We’ve all heard about how video games are infiltrating everyday life. Infiltrating it to an almost annoyingly offensive level. After reading a few trade magazines with such articles, I started thinking about parts of life that already have video game style rules. Consider the deep, intricate rules that you don’t even notice anymore..for example, how to decide which way to go when you’re walking straight at someone on the sidewalk. You kind of make eye contact, you tend to indicate slightly which way you’re going, etc. The same set of inherent rules are common in most of the things we do in everyday life; who goes first at an intersection, whether you should fold clothes one by one, or sort first then fold, etc. That is what makes video game design a pretty natural thing to understand. The best designs are made of sets of rules. So after years of thinking that way, I came up with a set of rules to one thing that we all encounter, at least those of us who drive to get groceries: Where to park in a grocery store parking lot to avoid door dents. But mostly, I’m writing this to show how something that seems like common sense actually has some pretty specific rules. As video game designers, this is how we approach things like character AI behavior. We make rules out of systems that seem totally organic. And I guess, as you can see below, we tend to do this all the time, even with the most mundane things. So here we go, the rules to parking at the grocery store, in order to avoid dents! I’m a VIP Rule If you have a nice car, never ever park across two spots. This one sounds like...

This here is gonna be one of my most spontaneous blog articles. I’ve been thinking about doing a how-to of games, but didn’t know where to start. Then today I got inspired by a lot of facebook traffic about marketing-driven games vs indie games and the creative process. This traffic was all spurned by a really well written article by Josh here that I felt went great as a companion to my first article in the series “Why you should love/hate Apple.” The indirect benefits/drawbacks of the Apple model had me thinking that a great place to start is the “common misconceptions” of what happens when you make a game. Stuff that’s not obvious from the outside. A lot of time it is also the dirty work. The un-fun stuff. So You’re Gonna Make a WHOLE game? You film dudes are gonna here something familiar. “Everyone’s a director.”  That’s the film saying, right?  Well in games, everyone is a designer. Here are all the people who think they are better designers than the best designers: Programmers Pimple faced 17 year olds That kid fresh out of school in his first design job The dude bagging groceries at the store Dogs Cats Single-Celled Organisms Aliens that are spying on us and pirating our games from another galaxy So that’s everyone right?  If you’re gonna be a designer, you have to really learn to accept that. The misconception is that designers make game ideas, characters and stories. Well some of that is true. We do that stuff. The misconception is that outsiders, even people in the game industry who haven’t designed an entire game, think that’s all we do. If that were the case, then yes, it would be all kitties and happiness and GREAT GAME...