Category: News

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community.
The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

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[Video Game Deep Cuts is a weekly newsletter from video game industry ‘watcher’ Simon Carless (GDC, Gamasutra co-runner), rounding up the best longread & standout articles & videos about games, every weekend.

This week’s highlights include a detailed look at what 2019 may bring in terms of business trends & games – as well as a whole host of other leftover 2018 highlights, daily ‘meditations’ on games, a Chinese indie megahit, and lots more.

Phew, so we’re in that ‘just before it all kicks off’ New Year period, and I hope you’re returning to work with a happy attitude and a relaxed demeanor. Actually, we’re just getting really amped up for Game Developers Conference 2019, as all the latest news shows – hope a bunch of you can make it!

Until next time…

– Simon, curator.]

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Opinion: Here’s what 2019 will be like for the game biz (Joost van Dreunen / Gamasutra – ARTICLE)
“2019 promises to be a great year in games. Innovation and competition will elevate the industry’s offerings and drive more inclusivity among  a broader range of audiences. [SIMON’S NOTE: we yoinked this onto Gamasutra from Joost’s excellent newsletter, which I would recommend subscribing to.]

The history of dance emotes in 15 gifs (Luke Winkie / PC Gamer – ARTICLE)
“It’s a little funny how much we’ve come to expect dance emotes in modern games. Obviously /dance doesn’t top our lists of demands like 4K support or unlocked framerates, but it’s honestly hard to imagine an MMO without a diligently programmed jig.”

My Favorite Game Animation of 2018 (Dan Floyd / New Frame Plus / YouTube – VIDEO)
“Here’s a list of 2018 games with amazing animation! [SIMON’S NOTE: Floyd, ex-Extra Credits, is a really smart video game x animation type, so this is a nice roundup.]”

The 40 Games We Can’t Wait To Play In 2019 (Andrew Webster / The Verge – ARTICLE)
“The year is almost over, which means it’s time to start dreaming about all of the great games you’ll be playing in 2019 — and it sure looks like there will be a lot. Next year is shaping up to be packed with notable releases, from the charming world of Animal Crossing to the violent action of Gears of War.”

DUSK and the Design of 90s FPS Games (Chris Franklin / Errant Signal / YouTube – VIDEO)
“DUSK is a game that hearkens back to FPS games from 20 years ago. Is it just a warmed over collection of old hat tropes, or does the game make a case for something like this being made today?”

*Press A* 2018 ~ The Year’s Best Videogame Soundtracks (Chris Redfearn-Murray / A Closer Listen – ARTICLE)
“This year the proliferation of unique styles and new approaches to old genres brought videogame soundtracks to what is perhaps a new high in quality and thought. From niche to popular composers, classical traditions to synthwave, everything we celebrate from 2018 bears the mark of being distinct – whether a modern spin on old, or just modern.”

Ducking up the game design of Mutant: Year Zero (Bryant Francis / Gamasutra – ARTICLE/VIDEO)
“Thanks in no part to a foul-mouthed talking duck, Mutant: Year Zero has managed to find an audience and a strong niche in the strategy game space, showing how even a stripped-back version of XCOM can do well with the right tone and sense of polish.”

The “Bandersnatch” Episode of “Black Mirror” and the Pitfalls of Interactive Fiction (Simon Parkin / New Yorker – ARTICLE)
“Interactive fiction, or I.F., is an old and treasured mode of video-game design. Per the veteran designer Sid Meier, a video game is a series of interesting choices; in many ways, the multi-branched story is the purest expression of that idea. “Bandersnatch” is a Netflix episode, so it’s by necessity simpler than many I.F. games, but it also demonstrates both the enduring allure of the format and its exasperating limitations.”

A Breakout Story (Ethan Johnson / The History Of How We Play – ARTICLE)
“The early years of Silicon Valley are jam-packed with legends and so many crossing events happening simultaneously. Jobs’ intersection with Atari is very much conjecture with a backdrop of absence that very much complicates the story. Sussing out the facts of the creation of this Breakout prototype is difficult, so let’s go through the process which led to the current conclusion.”

Birding Like It’s 1899: Inside a Blockbuster American West Video Game (Nicholas Lund / Audubon – ARTICLE)
“The first time I see ravens, I flush them out of an alpine meadow carpeted with wildflowers. I pause to watch the flock fly off towards the distant, snow-capped peaks, trailed by their echoing croaks, when a man riding by on horseback bumps into me. Irritated, I shoot the man dead, and take his hat. So it goes in “Red Dead Redemption 2.””

