Game Dev Quote of the Week: Story vs. Gameplay Edition

Posted by Rampant Coyote on May 8, 2015

Story vs. Gameplay – the never-ending debate. This interview with Brenda Romero circa 1998 (with a different surname) regarding the “balance” in RPGs… specifically, at the time, Wizardry 8… reveals an interesting approach that probably makes more sense in hindsight: “This is weird because I’ve never really thought of it that way. With Wizardry, it’s […]

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Lessons learned from 22 years of making indie RPGs

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 19, 2015

Jeff Vogel is something of a personal hero of mine. Nope, I’ve never met him (just know a lot of people who have), though we’ve exchanged a couple of emails and forum posts over the years. I can’t even say I’m a giant fan of his games, although they are quite good. But the guy […]

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Game Dev Quote of the Week – Spit-and-Polish Edition

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 26, 2014

This week’s quote comes from an older post at Gamasutra – “The Art of Polish: Developers Speak.” There’s plenty of good advice there. Including this: “Polish is often adding things nobody will ever notice, comment on, or appreciate, but will notice, comment on and appreciate when they aren’t there.” – Frank Kowalkowski (of Interplay, Obsidian, […]

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Game Dev Quote of the Week: Gygax vs. Meier Edition

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 5, 2014

From the world of both dice & paper gaming and computer gaming: “Designing games for Gary Gygax was certainly very inspiring, but I’d have to say that working with Sid Meier at MicroProse was even more influential. Gary taught me how to make complicated games; Sid taught me how to make simple ones.”  — Lawrence […]

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Game Dev Quote of the Week: Small Company, Big Ideas Edition

Posted by Rampant Coyote on November 14, 2014

“Try to be unique. The current main focus for indie developers seems to be to make concentrated experiences with a  challenging core gameplay, and staying away from that might be a good start in the drive to get notice. Keep it small and focused, not only in terms off the project, but also in terms […]

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Game Dev Quote of the Week: Divinely Inspired Marketing Edition

Posted by Rampant Coyote on September 26, 2014

As I’ve become a little bit of a Larian fanboy, I found myself looking up more information on the Divinity series. It was years before I tried the original game. Try as I might, the name “Divine Divinity” sounded absolutely ridiculous, and in a totally lame display of judging a book by its cover, I […]

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Game Dev Quote(s) of the Week: So Much For Common Wisdom Edition

Posted by Rampant Coyote on September 12, 2014

For today, here’s a super-fresh quote from Swen Vincke or Larian Studios, which strikes near and dear to my heart. After hitting a home run, selling more than a half-million units, paying all the debts and investors and being able to fund the next game with the proceeds, Vincke snarks: “So much for turn-based fantasy […]

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Game Dev Quote of the Week: Little Pieces of Deviation Edition

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 8, 2014

“Breaking your game down into small pieces forces you to analyze and evaluate your ideas on a deeper level. This is essential because you always want to be open to changes, you never want to set yourself into a path that you feel you can in no way deviate from. Deviation from the plan can […]

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Game Dev Quote of the Week – Getting it Done

Posted by Rampant Coyote on April 10, 2014

Designer / Developer Chris DeLeon , speaking on the matters of … uh, how to finish your game: “It’s common now to see developers finish game jam games more ready for public release than their long-term projects. The two main factors that seem to contribute are having a smaller scope and an unmoving deadline. The […]

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Game Dev Quote of the Week: A Bird In the Hand Edition

Posted by Rampant Coyote on April 4, 2014

Christer Kaitila, noted game-jammer and the creator of the One Game a Month initiative, wrote an article at the beginning of the year about how to succeed at making one game a month. It was really tough to pull out a single quote out of a fantastic advice-packed article, but here’s one: “Perfection is, by […]

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Game Dev Quote of the Week: Interesting Decisions

Posted by Rampant Coyote on March 14, 2014

This game design quote comes from Bruce Shelly, a designer of Civilization, Railroad Tycoon, and Age of Empires fame, from the way-back machine of 2001… and, as it is the season, it’s from GDC. “Presenting the player with interesting and well-paced decisions is the rocket science of game design. Players have fun when they are […]

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Game Dev Quote of the Week: Swen Vincke on Pigeonholing Games

Posted by Rampant Coyote on March 7, 2014

While I am going to provide a (sizable) excerpt here, this is really, really a case where I’d want to say, “Read the whole thing” – Swen Vincke: “Educating Players.” The problem here is that previewers and players will make assumptions about how a game is played based upon how it looks. They will absolutely […]

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Game Dev Quote of the Week: Gratitude for Crappy Games Edition

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 14, 2014

The following comes from the extremely awesome and talented (and quotable) Jeff Minter, creator of many, many games including Gridrunner, Tempest 2000, and Space Giraffe (shown below). It was printed in “Halcyon Days” (a source which I just discovered and will no doubt be drawing several quotes from in the future): “Basically I was motivated […]

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Game Dev Quote of the Week: Playing For Quarters Edition

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 7, 2014

I love digging out the old quotes about video games from the 80s and 90s. So much has changed, and so much seems quaint in retrospect, but the fundamental truths are usually still there once you strip out the technology and assumptions of the era. This one comes from the 1996 Computer Game Developers’ Conference […]

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Game Dev Quote of the Week: RPG Commerce Edition

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 31, 2014

This week’s quote comes from Ernest Adam’s 2013 “Bad Game Designer, No Twinkie” column: “The constant buying and selling in CRPGs harms their heroic quest feel, so the least you can do is make this more efficient so that the player doesn’t have to waste a lot of time on it. It’s not fun to […]

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Game Dev Quote of the Week: The Not-So-Secret Formula For Success Edition

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 23, 2014

From a bunch of excellent advice from the article, “What Triple-A Developers Could Learn From Indies“: “With such a great track record of repeated successful titles, the most common question that I get is ‘What is your formula?’ Really it is very simple. Pick a target market that you know well. Understand what they are […]

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