Game Design

Where to start working on the combat system, as well as what formulas to use, — said Konstantin Sakhnov, founder of the indie studio Vengeance Games and author of the course "Fundamentals of game Design".

Pete Hines, the head of the company's publishing division, announced his departure from Bethesda just yesterday. Shortly after, it became known that Bethesda's design director William Shen had also left.

The network noticed that Anders Howard, the chief monetization designer, left Naughty Dog. He was engaged in a multiplayer game in the world of The Last of Us.

The Russian retail received “Introduction to the design of gaming systems. A step—by-step guide to creating balanced games,” Bombora Publishing house reports. This is a book about development for beginners (it contains the very basics of work). We share an excerpt.

Sergey Martinkevich, Publishing Lead at Azur Games, told about successful game design solutions in the idle arcade My Mini Mart, which collected more than 70 million downloads last year.

Experienced game designer David Ellis is another developer to leave 343 Industries after working on the Halo franchise for more than a decade. This comes a few months after the studio’s restructuring and the departure of other veteran employees.

343 Industries has one less employee. David Ellis, who held the position of senior game designer of Halo Infinite, announced his departure from the studio.

Game designer Eric Covington believes that he was unfairly fired from Blizzard. He claims that the company did this after noticing the lines he wrote for the Greedy Goblin character from World of Warcraft, ridiculing the behavior of greedy corporations.

While Mundfish is working on the first DLC for Atomic Heart, we have reached out to the studio’s game design team to chat about some of the title’s elements and mechanics. In an interview with Game World Observer, the devs opened up about making the combat system and bosses, and also discussed some issues related to the open world.

In the USA, a lawsuit was filed against Nintendo. The company was accused of unfair and immoral use of gacha mechanics in the mobile game Mario Kart Tour.

While Mundfish is preparing to release the first story DLC for Atomic Heart, we talked to the studio about the design of the game and its individual elements. In an interview with App2Top, the developers talked about creating a combat system, gloves and bosses, and also discussed controversial issues related to the open world.

Jason Wilson (aka Jay Gunn), a prominent game developer of the 90s, has put his art and design archive for sale. However, the reasons for this decision are rather unfortunate, as he needs money to pay bills while looking for a job.

Redfall didn’t look impressive during its marketing campaign, but it was hard to imagine that the game would turn out to be so fundamentally flawed. Let’s dive deep into its systems and compare them to some of the core pillars of Arkane’s game design.

China’s NetEase has announced the launch of another foreign studio — anchorPoint Studios. Her team includes developers Ghost of Tsushima, Red Dead Redemption 2, Control and The Division.

There is a special program in Argentina that teaches prisoners different game development skills. Some of them have already made simple HTML5 titles.

Australian MPs continue to speak out against gambling video games. This time they suggested assigning a rating of 15+ to games that have paid loot boxes, and a rating of 18+ to all other games with gambling mechanics.

The head of monetization at Belka Games, Evgeny Gilmanov, opens a series of materials about the principles that guide the company in developing and implementing a monetization strategy.

Today, March 3, the global launch of Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty took place. The game was warmly received by critics, but PC users were very dissatisfied with it. We tell you how organically the latest Team Ninja game looks in the Koei Tecmo portfolio and how much, according to the developers, it has gone away from the Nioh dilogy.

There's plenty of interesting stuff in the documents released by the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) about its investigation into Microsoft's attempt to acquire Activision Blizzard, but the titbit that has perhaps attracted most attention is Microsoft's admission that a game appearing on Game Pass negatively affects its sales for at least a year. That's relevant to the investigations underway at the CMA and elsewhere because understanding Game Pass and how it is reshaping the industry's commercial landscape is crucial to understanding the actual impact of this $70 billion proposed deal. Read more

A group of former Respawn Entertainment devs has created a new remote studio, Wildlight Entertainment. The studio was co-founded by CEO Dusty Welch (formerly COO and GM of Apex Legends) and design director Jason McCord (previously design director on Apex).Former Respawn game director Chad Grenier is also part of the team, as studio head and game director. They are also joined by Mohammad Alavi, previously creative director at Respawn, who said on Linkedin that he's been at the studio for the past 13 months. Read more

Morality is a great tool for game designers that adds depth and complexity to player decisions. So how do we transform morality into game mechanics? Let’s take a look at a few games that have done this well.

Having found success in the 90s, John Carmack helped many people, including game designer American McGee. While most of them chose to forget about the money, the Alice creator eventually managed to pay off his debt.

Garth DeAngelis has stepped down from his role as a senior franchise producer at Firaxis. He spent 14 years at the company working on the XCOM series and Marvel’s Midnight Suns.

