Pinboard (DirkSonguer)

seventeen anecdotes about the nintendo wii | insert credit

DirkSonguer — 2018-06-22T08:31:20+00:00

seventeen anecdotes about the nintendo wii

What UX can (and cannot) learn from games – Raph's Website

DirkSonguer — 2018-06-21T17:43:40+00:00

Just add points? What UX can (and cannot) learn from games is a great presentation by Sebastian Deterding examining the currently popular fallacy that adding points to a system is enough to make it into a game or enough to transform a website or service into something fun (something that has spawned some argument lately on Twitter, in fact). I do think there is much for UX design to learn from games — and vice versa — but I also very much agree with the core thought here, which is that the two disciplines are different, and thinking that you can get by with a superficial understanding of one or the other is a mistake — they are not small disciplines!

Subtractive Design — Sirlin.Net — Game Design

DirkSonguer — 2018-06-21T17:28:13+00:00

Subtractive design is the process of removing imperfections and extraneous parts in order to strengthen the core elements. You can think of a design as something you build up, construct and let grow, but it’s pruning away the excess that gives a design a sense of simplicity, elegance, and power.

“Fear and Loathing in Farmville” | DESIGNER NOTES

DirkSonguer — 2018-06-21T17:26:22+00:00

GDC 2010 is now in the books, and it will be a hard one to forget because the whole conference seemed to be obsessed with one thing, which I summed up in this tweet. Or, as Sirlin puts it here: “Facebook, Facebook, Facebook, Facebook, Facebook, Facebook, Facebook, Facebook, Facebook, Facebook.” Off the top of my head, here are the highlights and lowlights of this fixation

The Psychology of Video Games | Examining the intersection of psychology and video games

DirkSonguer — 2018-06-21T17:25:40+00:00

psychologyofgames.com aims to use the science of psychology (queue thunderclap) to answer three broad classes of questions:

Why do gamers do what they do?
Why do those designing games do what they do?
Why do those marketing and selling games do what they do?

Why do people get so excited about loot drops in games like World of Warcraft?

Why do developers keep dumping good money after bad on a doomed project?

Why do gamers stay up late playing just one more level, despite the fact that they know they have to get up for school or work in the morning?

Gamasutra - Video: The dos and don'ts of game dev workplace design

DirkSonguer — 2017-03-29T09:00:10+00:00
A few years back, veteran game developer (and former architectural historian) Demetri Detsaridis hopped onstage at GDC 2015 to examine why game developers should think more deeply about where they work, and how they can improve that workspace in order to improve their games.

Still Logged In: What Social VR and AR Can Learn From MMOs

DirkSonguer — 2017-03-07T21:14:49+00:00
T his talk was delivered on Friday, March 3rd, at the 2017 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. It is, as the title says, about the many lessons from virtual worlds that carry through into any sort of persistent space, including the ones that we think of geotagged web services.

7 Things We Learned About Primary Gaming Motivations From Over 250,000 Gamers - Quantic Foundry

DirkSonguer — 2017-01-19T20:10:21+00:00
In the Gamer Motivation Profile (for video games), we measure 12 distinct motivations for each gamer. One way to get a concise picture of all the data we’ve collected is to focus on primary motivations—the motivation that each gamer scores highest on and is most important to them. In this post, we’ll step through what we learned when we compared the primary motivations of different demographic segments.

Indiana Jones and the Iron Phoenix: The Lost Sequel to Fate of Atlantis: After Fate of Atlantis | The International House of Mojo

DirkSonguer — 2016-10-19T09:53:45+00:00
Released in 1992, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis is considered among the strongest entries in the beloved LucasArts adventure line-up and probably remains the best Indiana Jones game to date. Why, then, did it take seven years for the next proper Indy title - no offense intended to the perfectly addictive Desktop Adventures - to arrive on PCs with 1999’s Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine?

Habitat Chronicles: KidTrade: A Design for an eBay-resistant Virtual Economy

DirkSonguer — 2016-09-30T15:25:54+00:00
Though many of the ideas presented in this article have been kicking around in my head for more than 20 years, and some of the features were tested here-and-there in various virtual economies that I’ve been fortunate enough to help create, the bulk of the work presented in this paper is part of an undeveloped children’s MMOG, designed for a Tantrum, Inc., and appears in this paper with permission. As always, I wish to thank the entire MUD/MMOG development community for constantly challenging and refining many of the ideas contained herein, and especially Chip Morningstar, who co-designed and implemented most of the virtual economies that inspired this design. The latest draft of this article clarifies some design issues and makes a few minor fixes, all as the direct result of discussions on Habitat Chronicles and TerraNova. Thanks gang. There are many external markets for virtual objects, including Gaming Open Market (GOM), TheGoods , and eBay to name a few. Not all use real currency to facilitate trades. For the sake of brevity, I will refer to all external trading markets as eBay, acknowledging any significant differences, where warranted.

