Game Design

On March 26, a new episode of the deconstructive show "What's in the Game?" aired on the WN Academy platform, dedicated to Avowed. Here's what stood out in the latest episode, where experts analyzed the new project from Obsidian in the Pillars of Eternity universe from the perspective of game design and narrative.

The lead game designer at Crazy Panda, Sergey Zaigrayev, shared with App2Top how he uses neural networks for working on documentation.

Rockstar Games has once again faced a data leak. Several of its design documents, created in the early 2000s, have been publicly released. These documents pertain to development plans for the GTA series games

In an interview with TASS, the head of Roskachestvo, Maxim Protasov, mentioned that next year the organization plans to conduct inspections regarding video games. They aim to study their monetization

One of the latest patches for Palworld removed the ability to summon captured creatures by throwing special spheres onto the field. The developers have not commented on the change, but online speculation suggests it was made due to legal proceedings with the owners of the Pokémon franchise

Lego and UNICEF have introduced a series of design guidelines aimed at assisting game developers in enhancing the well-being of children during digital play

Epic Games has decided to teach game development using the Unreal Engine. The company announced the launch of an educational course on game design on the Coursera platform.

We continue to publish the results of the salary survey chapter by chapter, which we conducted from April to May 2023. The current publication focuses on the income levels of Russian-speaking game designers.

We are launching a new section on our website where games industry experts share insights into their professions. In today’s article, Valeriya Berlenko, content producer at Cubic Games (part of the GDEV holding), explores the unique role and responsibilities of a concept artist.

Davide Soliani has decided to leave Ubisoft, where he spent most of his career. The Mario + Rabbids creative director is now preparing for the next chapter of his journey.

We continue our series of publications in which specialists from gaming companies talk about their professions. The latest article in the series is about the Core Game Designer. Dmitry Aborilov, the Lead Core Gameplay Designer at Nekki, shared detailed insights about the position

A common challenge in game development is having a clear understanding of the project's objectives. Graham McAllister, an organizational psychologist and founder of Team Sync, has been focused on identifying and addressing this issue, inspired by Jason Schreier's Kotaku article on the problematic development of Anthem. This issue isn't isolated to Anthem alone. For instance, Creative Assembly's recently canceled game, Hyenas, reportedly had a budget of approximately $100 million. However, developers who worked on the project, speaking under anonymity, revealed that the vision for the game remained unclear throughout its seven-year development period

BAFTA has updated its eligibility rules for the Games Awards, beginning with the 2025 edition. From now on, the Game Design and Technical Achievement categories will be initially voted on by two specialized voting chapters, composed of members with expertise in these areas, instead of the entire BAFTA membership. Additionally, the criteria for two categories have been revised: New Intellectual Property will now evaluate the "originality and innovation" of the IP, and the Evolving Game award will focus solely on titles that feature "substantial future updates" on their roadmap

We continue our series of publications where specialists from gaming companies talk about their professions. The new article in the series is about game designers. Two game designers from Glera Games, Natalia Sholina and Igor Petrov, provided detailed insights into the profession

Where to start working on the combat system, as well as what formulas to use, — said Konstantin Sakhnov, founder of the indie studio Vengeance Games and author of the course "Fundamentals of game Design".

Pete Hines, the head of the company's publishing division, announced his departure from Bethesda just yesterday. Shortly after, it became known that Bethesda's design director William Shen had also left.

The network noticed that Anders Howard, the chief monetization designer, left Naughty Dog. He was engaged in a multiplayer game in the world of The Last of Us.

The Russian retail received “Introduction to the design of gaming systems. A step—by-step guide to creating balanced games,” Bombora Publishing house reports. This is a book about development for beginners (it contains the very basics of work). We share an excerpt.

Sergey Martinkevich, Publishing Lead at Azur Games, told about successful game design solutions in the idle arcade My Mini Mart, which collected more than 70 million downloads last year.

Experienced game designer David Ellis is another developer to leave 343 Industries after working on the Halo franchise for more than a decade. This comes a few months after the studio’s restructuring and the departure of other veteran employees.

343 Industries has one less employee. David Ellis, who held the position of senior game designer of Halo Infinite, announced his departure from the studio.

Game designer Eric Covington believes that he was unfairly fired from Blizzard. He claims that the company did this after noticing the lines he wrote for the Greedy Goblin character from World of Warcraft, ridiculing the behavior of greedy corporations.

While Mundfish is working on the first DLC for Atomic Heart, we have reached out to the studio’s game design team to chat about some of the title’s elements and mechanics. In an interview with Game World Observer, the devs opened up about making the combat system and bosses, and also discussed some issues related to the open world.

