Bulletstorm Videos
I'm heading over to PCF/Epic in about a week and I just can't wait. Not after they've finally released a video of the glorious thing that is the game!
http://www.gametrailers.com/game/bulletstorm/13025
And:
This is some good shit, lemme tell you!
The Humble Indie Bundle
Packing, getting rid of stuff, making arrangements. I'm completely swamped with stuff about preparing to go to Epic (PCF), but I absolutely must tell you about the Humble Indie Bundle.
http://www.wolfire.com/humble (9/5/2010)
It's a bundle of cross-platform indie-games that you get for... Whatever you feel is reasonable. You pay what you want. It's just that easy. I didn't pay $80, but I paid something. You get to chose where the money goes, and I chose that everything should go to the developers.
It's a very interesting "business model".
Sorry, no time to write anything more. Just took a few bookshelfs apart and now it's time to pack a few boxes. I hate this part...
We’re Super-Empowered Hopeful Individuals
Since you're here I suppose you're a gamer of some sort. Maybe even one that plays online?
Either way; you play games.
And you know what? You're great! You can solve the worlds problems.
In a TED-talk by Jane McGonigal, a researcher and game designer, she explains how we're super people. Apparently, I'm a virtuoso. I like that. Someone who is dazzlingly skilled in any field. I wonder what my field is?
http://www.ted.com/talks/jane_mcgonigal_gaming_can_make_a_better_world.html (25/3/2010)
Games like World of Warcraft give players the means to save worlds, and incentive to learn the habits of heroes. What if we could harness this gamer power to solve real-world problems? Jane McGonigal says we can, and explains how.
- TED.com
Even if she might seem a bit "out there" and overly optimistic at times. I do agree with her as it has long been a fact that we do learn stuff from games.
Online player seems to have four super powers.
The clip is 20min long and it'll make you feel good about yourself. TED always beat random YouTube:ing.
Five books about games
One of the good things from back while studying game design at the University 2005, was that we got some good tips of books to read. Some which were not so very helpful and some that were really great!
One of the books was "Theory of Fun" by Raph Koster, and whenever there's talk about game design and books, this book is mentioned.
There's a site called FiveBooks which choose an expert within a topic and then lets him pick the best five books regarding the subject. Their tagline is "The best five books on everything."
They've now published a list of five books about games, and guess what; The first book is Theory of Fun. Regardless, there are four more books on the list and while I haven't read any of the other four I would really like to recommend them, as they seem to hold great information and lots for you (and me) to learn.
http://five-books.com/interviews/tom-chatfield (16/3/2010)
The books are:
- A Theory of Fun - Raph Koster
- Homo Ludens - Johan Huizinga
- Play Money: Or, How I Quit My Day Job and Made Millions Trading Virtual Loot - Julian Dibbell
- Playbooks and Checkbooks - Stefan Szymanski
- Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
I'll personally try and get my hands on the one about Flow first.
Books. Five of them.
Sporadic Play
Today I found a really interesting text about Sporadic Play on Raph Koster's blog. Raph is a persistent world game guru and has made games like Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies.
http://www.raphkoster.com/2010/03/10/gdc10-sporadic-play/ (11/3/2010)
In it, there's a lot to learn about how sporadic play works, some pro and cons and even some tips about how to make it better.
It's a lot about how we can make players feel attracted to the game because they don't have to spend a lot of time with it per session. Heck, they can't spend a lot of time with it.
I don't think it's a bad thing to spoil the ending, instead I think it's a good tease to make you read the entire thing:
Sporadic play has been around for hundreds of years. It can be integrated into many types of games. It can be used to create companion experiences for existing games. It can help small developers extend their content, and it respects the players’ time.
Another thing. Since the movie "The Hurt Locker" won a bunch of Oscar's, I watched it yesterday and maybe it's just me... It's probably just me, but I think Jeremy Renner, the guy playing the main character looked just like David Jaffe (creator of God of War) and that thought stuck with me during the entire movie.
The cheeks? I don't know why I think they're so alike...
Unexpected Downtime
I don't know what happened exactly, but ArcadeBerg.com's host have been having trouble since yesterday; resulting in unexpected downtime for more than 24h.
My guess is that it's because of a Zerg rush.
I'm sorry about this, but hopefully it'll all work fine from now on.
Downtime
Zoho?
Maybe I've been living under a rock or something, I don't know. Or maybe it's because it isn't established in Sweden, where I live but apparently there's this huge Online Office Suite out there that people claim to be better than Google Docs.
And as some of you might have noticed, I love trying out new tools and tell you about them if they can help you out in the design process.
http://arcadeberg.com/web/textflow/ (Textflow)
http://arcadeberg.com/causerie/office-live-workspace/ (Office Live Workspace)
http://arcadeberg.com/misc/my-new-best-friend/ (Evernote)
http://arcadeberg.com/causerie/organize-my-designs/ (DropBox)
The Suite I've stumbeled upon is "Zoho". They seem to got it all, writer, presentations, wiki, project management, you name it. And apparently, from what I've gathered so far, they're good! Their writing tool sure is prettier than Google's and if you're into formating your text, Zoho seems to be a better choice.
Zoho, sounds like a redneck town.
I've always been a Google fanboy so it'll be hard to like Zoho, but I'll give it a real chance and hopefully it's even better than what Google is offering. Although, I haven't found any drawing tools in Zoho yet.
There's nothing like always having your docs within reach!
http://www.zoho.com/ (22/2/2010)
More Google Wave Invites
I got another bunch of Google Wave invites, so I thought I'd give 'em away here again.
http://arcadeberg.com/web/google-wave-invites/ (25/11/2009)
Just like last time, comment or e-mail me, providing your mail adress and I'll invite the first seven people. But this time I want one more thing than your adress, I also want you to mention one game you like. That's it.
googlewaveinvites [at] arcadeberg [dot] com
I'll update this post when I run out of invites as fast as I can.
Update: I'm all out folks. Enjoy.
Google Wave Invites
Hey guys.
I just got a bunch of Google Wave invites and I thought I'd give 'em away here.
Just give me your e-mail and I'll give them to the first seven people to reach me. Either post a comment, or if you don't want to write a comment visible to all, send me an e-mail on:
googlewaveinvites [at] arcadeberg [dot] com
I'll update this post when I run out of invites.
Oh, and even if I add you to the list, you won't get the invite at once.
Invitations will not be sent immediately. We have a lot of stamps to lick.
Update:
Woah, that was fast! I'm all out now, sorry.
Congratulations Markus, Frédéric, Tom, Stephen, Philip, Axel and Patrik!
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