It seems to have become a traditional that at every conference I sit down with F13.net for a rambling, all-over-the-map interview, which they then take weeks to post. 🙂 This time, however, they typed fast and furiously, and it’s up already! Read on for digs at various industry luminaries (who are all friends whom I deeply respect, honest), plus thoughts on how many stories tall a videogame needs to be for us to feel like the screen is actually big enough…

Also, this time the interview features special guest star Cuppycake!

F13.net – Usefully Cynical Commentary » AGC07: Interview with Raph Koster

… the whole point of being a self-made man is so you can buy that cool golf ball. *laughing* It’s the American Dream! So, yeah, it matters, but I think some of it is honestly because we’ve been pretty crude actually, I think, in design about how we set up comparisons between players and how we tell them to measure themselves against other people. We just give them this one metric, level or whatever, and then… what if there were lots of metrics? Like: You are an extremely high-level epic mount earner! That guy’s a lousy epic mount earner. Then all of a sudden you could say, “Well, clearly he bought his”, and you go neener-neener and walk away. And nobody would feel like it was awful! So some of it might be just that we’ve been bad about designing our metrics.

GamerDad has had a heart attack, and his wife is asking for donations.

For those who don’t know the site, it is a great blog looking videogames from the perspective of a parent. Andrew Bub pretty much gave up his previous writing career for this, and it’s worthy of support.

Another demonstration of XBLA’s interest in indie gaming!

GameSetWatch – IGF Winner Braid Confirmed For Xbox Live Arcade

“Raph Koster reads my blog” t-shirt.

Of course, it’s not just me. Smed, Brad, and Richard get it too. 🙂

Scott Hartsman has a blog now, and there’s a great post on community guidelines there.

One of the interview questions we had as we looking for a community person was “if you had to pick five words that are key to community relations, what are they?”

There were varied answers, of course, but the one we were looking for was “honesty.”