staffinsights Archives - Page 38 of 46

10 Tips for Designing a Game Tutorial

Every game teaches you how to play. Plants vs. Zombies is an interesting case study because it made “hardcore” strategy content accessible to casual and non-gamers. Before Plants vs. Zombies the game industry had falsely concluded that the casual market just wasn’t interested in certain game genres. In addition to appealing to casual gamers, it…

March 16, 2017 // Stephen Calender

Filament Games | Educational Game Developer

Gamification vs. Game-Based Learning

When we talk to people about the work we do, the topic of “gamification” comes up quite a bit. To some folks, it’s synonymous with game-based learning, and to others, it’s presented as the inverse. Brandon and I hashed out a decent working definition on the podcast, but we realized we don’t have a matching…

March 13, 2017 // Dan Norton

How to Make a Simple Project Shine

We make games! You already knew that because you’re reading our blog, but what you may not know is that we’ve partnered with a variety of organizations to design elegant platforms to house their games, apps, and other digital content. These projects have brought to light a number of design concepts that we wanted to…

March 8, 2017 // Madeline Folz

Augmented Reality Learning Environments

Holy cow, have you guys checked out quadcopters?! We live in interesting times, where a convergence of technologies, spurred by mobile phone development has led to a ton of very powerful things getting embedded into very small devices. This includes a wide variety of different kinds of sensors, and ever improving video/transmitting capabilities. Stuff’s getting…

February 22, 2017 // Dan Norton

The Importance of Feedback

I’ve previously quoted Sid Meier who believes one way to think about game design is “a series of interesting decisions“. Besides game designers, there are a few other professions that obsess over human behavior with a particular focus on the choices we make; namely, psychologists and economists. They study phenomenon that expose flaws in how we…

February 16, 2017 // Stephen Calender

Speed Sketch! Opposites Attract

Newton’s Laws got nothin’ on the laws of attraction! Watch as Game Art Team Lead Natasha Soglin paints a special Valentine’s Day portrait for these two Motion Force characters. Have questions for Natasha? Get in touch via Facebook or Twitter! In the mood for more Speed Sketches? Check these out! Winter Wonderland Happy Thanksgiving from Filament Games Happy Hallowbee Landscape…

February 13, 2017 // Kat Shanahan

How to Design the First Five Minutes of Your Game

A common request when pitching a game idea is “walk me through the first 5 minutes (or sometimes 30 seconds) of your game.” It is a question designed to weed out who has really thought out their ideas. The truth of the matter is that you need to convey a lot information concisely and elegantly…

January 23, 2017 // Stephen Calender

Preventing Defects And Defensive Programming

As programmers, we can embed fail-safes into our code. In essence, we get decide what failure looks like. As we are writing code we choose how rigorously we validate our work; for example, checking that values are not null, lists are not empty, or numbers stay within valid ranges. In the event that something bad…

January 11, 2017 // Stephen Calender

Speed Sketch! Winter Wonderland

What better way to start the new year than with a new Speed Sketch! Follow along as Game Art Team Lead Natasha Soglin creates this this enchanting landscape. Natasha created this piece in 60 minutes to experiment with color palette and mood. Have questions for Natasha? Get in touch via Facebook or Twitter! In the mood for more Speed…

January 9, 2017 // Kat Shanahan

Features That Add Value

When I provide insight into game development, instead of talking about specific games, the conversation revolves around the building blocks of games we call features. Through analyzing the atomic elements of games and how they can be combined and work together, we hope to learn generic lessons that can be applied to all games. If…

December 14, 2016 // Stephen Calender

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