Motionographer 4 things we wished we’d known before creating a VR experience in Unreal

DirkSonguer — 2016-08-03T15:31:16+00:00
Over the last three years, we’ve had the pleasure of producing some of the first branded VR experiences to hit the market. With each new project, we’ve encountered crazy challenges that put our backs against deadlines and had us asking, “What the f*ck have we gotten ourselves into?” Whether stitching and color correcting live-action, rendering massive amounts of masks and utilities for pre-rendered 3D or figuring out how to track and combine both for the same experience, we always came away with tips and tricks to tackle the next project. Nothing, however, could prepare us for the move from passive to interactive VR experiences.

AR is an MMO – Raph's Website

DirkSonguer — 2016-07-26T07:54:16+00:00
I've said this before, but in the wake of the viral success of Pokémon GO, it needs to be said again. Augmented reality is just a virtual world, an MMO, a MUD even, with all of the same design issues, plus a few new ones.

Cycle of Life – Raph's Website

DirkSonguer — 2016-05-03T07:42:41+00:00
This talk was presented at an event hosted by Next Games in Helsinki, Finland. Alas, there is no recording or transcript.

Contents of “Development and Deployment of Massively Multiplayer Games: from social games to MMOFPS, with stock exchanges in between” - IT Hare on Soft.ware

DirkSonguer — 2016-01-19T11:34:02+00:00
[[This is a Table of Contents (and also “About” and “Scope” sections) from the upcoming book, which is currently being beta-tested. For details of this Beta Testing, please refer to the post on it. All the content published during Beta Testing, is subject to change before the book is published.]]

Louis Vuitton's newest fashion model is a character from Final Fantasy

DirkSonguer — 2015-12-30T06:08:32+00:00
French fashion house Louis Vuitton has recruited a new model to feature in its spring/summer 2016 campaign, but it's not someone you'll recognize from the usual fashion magazines or even from Hollywood. The character Lightning from the Final Fantasy series stars in new images and a video shared by Louis Vuitton's creative director Nicolas Ghesquiere on Instagram. In the caption, Ghesquiere introduces the video with the description "reality and fantasy become one" and describes Lightning as "a genuine heroine."

China has made obedience to the State a game

DirkSonguer — 2015-12-24T08:40:18+00:00
With a concept straight out of a cyberpunk dystopia, China has gamified obedience to the State. China has created a social tool named Sesame Credit which gives people a score for how good a citizen they are.

Kudos 2 Postmortem

DirkSonguer — 2015-12-21T08:49:25+00:00

Why video games have launch problems | PlayFab

DirkSonguer — 2015-10-11T19:30:30+00:00
It comes down to the fact that most games are now online services, with updated content, special events, virtual economies, player interaction, etc. All of these things require backend services — services that need to be built and thoroughly tested before launch, and that need to run reliably from that point on. Done right, a game’s backend services provide for a great customer experience and make possible the kinds of live game operations techniques that foster an engaged pool of players, happy to spend their money long after the initial release. Done wrong, they can absolutely kill a game.

[untitled]

DirkSonguer — 2015-08-20T20:39:16+00:00
The "Physics of Racing" is a set of free articles. This means that you are granted a perpetual, transferable, royalty-free license to copy, print, distribute, reformat, host and post the articles in any form, electronic or other. You are asked only that you (1) do not change the content or attribution (that is, the author's name) (2) do not charge money for copies in any form (3) do not restrict the ability or rights of others to copy these articles freely.

Interstellar Citizens | Smart Speak

DirkSonguer — 2015-07-07T05:37:02+00:00
I am not even going to touch on what can go wrong when you have different studios, in different states and countries, working on various aspects of the same massive game. If you know a producer who has ever worked with external contractors and/or studios on a project, have a chat with him or her, listen to the horror stories; then multiply that by a factor of ten. Only then will you begin to get the full picture of what could go horribly wrong here.

The Interesting Gaming Habits of Teenage Girls | Kotaku UK

DirkSonguer — 2015-05-15T18:06:04+00:00
But flipping through the schedule at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco this March, my eyes settled on a talk called "Curiosity, Courage, and Camouflage: Revealing the Gaming Habits of Teen Girls." I am not now (nor have I ever been) a teen girl, but I'd like to think that a modicum of empathy can go a long way. After reading Patricia Hernandez's piece on the ludicrously popular Kim Kardashian game last year, I figured that's what most young women were playing these days, and I wanted to try to understand that. The presentation was revelatory, but not in the way that I expected.

Manifesto for a Game Development Studio (or any creative tech company) | T-machine.org

DirkSonguer — 2015-04-04T17:31:34+00:00
Here are the founding principles of my next startup. It’s incomplete and imperfect, but for where I want to go … it’s a start. Incidentally, if you share them, and want to work with me, you should get in touch (adam.m.s.martin at gmail.com). I’m sure we can find a way to work together.

