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Big Game Theory!: November 2014

http://www.big-game-theory.com/2014_11_01_archive.html

Musings on games, design, and the theory of everything. November 25, 2014. The Player’s Point of View: Theme and Framing the Experience. Now rewind back two years (give or take) when I was working more actively on the Game Genome Project. If you need a refresher, the Game Genome Project is a BGG guild comprised of various individuals looking to develop a nomenclature and/or classification scheme for boardgames. The basic premise of the project is this:. The Game Genome Project. November 17, 2014. About i...

big-game-theory.com

Big Game Theory!: July 2014

http://www.big-game-theory.com/2014_07_01_archive.html

Musings on games, design, and the theory of everything. July 15, 2014. Towards a Grand Unified Theory of Boardgamery. There has been an interesting series of articles on the League of Game Makers about the whole mechanics-first or theme-first approach to designing games ( Part 1. Part 3 of the series, Theme vs. Mechanics: The False Dichotomy. July 8, 2014. Onward to the eye-candy! July 7, 2014. Designer Diary: Hegemonic, or Reimagining the 4X/Sci-Fi Empire Genre from Sketchbook to Publication. Inspired i...

big-game-theory.com

Big Game Theory!: May 2014

http://www.big-game-theory.com/2014_05_01_archive.html

Musings on games, design, and the theory of everything. May 19, 2014. The Wondrous Ages I Have Known. A PC 4X game I am enjoying more and more by leaps and bounds. Orc Sorcerer owns you! The Wondrous Ages I Have Known. Rock, Paper, Shotgun. These Halls I Walked: An Homage to Doom and Quake. Over the past few weeks I’ve been going through various computer archives and backing up old decaying data onto a shiney new 2TB drive. Towards a Grand Unified Theory of Boardgamery.

big-game-theory.com

Big Game Theory!: Links

http://www.big-game-theory.com/p/links.html

Musings on games, design, and the theory of everything. Yes, this is a page of links. Like in the good ole days before search engines and when Yahoo had a hierarchical index the entire internet outside the walls of AOL. But I digress. Tabletop games, mostly. Monster site, forums, game databse, blogs, etc. Today in Board Games. Provides nice frequent roundups of reviews and articles. Design blog and reviews. Boardgame blog by Stephen Brochu (Ubisoft designer). Excellent commentary on games from Mark Taylor.

big-game-theory.com

Big Game Theory!: The Snowball and the Steamroller: Fundamental Challenges in 4X Game Design

http://www.big-game-theory.com/2015/02/the-snowball-and-steamroller.html

Musings on games, design, and the theory of everything. February 5, 2015. The Snowball and the Steamroller: Fundamental Challenges in 4X Game Design. 4X games are predicated on exploring some unknown geography, expanding your control into newly discovered regions, exploiting resources from those regions, and using those resources to build up forces and exterminate your opponents (who are trying to do the same to you! Issue #1 - City Spam and Snowballing. Issue #3 - Micromanagement, Tedium, and Drag-out.

big-game-theory.com

Big Game Theory!: A Hellivator to Heaven: Adventures in Terraria

http://www.big-game-theory.com/2015/02/a-hellivator-to-heaven-adventures-in.html

Musings on games, design, and the theory of everything. February 25, 2015. A Hellivator to Heaven: Adventures in Terraria. But now that I'm down here, amidst the lava pools and demons, I'm wondering what to do next. And so it goes with Terraria. Coming up for air. Would I be more comfortable there? No time to figure it out - there are blocks that need to be mined! A zoom-out of the surface and that little floating island above my house . how curious indeed! And then my daughter showed up. She is three.

big-game-theory.com

Big Game Theory!: April 2014

http://www.big-game-theory.com/2014_04_01_archive.html

Musings on games, design, and the theory of everything. April 25, 2014. A Call to Arms! 160; Its been a little while since posting, and among other reasons was the most prominent one: last month saw the birth of our second child and all that entails. Things now seem to be slowing down on the crazy-factor scale, so Im crawling out of the cave with a little request! Ive talked about Emissary. In prior blog posts ( Emissary: A Study in Brain-burn and Emergence. A Call to Arms! Rock, Paper, Shotgun. I’...

big-game-theory.com

Big Game Theory!: February 2015

http://www.big-game-theory.com/2015_02_01_archive.html

Musings on games, design, and the theory of everything. February 25, 2015. A Hellivator to Heaven: Adventures in Terraria. But now that Im down here, amidst the lava pools and demons, Im wondering what to do next. And so it goes with Terraria. February 5, 2015. The Snowball and the Steamroller: Fundamental Challenges in 4X Game Design. Typically, 4X games aim to convey the machinations of entire empires, and hence have a large geographic scale in mind.  . Issue #1 - City Spam and Snowballing. These three...

big-game-theory.com

Big Game Theory!: April 2015

http://www.big-game-theory.com/2015_04_01_archive.html

Musings on games, design, and the theory of everything. April 30, 2015. A Shattered Dream: Critiquing the 4X Genre. I’ve been struggling to write a holistic critique of the 4X genre for a while. On one hand, I ask myself “why is such a critique even necessary? Thankfully, a recent Three Moves Ahead (3MA) podcast. April 17, 2015. Spring is getting underway here in Michigan, which means the grill has been dragged out of the . What about the games? What are are you doing there behind the curtain? I’ve...

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Big Game Theory!: January 2015

http://www.big-game-theory.com/2015_01_01_archive.html

Musings on games, design, and the theory of everything. January 19, 2015. On Game Obsessions, Disillusionments, and Finding Meaning. Alec Meer, over at Rock, Paper, Shotgun. The time passes pleasantly, maybe even thrillingly at times, but it means nothing, there’s no sense of achievement other than Achievements. Maybe it’s more compulsive masturbation than Disneyland (or maybe Disneyland is masturbation? January 16, 2015. Starbase Orion: The Brightest Star of All. On July 24th, 2013. This review will tak...