My name is Han Nguyen and I'm a game designer. I keep this blog mostly as a place to store my game-related things and as a reflection tool on my design processes. I suppose also this blogs also acts as a way to vent my thoughts into the world somehow, regardless of whether people care or not... like shouting into a well.
I have a bachelor's degree in Digital Design with a minor in dramaturgy and art history. I am currently taking my masters degree in Mediatechnology and Games at the ITU, so hopefully one day I'll move out of bedroom developing and into actual offices or something like to that.
Favourite games:
Favourite games:
- Rollercoaster Tycoon (1999)
- Year after year I keep coming back to this game spending hours and hours waiting for money to come in so I could build an awesome rollercoaster. This game speaks to the micro-managing controlfreak inside of me. It also proves the value of having good visual design over good graphics somehow, because it's not exactly a pretty game to look at however it has a very distinctive charm about it. It's cute and considering the fact that it was developed by a three-man team makes this game even more impressive.
- The Sims Series (2000-)
- Somehow I never mention the Sims when talking about games that I like, why? I'm not sure because it is one of the games I've spent many hours with and have many memories of and I do get excited about new expansions despite not buying them. However it doesn't hold much street cred among gamers to say that you like the Sims, which is a shame because I think Sims has really pushed the boundaries of games, by being perhaps a non-game. In the sense that you could discuss whether the Sims is a game at all or just playing around in a simulation. Then again don't all games derive from playing, so perhaps the Sims just points back to the core, playing.
- No One Lives Forever (2000)
- Quite possibly the first and only shooter (so far) that I've truly enjoyed playing. Furthermore this was also the game that showed me how games could actually tell stories and the importance of a good player character. It might not be the most innovating game nor the prettiest but it was extreemely well-designed. Furthermore NOLF was probably also one of the first games that made me think that games weren't just for kids but actually kind of cool. At the time I was also very into movies, so in a sense this game has me pointed towards working in games, because it had a good fictional universe and cinematic. I've since changed taste a little bit, but nonetheless NOLF has shaped me as a designer and player.
- Beyond Good and Evil (2003)
- This game offered a very interesting mix between freeform play and goal oriented play that I'm not sure I've seen any other game do quite as succesfully. Despite never being ushered into going from one goal to the other and being able to freely explore the Hillys, the game still maintained a very tight narrative grip on you. I was never in doubt as to what had happened in the story earlier despite not doing story-forwarding missions, which I believe is a very difficult balance to achieve. Keeping a narrative grip but yet allowing exploration.
