The Guardian has a worthy read and a bit more coyness from Raph Koster on Areae, web 2.0 and games:

I think a lot of what the game world can learn harkens back to the old cathedral and bazaar thing. Games are clearly cathedrals, as built right now. Each one is a moon shoot.
So with things [...]

eBay has announced that they’re proactively removing listings from their auction site which aim to sell virtual items for massively multiplayer online games like World of Warcraft, the EverQuest series and City of Heroes, according to Daniel Terdiman at cnet. The company has finally responded to calls from game publishers to remove the black market [...]

3D graphics company Softimage has partnered with Electronic Arts’ Chicago studio to build a game development pipeline built on its XSI animation software.
The pipeline has been built specifically with next-gen and HD games production in mind, and will be used for the development of a new title. The studio has recently completed work on Fight [...]

Earlier this month ELSPA published its manifesto for 2007, revealing plans to modernise the organisation and work more closely with members.
The move comes less than six months after Paul Jackson took over from Roger Bennett as ELSPA director general. Jackson, who formerly worked at Electronic Arts and has been a member of the ELSPA board [...]

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 [...]

The BBC is planning to launch a virtual world suitable for children between 7 and 12 years old to muck about it.
Called “CBBC World”, it will allow “digitally literate children” to create an online avatar and then create and share content, a bit like Second Life.
“It will give children a chance to move around a [...]

Shigeru Miyamoto, the acclaimed game developer behind titles such as Super Mario Bros. and Legend of Zelda, will keynote the Game Developers Conference 2007.
In his first keynote since 1999, the developer will reveal the creative process behind his work on highly-regarded software as well as his thoughts on new Nintendo hardware, in a session entitled, [...]

Co-founder of Geomerics, Dr Chris Doran, will give the first public display of the company’s graphics software for home consoles, as part of his talk next week at the Game On exhibition.
The demonstration of the real-time, cinematic lighting technology will form part of Doran’s presentation, where he will also discuss the technical challenges facing game [...]

Jon Jordan “What I found significant was the headline ELSPA chose for its press release of the wonderful news – “2006 interactive software sales thrash previous years”.
Now, this must count as a classic case of being economical with the truth. In term of their value, sales clearly didn’t thrash previous years. An extra £10 million [...]

Music, on a crowded bus, coming from the speaker on a mobile phone. Sodcasters are terrified of not being noticed, so they spray their audio wee around the place like tom cats. But who wants to be associated with the sound of a pair of twigs having it off on a bed [...]