Year: 2007

Totilo strikes again, witha great interview of Jonathan Blow.

…I feel like unearned rewards are false and meaningless, yet so many people spend their lives chasing easy/unearned rewards. So there is a very conscious decision that you only get collectibles in “Braid” when you solve a puzzle, and you only get one per puzzle. Some of the puzzles are easy, some are hard; but you did something very explicit to get the reward. It’s not like “Mario” and every other game since then, when there are gold coins sprinkled everywhere, and you get them just by walking along a path or jumping up to some blocks, and that satisfies your reward-seeking reflex for now and pacifies you into continuing to play the game. I actually think that Skinnerian reward scheduling in general (which you see in most modern game design, MMOs being the canonical example) is unethical and games should not do it…

In a handy overview with chart, TechCrunch looks at Virtual World Hangouts: So Many To Choose From.

This is indeed growing into a crowded space. I predicted at a conference a while back that every single major toy brand would have an MMO within two years. Well, we’re getting close, what with stuff like Mattel announcing U.B.Funkeys, for example. Edit: and the BBC jumping in as well. And BarbieGirls.com has hit 4m users, and the toys just now hit the streets.

Meanwhile, we have EA’s “chief visual officer” saying that chasing graphics is no longer the point because it’s becoming about user content — something which even a year or two ago was heretical within the industry.

I’m going to have to come up with some new stuff to predict soon, because predicting the present ain’t gonna cut it.

Another step for serious game legitimaciness.

If you read the right blogs, you have seen all of this already. Consider yourself warned!

• Some analysis of financial services in SL
•  The Library of Congress is going to work to preserve games. How exactly they can preserve VW’s, which get patched and change, is a whole other question. 🙂
• Linden says it has a one to two year timetable to release their servers.
• The UK is looking at taxing virtual goods profits, and of course, this is the month that the US is supposed to issue a report on it.

Videos of the panels are posted. If you missed the conference, or are interested in the way new business models are hitting the industry, these are something you should check out.

My panel was “Making Virtual Economies Work.” But they’re all worth watching.