If you haven’t read Clive Thompsons article on Halo 3 in Wired, what are you waiting for? Halo 3: How Microsoft Labs Invented a New Science of Play<\/p>\n
It’s an amazing article about designing games and play testing, and has a great quote on what it’s like to design a game compared to making a movie:<\/p>\n
“The ideal in gameplay, the goal every developer aims for, is an experience that keeps players in a “flow” state \u2014 constantly surfing the edges of their abilities without bogging down. Modern videogames are often compared to Hollywood movies, but the comparison, many Bungie designers will tell you, is inaccurate. A movie is static. “You sit there and absorb it all in a single two-hour shot, and it’s perfectly linear,” says Frank O’Connor, one of the writers tasked with scripting the story line in Halo 3.<\/p>\n
Creating a game, in contrast, is like a combination of architecture \u2014 constructing environments that influence the behavior of people inside them \u2014 and designing a new sport. Gamemakers have to devise a system of rules and equipment that gives players a few basic goals and then allows them to find their own ways of achieving those goals. The flow comes from constantly discovering innovative ways to solve these open-ended problems.”<\/p>\n
Hopefully this marks my return to the blog.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If you haven’t read Clive Thompsons article on Halo 3 in Wired, what are you waiting for? Halo 3: How Microsoft Labs Invented a New<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gamedesignadvance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gamedesignadvance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gamedesignadvance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gamedesignadvance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gamedesignadvance.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gamedesignadvance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gamedesignadvance.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gamedesignadvance.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gamedesignadvance.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}