Just cranking out one last AoI before the impending avalanche of E3 news necessitates the next one…
Researchers have studied the relationship between in-game violence and player enjoyment. (Example: in one experiment, they exposed people to two versions of Half-Life 2, one with little violent imagery and one with much more.) Results: the amount of violence in a game did not predict how much players enjoyed it, nor did it influence purchase intent for sequels of the game.
For those of you who will be assuming new management roles soon, check out this surprisingly thorough and helpful article about the ways new managers can avoid making a bad impression on subordinates (an issues which, the article notes, can prove utterly crippling to new managers in the long term.)
EA is developing Tiger Woods PGA Tour Online, a free, streaming, browser-based 3D golf sim. No comment yet on revenue sources. Between this and Battlefield Heroes, EA appears to be making a real commitment to exploring f2p gaming, unlike some other major publishers.
Profs. Gee and Jenkins note that educational games that harness and promote player communities might stand a better chance of success. Might seem obvious to some of you, and yet there are very few educational games that actually do this in a meaningful way.
Sony has announced the “PSP Go”, which will sport a 3.8-inch screen, will be 43% lighter than its predecessor, will have 16 gigs of memory and will by all digital (no UMD.) Barring the larger screen, this sounds almost like my iPhone… minus the phone functionality and minus my desire to carry it with me everywhere I go, like I do my iPhone. *grin* (In all fairness, I’ll withhold judgement till I hear the price of the Go…)
2m+ users have registered for SOE’s f2p, family-friendly MMOG Free Realms within the first month. 75% of registrants are under the age of 17; 46% under 13. Notably, nearly a third of players are female.
Google has released an API for Google Talk that permits for asynchronous multiplayer games.
Nintendo is doing some interesting community stuff with Personal Trainer: Walking. For example, every player’s steps is added to a community total, and that total dictates how deeply into the galaxy the community will “walk.” I like it. It would be neater still if the community could interact within the context of the space walk.
There’s more to life than games:
The first black woman to ever be ordained as a rabbi; she’ll also be the first black rabbi to lead a majority white congregation. How lovely. 🙂
Youtube: The Vendor Client relationship… in real world situations. This is brilliant.
Check out this presentation of Google Wave, which according to fans will replace email, instant messaging, wikis, forums, and SMS. It looks very cool to me, but I can never guess whether these things will overcome inertia
