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Lostgarden

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Game developmentEssays / personal

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286 from 1 Jan 2000 to 24 May 2025
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2025 2

  1. Creative Cohorts
  2. What is a Social Systems Designer?

2024 1

  1. Kind Games: The GDC Talk

2023 6

  1. What is a Daniel Cook Game?
  2. Kind Games: Designing for Prosocial Multiplayer
  3. Appliance Gaming 2020
  4. A design practice for social systems
  5. The Letter Circle
  6. Closed social affordances / Open social affordances in social systems design

2022 5

  1. Kindness
  2. The Workshopping Skill
  3. The trap of adding combat to your game
  4. Don’t Solve the Hard Problem
  5. Why are game designers wrong 80% of the time?

2021 3

  1. Value chains – A method for creating and balancing faucet-and-drain game economies
  2. The Chemistry of Game Design
  3. Designing game content architectures

2020 1

  1. Prosocial economics for game design 

2018 2

  1. Social Design Practices for Human-Scale Online Games
  2. Cozy Games

2017 1

  1. Game design patterns for building friendships

2016 1

  1. Autumn of Indie Game Markets

2015 1

  1. Minimum Sustainable Success

2014 3

  1. Top 5 design debates I ignored in 2014
  2. Loot Drop Tables
  3. How game forms are shaped by their environment

2013 4

  1. Multiplayer Logistics
  2. Prototyping Challenge: 3D Modeling Tool for 2.5D RPG Art
  3. A single game as a lifelong hobby
  4. Coercive Pay-2-Play Techniques

2012 9

  1. Understanding randomness in terms of mastery
  2. Building Tight Game Systems of Cause and Effect
  3. Goodbye Realm of the Mad God
  4. Looking to hire unicorn programmer for Spry Fox
  5. Prototyping challenge: Make a web-based 3D modeling toy
  6. Loops and Arcs
  7. Giving a talk at plague stricken GDC 2012 on sexy-sexy innovation
  8. Standing up for ourselves
  9. The Real Triple Town available on iOS and Android

2011 13

  1. Plagiarism as a moral choice
  2. Panda Poet: My most social design
  3. Steambirds: Survival Mobile
  4. Triple Town Beta (Now with Bears)
  5. Shadow Emotions and Primary Emotions
  6. Realm of the Mad God Released!
  7. A blunt critique of game criticism
  8. Game Design Logs
  9. What the heck happened to Clippy? Ribbon Hero 2 released
  10. GDC 2011: The Game of Platform Power
  11. List of Game Artists
  12. The Declaration of Game Designer Independence
  13. Happy 2011: Celebrating frontiers in Game Design

2010 13

  1. Story as evolutionary success or failure lessons
  2. Steambirds: Survival: Goodbye Handcrafted Levels
  3. Steambirds: Now out for iPhone, iPad and Android
  4. The Cutest Kindle Game Ever: Panda Poet
  5. Triple Town released for the Amazon Kindle
  6. Announcing Spry Fox (my happy new company)
  7. Visualizing the Creative Process
  8. Wordcamp 2010: Why we turned Microsoft Office into a Game
  9. Goodbye lostgarden.com. (Hello www.lostgarden.com)
  10. GDC 2010 Slides: Convergence of Flash Portals and Social Gaming
  11. At GDC 2010
  12. Steambirds: Why indie games are good for fans
  13. Ribbon Hero turns learning Office into a game

2009 17

  1. Happy Holidays 2009!
  2. Game design as government
  3. Three False Constraints
  4. Testosterone and Competitive Play
  5. Flash Love Letter: The Music Video?
  6. Speaking at GDC Austin
  7. Flash Love Letter (2009) Part 2
  8. Bunni Beta and Casual Connect
  9. Flash Love Letter (2009) Part 1
  10. My top secret reading list
  11. Engineering Emotions: More predictions come to pass
  12. Bunni Sneak Peek
  13. Danc’s Miraculously Flexible Game Prototyping Graphics for Small Worlds
  14. Game design in 2020
  15. What is your game design style?
  16. Review of “The Art of Game Design” by Jesse Schell
  17. Project Horseshoe: Multiplayer Game Atoms

