Gamasutra Member Blogs: From Meta-Systems To Evolving Tastes

[In highlights from Gamasutra's Member Blogs, our bloggers write about diverse topics, the consequences of achievement systems, and how our standards for quality evolve as we get older.] 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. Here are the top member blogs for the week: This Week's Standout Member Blogs - What You've Achieved; What You've Chosen (James Youngman) With the advent of achievements and the trend toward gamification, many of us have changed the way we play games in order to earn specific awards; James Youngman examines this phenomenon and argues that these systems should never take precedent over the core mechanics of a game. - Optimising With Unity For iOS (Jamie McCarter) Hoping to offer some advice for developing for iOS, Jamie McCarter lists several tips to help optimize script and graphics using Unity. - Games That Made Me Want To Be A Better Person: Beyond Good And Evil ( Mathew Stone) Matthew Stone provides a detailed account of the setting and characters in Beyond Good and Evil, explaining why the title succeeds in creating an emotional connection with the player. - The Anatomy Of The Gamer (Marcus Pettersson) Marcus Pettersson outlines several stereotypical archetypes of video game players, explaining why certain audiences have earned a distinct reputation among the general public. - Playing Games Simply For The Experience (Derek Bentham) Derek Bentham examines how our game playing habits change as we get older, noting that as the years pass, many of us develop more discerning tastes and can even tend to view games as work rather than entertainment.