Geir Ove Alnes

PROTIP: pop a credits list at the start of whatever design doc/ database setup you've got going on, and add people who help you out as you go. It makes things a LOT easier at the end, especially if those names rack up over a long period of time.

1am onwards are the golden hours of creativity and feature creep.

1am onwards are the golden hours of creativity and feature creep.

the secret to game design is that as much as players may claim otherwise they all love choosing one out of three things

Some solve problems I never knew I had, or maybe didn't actually have until I came up with ways to solve them 🤔 I am very aware of all of these facts, but still I toil endlessly into the night. Ludo, ergo sum... 🧵3/3

And because these have no deadlines, there's always more refactoring to be done, more polish to apply, more features to creep! For some of these projects I've written patch notes that span years of development time, yet those notes have never been seen by any eyes except mine. 🧵2/3

I am a perpetual side-project tinkerer, by which I mean I always have a bunch of those cooking on the side, with no clear end-goals in mind. 🧵1/3

C64 Winter Games Figure Skating - 6.0 - YouTube video by YouRolandTube

The perfect figure skating game was already made 40 years ago :P

youtu.be/Y_MXzzS7xI8?...

If you prefer your game design thoughts podcasts via Spotify, we're also there! Listen and learn at your leisure: open.spotify.com/show/5ewr7SE...

Post an image you can hear

Of the six mobile games I worked on over five years in my previous job, two never made it past limited releases in test-markets, one was cancelled because of a studio pivot, two were released on Apple Arcade, and one was released as a browser game. None of them are playable today... RIP 💀

Something which is pretty core to the way I think about game design is what I call "Considerations."

In other words, what is the player thinking about at any given time. What information are they given, how do they parse that information, and what do they do with it.

does anyone have any game design articles/videos/talks about non-addictive game design principles?

lots of "the perfect feedback loop!" and "how to make your game extra addictive!" videos out there, so was just wondering if someone's done the opposite in terms of design philosophies.

I started sweating at reading this, but then realized I'm using IMAP for the third party accounts. Only POP3 support is dropping, apparently. For now.

YELLING

Screenshot of the five 2025 Polaris reports, too small to comfortably read, with image previews of 2 flow charts, a sticky note collection, a game screenshot with text interface, and a geological pattern.

It's the Polaris 2025 reports! They've come! They're here! It's a bumper crop of five, count'em FIVE papers! We got comedy, we got death, we got cringe, we got trust... something for the whole team.

Piping hot game design knowledge and insight await:
polarisgamedesign.com/reports/

Is it a sequel to Betrayal at Krondor and prequel to Return to Krondor, based on the second book (Krondor: The Assassins) of The Riftwar Legacy trilogy, to complete the game trilogy using an updated version of the flight sim engine used for the second (soon? to be third) game in the series?

I'm sorry for the language, but... What the fuck, Google? They just ripped out the scrollable tab bar feature in Chrome, "just because". I'm doomed! Tab search is NOT a viable replacement for this. GGGGrrraaahhhh! 🤬 Maybe this is the drop that finally pushes me over to Vivaldi.

On the other hand, you get to experience every version of your dream game from start of development until finish, and see it grow and evolve from idea into reality in a way that regular players never will.

Looks like an awesome resource for your students!

Absolutely! 👍🏻 It can also be very eye-opening (and humbling, even) to see up close how players break your assumption on what is "intuitive" and "obvious", and then be able to ask them specific follow-up questions while it's still fresh in mind.

Harmless discourse: Even with dedicated community teams, I still like to dive into raw player feedback myself, especially for features I own. Nuances that I find helpful as a game designer are sometimes lost in translation/summaries or overlooked in the grand scheme of things.

Welp

You had me in the first half, not gonna lie, as I don't like horus of horus of grinding myself either. Take my like!

If you make changes to standards (like control schemes within specific genres) just to stand out, be prepared for backlash from players who go "why doesn't this work like game X that I'm already familiar with? No other game expects me to hold the controller sideways or upside down".

designeritis - the condition in which, after learning or practicing the craft of game design, your intrinsic joy of playing games "for fun" is damaged, lower, or difficult to sustain.

sound familiar?

Pros and cons. I now feel annoyed at some of the less ideal design choices that I identify in a given game, but also get a deeper appreciation for some of the more elegant solutions. On the other hand, I HAVE been cursed with the inability to look past poor jumping animations 😅 oh the horror

Ugh, not awake. Pixel 9 Pro XL.

Pixel 8 Pro. It's becoming such a regular occurrence that it's more surprising when it doesn't happen than when it does.

Getting so, so tired of randomly getting logged out of Bluesky on my phone when my connection switches between WiFi and 5G, or 5G and lesser Gs, for instance when I leave home to go to work. Or come back home. Takes more and more mental effort to log back in every time it happens. Sigh...