Top all-time · #2968
Liz England
Personal blog · lizengland.com/bloggamesdesign
Liz England's personal blog at lizengland.com covers games and design. Since 2014, 26 different Hacker News readers have linked it 28 times, most often “"The Door Problem" (2014)”. The last post was in 2022, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (13) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Liz England's 2014 essay "The Door Problem" to show how a mundane object like a door hides many design questions and roles in game development. Her blog is also cited as useful game dev reading.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 13 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- "The Door Problem" (2014)13 people · 14 mentions · first linked 2021-05-20
- The Door Problem (2014)9 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2014-04-23
What Hacker News says?
http://www.lizengland.com/blog/2014/04/the-door-problem/
Comment linking /blog/2014/04/the-door-problem/
on “We don't need data scientists, we need data engineers”Submitted The Door Problem (2014) as a story · 140 points
HN discussionThere is an excellent example of this type of fiddly detail in Liz England's 2014 blog post about the problems of doors in video games [0]. She identifies about 20 questions you can ask about as a door (as a game designer) and then about 30 different roles (from sound designers [1] to monetization director[2]) who might be involved. Her post works really well because the example is so mundane but the questions are v…
Comment linking /blog/2014/04/the-door-problem/
on “Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)”Submitted "The Door Problem" (2014) as a story · 118 points
HN discussionAlso see the "Door Problem" https://lizengland.com/blog/2014/04/the-door-problem/
Comment linking /blog/2014/04/the-door-problem/
on “The High Heel Problem”Submitted The Door Problem (2014) as a story · 77 points
HN discussionIt's both sad and funny. Saw similar comments for "fman", a simple file manager. Simple, until you start thinking about the details: https://www.catnapgames.com/2018/11/20/fman/ See also: The Door Problem - https://lizengland.com/blog/2014/04/the-door-problem/
Comment linking /blog/2014/04/the-door-problem/
on ““I Could Rewrite Curl””Submitted The Door Problem (2014) as a story · 28 points
HN discussionAn essay about game development professions that uses doors as the main example: https://lizengland.com/blog/2014/04/the-door-problem/ Edit: mentioned in the end of the video, of course :)
Comment linking /blog/2014/04/the-door-problem/
on “Why video game doors are so hard to get right [video]”Submitted The Door Problem – Game Design as a story · 9 points
HN discussionHere’s two: Jordan Mechner’s 20 tips: https://www.jordanmechner.com/downloads/library/20tips.pdf Liz England’s blog: https://lizengland.com/blog/2014/04/the-door-problem/
Comment linking /blog/2014/04/the-door-problem/
on “Ask HN: Recommend resources that helped your game dev journey?”Submitted The Door Problem as a story · 9 points
HN discussionThe Art of Game Design is a very good jumping off point; it's how i got my start, and it gives you a lot of windows to look through. A few years after getting that book, I started to work professionally with people building games, mostly white-labelled projects or contract work, which was the studio's bread and butter. But actually working with people developed my understanding of a) the relative value that artists,…
Comment linking /blog/game-design-library/
on “Ask HN: Recommend resources that helped your game dev journey?”Submitted The Door Problem (2014) as a story · 3 points
HN discussionIn Game Design this can be known as The Door Problem[1] and essentially is why you need a whole company to design good software. 1. https://lizengland.com/blog/2014/04/the-door-problem/
Comment linking /blog/2014/04/the-door-problem/
on “Fornjot – The world needs another CAD program”Submitted The Door Problem as a story · 2 points
HN discussionWhile thinking of making a game I’ve found these helpful: 1. The Art of Game Design, A Book of Lenses by Jesse Schell - https://schellgames.com/art-of-game-design 2. 20 Tips on Making Games by Jordan Mechner - https://www.jordanmechner.com/downloads/library/20tips.pdf 3. Liz England’s blog - https://lizengland.com/blog/
Comment linking /blog/
on “What I Learned Failing to Finish a Game in 2024”Submitted The Door Problem (2014) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThis is a repost of the original at: http://www.lizengland.com/blog/2014/04/the-door-problem/
Comment linking /blog/2014/04/the-door-problem/
on “The Door Problem (2014)”Submitted The Door Problem as a story · 2 points
HN discussionNice! Reminds me of The Door Problem: https://lizengland.com/blog/2014/04/the-door-problem/
Comment linking /blog/2014/04/the-door-problem/
on “Doors I touched today (1999)”Submitted What Game Designers do (According to the Internet) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSome more links of how bureaucracy inevitably creeps in as organizations get larger: - http://moishelettvin.blogspot.com/2006/11/windows-shutdown-c... - http://www.lizengland.com/blog/2014/04/the-door-problem/ Another famous anecdote was Google CEO Larry Page firing all of his project managers during its early startup days because he felt they just got in the way of his programmers getting things done. But his execu…
Comment linking /blog/2014/04/the-door-problem/
on “It Takes 6 Days to Change 1 Line of Code”Submitted The Door Problem as a story · 2 points
HN discussionAnother area of hidden complexity is doors in video games. Almost no game has life sized doors because they introduce gameplay issues, almost all doors in video games are at least 30% bigger than in real life and you see an overabundance of sliding doors vs swinging doors because of the complexity swinging doors bring to video game physics. https://lizengland.com/blog/the-door-problem/ https://www.ign.com/articles/p…
Comment linking /blog/the-door-problem/
on “Art of Roads in Games”Submitted The Door Problem (2014) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Door Problem as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted "The Door Problem" of Game Design [2014] as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
