services in exchange for online currency

girl_gamers: Whoring for WoW gold?

So the question is: Would you solicit services in exchange for online currency or items? Why or why not?

Pjio Referral Program Launches

Game Development, Production, Producer Articles & Resources » Pjio Referral Program Launches - Early Adopters Benefit

Pjio Referral Program Launches - Early Adopters Benefit
April 25th, 2007 :: Permalink :: Trackback
Posted in Announcements

The new Pjio.com referral program launches. Basically it’s a new service that rewards members for promoting and developing the site community. The program is different to many other referral programs by rewarding members over the lifetime value of an ever-expanding community. Members are rewarded with status points, known as Karma, Credits and a share advertising revenues where applicable. The rewards are earned by the member as and when the referred member participates in community activity or earns advertising revenues from a uploaded game.

Besides offering lifetime rewards, until the end of 2007 referrers qualify for 50% share of the referred members earnings. So, if a referred game developer earns $500 in ad-share, the referrer earns $250. This comes from Pjio’s cut (so both developers and referrers win in this deal). The system is 2-tier, so basically when you refer a friend, and they refer their friends - your network grows.

As you can see, I’ve chosen to experiment with the system. As they are just launching the program, I cannot personally recommend or tell how good it will be - but I know for sure that early adopters (like me) will get an advantage compared to those who get later in the system. The 50% share won’t be available for so many months after all, and the 2-tier system might be better for those who get in early.

We’ll see how it goes, here’s my referral link - check it out in case you are interested: Pjio.com.



Completely unselfish *cough* : Here is my referal link

Two Worlds” presents a sophisticated alchemy system

ZUXXEZ - THE GAME PRODUCERS - www.zuxxez.com

+++ “Two Worlds” presents a sophisticated alchemy system with a real hook +++

Thanks to the Alchemy System in "Two Worlds", players can now let their talent for experimenting run free and wild - magical elixirs, poisoned traps, shrapnel bombs, magical power-ups for weapons, you name it, anything goes... and it's all oh-so-easy too! Just drag-and-drop your selected ingredients from the inventory to the cooking pot! All kinds of plants you find, including herbs and mushrooms, are suitable for "Two Worlds" alchemy - and you can use ready-to-drink potions and parts of dead animals and monsters, as well as minerals and bombs. The possibilities are practically endless, but all these ingredients have their own individual properties - so give your mixture some thought beforehand if you want to achieve the right results! If you're happy with the outcome, you can give your formula a special name and save it in the cookbook! So you can make really effective potions and bombs anytime you like... but only if the necessary ingredients are available! Sometimes recipes are awarded for a successfully completed quest - or you can buy them for cash in a shop. Alchemy really starts to explode in the MMO mode of "Two Worlds", where you can even trade those magical recipes of yours - and you might just get yourself a real bargain too… if you keep your eyes open

Methodological approaches to game analysis

Abstracts ||Digital Arts and Culture::2003

Playing Research: Methodological approaches to game analysis

Espen Aarseth
University of Bergen
aarseth at uib.no

| download paper (pdf) |

The study of game aesthetics is a very recent practice, spanning less than two decades. Unlike game studies in mathematics or the social sciences, which are much older, games became subject to humanistic study only after computer and video games became popular. This lack of persistent interest might seem odd, but only if we see traditional games and computer games as intrinsically similar, which they are not. We might try to explain this lack by noting that games are usually seen as trivial and low-brow by the aesthetic and theoretical elites who cultivate the analysis of artistic media objects: literature, the visual arts, theatre, music, etc. But this does not explain the fact that aesthetic studies of games are now possible, and even, in some academic environments, encouraged and supported with grants. What happened to cause this change?

Game Studies

Game Studies - Archive

Game Studies is a crossdisciplinary journal dedicated to games research, web-published several times a year at www.gamestudies.org. Our primary focus is aesthetic, cultural and communicative aspects of computer games.

Marketing to Game Minorities

GameDaily BIZ: Marketing to Game Minorities

Marketing to Game Minorities

Stereotypes suck; yet even today, they threaten to derail the interactive entertainment industry. Scott Steinberg, managing director of Embassy Multimedia Consultants, chats with experts from several non-traditional gaming audiences to learn how developers/publishers can finally put prejudice out to pasture.

It's easy being Jewish – everyone knows we control the media. And hailing from Atlanta, thousands must love me: You've heard about that Southern hospitality, naturally. Still, maybe not... after all, I do have that short man's complex, right?