CCP Games shows off Project Nemesis for Gear VR and Kinect experiments

DirkSonguer — 2015-03-25T08:20:40+00:00
CCP Games, the developer of space MMO EVE Online and its upcoming VR debut EVE: Valkyrie, isn't ruling anything out. We got to try out four VR demos that CCP's teams in Atlanta and Shanghai have been working on - Project Nemesis, Disc Arena, Ship Spinner and The Workshop. The seven strong CCP Atlanta team whittled down thirteen ideas to three to make playable demos which means there's plenty more where these came from. None are guaranteed to see the light of day but CCP has brought them to EVE FanFest in Reykjavik to get the reactions of fans, like it did two years ago when it debuted Valkyrie.

The Pizza Party Where Everyone Got Fired

DirkSonguer — 2015-03-15T19:51:38+00:00
For months now we've been covering the way game publishers and development studios treat their employees in an attempt to spotlight the painful and unstable environment behind many of the games we love. (See our companion feature for a look at why layoffs happen so often in gaming.)1

Intelligent Artifice - Gameplay metrics: game design’s best kept secret?

DirkSonguer — 2015-03-14T12:06:09+00:00
http://www.intelligent-artifice.com/2015/03/gameplay-metrics-game-designs-best-kept-secret.html Gameplay metrics: game design’s best kept secret?

Inside The Post-Minecraft Life Of Billionaire Gamer God Markus Persson

DirkSonguer — 2015-03-05T06:23:17+00:00
It was June 16, 2014, and Persson bunkered in his penthouse apartment with a cold. Minecraft users had been up in arms that week about the company’s decision to start enforcing its End User License Agreement, which barred players from charging others for certain game-play features, such as stronger swords. As hundreds of tweets an hour flowed in, Persson, feverish from his cold, tapped out a 129-character outburst that would change his life forever. “Anyone want to buy my share of Mojang so I can move on with my life?” he asked. “Getting hate for trying to do the right thing is not my gig.” Mojang CEO Carl Manneh was sitting at home with his family when he first saw the tweet. Within 30 seconds of his reading it, his phone rang. A Microsoft executive who coordinated with Mojang wanted to know if Persson was serious. “I’m not sure–let me talk to him,” said Manneh.

Feedback Loops in Games – What Makes Monopoly, World of Warcraft, and Mario Kart So Much Fun | Systems & Us

DirkSonguer — 2015-01-06T07:24:01+00:00
What do games have to do with systems? Games are often a compilation of reinforcing and balancing feedback loops that drive the dynamics of player interaction. Take basketball for example, which has the common balancing loop of turn-taking. After one team scores, possession goes to the opposing team. This is designed to give both sides an opportunity to score. Imagine if instead there was a reinforcing loop which allowed the offensive team to keep possession of the ball after scoring. Points would come in streaks, allowing momentum to build up for the offensive team.

First the Classroom, Then the World: What Video Games Can Teach Educators

DirkSonguer — 2014-04-07T13:03:20+00:00
No one denies that video games are popular. How popular? Well, the ESRB (Entertainment Software Rating Board, the organization responsible for video games' parental ratings) has a great infographic to answer that question

#AltDevBlog » Company growth and the development approach of Fragments of Him

DirkSonguer — 2014-03-15T14:24:40+00:00
This blog is intended as a write-up of recent events and activities of our game development company SassyBot Studio. As a result, the contents of the blog reflect personal approaches and insights that we like to share and should not be taken as industry facts. We hope that by sharing our thoughts and experiences of past and future events it may help other start-up indie devs with struggles and questions of their own. We embrace contact and encourage you to share your adventures and lessons with us either here or through Twitter @SassyBotStudio.

Game Theory: How 70,000 Pokemon Players Sabotage Themselves | minimaxir | Max Woolf's Blog

DirkSonguer — 2014-02-22T16:36:44+00:00
On the game live-streaming site Twitch.tv, one user simply known as “TwitchPlaysPokemon” setup a live-stream of Pokemon Red, but with a twist: all game commands, such as “up”,“down”,“left”,“right”,“b”,“a”,“select”, and “start”, would be input by typing the appropriate command into the livestream chat. At first, this seems like a crazy idea: if thousands of people are inputting commands at the same time, could we accomplish anything in the game?

How I Make A Living Using GameMaker | Game Maker Blog

DirkSonguer — 2013-08-28T13:01:23+00:00
My reason for sharing these statistics is not to brag or boast, but to inspire others who dream of making money with GameMaker – it’s absolutely possible. While I’m not the only developer making a career out of GameMaker, few others seem to have the time or will to share. In this post, I want to discuss how I make money with GameMaker, what actions I took along the way, and where this path has led me.

