Gamasutra Member Blogs: From French Influence to Recapture

[In highlights from Gamasutra's Member Blogs, our bloggers write about diverse topics, such as the French influence over Japanese game designers, using the "recapture" concept to hide technical constraints within context, and more.] Member Blogs can be maintained by any registered Gamasutra user, while invitation-only Expert Blogs -- also highlighted weekly -- are written by selected development professionals. We hope that our blog sections can provide useful and interesting viewpoints on our industry. For more information, check out the official posting guidelines. This Week's Standout Member Blogs French Influence Over Japanese Game Designers And Animators (Thierry Brochart) Thierry Brochart argues that French game designers, developers and animators tend to look overseas to Japan and praise the work of Ueda and Miyazaki, when those creators tend to look overseas in the other direction and praise the work of Grimault and Saint Exupery... Using Recapture To Preserve Immersion (Joey Gibbs) Examining titles like Mass Effect, Infamous, and Zork, Joey Gibbs discusses the concept of "recapture" in video games and how it can be used to hide technical constraints with context. First Person Shooter Design: Skyspawn And Heartrate (Matthew Downey) If players gravitate towards certain undesired behaviors, such as spawn-killing and camping, Matthew Downey says developers should put measures into the game that incentivize playing the game as it was originally intended [Book Review] CryENGINE 3 Cookbook (Abhishek Dey) In 2011, Crytek released the CryENGINE 3 SDK to be used free of cost for non-commercial usage. The same year Crytek's lead developers authored "CryENGINE Cookbook" to assist designers and artists to create AAA quality games. Abhishek Dey offers a review of that book. The Quality Vs. Quantity Of Volunteers By Example (Michael Hahn) In this article, Michael Hahn shares his real life experiences and observations of quality vs quantity in recruiting volunteers and lessons learned from when he was at Microsoft Gaming Zone as a volunteer.