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On Relativism And Games

This is a post about the psychology and art of games, and we’ll return to your regularly scheduled programming blog shortly.

In almost every game I’ve played, there has been a force of evil. In fact, an overwhelming majority of not just games, but films and books, and stories that we tell our children, and legends of gods and demons, have a simple premise: good versus bad. Humans versus aliens. Allies versus axis. Good people versus bad people.

Now, this goes deep into our roots. Those who share our moral views are with us, they’re the good side. Those who don’t are bad people, the bad side. An over-simplified look at things? Well, bear with me.

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Flax HTML5 Game Engine

Flax HTML5 Game Engine Development Diary Part 5

While sitting in my Software Engineering lecture today about the waterfall development process I couldn’t help but think that the waterfall model was the model of development that we had unknowingly adopted when we set out to develop the Flax Engine. The waterfall model is a sequential software development process which was developed in the 70′s Continue reading ‘Flax HTML5 Game Engine Development Diary Part 5′

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Kid Paddle – A Serious Misrepresentation of Video Games



Kid Paddle, for anyone (which is probably everyone) who doesn’t know, is a children’s cartoon based around a few boys who spend the majority of their time in video arcades, getting into adventures involving playing against players who are better than them, making new arcade games, doing research to improve their ability to play etc.

Although this concept may appear sound enough, albeit slightly contrived, it is the kind of show that would quite easily affect parent’s opinions of video games in a negative way, especially due to the tenuous climate video games currently find themselves in.

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Choice systems and immersion in games

Choice systems and immersion in games

A great many games in the last few years have had choice systems, most based on dialogue choices the player makes in certain situations. While this is certainly a step in the right direction, it’s also quite flawed. Continue reading ‘Choice systems and immersion in games’