Nikhil Murthy

@murthynikhil

Experimental game designer currently working on Hoop Dungeon. Previous games: Syphilisation, The Quiet Sleep

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Nikhil Murthy@murthynikhil· Jun 25

Classic Korey game

Victory screen for Hoop Dungeon showing three ballers. Alice and Jeanne have each taken 0 shots and Korey has shot 3 of 6.

Nikhil Murthy@murthynikhil· Jun 22

I'm really liking how these frozen narrative moments work. They started more introspective and reworking them into more conversation and more trash talk in particular has really made them pop.

Nikhil Murthy@murthynikhil· Jun 5

It's time for #PitchYaGame. Hoop Dungeon is a basketball turn-based-tactics roguelike game. store.steampowered.com/app/4250030/...

Nikhil Murthy@murthynikhil· May 28

Congratulations on the recent launch and happy #TurnBasedThursday. I'm still working on the storytelling of Hoop Dungeon.

Nikhil Murthy@murthynikhil· May 23

This from the Krafton director doesn't hold up. I agree that roguelikes can be anything, but you can't then say that roguelike deckbuilders are a narrow genre. Both of these statements cannot simultaneously be true and it's trivial to see which of them is wrong.

"I feel like the trend cycle in gaming is just getting shorter and shorter," Lee began, when asked how pitching developers should choose between pursuing a popular fad, or striking out afresh. "I remember when survival crafting was a big thing, and then it was, you know, deckbuilding roguelikes, right? I've had maybe 250 roguelike deckbuilders in the last 12 months. I don't know how to choose. Would you? Like, they're all Balatros with different cards. I don't know how to choose one.

"And that's a roguelike deckbuilder problem," he went on. "I'm sorry if anybody here is making a roguelike deckbuilder. But that genre is is too narrow for you to differentiate far enough from anything else, right? Genre is a misnomer. Roguelike isn't a genre. Roguelike can be anything. It can be an FPS or a deckbuilder, anything. If you tell me, you have a roguelike game, I have no idea what you're making."

Nikhil Murthy@murthynikhil· May 20

Working on storytelling in Hoop Dungeon

Nikhil Murthy@murthynikhil· Apr 28

Playoffs time

Image of Cain's dunk on Duren with Duren labeled NBA2K, Cain labeled Hoop Dungeon and the ball labeled Good Gameplay

Nikhil Murthy@murthynikhil· Apr 21

Excellent recontextualization of advertising photos by Richard Prince

Three photos, one of two men in suits, the second with two women in suits and the third a wedding photo of a man and a woman

Nikhil Murthy@murthynikhil· Apr 15

This would go hard in a taekwondo gym.

Colorful painting of two people in white robes meeting with a kick.

Twin Sunset - Andras Koncz

Nikhil Murthy@murthynikhil· Apr 13

I'm so jealous.

During June, I wrote the short novel that accompanies the game. This novella was not part of the original design. I only thought of it in April: realizing that the manual would be very large, I decided that I might as well go all out and write a novel to e.xplain the rules. My original intention was that the novel would explain the entire game and that no other documents would accompany it. It took me one day to prepare an outline that addressed all aspects of the game. I then wrote a chapter a day, two days a week. It was a most enjoyable writing task.

Nikhil Murthy@murthynikhil· Apr 11

You tell 'em Chris.

A variety of other systems have been used for playtesting. Most rely on gathering large groups of "real people" and assessing their reactions to the game. I have little respect for such systems. Although they are scientific, objective, and democratic, they seldom yield useful design information, for consumers make lousy critics. Their suggestions too often are inane and impractical. They don't know enough about computers or games to give practical criticism. Such methods may work with detergent and shaving cream, but I doubt that any great movie, book, or song was created through market research of this kind. I will concede that such methods can prove to be a useful way to guide the mass production of cheap games by designers of limited talents, but this book is not written for them.

Nikhil Murthy@murthynikhil· Apr 11

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose from Crawford's Art of Computer Game Design (1984)

CHOOSE A GOAL AND A TOPIC

This vitally important step seems obvious, yet is ignored time and time again by game designers who set out with no clear intent. In my conversations with designers, I have often noticed indifference to the need for clear goals. Game designers sometimes admit trying to produce a "fun" game or an "exciting" game, but that is usually the extent of their thinking about goals.

