"How do game characters contribute to shaping the playing experience? What kinds of design tools are available for character-based games that utilize methods from dramatic writing and game research?
Writer Petri Lankoski has a theory for this. There is a need to tether character design to game design more tightly than has been the case in the past, as well as to pay attention to social networks of characters by the means of finding useful design patterns.
When writer Brendan Keogh first reached out to us about a piece he was writing on 48-hour game development, we were a bit skeptical. Can a story about people sitting at computers be engaging? Does it fit in with the rest of our game coverage? Will readers want to stick around for something so massive?