Category: Links

Effortlessly create Gilliam-esque animations. Very accessible animation tool. Via David.

Short news article on some of the mechanics in Molyneux’s Fable 2 that try to find new ways of creating tension.

A prototype of a dynamic visualization of an email inbox using a metaphor based on microbes. Looks funky. There’s also a thesis here. Via Floris.

Post on a newish site that intends to catalogue the new shapes of games. The author should check out Path of the Warrior, which is a one-button RPG from Gamevil.

“Simulation meets political cartoons.”

Great presentation that introduces several game mechanics in a straightforward way and looks at how you can apply them to functional sites.

Presentation very much along the lines of what I have been bouncing around in my brain: the obvious crosss-over and similarities between social software and games.

Aesthetically pleasing Flash games.

Quite possibly one of the most ambitious ARGs I’ve seen so far. Seems to be launching a new ‘season’ soon.

Huzzah,, the DS Tingle game is getting a release outside of Japan!

A video showing some of the progress Spore has made over the past year. It keeps looking better. When will we be able to play it?

Winner of the latest Casual Gameplay Competition from Jay is Games is a game by fellow Dutchman Wouter Visser and pretty enjoyable to play.

An up and coming ‘abstract shooter’ conceived as a music album. Being a big fan of Rez, I can’t wait to play this!

Critical look at how web 2.0 turns community into a consumer product.

Simon Carless signals the rise of free (casual) games and asks what the impact might be on the ‘mainstream’ games biz.

A great manifesto from Kjerulf on how to be(come) happy at work. He certainly seems to be. :-)

An old Wired piece on the alternate reality game launched for Spielberg’s A.I. Contains some nice descriptions of game-play.

Interesting perspective on recent troubles with SL financial markets.

A review of GameTap’s Mac client. It allows you to play old arcade games. Gonna give this a try soon. Update: Only works on Intel Macs. Booo.

Interesting analysis of The World This Week from Business Week. Could we mash this up with some more interactivity to get something really good?

Another great game concept by area/code. This time they created it for Discovery and it involves live sharks. ‘Nuff said.

Ultima Online’s Lord British encourages MMO developers to be more creative.

Great interview with Richard Bartle of MUD fame. The comments thread also contains some interesting remarks on his approach to design of MMOs.

Blog of a Swedish game design student who seems to be able to whip up Flash games in an impressive short amount of time.

A massively multiplayer word association ‘game’.

Interesting atmospheric point and click adventure game made by an indie developer.

A round-up of some of the most notable games and events at this year’s E3.

Weinberger’s view on the YouTube debates (which I did not see). Thoughtful as ever.

Weinberger describes an interesting new folksonomic technique they call ‘tagmashes’. Basically a saved search for more than one tag that is accessible through a persistent URL.

Did not bookmark this before but might be useful sometime. A talk on mobile IA by Christian Crumlish I attended at this year’s IA Summit.

Commercial for a game released in Japan that comes with a hardware add-on that turns your Nintendo DS Lite into a slide controller. Long live experimental game interfaces.

Yes WoW is hugely popular (or so it seems). I wonder how many people are actually pathologically addicted to it though. Is suspect this is still marginal. The DEA can hold its horses in this case.

Interesting social casual game concept which basically comes across as a butterfly sim. Expect to see some beautiful graphics (on the Xbox 360 at least) and hopefully some cool social interactions.

Richard Ziade has started blogging recorded whiteboard sketches that include audio. He calls it sketchcasting. I call it an interesting idea. I wonder what tools he uses to pull this off.

Almar with some interesting thoughts on attacking the myth of the fold in webdesign.

SlideShare promises to make it easy to mash up your slideshow with an audio track Might give this a try with the next presentation I do. Not one but two new *casting techniques launched in one day. Oh my!

This has been around for a while but still a handy resource when doing some web typography. I especially like the bit on ‘special characters’. I could use an Elements of Typographic Style for the Dutch language though.

Thomas announces a new project that hopes to address the question: “how do we as humans keep up to date with what’s happening in the world and make sense of it all”

‘”Megaphone3000″ is an exciting big screen game where your cell phone becomes your controller!’

The Tarquin Engine is a tool for the creation and delivery of zooming infinite canvas webcomics. Might come in handy when delivering conceptual comics.

Awesome little indie game: “Kumoon is a hybrid of a third person shooter and a puzzle game. Player controls a chick that tries to knock down boxes in various rooms by shooting them with a revolver, shotgun or a bazooka.”

Interesting thoughts on the value of sketching in the design process. I liked the comparison of sketches to prototypes most.

A thorough analysis of the problems Facebook ran into when introducing a new feature a while ago. It seems they still haven’t learnt though, ’cause I read something on a new user revolt recently.

Nice little interview giving some insights on how Cheng uses comics at Yahoo! Includes some useful links to resources for comics creators.

Interesting presentation from Nova on the directions mobile entertainment is headed.

Shirky’s thoughtful reply to the much derided book Cult of the Amateur.