Mar 06, 2025

Book Rec: The Hero with a Thousand Faces - Joseph Campbell

Every storyteller is familiar with the Hero's Journey. It was in this book that Campbell outlined that universal story arc and it's prevalence in mythologies across cultures and times. His concepts have influenced some of the most popular franchises in the world, from Star Wars to the The Little Mermaid. Campbell's work even inspired the name Liminal!

Mar 06, 2025

Book Rec: Building SimCity - Chaim Gingold

Chaim did an amazing job building a narrative across generations of curious minds. What stands out to me is how well he articulates the relationship between the human need for play and the human need to understand our role in the world around us. That not only do these arise from the same place within us, but that they can be solved together.

Mar 03, 2025

Original Sims Design Docs

There is no denying the impact that the Sims has had on the world of gaming. Will Wright and co's masterpiece changed what it means to be a gamer and elevated expectations for emergent storytelling in games. We owe the Sims, and the entire Maxis creative philosophy, a debt of gratitude for pointing the way into the future. Here you can find all of the design files shared by programmer Don Hopkins.

Mar 03, 2025

Reminder: if inexperienced creators are using your tools to churn out loads of half-baked garbage, your tool is a phenomenal success

Max Kreminski is a talented researcher with a focus on creativity support tools. In this "trashifesto" he reminds us that tools that help us learn to create often show up first and foremost.... by helping us create crap. So if you see a torrent of crap flowing from inexperienced developers latching onto a new tool, celebrate!

Mar 03, 2025

Participation in Imagination

Our very own Isaac Karth writes about players participating in the fantasy of a game whether they are the prime mover of the story or not.

Mar 03, 2025

Spore's Magic Crayons (slides)

A keynote presentation of Chaim Gingold's masterclass thesis, shared at GDC 2007. Chaim discusses his design philosophy for creativity software and how he approached designing the groundbreaking Creature Creator in Spore.

We have often said a goal of Liminal is to provide Magic Crayons for everyone!

Mar 03, 2025

Spore's Magic Crayons (audio)

A keynote presentation of Chaim Gingold's masterclass thesis, shared at GDC 2007. Chaim discusses his design philosophy for creativity software and how he approached designing the groundbreaking Creature Creator in Spore.

We have often said a goal of Liminal is to provide Magic Crayons for everyone!

Mar 03, 2025

Storytelling, World Building, and You

Jim Shepard's talk (Youtube) at Roguelike Celebration 2018 for leveling up storytelling in games via:

• environmental storytelling
• great item flavor text
• dialog and character voice
• and more!

Mar 03, 2025

Casual Creators

Kate Compton's seminal article defining a Casual Creator as an authored system or software that:

• privileges enjoyment of the creative process above productivity
• encourages and supports a state of creative flow
• results in the user’s feeling of pride and ownership toward the produced artifact, and sense of pride in their own creativity.