(Good to Great first aired as Episode 17 on February 20, 2017.) In games, as in any creative discipline, it’s relatively easy to find good creative products, but much harder to find truly great ones. What is it that separates great creative wor

49: Love and Its Opposite

May 15th, 2018 47m 53s

In game design as in life, it’s tough to reach an ideal outcome without taking risks. Thus, if the goal is to create games that will surprise, inspire, and entertain in new ways, accepting the risk of equal dislike by some proportion of players

48: Mobile Metamorphosis

May 1st, 2018 47m 11s

Mobile gaming has long been a commercial powerhouse, but it hasn’t typically exerted a strong pull on the so-called “core gaming” audience of PC and console enthusiasts. Mobile’s rap has been that it’s ideal for light entertainment, but not wel

47: One Chapter at a Time

Apr 17th, 2018 51m 7s

Time is one of the most implacable risks that game development studios face. It takes time—sometimes quite a lot of it—to create a worthwhile game, and in traditional release models all of that time has to be financed up front before a game’s s

46: Breaking Through

Apr 3rd, 2018 51m 16s

In a games market that is full to bursting with interesting titles, even compelling games can easily become lost in the shuffle. In order to cut through the noise and succeed, developers need to match their work to the right audience, finding t

45: All Ears

Mar 20th, 2018 52m 55s

The idea of incorporating player feedback into the game design process has strong intuitive appeal. Rather than just guessing what players want, why not ask them directly? In fact, while the theory may be simple, the practice of gathering authe

44: The Thread and the Tapestry

Mar 6th, 2018 1h 3m

Designing a single gameplay system is a meaningful challenge by itself, but it’s also only the first step in the design of modern games. Today’s games are built not around the single threads of individual systems, but rather around complex tape

43: The Process Paradox

Feb 19th, 2018 55m 3s

The game industry exists at the intersection of two very different worlds: the world of games as pure creative expression, and the world of games as products. Superimposing these perspectives is no easy feat; how does one reconcile the unpredic

42: Grist for the Grind

Feb 6th, 2018 58m 15s

The play pattern of “grinding”, or repeatedly playing the same content in order to level a character or earn rewards, is surely one of gaming’s most curious idiosyncrasies. How can playing the same content time and time again be fun? In fact, g

41: Open Worlds, Open Questions

Jan 23rd, 2018 59m 16s

Open-world games promise the opportunity to immerse oneself in an entirely new reality, replete with characters to meet, adventures to undertake, and mysteries to solve. With a pitch like that, it’s not hard to understand why so much recent des

40: The Explorer's Journey

Jan 9th, 2018 59m 20s

Think back on your most memorable gaming moments and there’s a good chance you’ll recognize the themes of exploration and discovery running through many fond memories. From The Legend of Zelda’s iconic secret passageways to the camouflaged nook

39: Respecting the Player

Dec 25th, 2017 1h 1m

The games industry, much like other creative businesses, depends on the principle of fair exchange between creators and audiences. It’s an exchange that can be enumerated in dollars and cents of course, but there is a second very important ingr

38: The Best Games You Almost Forgot

Dec 12th, 2017 56m 35s

From action to narrative to family-friendly adventure, 2017 delivered a bumper crop of truly superb games. In fact, with such an abundance of excellent titles on offer, the discerning fan’s biggest challenge is making sure no worthwhile experie

37: Solving the Right Problems

Nov 28th, 2017 58m 50s

Game design is a famously multifaceted pursuit, but what if you were asked to pick just one skill that most clearly distinguishes great game designers from their peers? What do you think this single powerful ability might be? On Episode 37 of V

36: Loot Pursuit

Nov 14th, 2017 53m 22s

Loot boxes are a potent trend in modern game design, translating powerful mechanisms of motivation and operant conditioning into a startlingly effective form of micro-transaction. Indeed, loot boxes are so efficient at monetizing player attenti

35: The Perils of Perfect

Oct 31st, 2017 1h 4m

While we all have our own reasons for playing and loving games, fun generally features high on the list. Sometimes though, our desire to play games skillfully—to best our opponents or to achieve that elusive perfect play-through—can turn what i

34: Lone Wanderers

Oct 17th, 2017 57m 10s

It wasn’t so long ago that the term “single-player game” was unnecessarily descriptive, the former being implied by the technical infancy of the latter. Today though, in our world of friend lists and ubiquitous network connections, single-playe

33: Choice and Consequences

Oct 3rd, 2017 1h

To play games is to make decisions. From tiny implicit choices to grand and thoughtful reflections, the act of choosing a course and observing its outcome is a core loop that unifies games of all stripes. Yet though all games offer choices, onl

32: Destiny's Call

Sep 19th, 2017 1h

Like a comet returning to our solar system after a long journey, this month marks the arrival of Destiny 2: the second installment in Bungie’s outsized shared-world shooter. While the first Destiny landed to mixed reviews, hopes are high that t

31: Strategic Terrain

Sep 5th, 2017 1h

Any meaningful challenge requires us to move between different levels of thought: big-picture strategy flows down to tactical detail, and in-the-moment observation flows back up to refine our overall plan. As games push into ever more ambitious

30: The Happy Place

Aug 22nd, 2017 56m 59s

Art is capable of inspiring the full galaxy of human emotions, so why are games so often preoccupied with darker shades of feeling? Though many of us were introduced to gaming with vibrant and cheery titles like the Super Marios of yore, the ga

29: Design as Discovery

Aug 8th, 2017 1h 2m

It can be easy to talk about game design as a discrete phase of game development: an initial step in the process where you firmly set down what it is that you want to build. In fact, effective game design is something that occurs continuously t

28: In the Loop

Jul 25th, 2017 53m 6s

Gameplay loops are the repeatable circuits of motivation, action, and reward from which player experience arises. The best designers understand how to weave and layer these loops with great dexterity, crafting nested structures that suffuse eve

27: Equilibrium

Jul 11th, 2017 59m 51s

In the parlance of game design, balance refers to the equilibrium between a game’s component parts: that carefully tuned web of relationships between goals, systems, and challenges from which fun is intended to arise. Skillfully balanced games

26: E3 Reverie

Jun 27th, 2017 1h 5m

E3, the Electronic Entertainment Expo, is a marquee event on the game industry’s annual calendar, offering publishers and platform holders a lavish stage for unveiling their latest offerings. Amidst the elaborate sets, bombastic presentations,