Anyhow, I digress. See how much fun you can have with stereotypes? The only problem being as follows: Easy to fall back on, seemingly harmless at first blush, they're not only potentially offensive and/or demeaning – they're an absolute killer in a boardroom situation.

The same reason Embassy Multimedia Consultants advises its clientele to look at all potential partners and projects objectively is the same reason game makers and marketers can't afford to pigeonhole audiences. By doing so, you run the risk of not only speaking to them out of turn or erroneously, but you also flirt with the danger of completely missing the mark in terms of positioning, alienating entire demographics and ultimately consigning your product or service to oblivion.

That being said, it's painfully obvious that for too long, we in the gaming business have been slaves to typecasting. To wit, a few key points we'd all do well to remember:

* Gamers aren't all geeks

* Not every buyer's a white, 18-34 year-old male

* Graphics mean less than gameplay

* Hype alone does not move units

* Celebrity endorsements don't guarantee hits

* The simpler the concept, the better

* Shoppers are smarter than they're given credit for

In the spirit of constructively airing out several of the industry's more shameful grievances, I've invited four associates, each representing a traditional "gaming minority" – seniors, women, Latinos and African Americans, respectively – to offer their thoughts on the subject.

It's my sincere hope that the insight they offer helps to do away with some of the ignorance which sadly still seems to persist and color several of the sector's more common business practices:

Sal Falciglia

CEO and founder of Slingo, Inc., creators of the mega-successful Slingo casual game series: Won't disclose his age, but says he's "been around long enough to see a few U.S. presidents come and go."

What's the most common misconception about seniors?

"That seniors are not engaging in games and other online interactive entertainment experiences. According to Hitwise, over 30% of Slingo.com's traffic comes from users who are over 55 years of age. This means that hundreds of thousands of seniors are going online to play games and engage in social networks on our site alone."

How do you feel about their traditional portrayal in the gaming space?

"It's a bit shortsighted. Seniors have been engaging in social games for many years and the digital world is the next stage of senior entertainment evolution. Just look at any bingo hall or group of people playing bocce or shuffleboard and you will see a good portion of the players are from an older generation. Now they are conversing and congregating online."

What type of titles is the community really drawn to?

"We have seen our senior community drawn to games that embrace social elements and cooperative gameplay rather than isolated experiences or competitive games. They also have a tendency to enjoy games which are 'massively single-player' where people play together and are ranked against each other, but one person cannot affect another person's gameplay. For those people who don't have a large social outlet, online community games are a great way for people to connect."

How could game developers and publishers make their products more appealing and/or marketable to this audience?

"Start by forgetting most of what you learned about making games in the core space. User interface is considerably more important since eyesight, reaction time and color blindness can be factors with older players. Games should be designed so that next steps are clearly defined and the game itself should focus on the fun. Games should be pleasing to the eye, but don't have to focus on crazy particle effects and 3D graphics. Simple is usually better – like games that only require the use of the left mouse button."

Anything you'd like to say to software makers and distributors that might help them get their heads out of the sand?

"Just as the game industry dropped their mouths when they realized WOMEN were playing games a few years ago, the same level of awareness is going to strike when statistics show yet another demographic category has been underestimated. It's simple; anyone of any age enjoys an entertaining experience and sometimes that experience is a digital game."

Do games all have to be cerebral, slow-paced affairs like crossword puzzles or card games to connect with this demographic?

"Not at all. These people are seniors, not feeble, so they enjoy an exhilarating experience just as much as the next person. But just don't think that your older crowd is looking for shooters, RPGs and twitch games with complicated controls and unachievable goals that require 50 play-throughs."

As a follow up, what do you think is the best way to reach this audience?

"Like any other entertainment product you need to advertise where you will reach your market and show them how much fun your product is. Do not discount the massive power of word-of-mouth with an already social senior crowd."

Finally, the worst stereotype about seniors and gaming would be...?

"That older people don't add value to the game industry. Advertisers ignore them because they don't think they support an entertainment-based lifestyle. Seniors are a large and growing group of people who tend to consume entertainment products due to ample amounts of free time. They want to be entertained and are incredibly social people."

PlayStation Network Achieves 1.3 Million Users

GameDaily BIZ: PlayStation Network Achieves 1.3 Million Users

PlayStation Network Achieves 1.3 Million Users

Sony has revealed its first statistics regarding its PlayStation Network for the PS3. The company has amassed over 1.3 million users for the free online service. That's several million behind Xbox Live, but it's not a bad start for a console that's only been available since last November.

