Gamasutra Expert Blogs: From Sexy Time To Stickiness

In our weekly Best of Expert Blogs column, we showcase notable pieces of writing from members of the game development community who maintain Expert Blogs on Gamasutra. Member Blogs -- also highlighted weekly -- can be maintained by any registered Gamasutra user, while the invitation-only Expert Blogs are written by development professionals with a wealth of experience to share. We hope that both sections can provide useful and interesting viewpoints on our industry. For more information about the blogs, check out the official posting guidelines. In this latest round-up, industry notables write about sexy time in games, stickiness in MMOs, design tool quests, the Global Game Jam, and preorder sales. Here are the top blogs for the week: This Week's Standout Expert Blogs - A Global Game Jam 2010 Report (Eric Hardman) Everybody loves the Global Game Jam! Eric Hardman reports on the proceedings of the event that took place at Carnegie Mellon's Entertainment Technology Center, just one of dozens of simultaneous game creations events this past weekend. - Quest For The Perfect Design Tool (Urbain Bruno) This may not sound as majestic as "Quest for Glory" or "Quest for the Crown" or "Quest for Fire" or "Ratchet & Clank Future: Quest for Booty," but it's probably a lot more applicable to the specific needs of modern game designers. - Sexy Time in Games (Benjamin Quintero) What time is it in games? It's sexy time in games! However, Benjamin Quintero believes it may be that particular time in games too often, and too...extremely. - Organic Indie Preorder Pack Postmortem (David Rosen) Based on the headline of the previous post, I can see how your brain might have spent a split second reading this post's headline slightly incorrectly, but what it's actually about is a highly successful limited-time preorder bundle of indie games Overgrowth and Natural Selection 2, which paid off big for both teams. - "Stickiness" In Games, or: Why you can't beat WoW (Shay Pierce) To my surprise, Stickiness In Games has little, if anything, to do with Sexy Time In Games. As it turns out, this post deals with the growing success of World of Warcraft, as its swelling subscription figures create ever-tighter bonds amongst its player base. Wink.