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James Hofmann's Blog
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I am a professional game designer with a B.A. in Economics and a serious bent towards coding and scripting.
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Expert Blogs
Time, Perspective, Value, Creativity.  |
| Posted by James Hofmann on Sun, 01 Nov 2009 05:48:00 EST in
Production
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| Some thoughts on game production processes when working solo. |
| Read More... | 3 Comments |
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Game Formats |
| Posted by James Hofmann on Mon, 10 Aug 2009 04:21:00 EDT in
Game Design
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| Thoughts on the concept of game "formats" as templates for game "designs." |
| Read More... | 3 Comments |
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Player Skill, Patterns, Randomization |
| Posted by James Hofmann on Tue, 14 Jul 2009 10:26:00 EDT in
Game Design
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| A lengthy discussion of the relationships between skill, patterns, and randomization, and how they affect games. |
| Read More... | 2 Comments |
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Worlds of Abundance: Currency and Virtual Worlds |
| Posted by James Hofmann on Tue, 09 Jun 2009 06:15:00 EDT in
Game Design
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| A summary of game design elements as metaphorical forms of money, and how video games are implicitly abundant economies. |
| Read More... | 5 Comments |
James Hofmann's Comments
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Comment In: iPhone Piracy: The Inside Story [Feature - 11/18/2009 - 02:55]
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Glenn: Defeating piracy by quietly ... Glenn: Defeating piracy by quietly breaking the game can be very dangerous because it can mislead the user of a pirate copy into thinking you made a buggy, unbalanced, unplayable game. If we are in a world where piracy is predominant, that is going to be the majority impression of ... |
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Comment In: Lead Designers Who Only Say 'No' [Blog - 11/17/2009 - 09:53]
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My brief, but informative experiences ... My brief, but informative experiences from the work-for-hire studio environment were rife with this sort of thing. I did a lot to try to combat it. Understanding everyone's role and balancing their needs to filter out design possibilities before I propose them was very important. Nobody is 100 disciplined about ... |
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Comment In: Using C# For a Commercial Game [Blog - 11/17/2009 - 03:38]
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I've always been on board ... I've always been on board with the idea of using the highest possible levels of abstraction for game code, wherever it's possible. While I've taken on programming as a major skillset, I'm more interested in game design than engine programming, and fighting C gets in the way of that. To ... |
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Comment In: Randy Smith: Do Games Need To Be Fun? [News - 11/17/2009 - 02:46]
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I love the term engagement. ... I love the term engagement. It describes everything we want out of fun, without being saccharine and constraining. |
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Comment In: IGDA Forum: Asking 'Why' Will Keep Games Out Of The Ghetto, Says Hecker [News - 11/13/2009 - 01:10]
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I think the difference between ... I think the difference between games and other media - as an industry - comes from the rise of video games as an early-adopter geek toy. Comics were based on existing printing technology and therefore could go straight to the newsstand. Likewise, movies were mass marketable the moment the projection ... |
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Comment In: Opinion: The Lion's Gate - Majors And Indie Publishing [News - 11/11/2009 - 05:45]
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Music's shift in the last ... Music's shift in the last decade can help inform us of the possibilities. What that industry has now is a sliding scale of backing vs. ownership tradeoffs - you can go 100 indie and DIY everything, you can sign to a small label and retain a sizable stake, and you ... |
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