According to Dave Karraker, Sony Computer Entertainment America's Sr. Director, Corporate Communications, the PS3's PlayStation Network has reached 1.3 million users globally. 600,000 of those are located in North America where the new Sony console has been on the market for five months.

SCEA also revealed that 3.7 million pieces of content have been downloaded since the PS3's launch. It's not clear how many of those are actual downloadable game purchases. We'd wager that the majority of the downloads are coming from free demos and movie trailers—an area that Sony has been refreshing fairly consistently on the PlayStation Store.

According to the recent NPD data, life-to-date PS3 sales in the U.S. stand at 1.2 million. We don't currently have access to the PS3 install base total up north in Canada, but adding whatever that (likely small) figure is to the 1.2 million and dividing by the 600,000 PSN users in North America shows that fewer than half of PS3 owners are going online with the new system.

By comparison, in the months following the Xbox 360 launch, Xbox Live users comprised almost 60 percent of the Microsoft console's install base at the time. Xbox Live currently has more than 6 million members, both silver (free) and gold (paying). Of course, it's not entirely fair to compare PSN to Xbox Live, as Microsoft's online service has been available since 2002.

Source: GameSpot

Interactive Virtual Environments on Websites

DutchPIPE - PHP/AJAX Interactive Virtual Environments on Websites

utchPIPE Showcases

In addition to the whole site which is an example of a DutchPIPE environment, we'll be slowly adding showcases here to demonstrate different possibilities (see About DutchPIPE). We are now concentrating on the core AJAX/PHP system, and these showcases will be simple proof of concepts, but over time as the system matures, more complex (and more exciting!) showcases will appear.



curtesy of fogwraith

Idleness is good

'Idleness is good' | The Guardian | Guardian Unlimited

'Idleness is good'


His staff choose their own managers, set their own salaries and take breaks in the office hammocks. So how did businessman Ricardo Semler ever become a millionaire? He explains all to Stephen Moss

Thursday April 17, 2003
The Guardian

It's not every day I get to meet a Brazilian millionaire businessman. Nor does G2 usually focus on their activities. This is more Fortune magazine territory. But Ricardo Semler is our kind of capitalist. His company, Semco, has been called "the world's most unusual workplace," he has just produced a book called The Seven-Day Weekend, and, best of all, he advocates idleness.

"The bad rap that idleness has is a real problem," he says, "because idleness is really the time when you solve problems. People say idleness comes close to sloth, which is not true at all. It is from idleness that the best things I've ever done have come." Semco's offices in Sao Paulo are fitted with hammocks.

Article continues
The Seven-Day Weekend, a follow-up to the bestseller Maverick! which he produced a decade ago, is a paean to inactivity. Semler, who is 43, has a four-year-old son and likes to spend a lot of time feeding the ducks. He dislikes email; likes long holidays in remote places; thinks you should be able to "buy" retirement time in your thirties and forties which you can work out in your sixties and seventies; and resists boundaries between work and pleasure.

At Semco, meetings are voluntary (if no one turns up, whatever is supposed to be under discussion must be a terrible idea), employees are allowed to set their own salaries and choose who their managers should be, there are no receptionists or PAs (who would want to do these support jobs?), and titles, business cards and all the rest of the paraphernalia of office life are frowned on. It sounds like anarchy, but Semler says it works. "Freedom is no easy thing. It doesn't make life carefree - because it introduces difficult choices. It's much easier for people to give into a familiar system in which they don't have to make any decisions."

Semco used to be a nice, straightforward engineering company that made marine pumps. It was founded by Semler's father, an Austrian exile who came to Brazil in 1952 via Argentina, but when the 24-year-old Ricardo took over in the early 1980s he set about transforming it. It is now a "federation" of 10 businesses: it still produces pumps but much more of its $160m-a-year turnover, generated by 3,000 staff, comes from site and inventory management.

Semler is not a fan of growth for its own sake. "There is no correlation between growth and ultimate success," he says. "For a while growth seems very glamorous, but the sustainability of growth is so delicate that many of the mid-sized companies which just stayed where they were doing the same thing are much better off today than the ones that went crazy and came back to nothing. There are too many automobile plants, too many airplanes. Who is viable in the airline business?"

