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Compare and Contrast
According to some estimates, there are around 300 million people with some form of color blindness in the world today. While this number...
Mark Elrod
Jan 17, 20224 min read
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Let’s talk Game Balance
Game balance is something that will be a hot topic as long as video games continue to be made. In competitive, multiplayer games, one...
Mark Elrod
Dec 20, 20213 min read
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The Finale?
Catching up This project started when I decided to spend November making a game. The game would be a first-person shooter in the style of...
Mark Elrod
Dec 6, 20215 min read
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What's on the Menu?
So, I forgot this past week was a holiday until literally the day before Thanksgiving. As a result, I wasn’t able to spend nearly as much...
Mark Elrod
Nov 29, 20214 min read
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Build Week
Three weeks have passed since I started creating my own Doom inspired first person shooter. In that time, I’ve created weapons, enemies,...
Mark Elrod
Nov 22, 20215 min read
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Third Update is the Charm
I’m now two weeks into developing a game and sharing my journey with you all here. As with last week, I have made some progress that I’m...
Mark Elrod
Nov 15, 20214 min read
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It’s Been One Week
I blinked and suddenly we’re a full week into November. That also means that I’m one week into developing my yet-to-be-named shooter, and...
Mark Elrod
Nov 8, 20214 min read
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The Journey Begins
This month (November 2021), I’m going to be changing up what I’m writing for this blog: not only will I be spending November making a...
Mark Elrod
Nov 1, 20213 min read
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Rare Cards
Rarity systems, despite their names, are extremely common in collectible card games (CCGs) and trading card games (TCGs) all over. The...
Mark Elrod
Oct 18, 20213 min read
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Organizing Chaos
Planetside 2 is a first person shooter set on the distant planet of Auraxis. In it, players join one of three factions to battle for...
Mark Elrod
Oct 11, 20213 min read
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A Magical Design
Card games of all kinds are ubiquitous around the world. Many games such as poker, go fish, or solitaire use the traditional four-suit...
Mark Elrod
Oct 4, 20214 min read
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Game Not Over
It’s a scenario gamers everywhere are all too familiar with. Your character ran out of health, your timer ran out of time, you didn’t...
Mark Elrod
Sep 27, 20214 min read
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Buttons Do What Now?
If you’re reading this, I would bet that you have used some sort of computer program- whether it be a game, a text editor, or even the...
Mark Elrod
Sep 20, 20214 min read
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Learning How to Play
The one experience that everyone who has ever played a game shares is that moment you boot up a game for the first time. Whether it is...
Mark Elrod
Sep 13, 20214 min read
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The Gold Standard of Esports
It’s hard to find someone in the United States who hasn’t seen some sort of professional sport on TV. Whether they have put a game on in...
Mark Elrod
Sep 6, 20217 min read
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Celebrating Food for Thought
Valheim is a survival/adventure game released into early access February 2, 2021. In it, players become the soul of a dead viking, tasked...
Mark Elrod
Aug 30, 20214 min read
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Hey, Listen! Notifications vs UI
As of July 2021, a staggering 89.66% of Steam users are running the service on Windows 10. This has a number of implications, but there...
Mark Elrod
Aug 23, 20214 min read
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What are you Holding?
Last week we looked at Pokèmon Unite’s battle pass as an example of why more complicated systems aren’t always better than their simpler...
Mark Elrod
Aug 16, 20215 min read
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Battling Pokémon Unite's Battle Pass
Recently, I have been having a surprising amount of fun playing Pokémon Unite, a recent Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) from...
Mark Elrod
Aug 9, 20213 min read
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The Aggro Problem
Time for a hot take: with the advent of online TCGs, aggro as an archetype needs fixing. Now that I’ve angered a significant portion of...
Mark Elrod
Jul 28, 20216 min read
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