Author: Raph Koster

Raph Koster is a multi-award winning game designer, virtual communities expert, writer and speaker. Check out his full bio to learn more.

AGDC: Bruce Sterling keynote
September 16, 2008September 16, 2008 Game talk
18 Comments

Again, sorry for typos.

Bruce Sterling, Future of Entertainment

Hello, thanks for having me into your event today, and thanks for that intro. Though there is a problem with that, I am not Bruce Sterling. He couldn’t make it, he sent me instead.

The reason he couldn’t make it is that in 2043, Bruce is 89. Dr. Sterling is too frail to get into a time machine to talk to game devs, so he called on me to do it. I am one of his grad students. I volunteered, sort of, to journey back in time using some of our new technical methods. It wasn’t exactly easy, and I am here and fully briefed.

Before I get started about computer entertainment 35 years from today, even though that is a very interesting topic and I am writing my thesis about it, I think I should level with you. I should tell you a few things first confidentially.
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AGDC08 / WiM: Google Lively keynote
September 16, 2008 Game talk
3 Comments

Liveblog, hurried and it was hard to hear and muffled so lots of typos and elisions.

Kevin Hanna, Creative Director, Google Lively

About a year ago the first rumors hit about Lively. My favorite was one where some bloggers decided to debunk the rumor, presenting arguments as to why Google would never go into this space. At the end the question is why would Google do this?

So we are here to answer the question of why is Google in this space?
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Declaring the Rights of Metaplace Users
September 15, 2008 Game talk, Gamemaking
86 Comments
As has already been mentioned online, today at the Austin Game Conference Metaplace announced that its Terms of Service will be modeled on my 2000 article “Declaring the Rights of Players.” What does that mean?

It means, in a nutshell, that we are signing up for the following:

Rights of creators
- Freedom of expression
- Ownership, including earning money & running their own world
- Privacy
- Develop their own TOS
Rights of users
- Freedom of speech & assembly, privacy
- Rule of “law” and due process
- Ownership of their IP
Responsibilities of creators and users
- Don’t break the law
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AGDC08: Lane Merrifield, At Their Service
September 15, 2008 Game talk
1 Comment

At Their Service: Making a Difference by Putting Players First
Lane Merrifield, Club Penguin
(liveblog)

Thank you for allowing me to be here, a huge honor. It wasn’t to omany years ago that I was just an avid fan dreaming of attending this conference. Going to try to keep it brief so we can have time for questions.

I had a few plane issues last night, landed at 4:30am, if i am slow, it’s not because I am Canadian.

Why would I fly to Austin to listen to someone talk about serving others? If we can truly learn how to put the player first, we will have better customer support, and we will build better games, stornger teams, and better businesses.

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AGDC08: Measuring & Metrics
September 15, 2008 Game talk
3 Comments

Measuring & Metrics: the Online Gaming Audience, Edward Hunter, Comscore

(these are just rough notes, not a liveblog transcript).

Gamers used to be 18-24 males, now there are online gamers in every demographic. Exponential increase in spend for advertising to reach the gamer. 9 out of ten calls to ComScore are about ads.

Metrics asked for:
– reach and frequency
– genre prefs by demographic
– market size
– demographics: ideal targets for a game
– exposure targets — how many did you reach, what is the kind & level of engagement? What actions do they take? (Do they interact with the ad or just see it there but focus more on the game?)
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