“Really Freaking Disturbing”

Written by admin on June 22nd, 2010

I’m actually a big fan of Cracked, so imagine my surprise to find my old “Behavioral Game Design” article had become the focus of an article entitled “5 creepy ways videogames are trying to get you addicted“.

NPR Broadcast about Halo 3

Written by admin on March 29th, 2009

Here is the story NPR did about our Halo 3 work.  The reporter was kind enough to edit out the part where I was so nervous I mispronounced my own name. :)

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14649338

Wired article on Halo 3

Written by admin on March 29th, 2009

Here is the Wired article from a couple of years ago covering the work we did on Halo 3.  Unfortunately, the author of the article chose to edit out everyone who worked on the project except Randy Pagulayan, my boss at the time.  Oh well, at least the work got out there.

http://www.wired.com/gaming/virtualworlds/magazine/15-09/ff_halo

GDC 2009

Written by admin on March 29th, 2009

There’s a nice article on Gamespot covering my talk at GDC 2009.  I’m amazed there was any press there at all, since my talk was opposite Paul Barnett’s.

http://gdc.gamespot.com/story/6206812/gdc-2009-quality-testing-halo-3

One tiny correction, the article quotes me as saying “All of my research is nothing compared to having the developer being there to see how the players suffer as they play through their world.”  The actual statement was that my reports and graphs and so on were unimportant compared to having the developers attend the playtests in person.

Kinetic Design

Written by admin on March 7th, 2009

My brother has a design article of his own online.  His work is in industrial design rather than game design, but the movies are just awesome.

Um…

Written by admin on March 7th, 2009

Scott Mackenzie, a researcher at York University in Toronto, has taken exception to my article in the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) journal Interactions and has submitted a counter-article to the Alt.Chi section of the CHI conference.

Honestly, I’m not sure what to make of this.  It’s a refutation of one sentence of my article which is more than twice as long as the entire original article.  Weirder still, he’s misunderstood the sentence.  Even worse, his evidence doesn’t really refute what he thought I said.

I generally attend only one or two conferences a year and I’d already decided to skip CHI this year, so I’ll miss the presentation of the counter-article.  That’s probably a good thing, I can’t imagine what kind of conversation I’d have with the man.

Futureplay 2007 Keynote

Written by admin on March 7th, 2009

Dave Broadbeck was kind enough to post an audio recording of my talk at Futureplay 2007.

Since the recorder was placed in the audience, the talk sounds quiet and the audience laughter (at my jokes, thankfully) sounds very loud.  Works for me. :)

Hello

Written by admin on February 27th, 2009

Welcome to my new blog.  This site is intended as a single unified web presence for all my articles on psychology, usability, and game design.