Sunday, May 22, 2011 at 7:24PM A note about this rant: I started it many months ago, and it felt like there was a reason for it at the time. Now I'm not really sure if it's warranted. Continued after jump . . .
Code Geeks, geeks, rant in Back log, Uncategorized Tuesday, May 17, 2011 at 12:17AM I finished Alan Wake the same day I finished Portal 2. That was unfortunate for Alan Wake, but extremely good for helping me think through the construction of narrative in linear games. Spoiler averse post continued after the jump . . .
Alan Wake, Portal 2, Stephen King, game analysis, narrative in Games Monday, May 16, 2011 at 9:58PM There will be more blog posts coming on various topics I've mentioned before (or tweeted about), I promise. In fact, it's quite possible I finally got past my bloggers block today by doing a little work on one of my slow moving posts. In the mean time though here are a few more thoughts on gamification.
Bogost, exploitationware, gamification in Back log, Games Wednesday, May 4, 2011 at 7:40PM This is just a brief blast on this topic of gamification, or as Ian Bogost has referred to it Exploitationware.
Rewarding badges doesn't make a product more like a video game, but more importantly if you don't have a simulation you're not making a game.
The bottom line is that tracking points doesn't mean anything unless those points have meaning, and in any worthwhile simulation, you have good modeling of numerous points in relation to each other in meaningful ways.
Hence, without simulation you're not making anything more game like.
Also, as has been discussed previously in numerous places, a simulation alone does not a game make.
Sunday, April 17, 2011 at 9:38PM This post is a little delayed (as usual), but here are my slides from AERA. Notes and slides after the jump.
