Remember the “shocking study”? Well, it made CNN and Reuters today. And that right there is why it mattered.
CNN.com – Some games may enhance sociability – Sep 6, 2006
(Visited 10273 times) Game talk
Sep 062006
AGC: Rob Pardo’s keynote
(Visited 102292 times) Game talk
Sep 062006
Here’s my live notes from Rob Pardo’s keynote at the Austin Game Conference.
Rich Vogel intro: WoW is now a global brand, approaching a billion dollars in revenue and at 7m paying users. Rob Pardo was lead designer of Starcraft and is now VP of Design at Blizzard.
What Really matters: how Blizzard Game philosophy translates into World of Warcraft
We have a set of core philosophies, and I will talk about how we apply them to WoW.
We have a lot of mantras: “concentrated coolness,” “easy to learn, hard to master,” etc. With many designers it’s important to have those shared values.
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In Austin for AGC
(Visited 7434 times) Misc
Sep 052006
I highly recommend not traveling when you seem to have a splitting headache and a 100 degree fever. I can’t even muster the energy to go to Rudy’s, how sad is that?
Using Games to Tap Collective Intelligence
(Visited 5938 times) Game talk
Sep 042006
David Edery has written a fairly in-depth post on Using Games to Tap Collective Intelligence that echoes some of the things I was saying way back when. Worth a read.
Two writers I met at Worldcon
(Visited 7228 times) Reading
Sep 032006
I wanted to call out the work of two writers I met while at Worldcon. First up is Bill Shunn; I had dinner with him and his lovely wife Laura, as well as a host of other folks, one night. I naturally asked where I could find something he’d written; as it happens, Salon was the easiest place. And to my pleasure, “Love in the Age of Spyware” is one of the best SF shorts I’ve read in years.
The other is Tobias Buckell. I just finished Crystal Rain and it was great fun — an adventure story in an island culture world where enemy aliens have taken on the roles of gods in a fallen human civilization, recreating aspects of the Aztec culture in order to wage war. It’s full of airships, hidden technological secrets, island patois, and derring-do. Toby was a winner of the Writers of the Future contest, and a finalist for the Campbell. If you are looking for something a little different from the usual fantasy or space opera, this should fit the bill nicely without being so completely exotic that you can’t relate — it’s still very much in the straight-up science-fiction adventure story tradition.
So go check them out. 🙂
