Latest Posts
-
Notes on GAMETHING Season 5
-
The ways that Syphilisation fails as a postcolonial game
-
Notes on GAMETHING Season 4
-
The unique features of Syphilisation
-
Notes on GAMETHING
-
Understanding translation in 4X games.
-
Meditation as gaming and gaming as meditation
-
General approaches to making your game postcolonial
-
Identifying and replacing colonial mechanics in Breath of the Wild
-
Moving production to the camps
-
Identifying and replacing colonial mechanics in Stardew Valley
-
Understanding the big question of ideological games and what Syphilisation does in the space.
-
Identifying and replacing colonial mechanics in Monster Hunter
-
On how Syphilisation was rewarding to build.
-
Going over a major update to the eXploitation phase in *Syphilisation*
-
Using the lens of postcolonialism to solve ICS
-
Going through Civilization 6 looking for postcolonial statements
-
Updated notification system and more tooltips
-
A new storyline for Pahal Radha
-
New win-con and updated campaigns.
-
Preserves and Game Flow
-
OOO
-
Planned features for Syphilisation
-
Streamlining Syphilisation for simplicity.
-
Thoughts on the many moments of Florence
-
Thoughts on the experience and game design of New Pokemon Snap.
-
Work to counter industrialization
-
Celebration Points and Covid Vaccines
-
Understanding player identity in Civ and related games.
-
Updating the economy to have fewer, bigger decisions
-
History From Below and UI
-
Teamwork, Player Characters, Facts and Climate Catastrophes
-
How the recreation commons of SMAC help worldbuilding.
-
New Syphilisation features
-
Implementing a new trade system
-
On how the 10mg experiment can be a more sustainable model for game development.
-
Tooltips
-
Stocktaking
-
Updates to culture.
-
Quest system improvements
-
Storyline support.
-
Working out combat
-
Redesigning the biomes.
-
An overview of the pending features and a couple of small improvements.
-
A rundown of what's left to do for Syphilisation
-
Ready for sale!
-
UI and image fixes
-
Full playtest.
-
Second bookkeeping update
-
Bookkeeping update
-
Playtesting Work
-
Thinking through the big questions in game design that Syphilisation can answer
-
Colonization wars, story events and Kasturba's imprisonment and heart attacks.
-
Assorted thoughts on postcolonial end-games
-
Preserves, playtesting and Linlithgow's racism
-
Citizens, region quests, playtests and Gandhi's letter to Hitler
-
The parameter restructure and Gandhi fighting with young women
-
Diplomacy update, personal projects, parameters and parodies
-
Updates to the currency conversion and report systems
-
Examining what may be the most common interactive leisure activity in the world
-
Stock-taking Syphilisation
-
Why I want games scholars to ask for games to better examine themselves.
-
UI, playtesting and the protests in the United States
-
Stable eXploitation, UI changes and Comrade Sak
-
Major diplomacy revamp, some starting quests and some context for Lord of the Flies.
-
How Wilmot's Warehouse ended up with an exogenous degeneracy.
-
Syphilisation Update - 2020-05-03
-
Syphilisation Update - 2020-04-19
-
Syphilisation Update - 2020-04-12
-
Syphilisation Update - 2020-04-05
-
Syphilisation Update - 2020-03-29
-
Syphilisation Update - 2020-03-22
-
Syphilisation Update - 2020-03-08
-
Breaking Down The One More Turn Pattern
-
Syphilisation Update - 2020-03-01
-
Syphilisation Update - 2020-02-23
-
Analyzing the role-playing of 4X games.
-
A brief thought on the villages of Civilization
-
Syphilisation Update - 2019-12-22
-
THE NEW SYPHILISATION MANIFESTO
-
How A House for Mr. Biswas designed its epic quest.
-
Syphilisation Update - 2019-12-08
-
A shallow status check on the Syphilisation big picture
-
Syphilisation Update - 2019-11-30
-
Syphilisation Update - 2019-11-24
-
Syphilisation Update - 2019-11-17
-
Syphilisation Update - 2019-11-09
-
Syphilisation Update - 2019-11-03
-
Syphilisation Update - 2019-10-26
-
Syphilisation Update - 2019-10-20
-
The implications of preservation being a creative activity
-
Syphilisation Update - 2019-10-06
-
How the systems of Civ6 push you into war and then into cycles of war thereafter
-
Syphilisation Update - 2019-09-15
-
A deeper look at snowballing
-
How the Majima campaign of Yakuza Kiwami 2 illustrated the issue of pacing in open world games.
-
Syphilisation Update - 2019-07-21
-
Some unexpected comparisons between video games and music songs and genres.
-
Syphilisation Update - 2019-06-30
-
Syphilisation Update - 2019-06-23
-
Syphilisation Update - 2019-06-16
-
Syphilisation Update - 2019-06-09
-
Syphilisation Update - 2019-06-02
-
Syphilisation Update - 2019-05-05
-
Syphilisation Update - 2019-04-28
-
Syphilisation Update - 2019-04-14
-
A history of Jallianwala Bagh and a bit on what it is to design around it
-
Syphilisation Update - 2019-04-07
-
Thinking about further implications of the burden of optimal play
-
Syphilisation Update - 2019-03-31
-
Syphilisation Update - 2019-03-24
-
Syphilisation Update - 2019-03-17
-
Thoughts about what game mechanics and colonialism.
