Virtual Cultures

Jon Radoff's slides from IMGDC

Jon Radoff of GamerDNA (which is a totally exciting and needed gamer social network) has posted his slides from the talk he did at IMGDC this year, "Ten Top Trends in Online Games".  Among other things, they're starting to collect all sorts of interesting data on player behavior... check it out:

http://radoff.com/blog/2009/04/21/top-trends-in-online-games/

Richard Bartle and the Lost Girls: IMGDC 2009 Keynote

Dr. Richard Bartle's keynote for the last day of IMGDC was quite possibly one of those events that defines an industry, creating a ripple that affects everything that comes after.  He offered a stellar analysis of a key feature, and problem, in virtual world design, suggested a solution that seems obvious (in retrospect, of course), and wrapped it all in an outstanding and compelling metaphor.  

Live from Las Vegas: IMGDC 3

The Indie Multiplayer Game Developers Conference has a special place in our (Ron and my hearts) because, although we’d been talking about starting a blog for a long time, the first IMGDC conference, held two years ago in Minneapolis, gave us the impetus to actually kick this blog off. This conference also holds a special place for me since it is the one event that fuses my two passions: multiplayer games and indie games. It’s quite a feat to pull of a conference like this in an economic downturn, and in true indie style Jonathan Stevens, IMGDC’s founder, averted disaster and managed to pull the conference together in Las Vegas against particularly daunting odds.

Ron and I decided to split the loot on this one, so I’m going to start with a summary of the first and second day keynotes, and talk about a few themes that emerged during the three days.