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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RPG Design: An Imperfect Union

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 19, 2014

When this article posts, I should be in the air with most of the Pacific Ocean behind me, on my way back from Japan. Didja miss me? Didja even notice I was gone? Spending a week and a half in the Land of the Rising Sun kinda made me want to play Persona 3 and […]

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Why did the Avatar of Virtue screw up everything s/he touched?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 2, 2014

I was amused by PC Gamer’s article by Richard Cobbett, “Ultima: The Legacy of the Avatar.” (Hat tip to RPGWatch for the link). He doesn’t present anything all that new, although he does drive home the idea that the Avatar’s efforts to save Britannia ultimately led to its doom. Actually, not even saving Britannia. Just […]

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RPG Pacing

Posted by Rampant Coyote on November 28, 2014

I should keep a collection of weird (but sometimes insightful) ideas that I get when I’m busy working on my game after midnight. It seems that the combo of fatigue and focus in the late hours on the nuts and bolts of RPG development cause some strange “thinky thoughts” (as my wife sometimes calls it). […]

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Creating Worlds

Posted by Rampant Coyote on November 21, 2014

Back in its heyday, Origin’s motto was, “We create worlds.” When I think about why I love games and why I love making games, that’s the key. As much as I do appreciate these “little” games with the single, focused game mechanic – as much as I used to love the arcade machines in the […]

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RPG Design: Escape the Dungeon? Is That All?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on November 18, 2014

I’m a dungeon-crawler at heart. When I think of role-playing games, my brain immediately goes to the Mines of Moria or the goblin caves under the Misty Mountains. So I’m usually trying to find my way into dungeons. But that’s me, as a gamer. A lot of dungeon-crawling RPGs have a straightforward goal: You are […]

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Dungeon Crawling So Old It’s New Again

Posted by Rampant Coyote on November 13, 2014

One concept of early dice-and-paper role-playing games (and some of the old CRPG counterparts) that has been somewhat lost in the modern era is the idea of avoiding combat encounters. Old-school D&D has a not-entirely warranted reputation for being about killing everything in sight. After all, that was how you got XP (experience points), right? […]

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RPG Design: The Role of Magic and RPG Balance

Posted by Rampant Coyote on November 12, 2014

I’ve been doing some brooding over Frayed Knights 2: The Khan of Wrath since Comic Con (more on that in a future post), and it’s brought about a few changes. There’s one point I’m not sure on yet, because changes might mess with the flavor. I don’t want to mess with the flavor. One problem […]

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RPG Design: Should We Hide the Stats?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on November 4, 2014

James Cox has an article worth reading over at Gamasutra, “There is No ‘+5 Sword’ in Lancelot.” In it, he makes the case that the time has come to hide all the numbers in CRPGs. He even refers to this as “babying systems.” Yeah, that reference honked me off a bit, but his idea isn’t new, […]

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The Challenge of Horror in Video Games

Posted by Rampant Coyote on October 6, 2014

In the Barnson household, we celebrate Halloween all month long. It’s all about scary. We value scary. My wife, who tells ghost stories professionally (yes, that is a thing), has a whole verbal essay about the value of these kinds of tales.  From the purely cautionary roles, to catharsis, to simply exploring scary situations or […]

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Cargo Cult Game Design

Posted by Rampant Coyote on September 29, 2014

While they were really only identified after World War II, Pacific “Cargo Cults” emerged when primitive people encountered what seemed like miraculous wealth arriving from American and European countries, particularly during wartime. They saw the airfields and ports with constant traffic of supplies from… well, some version of heaven, they believed. In some cases, the […]

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Is Simplicity Overrated?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on September 16, 2014

I have a quote from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry that hangs above my desk. I use it as a reminder – because I constantly need reminding. It says, “Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” I have a number of favorite quotes generally attributed to […]

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RPG Design: The Positive Potential of Potions

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 27, 2014

About ten months ago, I wrote about consumable / expendable resources in RPGs. More recently, Matt Barton penned an article about how much he wants to get rid of consumable items altogether in “Down with Pots!” Well, I’m gonna answer both him and my younger self. At least in part. Actually, I’m gonna write three answers […]

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Computer RPGs and the Game Controller

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 29, 2014

I love my keyboard and mouse for gaming. Before mice were common, I loved the keyboard. I remember playing Ultima III and IV, where there was a command for almost every key. It seems a silly idea today, but back then, it at least made the game feel like it was incredibly interactive. Look at […]

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Playing Bad Games…

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 8, 2014

Across the street… a neon sign. “All you can eat for a dollar ninety-nine. Our soul stew is the baddest in the land.” But uh, one dollar’s worth was all that I could stand. — Huey Lewis and the News, “Sometimes Bad is Bad.” It’s often easier to figure out what has been done wrong than […]

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The Game that Changed Everything

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 30, 2014

I spent a little bit of time playing Doom this weekend. Yes, twenty-year old Doom. Updated a little bit with some new technology to take advantage of modern hardware and to make it nicely mouse-playable and everything, but it was still the same game. Running in Doomsday with a fan-made high-quality texture pack. There are […]

Filed Under: Design, Retro - Comments: 10 Comments to Read



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