How much I walked in London

 Posted by (Visited 5528 times)  Misc  Tagged with:
Oct 112008
 

I walked around a lot. All over Clerkenwell (where my hotel was), doing a bit of a tour of locations from Oliver Twist. Over to Covent Garden the day of the unconference. Past the Barbican on the day of the SXSW party. And from Tower Hill to the South Bank and all the way across to Westminster Abbey, on the last day. Along the way I stopped in at The Tower of London, Southwark Cathedral, The Globe, and lots of other interesting locations. I have a kajillion photos, of course, but in the meantime, here’s a quick map of where I walked.
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New Daedalus project!

 Posted by (Visited 5391 times)  Game talk  Tagged with: , ,
Oct 102008
 

The Daedalus Project.

Lots of stuff to dig into, but here’s some highlights:

  • 23% of users create their own guild
  • 20% join because a real life friend invited them
  • Only 4% come via random invite
  • 26% have been in guilds for longer than 2 years
  • 59% join guilds where they know someone in RL
  • Women were twice as likely to be in guilds with romantic partners
  • 20% of people pick a class and always go for it in game after game
  • 17% go for class abilities instead (hardest, crowd control, overpowered, etc)
  • 11% go for the aesthetic of a player race
  • 67% have a preferred class type.
  • On average players have 8.7 characters on their account, but most everyone can identify a “main”
  • Genre: Both genders like fantasy best, but men also like futuristic spaceships a lot.
  • More people like being a vampire than a vampire hunter, but women are more into being a vampire than men are.
  • 80% of people would rather be in the least popular faction.

Play driving games to reduce car insurance?

 Posted by (Visited 8560 times)  Game talk  Tagged with:
Oct 102008
 

Could playing computer games enhance mental agility enough to turn people over 50 into better drivers? Allstate Corp. wants to find out, and if the answer is yes, it might offer insurance discounts to people who play the games.

Alas,I am not old enough to qualify. But it sure seems like a classic application of my theory of fun. 🙂

PsycPORT.com | Testing whether computer games can improve driving.

(Via Morgan).

F13 interview

 Posted by (Visited 4914 times)  Game talk, Gamemaking  Tagged with: , ,
Oct 102008
 

While I was in London, an interview with F13.net came out. We also did a small key giveaway for entry into the Metaplace testing, but those are all gone. Don’t worry, there will be more. 🙂

We covered stuff ranging from Metaplace to academia and game studies, to the AAA MMO market.

F13: What do you make of Blow’s assertion that “modern game design is actually unethical”?

Raph: Jon’s take on the underlying mechanics of fun, from a chemical point of view, isn’t very different from mine. I think that Dan Cook probably said it most succinctly, that “game designers are hijacking the learning systems of the brain.” But perhaps we might tweak that to “the REWARD systems” of the brain.

Lots of other things accomplish this, sometimes for good and sometimes for evil. A lot of work goes into devices and designs built to encourage gambling, for example, and if you read up on the subject, you quickly find that there’s something deeply manipulative about it.

On the other hand, we are also tapping into that when we give someone a gold star for doing well in grade school, and this is usually used for a positive purpose.

The people you meet on planes

 Posted by (Visited 4686 times)  Misc
Oct 102008
 

There I am in the U.S. customs line at LAX, and I notice the girl in front of me, part of a smallish gaggle of young people. She’s got this long dark hair, quite noticeable. Tired looking — hey, it was an 11 hour flight from London — and she’s digging in her bag for her passport, trying to fill out the arrivals card on the fly, and keeps holding up the line. Something familiar about both her and her boyfriend, who has really startling blue eyes and keeps looking at me strangely because I keep looking at them trying to place them.

Then I realize I’m standing next to the stars of High School Musical, Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens, and nobody has recognized them. The two other folks traveling with them are constantly checking their Blackberry, and the conversation is something like “Yeah, when we were in Australia…” After we get through the passport stamping, I tell them quietly how much my kids love their work (didn’t want to cause a big to-do in the line), and they are very gracious despite how tired they are. I end up with the soundtrack stuck in my head the whole rest of the trip…

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