Wow reaches 9 million
Gamasutra – World of Warcraft Hits 9 Million Subscribers
And yes, they mean actual players (a lot of people seem to think that WoW’s numbers are “registered user” figures, but they’re not).
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Cooking up Chemistry
I finally got around to reading Dan Cook’s The Chemistry Of Game Design on Gamasutra. At the rate other folks are going, I won’t have to write “A Grammar of Gameplay.”
The skill chains he describes are, of course, basically the same as the game atoms I’ve been messing with, and very similar to the diagrams that Andrew McLennan & co. have been working on, and to Ben Cousins’ stuff, and so on. I tend to think that the reason we’re all saying roughly the same thing is because, well, this is kinda how it is.
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Charles Stross has pre-traumatic future shock
Charlie’s Diary: Unpacking the Zeitgeist is a fun post about trying to explain the recent gold-farmers-dropping-gnomes incident to someone from 1977 — and pondering what that means for trying to envision what 2037 will be like.
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Newsweek looks at HiPiHi
China’s (Controlled) Virtual World – Newsweek: International Editions – MSNBC.com
Just briefly noting, haven’t even had the chance to read it yet (been a busy day!).
Edit:looks like it’s part of a broader look at virtual worlds, focusing (of course) on Second Life — the international editions even have it as the cover story.
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The Sunday Poem: Pistachio
Ok, a challenge. Next Sunday do a poem on Ice Creme Cones, and do it without any insinuations of death, love, or nature.
No insinuations? Fat chance.
Pistachio
Pistachio piled high, a green the shade of leaves in shade;
Scintilla sparkles, specular sliding off the cone.A spritz of soda, carbon captured, bubbles bursting;
Antiseptic odor effervescing from the glass.Waterstains on spoons, overlapping nebulae. Straws. Scoops.
Color buckets, congealed craters, rough gorges. Crème.Here there is no death except in melting. There is no love,
But for the sharing of banana splits, there is no natureSave for green the shade of leaves in shade, the nuts,
The flavor on the tongue, purchased by my grandpa.We chrome, we swirl, we pile double-high, we watch
As scoops sizzle on the hot cement, fallen from their perch.