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I'm a designer/programmer with 5 years industry experience. I'm most interested in designing and creating multiplayer games, bringing people together and increasing participation (bringing casual and hardcore players together) whilst maintaining depth and accessibility. I strongly believe that games can be designed such that losing is fun and all players can enjoy games, whilst still having a competitive edge. Particular areas that currently interest me:
- Depth, player choice
- Intuitive gameplay
- Emergent gameplay
- Feedback loops, promoting learning
- Making failure or losing fun
- Balancing (including self-balancing mechanics)
- Teamwork / Co-op mechanics design
- Prediction, bluffing and meta-game (enabling games psychology)
- Mechanics design that is non-reliant on level design
http://uk.linkedin.com/in/michaelparkerdesigner |
Member Blogs
Designing Multiplayer Team-based Mechanics without adding Frustration  |
| Posted by Michael Parker on Fri, 21 Sep 2012 10:05:00 EDT in
Design,
Console/PC
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| Why reliance on teammates can cause frustration if your game systems are badly designed, and some patterns to prevent this |
| Read More... | 5 Comments |
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Adding Psychology to Multiplayer Games - Why? |
| Posted by Michael Parker on Thu, 01 Sep 2011 12:38:00 EDT in
Design
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| Predicting your opponent and bluffing. Adding these types of psychology to multiplayer games is a great way to increase depth, longevity, social interaction, and accessibility. Should we see more of it? |
| Read More... | 4 Comments |
Michael Parker's Comments
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Comment In: Want To Help Stop Youth Cyberbullying? Let Your Kids Raid More. [Blog - 05/23/2013 - 10:40]
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You 're right, Ramin, but ... You 're right, Ramin, but I think Blizzard has made some steps in the right direction. Back in the old days of WoW there was a lot more of a competitive and blame culture. In the early days you raided with 40 people at once - a group of that ... |
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Comment In: Learning to Love Handicaps in Competitive Games [Feature - 05/22/2013 - 04:00]
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Hard, but not impossible. There ... Hard, but not impossible. There 's nothing to stop you having ambigious on screen effects so that multiple abilities share the same onscreen power-up effect, for example. The player himself knows which ability he has chosen, but the opponent can 't tell simply by looking at the screen he would ... |
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Comment In: The Design Debates [Blog - 07/31/2012 - 04:31]
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I do kind of think ... I do kind of think it 's interesting and a little frustrating that the best discussions are often started by flawed articles, or articles which people disagree with. Sometimes I write things and people just agree with me and have nothing to add. Whilst that 's nice in a way, ... |
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Comment In: The “QWERTY” Game Controller [Blog - 06/14/2012 - 11:14]
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I think this is true ... I think this is true for certain genres of games. For example, beat em ups e.g. street fighter , 3rd person action games which don 't require precision aiming e.g. god of war, assassins creed , platform games... For these genres I agree I am very comfortable with the xbox ... |
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Comment In: Skyrim (Part 2) - The Dovakiin Switcheroo [Blog - 03/11/2012 - 05:16]
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One of the many problems ... One of the many problems with skyrim is indeed that it 's truly a sandbox / exploration / immersive / adventuring game, and not a challenging / structured / levelling driven game, yet it tries hard to lie to you about it and convince you otherwise. I sense the developers ... |
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Comment In: Minmaxing - Is turn-based fun anymore? [Blog - 02/06/2012 - 04:14]
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It's interesting that as designers, ... It's interesting that as designers, we still aren't using a common vocabulary to describe the types of mechanics involve in game design. Looking ahead at possible moves is one thing. Manual dexterity is another. Social interaction, or psychology / bluffing / prediction is another maybe more than 1 field here ... |
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