Deorbital Presents: Amr Al-Aaser’s 2018 Games Of the Year (Amr Al-Aaser / Deorbital – ARTICLE)
“I constantly struggled to both get my hands on everything I wanted to check out. At one point I had over 60 tabs on my phone full of promising titles that I’ve still not got around to. Even as I write this I’m covering new games that threaten to shuffle this list around. [SIMON’S NOTE: I know, enough ‘best games’ already – this one’s fun because it’s distinctly alternative!]”

The best writing in games in 2018 (Wes Fenlon / PC Gamer – ARTICLE)
“To celebrate the best words in videogames this year, I decided to turn to the people who write them. I asked a whole bunch of videogame writers to tell me about their favorite story this year, and to also pick out a particular bit of writing to highlight: a singular story moment, or dialogue, or bit of flavor text that suck with them long after the game was over.”

Telling Stories About A Decaying Small Town With Cities: Skylines (Cameron Kunzelman / Kotaku – ARTICLE)
“YouTuber TazerHere has created a sleepy Texas town called Berrysville in immaculate detail, but what really makes it unique is that it is chock full of stories created by community members… It is an astounding piece of work that clearly required a lot of mods and particular model choices, and the final product is a place that looks (uncannily, I might add) a lot like many small town locations in the American Southwest.”

The Roots of Compile – 1998 Developer Interview (Shmuplations / All About Compile – ARTICLE)
“This compilation of interviews from 1998’s All About Compile book sheds light on the early days of the prolific, now-defunct software house Compile and the origins of several of their most memorable titles, including the comical RPG series Madou Monogatari and its falling-block puzzle game spin-off, the wildly successful Puyo Puyo.”

TouchArcade 2018 Game of the Year: ‘Oddmar’ (Eli Hodapp / TouchArcade – ARTICLE)
“2018 is almost behind us, and we’ve already listed our our 100 favorite games of the year (which is quite a task, given the amount of great games that had to get cut to get us down to 100), which leaves us two things left to do to fully pack 2018 in and move on to 2019: Reveal our Game of the Year picks, and publish our personal favorites. [SIMON’S NOTE: there’s SO much good stuff on iOS that it’s almost impossible to keep up with – kudos to TouchArcade for trying!]”

Best mobile game genres of 2018 – Top Free Games Charts (Tom Kinniburgh / Mobile Free To Play – ARTICLE)
“2018 has been a year of change in mobile. There’s been an entirely new genre emerge in the form of Battle Royale, Hypercasual continued to dominate the free charts, and a large number of prominent publishers had titles slip out of the top 50 grossing (Supercell, King, Playrix).”

I think I like Below the most when I’m not actually playing it (Christian Donlan / Eurogamer – ARTICLE)
“Below blooms in the mind when you aren’t playing it. It does for me, at least. The art seems wilder, darker, more filled with promising shadows, the narrative seems more teasing, more richly stuffed with the potential for strange interpretations.”

Press ‘A’ to Study Harder (Rui Zhong / Foreign Policy – ARTICLE)
“My son is hunched over a table stacked high with books, practice guides, and homework. Dramatic music blares as he studies for the intensely competitive gaokao; if he aces it, he’ll earn a place in one of China’s most prestigious colleges. If he doesn’t, he’ll be doomed to mediocrity. Fortunately, I’ve boosted his intelligence score while managing his stress levels and my parental satisfaction—and all of that is tracked by two bars at the top of the screen.”

Tales of an aging gamer: Why don’t I pick up a controller as often as I used to?(Theo Karasavvas / Ars Technica – ARTICLE)
“Despite a wider variety than ever before, video games don’t have the same effect on me as they used to. That might not sound like a problem to some of you, but it is to me. I have played video games from the early days of my childhood, starting somewhere around the late ’80s. I became heavily addicted to my Game Boy as a kid, and I can still remember the thrill I felt the day I bought my first PlayStation 22 years ago.”

The Gamers Of The Year, 2018 (Ethan Gach / Kotaku – ARTICLE)
“At the close of every year, Kotaku highlights not just video games but gamers—people who did noteworthy or influential things in the world of video games. This year, we’ve decided to honor an entire community, one that did its best to group together and recover after a senseless, unthinkable tragedy. [SIMON’S NOTE: this is a great, sad piece.]”

The PC Pulse: What are the biggest trends facing the market in 2019? (Alex Calvin / PC Games Insider – ARTICLE)
“We at PCGamesInsider.biz boast many talents but we cannot predict the future. Shocking, truly shocking, we know. But while we don’t have a crystal ball, we do have a group of incredibly smart industry folks at hand who have the knowledge and insight to predict what the trends that will shape the market in 2019 will be.”

