Game talk

OFCOM is the UK telecommunications watchdog group — independent, but chartered by the government to “further the interests of consumers” as regards telecommuncations of all sorts: TV, radio, spectrum, and high-speed data networks (meaning, the Net).

Last December, the EC proposed some new regulations for basically all forms of video; anything that provided a moving picture to the audience, basically. I gather there has been some controversy about the proposals, because they basically extend the practices of TV regulation to fields such as mobile video, games, and streaming video.

So OFCOM hired RAND Europe to do a study. It’s 200 pages. You can read the high level summary here: Assessing Indirect Impacts of the EC Proposals for Video Regulation.

Read More “RAND and the EU tackle online games”

Really light on stats this time around. The main statistical finding is that youngercplayers tend to be more rigid in dealing with dilemmas and minor infractions, kicking people from groups and so on. On the other hand, there’s a fascinating interview on the topic of game addition with a practicing therapist. Worth reading. The link: the DAEDALUS PROJECT: MMORPG Research, Cyberculture, MMORPG Psychology.

Another day, more changes to the blogroll.

Over at OverModerated (a blog dealing exclusively with community management issues in online games), there’s this nifty article entitled The Virtues As Applied to Community Management. Overall, a solid overview of key lessons learned presented in the pithy bulleted way that gets a blog links. 🙂

But there’s a weird undercurrent in there that I can only term developer resentment!

Read More “OverModerated: The Virtues As Applied to Community Management”

It’s available here and from the program page.