Column: 'Blogged Out: Jack of All Raids'

In today's daily column, regular columnist Jim Rossignol presents this week's 'Blogged Out', a news report that looks at the world of developer blogging and the conversations being had with the community at large. This week, Rossignol takes a look at "swiss army" game design, the inability to share mobile phone games with your friends, and the productivity of playing Guild Wars versus watching television. In this extract, Rossignol questions audience preference between monogomous and "complex" - that is, featuring a variety of gameplay options - games: "It seems to me that most publishers and developers would worry about any lack of complexity in a game, since they expect consumers to want variation, mini-games and extra bangs for their buck. Or perhaps it's that few games actually have that 'quick to learn, forever to master' dynamic that seems to characterised the best of the 'monogames'. Perhaps there's room for a study of how long people spend playing monogames and how long they spend playing games with far more variety. If they buy less in the way of monogames, is that because they're spending longer playing the monogame, or because games with variety are more numerous and over faster?" You can now read the full Gamasutra column, including discussions about Wal Mart, iPods, and retarded animals (no registration required, please feel free to link to the article from external websites).