Last weekend I got the chance to visit my good friend, Zvi. He and I have been wasting time together since middle school. By “wasted”, I mean “completely unredeemable”, and by “time”, I’m (sadly) referring to copious amounts. This is, I think, one reason why we now live several states apart. It’s a necessary precaution.

Anyway, somehow we decided to screw around with Photoshop and spend several hours attempting to make ourselves look like aliens in a fancy graphic novel. I think we did a pretty good job, given that neither of us are artists. Unfortunately, I have to admit that Zvi’s photo came out significantly better!

And having shared that completely useless bit of information… happy Thanksgiving everyone! May you all be blessed with a terrific food coma. :-)

Via Ilya, the answer to the question: what happens when you fuse Pac-Man with Zork?

Some information about EA’s revenues by platform and by retailer. Short version: Gamestop ekes out Walmart, and the 360 generates (by far) the most revenue of any console platform — old or new. By next year, I expect that EA will be generating large sums of revenue from the Wii as well.

Rumors abound that, thanks to a private stock sale, Linden Lab (Second Life) is now valued at “significantly more” than five billion dollars.

Ray & Greg of Bioware discuss their views on leadership, humility, and integrity. As always, they sound like great people to work for.

Lawrence Lessig’s TED presentation on copyright, culture, democracy, and user-generated content. A must-see.

Research firm EEDAR claims that a next-gen game’s revenue can jump by 69% if the game offers both a downloadable demo and a trailer. 360 games perform 129% better, while PS3 games perform just 16% better. Impressive (on multiple levels.)

Fischer Price has unveiled a $100 “Smart Cycle” for young children. It includes a game cartridge that features “several fun and educational adventures” such as “Math Mountain.” (Ugh… I haven’t even seen the thing, and I can already say with 95% certainty that Math Mountain won’t be fun.) Notably, there are additional games available for the Cycle featuring the likes of Dora the Explorer, SpongeBob, etc.

Guitar Hero III has already sold 1.4m units across all platforms. So much for speculation that Rock Band would cripple the franchise this year…

I’ve been compiling a list of “free game types” in preparation for my GDC Lyon lecture. When I look at the list on a single page, its breadth and depth are a bit stunning. There’s already a mountain of free game content out there, and the mountain is growing fast.

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I’ve spent the past few months interviewing many different people on the subject of games and advertising — professors, ad sales professionals, game developers — you name it. I’ve learned a great many things from these interviews, but one thing I have not learned is of the existence of much research on the topic of improving advertising effectiveness. I am referring specifically to ads in and around games, as well as advergames themselves.

I’ve found plenty of non-game-specific ad research. And there are several studies (sponsored by major publishers and/or in-game ad networks) that seek to prove advertisements in games are effective, without exploring what can make them more effective.

So I thought I’d ask you all: if you’re aware of any studies on the subject of game advertising effectiveness, especially studies that weren’t sponsored by organizations with a perceived bias, I’d greatly appreciate hearing about them.

Kim Pallister and Vlad Cole, two friends and colleagues here at Microsoft, have launched the Video Game Venture Capital (VGVC) blog. It tracks capital flows into the game industry, and is already chock full of goodies.

Article about dating games (or “dating simulations”, as the author puts it) in Japan. What I want to know is: why aren’t there more “career simulations” in the US, given our cultural fixation on money? There are the various Tycoon games and whatnot, but notably the “legal sims” (i.e. Phoenix Wright) and “medical sims” (i.e. Trauma Center) are coming from Japanese developers (and of course, I use the term “sim” very loosely here.) I’ve yet to play a great CEO sim, or sales sim, or biz dev sim, or marketing sim, etc…

A Nielsen research study finds that only 14% of TV-owning households in the US have fully-equipped HD TVs. That figure is much lower than those cited by the CEA (which claims 32%). If true, good news for Nintendo, not such good news for Microsoft and Sony.

A relatively shallow article about the importance of pre-orders. I only cite it because it made me recall an interesting conversation with a friend of mine at a top five publisher, who claimed they can predict the lifetime sales of a retail game with 90% accuracy, based mainly on pre-orders.

In this research study, kids equipped with Nintendo’s Brain Age were found to become better at math, faster in exams, and most interestingly, better behaved in class.

For my readers who are new to this industry: Raph Koster has posted a nice summary of every role in a game development team. You might be surprised by its length.

Via Kim, a game called Swypeout that ships with a USB bar code reader. Collectable Swypeout cards can be purchased, processed by the reader, and imported into an online racing game (i.e. car on card == car in game). This kind of thing is very popular in Japanese arcades; in the US, where arcades are a dying breed, Swypeout is a sensible translation.

Portal (one of the many fine games included in “The Orange Box”) is just fantastic; a nearly perfect 3-4 hour gameplay experience. And I’m still laughing about the song at the end of the game. Do yourself a favor and play it, if you haven’t already.