long DarkI love The Long Dark, and I want to talk about why. To do that, I need to first talk about the third grade. I went to a weird little private school, sent there when my strange and (to the educators of the early 1980s) incomprehensible behaviors proved too much…33 min read33 min read
Mar 16, 2021The Design Philosophy of Battletech, Part 4The Setting I’ve actually had a lot of trouble convincing myself to write this essay, because I’m missing a lot of the resources I’d need to really delve into the process by which the setting was created. Specifically, all my notes and documents and images that I used to work out the…Battletech14 min readBattletech14 min read
Nov 30, 2020The Design Philosophy of Battletech, Part 3Maps, Missions and Contracts — Last time, I talked about one of the two primary storytelling mechanics in Battletech, the event system. Today I’d like to explore the entire ecosystem of the encounter, the contract, and the mission. When I built The Company, I envisioned the simulation portion of the game as a wrapper around…Battletech15 min readBattletech15 min read
Nov 18, 2020The Design Philosophy Of Battletech, Part 2The Event System In the previous essay, I talked about creating a bond between you and your pilots. There are two points of interaction between you and them: the missions, which I’ll talk about in a future essay, and the event system. Of the two, the event system was the one I cared…Battletech12 min readBattletech12 min read
Nov 17, 2020The Design Philosophy of BattletechI do a lot of my design work by gut. I intuitively grasp whether something is going to be fun or not; whether something is a good idea or not; whether something is going to be worth the time to develop or not. In the moment, I can’t explain why…Battletech11 min readBattletech11 min read
Feb 20, 2020The WaterseekerWaiting at the oasis, you had given up on ever finding a caravan to join. The ones that stopped at the rock-sheltered hollow always seemed to have several Waterseekers with them already, and a caravan only truly needed one. Unerringly, the caravans’ Waterseekers found this hidden place, the same one…Fiction25 min readFiction25 min read
Dec 6, 2019Player Motivation (Part One)In Design and Impostor Syndrome, I said: “It’s one of those so-obvious-in-hindsight concepts, where you hear it and think ‘well, of course’: players don’t have to play your game.” Convincing players to play your game is, I’d argue, the primary task of the game designer. Whatever experience you want them…Gaming12 min readGaming12 min read
Nov 14, 2019Trust and Game DesignIn ‘Design and Impostor Syndrome’, I said: “ Designers seem plagued by the notion that they’ve somehow tricked their way into their positions, fooled hiring managers into believing their facile bullshit is actual skill and experience.” I want to explore where this notion comes from, and why it’s so corrosive…Game Development15 min readGame Development15 min read
Nov 8, 2019Design and Impostor SyndromeEvery talented designer I have ever known, with only a few exceptions, has suffered from impostor syndrome. Designers seem plagued by the notion that they’ve somehow tricked their way into their positions, fooled hiring managers into believing their facile bullshit is actual skill and experience. I think this tendency comes…Game Design9 min readGame Design9 min read
Oct 28, 2019Why have game designers?Why have game designers at all on your project? That’s not actually a rhetorical question; I know one major game studio that simply does not hire designers, and several others that do not have any senior design staff, just junior designers in level creation and mechanical tuning. …Game Design5 min readGame Design5 min read
