It’s somehow wonderful to see this Terra Nova piece on Virtual Laguna Beach and contrast it with the f13 thread entitled “KILL ME NOW!! MTV Beta Testing Virtual Laguna Beach”. I suspect many of the core gamer crowd will be quite unhappy with many of the coming developments in virtual worlds…
A while back I was contacted by Christiano Lima Santos, who helps run a Brazilian game developer community called Programadores e Desenvolvedores de Jogos. He asked for an interview, which I gave. The second issue of their truly fantastic newsletter PDJZine is out, and it contains the interview — in Portuguese, of course.
I am blown away by the quality of this ‘zine — it’s practical, detailed, and just really impressive. My Portuguese is more than a little rusty, but I was able to follow it anyway. Anyone know of comparable resources in English? I’d love to point to them. Just recently I was reading David Brin’s article about why kds don’t learn to code today, and it hit home for me (David had actually asked me for recommendations on languages a while back, so knew this rant was coming). The days of being able to type in listings are gone, but they were so important — so it’s great to see this ‘zine full of actual code blocks, and just as importantly, pseudocode.
Anyway, there’s two issues posted; if you read Portuguese or even Spanish, check it out. My interview is in Issue 2 (PDF).
In the meantime, here’s the interview I gave, in English, so you can read it. 🙂
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I’m always surprised by who shows up to chat. This time, it’s JD Deitch, who is Analytic Director for Games & Software at NPD. He dropped me a line to let me know that he posted a few comments in reply to concerns and questions about methodology in the recently announced study.
I suppose that it was inevitable that reviews on Amazon turn into full-fledged threads. In other words, you can now answer a review.
As Making Light points out, however, this just means that lots of authors will start arguing with negative reviews. I shall try to mightily resist getting sucked into this. 🙂
Unless these allergies that have knocked me flat keep me still flat tomorrow, the whole family will be at the Video Games Live concert at the Hollywood Bowl tomorrow. There are even tickets left. I’ll be doing the Meet and Greet thing too, though I will probably miss out on meeting all the gameplayin’ celebs in Hollywood at the afterparty because I have to get the kids back home to get at least some sleep on a school night. It’ll be a late night as it is, but they’ve been pestering me about the show ever since they saw the classic game montage. (Note: YouTube seems to be down right now, but when it’s up, the first movie on that page should work).