Part Live-Performance Art, Part Video Game, ‘Meditations’ Takes 365 Days to Experience (Brian Crecente / Variety – ARTICLE)
““Games and game developers can be anything.” That, Rami Ismail says, is the message he hopes everyone takes away from the experience come Dec. 31, 2019. “That’s the hope. For 365 days you have seen 365 completely different things made by 365 different people. The thing they have in common is that they are all game developers and made a game.” [SIMON’S NOTE: some initial confusion over crediting, but ongoing credits are made clear via this handy Twitter account.]”

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[REMINDER: you can sign up to receive this newsletter every weekend at tinyletter.com/vgdeepcuts – we crosspost to Gamasutra later on Sunday, but get it first via newsletter! Story tips and comments can be emailed to [email protected]. MINI-DISCLOSURE: Simon is one of the organizers of GDC and Gamasutra & an advisor to indie publisher No More Robots, so you may sometimes see links from those entities in his picks. Or not!]

In this GDC 2012 session, Richard Lemarchand (formerly of Naughty Dog) tries to dispel some of the confusion about how video games keep players engaged.

Lemarchand introduces the psychological concept of attention to the ongoing conversation about play and games.

By using practical examples from his involvement in the playtesting of the Uncharted games, he describes how metrics data and other methods can be used to get a handle on the elusive subjects of players’ attention.

It was an insightful talk that’s definitely still worth watching, so developers shouldn’t miss the opportunity to do so now that it’s freely available on the official GDC YouTube channel!

In addition to this presentation, the GDC Vault and its accompanying YouTube channel offers numerous other free videos, audio recordings, and slides from many of the recent Game Developers Conference events, and the service offers even more members-only content for GDC Vault subscribers.

Those who purchased All Access passes to recent events like GDC or VRDC already have full access to GDC Vault, and interested parties can apply for the individual subscription via a GDC Vault subscription page. Group subscriptions are also available: game-related schools and development studios who sign up for GDC Vault Studio Subscriptions can receive access for their entire office or company by contacting staff via the GDC Vault group subscription page. Finally, current subscribers with access issues can contact GDC Vault technical support.

Gamasutra and GDC are sibling organizations under parent company Informa

Whether you’re just starting out, looking for something new, or just seeing what’s out there, the Gamasutra Job Board is the place where game developers move ahead in their careers.

Gamasutra’s Job Board is the most diverse, most active, and most established board of its kind in the video game industry, serving companies of all sizes, from indie to triple-A.

Here are just some of the many, many positions being advertised right now. If you’re a recruiter looking for talent, you can also post jobs here.

Location: Culver City, California

Heart Machine is a small, deeply motivated and close-knit team located in Los Angeles. Our focus is gameplay that’s engaging, fluid and fun, while also building atmosphere through lush art and sound design. We’re immensely excited to be creating things we love every day.Our next project is ramping up production, using Unreal 4 in a fully 3d gameplay experience. We’re looking for talented, passionate, smart and good people to become part of our crew, to help build and shape something ambitious and completely unique from the ground up. As a critical anchor for the project you’ll be crafting code for character interactions, NPC interactions, scripted sequences, combat, environmental interactions and much more. Help us build something satisfying and fluid while overcoming new and exciting challenges in gameplay.

Location: Bellevue, Washington

Soulbound Studios is seeking a few full-time Gameplay Programmers to join the dedicated team working on Chronicles of Elyria here in Bellevue, WA. In this position you will be collaborating with other gameplay programmers and designers to bring the innovative new features of Chronicles of Elyria to life. Whether its dynamic environments, characters that grow old and die, or systems of player-run governments and economies. Here at Soulbound Studios we believe in pushing the boundaries of innovation to create meaningful gameplay experiences.

Location: Los Angeles, California

FoxNext Games, a world-class mobile game development studio, is in search of an UI Artist to join one of our development teams. We need a strong creative contributor with an exceptional understanding of interface design and mobile user experience. Your passion for games and thoughtful, intuitive interface design helps to bring engaging experiences to our players, and contribute to one of the most visually ambitious mobile experiences ever.

Location: San Francisco, California

If you’re interested in taking first-person shooters to the next level, Impulse Gear is looking for you!  Impulse Gear is seeking a Mid / Senior Animator to help push the boundaries of our Virtual Reality worlds.  Daily tasks would involve the creation of unique character animation, motion capture processing, skinning, developing physics assets and more.  The ideal candidate will have had previous success as a Mid/Senior level Animator, outstanding communication skills, a creative mindset, experience working with Unreal Engine 4’s animation and physics systems, a passion for Virtual Reality and a strong drive to bring new techniques and workflows into our projects.

