I’ve just returned home after two weeks in Japan. First week was for TGS; second was vacation. I visited Tokyo, Kyoto, and Hiroshima. Some totally random observations:

Games

• The most interesting thing I saw at TGS was not a game. It was a DS clothing recommendation system — you pick the dress you want to wear, and the system recommends matching shoes, purse, etc. At least, I think that’s how it worked (TGS is clearly not intended for English-speakers.) Anyway, I could see how young girls would love this, especially if it has game-like elements built in.
• Other cool things: a proprietary game system (whose name, frustratingly, I can’t recall) which included light sensors on finger straps. You slip them on your hands and they detect when you open and close your palms. The sensors also act as a pointer (Wiimote style.) Ever wanted to know what it feels like to throw a fireball in Street Fighter? Anyway, Next Gen has a decent wrap-up of other interesting things on the floor.
• Contrary to accounts I’ve read elsewhere, I did not see many Nintendo DS units on any of the subways or trains I rode, and I rode many. In fact, I usually saw none, and only occasionally one or two. Given strong DS sales in Japan, this lends credence to a couple reports I’ve seen that indicate significant use of the DS in the home (often at the expense of time on other entertainment devices.) On a related note: some people seemed quite amused to see me playing a DS - I’m not sure why. Aren’t “older people” big buyers of the DS in Japan? ;-)

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…Taking a brief break from the glories of Tokyo to highlight the following:

Two (one, two) decent articles in the MIT Sloan Management Review about hiring, motivating, retaining, and empowering the best employees. Both are a bit verbose but if you slog through to the end, I think you’ll be glad you did. PDF format.

Raph has unveiled Metaplace. It sounds awesome. Quote: “Now you can create a world in just a few minutes… as part of that, we also committed to an open markup standard for our network protocol… you can have a game world that is also a website, or use Web data to populate your world…. we knew it was all coming together when one of our team made a game in a day and a half. And then stuck that game on a private MySpace profile…. you can inherit someone else’s world (if they let you) and use it as a starting point… use an RSS feed for your NPCs.”

Bungie has posted information about the multi-user level editor in Halo 3.

The first GameTap Indies games have launched.

Another funny cartoon by Chris Avellone. If you like cartoons about cannabis, flatulence, and pepper spray. I kinda do.

I wasn’t able to attend Austin GDC this year, but here are a few articles about it that caught my eye:

Sulka Haro shares some insights into Habbo Hotel. Interesting quote: “Advertisers now understand that you can communicate with the teens, not at the teens. We’re putting out branded furniture which the teens love even more, oddly enough… rare items do value up in Habbo — some items value over $2000 each.”

Raph Koster talks about designing for everyone. Two quotes: “When you look at the kinds of problems we ask people to solve, and the things we assume them to do, it’s like we’ve given them a PhD in mathematics. No wonder you sit mom down and she asks ‘how do I move?” Also: “There’s no reason why WoW couldn’t be represented by anything other than an RSS feed, and if you could, it’d probably be doubled in users.”

Also, Raph’s take on the event as a whole. I think he makes some good points about major business and design assumptions that seem to be made (without reflection) by many within our industry.

Nabeel Hyatt, with his own good selection of conference quotes. One (of several) goodies: “Games are a one-night stand, you want a playboy bunny. MMOs are marriage, you want the girl next door. Still a little sizzle, and a lot of potential for the future.” - Damion Shubert

PS. Speaking of conferences: I’m attending TGS. Drop me a note if you are, too.

I watched This Film Is Not Yet Rated a few days ago. Very interesting documentary (if “preachy”, but aren’t they all?) I recommend that you see it. All the issues raised in the film can be applied to the video game industry, and all are worth discussing, but I want to talk about just one, brief part. In the film, one person argues that (and I’m paraphrasing here): “violence with no gore should be reserved for adults, who can intellectually handle the fiction of it. Violence with realistic gore is what should be considered safe for kids.”

I’m not a psychiatrist. I don’t have kids. I can’t claim that I have a deep understanding of what does and does not negatively impact child development (beyond the obvious things — lack of affection, lack of education, lack of sustenance, etc — stuff we as a society manage to ignore every day in favor of more sensational news.) All that said, this argument struck a cord with me. Let me explain.

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GDC 2008 has sounded the call for lecture & panel submissions. (So has GDC Lyon, taking place this December.) I was thinking about what to propose (and struggling, given the wide range of topics I find interesting), when it occurred to me that I could simply ask all of you!

Please let me know if there’s any specific subject that you’d like to hear me tackle in lecture or panel format at the GDCs. I promise to turn the suggestions that I’m most capable of addressing into submissions (then it’s up to the GDC advisory committee, of course.) The only caveat: GDC doesn’t like proposals that seem to promote a platform or product, so while proposals that draw on my knowledge of XBLA may be appropriate, panels that are entirely specific to XBLA probably will not be accepted. That said, hit me with your best shots.

How’s that for applying a crowd-centric philosophy to everyday life? :-)

Following the recent announcement that Penny Arcade’s first game is coming to XBLA, I thought ya’ll might enjoy this neat glimpse into the history and personalities behind the comic.

Researchers are now using MMOGs to study the spread of epidemics; the “Corrupted Blood” bug in World of Warcraft (which stemmed from a boss battle gone awry) provides a great first test case.

Chris Avellone has been putting up stick-figure sketches for several months now. This one is comedy gold. :-)

Ubisoft is making some of their older titles available for free, in ad-supported form. Makes sense; they aren’t capturing much value from these games anymore, so why not try ads? Best case, they make some extra cash, *and* convert a few non-fans of POP (and other titles) to likely buyers of future versions.

Soren Johnson talks about tutorials (something that XBLA devs should be especially concerned about, given that a long, unwieldy tutorial could guarantee poor sales of a game in our try/buy model.)

An interesting glimpse into the Halo 3 test lab.