Ryan Shields

For those nostalgic for the days when racing games evolved beyond tires and asphalt and took to the futuristic, dystopian skies, I introduce RedOut: Lightspeed Edition. Production company 505 Games has recently announced that this exclusive edition of RedOut will…

If I’m not mistaken, many of us remember things fondly. That particular place, this particular song, that particular person—whatever the thing, it triggers a memory laden with a thin, fading gold. In remembering we fondly mourn the flakes of olden…

Recently, in my downtime, I’ve recognized that many contemporary video game icons confirm a truism about reiteration. And this is the truism. Few things are original, in the sense of never being done before; many things are original, in the…

Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, Start. Gamers among us perhaps know that series of inputs as the Konami Code. The Konami Code is, arguably, the most popular cheat code in gaming history, giving the player…

Some time ago, I began a series on how games are made. Apologies for the recent detour on stories and storytelling; I find the topic fascinating, and I think it’s a topic often overlooked in recent years, with open world…

Lately I’ve been writing pieces on the nature of storytelling. This should be the last piece in the mini-series, for I am running out of ideas and readers are perhaps charging me with beating a dead horse. So, I figure…

What do Breath of the Wild, the latest Ghost Recon, and Kingdom Hearts 0.2 have in common? They have open worlds. Open world games give players freedom to explore, to play, to make their own adventure. In recent times open…

Two weeks ago I deviated from my game development series and began a mini-series on what goes into a story. In the first article of this mini-series, I distinguished between story and plot, outlining the nature and purpose of storytelling.…

In July 2012, during a midnight showing of The Dark Knight Rises, James Holmes shot up a theatre in Aurora, Colorado, killing 12 and injuring 70. Adam Lanza shot and killed 28 people—approximately 18 children and 10 adults—at Sandy Hook…

Back in February I wrote an article on how games are made. The article, I hope, delineated how most games are made. In this article, and, perhaps, future articles, I will go into more depth on the first step in…