2008 24

  1. Fishing Girl Prototype results
  2. Post-it note design docs
  3. Tidbits from the garden
  4. Project Horseshoe 2008: There and back again
  5. Fishing Girl: Game Prototyping Challenge
  6. Lostgarden Podcasts
  7. The Princess Rescuing Application: Slides
  8. Theme and game design
  9. Rules of Productivity Presentation
  10. Shade: Prototyping Challenge results
  11. Soul Bubbles: A classic game ill treated by expert reviewers
  12. Shade: A game prototyping challenge
  13. What actitivies can be turned into games?
  14. Lostgarden looking for brilliant programmer in Seattle
  15. Improving Bug Triage with User Pain
  16. The Scary List
  17. The joy of 2D avatars
  18. A Services Strategy for Casual Games
  19. The Translation Game
  20. The Randomly Reinforced Lost Garden Prototyping Awards
  21. GDC: Social lessons of years past
  22. Play With Your Peas: A game prototyping challenge
  23. My wife collected 121 stars
  24. Project Horseshoe Report: The Watery Pachinko Machine of Doom

2007 40

  1. Super Mario Galaxy: A breakup note
  2. The Naked Business
  3. Random links and musings
  4. How to bootstrap your indie art needs
  5. Project Horseshoe 2007 slides: Smashing the game design atom
  6. Project Horseshoe 2007: A recipe
  7. Constructing Artificial Emotions: A Design Experiment
  8. Lessons about failure
  9. Tree Story wireframes
  10. Knytt time at the end of the genre lifecycle.
  11. Celestial Music
  12. Tree scribble
  13. The Chemistry of Game Design
  14. Tree Story
  15. Short thoughts on games and interaction design
  16. Ebisu
  17. Latest crop of sweet prototypes (with source!)
  18. CuteGod: A prototyping challenge
  19. Initial PlanetCute level editor
  20. The Circle of Life: An Analysis of the Game Product Lifecycle
  21. Danc’s Miraculously Flexible Game Prototyping Tiles
  22. Thoughts on Silverlight, Expression and Games
  23. SpaceCute: Extending the verbs
  24. SpaceCute: First round of prototypes and new graphics
  25. Free game graphics: Tyrian ships and tiles
  26. SpaceCute: Prototyping challenge
  27. SpaceCute: Some sketches
  28. Lost Garden License
  29. Cooperation War Challenge
  30. Personality
  31. Taking a pass on GDC this year
  32. Notes: Interaction Design, Visual IDs, Oekaki
  33. Rockets, Cars and Gardens: Visualizing waterfall, agile and stage gate
  34. Discovering Comet-san
  35. Happy Valentine’s Day: Turtles all the way down
  36. "Content is Bad"
  37. One Billion Buttons Please: Should we build features for experts or newbies?
  38. Project Horseshoe Report: Building Innovative Games that Sell
  39. The game design behind the five things blog meme
  40. Some random artwork

2006 46

  1. Escapist article on ‘Boutique MMORPG’
  2. The Wii Help Cat: A lesson in interaction design
  3. Building fun into your software designs
  4. Sprawl: The world’s first public Silverlight game
  5. The Passion of the Developers
  6. Killing the elder game
  7. Millions of Peaches: The value of games
  8. Project Horseshoe
  9. What are game mechanics?
  10. Persistent myths about Game Design
  11. Mr. and Mrs.
  12. Fighting the Dice Wars demon
  13. Future proofing game graphics
  14. How is Lost Garden doing today?
  15. Flashlight computer
  16. Bursty Indie Sales Cycles
  17. Games are designer food for infovores
  18. Ze Story Snobs
  19. Playground game design as a sustainable competitive advantage
  20. Lessons from the Land of Pixel Art
  21. More free game graphics
  22. Erotic Mathematics: Lessons in Perception
  23. Community sites as games: The tip of the iceberg
  24. New Painting: "Manekineko – The Beckoning Cat"
  25. Cheap custom whiteboards for rapid game prototyping
  26. ComicAll: A social board game design
  27. Viki: A visual wiki design
  28. Who knew Pikachu was so big?
  29. The joyful life of the lapsed game developer
  30. GameInnovation.org
  31. Team culture matters
  32. Managing game design risk: Part II – Data Driven Development
  33. Managing game design risk: Part I
  34. Unofficial GDC Blogger Bar Meetup
  35. Paintbox games: Games that serve as augmented creativity tools
  36. Never innovate halfway
  37. GDC means beverages
  38. The root of shock game advertising
  39. Tyrian Comic
  40. Notes from FlashForward 2006
  41. 250 free handdrawn textures
  42. Software Development’s Evolution towards Product Design
  43. Valentine’s Day 2006
  44. Pick your game community: Virtual or Real?
  45. The Blind Men and the Elephant: Thoughts on an integrative framework for understanding games
  46. Creating a system of game play notation

