I'm sure everyone knows this hack already, but I'm going to talk about it anyway, on the off-chance that it saves someone from going completely off-the-rails during their dev. It's a hint about scope, when you're feeling lost: steal it. 100% rip it off from another game. How did the world of Fable become that size? Because I'd played Devil-May-Cry, and noticed that the world was something like 82 zones. It didn't seem excessive. It re-used and re-contextualised areas. It worked for a relatively short, but high quality game.

I've been asked to opine on design in modern games. So, here goes:

I think we're in a dangerous place. We've created a massive library of 'best practices' and 'design methodologies' and 'interface standards' that have made everything in AAA smooth and homogenous.
Yuck. We've engagement metrics for 'how often enemy encounters should appear', 'how high your character should jump relative to his size', 'how far the player should be able to see', 'how long missions should last', 'how often characters should talk' etc.

#Roguelike folks: I'm going to re-post my new #Moonring dungeon generator algorithm with better formatting. So here goes... 1) First of all, all my dungeons start as a lower-res 'flow diagram'. This is useful because it separates the tile-by-tile detail of the final map from the larger scale ideas about how I want the dungeon to work, and where 'drama' occurs.

Hey, you. Your baby is weird-looking. I know, I know. You think I'm talking to someone else. I'm not. Ever wondered why people compare babies to Churchill and Hitchcock? It's not because those guys were pretty. Yeah. Now look at your baby again. Brrrr. (Time to outrage, 3... 2... 1...)

To all those out there in game-dev world: if your company makes you feel kind of uncomfortable because the bro-ey elements are offputtingly dominant, and your leadership makes sexist remarks without consequence...
...the problem isn't you.
...but the problem is also you. Unchecked shitty behaviour isn't your *fault*, but maintaining a culture that supports this shit without question *is* kind of your fault... or more accurately, something you can do something about. If you're in a position of privilege, you *can* help.

It's interesting that #Fable's forebear, Wishworld is repeatedly met with the same comments: "Lol, no way that'd work on an Xbox! How delusional!"
This thinking is rather odd for a number of reasons: 1) We were initially working on PC. We were 'considering' console ports at the time, but it's only when we shifted to Project Ego that we started working with the brand new XBox hardware.