Category Archives: Technology

A Checklist for Kids Virtual Worlds

Community, Games, MMO, ShadyLogic, Technology, Usergenerated,

In February I  was honored to be part of a Panel on Virtual World development at Engage 2010 at the NY Toy Fair.

In “The Tactical Perspective:  A Best Practices Checklist” we discussed the process of migrating brands online, including a typical product development roadmap and timeline.  At a high level we covered the different phases of production as well as engaging an audience, building a brand, operations,  moderation and driving ROI.

Engage Expo was great to work with and has generously shared the recordings of the session:

Should Designers Script?

Games, MMO, ShadyLogic, Technology

At last years LOGIN conference Peter asked me to do a debate.  Knowing that I was bit outspoken in my views on technology and game design he pitted me against Isaac Barry of Gamehouse.  Our topic… “Should game designers be allowed to write code in a  scripting language”.

Watch the video if you want to get into the debate.  It is a bit slow initially.  I was a bit evil and switched the tables on Isaac in the opening statements by framing the debate around MMO’s and then conceding his main points around casual games.  Issac recovered about halfway for some fun points.

Or you can read more….

Continue reading Should Designers Script? →

Why not C Sharp?

Games, Open Source, Technology

Microsoft-Dot-Net-Old-Logo2The choice of which technology and language a project is built on can be divisive. We wed ourselves to the tools we know best and identify with the solutions we employ.   While there are zelots in the PC vs Mac debates, the hotter arguments in tech circles frequently revolve around what technology will mean success.

One debate that comes up in game development is the use of any language other than C/C++.  The C/C++ languages have been almost the exclusive language for game engines since its beginning.   While developers my also adopt scripting languages (many times to offload work to less technical game designers) the core that makes the engine do its magic is in C/C++.

With the advent of new technologies does this still make sense? Continue reading Why not C Sharp? →