Why do people buy virtual goods?
I recently read a paper by Vili Lehdonvirta about what drives the purchase of virtual goods. I’ve suggested three use cases for virtual goods before: 1. Attention in a noisy environment (usually...
View ArticleGame design tips from top game designers
Two good recent posts give some useful game design tips. Raph Koster talks about ways to make your virtual space more social, including specific design suggestions to prompt downtime and an opportunity...
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Applying game design principles to the real world – new Honda Insight
Popular Science has an interesting article about the new Honda Insight and some of the ways that it helps drivers drive in a more fuel efficient manner. Two of the techniques show a very strong game...
View ArticleTips on designing layouts for games and virtual worlds
Raph Koster has some useful tips on laying out maps; some of these are probably not too different from urban design planning best practices in the real world. I’m repeating them here (aggregating and...
View ArticleErik Bethke on game balance in free to play games
Interesting quote from Massively‘s GDC coverage about how to design for Real Money Trading: Bethke imparts some advice on how the common mistakes can be fixed in terms of balancing. You can charge for...
View ArticleSome game design considerations for a free form eldergame
Last month I posted about Bartle’s thoughts on how to build an eldergame, principally, to allow for free form play following the Eve model. Jame Portnow recently posted in GameSetWatch about some of...
View ArticleCasual Connect panel on designing, balancing and managing a virtual economy
Freetoplay.biz has raw notes taken from the session on Designing, Balancing and Managing a Virtual Economy. Some good quotes include: On inflation: Gaia did not manage economy when they started want...
View ArticleCasual real time strategy games
Gamasutra has a nice writeup of the game design behind Corpse Craft, a causal RTS (real time strategy) game on Whirled: In a traditional RTS, resource gathering is largely automated (players send...
View ArticleWhich games will go the way of Pinball machines?
It is interesting to note that while MMOGs, time management games and real time strategy games have made the jump to social games, First person shooters have not. Why not? I find the current...
View ArticleLessons from the leaders – Engagement in social games
On Friday I moderated a panel at the social gaming summit featuring speakers from Zynga, Playdom, Playfish and Crowdstar on the topic of engagement best practices in social games. Socialtimes has a...
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