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.

  • Learning triggers the brain’s reward loop

    Hours Categories Game talk
    Comments 10 Comments

    Just yesterday my new editor at OReilly asked me “is there anything that has made the content of A Theory of Fun in need of updating?” And my response was “no, not really…”

    That’s because articles like this one keep coming out:

    Further experiments on their brains revealed that that the same neurons were signaling the expectation of both water and knowledge, and they were linked to the release of dopamine–a neurotransmitter chemical that’s connected to making you feel rewarded when you achieve a goal.

    And that’s incredibly revealing. Because it implies that the primal urge mechanisms that drive us to eat when hungry and drink when thirsty are also directly allied with seeking out new knowledge–it seems we’re actually programmed to gather information.

    — Reading Fast Company as Rewarding as Sex, Study Suggests | Technomix | Fast Company.

    Digging deeper to the source article shows that the key quote is this one:

    …information about a reward is rewarding in itself.

  • The Game Crafter: Cafepress for board games!

    Hours Categories Gamemaking
    Comments 11 Comments

    Gamecrafter logoThis is awesome, and I will be signing up tonight and probably throwing one of my board game designs up there to try it out. 🙂 The short form: CafePress for board game designers.

    Their brief FAQ covers the basics.

    At TGC, you can start selling your game with only the push of a button. There are no up-front fees, no contractural obligations, no distributors, and you don’t need a big publisher to decide your game will sell 10,000 units in the first year.

    TGC is your dream made simple!

    Why TGC? We’ve been in the game design/manufacturing industry for over 10 years and published many of our own titles. We’ve always specialized in small run games, but we did it only for ourselves. Over the years we’ve gotten hundreds of requests from other indie designers asking if we’d publish their games, and finally we realized that our process could be applied to games other than our own as well.

    — The Game Crafter – Your game REALIZED – Home.

    Looks like they handle not just boards and cards, but also sell a nice assortment of parts that can go into the game. Not as wide an array as I have in my prototype kit, but decent nonetheless. 🙂

  • Intel aims at VW-like “ICE web”

    Hours Categories Game talk
    Comments 6 Comments

    At Semicon 2009, the keynote speaker from Intel apparently said that Intel is working towards the Internet becoming an “immersive connective experience,” or ICE web.

    Intel’s laboratories have also investing in researching visual computing, using computers in conjunction with cameras and GPS in a smartphone. For example, users could take a picture of a sign on their smartphones and the handset would check GPS to see what country the users was in, get a translation of its meaning and give directions from a mapping application overlaid.

    He said that applications like Second Life were merely the first generation of virtual worlds and the situation was going to get more immersive. Intel has been using software modelling techniques to render 3D more effectively, including making computer generated environments obey physical laws of movement and building in behavioural intelligence.

    — Intel outlines the next generation ‘reality web’ – Technology – News – CRN Australia

    None of this sounds particularly off the Metaverse Roadmap, honestly. The interesting thing is the dates.

    He estimated that the techniques of using the camera to produce visual searches for data of photographed object would come online in 2010, with information overlay on camera views by 2012 and a 2D and 3D visual overlay available by 2014.

    Naturally, why this matters to Intel is that all this will need more powerful chips… especially on more mobile devices.

    Of all the parts of the Metaverse Roadmap, it’s the augmeted reality quadrant that is moving the fastest (once you train yourself not to look for goggles and instead look for phones).