How random encounter system can be designed in a modern and enjoyable way in current RPGs — If the random encounter system disappears from the turn-based RPG industry, what would that hurt us? What gaming experiences could not be captured by a Visual Encounter System? A “video game Encounter System” is an algorithmic system that allows a player to meet playable and non-playable characters to interact with…

Sometimes a video game is like a novel, freely conceived and planned by a single author, a door to his personal and imaginary home — If a book writer can have his personality found in a maze of words, a creative director of a video game doesn’t even have a place to hide it in his work. The term ‘auteur’ (fr., “author”) gained a stricter meaning in the late 1950s, initially in the field of…

How to make the fictional worlds of video games more immersive and convincing — If video games have the power to make players feel like they’re inside a fictional story, then video games also have the power to make stories feel real. In his Lectures on Aesthetics, Hegel called Aristotle an “art-doctor” as a way of criticizing the way he tried to “cure” and…

How to provide unique experiences in video games with a story told by contradictory perspectives of different characters — If narrative designers want to tell a story about a particular event through different character perspectives, each with a different version of the facts, and none of them is necessarily the “correct version”, how could video game media be used to convey this experience?

How to make more with less in video games through minimalist and coherentist design — If a video game is reduced to its essence, what would be left? Just its abstract concept? Just the basic mechanics that define its genre? If either of those alternatives is the answer, then that video game is empty or generic. …

Game design concepts for creating different combat systems in RPGs — If role-playing games immerse players in amazing imaginary worlds behind puppets, maps, and simple 2D or 3D graphics, then why can’t they also have turn-based combat masquerading as real-time battles? In fact, many RPGs can do this. …

The history of RPGs and their ways of storytelling — If we needed to divide RPGs into two broad categories, those would be Western and Eastern RPGs (or CRPGs and JRPGs), but not because they’re made in different corners of the planet, but because they correspond to two different game design traditions that value different things in tabletop RPGs. In The Beginning The…

How the development of text in video games through the ‘90s brought us closer to their worlds and characters — If appearance and actions show us what characters are, their words and thoughts reveal their soul. A mute and thoughtless character may be beautiful, profound, expressive, and efficient, but their desires and motivations will always be opaque to us. …

Why some titles can be considered great and not be fun — If we can read James Joyce’s Ulysses or watch Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker, media that isn’t particularly enjoyable, but interesting, creative, profound, powerful, and, above all, good, why can’t we view video games the same way? It is easy to see that if there is something that video games have provided…