He refuses to make long-term projections. "If someone asks me, 'where will you be in 10 years' time?', I haven't got the slightest idea. I don't find it perturbing either if we said, 'look, in 10 years' time Semco could have 500 people instead of 3,000 people'; that sounds just as interesting as 21,000 people. I'd hate to see Semco not exist in 10, 20, 50 years' time, but what form it exists in, what business it's in and what size it is are not particularly relevant."

...

more information in the original article or here:

http://positivesharing.com/2006/05/book-review-the-seven-day-weekend

Surprise

Compubeaver

Compubeaver
Kasey McMahon
Copyright 2007


The Beaver - Fresh out of the mail.

This is the first time I've seen one
up-close, and it's quite a fascinating creature.

...

More information in the original article :)

Writing Network Code - related articles

GameProducer.Net » Planning is Essential in Writing Multiplayer Network Code

Planning is Essential in Writing Multiplayer Network Code
December 16th, 2006 :: Permalink :: Trackback
Posted in Game Development

I must say that proper planning is crucial when it comes to programming multiplayer games. Our Edoiki game network code is much simpler now compared to what it was in the beginning of the project - and I’m polishing the code even more.

I’ll give an example.

First I used multiplayer code where client would ask server “if he can do things”. If client needed to pick object, there would be separate code for “pick object”. If client needed to move somewhere, there was a separate code for “move”. Almost every action had separate packet building codes, ACKing (acknowledging - or basically saying “I received your packet”) codes and so on.

Now things are designed much simpler: clients only send input commands (like “clicked certain mouse button” or “certain object in screen”) - there’s no separate code for different actions: there’s only code for sending inputs, and that’s it. This has made things much easier in the client end, and also in the server end. Now server checks received input commands, ACKs them, and sends “what happened” information to all clients. There’s a class (or class like way as Blitz3D is not object oriented) for network objects, and server changes the states of these objects, and tells clients what updates have happened. In all simplicity, there’s just two main elements that need to be taken care of “client input commands” and “server’s network object state updates”. Use of bit masks has given me way to use the same functions for state updates: now there’s no need to create separate code for moves, attacks, health changes, etc. - I simply use the server to update object states (in one piece of code) and magic happens.

GameProducer.Net » Planning is Essential in Writing Multiplayer Network Code

Planning is Essential in Writing Multiplayer Network Code
December 16th, 2006 :: Permalink :: Trackback
Posted in Game Development

I must say that proper planning is crucial when it comes to programming multiplayer games. Our Edoiki game network code is much simpler now compared to what it was in the beginning of the project - and I’m polishing the code even more.

I’ll give an example.

First I used multiplayer code where client would ask server “if he can do things”. If client needed to pick object, there would be separate code for “pick object”. If client needed to move somewhere, there was a separate code for “move”. Almost every action had separate packet building codes, ACKing (acknowledging - or basically saying “I received your packet”) codes and so on.

Now things are designed much simpler: clients only send input commands (like “clicked certain mouse button” or “certain object in screen”) - there’s no separate code for different actions: there’s only code for sending inputs, and that’s it. This has made things much easier in the client end, and also in the server end. Now server checks received input commands, ACKs them, and sends “what happened” information to all clients. There’s a class (or class like way as Blitz3D is not object oriented) for network objects, and server changes the states of these objects, and tells clients what updates have happened. In all simplicity, there’s just two main elements that need to be taken care of “client input commands” and “server’s network object state updates”. Use of bit masks has given me way to use the same functions for state updates: now there’s no need to create separate code for moves, attacks, health changes, etc. - I simply use the server to update object states (in one piece of code) and magic happens.

I believe that reading high level information about how to create network code is important if you want to make efficient network code. My first pieces of multiplayer code are awful to watch today, but I’m extremely pleased with what I have now.

Here’s some articles I’ve found very useful:

* Quake 3 Networking model
* 1500 Archers on a 28.8: Network Programming in Age of Empires and Beyond
* RakNet programming tips
* Valve’s Source multiplayer networking
* Latency Compensating Methods in Client/Server In-game Protocol Design and Optimization
* Unreal networking
* Networked Physics
* The TRIBES Engine Networking Model
* Designing Fast-Action Games For The Internet

And here’s some more links where you can find lists of more articles:

* Gamedev.net articles list
* Indiegamer.com networking thread

From that list I’d say the Quake 3 networking model really hit me: their way to deal with things in all simplicity is brilliant. They decided to user quite pure server client system and there’s one major idea: there are no reliable or unreliable messages. The concept of “sending only non-ACKed changes” is - in my opinion - simple and efficient.

