Recent content by WilyWombat

I just wanted to applaud the Escapist for daring to enter the troubled waters of religious discussion, and poking at games with the religion stick. As a game designer of many years, I can emphatically state that publishers deliberately stay away from something this touchy and controversial. And...

In response to SamuraiAndPig, who states that his/her problem with games is that violence is portrayed as The Solution and generally rewarded. 1. While you can certainly find a lot of games where a violent mechanic is the core gameplay, there are many where this is not the case. The Sims comes...

Is everyone involved with games working from a hellish school experience of alienation? Escapist indeed! Heroic escapism exists to give everyone hope and new perspective, so yay for them and yay for those of us who have found a way to be comfortable with who we are.

This column could have been called "One Man's Journey from Wide Eyed to Eyes Open". I have gone through several of these "story arcs" of blind admiration to acknowledgment of imperfections, from hero worship to being in love to really digging a song. I urge everyone to refrain from being...

Great article Brenda! I NOTE that there will always be those who point at the new thing and find it scary (and try to capitalize on it). I HOPE that with our persistent, informative and respectful conversations to the general non-gamer population we can defuse their concerns. I KNOW that...

Lots of thoughts on this matter - We already self medicate via coffee and other psychoactive consumables. I am guessing that the huge number of iPods I see plugged into people's heads are a often a form of meditation, music is magical that way. - Anxiety and Depression are not always solvable...

Great read! Science and what the future holds is definitely firing a lot in the past few weeks. Arthur C Clarke passing away as so many of his predictions are operating now. Ray Kurzweil's mindbending presentation at GDC. Here is a link to his 2005 TED presentation, which I think probably covers...

Thought provoking article. I think the games industry has been working to evolve the game experience to more than execution of mechanics for quite a while now, just not always successfully. In working with a legendary property like Conan, a developer would need to make decisions about what they...

Great article, will be mailing the link out to our design grp right after this. As a worker and as a manager in all kinds of industries, I always tried to put some game into the workplace...but never had the rationale so coherently stated as in the article. (It just felt like the right thing...

Gamers are a reflection of all facets of popular culture. And when a lot of that culture classifies women as 'be-yoches' or "mysterious cootie factories", you are going to have a fair portion of ignorant asses mouthing off. But...how many gamers ARE idiots like that? It doesnt take many to...

It's really fascinating to see what people do with the tools that are available. And the evolution of that micro society matches similar situations I have witnessed, from SCA groups to MMO guilds to rock bands. So many things are generated out of passion, its no wonder that they cannot last...

All of what you said, especially the Get Over Yourself! my two additional cents below... My advice to aspiring designers is to learn from every possible chance at entertainment, do a lot more than play games. I spent a summer once working on theatrical set construction, have done movies with...