Recommended posts, 2017-2025

It’s been over five years since the last time I gathered up recommended posts in one place and added them to the menu above. I figured I was due.

As usual this will include talks and interviews as well as articles. Just think of it as “my take on what the best stuff to look at on the site is.”

Previous collections of recommended posts can be found under the Blog heading on the menu bar or at these links:

Recommended posts 1998-2012Recommended posts 2012-2017Game design overviews

All of these posts are about game design in general and tend to cover big swaths of similar territory.

Reconciling Games, a talk which walks through the process of game design using a fish aquarium as a lensDisassembling Games also walks through high level views of game design, but with special attention to UX designRevisiting Fun: 20 Years of A Theory of Fun is a talk from GDC updating Theory of FunGame design is simple, actually is now the most popular post on the site, and is an overview of the entire scope of game design as a fieldMultiplayer game design

These posts are all specifically about dealing with multiplayer game dynamics.

Consent systems, a post basically about tandem emotes between two playersWhat old tennis players teach us, which is about overturning static leaderboardsThe Trust Spectrum is a whitepaper based on Google ATAP research on how trust operates within games, complete with ways to measure your game design for how much trust it demands and how that affects your audienceFrom 1 to n: Multiplayer Game Design is a talk covering all sorts of multiplayer design including trust and social mechanicsOther game design topicsDepth and Design: Contrasting Human and AI Understandings is about what depth is and whether AI can see it. This talk is mathy and crunchy.Tabletop Game Grammar is a talk applying game grammar principles to poker in particular to see how the concepts translateStart with the Sim is a microtalk about balancing system design versus experience designWhat drives retention is a post listing the key drivers of retention in gamesBest practices for community engagement is a post that covers what the title saysWhy NYT’s Connections makes you feel bad is a crunchy game design breakdown of ConnectionsSandbox vs themepark is a historical overview of where these two terms come from and what they meanThe games business

These posts are about the games business and how we as developers get along within it.

Some current game economics is a response to gamer questions about why the business of games looks like it does. Even though it is years old, everything in there is pretty much still true.The cost of games is a detailed breakdown of the costs involved in game development using data from 1985 to today, which then draws conclusions about what that means for players and for developers.Industry Lifecycles is a talk version of the above, which also describes the the cyclical nature of game platforms.The evolution of ‘gamers’ is a description of the way the term “gamer” and what target market is references has evolved from the 1970s to today.Postmortems and history

As always, there was a decent amount of stuff posted to the blog that answered questions about older games. I should probably specifically call out that my book Postmortems came out during this time period and collects 700+ pages of virtual world history.

There were a bunch for Ultima Online specifically:

Classic Game Postmortem: Ultima Online at 20, a talk given for that anniversaryUltima Online’s influence is a post about specifically what UO did to impact games in generalUltima Online’s 25th Anniversary is about Ultima Online terrainSpam Spam Spam Humbug Interview

And there’s a few more things that are of historical interest:

Looking back at a pandemic simulator describes the COVID public health simulator I designed in the midst of the pandemicClassic Game Postmortem: Star Wars Galaxies is a talk given at the 20th anniversary of the game’s launchTen Lessons Learned is more of a career retrospective talk, ten pieces of advice I would give to any game developer starting nowThe Evolution of Online Worlds is an hour-long video survey of the history of online worldsRiffs by Raph

These posts were basically written as marketing for Playable Worlds and our game Stars Reach. However, they also serve as a pretty good manifesto for what I think MMOs ought to be like.

The Future of Online Worlds is a manifesto on what living online worlds can be likeThinking long-term is about what makes them lastDesigning for Social Play gives guidelines on building proper communities and societies within online worldsPlayer-driven economies touches specifically on how economies play into thatRevealing Playable Worlds Technology describes our technical platformBut First, the Game is about why that tech, and how it impacts what we can makeMetaverse madness

There was a huge boom in interest in the Metaverse during this time period. And frankly, most people had no clue what the hell they were talking about, or had very little idea how online worlds and therefore metaverses would even work. Sooooo…

First was a series on how they work from a data point of view, aimed particular at folks who thought blockchains solved all the issues. Hint: they don’t.

How Virtual Worlds Work, part oneHow Virtual Worlds Work, part twoDigital Objects: How Virtual Worlds Work part 3Object Behaviors: How Virtual Worlds Work part 4Ownership: How Virtual Worlds Work, part 5

Then there were a series of panels, talks, and podcasts which touched on everything from governance in a metaverse to the hard realities of building one. Trivia: did you know the first one was built during the 90s? I built one during the 2000’s!

Building the Metaverse sessionFive Big Metaverse Questions covers similar ground to the How Virtual Worlds Work series, but extends it to governance and the question of the Internet as existential threat.Real Talk About a Real Metaverse gives a pile of historical context to it allThe Metacast by Naavik: Mastering Digital WorldsEmulation stuff

I did a fair bit of work on emulators during this period. There is much more than just these three things, but these seemed like the most worthy of calling out.

Microvision Emulator ReleaseAtari 8-bit Guide for lr-atari800 and RetropieGuide to Retroarch System, Emulator, Core, and ROM Config Files