A game must have a clearly defined goal, and it must be expressed in terms of the effect it will have on the player. It is not enough to declare that a game will be enjoyable, fun, exciting, or good; the goal must establish the fantasies that the game will support and the types of emotions it will engender in its audience. Since many games are in some way educational, the goal in these cases should establish what the player will learn. It is entirely appropriate for the game designer to ask how the game will enlighten its audience.

The importance of a goal does not become obvious until later in the design cycle. The crucial problems in game development with microcomputers are always problems of trade-offs. Everything that the game designer wants to do costs memory, and microcomputer memory is always in short supply. Thus, the designer must make trade-offs. Some game features can be included; some must be rejected. At two o'clock in the morning, when you face the awful decision of rejecting one of two highly desirable features, the only criterion for making this painful choice is the goal you have established for the game. If your goals are clear, your decision will be painful but obvious. If they are murky, you may well make the wrong choice, and whatever you choose, you will never know if your decision was correct.

How does one select a proper goal? There is no objective answer to this question. The selection of a goal is undeniably the most subjective process in the art of computer game design. This is your opportunity to express yourself; choose a goal in which you…

Nikhil Murthy@murthynikhil· Apr 9

Thanks for hosting this week! I'm doing some final Hoop Dungeon playtesting now in anticipation of a big feature release tomorrow, including this new baller who is definitely not a reference to any famous basketball player and just so happens to be the only baller who cannot pass.

Menu screen for Hoop Dungeon showing a baller named Korey.

Nikhil Murthy@murthynikhil· Apr 9

Crawford here talks about dirt, which partly anticipates #killGameplay but I think more anticipates the elegance in game design debates. I don't buy code as game reification now but here you can see how, for Crawford, hardware constraints made every byte important and how that impacted design

Thus a game that stores huge quantities of static data is not making best use of the strengths of the computer. A game that emphasizes processing and treats information dynamically is more in tune with the machine. Relegate all static information to a rules book; paper and ink are still a better technology than personal computers for storing static information. Information that lies around and that must be dusted off before using has no place inside the microcomputer. As you look over your program listing, inspect each byte and ask yourself, "Am I getting my money's worth from this byte? Is it working hard for me, doing useful things frequently? Or is this a lazy byte that sits idle for hours and is used only rarely?" Fill your program with active bytes that do things, not with lazy bytes.

Lazy bytes are often associated with dirty rules. (They like to hang out together in sleazy pool halls.) Dirty rules are special cases that occur rarely. The bytes associated with them are seldom used, lazy bytes.

Nikhil Murthy@murthynikhil· Apr 7

But why does Chris Crawford take a paragraph to describe famous party game Twister like some kind of alien anthropologist?

An obvious example of such a social lubricant game utilizes a large plastic gameboard about four feet square marked with colored spots. During each player's turn, a random process determines which of four appendages (arms or legs) is to be placed on which spot on the board.
As the players contort to fulfill the requirements, they inevitably make physical contact with each other in innocent and foolishly humorous ways. This game, a true icebreaker, promotes social lubrication. - Chris Crawford, the Art of Computer Game Design

Nikhil Murthy@murthynikhil· Mar 26

Thanks for hosting! Hoop Dungeon just got set plays! You can now change your opening configuration to best use your unlocks and best defeat the defense.

Nikhil Murthy@murthynikhil· Jan 29

Portuguese stamp made of khadi

Nikhil Murthy@murthynikhil· Jan 10

It’s very funny to call out Queen Victoria’s taste in reading in a book titled The Victorians and their Reading

“Queen Victoria, who, like Macaulay, has been accused of a Philistine taste in artistic matters, had a great admiration for him.”

