Author: Myles Blasonato

Myles Blasonato is a passionate lead game designer with over 15 years experience working with some of the most talented people in gaming, involved with crafting experiences such as God of War, Heavy Rain, and Destroy All Humans. Currently, Myles is the Lead Game Designer at Blowfish studios working on the next generation of AAA Web3 games – https://www.blowfishstudios.com

The Simulation Meaning: Why Mechanics Need a Purpose

Posted on by Myles Blasonato in Analysis, Blog, Featured, Game Design

You can usually tell when a game knows what it wants to be. Not because of its story. Not because of its graphics. Because every system seems to be pulling in the same direction. The opposite is also true. Some games have perfectly functional combat, progression, crafting, and exploration systems, yet the experience feels strangely hollow. Nothing appears broken, but nothing feels meaningful either. The player is busy, but they are not immersed. This is often a simulation meaning problem. Simulation meaning is what happens when the rules of your game world express the deeper purpose of the experience. It is not enough for a system to be fun in isolation. It needs to support the fantasy the player is stepping into. The meaning comes from how the player interacts with the world, not just what the story tells them...

South Australia’s Games Sector Received $500,000 in Funding

Posted on by Myles Blasonato in Blog, News

South Australia’s games industry has received a major boost, with the South Australian Film Corporation committing $500,000 across 11 local game projects through its new Digital Games Fund. The program is designed to support original, innovative games, help local studios grow, and increase the number of South Australian-made titles reaching the global market. Alongside the funding, SAFC has also established a new Games Industry Advisory Group to provide strategic direction across its games programs. This is a strong move for the local industry because it does two things at once. It funds actual projects, and it builds the advisory structure needed to support the sector long-term. That combination matters. Funding without guidance can become scattered. Guidance without funding becomes symbolic. Together, they create a much stronger foundation...

Game Juice Is Selling the Player’s Actions

Posted on by Myles Blasonato in Analysis, Blog, Featured, Game Design

A lot of games misunderstand why certain mechanics feel satisfying. They focus entirely on function. Damage numbers go up. Enemies lose health. Objects move. Systems technically work. But the player still feels disconnected from the action because the game never properly sells what just happened. Game juice is the process of making the player’s actions feel meaningful. It’s not enough for an attack to mathematically succeed. The game needs to communicate force, weight, struggle, and consequence through animation, sound, camera response, timing, and environmental reaction. The player should not just understand that they landed a hit. They should feel it. That distinction matters because players experience games emotionally before they experience them mechanically...

Xbox’s Leadership Restructure Shows the Industry Is Entering a Strategic Reset

Posted on by Myles Blasonato in Blog, News

The most interesting part of Xbox hiring Matthew Ball and Scott Van Vliet isn’t the individual appointments themselves. It’s what those appointments represent. For years, the games industry operated under a relatively stable assumption: bigger budgets, bigger subscriptions, bigger acquisitions, bigger ecosystems. Scale was the strategy. That strategy is now under pressure. Xbox bringing in industry analyst Matthew Ball as chief strategy officer and former Azure OpenAI infrastructure lead Scott Van Vliet as CTO signals something important: Microsoft no longer sees the current games market as a straightforward growth problem. It sees it as a structural problem. And honestly, that’s probably accurate...

The Dominant Strategy Problem: When One Playstyle Kills Your Entire Game

Posted on by Myles Blasonato in Analysis, Blog, Game Design

One of the fastest ways to destroy systemic gameplay is allowing a dominant strategy to emerge too early. A dominant strategy is a solution so effective that it invalidates most other forms of play. Once players discover it, curiosity disappears. This is where many games unintentionally collapse their own depth. They introduce multiple mechanics, abilities, weapons, traversal options, or build paths, but underneath it all, one pattern clearly outperforms everything else. A stealth approach works in every encounter. A weapon dominates all ranges. One build trivialises progression. One tactic bypasses risk entirely. The game may still contain variety in content, but the interaction space shrinks dramatically. And once the player realises there’s one “correct” answer, experimentation stops...

Ken Levine Believes Art Direction Trumps Realism and He’s Right

Posted on by Myles Blasonato in Blog, News

For years, the games industry has treated graphical realism like an inevitability. Every new hardware generation promised more detail, more lighting accuracy, more polygons, more rendering techniques, and more expensive ways to simulate reality. The assumption was simple: better technology equals better immersion. But the industry is starting to hit a wall. In a recent interview, Ken Levine argued that we’re reaching diminishing returns with bleeding-edge graphics technology, pointing specifically to why games like BioShock still hold up visually today. Not because they chased realism, but because they chased style. And honestly, this is one of the most important conversations happening in modern game development...

The Power of Environmental Responsibility in Game Design

Posted on by Myles Blasonato in Analysis, Blog, Game Design

One of the most important aspects of immersive design is something I call environmental responsibility. This is when player actions leave a lasting mark on the world around them. The player doesn’t simply move through the environment. They reshape it. That could mean collapsing structures, draining resources, setting areas on fire, changing traversal routes, contaminating water supplies, destroying cover, or permanently altering the state of a location. The key difference is persistence. The consequence remains after the moment is over. And the moment a world remembers, players start thinking differently...

Griffin’s $100M Indie Fund Could Signal a Major Shift in How Games Get Financed

Posted on by Myles Blasonato in Blog, News

The biggest part of this story isn’t the number. It’s the structure. Griffin Gaming Partners launching a $100 million fund dedicated to indie developers matters because it directly challenges one of the most damaging patterns in modern game development: funding models that leave studios carrying most of the creative risk while receiving the least long-term security. The newly announced Special Opportunities Fund will finance games in exchange for a share of revenue rather than taking equity in the studio itself...

Gameplay Exhaustion: Why More Content Is Making Your Game Feel Empty

Posted on by Myles Blasonato in Analysis, Blog, Game Design

There’s a growing issue in modern game design, and it isn’t a lack of content. It’s the opposite. Games are full of things to do, but very little of it carries weight. Players move from task to task, clearing objectives, ticking off systems, progressing through experiences that feel large on the surface but hollow underneath. This is what I call gameplay exhaustion. It’s the point where the player is still playing, but no longer thinking. At the start, everything works. The player is learning patterns, testing systems, figuring out how things behave. That learning phase is where engagement is strongest. But over time, that process stops. The player begins to predict outcomes. They recognise the structure. The game becomes readable in the wrong way. Not understandable, but repetitive. That’s where exhaustion begins...

AGDAs 2026 Are Open – And That’s Exactly What the Australian Industry Needs

Posted on by Myles Blasonato in Blog, News

Nominations for the 2026 Australian Game Developer Awards (AGDAs) are now open, with the ceremony set to take place on October 7 in Melbourne as part of Games Connect Asia Pacific. On paper, this is a standard industry announcement. In reality, it’s a signal of something far more important: stability, recognition, and momentum for the Australian games industry at a time when it needs it most. The AGDAs aren’t just about celebrating finished games. They are one of the few national-level mechanisms that validate creative work, build visibility, and connect developers to broader opportunities. In an industry facing economic pressure globally, that kind of recognition becomes structural, not symbolic...