Talk: Exploring and Presenting a Game’s Consequence-Space

I gave a talk at the PRACTICE game design conference at the NYU Game Center a couple months ago:



Slides are here

I had meant to update the talk I gave at Indiecade in 2011, and talk more in depth about how I used these ideas for Miegakure, but in the end because of the half hour format I do not cover the first half (designing mechanics to generate an interesting possibility space) and only cover the second half (how to explore the space the mechanics create). I also talk about a bunch of game design problems that are especially interesting in the case of Miegakure. I also cut the intro a bit, but posted it Here.

5 Responses to “Talk: Exploring and Presenting a Game’s Consequence-Space”

  1. Robbie Losee says:

    Great talk. I was delighted to hear that the stack of different-looking slices will fade into a more consistent-looking 4D space as the game progresses.

  2. Mordecai says:

    Do you have your slides posted anywhere? some of them are a little hard to see.

  3. Xinwei says:

    Brilliant idea and great effort!
    This concept is too difficult to express. Since the presentation method is still 3D, the transition between two spaces is limited with this appear-disappear visualisation. Character also has to move in 3D, and a special movement is defined to be the switch to enter another shared space. It’s basically a challenge of memory.
    BTW, just a thinking: what if there is one puzzle using 4 juxtaposed spaces on the same screen, then the character has different projections in the 4 spaces, player has to somehow try to unify the movement to pass through…

  4. Ness says:

    A level editor would be amazing! I do wonder what a 4D racing game would be like. I’m sure there can be a sort of hide-and-seek game like this–especially if it were first-person. An FPS? Certainly interesting…