Lifting the lid on the art, science and business of making games
This issue’s People, Places, Things opens on p100 with influential engine programmer Corrinne Yu revealing how high-school coding projects changed her career trajectory and took her from NASA to the videogame industry. On p102, we travel the delicate and dicey Rainbow Road , Mario Kart’s technicolour test of handling skill, and explore the many shades it has adopted over two decades. The runt of GoldenEye 007’ s arsenal, the Klobb , is stripped down and rebuilt on p104, as we attempt to find the value in an oft-derided firearm. Joe Danger and No Man’s Sky creator Hello Games explains how it recovered from the Christmas floods in our Studio Profile on p106, even if it is making a whole universe in a box room. On p110, The Making Of… Die Hard Trilogy deals with another small team under pressure, this time at Probe Entertainment, but one that would go on to beat its well-funded internal competition, Alien Trilogy, in terms of critical acclaim. As always, our columnists round off the issue, with designer Tadhg Kelly (p114) cautioning against the bright lure of dark design practices for mobile and social games, and explaining why they tend to lead to fatalism. Clint Hocking (p116) counts the cost of games following the Hollywood blockbuster model, since predictability in budgeting will be all-important to that future. Finally, James Leach (p118) is afraid for women in games – specifically that we’re too shy to make them flawed, engaging characters with different attributes to their many male counterparts.