While playing games, players strive for victory through goals and objectives, which are determined by many factors. Skills, motivation, resources, practice, and, more important, power play a crucial role in this process. The comparison between these elements is an important game design activity to achieve a fair gameplay experience.

For a more general study, I argue that the term fair is more appropriate than the term balance since the latter can be more easily misinterpreted and might also be unwanted. Fair is meant in the sense that the players' experience is acceptable, moderate, or plausible. A fair gameplay experience is meant to be pleasant and engaging, even if it is not necessarily a balanced experience. Perfect balance can make the game feel bland and uninspiring, as all options might feel the same. …

There has been an on-going discussion for years on the influence of games on society. One side protests that video games stimulate aggressive behavior and normalize violence (Grossman and DeGaetano, 2014). According to this line of thought, killing (human) beings in a video game should trigger a negative reaction from gamers. As the opposite happens, players have fun and amuse themselves while playing such games, it is understood that their morals and values have been damaged.

On the other side, violent media, including games, use a strategy called moral management that allows its viewers (and players) to cope with its contents without conflicting with their own values and not becoming permanently violent (Klimmt et al., …

A game's economy is an internal system within a game responsible for all the mechanisms related to the game's resources [1]. In the game’s economy, the term resource is very open and comprises concepts from collectible items (such as coins) to the player’s journey itself. In general, a resource is any concept that can be measured numerically [1]. (For a more in-depth analysis on resources, refer to this previous article).

Resources are handled by the game's economy using 4 basic mechanisms (or 4 pillars), which are: Sources, that create resources out of nothing according to a production rate; Drains, which eliminate resources from the game permanently; Converters, that convert resources into others of different types according to a conversion rate; and, Traders, which trade resources among different entities in the game, such as Players or NPCs [1]. …

Final Fantasy IX is a JRPG released in July of 2000 by Squaresoft. It marks a return to the first Final Fantasy games' medieval style, which had been changed to a more futurist setting in Final Fantasy VII and VIII and then became dominant from Final Fantasy X onwards.

Final Fantasy IX plot is centered on the consequences of a war between nations. Besides the theme of warfare and its outcomes to society, the game deals with other issues such as trauma, the search for meaning in life, and the struggles to accept mortality.

The game's main cast is composed of 8 (arguably) memorable characters. While Zidane is the protagonist and main hero of the story, most of the plot is driven around the deuteragonist, princess Garnet Til Alexandros XVII. …

During November of 2020, I participated in the Github Game Off Game Jam (a mouthful, I know) and developed a game by myself in the period. The experience also allowed me to apply many of the skills and topics I have been writing in these past months about game design and development.

MoonGun, the game I developed, was the 85th Overall Best Game, from a rooster of over 500 games, and achieved the 38th position for Best Theme Interpretation, 40th position for Best Audio, and 48th position for Best Graphics. It also gathered a good amount of positive feedback.

In this piece, I’m looking back at the process and sharing the methods I have used, including the stages of conception, planning, development, and release. Moreover, this subject allows me to reiterate some of the topics previously discussed in my articles, presenting them into a final working product. …

Just as I stated in previous articles, Unity 3D is my favorite tool for game development. Mostly for how fast you can prototype and validate ideas with it. In this series of articles, I list a few techniques in Unity that can speed up your prototyping skills. However, bear in mind that these techniques are not focused on performance, as performance is a subject of its own and should be addressed only when the prototype has served its purpose.

I developed these techniques over the 8 years I have been using Unity 3D daily, be it for professional products, personal endeavors, or as a game designer and programming teacher in the Netherlands. …

Unity3D has been my favorite tool for game development for quite some time. I have been using it for over 8 years now, be it for professional products, personal endeavors, and as a programming and game designer teacher. Moreover, I have been using Unity for almost all Game Jams I have been to, and it has helped me quickly build up the cornerstones of my jam-games in just a few hours.

As you might know, a Game Jam is a game development contest in which participants try to make a game from scratch over a short period of time. Game Jams usually range from 24 to 72 hours, but others spam over a more extended period, such as the GitHub Game Off that spans over the entire month of November. …

Paraphrasing Salen, Tekinbaş, and Zimmerman in Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals (2004), a game is a system defined by rules in which players engage in a conflict to achieve a quantifiable outcome. The latter determines the goal and decides which player(s) won. Having a goal is a core difference from a game to other less formal play activities.

For example, running playfully is engaging and fun, but it is not a game per se. However, it can be transformed into a game by adding a goal and a conflict: whoever runs to the pizzeria wins. …