I will write more helpful articles about what I’ve learned and give better insight in the future, but for now I suggest taking a look at some of those articles.

Game Development information source: DevMaster.net

DevMaster.net - Your source for game development

Tips on Developing an MMO Economy, Part I
Based on the author's experience in developing his own MMO game, this article provides tips and advice on developing a stable economy for MMO games -- part one of the series. (17/02/2007)

SOE exploring markets outside of the US

Next Generation - Interactive Entertainment Today, Video Game and Industry News - INTERVIEW: Sony Online's Worldwide Quest

Sony Online Entertainment’s new executive hire wants to increase the firm’s international footprint, but with stiff global competition is it too little too late? And how the hell does WoW make it look so easy? Click through for the exclusive Next-Gen interview.
ImageSOE’s new VP of business development and international operations Dave Christensen would argue that it’s never too late to compete in new markets, as long as you have a unique strategy.

SOE’s primary market is currently North America, targeting Western gamers with MMOs such as PlanetSide, Star Wars Galaxies, The Matrix Online, EverQuest and the recently released Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. Meanwhile, foreign products such as Lineage along with US competitor Blizzard with World of Warcraft are hogging up increasing amounts of MMO market share overseas.

Christensen, who worked as a consultant for SOE six months before coming on board in January, freely admits that SOE will have to play some catch-up in the international market. “With China and Korea, I don’t want to say we missed the boat there, but we’re going to have to work with partners there to really build up our presence in that region,” he says.



...



more information at the original article

Bunch of Articles About Rapid Game Prototyping

Kloonigames » Blog Archive » Another Bunch of Articles About Rapid Game Prototyping

Another Bunch of Articles About Rapid Game Prototyping

Some time ago I published the Articles About Rapid Game Prototyping post. When I wrote it, I didn’t intend to write a sequel. So I didn’t hold back any links. After I published it I stumbled upon few new resources. The list quickly grew into a bigger one (thanks to Lost Garden) and now I think I have enough to justify a new post.

Last time the articles where mainly about software game prototyping. There where only two articles that touched the delicate subject of paper prototyping. Even if your not interested in paper prototyping or board games I recommend reading the articles about them. They contain a lot of useful information for anyone creating a game prototype in any material.

Attention-Based Web Metrics by Compete.com

Compete.com Blog » Compete.com Announces the only Attention-Based Web Metrics

Compete.com Announces the only Attention-Based Web Metrics
Written by TJ Mahony (e-mail) -- April 2nd, 2007 | Listen or download an audio version of this post Listen | EMail This Post

For the last few months we have made several posts using a new metric we refer to as Attention. We created our Attention metric because all of us in online marketing need a better way to gauge the influence of a site beyond unique visitors, page views and “visits”. While these are all critical pieces of the puzzle that is the web, they all also have their short comings.

Today we announce that you can use Compete.com to measure a site’s Attention. Attention fuses engagement (measured by time) and traffic (measured by unique visitors) into a single, more complete picture of a web site’s value.

Today’s Enhancements:

In-game Advertising to Hit $1.94 Billion in 2011

In-game Advertising to Hit $1.94 Billion

In-game Advertising to Hit $1.94 Billion
By Tom Ivan Print | Send to a friend | Email the editor

A new report forecasts that global in-game advertising will rise by almost 23% a year for the next five years, reaching a figure of $1.94 billion by 2011.

Image Essentially this is because the video games market is currently booming and advertisers are keen to exploit the possibilities presented by such a vast amount of players. A widening of the traditional video game playing demographic, including an increase in male and especially female adult players (who hold the majority of decision making buying power in the US), the prominence of online gaming, and technological innovations allowing far more flexibility with regard to how, where and when adverts are embedded into games are increasingly enticing marketers to the medium.

The increase in casual gaming is also cited as a key factor in the proliferation of in-game advertising. A major proponent of in-game advertising, RealNetworks has implemented a streaming video advertising model for use in their casual games to great success. As a result it reports that advertisers have received click through ratings averaging 10% and an average 74% completion rate for the ads.

Zhengtu - Most Profitable Game?

Gamasutra - The China Angle: Wii Piracy, World Of Warcraft Beaten?

Zhengtu - Most Profitable Game?