Blizzard Proletariat leadership has decided not to voluntarily recognize a workers’ union. Instead, they requested an anonymous vote as part of the election process through the National Labor Rleations Board (NLRB).

Maverick Games is a new independent studio founded by several Playground Games veterans. Former Forza Horizon developers are working on an announced AAA game for consoles and PC.

WN Belgrade’23, the upcoming business conference for developers and other games industry professionals, has been announced. Let’s take a look at the first details about the two-day event, which will feature an expo zone and lectures from various experts.

We continue to summarize the results of last year. This time we are publishing an interview with Pavel Ignatov, CEO at Balance, a company specializing in gaming LiveOps.

Jonathan Blow, renowed indie game developer and creator of Braid, has shared his thoughts on Elden Ring. While praising the game’s scale, he claimed that it has no design per se.

The other day, a discussion broke out on Twitter about not the best quality of modern AAA games. Some of the participants were not against making an exception for the Elden Ring, calling its design “passable”, but not Jonathan Blow. According to the creator of The Witness, there is no design as such in this game.

We have seen a number of new studios started by ex-Blizzard devs over the past couple of years. Here is what some of them say about building their own businesses and making new games outside of one of the inudstry’s most prominent AAA companies.

Blizzard Proletariat, known for its multiplayer action game Spellbreak, has decided to follow in the footsteps of two other Activision Blizzard teams. A group of workers announced a new union to seek fair compensation and other benefits.

Scott Thunelius, programmer and 3D artist known for his work on Subnautica, has shared with us the key principles behind creating retro-style graphics. As an example, he used Warpips, a tug-of-war strategy game he made with his friends in the spare time.

Tomb Raider has cemented itself as one of the best-selling video game franchises in history. The total sales of all titles in the series about Lara Croft’s adventures are now approaching the 100 million mark.

Havok Physics for Unity has now officially become supported for production. Developers will be able to use the physics engine for free and implement its features in their games.

After more than a decade at Riot Games, Joseph Ziegler has announced his decision to leave the company. He will now be the game director at Destiny developer Bungie.

Ryan Smith, tech art director of R&D at Gearbox, has opened up about how the studio is already using AI in its work. He encouraged other artists to learn these tools, because they can help in solving routine tasks.

Why do players consider some events and details in the game more significant than others? This is directly related to the so-called narrative weight. Andrei Medvedev, game designer at Friday’s Games, breaks down what this term means and why it is critical for game designers to be able to adjust the importance of certain elements.

Chris Metzen has returned to Blizzard Entertainment six years after announcing his departure. He will again be working on the Warcraft franchise, the universe he has been involved in since its inception.

ArtStation has finally responded to the backlash from artists calling on the platform to ban AI-generated art. The company, however, tried to find a compromise, which further angered many professionals.

The surge in popularity of ChatGPT, Midjourney, and other tools has people thinking that AI will soon replace artists and will help even smaller teams create games on the scale of Cyberpunk 2077 or RDR 2. However, many devs remain skeptical.

The battle over Disco Elysium continues. The game’s lead game designer Robert Kurvitz has now confirmed that he is still seeking legal options against ZA/UM’s new majority shareholder, who ousted him from the studio.

GameMaker has introduced a new free education version of its engine. It allows schools to teach students game design and the basics of programming, using special materials and resources.

WN Dev Day Canada’22 took place on December 6, bringing together hundreds of game creators. Here are the results of the online event and the winners of a special contest for local developers.

Greek studio beyondthosehills has shared with us some tips for creating abstract art style (and pitfalls to avoid). Here are some tips based on their experience with their minimalist puzzle game reky.

Supercell has formed two new development teams in the US. They will be led by several industry veterans who have worked at companies like Riot Games, Blizzard, and Valve.

How to record all game content in the format that the engine will accept, — said Konstantin Sakhnov, founder of the Vengeance Games studio and scientific director of the Game Project Management program at the HSE.

The Netherlands-based studio Grumpy Owl Games has shared with us some tips for designing a turn-based combat system. They also used their own tactical RPG Untamed Tactics as an example.

Tools for AI-generated assets are constantly evolving. Scenario co-founder Emmanuel de Maistre has shown what game developers can achieve by fine-tuning Stable Diffusion.

A group of UK researchers have conducted a study of games with loot boxes and other chance-based rewards. They identified the harm these mechanics cause to children and shared their recommendations for solving this problem.

Supercell-backed studio Space Ape has decided to end development of Boom Beach: Frontlines. The game struggled to retain an audience and failed to reach the team’s expectations.