Suppose you are in charge of a company developing the next competitive online game. Naturally it will be on your mind to have a matchmaking system, so that players can dive right in to the competition.

The question is, should you let players see their MMR?

I'm going to discuss some possibilities by drawing on ideas from a completely different discipline: the microeconomics of certification.

In particular, there's a great paper called "Coarse Grades: Informing the Public by Withholding Information" which inspired me to share and adapt its ideas for the lane-pushing space. Yes, that

I am delighted to have had the opportunity to chat with Nelson 'TekkVicious' Lee, the developer behind an old favourite of mine Enmity Campaign. We talk about Warcraft III, the fighting game community, design decisions, and what can be learned through the process of game development.

Nelson: Thanks for having me!

I played a lot of Starcraft when I was young

I occasionally enjoy connecting game design with other disciplines, and musing on how the two relate. Sometimes the results give me fresh insights, or better yet: new vocabulary for describing parts of a problem that I hadn't considered!

In this article, we'll be exploring lane-pushing level design as viewed through the lens of topology.

Throughout the genre's history, lanes have served us well and there's no doubt this will continue. At the same time, I foresee new variations on lanes emerging which will challenge perceptions.

In this article, I describe a mechanic called pseudolanes, of which lanes present a specific case. I also offer the following definition:

A lane-pushing game is a game which ensures continuous and meaningful availability of pseudolanes.

This is my vision or "thesis" for the genre and its broader potential. I hope to see many new games make use of or take direction from these ideas and push

MOBAs, ARTS, DOTA-likes, and AoS maps... With so many names floating around for our beloved genre, it can be easy to have our conversations get side-tracked by questions like "what counts as a MOBA?"

In this article, I'm going to explore how other game genres are named, how those approaches could apply for us, and why "lane-pushing game" is what worked best for me and this website.

I want to draw attention to one of the most interesting developments we've seen in the last five years of lane-pushing game design: the battlefield of Korean studio Nexon's recent lane-pushing game Ascendant One. It's a sphere.

This sci-fi themed game takes place on a planet: an actual 3D planet! There are six lanes which run from north to south, with bases at the poles. Gameplay takes place on the half of the planet that is "sunny" at any given time.

The planet rotates at a slow but steady pace: completing a full rotation every 18 minutes. There are usually three lanes in play at

Three years ago, Dota2 finally broke away from maintaining parity with DotA Allstars, and started to explore new horizons under the continued stewardship of its lead developer Icefrog. Moving to a new platform is an exciting thing, and being on the source engine has opened up "infinite" possibilities for what Dota2 could become.

In this article I want to explore how some of those possibilities have been realized through the last three years of content patches in Dota2, and discuss how DotA's roots may still play a role in its future.

The recurring theme here is that content patches have