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Kit Kat makes a real Virtual Goods
If you want to understand the fundamentals of how a functions gift-giving economy works, taking a closer look at this article on the Japanese candy market may give you some insight into how people relate to objects differently when they’re given a different context.
Fiorella says companies want to keep spending habits up by introducing unusual [...]
Social Games are dangerous!
And so, once again, a few bad apples are used to blame an entire industry for being too addictive and too dangerous.
This time the man trotting out the moral panic is Michael Arrington, in this post condemning the offers system that games are using for monetization.
Any system with that many users is going to [...]
The Future of Games
Below you’ll find the the slides from the talk I gave at the Penny Arcade Expo last week.
I really enjoyed being at the show and giving the talk. Thanks again to everyone who came out.
If you do have any thoughts or questions feel free to post them in the comments. I’m happy to discuss them.
PAX [...]
O’Reilly explains what may kill the Kindle in the long run.
There’s few people out there who have a better understanding of digital publishing than O’Reilly. He’s spent the better part of the last two decades publishing technical books that have given developers the information they need to make innovation happen, while being a driving force behind the rise of “Web 2.0″.
In this article for Forbeshe [...]
Why the XBox 360 may already be the next generation’s winning console
It’s heresy among the gamers to say that any particular console may have “won” a particular round of the game wars, especially when you’re talking about features not directly related to the games themselves. Over at Offworld, Jim Rossignol posts an excellent article discussing how the XBox may already be a generation ahead.
All I have [...]
Speaking tonight at The Facebook Developers Garage
I’ll be giving a talk in San Francisco tonight on casual gaming metrics applied to social gaming. If you’re in town for GDC and looking for something to do tonight, this may be the meetup for you!
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
6:30pm – 9:30pm
Hyatt Regency San Francisco
5 Embarcadero Center
San Francisco, CA
There’s more info here.
I’ve posted the [...]
Status in Social Games: There’s two different kinds
It’s common to think that a shiny new piece of technology brings with it an entirely unique experience of the world. For a number of reasons people involved with cutting edge experiences can dismiss thousands of years of human history and try to treat
If other people are your resources when you play a social [...]
DLC for GTAIV: A Bad Idea?
Pachter has crunched some numbers on Grand Theft Auto’s downloadable content and found them wanting:
"We estimate that around 7 million copies of the GTA IV disc (required for the download) were sold on the Xbox 360, and believe that no more than 5 million of these were sold to members of Microsoft’s Xbox Live service," [...]
What is a Social Game?
It’s hot, it’s new, it’s the trend that’s somehow managing to garner precious venture dollars during a time of economic collapse, and to create genuine excitement… But what is it exactly that makes a game “social”?