Gamasutra Member Blogs: From Difficulty Curves To Sexuality

Author: by Staff

In highlights from Gamasutra's Member Blogs, our bloggers write about diverse topics, including difficulty curves, story endings, Zynga's Facebook deal and sexuality in games. Member Blogs can be maintained by any registered Gamasutra user, while invitation-only Expert Blogs -- also highlighted weekly -- are written by selected development professionals. Our favorite blog post of the week will earn its author a lifetime subscription to Gamasutra's sister publication, Game Developer magazine. (All magazine recipients outside of the United States or Canada will receive lifetime electronic subscriptions.) We hope that our blog sections can provide useful and interesting viewpoints on our industry. For more information, check out the official posting guidelines. Here are the top member blogs for the week: This Week's Standout Member Blogs - Storytelling: Climax is God (Alexander Kerezman) "There is nothing, absolutely nothing more important in a story than its ending," argues Alexander Kerezman. Here, he goes in-depth with the endings of a few popular movies and games to examine the impact an ending has on a story. For his effort, Alexander will receive a lifetime subscription to Gamasutra sister publication Game Developer magazine. - Difficulty Curves (Jimmy Larsen) In his first Gamasutra blog post, Jimmy Larsen takes an interesting look at difficulty curves, complete with graphs. - Post Mortem - Phoenix Spirit (Ka Wang Wu) Ka Wang Wu details what went right and what went wrong with the development of his iPhone game Phoenix Spirit, from development to testing to marketing and release. - Zynga v. Facebook -- Who exactly is the winner here? (D Luria) Last week, Zynga and Facebook came to a five-year agreement on virtual currency with Facebook. D Luria wonders if Zynga is doing the right thing in "tying their fortunes to the vagaries of Facebook." - The Immature Medium (Marc Bell) Marc Bell writes: "Boobs, sexuality in video games. Is it mature or immature? Context is the key."