I attended two talks, both by Spore developers, that were long on bits of insight, but short on hard takeaways.
links for 2009-03-31
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'In the case of Xbox Live Community Games… the company takes 30 percent of sales off the bat. Add in a 10 – 30 percent “promotional fee” for games that get “featured” status in the Xbox Live Arcade, and that means Microsoft can wind up keeping 60 percent of revenues overall.'
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Sondheim teaching "Send in the Clowns" to singers.
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Scans of old Commodore-related magazines, books, mailer disks, etc.
GDC 2009.
I wanted to post more during the conference about all the great stuff I saw and people I heard from, but I’m not as young as I used to be, so it’s getting harder for me to spend all day attending panels, spend all night attending parties, and still find the energy to post blog entries as I go.
GDC 2009: Game Design Challenge.
If McGonigal is right in her assertion that embarrassment is a gateway to happiness, then getting a bunch of game design nerds into a room to talk about their own sex lives is a good way to throw those gates wide open.
GDC 2009: Hocking: Intentionality and Improvisation.
Rather than forcing the player to adhere to a fixed script, improvisational play and complex systems encourage the designer to give up control and put the power to have fun back in the player’s hands.
links for 2009-03-29
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"One of the things that taxes a player in a game like WoW is inventory management. Basically, at all times players are making decisions on what they want to have in their bags."
links for 2009-03-28
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'Not everyone who buys a computer needs to become a computer expert. Clay Shirky, I've got more cognitive surplus for you!'
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RGB values for your favorite crayon colors.
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Portraits of the artist having sex with each of the presidents. In order.
links for 2009-03-26
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'Khronos established an Accelerated 3D on Web working group to create a royalty-free specification. The goal is to produce a first public version within 12 months,'
links for 2009-03-24
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Real numbers! Bless 'em.
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'Who cares if Yahoo execs don’t use Flickr personally. They are busy people and have plenty of other more important things to do…. But I think that having Yahoo executives not use their company’s most innovative products sends a message both to the product teams that manage those products as well as the broader public about how Yahoo executives view innovation.'
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Our collective dream/nightmare of a Space Jam spinoff series comes a little bit closer
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'I'm alone because I 'm now used to getting up when I want and drinking from the juice bottles and not shaving my legs and leaving dishes from the night before on my bed and getting up at 3am and seeing a movie and going back to bed at 5am and not hearing a word of scorn.
I'm alone because I don't want a bikini wax.
I'm alone because I appreciate solitude.'
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'The Liemandt Foundation is dedicated to facilitating, testing, and promoting “stealth education” video games so that they can make learning fun for kids who might enjoy playing games more than listening to teachers.'
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NPR discovers art games.
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'A major takeaway from this is that immediate reactions to socially-geared changes are unwise. Day-to-day metrics aren't necessarily helpful when you're implementing changes with a highly social aspect, since it takes time to adjust.'