Location: New York, New York

The Lead Artist will have a balance of artistic talent, technical knowledge, and leadership skills. This role is critical to the success of the division by leading key projects for the studio. Responsibilities include directing and participating in the production of all visual material, both environments and characters, being accountable for the visual quality delivered while staying within technical limits, managing the project artistic team which will be a mix of internal, remote and outsourcing, and working in partnership with the producer, technical lead and creative lead to hit the project objectives.

Newsbrief: Blizzard Entertainment’s chief financial officer Amrita Ahuja has departed the company, and the game industry entirely, to join up with the mobile payment company Square as its new CFO.

Ahuja started as Blizzard’s CFO in March of 2018 and, before that, spent 8 years at Activision Blizzard as the VP of strategy and business development, VP of finance and operations, and SVP of investor relations.

Her departure marks the second major executive loss Activision Blizzard has seen just this week. A few days prior, the company placed Activision Blizzard CFO Spencer Newmann on leave (pending a full firing), after discovering that Newmann had gone against his contract to jump ship for Netflix. He officially departed the company and was announced as Netflix’s incoming CFO days later.

Organizers of the 19th Annual Game Developers Choice Awards, the leading peer-based video game event celebrating the industry’s top games and developers, are excited to today announce this year’s nominees!

Winners in all categories will be honored at the Game Developers Choice Awards (GDCA) ceremony, taking place on Wednesday, March 20, 2019 at 6:30pm at the San Francisco Moscone Center during the 2019 Game Developers Conference (GDC) and held in conjunction with the Independent Games Festival Awards (IGF).

Organizers are also announcing that the Game Developers Choice Awards will be hosted once again by Tim Schafer, LucasArts industry veteran and founder of Double Fine Productions (Psychonauts 2). Both GDCA and IGF Awards are available to attend for all GDC 2019 pass-holders, as well as streamed via http://twitch.tv/gdc & other to-be-announced streaming platforms.

The developer-picked GDCA nominations are led by Rockstar Games’ Red Dead Redemption 2 with a total of 7 nominations, followed closely by Sony Santa Monica’s God of War and Insomniac Games’ Marvel’s Spider-Man with a total of 6 nominations each. Rockstar Games’ Red Dead Redemption 2, the sprawling adventure set in a richly detailed open world at the dusk of the Wild West era, received nominations for Best Audio, Best Design, Innovation Award, Best Narrative, Best Technology, Best Visual Art and Game of the Year.

Sony Santa Monica’s God of War, the epic new chapter of the influential action series that features stunning battles with gods and an involving tale of a father’s struggles guiding his son through an unforgiving world, was nominated for Best Audio, Best Design, Best Narrative, Best Technology, Best Visual Art and Game of the Year. Marvel’s Spider-Man, the acclaimed action-adventure game developed by Insomniac Games starring the beloved comic book character, was also nominated for Best Audio, Best Design, Best Narrative, Best Technology, Best Visual Art and Game of the Year.

Other titles receiving multiple nominations include the rewardingly challenging platformer, Celeste from Matt Makes Games, the innovative puzzle whodunnit game Return of the Obra Dinn from Lucas Pope’s 3909, the deeply immersive take on a classic puzzle game, Tetris Effect from Monstars, Resonair & Enhance, and the emotional tale of life and love, Florence from Mountains.

Any video game that was released and made publicly available during the 2018 calendar year, irrespective of platform or delivery medium, is eligible for free nomination for the 2019 Game Developers Choice Awards. Both nominees and winners are selected by the Game Developers Choice Awards-specific International Choice Awards Network (ICAN), which is an invitation-only organization, comprised of leading game creators from all parts of the industry.

The complete list of nominees, including honorable mentions, for the 19th annual Game Developers Choice Awards is as follows:

BEST AUDIO

Celeste (Matt Makes Games)

Red Dead Redemption 2 (Rockstar Games)

God of War (Sony Santa Monica / Sony Interactive Entertainment)

Marvel’s Spider-Man (Insomniac Games / Sony Interactive Entertainment)

Tetris Effect (Monstars and Resonair / Enhance)

Honorable Mentions: Beat Saber (Beat Games), Wandersong (Greg Lobanov / Humble Bundle), Return of the Obra Dinn (Lucas Pope / 3909), Battlefield V (EA DICE / Electronic Arts), Forza Horizon 4 (Playground Games and Turn 10 Studios  / Microsoft Studios)

BEST DEBUT

Polyarc (Moss)

Mountains (Florence)

Nomada Studio (Gris)

Villa Gorilla (Yoku’s Island Express)

Sabotage (The Messenger)

Honorable Mentions: Beat Games (Beat Saber), Digital Sun (Moonlighter), Two Point Studios (Two Point Hospital), Okomotive (Far: Lone Sails)

