The Princess Rescuing Application: Slides
Slides from a recent presentation by Dan from Lost Garden on applying game design principles to application design.
Top 10 Best Looking Facebook Games
Inside Social Games ranks the best looking Facebook games.
An In-depth Look: Mob Wars
KISSmetrics takes a look at what has made Mob Wars so successful.
The Art of Using Notifications within [...]
5 major cultural differences between Games people and Web people
Andrew compares a few differences between the web world and gaming world. Great insight for those of you web people getting wrapped up in the wave of social/casual game design, myself included. Or vice versa.
Virtual items design: Build it yourself or use UGC?
Andrew shares an old [...]
Theme and Game Design
Danc examines theme usage in game design. Another great Lost Garden post!
Game Design Lessons From Evolutionary Psychology: Social Status, Pt. 1
Brett examines the intrinsic human desire for status and how it is applied in Facebook games.
The “Core” of a Game
Brenda Brathwaite talks about the “core” of a game, and how everything needs [...]
The guys at Alamofire just released a HUGE update to PackRat, entitled Ratzilla. Lot’s of new changes that I have yet to go through.
But the REALLY big news is that they’ve now implemented a revenue stream via a dual currency system. You can now buy tickets, which can in turn be used to buy items [...]
3.0.2 Patch Notes
The notes for today’s upcoming patch in World of Warcraft.
WoW Micro-transactions
Tobold reports that WoW will have paid character customization in the upcoming expansion. This is very interesting news.
Three Decisions to Make on Virtual Goods
Eric (IMVU) sums up the tough decisions you’ll need to make to be successful with virtual goods.
Monitoring Status Messages: Growing [...]
Here are my raw notes from the Virtual Goods Summit 2008. I’m presenting them to you as-is, so take it all with a grain of salt. As soon as the videos are posted, I’ll link them up. Here are the photos I took of the event.
Branded and User-Generated Virtual Goods
Margaret Wallace, Rebel Monkey
Brian Balfour, Viximo
Lee [...]
If you’re planning a feature set for a product, always beware of “icebergs”. These are features that on the surface look harmless and trivial, but once you dive below that you discover that you’ve only accounted for 10% of the scope. Unexpected encounters with icebergs, without the proper navigation skills, can spell disaster and possibly [...]
Behind the scenes: Getting Real with free Campfire accounts Jaime Dihiansan from 37signals details the history of an email redesign project. I love these "in-the-trenches" posts.
Making Money Twice A bit old, but a nice view (with figures!) into a small portion of the 37signals revenue stream.
When have you released too early? Awesome [...]
BlizzCon in HD In case you didn't know BlizzCon will be available via Pay Per View on DirecTV…in HD!
xkcd: Flash Games This pretty much sums up the "high production value" argument.
Does High Production Value Matter? It's been asked before, but this post sums it up pretty well.
Clever Designs in EQ2 Elder Game gives a nice little breakdown of some of the juicy design bits in EQ2.
Controlling Inflation in Social MMOs Nice little overview of controlling inflation in MMOs.
How to Make a Successful Social Game: Use Gifting Great little tips from Bret on using gifting in social games.
Design Analysis: [...]