Josh Bycer's Blog
For more than seven years, I have been researching and contributing to the field of game design. These contributions range from QA for professional game productions to writing articles for sites like Gamasutra and Quarter To Three.
With my site Game-Wisdom our goal is to create a centralized source of critical thinking about the game industry for everyone from enthusiasts, game makers and casual fans; to examine the art and science of games. I also do video plays and analysis on my Youtube channel. I have interviewed over 500 members of the game industry around the world, and I'm a two-time author on game design with "20 Essential Games to Study" and "Game Design Deep Dive Platformers."
Expert Blogs
Posted by
Josh Bycer
on Wed, 14 Apr 2021 10:53:00 EDT
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My fifth book is starting to take shape, and it's giving me the chance to revisit the topic of Pay to Win Design. For today, I want to discuss the three clear signs that a game is pay to win.
Posted by
Josh Bycer
on Wed, 07 Apr 2021 10:37:00 EDT
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Doing research for horror games, I came to id Software's attempt at making a horror FPS, and I wanted to talk about why the veteran developer messed up when it came to horror.
Posted by
Josh Bycer
on Mon, 29 Mar 2021 11:55:00 EDT
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The recent plans to close Sony's older digital stores frame today's post talking about why videogame preservation needs to be taken more seriously, and the steps I would personally like to see taken.
Posted by
Josh Bycer
on Wed, 17 Mar 2021 11:33:00 EDT
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Success is often hard to measure for game studios, especially indie dev. But for today, I want to talk about an important metric that every studio needs to hit, and sadly, most have yet to reach.
Posted by
Josh Bycer
on Fri, 26 Feb 2021 08:35:00 EST
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Writing my fourth book on horror gave me the chance to revisit the entire Resident Evil franchise, and in today's post, I wanted to try and rank them in terms of horror design.
Posted by
Josh Bycer
on Tue, 16 Feb 2021 08:44:00 EST
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Getting Over It With Bennett Foddy brought the idea of "rage" or "jank" games to the mainstream. Love them or hate them, there's an interesting design discussion about games purposely built to make you pull your hair out.
Josh Bycer's Comments
Comment In:
[Blog - 03/29/2021 - 11:55]
We had a talk about ...
We had a talk about this further on my live gamedev streams, and I think the best analogy would be something like a public library, with funding coming from the government, or a third party, with the role of cataloging, maintaining and providing these games as a free service for ...
Comment In:
[Blog - 01/26/2021 - 09:10]
Comment In:
[Blog - 01/20/2021 - 11:48]
I think it depends on ...
I think it depends on the game and the atmosphere you 're going for. I recently played the Beast Inside which did break up the horror and puzzle-solving with the main character talking to his wife about what 's going on. And there have been other examples where even if ...
Comment In:
[Blog - 08/06/2020 - 11:11]
It 's no secret that ...
It 's no secret that in most f2p games there will be another wall, and when I 've worked with some designers who weren 't so keen on f2p and reduced the requirements to reach the next wall they found that we both made less money and fewer players were ...
Comment In:
[Blog - 07/20/2020 - 10:41]
Comment In:
[Blog - 06/30/2020 - 11:03]
For instance, Magia Record is ...
For instance, Magia Record is having an event right now where you can buy a guaranteed SSR of your choice for a coupon in a pack which IIRC costs 650 gems. So if you go to the gem buying page, you will see you can get that many gems for ...
