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Lewis Pulsipher's Blog
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Dr. Lew Pulsipher started playing boardgames more than 50 years ago. He designed his own games, then discovered strategic "realistic" gaming with early Avalon Hill wargames, and ultimately earned a Ph.D. in military and diplomatic history. Formerly contributing editor to several role-playing game magazines and author of over a hundred game magazine articles, he is designer of Britannia (UK, US, and Germany in separate editions), Dragon Rage, Valley of the Four Winds, Swords and Wizardry, and Diplomacy Games & Variants. Britannia (2nd edition) appeared in 2006, with foreign editions (German, French, Spanish, Hungarian) in 2008. It was described in an Armchair General review of a 2006 edition as "ready to continue on as one of the great titles in the world of games". His "day job" is teaching game design in the Southeast, where he has 17,000 classroom hours of experience, mostly teaching computer networking, in college and graduate school. Current projects are at PulsipherGames.Com. Game design blog: http://pulsiphergamedesign.blogspot.com/
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Expert Blogs
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Interaction in Games |
| Posted by Lewis Pulsipher on Sun, 08 Nov 2009 09:38:00 EST in
Game Design
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| Initial attempt to categorize types of interaction in games. Once again, derived originally from class discussion. As with all such lists, there is no single or "right" way to categorize something this complex. |
| Read More... | 5 Comments |
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Defining "Hard Core" and "Casual"? |
| Posted by Lewis Pulsipher on Fri, 06 Nov 2009 11:39:00 EST in
Game Design
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| In class we spent some time trying to differentiate between “Hard Core” and “Casual” video game players. This usually results in a fairly good list, but it’s likely more can be added to it. I’ve decided to post it to see what experienced people think. |
| Read More... | 17 Comments |
Surprise: Movies Based On Games Aren't Likely To Be Good  |
| Posted by Lewis Pulsipher on Fri, 30 Oct 2009 02:21:00 EDT in
Visual Art
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| Reading an article in the latest Game Informer magazine about the poor record of movies derived from games, my reaction was "that's not surprising." Games aren't a good storytelling medium, which makes a successful movie less likely to derive from a game. |
| Read More... | 22 Comments |
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"Everyone Plays Video Games" - NOT. |
| Posted by Lewis Pulsipher on Mon, 03 Aug 2009 01:03:00 EDT in
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| Optimistic pundits like to say "everyone plays video games". That's not even true in the USA, and certainly not worldwide. Maybe "everyone watches movies" could be justified, but the equipment is much cheaper and much less effort is required. |
| Read More... | 1 Comments |
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Going Into The Video Game Business As An Indie |
| Posted by Lewis Pulsipher on Tue, 28 Jul 2009 12:47:00 EDT in
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| If you're going to start a video game company, or if you deal with a small or startup company, the company needs to have a business plan, and the founders need to recognize that "passion", "hustle", and "hard work" are not enough to succeed in business. |
| Read More... | 1 Comments |
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What Business Are You Really In? |
| Posted by Lewis Pulsipher on Wed, 15 Jul 2009 07:26:00 EDT in
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| The great railroad companies failed because they thought they were in the railroad business, whereas they were really in the transportation business. Some video game companies think they're in the technology or film business: big mistake. |
| Read More... | 15 Comments |
[More Lewis Pulsipher Blogs]
Lewis Pulsipher's Comments
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Comment In: Defining "Hard Core" and "Casual"? [Blog - 11/06/2009 - 11:39]
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@Christian Not as concerned is ... @Christian Not as concerned is hardly the same thing as not concerned . These are generalizations, exceptions are easy to find, particularly if you decide who is casual or HC and then look for exceptions. Yes, ego is a really big problem, one of the reasons why the world at ... |
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Comment In: Surprise: Movies Based On Games Aren't Likely To Be Good [Blog - 10/30/2009 - 02:21]
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Thanks for the comments. A ... Thanks for the comments. A really successful movie-- 200M domestic range--must have a larger audience than the devotees of any video game. So it cannot appeal only to the core who loved that game some of whom will hate the movie no matter what... . Consequently, the movie may not ... |
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Comment In: VGS 09: Game Designers - Everything You Know Is Wrong [News - 10/30/2009 - 02:47]
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One poster characterizes the article ... One poster characterizes the article point of view as Sell semi-addictive crap exploiting human weaknesses . But how is this different from Facebook games Not at all, as far as I can see. I find Facebook games tedious, pointless, but they're played by many more people than video games that ... |
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Comment In: NPD: Gamers Prize Word Of Mouth Most Heavily When Buying [News - 09/14/2009 - 02:29]
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Sigh. Well, I'm the one ... Sigh. Well, I'm the one who can't read, I see that the 12-25 year olds aren't listed. They must be less than the largest group at 24 which still leaves at least 13 over 45. Sorry. |
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Comment In: Analysis: Game AI & Our Cheatin’ Hearts [News - 09/14/2009 - 05:23]
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If a game is treated ... If a game is treated as a predictable interactive puzzle, then whenever the AI OR a human player appears to do very well, there will be accusations of cheating. Hacking games to cheat seems to be common amongst online players. If the game represents or models something that resembles the ... |
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Comment In: Opinion: Are Games Too Much Like Work? [News - 09/04/2009 - 05:14]
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I stopped reading comments on ... I stopped reading comments on this article when commenters descended to the ad hominem logical fallacy, presumably because they couldn't think of any counter-point to the actual statements in the article. One of my students characterized the comments as mud-slinging . Having read many comments on other sites such as ... |
[More Lewis Pulsipher Comments]
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