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on August 09, 2009

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Doesn't really need saying, but...

...must see!

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Ten Books that aren't about Game Design ...

. . . that every game designer should read. In wrapping up my latest term teaching Game Design here in California I was reminded that virtually all of the texts I recommend to students aren't actually about Game Design. I feel that is because I genuinely believe that there are so many important things to learn that aren't specifically about our craft, but relate to our ability to operate within it. We learn about game design by making games, iterating, answering questions, facing challenges, and learning from our mistakes. We can of course also start to supplement that by reading some of the fledgling academic works looking at game design too, but to me, there are some vital elements that a game designer can learn from looking outside our field. Creative mediums have after all been around a very long time, and many of the lessons learnt in other spheres can provide valuable insights. It's about broadening your horizons. Asking what you can learn

The Blade of the Sands

This was a project that I had been looking forward to tackling for some time. I had picked up the Necrosphinx kit just before it was retired by Games Workshop a few months ago, and finally found the time over the last two weekends to do it some justice! I wanted to create an aged bronze and gold feel overall. So started out by using layers of inks and washes to weather the bronze and gold. Then the challenge was picking out which details to add color to, without the model starting to look to busy. I always associated rich, primary colors with Egyptian schemes, so I went for some red and bright blue detailing. Once the colors were in I went back and used some more washes to blend the color details back in and weather them a little. Since I wouldn't be using him to actually play with I decided to go to town a little, and craft a display base for him as well. I think it all came together pretty well all things considered. I was happy wit

Behold the Court of the Nurgling King

Some ideas start small. Other ideas start very small. Others start very small and end up large. This was one small idea that ended up very large. Behold the Court of the Nurgling King This was a very special project that started with a small, silly idea. It all started with this guy and an army of nurglings ... When I saw the caped Nurgling he looked all regal and confident to me. He looked in command. He looked like a King. Then I imagined what a Nurgling King might ride into battle ... I figured he might compensate.Then I just had to figure out how to make it! Then the Rotigus head from the Greater Unclean One kit was the final piece of the puzzle that launched me into this one! The conversion wasn't quite as straightforward as I hoped. I had to play with the arms quite a bit to re-use the Bell hand (also from the Greater Unclean One kit), and then modify the Battlecannon arm to allow for the 'Royal platform' Then I set about layering

The Success Anomaly

So the big news of the weekend for MMOs was that Star Wars: The Old Republic has an official release date, and will launch over the Christmas holidays this year. The game will most likely sell extremely well out of the gate, almost certainly the most successful first month sales of any MMO ever, and probably by a wide margin...it will then possibly even retain over a million subscription customers (something it should be remembered no game other than World of Warcraft has managed)...truly massive numbers...unless the game somehow collapses it is going to post seriously impressive numbers...yet...you can already read many comments across the net which indicate that there is a sizable number of people who are referring to that as a potential 'failure'. Suddenly being the second most successful MMO of all time, would not be enough for some folk to a call a game a success. For some it seems to boil down to a simple formula, where they believe the only success factor is o

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