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November 22, 2009
 
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November 22, 2009
 
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November 22, 2009
 
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Blogs

John Mawhorter's Blog

A game designer in training. Currently a student at Carleton College. Deeply interested in all things game related, though I fall on the mechanics side of the great mechanics-story debate.

Member Blogs

Game Design Questionnaire  Featured Blogs
Posted by John Mawhorter on Sun, 16 Aug 2009 03:40:00 EDT in Game Design
A fun questionnaire on game design preferences.
Read More... | 18 Comments

Specific Games Followup: Call of Duty 4's Mile High
Posted by John Mawhorter on Wed, 05 Aug 2009 07:59:00 EDT in
Call of Duty 4's Mile High as an example of a "specific games" type experience (train over and over until it is perfect).
Read More... | 0 Comments

Tweaking
Posted by John Mawhorter on Tue, 04 Aug 2009 07:51:00 EDT in Game Design
PC games and the tweaks required to get them working well on your machine are bad news.
Read More... | 3 Comments

sRPG Combat System: Combinations Galore
Posted by John Mawhorter on Tue, 04 Aug 2009 06:02:00 EDT in
A twitch-based combat system for turn-based RPGS (sRPGs like Final Fantasy Tactics)
Read More... | 3 Comments

Luck Ain't Hardcore  Featured Blogs
Posted by John Mawhorter on Mon, 03 Aug 2009 07:57:00 EDT in Game Design
Luck and hardcore players don't mix.
Read More... | 3 Comments

Specific Games
Posted by John Mawhorter on Sat, 01 Aug 2009 07:55:00 EDT in Game Design
Specific games and art are interesting, but most of all specific games are fun.
Read More... | 0 Comments

[More John Mawhorter Blogs]   

John Mawhorter's Comments

Comment In: Analysis: Kotick's 'Raise The Price' Comment And AAA Game Value [News - 08/11/2009 - 05:25]

Releasing DJ Hero and Tony ...

Releasing DJ Hero and Tony Hawk: Ride during a recession is gonna kill sales for both those games especially since they aren't hardcore focused . Ever wonder why so many games are delayed until 2010. It's the economy stupid

Comment In: Game Formats [Blog - 08/10/2009 - 04:21]

Format isn't really what most ...

Format isn't really what most companies want to copy. They don't merely want first-person interaction, they want to make a FPS specifically. When they copy and try to improve upon presumably Call of Duty 4 say, they fail because they don't have the talent or resources of Infinity Ward. I ...

Comment In: Activision's Kotick Earned $15 Million In 2008 [News - 08/10/2009 - 05:41]

The whole we don't need ...

The whole we don't need money because we get to work in a great, fun industry thing is what holds down everyone's salaries. Hollywood is heavily unionized from the directors down to the setbuilders, another reason they get paid so much.

Comment In: Improving Gameplay Testing In The Console Game Industry [Blog - 08/07/2009 - 05:42]

Even in the PC world ...

Even in the PC world where users are more used to bugs and stuff people often take the beta to be the game itself and bad word of mouth can really sink things. This, of course, just means that developers I'm mostly talking MMO developers, but they are the ones ...

Comment In: Vital Game Narrative: A Conversation With Rhianna Pratchett [Feature - 08/07/2009 - 06:50]

Often games seem to have ...

Often games seem to have an odd disconnect between the player character and the action which they're performing. So I often try to start with the central premises of the gameplay and work out what kind of character would be engaging in such activities, where would they have come from, ...

Comment In: World Of Warcraft's Chinese Relaunch Sees Government-Mandated Content Changes [News - 08/06/2009 - 02:35]

What I said/meant earlier was ...

What I said/meant earlier was that censorship implies the outright destruction of the art/artist part to me more than the rating boards will rate your movie X if you don't take out the graphic sex side of the scale, and that this seems to fall in the middle, which means ...

[More John Mawhorter Comments]