BEST DESIGN

Marvel’s Spider-Man (Insomniac Games / Sony Interactive Entertainment)

Celeste (Matt Makes Games)

Into the Breach (Subset Games)

Red Dead Redemption 2 (Rockstar Games)

God of War (Sony Santa Monica / Sony Interactive Entertainment)

Honorable Mentions: Frostpunk (11 bit studios), Minit (Kitty Calis, Jan Willem Nijman, Jukio Kallio & Dominik Johann / Devolver Digital), Return of the Obra Dinn (Lucas Pope / 3909), Astro Bot Rescue Mission (SIE Japan Studio / Sony Interactive Entertainment), Monster Hunter: World (Capcom)

BEST MOBILE GAME

Alto’s Odyssey (Snowman)

Florence (Mountains / Annapurna Interactive)

Reigns: Game of Thrones (Nerial / Devolver Digital)

Holedown (Grapefrukt Games)

Donut County (Ben Esposito / Annapurna Interactive)

Honorable Mentions: Furistas Cat Cafe (Runaway), The Room: Old Sins (Fireproof Studios), Pocket Run Pool (Zach Gage), Alphabear 2 (Spry Fox), Twinfold (Kenny Sun)

INNOVATION AWARD

Red Dead Redemption 2 (Rockstar Games)

Florence (Mountains / Annapurna Interactive)

Nintendo Labo (Nintendo EPD / Nintendo)

Tetris Effect (Monstars and Resonair / Enhance)

Return of the Obra Dinn (Lucas Pope / 3909)

Honorable Mentions: Minit (Kitty Calis, Jan Willem Nijman, Jukio Kallio & Dominik Johann / Devolver Digital), Celeste (Matt Makes Games), God of War (Sony Santa Monica / Sony Interactive Entertainment), Astro Bot Rescue Mission (SIE Japan Studio / Sony Interactive Entertainment), Moss (Polyarc), A Way Out (Hazelight Studios / Electronic Arts)

BEST NARRATIVE

Florence (Mountains/Annapurna Interactive)

God of War (Sony Santa Monica / Sony Interactive Entertainment)

Marvel’s Spider-Man (Insomniac Games / Sony Interactive Entertainment)

Return of the Obra Dinn (Lucas Pope / 3909)

Red Dead Redemption 2 (Rockstar Games)

Honorable Mentions: Assassin’s Creed Odyssey  (Ubisoft Quebec / Ubisoft), Detroit: Become Human (Quantic Dream / Sony Interactive Entertainment), Celeste (Matt Makes Games), Life is Strange 2 (Dontnod Entertainment / Square Enix), Where the Water Tastes Like Wine (Dim Bulb Games and Serenity Forge / Good Shepherd Entertainment)

BEST TECHNOLOGY

Marvel’s Spider-Man (Insomniac Games / Sony Interactive Entertainment)

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey  (Ubisoft Quebec / Ubisoft)

Forza Horizon 4 (Turn 10 Studios and Playground Games / Microsoft Studios)

God of War (Sony Santa Monica / Sony Interactive Entertainment)

Red Dead Redemption 2 (Rockstar Games)

Honorable Mentions: Sea of Thieves (Rare / Microsoft Studios), Far Cry 5 (Ubisoft Montreal and Ubisoft Toronto / Ubisoft), Battlefield V (EA DICE / Electronic Arts), Detroit: Become Human (Quantic Dream / Sony Interactive Entertainment), Return of the Obra Dinn (Lucas Pope / 3909)

BEST VISUAL ART

Gris (Nomada Studio / Devolver Digital)

Marvel’s Spider-Man (Insomniac Games / Sony Interactive Entertainment)

God of War (Sony Santa Monica / Sony Interactive Entertainment)

Return of the Obra Dinn (Lucas Pope / 3909)

Red Dead Redemption 2 (Rockstar Games)

Honorable Mentions: Battlefield V (EA DICE / Electronic Arts), Tetris Effect (Monstars and Resonair / Enhance), Dragon Ball FighterZ (Arc System Works / Bandai Namco Entertainment),  Assassin’s Creed Odyssey  (Ubisoft Quebec / Ubisoft), Below (Capybara Games)

BEST VR/AR GAME

Budget Cuts (Neat Corporation)

Beat Saber (Beat Games)

Tetris Effect (Monstars and Resonair / Enhance)

Moss (Polyarc)

Astro Bot Rescue Mission (SIE Japan Studio / Sony Interactive Entertainment)

