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The Community Blog (An Invitation)
New Community Blog (The Unintentional Gatekeeping of Video Games)

Chris Avellone's Blog

A blog by Chris Avellone in General

  • Entries

    63

  • Comments

    919

  • Views

    1178826

About this blog

Musings and uh, Stuff.

Entries in this blog

Classes to Take and Games to Run

A question from Chris Norris:   Greetings, Mr. Avellone   I saw your lecture at Framework 09 and was deeply inspired. I am currently studying to be an animator, but writing and design speak to me more than art or animation does. I was hoping I could ask you a few short questions?   1) I've looked at transferring to a games design degree and they teach classes such as physics, programming (LUA, C++) -and- manage to pack one or two art classes in there as well. I am w

Challenge vs Frustration: Bloggin' on Time Limits

So a designer's job is to make jumping through hoops fun, and calibrating the challenge/frustration ratio of jumping through said hoops.   This blog post stems from a question from the AMA Brian Fargo and I did on Reddit (long ago) concerning the issues with this in regards to one infamous piece of game design: time limits, and how two different games dealt with the challenge.   From a gamemaster/game designer perspective, the idea of time limits is appealing. It creates pres

Blog o' Romance

So, I generally despise writing companion romances (I think unrequited and/or doomed ones are ultimately more dramatic), but there are some techniques I've accumulated over the years that I try to incorporate into writing and designing romances in RPGs.   A lot of these things came out while writing Gannayev-of-Dreams in Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer, and I suppose it could hold true for other inter-party romances in games. What follows is a summary of some points we kicke

Awards for video game writers... but not designer-writers.

I have to confess, I was pretty happy to hear the Writers Guild of America, West was giving awards for video game writing.   Award Criteria and Submissions   Then the fine print came out, which basically invalidates all the writing work we did at Black Isle and Obsidian for the past ten years, including:   "Submitted games MUST have separate credit for writing (i.e. Written By, Story By, Writer, Story Designer, etc.). Writing credits must be verified by their inclus

Aliens and the "Action RPG."

There were some concerns floating around about Aliens being an action RPG, so I thought it would best to clarify. While there will be action elements to it, it is still an RPG in every sense of the word.   An analysis of the elements, along with diagrams as to what constitutes an action RPG in the aliens universe, is presented for your viewing enjoyment here. Hypothetically, the diagrams may resemble cartoons. And it may not be a serious analysis. All other standard caveats apply.   Happy

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