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Sonic the Hedgehog's origin story, according to the devs who made him
At GDC today original Sonic devs Naoto Oshima and Hirokazu Yasuhara talked about how they designed the game's iconic main character and its many twisting, turning levels.
March 21, 2018
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How Platinum designed and tuned Nier: Automata to 'feel' good
Game director Yoko Taro talks about how the game's multi-layered narrative was designed, while game designer Takahisa Taura digs into the nuts and bolts of how it was tuned to 'feel' good.
March 21, 2018
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Sex as a narrative tool: The dos and don'ts of writing sex scenes in games
As Michelle Clough explained during her talk “Eros in Play: Writing Sex Scenes in Games,” sex can be a useful tool for writers and narrative designers looking to flesh out their characters and worlds.
March 21, 2018
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Atari reveals its nostalgic 'Ataribox' game console as the Atari VCS
Atari’s shadow-shrouded return to the hardware business has been detailed this week at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, CA.
March 20, 2018
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Military-themed video games can promote a damaging vision of real war
“We need less killing and more war,” argued writer and veteran Andrew Barron. “Combat is dangerous and game mechanics should reflect this.”
March 20, 2018
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Gorogoa: how the hit indie game derived from a failed comic book
"I came to realize that composing the page was more interesting to me that sequential storytelling," shared Gorogoa dev Jason Roberts "I had to do something with it, even if it wasn't going to be a comic."
March 20, 2018
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Writing comedic games the West of Loathing way
“Taking about comedy is one of the least funny things,” said West of Loathing game dev Zach Johnson as he opened his talk at GDC 2018 today about the art of writing good comedy games.
March 20, 2018
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Darkest Dungeon devs share golden rules for good creative partnerships
“Having two bosses...it’s not streamlined,” said Red Hook's Tyler Sigman at GDC today. “But we truly believe the game would not have been successful without that messy, imperfect structure.”
March 20, 2018
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The player-directed level design of Tacoma
Fullbright's Steve Gaynor and Nina Freeman discuss the level design of Tacoma and how different facets of design depended on each other during development.
March 20, 2018
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In order to create empathy in players, writers need to get personal
iThrive Games' senior creative director Heidi McDonald opened her talk at GDC this afternoon on the narrative burden that writers carry when creating empathy.
March 19, 2018
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A Mortician's Tale deconstructs how death should be designed
Laundry Bear Games' Gabby DaRienzo discusses how A Mortician's Tale innovates on death mechanics, and shares strategies on how game developers can best explore death in their own games.
March 19, 2018
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Microsoft launches DirectX Raytracing to streamline real-time rendering
Microsoft has introduced four new concepts to the DirectX 12 API that aim to give developers entirely new rendering options and bridge the gap between commonly used rasterization techniques.
March 19, 2018