PickVidsBest Game design Videos
The 65 Game design videos here were recommended by different people across different months. Choose by who it is for: 1 introductory, 14 intermediate, 50 for a general viewer, and 0 for someone who wants the harder derivation. Most of them are a talk. What they share is that one speaker finishes a claim, and the examples exist to hold that claim up. Channels you will keep seeing include GDC Festival of Gaming, Extra Credits, /noclip.
Juice it or lose it - a talk by Martin Jonasson & Petri Purho
Martin Jonasson and Petri Purho take a bland Breakout clone and add layer after layer of 'juice' such as easing, particles, screen shake and sound until it feels alive.
Jan Willem Nijman - Vlambeer - "The art of screenshake" at INDIGO Classes 2013
Vlambeer's Jan Willem Nijman shows how to make an action game feel great by stacking small effects like screenshake, recoil and particles onto a basic shooter.
Preventing the Collapse of Civilization / Jonathan Blow (Thekla, Inc)
A DevGAMM talk by Jonathan Blow arguing that civilizations can lose technological capability and that software quality is already deteriorating.
Failing to Fail: The Spiderweb Software Way
Jeff Vogel of Spiderweb Software gives a GDC 2018 retrospective on surviving as an indie game maker since 1994, from shareware days through Steam.
Exploring the Tech and Design of Noita
In this 2019 GDC session, Petri Purho of Nolla Games explains the technical side of Noita's physics engine, including scaling a falling-sand simulation to large continuous worlds and adding destructible rigid bodies.
'Diablo': A Classic Game Postmortem
David Brevik's GDC 2016 postmortem of Diablo covers how it went from a turn-based claymation DOS concept to a real-time action RPG, plus the story of Blizzard North and development anecdotes.
Jonathan Blow: Game design: the medium is the message
Jonathan Blow's CreativeMornings talk arguing that business models shape game design, drawing an analogy between 1970s TV and HBO and between free-to-play and premium games.
Manufactured Discontent and Fortnite
Dan Olson of Folding Ideas critiques Fortnite's monetization, arguing it uses manufactured discontent, such as shop design and skins, to push spending.
Jonathan Blow: Video Games and the Human Condition
Jonathan Blow's 2010 Rice University talk argues that game designers refine their techniques in ways that can manipulate players, as with A/B-tested social games.
DOOM: Behind the Music
Mick Gordon's GDC 2017 session on composing the Doom (2016) soundtrack.
Classic Game Postmortem: Sid Meier's Civilization
A 2017 GDC postmortem in which Sid Meier and Bruce Shelley tell how Civilization came together from board game design and sim game experience.
Propaganda Games: Sesame Credit - The True Danger of Gamification - Extra Credits
An Extra Credits episode on China's Sesame Credit, which gamifies obedient citizenship through a social score.
Classic Game Postmortem: Ultima Online
A 2018 GDC panel where Raph Koster, Starr Long, Richard Garriott and Rich Vogel look back on what went right and wrong building and running Ultima Online.
Nintendo - Putting Play First
Game Maker's Toolkit examines Nintendo's design approach of starting from a core play mechanic, making it fun, and building around it.
Dwarf Fortress Creator Explains its Complexity & Origins | Noclip Interview
A /noclip interview with Tarn Adams of Bay 12 Games about Dwarf Fortress: where the ASCII simulation came from, how it works, and the plans for its Steam release.
Ross's Game Dungeon: Deus Ex
Ross Scott's Game Dungeon episode on Deus Ex, a long review of the game covering its narrative, politics and economic philosophy as well as its design.
Pitfall Classic Postmortem With David Crane Panel at GDC 2011 (Atari 2600)
David Crane, designer of Pitfall for the Atari 2600, gives a GDC 2011 postmortem on the game's design challenges.
Sid Meier's Psychology of Game Design
Civilization creator Sid Meier's GDC 2010 talk on applying psychology to game design.
Practical Creativity
Raph Koster's 2014 GDC Next talk on what science says about creativity, with practical steps game designers and developers can use to be more creative.
How Gamers Killed Ultima Online's Virtual Ecology | War Stories | Ars Technica
An Ars Technica War Stories episode in which Richard Garriott and Starr Long describe Ultima Online's planned virtual ecology and how players wrecked it.
Space Station 13 Review | AHELP: Clown Grief Pls Ban He™
SsethTzeentach reviews Space Station 13, the chaotic multiplayer game, by recounting absurd stories of singularities, malfunctioning AIs and plasma fires.
What Games Are Like For Someone Who Doesn't Play Games
Razbuten has his wife, who has never played games, try a sampling of titles and shows where she struggles.
TUN: Un-Ruining the MMO
MrBtongue argues that modern theme-park MMOs lost what made earlier sandbox online games compelling, and that MMOs could be saved by returning to sandbox design.
Procedurally Crafting Manhattan for Marvel's Spider-Man
GDC 2019 session where Insomniac's David Santiago describes the procedural systems used to build Manhattan for Marvel's Spider-Man.