Games and narrative: The ludologist's lament

Some of you may have read Ted Castranova's post a few months ago over on Terra Nova titled Movies Stink. As I tried to convey in my comment there, I'm sympathetic to Ted's plight. Having novel and film shaped artifacts foisted upon you at the expense of game shaped ones really sounds like it sucks. Of course, I'm also more or less unable to have much empathy with him in this matter.

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Reflections of raid leadership

I had the opportunity the other day to give a talk in game in World of Warcraft for the r u game series by the Games and public libraries group which was a real blast. Although the attendance was light, my friend and colleague Mark Chen did jump on, and along with the series host Ellen Forsyth we had a rather excellent conversation about everything from my work on guild leadership, to games as texts, and more. One thing that came up, as it invariably does, was the question of leadership skill transfer between WoW and other settings.

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Various cool stuff: An interwebs video roundup post

While others are scouring the internet for various April Fool's content, I'm using today as an excuse to post a roundup of some of the cool things I've come across recently through my feed reader. In this post: Adorable animals, Cool audio, Robots, and more!

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SimCity always-on and other crimes against humanity

I'm not going to be the only one saying this. In fact many people have been ranting about it already, and there has been much muttering of oaths and rending of...bits in the comment threads. But I'm going to say it anyway, because it needs to be said. It needs to be said multiple times, by many people with different voices, and it needs to be stated from a number of angles including education.

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Live blogging GDC Sid Meier: Interesting decisions

The famous interesting decisions line, Sid Google's himself too apparently. Not interesting decisions: Choices a player makes randomly or non-choices where there's really only one right answer. Not an argument that this applies to every game (rhythm/puzzle/etc.) The importance of the fun as generating "those moments" for the player (shot of Sid with his son many years ago) LEGO game design: If you recombine fun elements from other games it should be fun - not so much Better chances in the design phase to ask what kinds of decisions will I want the player to make over the course of the game. more after the jump...

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