Honorable Mentions: Jurassic World Alive (Ludia), In Death (Sólfar Studios), Tendar (Tender Claws), Firewall Zero Hour (First Contact Entertainment / Sony Interactive Entertainment), Deracine (FromSoftware / Sony Interactive Entertainment)

GAME OF THE YEAR

Red Dead Redemption 2 (Rockstar Games)

Return of the Obra Dinn (Lucas Pope / 3909)

Marvel’s Spider-Man (Insomniac Games / Sony Interactive Entertainment)

Celeste (Matt Makes Games)

God of War (Sony Santa Monica / Sony Interactive Entertainment)

Honorable Mentions: Tetris Effect (Monstars and Resonair / Enhance), Super Smash Bros Ultimate (Bandai Namco Studios & Sora / Nintendo), Into the Breach (Subset Games), Assassin’s Creed Odyssey (Ubisoft Quebec / Ubisoft), Florence (Mountains / Annapurna Interactive), Monster Hunter: World (Capcom)

The Game Developers Choice Awards also recognize two individuals this year with annual Special Awards categories: Pioneer and Lifetime Achievement. The Lifetime Achievement Award will be presented to esteemed writer and director, Amy Hennig, who has had a multifaceted career in game development, starting with development on the Atari 7800 and including roles as creative director and writer of Naughty Dog’s Uncharted game series. 

The recipient of the Pioneer Award will be announced in the near future. For more information about the 19th annual Game Developers Choice Awards, visit the GDCA website. Both the Game Developers Choice Awards and IGF ceremonies are available to attend for all GDC 2019 pass-holders.

Bring your team to GDC! Register a group of 10 or more and save 10 percent on conference passes. Learn more here.​

For more details on GDC 2019 visit the show’s official website, or subscribe to regular updates via Facebook, Twitter, or RSS.

Gamasutra and GDC are sibling organizations under parent company Informa.

There’s an art to acting imperceptibly to those around you — to being surreptitious, or at least hidden from view. Especially in games, where other characters are programmed to spend all of their time looking for signs of trouble. But encounters and levels designed specifically for stealth are more often poorly-designed or rote by-the-numbers exercises in frustration than delightful moments of virtuosity.

Whether in a stealth game or as a palate cleanser or change of pace in a shooter or action-adventure, designing a great stealth encounter takes novelty, finesse, and patience. It’s hard to get it right, but thankfully there are plenty of stellar examples we can look to for pointers. 

We reached out to four stealth-loving game designers to get their thoughts on the stealth encounters that everyone should study and came up with these seven recommendations.

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided‘s stealthy party takedowns

Wildfire designer and Sneaky Bastards editor Dan Hindes points to Deus Ex: Mankind Divided‘s closing stage as a standout moment. “Usually, stealth games require you to infiltrate a hostile/restricted area and take down enemies one by one, without getting spotted,” he explains. But this level puts you in “neutral” territory: a fancy party in which both you and your enemies are guests and the goal is to take them down without alerting waitstaff, security, or other guests.

“This leads to tense, exciting moments where a disguised enemy might be standing next to a regular party guest,” says Hindes. “You’ll need to distract the party guest for a few seconds, take down the disguised enemy, and stuff their unconscious body under a table of champagne glasses – just before that party guest comes back for a refill, while you walk away like nothing has happened. Or perhaps you’ll shoot a camera with an EMP blast to disable it for a few seconds, while you neutralize an enemy and move their body away from the camera’s field of vision, before the camera comes back online. These feel like moments from a Mission Impossible movie.”

Better yet, there are restricted spaces at the party like the kitchen and backstage — areas that are ideal for luring enemies into but that are also rife with danger because guards will notice unusual behavior more readily. By simply twisting the dynamics of the situation, traditional stealth mechanics and actions suddenly become fresh and exciting.

TAKEAWAY: Novel situations and new contexts can bring life to stale or old gameplay loops, and nothing says “cool spy shit” like pulling off big stealth maneuvers while staying out in the open.

Turning the tables on Mr Freeze in Batman: Arkham City

Good boss fights are hard to design, but Batman: Arkham City serves up a masterclass with the caped crusader’s big battle against Mr Freeze. The encounter is a double-ended cat and mouse game, with the player being hunted while simultaneously searching for a way to use the environment to create an opening for a stealthy boss kill. “As a player, it felt really good to turn the situation around and keep hitting that overconfident jackass,” explains David León, studio head at Aragami developer Lince Works. 

“Designing a boss battle in a stealth game is especially difficult, as the whole point of the stealth genre is to evade confrontation and find a stealthy / indirect way to beat any challenge.” But here the developers found a way to take the same stealth mechanics that are used throughout the game and twist them into a high-stakes one-on-one battle against a much more powerful foe. In a similar vein, consider looking closely at the final stage of Metal Gear Solid 5‘s Hellbound mission — in which Snake and his prisoner must hide from a formidable, terrifying Metal Gear.

