Posts Tagged valve
Design Roundup #5
Posted by The Management in design on October 31, 2010
- Valve Publications – I’ve raved about Valve’s design tips in the past, and there’s more to be found here.
- Bow Before The Worm Slayer – Will Hindmarch’s Escapist post on how low-cost, text-based achievements in Lord of the Rings Online facilitate player communication.
- Evaluating Game Mechanics For Depth – Mike Stout’s article on gameplay depth, what it really means, and how it can be increased without relying on aesthetic tricks or worrying about redundancy.
About
Hi, my name’s Radek Koncewicz, and I'm the Creative Lead of Incubator Games, a small development studio I started with a few former coworkers.
I think a lot about videogames, and when I find the time, I post those thoughts here on this blog.
Orange Box Designer Commentary
Posted by The Management in design on February 27, 2009
Valve first tried out designer commentary with the Lost Coast standalone demo. Apparently it was such a big success that they decided to do the same for all the games in the Orange Box.
Now Valve is a group of some very, very smart people, and it shows.
Escape from City 17 at the end of Half-Life: Episode One.
Generic behind-the-scenes specials tend to tell the same old story: the development cycle was hectic, but the team eventually persevered and released a great product (even if it was a little flawed and missing some features). In between all that you might come across an interesting tid-bit or two, but don’t expect any mind blowing revelations.
The commentary on the Orange Box, though, is full of pure-gold nuggets. In fact, playing through its four commentary-enabled titles will probably teach you more about various aspects of videogame production than any game design book. If you haven’t checked it out but are in any way interested in videogame design, I urge you to do so now.
Here are just a few segments I picked out:
Read the rest of this entry »
behind the scenes, design, developer commentary, episode one, episode two, Game design, games, half-life, Lost Coast, Orange Box, portal, steam, team fortress 2, valve, Valve Corporation, Video game
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