• My Life,  The Lazy Designer

    Be Careful What You Wish For

    As a game designer I spend a lot of time thinking of ways I can encourage players to act in particular ways. Some are obvious – drop a few expensive & cool items into stores at a particular place I want the player to return to because I know the items will encourage most players to travel back there once they’ve earned the gold for it. Some are less obvious like making the cost of using a visually impressive fighting ability slightly lower than it should be (balance wise) because it increases player engagement and the likelihood of them continuing to play the game early on. So I wonder sometimes…

  • My Life,  The Lazy Designer

    Distraction Devices

    Earlier I posted about how electronic devices can really disrupt meetings. Now Richard Curtis over at [e-reads] has a post discussing Christine Pearson’s book which goes into detail on why overuse of these distraction devices causes poor work performance. Worth reading, especially for those of you who still believe mobile devices allow you to ‘get more work done’.