Videogame Design Articles

Below are a collection of different aspects of videogame design that I talked about on my old blog and here. I've organized them into different sections to try to give them some structure. Also I wanted to archive them.

Game Feel

I wrote a series on the 'feel' of videogames. This was an attempt to analyze and discuss some of the things I noticed in other videogames and how they were applied to God of War.

Game Feel - Part 1, The Importance of Frames. One of my first attempts at discussing how small changes can have huge impacts on players perception.

Game Feel - Part 2, Jumping. I took a look at different platforming games and trying to figure out why some people claim a jump feels bad or good.

Game Feel - Part 3, Hit Pause. I always enjoyed why some games made the player feel more empowered and tried to explain the different techniques used.

Game Feel - Part 4, Animation Posing. While not an animator, I discussed why the pose of moves is important for designers.

Damage

I wrote a couple of things about taking and receiving damage in action adventure games.

Double Damage. This was written as more of a reminder to myself and other designers that normal people don't always understand under the hood mechanics.

Damage Presentation. I wanted to catalog all the different ways fighting games were displaying damage in their UI and how it could be applied to action adventure games.

Miscellaneous

Helping the player out. A look at how early Street Fighter games helped players without anyone realizing it.

Design is all about the details. This was me taking a look at Street Fighter and how small changes in not only animation frames but how they are 'tagged' can have a huge impact.

God of War / Devil May Cry Love Letter A look into the correspondence between early God of War and Devil May Cry teams.

Eric Williams

Every God of War game that I've worked on, I've worked alongside Eric Williams. When I was writing a lot of these blog posts, he was writing a bunch as well for his blog. In the interest of preserving these from fading away on the internet I've decided to re-host them with his permission.

Attack Animations - Part 1. Eric writes about how designers and animators can create better attack animations.

Attack Animations - Part 2. Eric continues his discussion about the importance of animations.

Attack Animations - Part 3. The final part of Eric's series about how designers and animators create create animations.

Combat Cancelled. In response to questions we both used to get regarding God of War's combat, Eric went into great depth about why some moves can be cancelled and other cannot.