Monthly Archives: April 2010

Bullshit Alert: Zynga threatens Sony and Microsoft

From the land of ven­ture cap­i­tal­ists look­ing to cash on the lat­est enter­tain­ment fad (social net­work games , as opposed to last year’s vir­tual worlds), we get this garbage from For­tune mag­a­zine: With more than 235 mil­lion monthly users, Zynga rules the nascent world of free online games played via social net­works like Face­book. Real …

April 21, 2010 – 7:17 pm | By David Eckelberry | Posted in Game Industry | Tagged |

De Consolatione Philosophiae

In the begin­ning, there was the quar­ter. The busi­ness model of the arcade inspired games that were designed to vac­uum up the most quar­ters per hour.  Sim­ple eco­nom­ics and self-interest of the gamemaker: Keep the player enter­tained, but also keep him drop­ping the quar­ters into a slot as often as pos­si­ble. The “vir­tual death drive” …

April 17, 2010 – 2:03 pm | By David Eckelberry | Posted in Game Design | Tagged |