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.

  • I’m #9

    Hours Categories Game talk
    Comments 13 Comments

    Massive Online Gamer coverBeckett Massive Online Gamer has selected a list of the “Top 20 Most Influential People in the MMO Industry.” I came in at #9.

    1. Rob Pardo, Senior VP of Game Design, Blizzard Entertainment
    2. Jeffrey Steefel, Executive Producer, Turbine
    3. John Smedley, CEO, Sony Online Entertainment
    4. Hilmar Pétursson, CEO, CCP
    5. Jack Emmert, CCO, Cryptic Studios
    6. Rob Seaver, CEO, Vivox
    7. Min Kim, Director of Game Operations, Nexon America
    8. Scott Hartsman, Formerly Senior Producer, SOE
    9. Raph Koster, President, Areae
    10. James Phinney, Lead Designer, ArenaNet
    11. Richard Garriott, Creative Director, NCSoft
    12. Starr Long, Producer, NCSoft
    13. Cory Ondrejka, Formerly CTO, Linden Labs
    14. Mark Jacobs, GM and VP, EA Mythic
    15. Sulka Haro, Lead Concept Designer, Sulake
    16. Sage Sundi, Global Online Producer, Square-Enix
    17. Jess Lebow, Lead Quest Designer, Carbine Studios
    18. David Perry, CCO, Acclaim
    19. Sanya Weathers, Director of Community, Guildcafe.com
    20. Daniel James, CEO, Three Rings Design

    Quite flattering, and it’s really great company to be in.

  • ExitReality: another VRML world

    Hours Categories Game talk
    Comments 15 Comments

    ExitReality Launches With Carl’s Jr Deal, and it looks like another attempt to commercialize VRML, much like several of the other projects we have seen over the last couple of years.

    The comment thread is interesting precisely because of its mix of reactions:

    This is really nice! Really love to check it out. It can turn any web page into 3D space? How can this be done? Amazing stuff!

    to

    I’d like one double failburger to go.

    One commenter makes the point that has to be made about any plug-in based approach to the problem: what about adoption of the plug-in? Most people simply say no to all plug-in install requests. This is a significant challenge across the web — it takes really compelling content to drive adoption.

    In any case, ExitReality seems to have some nice features that seem to rapidly be becoming de rigueur: HTML on a polygon, video on a polygon, etc. Not sure how they did the Burger Time emulation — Flash on a poly? Most interesting is the “install and automatically make a 3d space from your webpage” thing that is hinted at. It’s not that hard to do, really — pass in the URL to the world, and have the world scrape the page for assets to use — but it potentially makes a page a bit more compelling.

    Edit: Apparently there’s a MySpace app as well, which connects to the branded worlds.

  • (Tuesday) Mailbag: forum posters, churn, betas

    Hours Categories Game talk, Mailbag
    Comments 25 Comments

    Mr Koster, I am wondering if you can help me with a bit of online Mythbusting? I have an interest in statistics with relation to gamers and beta testers. This quote: “Something like 90% of the people playing an MMO never post in the forums.” was recently made here and attributed to you and Rich Vogel here. (please read the thread to see why I am interested) So, I was wondering if you could confirm this? How did you collect this data? And if so, what other data can you share? Do you know of any other sources of this sort of data? And, yes. I would be very happy to see this email posted and commented on in your blog. Thank you for your time and effort.

    Regards, Guy Russon

    Well, as far as how that stat comes about (and it does vary game to game — don’t take 10% as gospel, becaus eyou are right it’s a “whisper stat” at this point), you simply measure your subscribers, measure your active forum posters, and derive a ratio. 🙂 In the case of forums where they require a game registration in order to register for the forum, this is pretty easy.

    Read More “(Tuesday) Mailbag: forum posters, churn, betas”

  • An excerpt from The Craft of Musical Communication

    Hours Categories Game talk, Music
    Comments 17 Comments

    What makes this so interesting is that music like thought always intends to get someplace specific. That place happens to be the end of the thought or the cadence. What makes this even more interesting is that just as we walk, to get someplace specific, at 116, most people also speak with the normal accents in their speech occurring at a rate of 116 beats per minute. But we only do this when we have something specific to say. People who by temperament, by personality, by persuasion, or by habit speak either faster or slower than that speed are perceived to be intolerably dull or slow witted, if they speak much slower than 116, or untrustworthy, if they speak much faster than 116. The affect of being slower is of slothfulness or of painful self consciousness. The affect of being faster is that of a shyster who is always trying to fast talk people into doing things they don’t want to do.

    I thought this was fascinating, and it made me wonder whether it was applicable to pacing in other areas of creativity as well. Games? Blogging? Web site interactivity?

    The whole block, excerpted from The Craft of Musical Communication – Part One: Read More “An excerpt from The Craft of Musical Communication”