Gamasutra - A Personal Journey: Jenova Chen's Goals for Games

"In Journey," explains Chen, "we want to offer the player the choice between individualism and group conformity... We wanted to create an environment where the cooperation is not forced; you're totally fine doing it yourself. If you choose to cooperate, then that is the real essence of connecting two players."
via gamasutra.com

I remember reading (unfortunately I forget the source), that one of the problems with graphical video games is that while you can tell when someone is close enough to shoot, you can't tell if they need a hug. While I doubt Journey does the latter either, it seems to have come closer than any other graphical video game out there.

(I say graphical video game, because in MUDs/MOOs/MUSHES/what have you, you can tell, about the hug bit.)

Respawn's West And Zampella Sound Off On Upcoming Activision Lawsuit

Schwartz: You'll love this. Summer 2009 - May 2009. Before E3, the big [event] for Modern Warfare 2. Do you know who George Rose is? He was the head lawyer ­for ­[Activision].

So George Rose goes into the office of this guy named Thomas Fenady. He's some kind of IT whiz at Activision. He's sitting in his office and has no idea what is going to walk in his office. [Rose says], "Hey, this comes right from the top. I have a project for you from [Activision Blizzard CEO] Bobby Kotick. Jason and Vince - you know those guys? We're really sick of them. We want to get rid of them; we want to fire them. You need to break into their computers and dig up dirt to be used to justify firing them." [Fenady] testified to this.

So Fenady gets really nervous. He goes to his boss and his boss finds out about it and his boss says, "You should not get involved in something like this - this doesn't sound right." George Rose finds out about this, comes into his office, and goes, "Look, this comes from Bobby Kotick. If you do this, Bobby will protect you if anything happens. But remember, the number one priority is do not ­get ­caught."

via gameinformer.com

I'd be very surprised if Infinity Ward is the only studio Activision's been mismanaging.

Still, it is a rather epic drama.

Zomg, a SANE way to do development quotations.

Ever since we started Offroadcode we've taken the stance of never giving fixed price quotes for projects. Some people think this is crazy but allow us to explain why it makes sense for clients and ourselves.

What I'm going to cover here is nothing new to me and probably many other coders out there. To others though (both clients and designers in the business) it can be quite eye opening when I first tell them about it. All through the following post, remember the point below is what we do and what we give our clients.

We always want to give the client the best website we can for their available budget. Offroadcode
Keeping your cards close to your chest isn't the right way to work!Talking about budget shouldn't be a secret!

Asking a client what their budget is can come across as either rude or plain money grabbing. They hold back the true amount thinking we will quote back to them the full amount when we say how much it will cost. Difference is though, we don't give fixed quotes.

We will work up to the amount of budget the client is happy to spend. That to us makes sense. The clients gets the best site they are happy to pay for at a fair price.

We don't deliver rubbish for that money, we deliever the best we can to the amount of budget/time the user has. At the end of that we will have delievered the best, most feature rich site we could. All the client need do is pick and choose which features they want on their site.

via offroadcode.com

"One assumption we're making is that you do have an idea of how much actual time a feature might take to complete. If you don't, you really shouldn't be in charge of quoting for a feature."

XD Just one of the great things!

This is what happens when your ad agency doesn't actually care about YOU.

Yes, I admit it, I clicked on "Popular". And then I was royally pissed off. (That 'navbar' is an advertisement, by the way. See how helpfully it's labelled.)

If this ad agency's KPI was clickthroughs, not conversions, then I'm pretty certain this ad is getting results.

Unfortunately, of course, once users realise they've been tricked, their instant reaction is to close the site in disgust. The last thing on their minds is even LOOKING at whatever it was the site was selling.

One could argue that the agency was doing nothing wrong - their client probably demanded clickthroughs as KPI, and on this, I'm sure they deliver. But the reaction after click-through in no way helps their client.

An agency that cared about their client would realise that what the client (and every client, really) wants is conversions. Yes, an ad banner cannot guarantee conversions. But if the banner pisses off the users it brings to a site, you can bet it'll guarantee a lack thereof.

Guild Wars 2: OMG ANet, seriously, WTF?

Four Days. That’s it. I honestly thought that once my account was linked I would get quite some time to lock down my Guild Wars character names. Let’s see, I have 10 character slots in Guild Wars with the majority of characters being over five years. Guild Wars 2 comes with 5 character slots… perhaps? I have four days to decide how many character slots to fill with old names or risk losing them. Or, in profitable terms, I have four days to decide how many character slots to buy.
via killtenrats.com

:(