These are things I’ve found interesting between November 23rd through November 24th:

• FarmVille No Longer Most Popular App – "Phrases" has 54m users and it isn't even accessible within the US? Wow! (and yuck — I want to see what all the fuss is about.)
• A Visual History of the Credit Card –
• A Third Kind of Freedom –
• Analysis: AI Fallibility And The Chick Parabola – I find these discussions fascinating since there are is always the assumption that AI is necessary.

  Three ideas shape my AI design:
  1) Turing's Fallacy: "Any opponent described as an AI will be seen as an AI to another player. Even if the opponent is in fact a human."

  This suggests that no matter how good your AI gets, it will always fail.

  2) The best games are ones with clear cause and effect. If players see AI as an environmental system (not an opponent) then it is better to give them something they can learn and master rather than presenting them with a fuzzy, confusing gameplay landscape. This is why Goombas are more memorable opponents than 99% of all AI ever created.

  3) Humans make the best opponents. In a networked world, AI is at best a crutch or learning tool. Why not put your effort into making a great multiplayer game instead of wasting it on an AI that is less effective and prone to failure?

  These philosophies changes the type of game that you make. It relegates decades of design to the waste bin. I recognize this and embrace it.

  take care,
  Danc.

These are things I’ve found interesting between November 20th through November 22nd:

• A Distracting Article About Digital Distraction –
• ★ Where Are the Android Killer Apps? –

These are things I’ve found interesting between November 18th through November 19th:

• Guess: Which Is The Most Prolific Platform? –
• How iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry Users See Each Other –

These are things I’ve found interesting for November 16th from 08:45 to 08:45:

• Christian Gaming Zone: Minecraft – And who says games don't have deep meaning. ;-) It makes me realize that Minecraft is the perfect antidote to a decade of FPS "Shoot minorities in the head" bad PR.
• The art of connection, contribution, & change – Helpful reminder that making my game is not about beating my competition, but about connecting with the people who play my: "A contribution is never about us—it’s always about them. We show respect for them by being well prepared. We show we care by sharing a bit of ourselves and a small part of our own humanity. Do not allow yourself to get bogged down in a haze of self-doubt and worry about whether or not you are good enough. To win or to lose is not the point."

These are things I’ve found interesting between November 12th through November 15th:

• The REAL ‘Stuff White People Like’ « OkTrends – OkCupid's research on people's preferences based on race.
• Not an MMO anymore –

These are things I’ve found interesting between November 11th through November 12th:

• Apple and Oracle Announce Plans for OpenJDK Java Implementation –
• TSA’s New Book for Kids: ‘My First Cavity Search’ –
• Good Stuff on Agile and UXD –

These are things I’ve found interesting between November 9th through November 10th:

• In-Depth: Ed Fries Argues For The Artistic Necessity Of Constraint – Love this sentiment. Much of what we are doing with Spry Fox is centered around the idea of constraints. More specifically, we are picking design constraints that allow us to create deep, highly playable games rapidly and at low cost. This path is open to everyone, but it takes an iron will to actually execute within the boundaries.
• The McGurk Effect –

These are things I’ve found interesting between November 7th through November 8th:

• Preferring games to worlds –
• We’re about to Find out Just How Powerful Tencent Is –

These are things I’ve found interesting between November 1st through November 3rd:

• The LOLapps Saga Continues — Facebook Blocks Its Access to Communication Channels – It is a slippery slope from playing the cop to playing the gatekeeper. The spectrum:
  Facebook = Police Cop
  iOS = Church Cop
  Publisher = Gatekeeper
  1st Party Platform = Dictator.

  When selecting platforms it is a matter of picking the least deadly poison since they are all laced with anti-developer vileness deep in their platform-centric DNA.

• A Look at Trends in Social Games’ User Ratings on Facebook – Quality matters. In the bigger picture, game developer who spit on social games are spitting on a baby who is showing evidence that they are rapidly growing up.
• Robots steadily replacing middle class jobs –
• Exclusive: Apple, Google Are Sniffing Around Mobile Payments Startup BOKU –

These are things I’ve found interesting between October 29th through November 1st:

• Typewriter Hacked To Play <em>Zork</em> –
• Game Development Budgets –
• 57 things I’ve learned founding three companies – I particularly like #33.