This is an incredible article about how flat-out CRAZY video game culture is in Asia, especially South Korea (though China is pretty wonky too).
This is an incredible article about how flat-out CRAZY video game culture is in Asia, especially South Korea (though China is pretty wonky too).
What Neil is going to say tonight is “Do NOT put anything down on the sheet that the PLAYER does NOT want to explore.” In other words, while it may be cool that Bounty the Cosmic Head Hunter has a vicious hunted herself… if the player is NOT interested in being pursued relentlessly… don’t put it down.
On the Forge, Storn creates a Character Prompting Cover Sheet and it seems like a fantastic idea. It basically defines a layer above what the “character” is like in the world, and directly addresses what the players want in the game.
In his own words:
There’s no such thing as a perfect play, especially when you get a lot of gamers together, excited, adrenaline rushing over playing in such an unlikely and public space, and the emergent factors associated with Big pervasive games… so how do you prepare the players, and build the live gaming system, to adapt? How do you design for imperfect play?
AvantGame: no such thing as the perfect play
Hot new Mafia variant (in progress): The Thing!!! Feel the horror.
Like board games? Greg Costikyan suggets the Days of Wonder model as a way of properly leveraging the net to promote your game properties, and also talks about which kinds of multiplayer games can more easily support development.
From Penny Arcade: Adventure fantasy is a very bubbly and complex cauldron of fun.
Evolution and niches. Psychochild looks it over. Is super-nichifacation of games a symptom or a reaction to a stagnant mainstream? Do niches mean further focus on the hardcore rather than causal players? (Ex: several first-person shooters.) Or are they a means of reaching out to them? (Counter-ex: Puzzle Pirates?)
Those of us playing/making pen and paper games are lucky, because the cost barrier is much lower, whereas that is becoming the limiting factor in video games. (On the flipside, the profit margin is also much lower.)
From Fair Game: I will not abandon you does not equal nobody gets hurt. Meguey’s talking about games, but also really talking about social commitments in challenging situations.
From the Guardian: ‘It’s like a personal affront to their manhood if you bluff them out of a pot’. (Talking about Texas Hold ‘Em.)