Archive for April 6th, 2012

Jon Shafer, currently at Stardock and formerly of Firaxis, has a great article on his blog about why limits are good things. It also explains briefly why boats (pictured) are awesome.

Game design is the art of providing enjoyable frustration (credit to Andrew Meyer for that phrase) and the frustration part is something that often has to be tiptoed around or hidden from players. Most players think they’re just in this for the power fantasy of it all. Shafer gives a few examples of how limitations and scarcity create value. Read the article here.

Comments

If I’ve done my job correctly as a Xenoblade Evangelist and the proprietor of xenoblade.quartertothree.com, you should be sitting down to play Xenoblade Chronicles sometime soon. If so, I’m a bit envious. You can only discover how cool this game is for the first time once. Enjoy.

To help you enjoy it more, following are a few tips. Spoiler free, of course.

After the jump, the thing I wish I’d known when I started playing Continue reading →

Comments