Recent content by Alan Au

Everything Good Old is New Again Classic games are like old friends, and the folks at GOG have done a tremendous amount to work to bring those classics back, even if the process sometimes takes years. Read Full Article

Microsoft/343 is doing a "Halofest" thing this fall at PAX, so that's probably where any new Halo franchise announcements will originate. As for Bungie, the studio was trapped in a prison of its own making. It may have had golden bars, but it was a prison nonetheless, and I expect Bungie is...

I don't have a problem with a short singleplayer campaign, but I don't want to pay $60 for it.

I think the article interprets the definition of "fighting game" too narrowly, and as a result it only looks at the competitive multiplayer titles. It isn't that fighting games lack story and accessibility, it's that they're no longer classified as "fighting games" once they incorporate those...

Misadventures in Role-playing Most people play computer role-playing games in order to find out what happens at the end of the story, but one gamer chooses to exploit every digital loophole in such games to create his own wacky narratives. Alan Au shows us the man behind the anti-walkthrough...

Thanks to the Escapist staff for digging a little deeper into this issue. The more I hear about it, the worse it seems to get.

This sounds strangely familiar [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/91306-Game-Dev-Quits-Job-With-Help-From-Mario]...

I imagine a modern version of Magic Carpet with a gesture-based spell-casting game mechanic would be ideal for waggle controllers.

Thanks for that peek behind the curtain of game design. I think that the advice generally holds, and it reinforces the notion that there's really no substitute for experience. Of course, this belies the big caveat of the article: reading and even adhering to a set of design rules is not the...

Designing Religion One of the most venerable series in gaming, Civilization, has dealt with religion in every installment. However, the way the game has incorporated it into the gameplay has varied greatly with each game. Alan Au spoke with several key people involved with the series to...

1. I would have to go back and check my sources on this, but the topic came up at a party recently after a drunken round of WarioWare. It was revealed that a developer working on a similar party game (I want to say Microsoft, but again, I'd have to check) had purposely set out to do focus tests...

Star Wars: Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II: Mysteries of the Sith Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri: Alien Crossfire, a Brian Reynolds Design - Alan

Actually, "whining" is part of the job description. Well, okay, maybe it's more of a perk. - Alan

Button-Mashing Monkeys "Testing unreleased games is both fascinating and mind-numbingly boring." "For some, it's the ultimate dream job. Many aspiring game developers see testing as a way to get a foot in the door, a stepping stone on the career path to a 'real' game development position...

I give this thread a 4. Out of something. - Alan