GameMaker Studio Released, divide between community and YoYoGames created

GameMaker Studios Has officially been released. It’s priced at $100, but it costs extra for each exporter. The current available exporters are an iOS exporter(+$200), a HTML exporter (+$100), and an Android exporter(+$200). A very wise business decision. GameMaker HTML is being replaced by GameMaker Studios + HTML exporter. The price is still the same. Besides […]

Game Design

How to actually design a game is impossible to define on a large scale. The type of game being created has a big impact on the game design. Trade offs Tradeoffs creates risk and hence strategy in a game. Most games have some strategy in them. Tradeoffs need to be easy for the user to […]

Marketing

Two types of Marketing will be discussed: Indie game marketing and big game marketing. Indie marketing is done on a low or non-existent budget, while big game marketing is done on a bigger budget. Marketing for an Indie Game Paying for advertising is an easy way to make a game popular; however, there are ways […]

Player’s role during production

Players can be invaluable in shaping a game. Olli Sotamaa categorized player uses into these categories: Designer’s Muse, designer’s Patient, Player as Designer’s Adviser, and Player as Designer. I will summarize what he said about using players for these different purposes. (Sotamaa, 2007) Player as Designer’s Muse Players can be used to gather ideas. Often […]

Using Game Mechanics

In the last section we talked about which game mechanics should be used. Now I am going to talk about using those game mechanics in a way that will make a game fun. Feedback Loop According to Carlo Fabricatore, the main source of fun should come from feedback loops. A feedback loop is part of […]

Playability

Playability is the basic necessities that a game must have in order to be a game. Fabricatore categorized pliability into entities, scenarios, and goals. (Fabricatore, Nussbaum, & Rosas, 2002) Entities are every object with the game that the player can interact with, or the player himself. Scenarios are the hazards that a player may face. […]

Models for Creating Games

I am going to discuss different models for designing games and for publishing games that were mentioned in the horseshoe conference. Game Design Models Traditional design The red lines represent how much money it takes to develop a game with this model. A designer using this model will start creating a game, and then if […]

Preventing Failure

In 1997 Dan Lavin from Dataquest Inc. figured that only 4% of commercial games make money. (Armstrong, & Hamm, 1997) With such a big failure rate it is important to understand what needs to be avoided when developing a game. Research has shown that some of the most common reasons why games fail are unrealistic […]

Cinders and Phantasmaburbia Trailer

Cinders Trailer Cinders is out for pre-order. This GameMaker game from MoaCube puts you in control of the classic fairytale Cinderella. As can be seen from the above trailer, Gracjana Zielinska’s animated drawings are absolutely eye-dropping–the best I’ve ever seen. I haven’t actually played the game so I can’t comment on whether or not the […]

Kirsty posting more often

It looks as if Kirsty from YoYo Games will be posting every little news snippet about GameMaker and YoYo Games on the glog. If this continues I will won’t be posting as often about GameMaker news, instead I’ll be posting articles about game design. With that said let me introduce you to a series of […]