musings of a social architect

Rock Band + Downloadable Songs = Gamer Heaven

'Rock Band' sells 2.5 million songs

We've been playing Rock Band recently -- and although I LOVE the gameplay, I hate the song list (not my taste). So I'm thrilled beyond words to see that downloadable songs for Rock Band are selling well. A robust market will support a variety of songs - and increase my chances of finding songs to play that I LOVE (e.g. Baba O'Reilly by The Who)

BTW - I worked on Rock Band early in the project, helping to design the online & community features (look for my name in the credits :-)  I'm so proud to see how the game finally turned out. There were a LOT of tough decisions and tricky compromises to make, and Harmonix navigated that terrain beautifully.

It's a struggle to get my work done these days - 'cause all I want to do is pickup that guitar and rock out.

More Insights into Game Design Trends

Anyone for maths?

Math Brain Training, coming soon...

Types of Game Designers

A good summary of game design roles as practiced in the industry (bear in mind that these roles are changing

'Wii warm-up' good for surgeons

More evidence that games can be effective for training SPECIFIC neurological systems.

Researcher Kanav Kohel explained that the type of game play was crucial.
"You don't gain a lot from swinging an imaginary tennis racket.
"The whole point about surgery is to execute small finely controlled movements with your hands, and that is exactly what you get with the Wii."

The fine control needed to move a virtual marble around a 3D maze is similar to the skills needed to perform keyhole surgery, for example.

Some good advice from Raph

Jeremy Liew points to a couple of excellent posts from Raph on - great stuff for up-and-coming game designers:

Game Design Fundamentals: Part 1
Game Design Fundamentals: Part 2

And a choice quote from Raph...

Link: Raph’s Website � Web-based VW news round-up.

... that’s what all the most popular apps on Facebook seem to be: either fancier versions of Poke (poke with vampires! Poke with movie lists! Poke with stuffed animals!) or richer profile stuff (wall with video! Profile with movie lists! Wall with a stuffed animal!). Which goes to show what SNSes are built around: rich profiles, and presence.

Social Games are exploding

Recently, I've been spending a lot of time playing games games on social networks. FaceBook in particular has quite an ecosystem going -- lots of experimentation,  iteration,  testing out ideas. It feels like a bubbling caldron of game ideas.