…is quite wonderful. It basically makes the case that freeform play (and even user-created content) should be the elder game on top of a more directed and guided play experience — and that we don’t tend to see this because of historical divisions between player types.
PS, I’ve periodically gone digging to find the origin of the term “elder game.” Anyone know? This old MUD-Dev post references the moment when it probably became common currency…
I spent some time with the folks from the Avault lately, and now here’s the result, the Adrenaline Vault Podcast, where we talk about (if I recall correctly) Metaplace, World of Warcraft’s dominance of AAA games, why critics of videogame violence don’t quite get it, and more.
There’s an interesting article on CNet this morning about how the party game Werewolf (also known as Mafia) is quite popular among Silicon Valley tech folk lately (the article traces it to 2007 or so). It’s been popular among game designers for much longer than that, of course — I think the industry interest in it may have crested a few years ago, actually.
The thing that piques my interest in the article, though, is the suggestion that the game’s themes may be why it resonates so strongly in the go-go-go Silicon Valley culture. You see, Werewolf is a game in which you have a group of people lying to the other players.
Fundamentally, Werewolf is about deception by a minority, and about the ways in which manipulation happens. Villagers lose when they fail to act rationally, fail to cooperate to a sufficient degree, and fail at institutional memory.
“If you think about what the fundamental skills in play in something like Werewolf are, they have to do with persuasion and communication. For entrepreneurs in particular, this is kind of a lot of the currency of their everyday lives,” Slavin said. “Bringing the types of interactions that are most typical in those scenarios…and turning them into something useless, something that only has social currency instead of live-or-die consequences for the company, is (fun) in the same way that it’s fun to bankrupt your friends in Monopoly, not in real life.”
“Those are incredibly important lessons for an entrepreneur,” Ventilla said. “You’re constantly reminded of just how much you need to do until you’re really top-notch at those things.”
— Why do young techies want to be werewolves? | The Social – CNET News.
I suppose this is healthy or not for the entrepreneur (and Silicon Valley as whole!) depending on whether they prefer to play as a villager or as a werewolf…
It’s coming up!
5th Annual Games for Health Conference in Boston on June 11-12 with Pre-Conference on June 10.
Over 60 sessions on many many topics.
People who enter beb09 @ registration get a 15% discount
Also direct registration at: http://www.regonline.com/gfh2009
Content summaries so far at:
http://www.gamesforhealth.org/archives/000253.html
Club Cooee went open beta today… and it looks like a better-done Lively, but running on your desktop as a widget. Basically, it turns the VW experience into a desktop IM client. Or vice versa, perhaps — they describe themselves first and foremost as a messenger client.
Looks like it’s free, depending entirely on the sale of virtual currency for monetization (they run a two-currency system, like most virtual worlds do today). You can buy items and animations, and build your own rooms to some degree. My favorite feature, though, is drag and drop sharing of music and pictures from your desktop.
There’s gaming pedigree here — the company was founded by the guys who did The Settlers and AquaNox.
