Posts Tagged Tom Smith

Whenever I sit down to write an article about some aspect of game design, I always do a bit of research first. Often I run into works that already cover the topic, usually more extensively than I would have, so I scrap it. That doesn’t make these existing pieces any less valid, though, so I’ve decided to periodically highlight them.

Also, there’s a lot of information out there that isn’t specifically aimed at videogame design: neuroscience, prose, psychology, etc. Articles that discuss these topics can still be quite useful for a designer, so I’ll try to include them as well.

• An Easy Way to Increase Creativity – The concept of creativity is somewhat ethereal, but this Scientific American article goes over some concrete techniques for “thinking outside the box.”
• Yomi Layer 3: Knowing the Mind of the Opponent – David Sirlin’s excellent piece on predicting and conditioning one’s foe in competitive gaming.
• Intelligent Brawling – Tom Smith’s Gamasutra post on the more subtle mechanics of 3D brawlers and how they influenced the production of Nihilistic’s/THQ’s Conan.