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	February 10, 2012

		Road to the IGF: Lucky Frame's Pugs Luv Beats

		Analyst questions validity of unusual January NPD results [4]

		Strong Tales of Xillia sales help Namco Bandai to Q3 profits


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	February 10, 2012

		Principles of an Indie Game Bottom Feeder [19]

		Postmortem: CyberConnect 2's Solatorobo: Red the Hunter [1]

		Jerked Around by the Magic Circle - Clearing the Air Ten Years Later [40]


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	February 10, 2012

		Beachhead / Activision Senior Operations Engineer

		Sony Computer Entertainment America LLC Manager Quality Assurance

		Beachhead / Activision Senior Front End Web Engineer

		Beachhead / Activision Senior Back End Web Engineer

		Beachhead / Activision User Experience Lead

		Sony Computer Entertainment America LLC Senior Software Engineer

Jason Schklar's Blog Expert Blogs

Game and User Experience Consultant.

Experienced game producer, designer, and user experience wonk. I partner with creative and technically savvy people to create fun, immersive, and awe-inspiring user experiences.

My Blog: Play-Think-Write

My Twitter: @Jackalshorns

My LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jschklar

Credits:

* Rise of Nations (usability guy and "learn as you play" tutorial co-designer)

* Rise of Nations: Thrones & Patriots (producer & usability guy)

* Rise of Legends (producer, usability guy, and "learn as you play" tutorial co-designer)

* Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge (usability guy and "learn as you play" tutorial co-designer)

* Jade Empire (usability guy)

* Catan for XBLA (producer, usability guy, and "learn as you play" tutorial co-designer)

* Ninja Blade (external producer & game design director on core combat, controls, and "learn as you play" tutorial)

Expert Blogs

Co-op/social Dungeon Master: Left 4 Dead as a proof of concept
Posted by Jason Schklar on Sat, 07 Mar 2009 03:55:00 EST in Game Design
Creating and DM'ing an RPG is time intensive, can result in unbalanced and unpolished levels, and is generally a thankless and lonely task. Playing as Infected in Left 4 Dead led me to rethink how a game might make DM'ing fun for both DMs and Adventurers.
Read More... \| 4 Comments

Jason Schklar's Comments

Comment In: Analysis: McMillen On Risk & Reward In Video Games [News - 05/07/2010 - 09:15]
I wonder what happens when ... I wonder what happens when we define reward more broadly. Like, say, social reward . Your analysis of the 1up mushroom as a reward for freeform exploration made me think about a lot of the animosity some folks feel towards achievement points . Really, achivement points are social rewards for ...

Comment In: No More Wrong Turns [Feature - 08/25/2009 - 04:55]
Great overview and classification system. ... Great overview and classification system. The only thing that immediately jumps out as missing is the eff off or anti-weenie marker. Something that lets the player know whoops, I've gone the wrong way and should probably head back . Sometimes this is done punitively fall in water/acid and die . ...

Comment In: Usability Usability Usability [Blog - 08/20/2009 - 04:45]
Hey Dan, The added bonus ... Hey Dan, The added bonus of having usable tools is that this directly affects the team's ability to make the game, itself, more usable because they can iterate faster in response to game usability feedback. One of the most frustrating things for both myself and my clients is when we ...

Comment In: Social Gaming Summit: In-Depth On The State Of Social Gaming [News - 06/23/2009 - 01:33]
It's quite funny and a ... It's quite funny and a little bit ironic that there are no comments here, while other articles about the hard core games industry get inundated with posts. The casual and social games industry has been and will continue to grow at a rate that will completely leave the traditional games ...

Comment In: Interview: BioShock 2's Finley On Designing For Player Desire [News - 06/23/2009 - 05:47]
@Justin, @Dan: Portal and other ... @Justin, @Dan: Portal and other Valve titles are certainly accessible -- if you narrowly define accessibility as accesible to the core market of interest which is experienced first person shooter players. One of my greatest pleasures of playing Valve games is that I can jump in and be assured that ...

Comment In: Analysis: Can Nintendo Take 'Accessibility' Too Far? [News - 06/24/2009 - 05:31]
@Sean Parton: Cool example -- ... @Sean Parton: Cool example -- and I think that these mundane assists might be even MORE important than helping people through well constructed but intentionallly challenging puzzles. The game designer did NOT intend find the elevator button to be a challenge, recognized that folks might have trouble seeing it, and ...

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