Co-Optimus

I was talking about coop-centric gamedesign (and specifically AI) yesterday, and I forgot to link to this interesting topical website — linked by Chris M. Park's blog, also very much worth reading, for that and more.

Merry '10, people, this will be an interesting year, in the Chinese and any other sense, I reckon.

Best of luck.

Believe it or not…

…these two are soon getting married.

***

[Here be the photo gallery, and go there for a nice behind-the-scene look at Big Daddy's inception.]

Story of my life.

Either I'm getting complacent and easier to please (which would be subtly ironic, given the link below), or I'm on a roll for finding stuff worth reading, lately.

In this case, and for my sake, worth re-reading at least once a week until it sinks in.

Another bullseye.

You may remember I mentioned Eschaton Online a few days ago.

Turns out Gnostic Labs seems very much dead, but unless I fell prey to an eerie case of fortuitous homonymy, I believe I've picked the scent of one Jake Cannel, once of the Eschaton Online team, who's nowaday focusing on computer graphics, on the western US coast.

As it happens, he blogs, like anyone with access to tap water is required to nowadays — seemingly by law — yet to the difference of most, it's definitely worth reading, at least if you're into his kind of stuff.

This, especially, about the evolution of gaming platforms and how it could impact development practices is at once well-written and spot on, imnsho.

Not much more to say right now, although I poked a company that's working on the kitchenware version of that idea, roughly… I'll get back to that if/when I get word from them.

Economic crisis update.

…or why the way we do capitalism deserves to die.

Getting there.

The rapture of the nerds is on us, or close by, according to Itamar Arel, who gave an interview last month to Sander Olson. Read it there.

The skinny is Dr Arel believes we're just a decade away from the first proto-human artificial intelligence, roughly baby-stupid (or smart, depending on your personal bias), and from that point on, there's no stopping the singularity from happening within the next few minutes.

Meanwhile, I'm being clever trying to figure ways for MMO* to suck less… Considering the likelihood of success on that front, I suspect it will be a relief to be ended by our mechanical overlords.
Yay.

How the MMO* production model is broken.

Not spanking new, not illuminating (because of the next proposition), this entry by Scott Jennings summarizes so neatly a bunch of points I subscribe to, I figured I'd just link it here for future reference — at least until one of the younguns educates me on shared bookmarking or somesuch.
 In the meantime…

Bullseye !

And don't miss the comments, Lum's readership is half the goodness.

Economy in playmonies

Managing a Virtual Economy

From the Virtual Goods Summit 2009.

Derek goes global !

Derek Smart's 3000AD is cooking a MMO based on their Galactic Command IP !

This will earn the qualifier of awesome, for real.

…it will also be entirely unplayable for regular humans, but that's par for the course with anything Derek Smart™, and it shouldn't stop you from checking it out.

3000AD is a unique studio, and everything coming out of it is crazy-prophet type stuff: they do games nobody else would, maybe with good reason, but you never know until someone tries, and Derek Smart (Derek Smart Derek Smart) does try, in his boisterous, rambunctious, compulsively driven way. That alone is worth respect, in an industry that is growing more risk-averse and vision-impaired every year.

I hear space-grognards moans of arousal coming from the basement, already…

Live museification.

George Clooney googles himself for Esquire, artfully pretends to be a virgin.
Because one really has to make the most of any Georgean Encounter, there is a "behind the scene" feature about the feature about george looking into the webospheric mirror.

I don't know what exactly yet, but it flipped a switch in the back of my mind.