In this episode, Soren and Leyla interview veteran game designer Charlie Cleveland, founder of Unknown Worlds and best known for his work on Natural Selection and Subnautica. They discuss why Moonbreaker is the first digital miniatures game, if players would notice if critical hits were removed, and whether the game should have an undo. This episode was recorded on March 19, 2023. Games discussed: Moonbreaker, Warhammer series, Hardspace: Shipbreaker, Magic: The Gathering, Civilization 4, Duelyst, Marvel Snap, Air Land & Sea, Old World, KeyForge, Subnautica, CPU Bach https://www.idlethumbs ..read more

In this episode, Soren and Leyla interview veteran game designer Charlie Cleveland, founder of Unknown Worlds and best known for his work on Natural Selection and Subnautica. They discuss why Charlie Cleveland moved to Cleveland, how he did Kickstarter before Kickstarter, and whether Subnautica was intended to be a survival game. This episode was recorded on March 20, 2022. Games discussed: Pong, Dungeons and Dragons, Magic: The Gathering, Diplomacy, Aquarium Fighter, MindRover, Empire Earth, Natural Selection, Roblox, Natural Selection 2, Subnautica, Don’t Starve https://www.idlethumbs.n ..read more

I gave an Old World postmortem at GDC 2022, which is available on YouTube: However, I fully scripted the talk ahead of time, so I decided it would be worth taking the time to post the slides online, in three parts to have mercy on your browser. After shipping Civ 3, one thing I heard often from the Civ 2 community was that the modding tools lacked support for something called “events” which I eventually learned meant a system of triggers and effects that modders could use to give games a narrative arc. It could create a series of chapters, for example, which pushed the story forward when the ..read more

I gave an Old World postmortem at GDC 2022, which is available on YouTube: However, I fully scripted the talk ahead of time, so I decided it would be worth taking the time to post the slides online, in three parts to have mercy on your browser. Now, let’s talk about the tech tree, which has always had a problem with golden paths. For example, at the start of Civ 4, you can just click on Gunpowder, and the game will show you exactly which 11 technologies to research to get there. For a game with average playtimes in the hundreds of hours, this becomes a real problem. Indeed, with the populari ..read more

I gave an Old World postmortem at GDC 2022, which is available on YouTube: However, I fully scripted the talk ahead of time, so I decided it would be worth taking the time to post the slides online, in three parts to have mercy on your browser. Welcome to My Elephant in the Room: An Old World Design Postmortem. Here are the games that I’ve worked on. Spoiler alert: Civilization 3 and 4 are going to come up a lot in the presentation… I also do a podcast where I interview game designers about why they make games, so check it out if you have time for 4-hour interviews. Old World is a 4X set ..read more

In this episode, Soren interviews veteran game designer Liz England, best known for her work on Scribblenauts, Sunset Overdrive, and Watch Dogs: Legion. They discuss how she organized her mom’s RPG inventories, what is the boiling point of a lion, and whether system complexity matters if the player can’t see it. This episode was recorded on September 17, 2022. Games discussed: Alice in Wonderland, Time Zone, The Outer Wilds, Might and Magic: World of Xeen, Heroes of Might and Magic, Unreal, Drawn to Life, Scribblenauts series, Resistance 3, Sunset Overdrive, Sea of Thieves, Watch Dogs: Le ..read more

I am speaking at this year’s GDC, and the talk will be something of a sequel to GDC 2010’s “Theme Is Not Meaning” (which was the lecture version of two Game Developer columns I wrote earlier that year). I reconstructed the talk from my slides and the recorded audio here: In 2010, I argued that we need to stop assuming that a game’s theme provides its meaning and, instead, that meaning comes from the mechanics themselves. Since then, I have seen many people point out that we should stop referring to a game’s setting as its “theme” as the word “theme” should have a much broader, and more signif ..read more

In this episode, Soren and Leyla interview veteran game designer Harvey Smith, best known for his work on the Deus Ex and Dishonored series. They discuss what TDA stood for at Origin, if Dishonored is just Thief but faster, and why it is sometimes better to be heavy handed. This episode was recorded on March 23, 2022. Games discussed: Pong, Adventure, Defender, Dungeons and Dragons, Elden Ring, Ultima Underworld, System Shock, Fireteam, Deus Ex series, Dishonored series, Redfall https://www.idlethumbs.net/designernotes/episodes/harvey-smith-1 ..read more

I gave a design postmortem at GDC this year on Old World, a game which took me six years to make. In reality, it took me 22 years to make this game as every stop in my career path informed the design, especially lessons learned from my first seven years at Firaxis, working on Civilization III and IV. It’s my elephant in the room, so to speak ..read more

In this episode, Soren interviews independent game developer Matthew Davis, co-founder of Subset Games and best known for his work on FTL and Into the Breach. They discuss whether FTL is a roguelike, how they resolve conflict at Subset, and whether Soren can convince them to add unlimited undo to Into the Breach. This episode was recorded on Sept 19, 2022. Games discussed: Super Mario World, Secret of Mana, Fallout series, Scorched Earth, MLB 2K ???, HeroQuest, Ticket to Ride, Battle Line, FTL, Red November, Tetris, DOTA 2, League of Legends, Spelunky, Civilization series, Slay the Spire ..read more