Play’s Republic

Digital playgrounds like the ones mentioned here are incredibly popular with the kids these days. Neopets and the Cartoon Network are also sites that are incredibly popular. The catch with this are the masses of commercial messages being targeted at children through these tools. It’s particularly concerning considering how susceptible children are to advertising messages. […]

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SL has a big challenge ahead of them if they are to make a true impact.  They are the leaders in the genre, but in order to stay ahead of others who will come around they need to rethink their approach.   Scalability is a huge issue when dealing with the corporate world and I just […]

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you know those moments when everything comes together - well mine came a bit late.  This whole semester I have argued in favor of the structurlist argument and intent, not really sure what to make of the “game design” impacts interaction discussion until I looked back at the many ways in which I changed my original […]

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At the recent Serious Gamers Conference in San Francisco, Jane McGonigal gave an overview of ilovebees - an alternate reality game that focuses on collective intelligence - but is really a viral marketing campaign for Halo 2 back in 2005.  McGonigal talks of how these games can be used to teach skills focusing collective cognition, […]

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I came across this list of 50 top gaming books - thought I would pass it on  - did not realize there were enough to determine top 50 http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3962&Itemid=2

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Japanese Marketers Target Gamer Girls, Moms
By Chris Kohler
“Initially taken off guard, Japan’s game makers are now in the grip of girl fever — scrambling to market directly to women gamers who were once ignored.”
Part of what I find interesting about this is that many of the games described might be placed in the rather infamous […]

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I’ve never heard of “Entropia Universe” before this article, but it sounds like an interesting way of doing business- and of dealing with the difficult, rarely-sanctioned issue of the real-world trade of virtual world goods. First: their currency is set against the U.S. dollar at a fixed 10-to-1 rate. And secondly… they’ve sold licenses for […]

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More Mario references.

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A follow-up to Brian’s post just earlier, it seems like WoW is an aberration in its ability to appeal to both Eastern and Western user bases. I found this article that talks about the difference. Seems like the two gaming communities are very disparate, but something about these results seems dubious to me. […]

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