Player Culture: The RealID Fiasco and the Magic Ci...
Lauren Collister on Apr 22, 2013One of the things I’m most interested in as an ethnographer is the interface between online and offline life, and how this line is increasingly blurred. I originally became interested in this when reading about the Magic Circle, a concept which...
Video games, violence, and common sense
Nicholas Matthews on Apr 2, 2013Media violence research waxes and wanes like many other research topics. Focusing events train the collective gaze of the world on single point. When Facebook changes how it shares our information, we discuss our tenuous grip on privacy. When...
GDC: Riot Experimentally Investigates Online Toxic...
Jim Cummings on Mar 31, 2013Riot Games has gotten a fair amount of press in recent months regarding their empirically-based research on the nature of “toxic” player behavior in League of Legends. As a result, I wasn’t surprised to find standing room only for Jeffrey...
Self-determination theory at GDC
Gabriel Recchia on Mar 29, 2013In a previous article, I argued that theories of motivation that include a diverse range of motivators might be more useful to game designers than parsimonious theories that pick out a small handful of motivators as primary. Apparently, I have much...
Productivity and Replay Value
Lauren Collister on Mar 18, 2013One of the things that has captured my attention recently is the replay value of games. If you have already played through a game once (assuming it isn’t a game with new released content), why play it again? Some players take joy in reliving a...
Sixteen ways to motivate
Gabriel Recchia on Feb 22, 20137 Habits of Highly Effective People. The 8 Essential Steps to Conflict Resolution. I’ll be the first to agree that including an arbitrary number in a headline makes an article sound like something that you’d find in the bargain bin of your local...