Bruce Damer is trying to get input and resources for a Virtual Worlds Timeline: Origins & Evolution of Social Virtual Worlds (e.g., not focused on the game worlds). He wrote the excellent book Avatars: Exploring and Building Virtual Worlds on the Internet back in the day… and you know, I think my copy got lost somewhere along the line, because I haven’t seen it in years.
Amber Night makes her play for YouTube fame. And it’s relevant to game design! Check out the incisive commentary on gold farming:
Amber: Gold farming is like, these players who are Chinese or Australian or something, and they go out and they plant gold… seeds.
Inteviewer: Yeah, I don’t…
Amber: You know, we can quibble over definitions, like, all day long, but can I just say this? It depletes the soil. So you don’t think maybe rotating gold crops with like cantaloupes or mangos or something, that would be OK. Because you never hear about the mango farmers ruining the game. That’s because mango farmers respect the soil.
Just a link, no commentary: 3pointD.com » Blog Archive » Virtual World Tax Debate Gathers Steam.
Awesome. 🙂 SketchFighter 4000 Alpha is the next game from Ambrosia, who have been making kick-ass games for the Mac since forever. (Escape Velocity must be played to be believed…) And the art style is all school notebooks. Be sure to check out the screenshot gallery. Gotta love the explosions that leave behind eraser smudge.
His grandfather told him, when he was a child,
How he used to bait bees with sugar and steal
Their honey, licking it from smeared fingers
While they strung a line of yellow dots to his trap.
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