malvasia bianca

More and more, I’m getting interested in programs because of their aesthetics. (Via Daring Fireball.) NPR’s 404 page. (Via @jpallas.) I should have spent more time in Mass Effect 2 with Tali and Garrus in my party. (Via @elenielstorm.) The whole world has linked to this one, but for good reason. There’s also a Wired […]

So, now I’ve written about all the GDC panels I attended; for reference, the links are: Tuesday. Wednesday. Thursday. Friday, part one and part two. Saturday, part one and part two. So, that’s the trees; what about the forest? Looking back at it, I see two themes coming out of the conference for me. Know […]

I’ve already talked about the two talks I went to on Saturday that were about Mass Effect 2; here are my notes on the rest of the day. 10:30 am: Motivating Casual Players: Non-Traditional Character Progression and Player Retention, by Laralyn McWilliams. Another fabulous talk, marred only by the less-than-fabulously-legible quality of my handwritten notes. […]

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’ll split them up into two posts. 9:00 am: Where Did My Inventory Go? Refining Gameplay in Mass Effect 2, […]

My favorite talk of the first four days of GDC was Sulka Haro’s talk on The Evolution of Habbo Hotel’s Virtual Economy. Habbo Hotel is a virtual world that’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 surprises. […]

Today’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 […]

Today’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’s a shared joke with her sister as an example). This is an inside joke, a […]

Today’s talks: 10:00 am: How to Manage an Exploratory Development Process, by Kellee Santiago and Robin Hunicke. I heard Robin speak in the microtalks last year; she’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, […]

When showing up at GDC, I leafed through the booklet to see if there was anything I’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 guess that’s […]

Here’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—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! Please […]

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’t spent much time thinking about it since then; BioWare seems to make games that push my buttons very well but don’t put […]

(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—placing buildings, gathering coins, clicking on messes to clean them up, feeding my tourists—and leveling up apace. But I was starting to […]

Since I occasionally blog about games published by my employer, I figure I might as well have a generic “conflict of interest” 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’ll try to avoid […]