Mike is a seasoned Design Director with 17 years of industry experience (formerly of EA, Radical and THQ). His expertise lies in the systems, mechanics & feature design and direction of racing, combat and character-action console games. He has designed, directed and balanced most of the gameplay systems, mechanics and driving physics for several versions of Road Rash and for Scarface: The World is Yours and has also done design and direction work on several EA franchises including James Bond. Most recently Mike was a Sr. Creative Manager at THQ working with multiple creative teams and helping with the evaluation and evangelism of new game pitches.
Unsatisfied with the heavy imbalance of theory-based design articles, Mike started a Gamasutra Feature Series on Gameplay Fundamentals in order to help fill the void of gameplay-focused design, level production and execution process articles.
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http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20061128/lopez_01.shtml
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3848/gameplay_fundamentals_revisited_.php?page=1
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3863/gameplay_fundamentals_revisited_.php
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3959/gameplay_fundamentals_the_.php
@Glen: I wonder how long it will take Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo and the top publishers to publicly release digital distribution, DLC and micro-transaction numbers and for NPD to report them. I'm not holding my breath...
@ Ephriam, I stand corrected and do recall that now. Thanks. Still I think there is much more heat on our industry than on the retailers but I have already gone on too long. Good day.
Anyone who is interested in getting an external writer for their project take Susan's lessons to heart and definitely bring the writer s on early and allow them to iterate with the designers as much as possible. The results will be significantly better than if you just try to shoehorn ...
@gstarr - those are some valid points but I would have to respectfully disagree with your reasoning that the digital market is all down hill. That announcement was based on the early release numbers of GTA IV Lost and Damned, not on lifetime numbers the lifetime of digital can be ...
Good point about simplicity in control vs. simplicity in interface. The Sony interface is even more complex IMOHO with dual moving axis horiz/vert . But I think Natal will fail to become mass market for other reasons the same ones that plagued every other peripheral add on in console history ...