Nikhil Murthy@murthynikhil· Dec 30

I had no idea about Benjamin Disraeli writing novels to skewer aristocratic fashions

Disracli's satirical version, in Tancris, of the conversation of these muddled aspirants is delightfel Tancred, Marquis of Montacute, young, rich, handsome, devi, and devout, is inclined to fall in love with Lady Constance Rawleigh, and calls on her at her mother's house.
After making herself very agreeable Lady Constance took v? a book which was at hand, and said, "Do you know this?" And Tancred, opening a volume which he had never seen, and turning to its title-page, found it was The Revelations of Chaos, a startling work just published, and of which a rumour had reached him.
"No," he replied, "I have not seen it."
"I will lend it you if you like: it is one of those books onc must read. It explains everything, and is written in a very agreeable style."

Nikhil Murthy@murthynikhil· Dec 24

I’m extremely excited to finally get to this one

Picture of the book The Victorians AND THEIR Reading by AMY CRUSE

Nikhil Murthy@murthynikhil· Dec 11

I was not mistaken. It was hatred; I was hated, detested, and despised, not by my next-door neighbor or a close cousin, but by an entire race. I was up against something irrational. The psychoanalysts say that there is nothing more traumatizing for a young child than contact with the rational. I personally would say that for a man armed solely with reason, there is nothing more neurotic than contact with the irrational.

Nikhil Murthy@murthynikhil· Dec 7

I don’t see the argument as much any more but this is why I don’t like the idea that liberal arts will undercut fascism

What does this mean? Quite simply this: when an Antillean with a degree in philosophy says he is not sitting for the agrégation because of his color, my response is that philosophy never saved anybody. When another desperately tries to prove to me that the black man is as intelligent as any white man, my response is that neither did intelligence save anybody, for if equality among men is proclaimed in the name of intelligence and philosophy, it is also true that these concepts have been used to justify the extermination of man.

Nikhil Murthy@murthynikhil· Dec 7

I believe you, Dr. Fanon. You don’t need to prove it.

So? So in all serenity my answer is that there are too many idiots on this earth. And now that I've said it, I have to prove it. - Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks

Nikhil Murthy@murthynikhil· Dec 6

Immersion discourse in 1915

ted, contined to a few v
manufacturers, such as Agostinho da Costa and Augusto Carn de Sousa Martins. Working in tinplate, the "teacher" of war chines, spindles and wood stoves was Luciano Moura. But wh we consider large-scale toys, particularly those that were made paper pulp; we find the two great industries of the beginning of th century: A. Potier and Bryn-kedo.
Despite the Portuguese industry of toys was very primitive, in the threshold of the craft, there were people seriously dedicated to this production and defended it as an essential tool for the education of children in school, such as A. Potier, distinguished engi-neer, who, in 1915, wrote in his catalogue: "It is through the toy that children should begin their education and, therefore, the toy should be chosen regarding especially the potentialities that can pedagogically offer. A toy that is poorly done or incomplete in its details represents a false notion of reality, because it is through it that children firstly became aware of what surrounds them and, in these circumstances, the toy should be set aside because it is teaching them in a wrong way."

Nikhil Murthy@murthynikhil· Dec 6

Portuguese game from the 60’s

Folding game board titled Pontape Ao Goal

Nikhil Murthy@murthynikhil· Oct 14

Weakness Behind Cruelty at MNAC, Barcelona

Cartoon of Hitler behind Goring with the legend Weakness Behind Cruelty

Nikhil Murthy@murthynikhil· Sep 27

Techno Banter is completely correct that people who like Joy Division shouldn't be allowed in the club (I am the person who likes Joy Division)

Man wearing an Unknown Pleasures T-shirt being denied entry into a club.

Nikhil Murthy@murthynikhil· Jul 29

I finally started the excellent Gameworld Interfaces and I quite like it but this is gaming exceptionalism.

When the game addresses the player directly through verbal responses or symbols
integrated into the world, this approach is pragmatic, not avant-garde. It is not a curiosity but a convention for this medium. As participatory media that must communicate gameplay-relevant information to the player, digital games do not have an imaginary fourth wall that can be broken. For this reason, the presence of system information must be considered a medium-specific and necessary functional and aesthetic practice.

Nikhil Murthy@murthynikhil· Jul 19

Jahangir had a dodo in his menagerie.

Painting of various birds in Jahangir's menagerie, including a dodo.

Nikhil Murthy@murthynikhil· Jun 20

This is how you open a book