May 192006
 

Now that it’s on Amazon, I suppose that I need to actually write it.

This is the follow-on to A Theory of Fun for Game Design, of course, and it’s called A Grammar of Gameplay: How Games Work. It’s intended as a companion, of course, but also as an amalgam of all the thoughts on game atoms, game design notation, mechannics vs dressing, and so on. It’s also intended to spend a fair amount of time on only the dressing — not so much as to replace indispensable books like Lee Sheldon’s, but just to provide a bit of an overview of how non-mechanical elements influence a player’s perception of a game.

The overview sell sheet that I provided to the publisher:
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Exceptionalism

 Posted by (Visited 18792 times)  Game talk
May 152006
 

In the apparently neverending discussion thread on the Metaverse Summit, I seem to have been assigned the role of Second Life skeptic or even opponent, despite this not being my intention. In fact, it’s rather odd, since in some circles I am considered a staunch SL defender, whereas in others I am the skeptic…! I guess I have different avatars for different social worlds…

In a post over at his blog, Cory Ondrejka writes,

Would you be willing to give up on online game exceptionalism? 🙂

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