In the USA, a lawsuit was filed against Nintendo. The company was accused of unfair and immoral use of gacha mechanics in the mobile game Mario Kart Tour.

While Mundfish is preparing to release the first story DLC for Atomic Heart, we talked to the studio about the design of the game and its individual elements. In an interview with App2Top, the developers talked about creating a combat system, gloves and bosses, and also discussed controversial issues related to the open world.

Jason Wilson (aka Jay Gunn), a prominent game developer of the 90s, has put his art and design archive for sale. However, the reasons for this decision are rather unfortunate, as he needs money to pay bills while looking for a job.

Redfall didn’t look impressive during its marketing campaign, but it was hard to imagine that the game would turn out to be so fundamentally flawed. Let’s dive deep into its systems and compare them to some of the core pillars of Arkane’s game design.

China’s NetEase has announced the launch of another foreign studio — anchorPoint Studios. Her team includes developers Ghost of Tsushima, Red Dead Redemption 2, Control and The Division.

There is a special program in Argentina that teaches prisoners different game development skills. Some of them have already made simple HTML5 titles.

Australian MPs continue to speak out against gambling video games. This time they suggested assigning a rating of 15+ to games that have paid loot boxes, and a rating of 18+ to all other games with gambling mechanics.

The head of monetization at Belka Games, Evgeny Gilmanov, opens a series of materials about the principles that guide the company in developing and implementing a monetization strategy.

Today, March 3, the global launch of Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty took place. The game was warmly received by critics, but PC users were very dissatisfied with it. We tell you how organically the latest Team Ninja game looks in the Koei Tecmo portfolio and how much, according to the developers, it has gone away from the Nioh dilogy.

Morality is a great tool for game designers that adds depth and complexity to player decisions. So how do we transform morality into game mechanics? Let’s take a look at a few games that have done this well.

Having found success in the 90s, John Carmack helped many people, including game designer American McGee. While most of them chose to forget about the money, the Alice creator eventually managed to pay off his debt.

Garth DeAngelis has stepped down from his role as a senior franchise producer at Firaxis. He spent 14 years at the company working on the XCOM series and Marvel’s Midnight Suns.

Blizzard Proletariat leadership has decided not to voluntarily recognize a workers’ union. Instead, they requested an anonymous vote as part of the election process through the National Labor Rleations Board (NLRB).

Maverick Games is a new independent studio founded by several Playground Games veterans. Former Forza Horizon developers are working on an announced AAA game for consoles and PC.

WN Belgrade’23, the upcoming business conference for developers and other games industry professionals, has been announced. Let’s take a look at the first details about the two-day event, which will feature an expo zone and lectures from various experts.

We continue to summarize the results of last year. This time we are publishing an interview with Pavel Ignatov, CEO at Balance, a company specializing in gaming LiveOps.

Jonathan Blow, renowed indie game developer and creator of Braid, has shared his thoughts on Elden Ring. While praising the game’s scale, he claimed that it has no design per se.

The other day, a discussion broke out on Twitter about not the best quality of modern AAA games. Some of the participants were not against making an exception for the Elden Ring, calling its design “passable”, but not Jonathan Blow. According to the creator of The Witness, there is no design as such in this game.

We have seen a number of new studios started by ex-Blizzard devs over the past couple of years. Here is what some of them say about building their own businesses and making new games outside of one of the inudstry’s most prominent AAA companies.

Blizzard Proletariat, known for its multiplayer action game Spellbreak, has decided to follow in the footsteps of two other Activision Blizzard teams. A group of workers announced a new union to seek fair compensation and other benefits.

Scott Thunelius, programmer and 3D artist known for his work on Subnautica, has shared with us the key principles behind creating retro-style graphics. As an example, he used Warpips, a tug-of-war strategy game he made with his friends in the spare time.

Tomb Raider has cemented itself as one of the best-selling video game franchises in history. The total sales of all titles in the series about Lara Croft’s adventures are now approaching the 100 million mark.

Havok Physics for Unity has now officially become supported for production. Developers will be able to use the physics engine for free and implement its features in their games.

After more than a decade at Riot Games, Joseph Ziegler has announced his decision to leave the company. He will now be the game director at Destiny developer Bungie.

Ryan Smith, tech art director of R&D at Gearbox, has opened up about how the studio is already using AI in its work. He encouraged other artists to learn these tools, because they can help in solving routine tasks.

Why do players consider some events and details in the game more significant than others? This is directly related to the so-called narrative weight. Andrei Medvedev, game designer at Friday’s Games, breaks down what this term means and why it is critical for game designers to be able to adjust the importance of certain elements.

Chris Metzen has returned to Blizzard Entertainment six years after announcing his departure. He will again be working on the Warcraft franchise, the universe he has been involved in since its inception.