Game Design with Will Wright

Will Wright has become one of the most successful designers of interactive entertainment in the world. He began working on what would become SimCity—The City Simulator in 1985. Using a complex technique, he found a way to bring realistic simulations to desktop PCs. Previously simulations of this sort were only available to the military, scientists and academicians. However, using an easy to use graphic interface, the world of simulations opened up to consumers.

"In this lecture, recorded in November 2003, Wright discusses various aspects of game design, human interfaces, artificial intelligence, metrics, simulation and the future of gaming."

World of Goo Design Tour

Second video of the Design Tour series, made by the prominent indie team, Wolfire.

"Whenever I play a game, I look for design lessons that I can learn and apply to my own games. Recently, I decided to show these lessons in the form of a video tour of games that make interesting design decisions..."

Via Wolfire blog

Videojug: Getting A Job As A Game Designer

Harry Ravenswood moved to the UK from Australia in 2004, where he had been working at Torus Games. He has worked on 7 published titles on a range of different consoles, and has been working as a designer for over 6 years. He recently worked on The Regiment for Kuju Entertainment, an action title which saw him working closely with current and previous members of the SAS to get it as authentic as possible. (from Videojug).

"Videogames have come an awfully long way since the heady days of Pong and Pac Man all those years ago. If you think gaming is still just a few nerdy kids holed up in their bedrooms needing to get out more, prepare yourself for a shock. The videogame industry is now worth billions. The level of sophistication, both in terms of gameplay and graphics continues to grow at a phenomenal pace, and in many households they've overtaken TV as the entertainment of choice for winding down in the evening. The flipside, of course, is that videogame production is now serious business. While you may think being a videogame designer is just a day-long play-about, the truth is it's a very demanding, albeit very rewarding job..."

Cliffski: A Genuine Indie on Game Design

Cliff harris is a 38 year old Game Designer and programmer from the UK. In previous lives, he worked as a Boat-Builder (yes really), a guitar teacher and on stock market trading floors, where he got shouted at by city traders. He also worked as a game programmer for Elixir Studios, and then as an AI programmer at Lionhead where he worked on ‘The Movies’. For the last few years, he has worked from home for his own one man company – Positech Games, making quirky and original strategy and simulation games. (--Positech Games)

"Fellow indies dejobaan recently did a video reponse to questions about their game, and I thought this was a great idea and shamelessly copied it replying to all the stuff people ask me by email and on the forums, then spent far too much time today playing with sony vegas movie editor..."

Via Cliffski’s Blog

Brenda Brathwaite - 2 Minutes Interview

According to Wikipedia, Brenda Brathwaite is a game designer and professor of game development and interactive design at the Savannah College of Art and Design, and has worked in gaming for 26 years, having credits on 22 game titles. Is an active member of the International Game Developers Association. In 2008, she was elected to the IGDA's Board of Directors.

She founded the International Game Developers Sex Special Interest group in 2005. Since working on Playboy, she has studied adult and sexual content in video games and is regularly interviewed about the subject in the media. She has written a book on the subject, Sex in Video Games.

Despite the ridiculous short time they gave to the interview, the awful music, and the bloated video presentation, Brenda Brathwaite was able to say a couple of interesting things about sex in videogames.

"GameZombie.tv presents an exclusive video interview with Brenda Brathwaite, video game designer."

Via GameZombie.tv

Talking About These: VG and the Female Audience

Daniel Floyd is the creator of an animated lectures series where he expresses a fresh and in-depth view on industry trend topics.

Recently graduated from the Univerity of Georgia, he received a bachelor's degree in Drama, focusing in Digital Media, and is currently pursuing a carreer in the videogames industry as an animator.

"Episode six in my series of video "lectures," with special guest star: Gamasutra's Leigh Alexander!"

I didnt particulary liked this one.

At this point, calling Leight Alexander to oppinionate about the gaming female audience is not only a cliche, but I think is also a mistake. She is not really representative, and also writes very lightly regarding certain topics, while her incitations to debate are usually mass-targeted instead of following a line of maturity and depth.


Via Talking About These

Into the Night: Jason Rohrer and Chris Crawford

This episode of German/French documentary series, english title "Into The Night" features the meeting of my two favorite game designers, Jason Rohrer and Chris Crawford. Having seen the whole thing I can say that the quality of ideas, the way their conversations are framed, and the humanity between them really brings the whole ivory tower aspects of game design down to earth. If the object of these documentaries is to bridge games as a high to the wider world of New York Times reading film goers, then this is perhaps the most effective. (--PlayThisThing.com)

"French/German TV channel Arte interviews two game designers from different generations on their current projects and the state of the industry today."

Mirror, all in one, thx lolzorz.org: