Designer's Notebook

Ernest Adams writes a regular column for Gamasutra about games design that is often fun and thoughtful. My favourite articles are his looks at where designers go wrong called "Bad Designer, No Twinkie", eg:

Too many computer games are fulfillments of adolescent power-fantasies, and a meaningless apocalyptic scenario is a classic symptom. It's been quite a while since I was an adolescent, and I just don't believe them any more. Maybe that means I'm a boring old adult, no longer capable of grandiose visions… but let's face it, the people who run around yelling about conquering the world are nut cases. I think it's more accurate to say that I just don't care. I don't want to rule the world. I'm not terribly interested in saving the galaxy. It's too big and impersonal a task, and it's not credible that a single individual can do it anyway. Don't ask me to. I don't feel like it.

He also has is own website, where you can find all sorts of articles and links to games design material. Including lectures such as The Philosophical Roots of Computer Game Design:

For the last 20 years we’ve been asking, “Can a computer game make you cry?” and for the most part, our answer has been “well, yes, probably, but why in God’s name would you want to?” That’s a typically classical, male, English, sort of a response. And the comebacks are:

1. Because this is a medium, not just a business, and until we can make you cry we haven’t fully exploited its potential, and


2. Because there’s money in making people cry. What the hell do you think the chick-flick and the chick-lit phenomena are about? Women like to cry. It’s good for them. It joggles their hormones around and makes them happy. And they’ll pay money for that.

Hours of good reading, if you like this sort of thing, which I do. It's getting to the point where I find the ideas behind games design more interesting than the games themselves.