Author Archive
Why Game Narrative is an Oxymoron
If you haven’t been watching Charlie Brooker’s Newswipe you’re missing out on some great meta-media commentary on the pitiful state of television “news”.
Last year he created a special focused on Video Games called “GamesWipe”. It has the same snarky attitude as his regular show, and featured this bit of commentary on game content by British [...]
Why the iPad Isn’t Insanely Great
Apple has, in the past, always built their consumer products around a need that has either been unaddressed, or closes an obvious “hole” in the marketplace, even if most people didn’t realize how obvious it was until someone built a shiny-white plastic a bridge across it.
Core gaming data is irrelevant to Social Games, unless it isn’t.
I mostly ignore the data on core gaming when it comes to reading tea leaves for social, but the Nintendo Wii has really shaken things up on the console side in a way that I think has relevance for the Social Space. They’re making a truly mainstream play…
Over on the Wired Gaming Blog, Chris Kohler [...]
Women and Core Gaming
Here’s an interesting, and fairly succinct overview of women in gaming culture.
I don’t necessarily agree with his conclusions. I think he’s overly concerned with sexism while glossing over the fact that women (and mainstream gamers in general) may not be interested in the same play patterns, but it’s definitely worth a look.
via Lou Anders
The Ten Most Significant Social Games of 2009
My article on the subject has gone up on Inside Social Games.
While it’s easy enough to figure out what the most popular games are simply by going over to AppData and looking at the numbers, I thought the end of the year might be a chance to reflect on what were some of the most [...]
Love and Hate Are Always Better Than Like.
Set Godin pulls apart a New York Times article on user feedback for the Kindle, and mentions something that everyone interacting with user metrics should be keenly aware of:
Amazon reviews never reflect the product, they reflect the passion people have for the product. As Jeff Bezos has pointed out again and again, most great products [...]
Dear Duke Nukem: Compromise Is Part of the Process
There are plenty of lessons to be learned from the decade long debacle of Duke NukemForever, but the key one here, I think, is that any creative process is going to have elements of disappointment when you launch. Things you imagined would be better but aren’t, or ideas that you hoped would flourish but didn’t. [...]
A Vision for a Magazine on Digital Dveice
This technology doesn’t exist yet, but it’s good to see people are already thinking about the impact of the next generation of digital devices.
The good stuff starts at about 3 minutes in.
The first generation of digitized media tends to closely relate to our analog experiences, but quickly takes advantage of the flexibility of the virtual [...]
Why Zynga is worth $2.5 Billion
With their latest huge investor Zynga is now valued at somewhere around 2.5 billion dollars, give or take a billion (and who’s counting, right)?
As usual when these huge valuations come around, people tend to question whether or not the company is really worth it, especially when you consider they pulled off this kind of value [...]
Video Games as Astroturfing
Rachel Maddow covers the controversy over using virtual offers as a political tactic:
She does an excellent job of breaking down the economics.