The World's Greatest Game

Prompted by the recent relative increase in precious metal volatility, Hamilton of Zeal Intelligence explains financial market speculation in terms of game theory. Hamilton states that game theory is a branch of psychological research. Zimmerman and Salen state that game theory can be explained as a branch of economics. I state that playing the stock market is like a multiplayer game. The main difference being that the market has real consequences.

Deal Or No Deal

I watched someone lose $75,000 on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire today. And I thought that was tragic. But even more horrific, I saw another person gamble away $250,000 on Deal Or No Deal. In the end, the contestant went home with $25,000 and a puppy.

The show is interesting in that I feel that I would like to see the contestant take risks and win. Eventually, either shaudenfreude or pity takes over when they lose.

Zimmerman at GDC Key Points

The article should read "Gamelab becomes developer and publisher" rather than Gamelab switching from developing to publishing. In any event, the main points to remember are:

1. Publishers are risk adverse and consequently rarely publish anything original. How many more Ancient Jewels and Tycoons do we have to endure from Real and the Zone?

2. In England and Germany, funds are set up for game creation allowing for more creative freedom than America. I have yet to find these European funds.

Kumoon Review

Kumoon is a puzzle shooter where the player controls a cute chick equipped with a revolver, shotgun, and grenade launcher to take down cubes. The economic system forces the player to be creative about gaining points to spend on the weapons. For example, the initial free shot can return an optimal amount of points depending on how the shot is reflected off of walls and cubes. Subsequent paths of the falling cubes taken into consideration will also up the score. The slow motion feature gives spectacular witness to a great move. Exploring a timely narrative might make Kumoon even better. How about the cubes being cages containing other chicks that must be freed or culled.

Granny in Paradise Review

I enjoyed this original take on a
level game with digging Granny as the hero saving the cats and avoiding the a bad character that I can't really make out.

Hands Free Pong

Fraunhofer FIRST and the Charité have designed a brain interface called the BBCI (Berlin Brain-Computer Interface) shown at CeBIT. I'm guessing this new interface can expand video game design further than the Pong demo.

Google to offer free 3D software

This
will reduce the initial 3D game developing investment towards expensive software and consequently give 3D game developers a larger ROI. Google will gain in popularity and gain user information that eventually will be turned over to governments for better or worse.