The Quixotic Engineer

As a longtime fan of the Halo series, I’ve enjoyed seeing its evolution over the years. Each game builds from the strong foundation of the “golden triangle” (guns, grenades, melee) and sandbox combat design (vehicles, enemy AI interactions, wide open levels, physics, etc.) From there, several games in the series have experimented with various new player abilities. For instance, Halo 2 and 3 dabbled with dual wielding, and later entries added sprinting and clambering.

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Eurogamer recently invited developers from Naughty Dog and Insomniac Games to share their thoughts on accessible game design. I was thrilled to relate some anecdotes of working with our terrific accessibility consultants, and how novel features and mechanics emerged from our collaboration. I also got to express my viewpoint that accessibility is an exciting frontier in game design, and there are still so many foundational design and implementation questions waiting to be explored.

Eurogamer – How Naughty Dog and Insomniac Games think about accessibility

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Arkane Studios are one of my favourite developers. Playing through Deathloop has made me realize that I’ve been playing their games the wrong way for years.

I’ll get into the nitty-gritty of this revelation, but first I want to frame it within a general game design principle. It’s not enough for designers to provide players with a myriad of interesting gameplay options (as Arkane games certainly do). Within those options, players may find a strategy that’s boring but reliable and effective. The existence of such a degenerate strategy may lead some players to repeatedly use it even if they ruin the game for themselves.

It is therefore essential that designers make boring tactics impossible or ineffective.

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Photograph by Jake Ratner

A few years ago I started making Twitter bots as a weekend creative coding hobby, developing a dozen or so through 2015-2016. I’ve more recently developed a keen interest / anxiety around climate change, and have been reading various popular books on the subject. Last weekend, I combined those passions and created a new bot: @ClimateClockBot.

Recognizing the niche appeal of such an endeavour, I’d like to take a moment to expand on why I think bots are interesting and what I hoped to accomplish with this project.

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Earlier this year we wrapped up four years of development and shipped The Last of Us Part II. While most of my work was on systems, combat, and AI, I also co-headed our effort to push the boundaries of accessibility.

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