game culture

  • Cub Scouts gaming belt loop & pin

    Hours Categories Game talk
    Comments 9 Comments

    Yup, and the jokes about Couch Scouts are already flying on some news sites.

    There is something oddly appropriate about this, though, given how much games have been inspired by the “achievements system” that Scouts have used for a century.

    The requirements have a lot more to do with education than anything else, though. Only one of the five requirements for the academics pin involves actually playing. The others have to do with things like comparison shopping, hardware setup, evaluating the game rating system, and teaching people. The actual descriptions:

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  • What core gamers should know about social games

    Hours Categories Game talk
    Comments 112 Comments

    The culture clash between social games and core gamers was on full display at GDC. I have been called a traitor to the cause of core gamers, even. 🙂 At the awards show, when a Zynga rep claimed the social games award for Farmville and did a little bit of recruiting from the stage, he was not only booed, but someone shouted out, “But you don’t make games!” This is a common sentiment out there in the usual gamer haunts.

    I have many many thoughts on all this — and I have been posting some of them in various places when discussions arise.

    Yes, Farmville is a game. It just requires fairly little skill compared to games for “advanced” gamers. But by any reasonable definition of game, it fits perfectly. Read More “What core gamers should know about social games”

  • FiveBooks on games

    Hours Categories Game talk, Reading
    Comments 2 Comments

    FiveBooks is this neat site whose tagline is “The best five books on everything.” Basically, they pick a subject matter expert, and that person talks about five books that cover that subject. Tom Chatfield picked FiveBooks on games, and A Theory of Fun was one of them, alongside  classics like Homo Ludens and Flow. Quite nice company!

    While you are there, check out Aleks Krotoski’s five books about the Web; and props to Julian Dibbell, who gets a book on each list!

    Between the two lists, there’s only one book I haven’t read — and it’s the one on sports. Hmm.

  • Gameifying everything

    Hours Categories Game talk
    Comments 32 Comments

    Just a little meditation here…

    Lots of chatter this morning already over a speech given at DICE by Jesse Schell (author of the excellent Art of Game Design) on games Beyond Facebook: How social games terrify traditional game makers but will lead us to gaming everywhere.

    I have a long long article brewing on Facebook game snobbery by traditional gamers… and Jesse touched on this in his speech. But he also touched on something that folks like Jane McGonigal have been talking about for a long time: the gameifying of the world.

    Where is this going? Schell says that the achievements and incentives that have wired us into playing Facebook games compulsively will soon be built into everything. Your toothbrush, for instance, will give you 10 achievement points for brushing your teeth in the morning, Schell said. Then it will give you more points for brushing for the right amount of time. Then it will give you points for brushing every morning in a week.

    You may also get credit for eating your Corn Flakes. If you take the bus to work, your local government will give you 10 achievement points for reducing traffic. You will get credit for walking to work, as your digital shoes will testify. If you kid gets straight A’s on a report card, he or she will get 2000 points. And the Obama administration will give you 5,000 points for being a good parent.

    The quote starts someplace that sounds amusing to innocuous, and ends on a note that probably sounds disturbing (“good parent by whose definition?”) to many, particularly to those who are freaked out by the microscandal over Cass Sunstein’s behavioral economics approach to politics.

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  • Terra Nova: Gender differences in MMOs

    Hours Categories Game talk
    Comments 30 Comments

    The latest results from the giant EQ2 data research project came out a few days ago, and this time they center on gender. I’ll just point straight to the summary from Terra Nova:

    • Men are more driven to achieve within the game space, and women are more driven to socialize, although these differences are not as large as one might expect.
    • Female players fall into two distinct categories: stereotypically feminine players, typically brought into the game by a partner, and very hard-core players.
    • The hard-core women are more intense than their male counterparts: “The top 10% of male players played an average of 48.86 hours per week, while the top 10% of female players played an average of 56.64 hours per week.”
    • Female players are healthier offline than the males. This is especially true among older players.
    • When males and females play together within a romantic relationship, the males are less happy and the females more happy. When not playing in a romantic relationship, these outcomes are reversed: the females are less happy and the males more happy.
    • There are a surprisingly large number of bisexual females playing, but not males. While male bisexual players stuck to the national average, females were about five times higher than the national baseline rate.
    • Females under-report their playing time more than males.

    via Terra Nova: Gender differences in MMOs.

    The full paper can be gotten here (scroll down a bit) but you have to register or purchase it.