-
Syphilisation Update - 2019-03-10
-
Syphilisation Update - 2019-02-24
-
Assorted thoughts on how to examine traditional media with game design tools
-
Syphilisation Update - 2019-02-17
-
The RPS review of Foundation compares it to a warm bath and I absolutely love that
-
Syphilisation Update - 2019-02-03
-
Syphilisation Update - 2019-01-27
-
How to seed info dumps with approachable elements.
-
Notes on You And Your Research by Richard Hamming
-
What a compost bin taought me about game design
-
Notes on Tagore's lecture on the changing Japan of 1916.
-
Examining the first point where you can choose what to build.
-
Raw materials and their conversions
-
Issues and solutions for building system-driven games about romance.
-
My response to an article asking that we stop expecting games to build empathy
-
The distinction between punk and the DIY aesthetic of TQS.
-
How video games can affect how you see the world
-
A quick note on hybridized design.
-
Imagining a more 4Xy Civ.
-
Further defense of flavor text
-
Breaking down the other players in Civilization
-
A lot of thoughts on a recent book that I read
-
A Final MDA Analysis of The Quiet Sleep
-
Breaking down the techs of Civilization
-
THE SYPHILISATION MANIFESTO
-
Breaking down the units of Civilization
-
Breaking down the components of the cities in Civilization
-
Drilling down into the core aesthetics of Syphilisation.
-
Announcing my new game Syphilisation.
-
The playlist I used when working on The Quiet Sleep
-
A lot of thoughts on Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy
-
Analysing the addition of an emotional moment to The Quiet Sleep.
-
What life-like games are and why they are worth defending
-
An interactive exploration of the basics of balancing card games.
-
How missing a part of the interface of The Shrouded Isle led to an interesting difference in its gameplay.
-
How the representation of emotion changed in The Quiet Sleep
-
What a video game gutter is and how
-
How optional goals can conflict with the rest of your game
-
An examination of reasons to disapprove of non-interactive games in general.
-
A design doc for a game about high school gossip.
-
A deep dive into an interesting design approach
-
Introducing the third story for the quiet sleep.
-
Assorted thoughts on decisions that are human-designed.
-
Going over what mechanical foreshadowing is and how to integrate it.
-
Breaking down a specific moment from the 1998 IF Photopia.
-
An interactive article on pull algorithms in games.
-
Some refinements to city.
-
Notes on The Continued Influence of Misinformation in Memory: What Makes a Correction Effective
-
A quick note on a failed feature.
-
Thoughts on making narrative-based jigsaw puzzles.
-
Thoughts on a specific point on complexity in game design.
-
A look at some of the minutiae of making The Quiet Sleep.
-
Talking a bit on the novelty of communicating through systems.
-
Playing through the latest build of city.
-
Looking to fix the issues with a few systems of city.
-
More detail on what this new story is trying to say.
-
Looking at a new approach to narrative in city stories.
-
Examining some of the features of rock, paper, scissors.
-
Thoughts on the second story for The Quiet Sleep
-
A deep look into loose and tight choices and alternate hypotheses for their effects.
-
The state of The Quiet Sleep post-IGF Submission
-
A quick anecdote of The Quiet Sleep.
-
Adding trains and emotions to The Quiet Sleep.
-
On Pokemon Go and AR Games in general.
-
Further notes from playtesting.
-
On how the Pokemon games make their pieces valuable.
-
On the nostalgia factor of Pokemon.
-
On Pokemon Go and what it means for the future of games..
-
Raw Notes from playing Pokemon Go.
-
The results of the first playtest.
-
The proposal for a new focus system for city.
-
Getting the City systems to really come together.
-
The first week of work on getting City ready for a public playtest.
-
Work on the story and people of City.
-
Notes on various articles from April, 2016
-
Notes on various articles from March, 2016
-
Notes on various articles from February, 2016
-
Work on the story and UI of City.
-
Some work on cleaning up the information flow of City.
-
A deep analysis of the mechanics of City.
-
Tying features together.
-
Growth and pruning of existing city features.
-
Building out features to help communicate ideas.
-
How to design your game to better support self-expression for your players.
-
-
Work done on consolidating my game.
-
Notes on various articles from January, 2016
-
Analysing the systems of city thus far and the aesthetics desired from the game.
-
A description of some situations I want to represent and how I plan on doing so.
-
Honing the systems of my game.
-
City: Content
-
Notes on various articles from December, 2015
-
The progress made on the player representation of my game.
-
The progress made on the towers of my tower defense game.
-
How and why Drowning In Problems affected me so deeply.
-
Description of the first playable version of my game.
-
Notes on various articles from November, 2015.
-
Quick rundown of the game I'm working on and what I'm doing.
-
Examining the depth of the combat of Renowned Explorers.
-
A couple of examples of how Her Story deals with giving people the freedom to find content.
-
Thoughts on depth and complexity in video games.
-
Notes from GDC
-
Rough notes on the game This War of Mine.
-
Rough notes on the game Vainglory
-
Notes on The Banner Saga
-
I examine Gods Will Be Watching and analyze design decisions it made given that the game is not about having fun.
-
Notes on Road Not Taken