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July 14, 2017November 6, 2023

Skip the “Game vs. Story” and “Entertainment vs. Practical-Utility” Traps: The Anatomy of Compelling Experiences

I get tired of the games vs. story argument. Not to mention the entertainment vs. practical utility argument. In many cases these discussions come from assumptions that are wrong, and the problem is that if you get caught up in them, they can limit your options to making great experiences. Even some very smart experts have contributed to the confusion. "Video Games Are Better Without Stories" says Ian Blogost in a recent article in the Atlantic. While Robert Marks tells us that "Video Games Aren’t Just Better With Stories, They Are Stories" in another recent article at CG Magazine. I......

May 4, 2017November 6, 2023

The Right Game Theme Can Help You Save the Day

Do you feel often overloaded? I do. I bet being able to get your attention is harder and harder because your plate is already full and the requests from everywhere to fill it up even more don’t stop. Well… chances are that the people you are trying to get to play your game feel exactly...

March 24, 2017November 6, 2023

3 Lessons from Game Thinking to Help You Innovate Successfully in Games, VR, and Beyond

Innovating is hard. There is not a clear road, and a disorienting number of possible directions to follow. Innovating and succeeding in the market is even harder; but there are a few lessons we can learn from innovating products that have succeeded in the past. Amy Jo Kim has put together a Game Thinking Toolkit,...

February 28, 2017November 6, 2023

4 Prototypes That Will Help You Survive The Road Towards a Successful Game

If you have led a team in the development of a new game, you probably felt at some point like the clown in the illustration above: trying to entertain people, while juggling 10 things at the same time, trying to navigate through a flimsy thin line without falling, and pulling your team along for the ride....

February 6, 2017November 6, 2023

3 Rules of Thumb for Game Storytelling that Works

Adding storytelling to your game can help you connect emotionally to your players, add meaning to the experience, and increase long-term engagement. But stories can become more of a nuisance if not implemented properly. Following a few rules of thumb will help you add storytelling that does not clash with the rest of the experience....

January 19, 2017November 6, 2023

The Right Concept Art Will Save You Money. 4 Steps to Develop It.

A good piece of concept art can be used as a prototype to test one of the essential elements that your game will need to succeed: connect emotionally to your player. Spending on concept art is sometimes viewed as a luxury or even a distraction, but if done correctly, concept art will save you money and put you in the right direction towards developing a successful experience. In this article I'll dive into the significance of art, and four steps to develop effective concepts. We all have game ideas; some good, some bad. But having an idea is far from having a......

January 4, 2017November 6, 2023

Community Can Help You Build a Killer App . . .

But Don’t Make This Mistake: “The best content is other people” says Dmitri Williams in a recent op-ed article in the L.A. times, making a very good case about the importance of the social aspect in helping new games and platforms succeed. But for social features to work, they need to happen at the right time...

December 20, 2016November 6, 2023

Engagement in VR. 3 Lessons from Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody Experience.

The Bohemian Rhapsody Experience is a virtual reality music video for Google Cardboard based on Queen’s classic song; produced by Enosis VR in collaboration with Google and Queen, and released last September with some great reviews. David Deal from SuperHype blog called the experience “a more compelling glimpse of the future of VR than any...

December 1, 2016November 6, 2023

3 Questions That Will Help You Make a More Engaging Experience

How can you make your game more engaging and effective? In a nutshell, by making engagement stronger at the different levels of the experience and by making engagement connect to your ultimate goals: monetizing, teaching, or changing behavior. There are 3 questions that can help you figure out how to best do that and they can be applied not only to games, but also to education, VR experiences, and other software that needs to engage users. Let me elaborate. I talked in a previous article how successful games and experiences need to first stand out so your target players notice......

November 15, 2016November 6, 2023

The 5 Ingredients of Successful Games and VR Experiences

What makes a game successful depends on your goals, sometimes it is revenue, sometimes it is number of downloads, impact on your players, etc. However focusing on these outcomes is usually not very helpful as a developer, it is much more helpful to define success in terms of engagement because engagement can be linked directly...Continue reading...