Some games are designed to addict players and take their money. That is their purpose in this world. If the player engages with the game repeatedly, the game verbs are declared “fun”, no matter how vapid they may be. The usual pattern is to get players emotionally invested in the game loop and then hold […]

 If you’re intentionally making dull games with variable ratio extrinsic motivators to separate people from their money, you have my pity. – Chris Hecker Designers know what they are doing. They know when they show up in the office – “My goal is to degrade the player’s quality of life”. They probably won’t think about […]

I finished Dear Esther a couple of minutes before writing this, having played straight through, and I found myself itching to talk about it. Dear Esther is the second game to come out of the venerable Indie Fund, which was reason enough for me to play it. It’s unlikely that the game could have been […]

“I love this game, even though it’s terrible.” Amanda Lange’s feelings towards Skyrim mirror my own attitude towards almost every video game I’ve played. I love video games. I’ve made them the focus of my education, my career, and my leisure time. I plan to spend the rest of my life making and playing them. […]