Gamasutra Member Blogs: From Playing Life to Psychology In Multiplayer Games

[In highlights from Gamasutra's Member Blogs, our bloggers write about diverse topics, such as how games try to mimic life, a better way to learn how to program, adding psychology to multiplayer games, and more.] Member Blogs can be maintained by any registered Gamasutra user, while invitation-only Expert Blogs -- also highlighted weekly -- are written by selected development professionals. We hope that our blog sections can provide useful and interesting viewpoints on our industry. For more information, check out the official posting guidelines. This Week's Standout Member Blogs Playing Life (Jonas Johansson) Looking at how games try to mimic life, we can see how we in life can make use of the simplification and structure taking place within games. Jonas Johansson discussses attaining higher levels by taking inspiration from our virtual environments. A Better Way To Learn How To Program (Alexander Jhin) Learning how to program can be a nightmar, but AlexanderJhin believes that by using game design principleswe can make learning how to code a lot more compelling. Adding Psychology To Multiplayer Games - Why? (Michael Parker) Predicting your opponent and bluffing. Adding these types of psychology to multiplayer games is a great way to increase depth, longevity, social interaction, and accessibility. Michael Parker asks, "Should we see more of it?" GameStop Stopping Growth? (Chad Fillion) Should GameStop continue to resell games? Chad Fillion says, "Hell yeah". Is doing so hurting the industry? Perhaps, but it's capitalism. We should urge THEM to offer a kick back to the developers. Using A Genetic Algorithm To Create Adaptive Enemy AI (Michael Martin) Michael Martin is a big fan of artificial intelligence, and recently tried creating a simple game with adaptive enemy AI driven by a genetic algorithm. Here he examines his approach to implementing the GA, as well as some lessons learned.