User Feedback based design, and Biometrics

I’ve become very interested in “redesigning the game, after I gather mass of data.”
(I guess it’d be neat to change a game on the fly while gathering usage feedback, but since the tools I would use aren’t going to be widespread anytime soon – much more interested in iterating on a game which can end up widely distributed).

The lure/illusion of short time investments (re: game play)

Just commented on Christian Nutt’s feature at gamasutra : The Rise Of Dragon Age II.
I’ve been saying for years that “I’m just not an RPG guy” (though it seems I’ll avidly play every other genre). I think of it as a question of time : when I hear a game has more than 30 hours of gameplay – I hesitate to buy it. Because I know I won’t be experiencing everything it has to offer. (would you buy a DVD/Bluray if you knew some parts of the feature would be omitted?)

copyright: Do copies need to be physical? (duplication vs. translation?)

Reading this “Did Watson Succeed On Jeopardy By Infringing Copyrights?” article got me thinking about copyright again.

Someone commented that OF COURSE google book scanning is copyright infringement. here is my (perhaps naive) reply:

Analyzing Fighting Forms (cameras, stats, private communities)

Would be cool if gyms sold videos as a standard service.

Just setup a couple flip cams around the room, covering the ring from all angles? When anyone steps into the ring, a recording starts (records to disk). Or maybe you trigger it by pressing a button before you start your sparring session. $2 to 5 bucks to download the giant raw recording via usb or simcard. maybe a couple more bucks for a dvd of it to be burned and delivered – next day. No restriction from recording your own videos for free, with your own equipment. This would just be a for-your-convenience cheapo service.

hmm.
HMMM!

and someday soon, you could setup kinect cameras,

Marketing Concepts: the Calculated Climate Change of Bulletstorm

After reading Andrew Vanden Bossche’s High Aspirations for High Scores article on Gamasutra, I’m really surprised at all the ways Bulletstorm’s “Echoes mode” demo failed to hold my hand, and found it to be a major stumbling block in the game’s otherwise stellar promotion.

Would like to try and dissect the marketing experience so far, here:

Dickwolves, Rape Culture, Penny Arcade Fans and Fanatics

Apparently the crazed faceless masses of our dear internet have gone off the deep end about Penny Arcade’s attempts to not feel guilty.

They made a strip, the Sixth Slave, about the ignoble underlying nature of World of Warcraft players, and it somehow became a lightening rod for rape culture. (they followed up with a strip, Breaking It Down, about the lunacy of attributing the comic strip to the promotion of rape, which was then misconstrued as mocking rape victims). Refusing to back down, they proceed to sell a tshirt and pennant featuring a dickwolves mascot and sporty logo.

Here is an interesting summary of the community response, PAX Speakers Withdraw Over Controversy, by Alexander Bevier. I couldn’t resist offering my penny’s worth of thoughts:

If you wish to change the culture, I would encourage you to do the hard thing: and attend these PAX events.
Seek to speak there, and engage the gaming culture, instead of abandoning it to fester.