Reading Time: 10 minutes My handiwork in the alley had not gone unnoticed. The people in the inn were talking about me.
Online Gaming
Posted inGaming
Holiday gifts for the gamers on your list
Reading Time: 8 minutes From the video game player to the one who prefers offbeat indie card games and more, we’ve got you covered!
Posted inGaming
From gamer to ‘gamer girl’ to gamer again
Reading Time: 14 minutes Many years ago, more than half a lifetime by now, I took my first steps into gamer girl territory. Except I didn’t really see it as being a gamer girl. To me, I was simply a gamer, full stop. Now that we’re nearly at the 40-year anniversary of the classic Dungeons & Dragons cartoon series, […]
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The rise of the casual MMORPG player
Reading Time: 11 minutes Nowadays, these games studiously court players who might only have a few minutes a day or a couple of days a week that they can spend ingame.
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Gaming through the fear of failure
Reading Time: 12 minutes It’s not your imagination: games really have gotten easier over the years. The reason has everything to do with my generation’s fear of failure, and our need to get payoffs we can’t get in real life.
Posted inGaming
The heartbreak of nerfing
Reading Time: 8 minutes Excessive nerfing can lead to an erosion of trust in the playerbase. It hits at the heart of our sense of fairness. And perhaps more than anything else, gamers want games to be fair—or at least skewed in their favor.
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Cooperative gaming: the *chef’s kiss* of storytelling
Reading Time: 8 minutes Maybe I should have expected people to start RPing this way. Ever since we began living together, we’ve been telling stories together. From Commedia dell’Arte to ghost stories around campfires to collaborative fictions, shared creativity, uh, finds a way.
Posted inGaming
Show me your room: Building an ingame home
Reading Time: 7 minutes Years ago, on one of the online games I staffed, I decided to offer everyone who played it a room of their own. They could decorate it or not, do as they pleased with it, even reject it. To my delight, this decision turned out to be a very popular one. Ever since then, I’ve looked at player housing as an important way to help players connect with games.
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Competitive gaming: Gamemaster vs. players
Reading Time: 11 minutes If you’ve read me for a while, it’s not hard to figure out where I stand when it comes to cooperative vs. competitive roleplaying games. I’m all about creating and telling a great story nowadays. But there’s a lid for every pot, and long ago my pot was shaped differently. When I first got involved […]
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Does not game well with others: The art of the kick
Reading Time: 12 minutes In gaming as in real life, teamwork skills matter. When one player didn’t get the memo, the game master makes the kick.