GDC08: Luminaries Luncheon

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Feb 212008
 

Today I took part in a great off-site luncheon at GDC, organized by David Perry. Besides Dave, there was Chris Taylor, Neil Young, Phil Harrison, and Peter Molyneux there, as well as a whole bunch of journalists. And the topic — well, it was free conversation pretty much, with minimal prompting from the moderator, Gary Whitta. And wow, a great conversation. 🙂

There’s some coverage out already:

Edit: more!

Edit: even more:

GDC2008: Game Studies Download 3.0

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Feb 202008
 

Mia Consalvo, Ohio University
Ian Bogost, Georgia Tech, also runs Persuasive Games
Jane McGonigal, researcher at Institute for the Future, and makes ARGs

3rd Annual Game Studies Download

We will fill your brains with the ten most interesting research findings of the year. The main question is what do we know about games and game players in 2008 that we didn’t know in 2007.

Game researchers are very smart people who care a lot about games, the people who play them, and the future of the medium.

Targeted expertise in HCI, economics, architecture, and more…

Looked at 100s of articles and studies, then did a rapid fire top ten list with ten ideas and ten practical takeaways, You can downlaod the slides at

http://www.avantgame.com/top10.htm

#10: The best content understands exactly how the player likes to play and then makes it slightly harder.
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GDC2008: Master Metrics

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Feb 202008
 

Master Metrics:
The Science Behind the Art of Game Design

Dan Arey and Chris Swain, USC School of Cinematic Arts

Our purpose in putting this together — we are game designers, and this is directed at you as game designers. We got a survey from different folks in the industry about measurement-based design techniques, how they are used to create better play experuiences. They mostly involve analytics and measuring player behavior.

Method: talked to a lot of people we know, wanted to cover a lot of design aspects. Not intended to be a Best Of list, and if you have metrics-based techniques to share, let us know!

Important: these are tools to assist the creative process. period. We do not think you can or should put a formula on game design.
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GDC08: Worlds in Motion keynote coverage

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Feb 182008
 

Virtual Worlds News has a liveblog of “High Windows”, my keynote talk at the Worlds in Motion Summit this morning here at GDC. I was, uh, philosophical. 😉

There is also a Gamasutra article which seems to manage to capture an almost entirely different set of quotes.

I also see a few blog reactions.

As usual, I will try to get the slides posted later today.

Edit: more blog reactions. Brenda Brathwaite. Prokofy, based on the liveblog.

Edit 2: 3d on the Web Cheap. Jeff McNab. e-Clippings. And Massively’s coverage comes the closest, I think, to capturing the tone and narrative of what I said; lots of folks are reading this as being about Darfur, when it in fact is more about expanding our horizons — which is more the virtual horizons, and not just social activism.