Harebrained Schemes
Company
2 documents in the library are about Harebrained Schemes, from writers such as DiGRA and Game Developers Conference. Each has a summary and key insights with the page they come from.
Connections
Each row is a game or company named alongside Harebrained Schemes, each column a document, oldest first. A mark means that document names it. Select a row to see those documents.
Documents about Harebrained Schemes
Designing Hybrid Agency: AI-Mech Collaboration in Contemporary Mecha Games
This paper examines how contemporary mecha games embed AI into the machines players pilot, treating AI-mech units as sites of "hybrid agency" in which initiative, responsibility, and risk move between human and non-human actors through rules, automation thresholds, and representational cues.
- The paper reframes AI-controlled mechs in games as co-acting subjects ('hybrid agency') whose decisions directly shape what the player can do, rather than as enemy routines, scripted companions, or background coordination systems.
- Its analysis rests on three titles spanning genres: Titanfall 2 (first-person shooter), Daemon X Machina (third-person mech action), and BattleTech (turn-based tactics), each built on a human pilot collaborating with a semi-autonomous war machine.
- Initiative shifts between pilot and machine through mech takeovers, automated follow-up actions, and quieter reallocations via turn order and accuracy thresholds, often without the player noticing the transfer.
GDC Plays MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries with Piranha Games' Russ Bullock
MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries serves as a modernization of the long-standing franchise, designed to translate the deliberate, heavy combat mechanics of the series into a deep, non-linear single-player campaign.
- Piranha Games developed MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries as a non-linear, single-player campaign, leveraging eight years of technical experience and assets from MechWarrior Online.
- The game features a complex damage model with dozens of distinct degradation states and fully destructible urban environments to simulate the experience of piloting a heavy tank.
- Development efficiency was bolstered by strategic partnerships, including asset sharing and localization collaboration with Harebrained Schemes.