Game talk

This is the catch-all category for stuff about games and game design. It easily makes up the vast majority of the site’s content. If you are looking for something specific, I highly recommend looking into the tags used on the site instead. They can narrow down the hunt immensely.

A whole bunch of news tidbits

 Posted by (Visited 7183 times)  Game talk  Tagged with: , , , ,
Jan 052010
 

Boy, have I neglected the blog. Here’s some stuff I said to myself, “I should blog that” that flew by.

Non-Andean Bird

 Posted by (Visited 6782 times)  Gamemaking
Jan 052010
 

Some of you long-time blog readers may recall a little public project of mine called Andean Bird.*

But that is not what I am writing about. Instead, I wanted to call your attention to this!

That’s a prototype by Michael Wilson, who writes

Hello there. I enjoyed your playing with your ‘Andean Bird’ prototype three years back, which was a concept I’d wanted to explore myself but never had time. I was sad to see that you didn’t continue the project. However I’ve recently had some free time to learn XNA, and I’ve made a 3D bird flight simulator that is perhaps a spiritual successor. It still needs some elements to be a playable game – sound, a ‘flight path’ to follow etc – but the simulation mechanics are working well.

Continue reading »

Metaplace.com farewell party and concert

 Posted by (Visited 7760 times)  Game talk, Music  Tagged with:
Dec 312009
 

To say goodbye to Metaplace.com in style, there’s a party scheduled at noon tomorrow January 1st, probably running all the way until the lights go out at midnight. Please come on by and hang out!

I am also going to do one last, final farewell concert, after some users asked me to. It will be at 2pm Pacific (or Metaplace time) in The Stage, and I will embed it here as usual.

Metaplace.com closing

 Posted by (Visited 46244 times)  Game talk, Gamemaking  Tagged with:
Dec 212009
 

Today we announced that the consumer-facing Metaplace service, the one you all know as the user-generated worlds website at Metaplace.com, is closing on January 1st. There’s a FAQ and an official letter on the site.

The reason? Well, it just hasn’t gotten traction. I have many thoughts on why, but I hope you’ll forgive me if I don’t go into all of them right now. It is a sad day for us here, and I know many users are going to be very disappointed by this turn of events.

Metaplace Inc isn’t going away – in fact, we have some pretty exciting plans. But those plans are best shared on a future day.

If we have to sunset the service, we want to do it right. So for the next two weeks – come visit, and enjoy and celebrate all of the amazing creativity and work users put into their worlds. We’re providing a way for users to grab the data that makes up their worlds. We’ll be opening a website for the community so that you don’t lose touch with your Metaplace friends. And we’ll have a big party on the last day – because Metaplace.com will not go quietly, but with the sound of meeps and music and laughter.

It was a wonderful world full of wonderful people, and I will miss it more than I can say.

Terra Nova: Gender differences in MMOs

 Posted by (Visited 8751 times)  Game talk  Tagged with: , , , , ,
Dec 172009
 

The latest results from the giant EQ2 data research project came out a few days ago, and this time they center on gender. I’ll just point straight to the summary from Terra Nova:

  • Men are more driven to achieve within the game space, and women are more driven to socialize, although these differences are not as large as one might expect.
  • Female players fall into two distinct categories: stereotypically feminine players, typically brought into the game by a partner, and very hard-core players.
  • The hard-core women are more intense than their male counterparts: “The top 10% of male players played an average of 48.86 hours per week, while the top 10% of female players played an average of 56.64 hours per week.”
  • Female players are healthier offline than the males. This is especially true among older players.
  • When males and females play together within a romantic relationship, the males are less happy and the females more happy. When not playing in a romantic relationship, these outcomes are reversed: the females are less happy and the males more happy.
  • There are a surprisingly large number of bisexual females playing, but not males. While male bisexual players stuck to the national average, females were about five times higher than the national baseline rate.
  • Females under-report their playing time more than males.

via Terra Nova: Gender differences in MMOs.

The full paper can be gotten here (scroll down a bit) but you have to register or purchase it.

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