Handy Vandal's Almanac

To a game designer, everything is game design … including game design:

The most exclusive game on Facebook is also the most lucrative and intense: the game design of the games themselves. For designers in the space, particularly those from the traditional game industry, game design has become its own game, complete with a leaderboard.

“Every night at midnight, I check AppData,” says John Romero, a veteran video game designer, consultant and lead designer of Ravenwood Fair. The site has become a de facto leaderboard for many developers, backed up by weekly top games lists.

Imbued by a deep love of game play, many designers view social game design, and the competition it creates with other designers, as a real-time strategy game, complete with in-depth stats and armies composed of coders, artists, animators and product managers.

– Brenda Brathwaite @ Inside Social Games

Test Tube Baby — T-shirt design by Patrickspens.

Via Laughing Squid.

This should be a game! Won’t someone think of the children?

Now this is inspiring — !

GameInternals: all theory, no practice

GameInternals aims to spread knowledge of interesting game mechanics beyond the game-specific enthusiast communities. Each post focuses on a specific game mechanic that would normally only be known to high-level players of a particular game, and attempts to explain it in a manner that would be understandable even by readers unfamiliar with that game.

– Chad Birch

Bingo! Exactly the kind of thing that fascinates me! Direct hit, mister Birch!

I’m adding GameInternals to my favorites list.

Birch’s first post, Understanding Pac-Man Ghost Behavior, got immediate and well-deserved publicity at Boing Boing and Slashdot, blogs that I follow regularly.

Kudos to GameInternals; more, please.

Alphabetical by Maicon Costa.

Via Laughing Squid.