Hurricanes in Scandinavia. Ice in Austin. Snow in Malibu. And now, an inch and a half of snow in Tucson and Phoenix.
I think we broke it.
The weather
(Visited 7010 times) Misc
Jan 222007
They’re spending time where??
(Visited 14626 times) Game talk
Jan 222007
Jason Miller has an article which is mostly about whether 2007 will be the year of the online game — apparently he’s the initial source of the idea that Nabeel Hyatt was talking about.
What fascinates me, though, is the difference between the list of top games based on market share, versus the top games based on time spent. Time spent, of course, speaks to monetizing via ads. So, the first list is already heavy on titles that the mainstream online game industry tends to ignore or minimize the importance of. Check out the second list and tell me how many of them you even know?
Project Horseshoe reports posted
(Visited 8671 times) Game talk
Jan 212007
The various reports from Project Horseshoe are posted. I was in the group working on the online games. You may notice that the major initiative there is to create a Wiki that attempts to summarize current best practices in the industry: http://www.onlinegamebestpractices.org. We hope to have this Wiki populated to a first pass soon, and then open it to general contributions from the industry.
You’ll also notice that among the goals in there is to get the Rights of Players revised into something that fits today’s climate, and then get it adopted by companies. So if you want to help out in that process, feel free to start right here on this thread!
Definitely read all the reports, though — Dan Cook has already posted a further exploration of the eminently sensible stage gate process that the industry ought to be using for new product development.
The Case for First Life
(Visited 8461 times) Game talk
Jan 212007
The Sunday Poem: The Cat Came Back and Back and Back and Back
(Visited 15220 times) Music, The Sunday Poem
Jan 212007
This is probably my kids’ favorite song. I didn’t write it, of course; credit there goes to a guy named Harry S. Miller, in 1893. But it’s one of those songs that won’t die. A lot of kids come to it via the singalong version in Rise Up Singing: The Group Singing Songbook, which is kind of the default carry-around folk fakebook used around campfires. Some kids of a different vintage might remember the Muppets version.
As with many of the tunes that have gone through the folk process, the melody exists in many different versions as well. I am positive that the version I do bears little resemblance to the original. And of course, once I learned that there were a lot of different versions out there, I had to go out and scour the Internet for all the verses I could find. What I found far exceeded the cat’s official quota of nine lives. And then, of course, I had to add my own.