Shanghai based online game company Zhengtu Network's tax form showed that the company is recording monthly revenues of 160 million Yuan ($20.7 million) and monthly profit of 120 million Yuan ($15.52 million), reports DoNews.com.

Zhengtu Network's in-house developed MMORPG Zhengtu Online recorded 2.8 million daily active players and 860,265 peak concurrent users (PCU) on March 23, making it the second most popular game in China in terms of PCU, after Netease' Fantasy Westward Journey.

In comparison, China's World of Warcraft operator The9 recorded 680,000 PCU and US$36.1 million in revenues for the game in fourth quarter of 2006.

Zhengtu is free to play and charges for virtual items, but many gamers have complained that the game is the most expensive in China. Zhengtu takes advantage of players' thirst for power by placing no limits on player kill (PK) and allowing players to purchase powerful virtual items.

Consequently, the game population is divided into powerful paying players and prey. It is common for players to spend over 1000 Yuan ($129) a month on virtual items and there are reports that some have spent millions of yuan on the game.

Coincidentally, Chinese game developer Red Mushroom's CEO Bill Bishop posted an April Fools joke on WoW hunting. In his joke, Bishop claimed that several wealthy WoW players organized real life hunts in China with human as prey.

The psychopathology of the modern American corporate leader.

Inside the Mind of the Modern American Boss -- New York Magazine

Boss Science
The psychopathology of the modern American corporate leader.

* By Steve Fishman


(Photo: Superstock)

Possibly, your boss is a truly fine person—wise, kind, perceptive, capable, understanding, the all-seeing director of the office sitcom, the sort of individual one might like to have, in an ideal world, as a parent or a confidant. Or not. In the real world, bosses are known to suffer from a long list of social pathologies: naked aggression, credit hogging, micromanaging, bullying, you name it. According to one report, 60 to 75 percent of employees—it doesn’t matter the organization—say the worst aspect of their job is their boss. It’s not difficult to believe, as one office expert concludes, that “every employed adult will have to work for a bad boss for some significant period.”

In the natural world, there are brutal processes by which, say, one especially vicious bull walrus ends up on the rock, with all the females, while all the others are forced to skulk around the periphery. Dogs, we’re told, inevitably select a leader, who emerges naturally through some mysterious language of dominance rituals, reinforced with tactical urination. Could the same be true, somehow, in the world of work? Is there some law of office life that dictates that jerks rise to the top?

In search of an answer, I began to explore the vast and ever-growing field of office psychology. The field is packed with off-the-top-of-their-head pundits and latest-idea peddlers of all stripes. Sprinkled among these are a few thinkers and scientists. One of them is Seymour Adler, an industrial-organizational psychologist at Aon Consulting. Adler is tall, talkative, and unassuming; he wears large glasses, khakis, a shirt without a tie. He has the mild look of a weekend boater. And yet it doesn’t take long to figure out that Adler is a kind of office utopian, who dreams of remaking the office cubicle by cubicle. Adler is one of a brash, almost swaggering set of psychologists with a wildly ambitious goal: the perfection of the society of work. “The thrust of my research is to identify the traits required to be an effective leader,” says Adler, “and then systematically select those traits”; each according to his personality, if not exactly according to his needs.

Adler has a new set of scientific tools by which to remake the office. “There’s been a revolution in thinking about personality,” he tells me. “The revolution is how little of who we are is determined by nurture and how much is determined by genetics.”

Psychologists are reducing personality to a linked series of statistical clusters that the research literature now confidently correlates with performance. Essentially, Adler makes his living by helping companies decide which pegs should go into which holes.

Adler says he knows which personality traits help make for a responsive customer-service rep, which make for an eager salesman. (Rule of thumb: Throw the obsessives into operations.) That customer-service rep should have an agreeable, tolerant personality and one without deep ambition. “There’s no incentive pay,” Adler says. The salesman probably should be achievement-oriented, someone who needs to prove himself against measurable goals. In the same vein, another researcher reports that one law firm deconstructs its HR needs by personality traits. It insists on extremely bright employees who are also extremely insecure. “They want them to think that working really hard matters,” he explains. Through this prism, personality types can even be mixed and matched to make a team function more efficiently. Psychologist Robert Hogan, a pioneer in organizational psychology, says it’s a matter of balance; three basic types are required. “You need an ambitious person, someone who will step up. You need someone inquisitive and with ideas. Then you need one smoother-outer, a person who’ll keep on task.”

In this view, failure is nothing more than incompatibility. Match the appropriate trait cluster to a well-understood task and you’ll have rebuilt the office along rational lines.

