One of the things I sometimes talk about on stage is that game mechanics can make a massive difference to an experience. Even the most trivial and arbitrary rule set can suddenly become incredibly compelling, when people have targets to aim for, a measurement to compete with, or just some rules that allow people to [...]

GameLayers have shut down PMOG, or The Nethernet as it was later known. It has to have been a very difficult decision, especially as people liked the concept so much in the beginning. As part of the process of shutting it down though, they’ve posted an informative post-mortem on exactly why they made that decision, [...]

Microsoft have also pulled a sudden reveal on more services streaming into the 360. This past week not only has integration with sky TV been announced, but now also Facebook, Twitter, and Last.FM. Pictures of Twitter and Facebook are at Kotaku, and there doesn’t seem to be any footage or imagery of Last.FM working with [...]

When we have time, we like to read Smashing Magazine. The problem is, it’s a torrential barrage of content, nearly all fascinating in some way.
They currently have a large feature article up on the design of videogame websites, looking at some of the best and worst trends and ending with a showcase of some of [...]

Techcrunch highlighted Facebook app Packrat on Monday, which seems to be causing a bit of a disturbance there. In a piece titled “Facebook Isn’t A Social Network. And Stop Trying to Make New Friends There”, Michael Arrington writes:
A big part of the game is “stealing” cards from friends, and so a lot of users add [...]

Tom Armitage has given a talk on games and social software entitled “Playing Together” at NLGD and also at Develop. We unfortunately missed it at the latter because we were running Games:EDU a couple of rooms away, but Tom has now posted text and images.
It’s a really broad ranging talk with some great thinking on [...]

Late last year was a season of highly polished AAA game releases, and the run out of summer this year seems to belong to interesting indie games. We’ve already had Braid and Echochrome, and upcoming is Flower.
Upcoming is also Webwars: EVE, which seems to be a casual take on CCP’s MMO, in which players compete [...]

via Nicholas Lovell comes a rumour that Google are nearing a release of the in-game ad service they’ve been testing for a while. It’s most likely true given the recent release of Lively. Also, as Nicholas points out:
the opportunity for independent and smaller studios who fall below the radar screen of Massive, IGA or Double [...]

Raph Koster and co. at Area have been keeping quiet about what they’re doing, though the logo and Raph’s general talk of “game meets web” has been pretty revealing. Today, they announced Metaplace, which allows many virtual worlds to be connected up. From CNet:
“We are re-inventing virtual worlds that stop working like AOL,” Koster said, [...]

Marek Bronstring, of Idle Thumbs, has made an interesting post about The Great Games Experiment: a social networking site for gamers. His take:

There needs to be a place where small games can virally market themselves the way small bands have rapidly emerged from MySpace and YouTube. I don’t know if this is going to be [...]