Tag Archives: emergent gameplay

Nov
27
2009

Awakened in Africa

I awake and find myself in an abandoned armory. All I can hear is the sound of a fly buzzing through the air. Occasionally, some other unidentifiable animals create a serene soundscape of yelps and caws in the background. Despite the complete lack of windows or portholes in the weapon dealer’s hut, I get the [...]

By Trent Polack | Posted in Game Design, Gaming | Also tagged , , , , , | View Comments
Sep
30
2009

The Loneliest Space Marine

Halo 3: ODST is about a group of Orbital Drop Shock Troopers that drop into allied territory to fend off aggressive, hostile forces and complete some secret mission under the veil of a general liberation of the city of New Mombasa. Due to a series of unfortunate circumstances, all of the soldiers get off course [...]

By Trent Polack | Posted in General | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | View Comments
Jul
05
2009

Revisiting Halo 3

Bungie’s original Halo, released for the Xbox in 2001, was a landmark console game. Aside from giving Microsoft’s freshman entry into the console arena a system seller and a uniquely Xbox cultural character, Halo was the best first-person shooter to be released on a console since the days of Goldeneye and Perfect Dark. It had [...]

By Trent Polack | Posted in Game Design, Gaming, level design | Also tagged , , , , , , | View Comments
May
01
2009

Economy of Fun Gets Read to You

IndustryBroadcast.com is a site spearheaded by Ryan Wiancko with the goal of putting a number of articles written by game industry professionals and contributors into an audible form. It’s an interesting idea and one that appears to be getting a bit of attention as the site gets more and more content put into audio.
Anyway, [...]

By Trent Polack | Posted in General | Also tagged , | View Comments
Mar
21
2009

An Economy of Fun

The average video game, as it is thought of by both mainstream culture and even most gamers, is a heavily-authored gameplay experience with a discrete beginning, end, and climaxes strewn haphazardly about. At this point in the life of the video game, gamers are essentially conditioned to think of games as self-explanatory adventures with a [...]

By Trent Polack | Posted in General | Also tagged , , , , | View Comments