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	<title>malvasia bianca</title>
	<link>http://malvasiabianca.org</link>
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		<title>gdc 2010: saturday mass effect 2 talks</title>
		<description><![CDATA[On the Saturday of GDC this year, I went to two talks on Mass Effect 2 and two talks on other subjects; since I have a fair amount to say on both pairs of talks, I&#8217;ll split them up into two posts.
9:00 am: Where Did My Inventory Go? Refining Gameplay in Mass Effect 2, by [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://malvasiabianca.org/archives/2010/03/gdc-2010-saturday-mass-effect-2-talks/</link>
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		<title>gdc 2010: the evolution of habbo hotel&#8217;s virtual economy</title>
		<description><![CDATA[My favorite talk of the first four days of GDC was Sulka Haro&#8217;s talk on The Evolution of Habbo Hotel&#8217;s Virtual Economy.  Habbo Hotel is a virtual world that&#8217;s been around for almost 10 years now; its economy has gone through a lot of phases, each of which came with its own set of [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://malvasiabianca.org/archives/2010/03/gdc-2010-the-evolution-of-habbo-hotels-virtual-economy/</link>
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		<title>gdc 2010: (most of) friday</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Today&#8217;s talks:
9:00 am: GDC Microtalks 2010: Ten Speakers, 200 Slides, Limitless Ideas!
I really enjoyed the microtalks last year, so I had to go again this year.  It had nine people speaking in a slightly modified pecha kucha format; nobody was boring, some were quite interesting, and it seems to be a much more reliable [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://malvasiabianca.org/archives/2010/03/gdc-2010-most-of-friday/</link>
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		<title>gdc 2010: thursday</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Today&#8217;s talks:
9:00 am: The 4 Most Important Emotions for Social Games, by Nicole Lazzaro.
Her slides:

First, she gave some preliminary talks about some of her other conceptual frameworks, and talked about about social tokens (using a mango that&#8217;s a shared joke with her sister as an example).  This is an inside joke, a symbol that [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://malvasiabianca.org/archives/2010/03/gdc-2010-thursday/</link>
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		<title>gdc 2010: wednesday</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Today&#8217;s talks:
10am: How to Manage an Exploratory Development Process, by Kellee Santiago and Robin Hunicke.
I heard Robin speak in the microtalks last year; she&#8217;s at thatgamecompany now.  Good talk, and surprisingly moving: they started off by talking about how, at E3 2008, they debuted Flower, the press and their publisher loved it, yet the [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://malvasiabianca.org/archives/2010/03/gdc-2010-wednesday/</link>
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		<title>gdc 2010: tuesday</title>
		<description><![CDATA[When showing up at GDC, I leafed through the booklet to see if there was anything I&#8217;d missed.  And, indeed, there was: it seems that the online schedule builder had left off most or all of the keynotes for the summits!  (Or at least did when I looked at it last week, I [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://malvasiabianca.org/archives/2010/03/gdc-2010-tuesday/</link>
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		<title>gdc 2010 schedule</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Here&#8217;s my best guess at my GDC 2010 schedule.  Please let me know about talks that you particularly recommend, whether before or after the fact&#8212;I was rather relieved when, partway through looking through this, I remember that my All Access Pass will let me listen to recordings of talks that I missed this year! [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://malvasiabianca.org/archives/2010/03/gdc-2010-schedule/</link>
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		<title>mass effect 2</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The original Mass Effect was one of the games that pushed me into buying an Xbox 360.  I played through it quickly and had a great time, though for whatever reason I haven&#8217;t spent much time thinking about it since then; BioWare seems to make games that push my buttons very well but don&#8217;t [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://malvasiabianca.org/archives/2010/03/mass-effect-2/</link>
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		<title>the joy of tech trees</title>
		<description><![CDATA[(See conflict of interest disclaimer.)
We launched Tiki Resort last month, and it took me a few days to come to grips with it.  I was dutifully doing what the game told me to&#8212;placing buildings, gathering coins, clicking on messes to clean them up, feeding my tourists&#8212;and leveling up apace.  But I was starting [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://malvasiabianca.org/archives/2010/03/the-joy-of-tech-trees/</link>
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		<title>conflict of interest disclaimer</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Since I occasionally blog about games published by my employer, I figure I might as well have a generic &#8220;conflict of interest&#8221; post I can refer to.  So:

If I post about Playdom games, I have a conflict of interest.
