Jonathan Blow gave the closing keynote for us at Games:EDU on Tuesday. The most interesting point he raised for me was conflict between dynamical meaning and narrative.
Dynamical meaning is the meaning generated by the game rules themselves. The way the game encourages you to play sows values and motives in you as a player, automatically [...]

At a Games Edu today, Microsoft’s Albert Ho said it will share with amateur game developers up to 70 percent of the gross revenue generated by games they sell online through the company’s upcoming Xbox Live Community Games section.  This is more than XBLA, and more than standard dev contracts.
When the system launches later this [...]

KZero have an excellent visualisation of different types of MMO and what age groups play them. There are many there I hadn’t heard of, all neatly categorised. Follow this link for a full size version, and this one for a post by them breaking it down.
(via the infringalicious Wonderland :) Note to KZero – people [...]

Ian Bogost has an article up on the newly relaunched EDGE Online (replacement for Next-Gen), talking about ideas of who gamers and what games are. He’s particularly cogent near the end:
When we acknowledge videogames as a medium, the notion of a monolithic games industry, which creates a few kinds of games for a few kinds [...]

E3 has now passed, and seemed surprisingly uneventful even with vastly reduced numbers of people.
Probably the most interesting big announcement I saw out of it and haven’t blogged here yet is Sony’s PSN video rental service. It’s been rumoured (and obvious) for a while that Microsoft were likely to partner with Netflix to offer video [...]

We’re going down to Brighton soon to run Games:EDU, stage Polygons #12, and attend the Develop Conference.
We’ll be catching up with a lot of people we already know, but if you’re going to Develop too and would like to arrange a meeting with for any reason, do get in touch. Best way is to [...]

Great quote today from Ben Feder:
technology is at a point where developers don’t have to shock the audience to amaze the audience
(CC image by CarbonNYC)

TIGA is expanding it’s efforts to lobby the UK government, with a tightly packed argument built around training and education. Game development studios have far more to offer the UK than exports, and there’s opportunity for the government to utilise this in developing a more highly skilled workforce.
It’s good to see TIGA making such specific [...]

E3 is now in full effect, which actually means reduced effect since it’s been shrinking for the past few years. So far, this quote is by far the most interesting thing:
“Science is a really powerful brand that no other entertainment property is trying to grab,” said Wright, after complaining that modern chemistry sets “are so [...]

Google have finally launched a virtual world. People have been talking about this since the first google maps mashups, Sketchup and again with Google Earth.
What’s there so far seems pretty high quality, there must be some fairly powerful content creation tools to allow users to generate many of the rooms on show (there’s already a [...]