Work

Waking the Ghost

For 30 years, Game Development has contained a conflict between the emergence of narrative design and the game designers who define much of what a game will be. For years, game design and technology have ruled game development, and justifiably so.

But many prominent members of the game development community have begun to wonder aloud if perhaps this status quo should change. That perhaps for gaming to reach its potential, a renewed focus on narrative design should be made. This paper will examine the history of game narrative development, and how a few psychological theories may help to progress narrative design to reach gaming’s potential.

ThesisView project →

Game Design and Flow: How to Design Games to Better Maintain a Flow Experience.

Since 1990, when Mihaly Csikszentmihaly released his book explaining his theory of Flow. Games designers have been working to understand how it applies to the games they make. Now, in 2015, it is well understood what conditions must exist for flow to be achievable.

However, what isn’t as easily understood, is how can we better design games to maintain that state of flow once it has been achieved? This essay will analyse 3 games, Diablo 3, Skyrim, and Ori and the Blind Forest. To try and get an understanding of how the developers of those games were able to achieve flow, and how they were able to maintain it for the betterment of the players’ experience.

EssayView project →

Tropes in Modern RPG’s and how they may be doing more harm than good.

With the possible exception of First Person Shooters, no other genre of video games has had such a big impact on the industry as has Role Playing Games (RPG). Dungeons and Dragons is perhaps the most well-known table top RPG in the world, and most video game RPG’s owe their existence in some way to this early table top game.

It wasn’t long before RPG’s began to be developed for early PC’s, with games like Rogue, while simple given the technology available in the early 80’s, created sub genres that still exist today for RPG’s to be categorised as. These games also created a set of standards by which all RPG’s have since included and indeed been measured, where the absence of these rules is conspicuous and can supposedly detract from the experience of playing an RPG. Giving the player the option to select a character’s gender, race, and class (or subclass) have evolved into the basic foundation of any RPG. And while it’s hard to imagine an RPG without the ability to select from some, or all, of these options. There are more modern mechanics in RPG’s today, that have developed into commonly recurring themes, or tropes, for many RPG’s that are perhaps doing more damage than they are good.

EssayView project →

Attack of the Killer Space Crabs (Blasto)

Lead Game Design

A small game concept highlighting the role analystics could play on game design. Player decision are recorded and the game changes to add or remove obstacles dynamically as the player interacts with it.

Design DocumentView project →

Playtime (Project: Scared)

Game Director

Horror based 2.5D roguelike game featuring a group of high school students exploring an abandonded mansion. You play as a Ghost, who must haunt these students to an untimely end...or not.

Design DocumentView project →