Sep 182009
 

Gamasutra – News – GDC Austin: Raph Koster’s Deceptively Simple Coin Toss. It’s got a couple of images. 🙂

He offered several examples of complex games broken down into abstract graphs. For instance, he took the strategy board game Blokus, in which four players use tiles of various shapes to try to block other players’ ability to place a piece. Only corner-to-corner contact is allowed between pieces of the same color. No edges can touch, and the object is to use as many of your allotted tiles as possible.

Sep 182009
 

Xemu’s Long-Winded Game Industry Ramblings :: AGDC ’09: Raph Koster on Games and Math is a liveblog of the talk I gave a couple of hours ago here at GDCAustin.

The talk was first a very brief intro to game grammar approaches, followed by digging into the math behind very common game mechanics that have stood the test of time, and then lastly a look at some of the “bugs” in human cognition that games tend to exploit. It was supposed to be an intermediate talk, not superadvanced, so I hope I hit the right levelof complexity for everyone!

The room was pretty packed — 300 people, I am told! There’s also commentary on Twitter if you go looking.

I will try to get the slides up soon.

Sep 172009
 

Another liveblog…apologies for typos.

Monetizing Online Games

Lisa Rutherford of TwoFish
Karl Mehta, PlaySpan and PayByCash
Andrew Schneider, LiveGamer
Min Kim, Nexon
Moderated by Eric Goldberg

Eric: A realization at the conference that free to play is the future, these are the guys who can tell you about the future. LiveGamer recently acquired TwoFish. Can you each talk about your top three lines of business?

Andy: started in 2007b on P2P secondary market,and now we have a totalcommerce solution with nCash in Korea and TwoFish, helping partners get more revenue with microtransactions.

Karl:we monetize over 1000 games, microtransaction stack, prepaid card

Lisa: TwoFish focuses on post-purchase data, a data economy platform, what users do

Min: The most significant area I worked on, came out to US in 2005,started office in 2006, launched the payment card method here in the US, consumers had not been proven out yet. We looked at the iTunes card and said, we should do that. It started with the Nexon card. Distributed in 7/11, CVS,RiteAid, will be walgreens soon, 30k retailers in NA.
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AGDC: Top Ten Social RPG Trends

 Posted by (Visited 11653 times)  Game talk  Tagged with: , , ,
Sep 172009
 

Steve Meretzsky, Dave Rohrl, both from Playdom. This is a quickly on the fly typed liveblog and I notice my space bar on my laptop is starting to erratically fail!  I stopped when the Q&A portion hit.

One year ago, stuff barely games. Then Mob Wars launched, lots of imitators. This is now called the social RPG. 13 of top 25 on MySpace, less dominant but huge on FB.Shares some dna with MMO, longform game, months to play, level up, build character, but spare presentation, spreadsheet style UI,low production values. Play sessions are usuallya few minutes due to a mechanic of energy depletion that limits your play sessions.

This talk will cover ten trends, and then make some guesses about the next year.

#1.New horizons in virtual goods.

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Memories of Mary

 Posted by (Visited 5540 times)  Music
Sep 172009
 

Two weeks ago, I received in the mail from Amazon the latest in a long string of Peter,Paul and Mary collections I have owned. This one was the 40 Years Together disc, with remastered versions of the classic songs that I grew up knowing. With their crude stereo recording, the voices were clear in each ear on a long plane flight — not Auto-Tuned, not perfect. Some songs, like “Cruel War,” were a revelation.

I had a cassette of Ten Years Together, the best of from 1970, the year before I was born. “Lemon Tree” was sung to me as a child, and I memorized “Where Have All the Flowers Gone” as a kid as well. I saw them in concert a few times. Mary was really beautiful.

Years later, living in Jacksonville FL, I convinced some of my friends from high school to come to a PP&M concert with me. They laughed, they refused, they caved, thinking it would be ironic fun. As the songs started, I began to sing half-remembered words along with the music, and one of my friends shushed me. Repeatedly. She was getting quite embarrassed. But as the concert went on, I was not the only one singing under my breath. Eventually, Mary stopped between songs and told the audience, “Stop shushing people! This is folk music, it is meant to be sung. If you know the words, please join in!” I sang in full voice after that, and eventually so did my friends as they dimly remembered the story of Stewball the racehorse.  At the end of the show, the band stayed on stage, and we were able to walk up and greet them. My friends had tears in their eyes, pulled along by the utter sincerity and commitment that Peter, Paul and Mary had.

I remember convulsing in laughter with their version of the old lady who swallowed a fly.

I saw Peter Yarrow perform once more, at the Kerrville Folk Festival, a giant gathering of people who mostly just share music, a festival where a sign at the entrance to the ranch reads “welcome home.” He gave years to the festival, serving on its advisory board, helping new songwriters get a chance to share their voices.

Once, I was startled to see a familiar face in one of the offices at Origin. It was Peter again, visiting a teammate, the artist Micael Priest. I stuck my head in, didn’t come in to say hello. Micael said I should have.

I put the new CD on my iPod and had my daughter listen. Oh, she said, they did “Puff”? Yes, they did. And they did “If I Had A Hammer,” which I learned in grade school as a class singalong. And as she sang along to “This Land Is Your Land” and “Blowin’ In The Wind,” songs she learned in grade school herself, I thought about all the songs they did that I have not yet learned to play on guitar, songs that are old old friends.

Mary Travers is dead today. Where have all the flowers gone? Picked by young girls, every one.