Gamasutra: Paul Tozour's Blog - Decision Modeling and Optimization in Game Design, Part 1: Introduction

DirkSonguer — 2013-07-13T23:34:24+00:00
Game design is an incredibly difficult discipline. Design is like a dark room full of sharp objects, extraordinarily difficult to navigate safely once we stray from the beaten path. There are nearly always some painful injuries along the way, especially if we move too quickly. And we have relatively few tools to light up that dark room, and few well-defined and disciplined techniques for carrying out this process of design search.

Gamasutra: Todd Horn's Blog - An Overview of Gamification

DirkSonguer — 2013-06-04T12:19:54+00:00
Understanding how and why gamification works, the areas it is most effective, and what the limits are will help you determine the best approach. These topics will be discussed throughout this blog post. Gamification provides a direct benefit to the site owner and a more indirect benefit to the site user. For the site owner, gamification can be utilized to keep users on the site longer, consuming more information, contributing more content and returning more often. For site users, gamification can contribute to the sense of satisfaction those users might feel when interacting with the site. Their loyalty might be rewarded, their opinions highlighted, and/or their participation and expertise acknowledged. Gamification, when thoughtfully applied, can be a very valuable tool to increase engagement and improve brand loyalty.

This Isn’t the Article I Wanted to Write About Tomb Raider | Hellmode

DirkSonguer — 2013-04-07T18:33:27+00:00
Instead this is an article about Lara Croft being choked to death. There’s a scene fairly early on in the game where our young, intrepid heroine is being stalked through the forest. Her innocence is shattered; her friends are being brutally shot around her, their screams echoing in the distance as they’re murdered. She crouches against some old ruins at one point, finding a brief reprieve from the horrors she’s witnessing unfold. Suddenly a man surprises her, grabbing her and lifting her up by her throat. His hand clamps over her throat and he begins to choke the life out of her. She starts struggling. She has seconds to live. If you don’t hit the right series of buttons, she’s choked to death in front of you. Her body goes limp in his hands, her face goes blank, and he laughs the cruelest of laughs. If you don’t hit the right series of keys, she dies a horrible death. He lives. They never escape the island and Lara never becomes the heroine she was destined to be. I hit the keys wrong at first. I was so taken aback by the scene that I just stared at it, my mouth slightly open. A video game had never made me feel this way in my entire life—and I wasn’t sure what I thought about that.

Gamasutra - News - Video: Everything I Learned About Level Design I Learned from Disneyland

DirkSonguer — 2013-01-04T00:27:44+00:00
In this lecture, Scott Rogers illustrates how Disneyland's attractions and overall park layout make for excellent real-world analogues to games' world maps, individual levels, and more. As with creating memorable theme park rides, he suggests to allow the game's story to guide design, to use the environment to tell a story, to encourage player movement, and to maximize emotions. Check out the free video here!

Why Should Games Become Like Broadcast Media? - What Games Are

DirkSonguer — 2013-01-03T18:16:22+00:00
It may be a uniquely British perspective, given the prevalence of broadcast media (I.e. book publishing, music, theatre, radio and television) here, but it is pretty common to encounter the belief that broadcast and games are destined to come together. In particular the idea that games will grow up, that they will mature much as other media have and so get to sit at the adult's table, is highly resilient. I think this is entirely the wrong way to look at their relationship. For me, the future of broadcast is to report on what happens in games and realise that games are powerful generators of the narratives that they so desperately need.

3 Principles For The Future Of Gaming, From A Google Game Designer | Co.Design: business + innovation + design

DirkSonguer — 2013-01-03T00:19:59+00:00
3 Principles For The Future Of Gaming, From A Google Game Designer JOHN HANKE, THE MAN AT THE HELM OF GOOGLE’S EXPERIMENTAL GAME, INGRESS, CHARTS THE COURSE FOR THE FUTURE OF MOBILE GAMING.

Facebook re-opens notifications channel for developers to send users custom messages

DirkSonguer — 2012-09-08T11:56:33+00:00
Inside Social Games Facebook has launched the new Notifications API beta giving developers a way to reengage users with custom messages through the native notifications channel. These notifications are different from app requests in that users do not need to allow further permissions to receive them. Developers will find many positives to this feature as it makes it easier to reach their users. However, they must beware of the possibility of overflowing users’ notifications channel. Facebook previously allowed developers to send notifications to users, but it removed the feature in early 2010 as a way to reign in spammy apps. This time around, the social network has put in more safeguards to prevent developers from abusing the channel. Users can accept or decline these notifications and are given the option to opt-out at any time. Facebook encourages developers to test and monitor how notifications are performing through the notifications dashboard in Insights. Developers will get information on how notifications are being received as well as turn-off rates. Exceedingly high turn-off rates may be classified as spam and will be disabled. The company encourages developers to be mindful of the language in their notifications, suggesting that high-quality notifications receive higher click through rates than app requests. Low-quality app notifications are more likely to cause people to turn off notifications for that app all together. This article originally appeared on our sister site, Inside Facebook.

