malvasia bianca

Another World‘s opening cut scene shows an experiment gone awry, with my character being transported to another world, where I got dropped into a pool of water. At which point I died. On my next attempt, I moved out of the water; after a bit of trial and error, I killed the slugs on the […]

The Internet Archive has made a million books available for free to those who are blind or otherwise print-impaired. A delightful Bob-omb Battlefield performance. A city of staples. (Via @rands.) I love this attitude towards reuse. (Via @markhneedham.) “Games are too hard, they’re too long, and they provide way too much stuff.” (Via @ncroal.) CSS […]

As I mentioned previously, we’ve relaunched the Vintage Game Club under new game selection rules. And I’m very pleased with how it’s gone so far: after about a week of feeling out what games people might be interested in playing, two games emerged with champions, and in both cases we’ve had enough support that the […]

Daniel Floyd and James Portnow on Video Games and Moral Choices. Ryan from 37 Signals on applying Christopher Alexander to everyday work. Seth Godin’s April Linchpin session. A cat and an iPad. Which I find totally fascinating in a non-cat-youtube-video way. (Via @Laralyn.) I am a biotic god! (Via @truffle.) Amazing clouds. (Via @marick; also, […]

(Short Game disclaimer: There is a trial version of Galcon available in the app store, you’ll have a very good idea of what the game is like after playing it for less than five minutes.) I got curious about Galcon when Randy Smith used it as an example in his GDC talk on “Designing to […]

Plants vs. Zombies is a thoroughly delightful game about which, for better or for worse, I have very little to say. Despite not being a tower defense fan, I enjoyed the main gameplay mode: while I had my favorite tactics, it threw enough changes at me to keep me interested but not overwhelmed. The minigames […]

The Vintage Game Club has been going on for more than a year and a half now, and I’ve had a great time with it. But, as with any endeavour, its first appearance in the world leads to areas where the initial plan was, perhaps, not the best; so we’re experimenting with a new way […]

What core gamers should know about social games. Ian Bogost’s GDC 2010 microtalk. Roger Travis’s latest teaching experiment. This is not a spiral. A cool platformer twist. (Via @SimonParkin.) Jane McGonigal’s 2010 TED talk. A useful counterpoint to the discussion that Jesse Schell’s talk led to. The FarmVille diaries. (Via @SimonParkin.) Functional programming, OO programming, […]

(See conflict of interest disclaimer.) Many Facebook games (e.g. most or all entrants in the farm genre) could be considered sandbox games; and one of my most eye-opening experiences in spending time on Facebook is just how different those sandbox games can be from console sandbox games. Console sandbox games constantly give you very direct […]

Jesse Schell gave a great talk at DICE earlier this year on “design outside the box”. There are pretty good writeups by Kris Graft and Kim Pallister, and his slides are available, but if you’re at all interested, I recommend just watching it: his presentation style is very entertaining and engaging. The talk was all […]

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 […]

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 […]