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MouseWheel Down to Read Article What you just did… is an experience gamers have gotten all too familiar with. One second you’ll be playing a game, only for it to temporarily stop and tell you…

This article is a follow-up to the previous article focusing on Ninja Gaiden 3 and its development that you can read here. Happy reading! At the base of Mount Fuji on the outskirts of Hayabusa…

A question: how many games can you think of that were once so popular, it was installed on more computers than Microsoft Windows? Due to its success and subsequent impact, DOOMhas been analysed for nearly twenty-five years and counting. Each study aims to further unravel what made the 1993 title plus its expansion packs and sequel, tick. From its technical achievements, appreciation for speedrunning and modding to its level design – there’s plenty to cover. More than any single article can encompass. Instead of adding to this ongoing master thesis of DOOM, let’s turn it around and examine what lessons Action games can take from it, good and bad.

Dante Alighieri’s Inferno tells of one’s journey through Hell. In the poem the abyss is depicted as nine circles of torment located within the Earth, each layer in dedication to a sin: lust, gluttony, greed,…

It is the summer of 2004. The film Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones, by George Lucas and Jonathan Hales, has come and gone. Despite its mixed reaction, people now await the…

Ranking up is man’s way of moving up in the world. From getting to a higher rank in a martial art to a higher position in the military, going from Junior to Senior at work and even advancing to higher grades at schools as early as 1785, it is a universal concept that has been around forever. Your rank denotes where you stand compared to your kinsmen and how well you’ve performed, while also giving you insight in how to improve and setting a higher goal for your future endeavours. Games as a whole have tracked scores since the first board games, with players trying to beat each other in the least amount of moves possible. This transferred to videogames, only to become more complex in its score-boarding as technology advanced and allowed for more creative scoring systems. It was in 1989 that games like Golden Axe (ゴールデンアックス, Gooruden Akkusu) started using a letter-based grade scoring system. Aside from holding a tally of points, the player would be given a letter based grade at the end based on how he performed. This gave players an even clearer goal to strive towards in arcades, promoting replayability while also emptying more pockets. Ever since then, ranking systems have been present throughout gaming, yet it is a mechanic that isn’t often analyzed beyond the bare basics (link to mark brown video) or otherwise highly scientific (link paper); and neither focuses purely on Action games. So with our sights set mostly on the Action Hack and Slash genre: how do ranking systems operate, what kinds are there, how do they differ from point systems and what exactly makes a good ranking system?