Click Nothing

design from a long time ago

recent posts

  1. Sven's avatar
  2. Unknown's avatar

    I’m one of the author’s in the 2022 opdc (didn’t win anything, still trying to bear up under the shame…

  3. Max Clark's avatar
  4. Kfix's avatar

    Thank you for this very interesting collection, and for wrestling with the obviously mixed feelings on this anniversary. And thank…

  5. KenTWOu's avatar

    I can’t remember that moment when I realized that you simultaneously was creative director, lead level designer and script writer…

Category: Design Theory

  • Video Games Are Better

    Having read Ian Bogost’s recent piece in The Atlantic several times now, I think I’ve managed to digest what he’s saying and figure out how I feel about it. First off, I feel the piece is trying to do too much. Bogost opens by eulogizing Maxis, and celebrating the studio’s impressive contribution to our medium,…

  • IFOG Symposium

    Last week I was able to attend UCSC's Inventing the Future of games Symposium in Mountainview. Overall, I foudn the conference to be super interesting as it brought together a diverse range people who are working on the problems of dynamic narratives using a wide range of approaches. I gave a short presentation (slides and…

  • La Dissonance ludo-narrative

    (english follows) J'ai été contacté l'autre jour par quelque un en France qui a un blog sur le site GameKult. Lui a m'informer qu'il a tombé sur mon post de Bioshock et il avait aidé à articuler pour lui de quelques problemes qu'il avait avec le jeu. Il a décidé de traduire le post en…

  • Dynamics: the long and the short versions

    Last night was the opening night of the Art of Games exhibit at the EMP Museum, and along with several other great speakers from local the local industry, Valve co-worker Dave Kircher and I were there to give short talks about programming and design respectively. My talk, titled The Art of Games, Why Are We…

  • First We Take Manhattan…

    A couple weeks ago, The New Yorker ran a piece about Fumito Ueda, and his games Ico, and Shadow of the Colossus. It’s a good piece, and one that I am extremely happy to see running in such a prestigious publication with an audience broader than the audience for most writing-about-games. The piece quotes me…

  • Didacticism in Game Design

    There is a trend in game development that has been growing a head of steam over the last couple years, and I have some concerns about it. The trend is in support of the notion that game developers need to somehow demonstrate the maturity of their medium and of their own creative capabilities by making…

  • Click Nothing Tour 2009 – Part II

    In the beginning, there was nothing It's been a long time in coming, but I have finally put the finishing touches on the Click Nothing Tour 2009. It's going to be a long and complex one, but it should be fun. One talk, seven cities, ten days. The talk, as detailed in a previous post,…

  • Live and Let Die

    So, what started as an experiment by Ben over at Sometimes Life Requires Consequence is starting to pick up steam. It's been tagged a couple times now at Game Set Watch and Kieron Gillen over at Rock Paper Shotgun blasted some buckshot his way in today's Sunday Papers. Already at least a couple other players…

  • Ethical Decision Making

    Manveer over at Design Rampage threw up his Pecha Kucha style slides, notes and audio from his GLS talk about Ethical Decision Making in games. He makes more or less the same points that I made in a similar talk back in 2004, linked here as well as in the stack on the right. PK…

  • Well Played 1.0

    A few years ago, I was invited down to Carnegie Mellon by Jesse Schell to visit the Entertainment Technology Center. While there, I met Drew Davidson who is currently the Director of the ETC. This past year, Drew has been hard at work trying to trick a bunch of us slacker game developers, bloggers academics and others…