TAKEAWAY: The best stealth-based boss fights are about turning the tables on a more powerful foe (and they’re about embracing the same mechanics that are central to the rest of the game, but with a twist).

Braving the white death in Commandos 2

Big Robot founder/director Jim Rossignol notes that stealth tactics puzzler Commandos 2 was “an absolutely landmark game” — one he believes that confirms that stealth is often best done in 2D. “Nowadays it lacks a lot of the finesse and technical scaffolding that modern stealth games demonstrate,” he continues, “but there was something about that systemic minimalism combined with exquisite pixel art that made it unbelievably engaging.”

Take the White Death mission, for example. Set on Arctic ice in a Nazi polar camp near a crashed British submarine, the player is left to sneak off the boat while it’s crawling with enemy soldiers, then to a hiding place where a second escaped commando ponders his next move. The player must then lead the pair, dashing through the ice, bootprints in trampled ice and snow trailing behind them, towards a parked German destroyer through a busy camp full of watchful Germans patrolling with their ever-pivoting vision cones stretching out before them. 

All along the way — and in the moments that follow — the commandos’ survival depends upon split-second timing, smart planning, clever manipulations of an inventory full of stolen distractions, and constant improvisation — as tensions ebb and flow and quicksave/quickload keys work overtime.

TAKEAWAY: Don’t let complexity become a crutch; some of the most compelling stealth experiences come from the emergent possibilities triggered by multiple layers of simple systems interacting with each other.

Surviving the horrors of The Cradle in Thief: Deadly Shadows

All four Thief games can offer numerous lessons for good stealth mechanics and level/scenario design, but Rossignol mentions the penultimate level of Deadly Shadows, Robbing The Cradle, as a particular standout (though he concedes that what he remembers most was watching comic author/former games journalist Kieron Gillen play it in front of a crowd on a big projector screen). It’s a horror-inspired break from the pure stealth of the rest of the game, widely regarded as one of the greatest (and scariest) game levels of all time.

Where stealth games are generally content to create their tension by establishing a fear of detection with hordes of patrolling, attentive guards, Robbing The Cradle goes much further. One simple way it does this is that it takes the lighting dynamics of the Thief series, which in essence is that light is hostile while its absence is friendly, and manipulates this relationship. Lights slowly pulsate and flicker — like breaths — while sounds rise and fall and dance around uneasily with them, crafting atmosphere from shattering expectations. 

Clever level design enhances the tension, too, forcing players to discover the building’s dark past for themselves, and gradually it becomes clear that this is not just a level about stealthily avoiding enemies (which are notably absent for much of the level). The building itself as an adversary — one that’s hellbent on keeping the player in its grasp.

“It’s a truly horrible level,” says Rossignol, “and I think it’s one of those bits of design that gets almost everything right. Telling a story, enabling the player to find their own way, and multiplying the existing tension created by stealth by introducing genuinely terrifying enemies. Also Gillen’s bug-eyed screaming. Not that everyone gets that part, of course.”

TAKEAWAY: Great stealth games set clear rules and establish player expectations, then toy with them and gleefully manipulate these same expectations to reinforce and amplify tension — which is the essence of a good stealth encounter. (Also, don’t be afraid to put storytelling right into the heart of a stealth encounter’s design.)

Braving the financial district in The Last of Us

Stealth games — or stealth missions in games — used to play like they were almost anti-action games, where direct confrontations were to be avoided at all costs, but that hardline kind of stealth has in recent years given way to a closer blending of styles — like in The Last of Us, where being discovered simply necessitates a change in approach. This is well exemplified by an encounter that occurs right after escaping a hotel in a financial district.

“It’s a relatively small area, but an incredibly fun compact sandbox that’s dense with opportunities,” says Morten Hedegren, game and level designer at ECHO studio Ultra Ultra. Right from the start, there’s a two-storey coffee shop, a barricade, and a large tree all in sight for possible sneaking options along the sides, plus some concrete to hide behind in the middle for players who like to go in and out of cover — which, unusual for the time but common now, is non-sticky — rather than full-stealth.

Hedegren points out that the routes around the sides are especially great for providing tension and suspense, and as an added bonus they offer a vertical element that’s great for escaping from danger or for surveying the area. “These types of encounters in The Last of Us served as a huge source of inspiration when we designed the levels in ECHO,” says Hedegren. “We always tried to give the player enough room to experiment and move through the environments in very open ended and dynamic ways.”

