Gene Endrody of MaidMarian.com pointed out this cool Alexa graph that shows how much seasonal trends matter for virtual worlds:

I did an Alexa compare of traffic for the last six months for MaidMarian.com, ToonTown.com and Habbo.com. Habbo’s traffic is from the US site only - compared with MaidMarian.com’s worldwide, so it’s not a fair comparison per se. What I found very interesting was how close the three correlate. You can see the boost that summer holidays provide, however the ebb and flow of web traffic is really obvious. I would be really cool if we had a Dow Jones Industrial Average for web traffic to compare against.

Yeah, I think any of the operators who have been running more than one world have noticed this. There’s definite seasonal trends to virtual world usage. We need some worlds popular in the Southern Hemisphere to even out the curves!

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A number shy of fifty, count short of a century’s half.
An age where half the time remaining is decline.
A span of time not quite tomorrow, a batch of hours
Piled past a rising sun and past a moonlit night.

The gap of time to find a killer before he’s off scot free;
The span of time for ecstasy to filter through a brain.
“A day or two,” the time we cite when something needs
Some getting over, the “she’ll be better in” refrain.

Anticipation’s simplest metric. The continental States.
The year of Paul of Tarsus’ mission, when singing
visions Damascened his eyes. Two even pair of dozens,
a pile of potential chickens, a deck without the kings.

All numbers have their secrets; odd or even, prime or strange.
All figures have their seasons, and all periods have a range.

Gamasutra - Question Of The Week: World Of Warcraft Vs. Habbo ?

“Following the Austin Game Developers Conference last week, how important do you think online worlds such as Habbo and web-based social gaming in general is to the future of online games, compared to existing game biz successes like World Of Warcraft? What can WoW learn from Habbo, and vice versa?”

Obviously, a question that I am very interested in seeing the answers to!

So in the recent F13 interview, I made the statement that “Mark Jacobs is on crack,” as regards his position towards microtransactions. Naturally, this was said with a laugh and all in good humor. Whether the transcription catches that is always up for grabs. I knew that quote would get picked up, though!

It got noticed over at the Warhammer forums, and now there’s a discussion not of the quote, but more specifically of the actual impact of microtransactions.
Raph Koster Speaks: “Mark Jacobs is on Crack” - Warhammer Forums

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You can blame Grimwell for this one.

Four jobs I have had in my life (not including your current job):

1. Sandwich maker at a Subway.
2. Tutoring learning-disabled college students
3. Teaching Spanish to fifth graders
4. Running A/V for conferences

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Games continue to creep into the oddest places. I suspect that one of the major applications is going to be something we really didn’t suspect at all, like telephone sanitizing.

Video games train new miners in Peru | CNET News.com

This, of course, actually sounds like fun. Check out the way Reuters talks about it:

The simulators require drivers to pass through timed obstacle courses in simulated mining pits, being careful to avoid wrecking multimillion-dollar rigs and causing the games to crash.

The driver’s cabin in the dump truck bounces over the rough road of mines, and some players enjoyed backing the truck up to a ravine and pulling a lever to dump the dirt load.

A little more breathlessness and you could see this selling on a console.

It seems to have become a traditional that at every conference I sit down with F13.net for a rambling, all-over-the-map interview, which they then take weeks to post. This time, however, they typed fast and furiously, and it’s up already! Read on for digs at various industry luminaries (who are all friends whom I deeply respect, honest), plus thoughts on how many stories tall a videogame needs to be for us to feel like the screen is actually big enough…

Also, this time the interview features special guest star Cuppycake!

F13.net - Usefully Cynical Commentary » AGC07: Interview with Raph Koster

… the whole point of being a self-made man is so you can buy that cool golf ball. *laughing* It’s the American Dream! So, yeah, it matters, but I think some of it is honestly because we’ve been pretty crude actually, I think, in design about how we set up comparisons between players and how we tell them to measure themselves against other people. We just give them this one metric, level or whatever, and then… what if there were lots of metrics? Like: You are an extremely high-level epic mount earner! That guy’s a lousy epic mount earner. Then all of a sudden you could say, “Well, clearly he bought his”, and you go neener-neener and walk away. And nobody would feel like it was awful! So some of it might be just that we’ve been bad about designing our metrics.

GamerDad has had a heart attack, and his wife is asking for donations.

For those who don’t know the site, it is a great blog looking videogames from the perspective of a parent. Andrew Bub pretty much gave up his previous writing career for this, and it’s worthy of support.

Another demonstration of XBLA’s interest in indie gaming!

GameSetWatch - IGF Winner Braid Confirmed For Xbox Live Arcade

“Raph Koster reads my blog” t-shirt.

Of course, it’s not just me. Smed, Brad, and Richard get it too.