Anything I talk about is strictly my own opinion; in fact, I&#8217;ll try to avoid talking [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://malvasiabianca.org/archives/2010/03/conflict-of-interest-disclaimer/</link>
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		<title>slitherlink</title>
		<description><![CDATA[When I was growing up, I had a subscription to Games magazine.  It&#8217;s a puzzle magazine whose main feature is the &#8220;pencilwise&#8221; section that takes up the middle chunk; crosswords are always most prominent in that section, but they&#8217;re always in a minority, with a wide range of other puzzle formats keeping them company.
Lots [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://malvasiabianca.org/archives/2010/02/slitherlink/</link>
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		<title>small worlds</title>
		<description><![CDATA[(Short game spoiler disclaimer: Small Worlds takes about 15 minutes to play.)
Small Worlds is the first in what I hope will be an irregular ongoing series of short game posts.  And, as such, it leaves me nervous: while I imagine many of y&#8217;all will be just fine with me not writing 1500 words every [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://malvasiabianca.org/archives/2010/02/small-worlds/</link>
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		<title>short games and spoilers</title>
		<description><![CDATA[As I mentioned last month, I&#8217;m planning to write more about short games.  Which is, I fear somewhat at tension with my current policy vis-a-vis spoilers, namely that I don&#8217;t worry about spoilers at all.  I don&#8217;t go out of my way to highlight them, and probably the fact that I discuss game [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://malvasiabianca.org/archives/2010/02/short-games-and-spoilers/</link>
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		<title>random links: february 16, 2010</title>
		<description><![CDATA[
So many experiments to try in schools.  (Via @Brinstar.)
The most interesting response I saw to that Clay Shirky piece a month ago.  (Via @deirdrakiai.)
Why Firefox doesn&#8217;t support H.264.  (Via @timbray.)
Tale of Tales&#8217; Realtime Art Manifesto.  (I particularly liked the Ueda quote contained therein, &#8220;Reduce the volume, Increase the quality and density&#8221;.) [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://malvasiabianca.org/archives/2010/02/random-links-february-16-2010/</link>
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		<title>tax software recommendations?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[This year I&#8217;ll be putting down my pencil and calculator and doing my taxes on a computer for the first time; any recommendations for software I should use?  Either something web-based or something that will run on a Mac is fine with me.
]]></description>
		<link>http://malvasiabianca.org/archives/2010/02/tax-software-recommendations/</link>
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		<title>yakuza 2</title>
		<description><![CDATA[There was a time towards the end of 2008 when it seemed like everybody in my twitter feed was talking about Yakuza 2.  It was apparently a Shenmue-style action RPG (also published by Sega), but (as Steve Gaynor so eloquently outlined in the 2008 holiday confab) filled with delightfully quirky side missions, missions that [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://malvasiabianca.org/archives/2010/02/yakuza-2/</link>
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		<title>with the light</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I was planning to mention With the Light in my blog post the other day on juvenile and adolescent games, but I forgot.  Actually, though, I&#8217;m kind of glad I did, because it&#8217;s a good enough work to deserve its own discussion as a positive example of those themes.  So I&#8217;ll discuss it [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://malvasiabianca.org/archives/2010/02/with-the-light/</link>
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		<title>juvenile and adolescent games</title>
		<description><![CDATA[When Michael reviewed MySims Agents, I knew I had to get it for my daughter for Christmas, and my hopes for the game weren&#8217;t misplaced: it looks both fun and charming, she loved it, my wife blazed right through it, and I&#8217;ll give it a spin as soon as I&#8217;m done with Mass Effect 2.
But [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://malvasiabianca.org/archives/2010/02/juvenile-and-adolescent-games/</link>
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		<title>random links: january 25, 2010</title>
		<description><![CDATA[
Interesting discussion of female video game characters.  (Via @Brinstar.)
Amazing high-speed photography.  (Via @ashalynd)
Criticizing games without playing them.  (Though, in the case of Train, I can think of one way to reduce the chance of that happening&#8230;)
And here&#8217;s another one on the theme of unhelpful criticism.
@kateri_t finally has a blog!  Or at [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://malvasiabianca.org/archives/2010/01/random-links-january-25-2010/</link>
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		<title>combat fatigue</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I recently replayed BioShock&#8217;s first couple of hours as part of a VGHVI gaming session.  And I thoroughly enjoyed revisiting those scenes with the perspective that I&#8217;d gained playing through the game, and gaining new insights by listening to the other participants.
But I was also sad, especially in the initial bathysphere descent.  That [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://malvasiabianca.org/archives/2010/01/combat-fatigue/</link>
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