Link Dumpage: Ray Gun (film)
My head is angry today, though my gamer score is not. Lots of Koster today:
- User-Generated Content: The List: "I love the fact that thanks to organizations like Valve, Maxis, and Bioware, user-generated content is attracting tremendous attention from industry and media alike. Still, coverage typically revolves around a single point of interest, i.e. 'UGC makes games more interesting' or 'UGC can help drive sales.' So I thought I'd compile a (by no means exhaustive) list of the good business-y things about UGC in the context of games..."
- User created content: "The lesson here is that everyone is a creator. The question is 'of what.' Everyone has a sphere where they feel comfortable exerting agency -- maybe it's their work, maybe it's raising their children, maybe it's collecting stamps. Outside of that sphere, most people are creators only within carefully limited circumstances; most people cannot draw, but anyone can color inside lines, or trace. If the games require serious commitment and challenging creation tasks equivalent to drawing from scratch, they will have smaller audiences."
- The lifecycles of a player: "A while ago, a poster in the comments thread asked what I thought the lifecycles of players were. I don’t think there is only one lifecycle, is all. I know of several models that have stood up over time, so here they are, briefly described."
- 40 ways to be a better (game) designer: "I'm always looking for ways to become a better game designer ... it's with interest that I read articles like 50 ways to become a better designer. Much of the list isn't directly applicable, but some of it is, and it inspires a list of my own, centered around games. Not exhaustive, and probably not even accurate, but stuff I have often helped myself with. Many are cribbed and adapted."
- Rails and Ajax: a Match Made in Purgatory: "...we cannot efficiently mix desktop and web paradigms. All kind of problems ensue when we attempt to build a web app that should behave as if it's a desktop app. And vice versa. And yet, that's what Ajax-colored approach seems to advocate. Bring back the desktop paradigm into the world of web. That's not the wisest thing to do, if you ask me."
