GameDev Blog
Chris Crawford is my game design hero. I deeply appreciate Chris' principles and how much he adheres to them, I love the way he looks at things, the way he reasons, the way he argues. What he says resonates profoundly with me, and he has been a source of inspiration for more than 15 years. I’ve read pretty much everything he published, both in books an on his extensive web site, but curiously I had never read Chris Crawford on Game Design (New Riders, 2003) cover to cover. Now I did, and here are some thoughts about it.
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Each benchmark focuses on something and depending on this focus it may tell a different story. For the different programming languages usable with the Godot Game Engine, the most popular benchmark is Carter Anderson’s Godot Bunnymark, which gives a relatively strong emphasis to rendering. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it doesn’t tell the story I want to hear.
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Where to go next on my quest to learn game design? A book about fun? As a long time follower of Chris Crawford, I am convinced that fun is overhyped. I want to see games growing to be as respected as other media are. I want to see the game equivalents of Schindler’s List 🎥 and Crime and Punishment 📖 – great works which are not fun, right? Anyway, I gave credit to all praise this book has attracted over the years and decided to read it. And thus here’s my review of Raph Koster’s A Theory of Fun for Game Design, Second Edition (O’Reilly, 2013).
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People all around the Internet were praising DiRT Rally for its realism and unforgiving rally driving experience. When trying it, a couple of minutes into the game, I hit huge rock at high speed, my car rolled over several times until stopping upside down. A message popped up saying something like press enter to recover vehicle, which I did, and then I was instantly back to the road, ready to keep racing. Instead of killing the virtual me, the game merely gave me a 15-second penalty. Come on, are they really calling this nonsense a realistic simulation?!
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In a relatively short time, RimWorld climbed to the top of my all-time favorite games (in the company of giants like Civilization IV). When I decided I wanted to learn some game design for real, it was quite natural to start from a book written by the mind behind this gem. So, here’s my review of Tynan Silverster’s Designing Games (O’Reilly, 2013).
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