GDC: Chris Bell - Designing for Friendship & ...

Travis L. Ross on Mar 11, 2012
Meaningful relationships and anonymity. These are things that we don’t often consider together. In fact, much of the evolutionary literature on relationships and trust suggest that anonymity can deteriorate relationships. Yet, this strange...

GDC: Winning the behavior change game – suggestion...

Jim Cummings on Mar 8, 2012
The role of games for promoting, facilitating, an supporting behavior change has been a hot topic at this year’s conference. Below are summaries from two presentations from two separate sessions, both of which stress how games – through their...

Eight Mechanics to Enhance Cooperation in Multipla...

Travis L. Ross on Jul 6, 2011
As we move through the world we sometimes find ourselves in interactions where what is best for ourselves is not best for those around us. Pollution, overuse of resources, the maintenance of roads, and welfare for the poor and unfortunate are all...

To Bartle or Not to Bartle?: Capturing Player Beha...

Jim Cummings on Jun 14, 2011
From horoscopes to the Hogwarts Sorting Hat to Facebook quizzes, we humans seem to have a certain fascination with categorizing ourselves in terms of group identities and fitting ourselves to archetypal models. Maybe this is because of the various...

Communication Channels in Games

Travis L. Ross on May 26, 2011
I was recently reading an article regarding the release of the new Team-Oriented FPS Brink. The game brings some new features to the table. However, one thing that struck me was the simplification of the communication channels used in the game as a...

Reciprocal Altruism & the Need to Belong

Travis L. Ross on Dec 22, 2010
Recently, I posted about the ethics of online games. The post itself was sparked by a flurry of posts among game industry news sources about the "ethical" responsibilities of game developers and the unscrupulous nature of social network games like...