Gamasutra Expert Blogs: From The Dubious Future Of 3D To The Social Games Of Tomorrow

In highlights from Gamasutra's Expert Blogs, industry notables write about diverse topics, including the cloudy future of 3D, the representation of women in games, and where social games will go after Facebook. 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. Here are the top blogs for the week: This Week's Standout Expert Blogs - Five Reasons 3D Display Is Doomed (Steve Peterson) Convinced that 3D displays will fade away as a nothing more than a fad, Steve Peterson explains why the technology’s technical limitations and narrow appeal will be its downfall. - Five Reasons 3D Display ISN’T Doomed: A Rebuttal (Neil Schneider) In a response to Steve Peterson’s diatribe against 3D displays, Neil Schneider provides counterarguments to Peterson’s criticisms and provides data that asserts that the technology may not be doomed after all. - Gamazon: Dead Girls Have More Fun (Arinn Dembo) Games often feature extreme brutality, but more often than not, the characters involved in the violence are male. Arinn Dembo, a female developer with over 15 years in the industry, suggests that the limited representation of women in games is not due to sexism, but rather the emotional limits of male developers. - Standard MMO Character Roles: The Good And The Bad (Joshua McDonald) Josh McDonald takes a look at the standard tank, healer, and DPS structure of traditional MMOs, and offers some solutions to break out of this paradigm and diversify the combat systems in online games. - Beyond Facebook For Social Games (Alistair Doulin) While Facebook may be crucial to the world of social games today, it may not be nearly as significant years down the road. Alistair Doulin identifies the pros and cons of Facebook as a platform for social games, and calls for a more robust platform that can provide experiences that Facebook cannot.