2005 85

  1. What is the critical mass necessary to create a major world culture in an online game?
  2. Convergence: A great word to hate
  3. Idly gathered game industry statistics of doom
  4. Mini Game Design Reviews: Guitar Hero and Wierd Worlds
  5. Off topic: Lessons from Starbucks
  6. Random Notes from Mr. Fever
  7. A five step program to move beyond the game geek culture
  8. The myth of programmer-designer greatness
  9. Programmer Design: Sinistar graphics put to use
  10. Article: “How to prototype a game in under 7 days” on Gamasutra
  11. Book Review: 21st Century Game Design
  12. Big News: The Newest Gig
  13. A Game Business Model: Learning from Touring Bands
  14. Space Crack: Monkeying with 2D art
  15. Space Crack: A gift prototype
  16. Game Design Review: DS Training for Adults
  17. Nintendo Genre Innovation Strategy: Comments and Follow up
  18. Religion as a game
  19. Nintendo’s Genre Innovation Strategy: Thoughts on the Revolution’s new controller
  20. Back in America
  21. Small Worlds
  22. Game Design Review: Advance Wars – Dual Strike
  23. Off to Japan!
  24. News: Station Exchange deemed an early success
  25. News: China restricts MMOG playing time
  26. Why you should share your game designs
  27. What do you want to see on Lost Garden?
  28. Common Game Prototyping Pitfalls
  29. Secret Life of Aliens: First Prototypes
  30. User Content: Working with players to efficiently create profitable games
  31. The Secret Life of Aliens: A Redesign
  32. Space Crack: Graphics and UI Test
  33. Space Crack: An artistic dilemma
  34. A short interview with a lady friend: Why video games are pointless
  35. Space Crack: Financial Mechanics
  36. Costikyan: Death to the Game Industry (Long Live Games)
  37. How to Design Online Crack
  38. News Flash: Game Designer gets the Hot Girl
  39. Massively Multiplayer Casual Games
  40. Space Crack: The Space Opera
  41. Space Crack: Component Bible
  42. Oasis: How to create an ineffective game demo
  43. The brave new world of Indie console games
  44. Space Crack: Starting the game and ending the game
  45. Space Crack: Simple Combat
  46. Space Crack: Ships
  47. News: Chinese Government to influence MMOGs
  48. Out of work MMOG designers will rule the world
  49. Confessions of a horrible game player
  50. Space Crack: Using Planets to Build Territories
  51. Paper Nintendo characters
  52. SpaceCrack: Planet Basics
  53. Article: Usability Testing
  54. Vistech 2005: Thoughts on the military industrial game complex
  55. SpaceCrack: Verbs
  56. The Neo-Retro Art Style: Savior of the game industry?
  57. Space Crack: Building a gameplay parts list
  58. Space Crack: Graphics Mockup
  59. Space Crack: Fixing the Turn-based Strategy genre
  60. Nintendogs: The case of the non-game that barked like a game
  61. Space Crack: Why Space Crack?
  62. Space Crack: Introduction
  63. Using a blog as a game design document
  64. Movie Theater Games
  65. How small game team efficiency compares to other media
  66. Small Teams Kicking Arse: Defining "HPD"
  67. E3: There and back again
  68. Serious Games: A broader definition
  69. SpaceCrack: Game Concept Sketches
  70. Book: Raph Koster’s "Theory of Fun for Game Design"
  71. Game Genre Lifecycle: Part IV
  72. Game Genre Lifecycle: Part III
  73. Game Genre Lifecycle: Part II
  74. Game Genre Lifecycle: Part I
  75. Short Games rock
  76. The Financial Gameboy
  77. The child and the glass of poison: Our social duty to educate
  78. Genre Addiction article posted on gamedev.net
  79. Design Testing: The use of addiction metrics to force rapid evolution of innovative game designs
  80. A practical definition of innovation in game design
  81. My first experience with a PSP
  82. Download a complete set of sweet 8-bit Sinistar clone graphics
  83. Game Post Mortem: Hard Vacuum
  84. Sinistar!
  85. First Post

2000 9

  1. Giants and Castles
  2. The Two Houses
  3. The Fweeble Hatching
  4. The Girl who Loved a Weed
  5. Reagan and Jaws
  6. Emergent Prejudice and Culture
  7. My name is Daniel and I’m a genre addict
  8. Evolutionary Design
  9. The Open Kimono Business