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Nostalgia Is Underrated - dwlt.thinksOutLoud

http://www.dwlt.net/blog/2014/12/03/nostalgia-is-underrated

A comment I’ve often seen or heard from “gamers of a certain vintage” is something along the lines of “. When I go back to the games of my youth, I’m always disappointed. Some things are best left with positive memories. I certainly understand and have experienced that sentiment, but I also think it’s missing the point. Watching the recent documentary on Jim Marshall and the invention of the iconic amp (. The Arrival of a Train. The Thing from Another World. The Story of Film. Or the entire end-scene of.

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On Time - dwlt.thinksOutLoud

http://www.dwlt.net/blog/2014/12/16/on-time

If we are going to ask people, in the form of our products, in the form of the things we make, to spend their heartbeats if we are going to ask them to spend their heartbeats on us, on our ideas, how can we be sure, far more sure than we are now, that they spend those heartbeats wisely? What would feel arrogant to me would be asking you to spend 10 or 12 hours of your time a year watching my shit, and delivering something where we didn’t hold that time precious. Posted by David Thomson.

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Genre Lineage - dwlt.thinksOutLoud

http://www.dwlt.net/blog/2014/12/11/genre-lineage

Don’t follow in the footsteps of the ancient masters; seek what they sought. In my previous post. I made reference to films “quoting” other films, which made me think of some advice I’ve heard given to musicians several times: find out who your influences listened to; who influenced them? And then find out who influenced those influencers, tracing the lineage of your music. The same should be true for game makers – what games influence you? Who and what influenced those makers? Posted by David Thomson.

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Kindness - dwlt.thinksOutLoud

http://www.dwlt.net/blog/2014/12/02/kindness

Paul Graham’s Mean People Fail. It struck me recently how few of the most successful people I know are mean. There are exceptions, but remarkably few. The essay reminded me of George Saunders’ convocation speech I’ve been meaning to post for ages (expanded on in. Congratulations, by the way. I believe). Since it’s also his birthday today, I figured now was as good a time as any to do so:. So here’s something I know to be true, although it’s a little corny, and I don’t quite know what to do with it:.

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Blizzard's Design Rules - dwlt.thinksOutLoud

http://www.dwlt.net/blog/2014/07/07/blizzards-design-rules

With the news that Rob Pardo is leaving Blizzard. It reminded me I collected his “top ten” design rules from Blizzard at a talk he gave at GDC 2010 and never posted them. There are probably more detailed write-ups elsewhere, but here they are in bullet form:. Concentrate on the fun. Art, design, programming all in the service of fun. Design isn’t more important than others. Easy to Learn, Difficult to Master. SImple mechanics to begin with. Actually: easy to learn, almost impossible to master. Randomness...

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PopCap's Hidden Gems - dwlt.thinksOutLoud

http://www.dwlt.net/blog/2011/05/23/popcaps-hidden-gems

Amongst all the chatter about PopCap’s. Later this year, and the success of games such as. One thing that’s missing is a discussion of what underlies PopCap’s ability to even consider an IPO: predictability. Games are generally considered to be a hit driven business (and by extension, a miss-led industry), so how do you mitigate those concerns? In my mind, that comes from an aspect of PopCap that I’ve seen zero comment about: their ability to manage their games and brands. Let us count them:. These may n...

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The Only Thing Worse Than Being Talked About - dwlt.thinksOutLoud

http://www.dwlt.net/blog/2011/07/12/the-only-thing-worse-than-being-talked-about

The Only Thing Worse Than Being Talked About. Ken Levine, of. Fame, on raising industry profile. It’s not their fault. It’s our fault. As an industry we need to think of ourselves differently. We need to think of ourselves that way and present ourselves that way We have a responsibility to educate people who don’t think of games. Like the people booking those [chat] shows. Was about Scottish bands heading out to SXSW earlier this year. The second. Issues (never mind the lack of creative diversity. What I...

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Natural Approach - dwlt.thinksOutLoud

http://www.dwlt.net/blog/2015/03/12/natural-approach

Blogging as external memory:. It’s what I once called the SimCity model of growing. I used to often play the game years ago. I would take two approaches. One was to use the FUNDS cheat to get all the money I needed to build everything at once. But in doing this, I often found my cities built that way didn’t thrive. Instead, naturally growing my city slowly over time allowed it to stablize and do well. After GigaOm, the Non-VC SimCity Approach to Growing a Media Business. Posted by David Thomson. The Only...

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The Scale of the Problem - dwlt.thinksOutLoud

http://www.dwlt.net/blog/2010/09/21/the-scale-of-the-problem

The Scale of the Problem. This morning, Rory Cellan-Jones of the BBC reported. From Dundee about the games industry. In the preview. Of his visit to Dundee (and reiterated in his report), Cellan-Jones makes the following statement:. I] struggled to pinpoint any firm big enough to give this cluster some real weight. He’s right of course. But it’s worse than that. One of the biggest problems we saw at Denki. Or the latest Tom Clancy game. I don’t have a problem with that, it’s good to get e...Clearly, I ca...