The making of Warcraft part 1 - Code Of Honor

DirkSonguer — 2012-08-12T16:30:38+00:00
The developers at the startup company I worked for — then named Silicon & Synapse but later renamed Blizzard in a nod towards our tempestuous development methodology — played a great many games during our free time. And from that game-playing came the spark to create Warcraft. We were inspired to create Warcraft after playing (and replaying and replaying) a game called Dune 2, by Westwood Studios. Dune 2 was arguably the first modern real-time strategy (RTS) game; with a scrolling world map, real-time unit construction and movement, and individual unit combat. It isn’t that much different in design than a modern RTS like Starcraft 2, excepting perhaps a certain scale and graphics quality.

Yehuda: Olympics Badminton: A Study in Bad Game Design

DirkSonguer — 2012-08-03T10:19:38+00:00
Any idiot could tell you that a player's best move is to LOSE the first three rounds. These rounds don't count for anything other than to make your life more difficult in the last five rounds, which are the only ones that actually provide any payoff; and the payoff is the same whether the challenges in the last rounds are more or less difficult.

Polygonal Map Generation for Games

DirkSonguer — 2012-07-20T23:06:43+00:00
I wanted to generate interesting game maps that weren’t constrained to be realistic, and I wanted to try some techniques I hadn’t tried before. I usually make tile maps but this time I decided to make polygonal maps. Instead of 1,000,000 tiles, what could I do with 1,000 polygons? I think the distinct player-recognizable areas might be useful for gameplay: locations of towns, places to quest, territory to conquer or settle, pathfinding waypoints, difficulty zones, etc. Once I have the polygons I can rasterize it back to tiles (or voxels), but I wanted to first generate the structure.

Dinofarm Games » Why People Think Turn-Based is “Boring”

DirkSonguer — 2012-07-04T12:35:33+00:00
Let me ask you: how much do you like to “wait around”? I’m going to guess that even if a million people read this blog, nobody answered “too much”. I know, I know – they meant “too much” in a different sense of the phrase than I’ve just implied. Either way, let’s cut out the “too much”. Do you like to wait around at all? I’m going to dare to guess that most people don’t like to “wait around” AT ALL. Waiting around at all, pretty much universally, almost objectively, sucks.

Lost Garden: Building Tight Game Systems of Cause and Effect

DirkSonguer — 2012-07-03T11:03:31+00:00
To play a game well, a player must master a mental model of cause and effect. You learn that pressing a specific button moves you forward. You figure out that a sequence of controller moves lets you dodge a fired rocket. You observe a slight pause before an enemy attack and theorize that you could fire off a headshot at that exact moment. At each stage of learning, you create a hypothesis, test it via your actions and refine your mental models of the whirring black box at the heart of the game. This escalating refinement and mastery of new mental models and tools is essential to what makes many a game enjoyable. Such mastery obviously depends on the player. Yet it also is dependent on the designer and the systems they build. You can accidentally create a broken black box. Not all systems are readily amenable to the intuitive formation of models of cause and effect. As a game designer, it is your job to create systems that are intriguing to master without being completely baffling. If the system is too predictable, it becomes boring. If it is not predictable at all we assume that the system is either random or spiritual in nature. Both of these are failure conditions if you are attempting to encourage mastery.

Toribash - Violence Perfected - A physics based fighting game.

DirkSonguer — 2012-06-20T12:49:26+00:00
Toribash is an innovative fighting game based on the physics sandbox model where YOU design the moves! Join us today, and pit your skills against other players all over the world. Earn Toricredits by winning matches, then customize your character in the store! Trade items with other players. Win prizes in weekly tournaments. Climb the rankings. Earn your own Black belt. Better still: be one of the few who make it to 10th Dan! Toribash is Addictive! Try Wushu, Sumo, Kick Boxing, Sambo, Swords, Judo and more. Create fighting movies and post them on YouTube. Watch other players fight. Chat with them. Defeat them! Most of all: IT'S FREEWARE!

Cliffski's Blog » Free or not free? The debate

DirkSonguer — 2012-05-16T11:31:32+00:00
Over the course of a loooong time, me and Nicholas Lovell from gamesbrief, argued about whether or not free to play games are the bright new future of gaming. I am traditionally against the current implementation of F2P gaming (although I’ve softened on this a bit). Nicholas is traditionally very pro. See who you found most persuasive in our little debate…

Ten Things Every Official MMO Website Should Have | Bio Break

DirkSonguer — 2012-05-16T09:15:01+00:00
Let us speak today of MMO websites. I visit loads of official MMO websites, both for work and my personal interest, and it is absolutely appalling how many of them appear to be slapped together by Geocities monkeys from 1998 with no greater understanding of what such a website should do or offer. I often find myself very frustrated when I’m trying to find some basic information, the latest news, or God forbid, an RSS feed. You’d be surprised how many official websites do not have an RSS feed. It’s like they’re in denial about modern technology even while running a highly sophisticated game.

