Thoughts, as Promised

As mentioned in last post, this turned out to be great. (Raph Koster had the whole hour as the other guy fell ill).

Thanks to whoever had the foresight to include this in the DUX track.

So what made it good? Firstly, Raph had a lot of smart things to say, and secondly, and maybe more importantly (when giving a talk anyway) he was opinionated - he came with a lot of ideas to share. He just laid it out, and did it as someone who knows what conference speaking is about.

The crux of his presentation was offering a unique perspective to many of the same problems we're confronted with, as website and webapp designers - but coming from a different industry: game design. The parallels are many, as I'm sure many differences can be drawn too, but as the title states, it's about the insights: "Immersive Experiences: Lessons from Game Designers".

I did capture some notes, but was more compelled to listen than record frankly. The basic setup was a game design learning, followed by an anecdote, and then the general best practice that could be drawn. (He made it an entertaining formula.)

The PPT stack is promised on his website soon. See update below.

Meanwhile, here are the titles of the ones I managed to capture (clearly meant to be provocative):

• The average person is below the average
• Nobody reads the manual (ref. George A Miller: 7 + or - 2)
• Older men act like women
• Cozy Worlds
• Do it everywhere
• Casual gamers can be hardcore
• Audiences kill genres
• Adaptive difficulty has pitfalls (Oblivion)
• Bottom feeding
• Cameras convey psychology
• Avatars are filters
• Never ramp smoothly (Dunbar’s 148.6 aka “the rule of 150")
• They chase the carrot (feedback loops/incentive structures)
• Democracy fails in small groups (<50k>
• Free assignment of guild roles
• There’s 3 kinds of rules
• The map is not the territory
• Content will kill you
• Unpredictable policing
• People are lemmings
• They also make shit up
• Players need to know they will see each other tomorrow
• Make games gamers like
• Topple your kings
• Balance is overrated

Update 4/23: Newly posted materials

Web 2.0 Expo: Immersive Design
PDF here and audio, too (by way of trippy) and a write-up in Red Herring