TAKEAWAY: Sometimes it’s good to let players slip fluidly in and out of a stealth mindset, free to utilize any pathways, objects, and obstacles you lay out before them however they see fit.

Blending in, the silly way, in Hitman: Blood Money

Stealth doesn’t have to be about sneaking; it’s just as readily about blending in and looking inconspicuous, so not to draw attention to the fact you shouldn’t be there. You’ll find some of the best examples of this — that disguises are as much a form of stealth as sneaking — in the Hitman games.

Particularly Blood Money, suggests Rossignol, who looks favorably on a mission in which the player infiltrates a suburban party dressed as a murderous-looking clown. “There’s something perfect about this,” says Rossignol. “It’s always a conceit, of course, and very ‘gamey’ — no one in real life would be fooled by a hat and an apron stolen from a corpse — but that is one of the things that makes it work.” 

“We tend to think of viewcones and lurking in the shadows,” he continues, “but for me searching for the appropriate outfit is a perfect stealth solution.”

TAKEAWAY: Unless you’re making a simulation (and maybe even then), stealth need not be serious. Embrace fun and whimsical solutions to remaining undetected and drop in touches of frivolity if the situation allows.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare‘s All Ghillied Up

Few stealth moments in games measure up to the carefully-crafted suspense of Modern Warfare‘s sneaking flashback. Cast as a sniper and paired up with a superior officer, the mission has the player dressed in a ghillie suit and tasked with following his directions to hide from enemies — while they walk directly over the top of you — and sneakily, methodically dispatch several guards.

Get it wrong and all hell breaks lose — unlike in typical first-person shooter stealth segments, which tend to give hard fail states and require a do-over — with enemies pouring out from all sides to start a frantic firefight. But take it slow, follow orders, and stay patient, and there’s a brilliant build and release cycle of tension — especially in light of the chaos of the preceding mission (a failed assassination attempt). 

It’s a different brand of stealth to the other encounters on this list, with heavy reliance on tight scripting, but it’s a compelling argument that artful stealth design is more about the experience than the mechanics.

TAKEAWAY: Great stealth moments don’t need elaborate stealth mechanics, but if you’re going for a more experiential, scripted kind of stealth take care to avoid hard fail states — let your players do it the hard way, if they choose to, and let them stay in control even if you direct them to behave a certain way.

Conclusion: Tense situations, solved creatively

Good stealth design is predicated upon tension. It’s about letting the player choose when and how to engage in conflict, and making them fear that their plans will be spoiled at any moment if they put a foot wrong. 

Great stealth encounters establish a clear reason for caution — for the patient and methodical approach that stealth requires — and then constantly tighten and loosen the metaphorical noose around the player-character’s head, never completely allowing tension to wane until the mission is accomplished.

But they also leave room for player expression, with no one single solution and a systemic elegance that allows even catastrophic failures to be survived — with a bit of luck and skill, a lot of ingenuity, and possibly a very unstealthy few moments of activity. Solid Snake’s cardboard boxes and Agent 47’s far-fetched disguises may seem ridiculous, but history gives us much more unlikely attempts at stealth, so don’t feel like you have to be sensible in crafting your stealth systems and scenarios.

Thanks to Dan Hindes, David León, Jim Rossignol, and Morten Hedegren for their help putting this list together.

Former Eugen Systems developers say their sudden firings were the result of retaliation over ongoing labor disputes, but the company says that’s not the case. 

Speaking to Variety, a Eugen Systems representative says that the six developers in question were fired late last year because they “used a professional tool for an inappropriate purpose” in a way that the company says goes against its values and corporate culture. 

All six workers fired in late December were told that the dismissal was due to, according to the Video Game Workers Union of France (STJV), “having negatively affected the mood […] of the studio and [using] insulting language in a conversation that took place in a private channel.”

While Eugen’s given reason for the firing lines up between that original statement and these most recent details, the STJV previously argued that the move was in retaliation for strike participation, as all six fired developers were involved with a two-month long strike over a pay dispute at the beginning of 2018.

However, Eugen maintains that the two issues are unrelated, telling Variety “we have fully respected our employees’ right to strike, and our team still comprises those who were on strike, including one employee who has since been promoted to a managerial position. Our team currently counts 26 employees and will continue growing in the coming weeks.”

Nearly half of the studio’s staff at the time, roughly 21 developers, went on strike in mid-February to protest a long trend of unfair pay practices at the company, including lack of overtime compensation, disregard for minimum wage laws, and paying employees less than the wages outlined in their contracts. The strike itself lasted two months and ended when management refused to budge, though the 15 Eugen Systems employees are now working with the STJV to bring their grievances before a French labor tribunal this year.