game design

Scale is exposing the challenges of scaling videogames

Scale is a puzzle game with a straightforward elevator pitch: “You wield a device that can make any item any size.” This is a popular pitch. It earned the game $108,020 in funding from over 5,000 backers during its Kickstarter campaign. Steve Swink, Scale’s creator, subsequently created an alpha ver

Why is Rocket League’s jumping so much fun?

Rocket League is a game that is concerned with a great many things, but verisimilitude is most definitely not one of them. To wit, here’s an excerpt from Psyonix president Dave Hagewood’s excellent interview with Gamasutra about the game’s jumping mechanics: Designing Rocket League‘s rocket-boosting

In the Game of Thrones season finale, you either win, or you respawn

Spoiler warning for everyone who is not caught up on season five /// A few episodes ago, in yet another classic Stannis-Davos argument, the false king declared his strategic position—while also basically summing up the entirety of the Game of Thrones fiction: “We march to victory, or we march to def