You may or may not know the name “Nexon”, but you’ve most likely heard of their games. The Korean company has produced the industry-leading titles Maple Story and Kart Rider, to name but two. And although they may not have invented virtual item sales through microtransaction as they sometimes claim, my hat’s off to them [...] Keep Reading

No – seriously. Why don’t you? One of the most-repeated tips i heard at the Casual Connect conference a few weeks ago was to develop a strong brand. Customers like strong brands. Strong branding unifies all your … your stuff under one label. Strong brands are about striking, professional-looking logos, consistent use of colours and [...] Keep Reading

If you were there during the early days of the telephone, wouldn’t you have loved to have provided input? Maybe suggest to Alexander Graham Bell that telephones should issue low-grade electric shocks to teenage girls who talk on the device for more than half an hour? Or suggest a magnetic socket to Edison so that [...] Keep Reading

i’ve been watching a discussion over at Raph Koster’s blog (subject: I am Speechless) on the subject of torture in games. Now the author has broken it out into its very own post. In typical Koster style, amidst plugging his book, he waxes pedagogical, throwing out game theory terms to dismiss torture as bad design. [...] Keep Reading

MTV Multiplayer has an article where they talk about how Sigourney Weaver passed on voicing Ripley for some upcoming Aliens games. Her reasoning was twofold: 1) The designers’ Ripley was out of character, swearing like a sailor and shooting up sick people and human marines (in addition to the expected alien fodder) 2) The developer [...] Keep Reading