speaking

  • Speaking at Inside Social Apps

    Hours Categories Game talk
    Comments 2 Comments

    I seem to have neglected to mention that I will be on a panel at Inside Social Apps InFocus. The event is on the 25th — next week! As I understand it, they expect the event to be full, with no registrations available at the door, so if you’re in the area, you may want to register now on the website.

    The panel I am on:

    M&A Landscape for Small & Midsize Developers

    Paul Bettner, GM, Zynga with Friends (former Founder & CEO, Newtoy)
    Sean Ryan, Director Games Partnerships, Facebook (former EVP and GM Games, News Corp)
    Atul Bagga, VP Equity Research – Games, ThinkEquity
    Raph Koster, VP Creative Design, Playdom (former President, Metaplace)

    Some of the world’s largest media companies and game publishers have made major acquisitions of social game developers in the last 18 months. We’ve also seen consolidation in the space through several acquisitions of small-to-midsize developers. As we begin 2011, what do the shifting landscapes in the media and games industries mean for M&A activity, and potential acquisition targets, in the year ahead? We will investigate from every angle.

  • GDCOnline: my Social Mechanics talk

    Hours Categories Game talk
    Comments 18 Comments

    The intent of this talk was to do a “powers of ten” sort of look at multiplayer mechanics… not really to describe anything new, but instead to try to take the whole big spectrum of what we think of as multiplayer game design, and do a cross-disciplinary look at it. I covered a bit of game theory, a bit of psychology, a bit of evolutionary biology, a touch of history, a heavy dose of sociology, a dash of social networking theory, and of course, game design stuff.

    My hope was that when done, it would both serve as a good context for thinking about multiplayer games of several sorts, and also as just a plain old reference, something to point at when discussing things like what the impact of gifts and wall posts are in social games, or why some MMOs have longer retention cycles.

    So here it is as a PDF, for your perusal. I tried to make the slides stand on their own as much as I could, but of course, the actual voiceover would make many slides more comprehensible. For that, look for the actual session recording to appear on the GDC Vault.

    Long-time readers will notice that there are bits here that reference and repeat elements of much older presentations. I recommend following up this one with the math-heavy but extremely related presentation on social network theory Small Worlds: Competitive and Cooperative Structures in Online Worlds (PDF), if you have not seen it before… I gave it back in 2003, a year before Facebook launched. 🙂 It digs a lot deeper specifically into many of the characteristics of large scale-free networks in games.

  • GDCOnline: AAA to Social Games coverage

    Hours Categories Game talk
    Comments 3 Comments

    A few sites covered the talk I gave on John Donham’s behalf here at GDC Online.

    I do think Gamespot commenters interpret my little dig at SWTOR a bit too negatively — it wasn’t a dis but rather a gentle dig, considering that most of the team leaders there are good friends, and one of them was in the front row. 🙂

    The slides are actually John’s to post, so I won’t do so here unless he tells me to, but Tami’s liveblog actuall captures the specific slides rather well.

  • GDCOnline day one

    Hours Categories Game talk
    Comments 4 Comments

    I am here in Austin for GDC Online, and I haven’t made it to any sessions yet. Efforts continue to pare down my 1 hr 20 minute presentation to something that fits inside of a session slot, but moreover, I am now giving an addition presentation tomorrow, stepping in for John Donham who can’t make it. So if you are at the show, stop by Wednesday for this session:

    AAA to Social Games — Making the Leap Speaker/s: Raph Koster (Playdom)
    Day / Time / Location: Wednesday 1:30- 2:30 Room 5
    Track / Format: Production / Lecture
    Description: Developing games for social networks is a dramatic shift from making titles for PCs, consoles, or even the Internet. These new distribution channels have many unique lessons to learn, including fundamental revisions to the development process itself. This session will provide you with a solid basis for revising your strategy as you approach social game development.

    My regular talk is on Friday. I also hope to have some liveblogs for you all of sessions I attend if I get the chance.