Raph liveblogged Lane Merrifield’s lecture at AGDC. It’s an educational and even inspiring talk on the subject of customer service, from the founder of Club Penguin.
I really like Scott Adams’ (aka creator of Dilbert) blog. He’s often quite funny, and every once in a while he says something relatively insightful. In a post called timing is everything, he speculates that 9/11 basically killed the sales of his book God’s Debris. I believe it. Timing is everything in the game industry, too. It’s interesting how many publishers are willing to ignore that truism (to the detriment of their games’ sales) because they feel compelled by internal politics and/or Wall Street analysts to release a game by an arbitrary deadline. (And speaking of, do you think I should ask my publisher to delay the release of my book? Between the election and the economy, November really doesn’t seem like a great time for a debut!)
A friend emailed me this interesting article about how boring physical environments can actually stifle brain development. No surprise, but interesting to see it proved out. If you work in a cubicle farm (especially a drab one), watch out.
I’m so excited to see interesting games coming out of GAMBIT! One of the latest is called Akrasia. From the GAMBIT blog: “The team decided to make a game about INNER DEMONS and coming to terms of who you are. It would take place in the mind and the mind would be symbolized by a maze – a common metaphor but through its spatiality particularly well-suited for a game.” It’s a free download — check it out!
