Ryan Green is making a game that is as broken—as confounding, unresolved, and tragically beautiful—as the world itself.
How ‘Baldur’s Gate’ Saved the Computer RPG
The genre-stretching game broke new narrative, technical, and gameplay ground and established the identity of one of the past two decades’ most storied video game studios
Building games that can be understood at a glance
Building games that can be understood at a glance - Zach Gage, GDC 2018
Building games that can be understood at a glance
Building games that can be understood at a glance - Zach Gage, GDC 2018
The Legacy of No Man’s Sky in Game Design
Two years ago, No Man’s Sky, a sci-fi space exploration game boasting powerful procedural generation, released to a flurry of negative…
» The Game of Everything, Part 2: Playing Civilization The Digital Antiquarian
As a game designer, you have ultimate power. And with this ultimate power comes very little responsibility.
Context Sensitivity
Pluralistic: The games industry’s self-induced traumatic brain injury (17 Nov 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
Words have power. In 1991, I read "The Wonderful Power of Storytelling," the transcript of Bruce Sterling's keynote speech for that year's Game Developers Conference in San Jose, CA, and within a year, I'd dropped out of university to become a programmer:
The NOexistenceN of you AND me
Use "game" as a medium to showcase the world of "you/girl". Explore the truth of "you/girl/world" through the form of a "visual novel".
» Half-Life The Digital Antiquarian
Around twenty years ago, people would have laughed if you told them that videogames would end up at the Smithsonian, but the Half-Life team really did want to make games that were more than just throwaway toys. The rule against cinematics — which made our jobs much harder and also ended up leaving a lot of my favorite work out of the game — was a kind of ideological stake in the ground: we really did want the game and the story to be the same thing. It was far from flawless, but it was really trying to push the boundaries of a young medium.
GameSpot's SIMply Divine: The Story of Maxis Software
GameSpot action adventure driving puzzle role-playing simulation sports strategy hardware
A heartbreaking work of staggering genius
A book that redefines both family and narrative for the…
Kittens Game - a Dark Souls of incremental gaming
Death of the Author: An Alan Wake Series Retrospective
Game Dev Tree | The Paper Pilot
The Paper Pilot's digital garden of thoughts on philosophy, politics, and sociology