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.

GDCA: Gamasutra’s write up of Games Are Math

 Posted by (Visited 7093 times)  Game talk  Tagged with: , , , , ,
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.

AGDC: Games Are Math writeup

 Posted by (Visited 7018 times)  Game talk  Tagged with: , , , , , ,
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.

AGDC: Opportunities for Monetizing Online Games

 Posted by (Visited 12134 times)  Game talk  Tagged with: , , , , ,
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 11655 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.

Continue reading »

Random GDCA notes

 Posted by (Visited 5053 times)  Game talk  Tagged with: ,
Sep 162009
 

I got to my hotel and there was a cowboy boot made of chocolate, with bonbons inside, waiting on the table. Ah, Austin.

The speaker’s gift is an ice cube tray that makes Space Invaders.

Have not yet had Rudy’s. This is a crime.

Told a lot of UO stories! Sort of weird how much it came up today.

A few folks from Korea asked for my autograph. They say everyone there still reads A Theory of Fun. Hurray!

Learned that lots of scripts I wrote for UO are still used in their original form.

Watched a bunch of famous game designers whose names I shall not drop play Family Business. They affected terrible Joisey and Brooklyn accents as they played.

Was able to answer John Romero’s trivia questions about old Epyx games. Was able to stump him on the name of the third Apshai game. I told him I didn’t tweet that fact. I didn’t promise not to blog it!

Here’s one for the Twitter followers of #designshoefetish or whatever the tag is: a pic of me and Brenda Brathwaite.

My talk is not until Friday,and I still have slides to prep. But it is almost 1am here… sigh.

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