Lessons learned building a multiplayer game in NodeJS and WebGL

DirkSonguer — 2012-05-04T10:23:45+00:00
I've uploaded Hoverbattles to its own server on EC2, and it has been running fine with an uptime of over 96 hours so far, and this is great! http://hoverbattles.com I've wanted to share a few of the mistakes/lessons learned writing and deploying a multiplayer game built entirely with JavaScript on top of NodeJS and WebGL for a while and this represents an opportune moment to do so. I've gone with a brain-dump of various related learnings, as well as a couple of periphery items - first off, we'll go with the reason I couldn't keep Hoverbattles up on the old server.

Valve: How I Got Here, What It’s Like, and What I’m Doing | Valve

DirkSonguer — 2012-04-20T20:23:54+00:00
It all started with Snow Crash. If I hadn’t read it and fallen in love with the idea of the Metaverse, if it hadn’t made me realize how close networked 3D was to being a reality, if I hadn’t thought I can do that, and more importantly I want to do that, I’d never have embarked on the path that eventually wound up at Valve. By 1994, I had been working at Microsoft for a couple of years. One evening that year, while my daughter was looking at books in the Little Professor bookstore on the Sammamish Plateau, I happened to notice Snow Crash on a shelf. I picked it up and started reading, decided to buy it, and wound up devouring it overnight. I also started thinking to myself that I had a pretty good idea how about 80 percent of it could work right then, and wanted to implement it as badly as I had ever wanted to do anything with a computer – I had read SF all my life, and this was a full-on chance to make SF real. So I tried to start a project at Microsoft to do a networked 3D engine.

ThinkGeek :: Sifteo Interactive Gaming Cubes

DirkSonguer — 2012-04-11T07:25:05+00:00
We have been fighting over who gets to play with the Sifteo sample here at the office. These little blocks are addicting! Imagine all the fun of your favorite puzzle games meeting the touch-sensitivity of your smartphone meeting the accelerometer of your Wiimote. And the best part? It comes with the ability to write your own games!

The Curse of Cow Clicker: How a Cheeky Satire Became a Videogame Hit | Wired Magazine | Wired.com

DirkSonguer — 2012-04-08T11:47:50+00:00
You work for the Transportation Security Administration, manning the x-ray machine at a local airport. Your day begins easily enough, quickly scanning passengers’ luggage and bodies and waving them through. But after a few minutes, you get an alert—shirts are now contraband. OK, fine, you dutifully strip people of their T-shirts as they pass through the metal detector. Then another alert: Mobile phones are prohibited, too. Wait, now coffee isn’t allowed either, but cell phones are OK again. As you struggle to keep the new rules straight, the line of cranky passengers gets longer. Wait, snakes and turbans have just been outlawed. Oh, and shirts are allowed now, but you didn’t realize that until you’d already stripped down another passenger. That’s one strike against you. Now native headdresses are forbidden, turbans are OK, but shoes must be removed. You get confused and let a snake through—another black mark. The line of passengers begins to stretch across the room even as new regulations keep coming in faster than you can process them. Before long, you are fired—not because you’ve endangered anyone’s safety, but because you failed to cope with the illogical edicts of a capricious bureaucracy.

Why developing an HTML5 game is too damn risky | ektomarch.

DirkSonguer — 2012-02-24T07:43:27+00:00
I’ll preface this by saying that yes, I’m running Google Chrome Beta as my main browser, and yes, some bugs are to be expected from running a beta browser. That’s besides the point. So what am I complaining about? Any small bug on any browser can instantly kill a product you’ve worked months or years on.

Gamasutra - Features - Virtual Goods - An Excerpt from Social Game Design: Monetization Methods and Mechanics

DirkSonguer — 2012-02-10T16:33:11+00:00
[This text, on the crucial aspects of virtual goods design, is an extract from the ninth chapter of Social Game Design: Monetization Methods and Mechanics, by Tim Fields (Certain Affinity) and Brandon Cotton (Portalarium). In the book, the two authors closely examine how social games function as a player-responsive business.] Fake Estates The very phrase "Virtual Goods" is something of a delightful contradiction. Anything "virtual," by definition, doesn't physically exist, and goods, at least when appearing within the context of the marketplace, are typically an article of trade. For our purposes, though, virtual goods are real enough that they generate billions of dollars in revenue each year, and are so important to players that they can drive binge play sessions, provoke real-world fights, create (and destroy) marriages, and keep users spending money twenty-four hours a day, in almost every country in the world.

