Game talk

Trust is a big topic. There’s a number of definitions out there related to different domains; everything from the famous Ronald Reagan “trust, but verify” dictum applied to international arms treaties, to “trusted computing” which is not about whether something is trustworthy, but whether it behaves predictably from a software/content provider’s point of view (and not necessarily the user’s!).

In general, most people tend, of course, to assume that “trust” means what the dictionary says: someone or something on which you can depend.

Read More “On Trust (part I)”

Thanks to the kind offices of the folks at PARC!

Audio link.

Streaming video link.

I recommend the video, because you can see the slides, and there are some diagrams and stuff on those that I reference.

Errata: it’s actually 51% of the bracket 36-50. (That will make sense if you listen to the whole thing). And it’s Higinbotham with one G.

At some point, I’ll transcribe this and make it a page on the site…

I am starting to think that I should just set up a feed so that all of Danc’s posts on Lost Garden show up here in-line. The latest: The Blind Men and the Elephant: Thoughts on an integrative framework for understanding games basically concludes that we should be using altruism as our core framework for why we make games.

Just yesterday I answered one of a set of interview questions this way:

You’re a self-described “idealist on a virtual crusade.” What, exactly, does this mean? Are you (forgive the wacky pun) questing for the phattest lewt of MMORPG design? What’s the ultimate goal of this crusade?

It really just means that I have high hopes for what online worlds can be and do for people. Over the last decade and more, I’ve seen them make such big differences in people’s lives that I’m a true believer in their power to not only be incredibly entertaining, but also do more: teach people, bring people together, and empower them.

Sometimes people think that means that I’m not interested in the game side of things, but that’s not it at all… I happen to believe much the same of games in general.

Gamasutra -Soapbox – “Designing an MMORPG Feedback Rating System” is an article by David Edery on how we should make use of reputations systems in MMOs.

Dude, I’ve tried…! It’s a wonderful excuse to dump some accumulated knowledge on you.

Here’s some of the things that people don’t tend to realize in working in this space.

Read More “Rep systems”