Krystian Majewski
Website: http://www.krystian.de
Heartbreak Hotel
Let me tell you a story. I live in Germany. Games here are under harsher restrictions. Protection of youth is constitutional. When I received the German Developer Award, a journalist I’ve never met before gave a heartwarming speech on how TRAUMA shows even to the most jaded skeptics that game can be art. On the [...]
But It’s Worse in Games Because They are Interactive
FeministFrequency recently released a new Episode of their Series “Tropes vs Women”. This time, they discuss Women as Background Decoration, especially the prevalence of female Sex Workers in Videogames. As always, the critical perspective is welcome and the accumulation of examples is seriously disturbing.
However, I noticed that throughout the episode, the show makes a common argument [...]
Netrunner: The Way to Win is Not to Play
I’ve been playing Netrunner for more than 4 Months now. I have caught up with all of the released expansions so far. I went to some major tournaments. I started recording my games. I met some really great people. The game has been good to me.
My initial impression of the game has evolved a lot during [...]
Stepped on a Narrative LEGO
Bioshock developer Ken Levene held a talk at this year’s GDC titled “Narrative Legos”. Even though I haven’t visited GDC personally, the title stood out to me. It hints at a playful, simple, systematic and yet creative solution to the challenge of creating narrative in Videogames. It implies you could somehow break down linear narratives [...]
Android Netrunner – The Game Designer’s Game
I recently got into Android Netrunner. It is a card game by Richard Garfield of Magic: The Gathering Fame. It used to be a Trading Card Game itself but never succeeded in that format. It was recently re-released as a so-called “Living Card Game” and is currently enjoying a great deal of attention. I noticed [...]
PLEX and Reverse-Free-to-Play
I got a bit into EVE Online recently. I find it interesting since it represents a slightly different way of thinking about online games – one that seems to run against the practices established by World of Warcraft / Farmville at times. One instance in which I was struck by this is in the implementation of the [...]
The Evils of Upfront Payment
Here are some thoughts I had recently. We are quick to demonize Free to Play, myself included. But what we tend to forget that the “traditional” model of upfront payment has severe issues as well. Those issues have been detrimental to how games have developed and are still detrimental to what games are today.
But before we [...]
Modeling Traffic Violation
This is perhaps a bit old but here is an observation I had recently. I have encountered two games that model car traffic violations in different ways. One is GTA, the other one is Euro Truck Simulator 2.
Most of us are familiar with the way GTA models Traffic Violations – players have a wanted-meter represented by a row [...]
Request: UI examples for making people work together?
Here is an interesting UI issue I’ve encountered developing a prototype: what is a good and easy way to make AI characters perform things together. I’ve crowd-sourced this question on Twitter to look for examples in other games and realized that the question requires some explanation. So let me clarify:
There are numerous games where you control [...]
Ender’s Game – A Manual
For some time now, a lot of people suggested I should read Ender’s Game. The book was a sort of a puzzle to me. It seems to have influenced a lot of people I know from the Anglo-American culture. Most of them seem to have read it in their youth. Yet I never had contact [...]
