Companions, Character Archetypes & Creating Player Bonds
In this article, I’m turning my back on the main protagonists who usually bask in the limelight of our stories and our conversations. Because today I’m
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Key Ingredients To Writing Compelling Video Game Characters
One of the biggest struggles of narrative design is creating strong characters when they have such limited showtime and script. Movies and cinematic cutscenes give writers
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Game Design #3: Unbreakable Immersion
There are three main ways that a game’s immersion can be broken: frustration, boredom and plain old inconsistency. So first up, simplicity is key to avoid
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Game Design #2: Hooking Them In
To stay hooked, one must first… actually be hooked. For this, we need a clear goal (which I will cover in the next part of this
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Game Design #1: What IS a game?
One of the (surprisingly) many silver linings of corona-induced social distancing is that I have SO much time on my hands. ALL of the time in
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How To End A Game That Never Ends
I write for Kenshi; Kenshi is a non-linear sandbox game. It’s meant to be limitless, unconstraining and completely open. Yet there are rare times when I
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