Lucas Hardi

Category: Text

  • The Complexity Wall

    There is a complexity wall you hit during development. Even if you are on a small team, there is a point early in development where the complexity of the game makes it too cumbersome to add new systems. Either there are too many systems already there, or too much content built on those systems. What…

  • AAA Games versus Smart TV

    DISCLAIMER: This is a speculative opinion piece based on public information. These opinions are my own and do not represent my employer. The game industry is about to get flipped. The console in the living room has long been the king platform for games, but these days the living room is different. Only blockbusters like…

  • Designing The Warhammer Online UI

    After spending two years as the Lead Concept Artist on Warhammer Online, I was asked to take over the UI design. It was about 6 months before we planned to release the game, we had completed the bulk of the concept art for the game, and Michael Phillippi was ready to step up as the…

  • Game Design Nuggets

    I posted these on a forum recently. I can’t claim them as original thought, but I have found them to be my most useful heuristics in filtering game design ideas: Everything Rests on the Core Loop Sometimes called the “game mechanic” or the “30 seconds of fun,” the core loop is the series of actions…

  • The smeXbox

    I found this sketch on my hard drive. It’s about a year old, but I still believe we will see a lot of the ideas come to fruition in the *next* generation of game consoles. The basic idea is that the momentum from successes like the Wii and the social games market will focus the…