Sonic Physics Guide - Sonic Retro

DirkSonguer — 2012-01-23T07:35:33+00:00
ROM Hacks make the process of developing a functional Sonic game with unique art, enemies, and modifications much easier, since the game engine and basic mechanics are already functional. However, if the game requires a different game engine, modifying existing low-level assembly may be inappropriate, and some game designers might choose to program their own unique game engine. The physics of a game engine are rules that describe how to transform the player's input (either in the form of buttons, keyboard, or even a mouse if the designer feels inclined) into appropriate changes in the position of the sprites in the game (such as the Sonic sprite, or alternatively, how enemy sprites will respond). These physics guides will hopefully make the process of simulating the rules used in Sonic games easier. Since the rules themselves are independent of how they are implemented, many people choose programming languages such as Java, C, C++, Python, or a Lisp dialect to implement game physics. In addition, people can choose to use more specialized applications like Flash, Game Maker, or a Clickteam program like Multimedia Fusion 2. Hopefully, these guides will provide adequate information to facilitate implementation.

Raph's Website » Narrative is not a game mechanic

DirkSonguer — 2012-01-21T23:57:19+00:00
I love stories. My chief hobby is reading. I was formally trained as a writer, not as a game designer (there wasn’t really any formal training for game design I got started, but that’s another story). I think most game stories are not very good. And I quite enjoy games with narrative threads pulling me through them. When I find a game with a good story, I frequently prefer to the story to the actual game! So please keep that in mind as you read: I love story. Narrative in a game is not a mechanic. It’s a form of a feedback.

Ten, Eleven, Twelve | Hide&Seek - Inventing new kinds of play

DirkSonguer — 2012-01-17T23:24:44+00:00
There will be no escaping games in 2012. From the Olympics to hit shows on TV, lucrative games on your mobile phone to innovative live events, games are more a part of our everyday lives than they’ve ever been. This briefing document looks ahead to the key issues that can help guide your strategy in 2012. And, since the gaming world evolves fast, we’ve drawn some concrete examples of these trends from front-runners in 2011, so you can get to grips with what they mean in practice.

Cut the Rope | Behind the Scenes

DirkSonguer — 2012-01-16T05:47:15+00:00
Cut the Rope is an immediate favorite for anyone who plays it. It’s as fun as it is adorable. So we had an idea: let’s make this great game available to an even bigger audience by offering it on the web using the power of HTML5. To do this, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer team partnered with ZeptoLab (the creators of the game) and the specialists at Pixel Lab to bring Cut the Rope to life in a browser. The end result is an authentic translation of the game for the web, showcasing some of the best that HTML5 has to offer: canvas-rendered graphics, browser-based audio and video, CSS3 styling and the personality of WOFF fonts. You can play the HTML5 version of Cut the Rope at: www.cuttherope.ie.

Designing for the Untestable « #AltDevBlogADay

DirkSonguer — 2012-01-10T06:34:35+00:00
Sometimes you’re asked to design for the untestable scenario. For instance, design a system for 10,000 players to asynchrously interact in a persistent competitive world with progression mechanics that plays out over 3 months.

RPG Design: Staying Classy

DirkSonguer — 2011-12-30T18:41:08+00:00
Okay, after a little bit of basic background on class vs. skill based RPG systems yesterday, I’m going to talk about some of the advantages, disadvantages, and general design features of class-based RPGs

Simple Genius: Pockit, A Game Console With No Screen And No Graphics | Co. Design

DirkSonguer — 2011-11-29T13:55:40+00:00
Is a video game still a video game if there's no... video? Designer Adam Henriksson grabs that question by the horns with Pockit, a game console concept that has no graphics whatsoever. Instead, it's a Wii-like motion-sensing wand that "encourages everyone to be physical and have a reason to break norms," he writes. Rather than waving the wand around in front of a screen -- which is the only way you get to see what your wand is representing--the Pockit moves that aspect of the game experience into your own mind's eye. Whether you've configured the Pockit to be "running" a swordfighting game or something else, the point is that the players are focusing their attention on each other in real life, not virtualized avatars.

Why Not Brandification Instead? [Gamification] - What Games Are

DirkSonguer — 2011-11-20T10:54:18+00:00
My sense is that brand managers are approaching games in the wrong way. A few years ago they were all into creating virtual worlds but that didn’t really work out. More recently they went through a phase of creating social games, but again no luck. Now they’re keen to commission digital agencies or game developers to create gamified sites or software for brands, which will inevitably become coupon schemes, badges and leader boards. The vast majority of these projects are utter failures because they end up creating vapid digital services with no soul. The ones that do succeed often do so accidentally (for example, because they were unexpectedly fun). Games are a cultural product, and like any other culture there is a line where commercial relationships become nakedly self-serving, and no customer finds that sexy. Perhaps the branding industry should consider branding games rather than gamifying brands instead, if only for the reason that it’s more likely to work.

