It’s amazing to me that in the course of five years we can go from “consumables are the artifacts of greed” to “F2P is the strongest pillar of the industry”. When EA put consumables into Madden 2007 (I believe that was the year), there was an entire shitstorm of rage from the commentariat. Now, consumables are 68 percent of F2P spending and allowing entire distribution types that did not exist previously.

Gamasutra has a great article up by Simon Ludgate on the economics of that particular market that I find incredibly interesting. Designers and companies deserve to get paid for the products and services they provide. If this model helps breed innovation in game design and doesn’t just become a mechanism for extracting revenue from users (nee Zynga), then I welcome the sea change.

Coworkers have introduced me to League of Legends which is confounding in many, many ways, but I have to admit to finding how the business merges with the design to be fascinating. My one worry about these games are their ephemeralness–once Riot moves on, the game is done. There are no artifacts to leave behind. If that is the unfortunate dynamic of privacy prevention, then we all lose.

Too long and wonderful to tweet:

Enough pronouncements and posturings about game design as problem-solving, of finding the most effective solution, or the most powerful trump card, and wielding it in the air like an autistic Achilles. Let’s make games. Let’s make good ones. Let’s try to figure out what that means for each of us. Let’s help our colleagues and our players and our critics understand it.

- Ian Bogost

I’ve unfollowed so many of the so-called designers-to-follow out there because of their egotistical and unsubstantiated pronouncements on design that X is dead, long live Y; that because they consulted on some obscure title or read some obscure author that they have the true design principles, carved into stone by the hand of God. I’m no relativist, but I cannot believe that what passes for GDC lectures need be read by students and designers alike as gospel.

Sebastian Deterding creates some of the most beautiful presentations with some of the most thoughtful commentary and this one on what he calls “gameful design” may be his best yet:

I’ve neglected the blog in favor of Twitter recently because I’ve been working on a book (update: first draft almost done! ~400 pages!) and it’s been taking all of my non-work time and battling the depression that comes and goes over not actually making anything. So here’s a bunch of links I’ve posted to Twitter lately and a couple links to some longform.org things I’ve read. That’s all you get for now.

Alphaland is a sweet browser-native game that reminds me of a platform version of 3 in Three.

Anna Anthropy’s entertaining retro game for Adult Swim.

Bogost on Gamification.

The guys that made Oregon Trail really never made any money off of it despite it making millions for everyone else.

How Andrew Looney Designs Analog Games.

If you can stomach it, this article about holocaust deniers is a really interesting look into how our modern echo chamber culture works from both ends.

An old article about why a philosophy education is better than a business education if you want to be in business.

Red Dead apparently has a lot of “uninspired filler“.

The Wooden Flip Switch Box is ripe with metaphor (watch until end).

Why Your Work Disappoints You.

Being unemployed, I’ve been spending less and less time in front of the computer. I know that my days of being able to move around during my 9-5 are limited, so most of my web browsing is done through starring Twitter links that sound interesting for later review. Well I had some time to sit down and look through them, so without much comment here are the best ones I wanted to share:

- Chris Hecker did a writeup on his Achievements talk from GDC that is required reading.

- Jesse Schell has interesting, smile-inducing presentations even if you aren’t a designer. It’s part of what makes him a remarkable professor. This is his keynote from an AR conference.

- I am dumbfounded, absolutely dumbfounded that Steve Meretzky, who designed A Mind Forever Voyaging (and who I am meeting in a few weeks), would say that all games are Skinner boxes. I intend to ask him about that.

- This EA Louse guy and I have a lot in common. We were both shellacked by corporate infighting. The difference is that I addressed my anger at the event constructively and he went on an Internet tirade that will probably get him sued. I don’t know what exactly a shitfit gets you other than attention (both positive and negative). And if you are in the industry for attention, then you are in the wrong damn business. Apparently, this is a burgeoning trend. It’s time to act like grown-ups, folks. Do what we all do: bitch at the bar after hours.

Richard Bartle: “Designers working on games “must want to say something… if you’re a game designer, you have to have some of your soul in the game design. Because otherwise it’s just superficial, there’s no vision to it, no substance to it.”

- Excellent review of Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light by the guys at Semi-Secret (Canabalt) that I wholly agree with (or else I wouldn’t post it.)

- Numbersdump on Kickstarter donations. If I ever need to self-publish a board game, I’ll probably go that route.

- Ernest Adams shellacks Raph Koster in the first comment here. Also, Raph, saying that wall spam isn’t spam for the people playing the game is like saying that junk mail isn’t junk mail if someone actually signs up for that credit card somewhere. Lame.

- Sebastian Deterding does the best presentations on design on the Internet for non-designers period full stop. This one is called “Pawned” and is about the “gamification” efforts of other software developers. Read this and everything else on his site then everything in his required reading list.

- I love using my Kindle and I think the announcement of Kindle Singles is a huge step forward for writers. I’ve read so many business books that could have been done in half the length, but were obviously padded to get them to a more salable length. Kudos.

- Hockey super heroes. How could this possibly fail?

I actually still have a bunch more links in the hopper, but I will get to them later. Off to pub trivia and then a Big Time interview tomorrow!

Sebastian Deterding’s “Just Add Points?” is, among other things, an exercise in showing how the delivery of ideas (in this case, beautifully-designed slides) can highly augment their stickiness. If you would have told me I was going to read through a 90+-slide presentation twice today, I’d have called you a liar, sir.

The point of the presentation is “Here’s what UX designers can learn from game designers”, but I think moreso it can be “Here’s what game designers can be reminded from a UX designer perspective on game design.”

I have issues with Koster’s analysis, so his quoting him makes me cringe a bit but it is otherwise fantastic. I’m posting it so I remember to go back and read the related Slideshare presentations at the end.