Designing Usable and Accessible Games with Interaction Design Patterns

"What separates games from other forms of entertainment is that they provide interaction, however providing interaction it in the wrong way e.g. different from how the player would expect it or how the player requires it, means that people get frustrated playing your game --or worse-- cannot play your game at all."

A History of Matching Tile Games

"This article aims to write the history of a video game genre. The genre is that of matching tile games, video games where the object of the player is to manipulate tiles on a grid in order to create matches. For a few years, the best known and best selling matching tile games have been the Bejeweled series from PopCap games. Figure 1 shows Bejeweled 2 Deluxe (PopCap games 2005)."

Carnegie Mellon Preserves History of Gaming 'Firsts'

"Was “Pong” really the first video game? Did jumping first appear in “Donkey Kong?” To answer these questions and more about video and computer games, a team of master’s degree students at Carnegie Mellon University’s Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) has created a new and improved Game Innovation Database. "

GAMER THEORY 2.0

Interesting web companion to the book Gamer Theory.

Shape-based Hit Detection in 8

"A while back I posted a demo of shape-based hit detection in Flash 8. At the time, I wasn't allowed to post the source code, but promised I would later. So here it is.

The com.gskinner.sprites.CollisionDetection class is really simple to work with, there is a single static method called checkForCollision with four parameters:"

Recursive Dimensional Clustering

"Collision detection can be done in many ways. The most straightforward and simplest way is to just test every object against all other objects. Because every object has to test only for others after it in the list of objects, and testing an object with itself is useless, we arrive at the well known brute force comparison algorithm:"

DigiPen student games released

"DigiPen Institute of Technology has unveiled most of the student games created for the 2007 academic year. Nearly two dozen projects will available by the end of the month covering a wide range of styles -- from space shooters, to puzzlers and the popular 'riding a motorcycle in medieval times' genre."

Mastering the Craft of Online Gaming Infrastructure

"On April 19, 2007, a conference of game developers, IT entrepreneurs, internet security experts, telecom executives, and technology investors gathered in San Francisco to take part in Mastering the Craft of Online Gaming, a day long event in which the complex issues surrounding the online gaming market were discussed."

Peggle - Why is it fun?

"There’s something oddly compelling about PopCap’s latest release, Peggle. The game is basically Pachinko: You fire a ball from the top of the screen and watch it bounce around until it hits the bottom. That’s right, watch. The player is given zero influence and interactivity as soon as the ball leaves the starting cannon."

Interesting discussion on the merits of PopCap Games' new game, Peggle.

Game Career Guide Forums

"Gamasutra's game education sister site GameCareerGuide.com has launched new forums to facilitate the discussion of topics related to getting into the game industry, game career paths, game education, and game studies. Readers are encouraged to create accounts, specialize their profiles with avatars, and start up conversations."

Academics for Game Designers

"A wide variety of skills also makes you an indispensable addition to any game company and guarantees a place of honor in the Cockroach Club: a term derived from the fact that cockroaches can survive a nuclear blast... the occasional layoffs of the games industry. Don’t you want to keep your job when companies inevitably downsize and layoff personnel?'"

Interesting take on what it takes to get into and stay in the game industry from an academic perspective.

GDC: The First Decade of Mobile Games

"At his keynote at his year's GDC Mobile, event founder Robert Tercek gave a presentation covering the ten-year history of mobile games, from perspectives of business, innovation, and gameplay."

Are Games Art?

"“Here we go again.”

That was Tim Schafer’s reaction when I recently asked him the question, “Are video games an art form?”"

Interesting discussion of whether or not games are an artform.

Should you even die once in a well-designed game?

"How hard should a video game be? Should it tromp on your skull the whole way through until you break multiple controllers in aggravation? Or should it hold your hand throughout, offering a plethora of tutorials and stages easy enough for anyone to complete? Of course, the obvious answer is somewhere in between the two, but I think that it is even a little more complicated than that."

Chicago Game Studios Highlighted On Gamasutra

Tour of Chicago Pt. 1: High Voltage Software
Tour of Chicago Pt. 2: Wideload Games
Tour of Chicago Pt. 3: EA Chicago
Tour of Chicago Pt. 4: Day 1 Studios
Tour of Chicago Pt. 5: Midway

Debugging Fast-Paced Action Games

"During the development of my last game I took a different approach of debugging it which is especially useful for real time games. Because it's so simple I'm wondering why I haven't used this method before (perhaps too lazy ? ;-)) Usually you include a bunch of trace statements everywhere or create a logger system which prints out the information you need. But this is useless in games where many simultaneous events occur. Your logger will be flooded with messages so it's hard to keep track of everything."

Book Excerpt: Creating Casual Games for Profit and Fun

"You will learn to implement a casual game, from initial treatment to final installation, in this part of the book. Casual games typically feature many special techniques that are detailed and demonstrated in Adobe Flash and Adobe Director. Common game development methods are also demonstrated in this section."

How to become a Game Designer?

"There is no precise set of requirements for becoming a game designer. Most designers come from different fields of computer arts, programming or directly out of QA and I could totally see people from science or psychology fields orienting themselves in the video game field. In fact, the more diverse are your knowledges, the better."

Nice article about one way to become a game designer.

Game Over! - Universally Inaccessible Game

"'Game Over!' is the world's first (and hopefully only) universally inaccessible game. This practically means that it is a game that can be played by no one. But why was such a game created? Well, the goal of Game Over! is to be used as an educational tool for disseminating, understanding and consolidating game accessibility guidelines."