Books about people « #AltDevBlogADay

DirkSonguer — 2011-11-20T10:47:35+00:00
Over the years, my job gave me the priviledge of meeting amazing people. People who had a deep impact on my career, on my knowledge, on my personalty, and on what I am as a whole. That must be why I am so fond of stories about game development that focus on people. The technology keeps changing, but the motivation that drives it remains. The people who shaped one way or another what our industry looks like today are for me an endless source of inspiration and motivation. So I decided to share with you a few books I recently read, both have the same focus on the people behind the technology rather than on the technology itself.

There Be Dragons: Ten Potential Pitfalls of Gamification

DirkSonguer — 2011-11-15T12:05:27+00:00

Don't Play Games With Me! Promises and Pitfalls of Gameful Design

DirkSonguer — 2011-11-15T12:03:22+00:00

If Quake Was Made Today…

DirkSonguer — 2011-11-15T09:27:25+00:00
As a bunch of “old-school” RPG fans hang out here, we’re accustomed to griping about how “dumbed down” RPGs have become over the years. But it’s not just our favorite genre. As much as we complain about RPGs becoming first-person shooters, first-person shooters aren’t what they used to be, either. To illustrate this point, this excellent video by kmooseman

Exposing Social Gaming’s Hidden Lever « #AltDevBlogADay

DirkSonguer — 2011-11-15T08:54:10+00:00
See if this sounds familiar to you: To play the game, you put currency into the machine. You then pull the knob and wait for the result. When the result is presented, you are rewarded with a cacophony of exciting sounds, attention-grabbing images, and some form of currency. Often times, this winning helps you progress towards a larger goal. You also have the opportunity with each play to win a rare prize of significantly higher value than the value of the currency you contributed to play the game. That’s a slot machine, right? Wrong. It’s the basic action loop of FarmVille.

Ian Bogost - Cow Clicker

DirkSonguer — 2011-11-07T12:39:29+00:00
Cow Clicker is a Facebook game about Facebook games. It's partly a satire, and partly a playable theory of today's social games, and partly an earnest example of that genre. You get a cow. You can click on it. In six hours, you can click it again. Clicking earns you clicks. You can buy custom "premium" cows through micropayments (the Cow Clicker currency is called "mooney"), and you can buy your way out of the time delay by spending it. You can publish feed stories about clicking your cow, and you can click friends' cow clicks in their feed stories. Cow Clicker is Facebook games distilled to their essence.

Playing Wrong: Cheating Got Me Analyzing Games | 4 color rebellion

DirkSonguer — 2011-09-21T16:50:58+00:00
When I was younger I cheated in every game. It started with the likes of Warcraft 2 and Duke Nukem 3D. I cheated because I was about 11 and wasn’t all that good at games. I liked to cheat because that way I was in control of the game. I could do whatever I wanted, mostly. I’d get really annoyed if a game didn’t have God Mode because I’d have to worry about using a code to restore health or armour. Now I rarely cheat at games, but cheating was a gateway into another form of play. Cheating got me accustomed to playing games wrong. Doing things the developers hadn’t intended. Playing games wrong gives you a different perspective on something you love. I present some of my favourite instances of games played wrong, with some musings about why it was so fun.

Game Studies - Game analysis: Developing a methodological toolkit for the qualitative study of games

DirkSonguer — 2011-09-21T16:49:38+00:00
Although the study of digital games is steadily increasing, there has been little or no effort to develop a method for the qualitative, critical analysis of games as "texts" (broadly defined). This paper creates a template for such analyses by developing and explaining four areas that game researchers should consider when studying a game: Object Inventory, Interface Study, Interaction Map, and Gameplay Log. Through the use of an extended example (The Sims and three of its expansion packs: Livin' Large, House Party and Hot Date) as well as examples from different styles and genres of games, the case is made for employing these four areas or components as a (developing) methodology for the critical analysis of one or many digital games.

"For the swarm!" Inside the world of professional StarCraft players

DirkSonguer — 2011-08-30T05:19:07+00:00
I was thinking back to those long-vanished days recently as I stepped on the plane to Anaheim, California. My destination was the Major League Gaming (MLG) Pro Circuit, brainchild of Sundance DiGiovanni. MLG started its life in 2002 featuring primarily console games, but experienced unexpectedly large growth with the release of Blizzard's StarCraft II in 2010 (read our review). After arriving in Anaheim, I experienced this growth myself as I found my way to the end of a gigantic line stretching all the way to the end of the Anaheim Convention Center and into the adjacent parking lot. Passing tourists with their Mickey Mouse ears would sometimes turn and stare at us, and I could see them thinking: who were these people and what exactly were they lining up for?

Gamification is Here to Stay (And it's not Bullshit)

DirkSonguer — 2011-08-23T22:14:58+00:00
Gamification is a polarizing and divisive topic with many proponents and vocal skeptics and cynics. But it is not bullshit. Gamification is real and its benefits are tangible. Gamification is here to stay.