This month, I wanted to get more practical again, and decided to take a bunch of amateur smartphone photos of the equipment and some of the processes I use for analogue prototyping. Enjoy, and may your prototyping be rapid and fruitful!
This blog has grown for a couple of years by now. I've had it called out in 1-1s. I've had people contact me to thank me. I've had people write angry comments and e-mails.
It's high time to provide a guide for newcomers and angry returners alike.
Pitching, to publishers and other stakeholders, is something I've done quite a bit through the years. Sometimes successfully, sometimes not. This month, I wanted to share some general notes from this process, even if I'm unable to share anything from the pitches in question.
An attempt to bring every post on systemic design together. Tells you how to work with it in practice. One of the strengths I've found with this particular approach is that it lifts your focus -- it allows you to work on the design without getting stuck on implementation details too early.
This month's blog post builds on a #gamedesign assumption: the more iterations you have time for, the better your game.
playtank.io/2025/11/12/m...
This month's blog post goes into my thinking on pipelines and frameworks, based on a single key realisation: the quality of your game is directly related to the number of iterations you have time to make.
Roblox is a whole platform, not a "game" in any traditional sense. But I work with games, I know how these systems work, and the reason I play with them on occasion is because I want to understand how it works. That's better than blocking it entirely, in my opinion. (No robux for my kids though...)
My kids have so much fun with Roblox and in more accessible ways than "real" gaming. One game I played with them made me realise how much the direct interaction reminded me of Ultima VI+-style world simulation. The future will be in good hands!
This is a post I've been working on for a very long time, while actively trying to keep it useful. It's an attempt at a practical guide to #gamebalancing, and will have to become a living (though sporadic) document going forward. Would love to have your feedback!
Ahead of this month, I studied some of the works discussing games, game design, definitions, tools, and terms. There's a wealth of knowledge out there, yet the best you can do for your own games, in my opinion, is make up your own words.
This month marks the 50th Playtank.io blog post, and also the first-ever guest post by ex-Sony system designer Keelan Bowker-O'Brien! Enjoy. He knows everything about game economy design that I don't.
playtank.io/2025/08/12/g...
Never even thought of that. My condolances.
Was using my thermos mug and realised as I put on the desk that this represents a considerable part of my professional career. I think this was a Starbreeze x-mas present in 2008 or 2009. The Helldivers 2 controller was given to me by Arrowhead earlier this year.
I laughed out loud when it happened, since it wasn't designed at all, just a consequence of the systems doing what they were supposed to. A friend of mine called the proto "Everyone else is Jason Bourne." :D
Hmm. This is supposed to be a .gif...
Anyway. Great post!
The AI follows a simple rule. If they spot the player the want to attack. If they want to attack and have no weapon, they go to the nearest room with a weapon and grab the nearest weapon. It just happened to be the one I was holding...
Unintended silly systemic stuff.
Love this: "AI feels smartest when it handles a situation gracefully that hardly ever comes up. Without that, no amount of clever behaviour will get you there."
Reminded me of this silliness that happened in a prototype this spring:
I was described as a "social introvert." Had to hear it to understand how accurate it was.
This month's blog post is special, since the excellent Martin Ekdal has given me permission to share some exploratory design work I did as Design Director at Graewolv. It's a post about how role-playing can be used as a game design tool. Enjoy!
Game design is a constantly evolving craft and many of its challenges are tied to its present. But this month's blog post tries to deal with a number of specific challenges, such as recency bias and IP tourism, that felt worth writing about.
This month's blogging concerns how game studios make money. Making Money Making Games. The fact that many developers don't make money *selling* games is still something I need to explain with regularity and it still doesn't make intuitive sense.
playtank.io/2025/05/12/m...
Decided to write a little about game studio financing this month, since it's something many find somewhat unintuitive. Not an exhaustive treatise, but hopefully worth a read!
Playing Death Stranding, and reflecting how every Hideo Kojima game since MGS2 is an interesting often innovative #gamedesign wrapped in a messy indecipherable story told through poorly written 10+-minute cutscenes.
Data points I found fascinating looking through Steam achievements:
- ~10% stop playing in the very early game (tutorial).
- ~25-30% play single-player games to the end. Can be as high as 45-50% near launch for big blockbusters but shrinks over time.
What would happen if we made shorter games?
So many beginning developers ask "which engine should I use?" So this month, I'm going through the engines I've worked with (or alongside) myself, and the takeaways from them. The idea is to show you that engine matters less than getting the work done!
This month's post on #systemicdesign dives into data representation, and terms like state and context. A return to the more technical posts I used to write earlier in this blog's (short) lifetime!
A final entry in the combat philosophy series, that will wrap the more theoretical meanderings and leave me more room to focus on #systemicdesign!
I think it's the best of them too. The later instalments lay on the cutscenes, with The New Colossus having some that are probably 10-15 minutes long...
First week doing systemic design at Arrowhead Game Studios. Excited to see what this brings.