Like other utopian visions, Adler’s can seem profoundly inhumane—reducing people to a collection of qualities, manipulating them by identifying their weaknesses. In a sense, it’s a boss’s vision.

Kojima Talks Metal Gear History (Metal Gear Solid)

Gamasutra - GO3: Kojima Talks Metal Gear History, Future

Progress Through History

Kojima said he would show us this evolution using his games (primarily the Metal Gear series) as an example. In the 80s, non-abstract action games were primarily spaceship shooting games, such as Konami's Scramble. Metal Gear subverted this standard by not being about shooting - it was about "trying to form the tension of hide and seek".

BioWare Taps StreamBase For MMO Dev

Gamasutra - Product: BioWare Taps StreamBase For MMO Dev

Product: BioWare Taps StreamBase For MMO Dev Officials from BioWare have announced that the developer has officially licensed StreamBase Systems' Stream Processing Engine data analysis technology for the MMO project currently in development at BioWare's Austin studio.



The technology will be used by the company's recently founded MMO-focused BioWare Austin studio to make an unspecified new massively multiplayer title - BioWare Austin is the company’s second studio and the first to be located outside of Canada.



According to StreamBase, which also provides high-performance Complex Event Processing (CEP) software to prominent financial institutions and government/military bodies, the Stream Processing Engine technology will assist BioWare's MMO development with "robust scalability and persistence capabilities to store, process, and query large volumes of data in real time."



Using the technology, BioWare will be better equipped to handle large numbers of player interactions and events within its MMO environment. The developer will also be able to monitor the game environment in real time and immediately offer fixes for any game oddities, and to identify and react to malicious player behavior in real time to ensure game integrity.



Finally, StreamBase adds that its graphical “point & click” development environment will allow BioWare to achieve design and implementation times “which are orders of magnitude shorter than traditional custom coding, and with fewer errors.”



“StreamBase is designed to process enormous amounts of real-time information at blindingly fast speeds, making it an ideal platform for delivering a rich online gaming experience for thousands of players simultaneously,” said Barry Morris, chairman and CEO of StreamBase. “BioWare’s MMO gaming initiative is an excellent example of the many kinds of real-time applications that can take advantage of the rapid time-to-value our CEP software offers.”

Guitar Hero, Level 2

Music games won't be solo gigs anymore - USATODAY.com

Music games won't be solo gigs anymore
Updated 10h 24m ago | Comments 3 | Recommend 21 E-mail | Save | Print | Reprints & Permissions | Subscribe to stories like this
A scene from Guitar Hero II. The popular game is teaming with MTV for Rock Band, which includes drums, two guitars and a microphone.
Enlarge Red Octane photo
A scene from Guitar Hero II. The popular game is teaming with MTV for Rock Band, which includes drums, two guitars and a microphone.
By Mike Snider, USA TODAY
Guitar Hero was just the opening act. MTV and the developers of that video game have a headliner in the works called Rock Band, which lets four music lovers gig together in person or online.

Expected in stores for the year-end holidays, the Electronic Arts game (no price set) for the Microsoft Xbox 360 and Sony PlayStation 3 will be played with four instrument-based video game controllers: two guitars (lead and bass), a drum kit and a microphone.

In the popular game Guitar Hero, players tap color-coded fret keys and strum a guitar-shaped controller in time with scrolling on-screen notes. Rock Band "takes the core premise of Guitar Hero and expands it tenfold," says Alex Rigopulos, co-founder of Harmonix, which developed the game and the Karaoke Revolution games. "It lets you create a complete collaborative band."

MTV is supplying creative and financial support to Rock Band's development, as well as helping make deals with various music

Top ten research findings from academic game studies

Game Studies Download

Welcome to the GAME STUDIES DOWNLOAD



The Game Studies Download is compiled annually by Jane McGonigal, Ian Bogost, and Mia Consalvo for the Game Developers Conference.



It's a summary of the top ten research findings from academic game studies from the previous calendar year.



Our main criteria for selecting studies: the direct relevance of the researchers' insights to the future innovation of game design and development.



Game Studies Download 2.0 (Game Developers Conference 2007) Get the 2007 slides



Game Studies Download 1.0 (Game Developers Conference 2006) Get the 2006 slides



(This page will be updated with links to the full research texts shortly. In the meantime, a Web search of the authors' names will bring up the papers. - Jane 3.10.07)