That would be Wizards of the Coast he sued. I think there's an article somewhere that discusses that company's history, along with a look at that lawsuit.
That's largely related to how you measure a degree. The traditional measure from the play is just about who you know.
More recent connections such as the Bacon Number, the Erdoes Number, and this Faidutti Factor instead measure published, creative connections, which is a much more rigorous test, and thus it's not a surprise that the number would increase even as the interest group tightens up.
Of course you're entirely right when creative endeavors are common enough. The Bacon Number is lowly decreasing to irrelevency because so many people have either a 2 or at worst a 3.
Germans seem to have a much lower incidence of game design collaboration than either Americans or French, and so they're much more poorly represented on the chart.
Klaus Teuber, the designer of Settlers of Catan, has only one pseudo-collaboration. He did work with others on a mixed set of Settlers supplements called _Atlantis_, but that branch ends immediately because all of the people he worked with are new designers who have done zero or one games of their own, with no additional collaborations. If any of them become successful, we may be able to link Teuber in in a year or two.
Here's the list of the top 13 games I've reviewed in 2004: 13 RPGnet Reviews. They are: Alhambra (American release), Cthulhu 500, Four Dragons, Goa, Maharaja, Memoir '44, Modern Art (re-release), Rumis, San Juan, Ticket to Ride (plus a few supplements), and Tongiaki.
The point is that there are more types of social interaction than just those allowed by chat lines. In particular there are many competitive and cooperative actions that aren't generally supported.
I'm going to discuss those starting in my article two weeks from now.
Shannon
Eagle Games is a brand new company releasing new strategy wargames. To date they've been doing historical games and games based on computer licenses, of all things.
European board games have indeed matured greatly in the last 10 years and have been making great in-roads into the U.S. for 5 are so. I think this has as much to do with a new adultness in their designs as the economic cycles.
RuneQuest: I've purposefully left the question of character modeling to the second article, and you should thus see it in about a week. RQ's skill-based mechanics are definitely an issue to bring up, but as far as I can tell they weren't the innovator. Traveller did it in 1977 while RuneQuest wasn't released until 1978. Granted, RQ took a step further back from class-based modeling, but the skills were all there in Traveller.
Toon: I'll definitely cop to leaving out Toon due to lack of familiarity and would love to hear more about how you think it really expanded the genre.
Paranoia: I don't see a similarity at all between Paranoia's gamemaster fiat and the issue of spontaneous rules that I discussed for Ars Magica. Perhaps that just means that I should clarify what I'm saying when I revise all the articles for a second printing.
White Wolf: Honestly, I don't think the WW games offered much breakthrough from a game design point of view other than the simplified statistics. Yes, they tapped into a market that other people hadn't & yes they developed new ways to sell supplements to players. Those are all exciting for the industry as a whole, but not part of the game design history I'm writing.
I actually have discussed Flying Buffalo in a previous article.
This one, part of a series on how to design strategy games, talks about the evolution of web games, and points toward Flying Buffalo and other PBMs as the first step:
Strategic Introductions: Web Games
Slashdot Mirror
The fact that they're still arguing about who's Senator suggests that those conservatives should have voted in Minnesota.
That would be Wizards of the Coast he sued. I think there's an article somewhere that discusses that company's history, along with a look at that lawsuit.
There's a follow-up article on Paizo scheduled for the 21st.
That's largely related to how you measure a degree. The traditional measure from the play is just about who you know. More recent connections such as the Bacon Number, the Erdoes Number, and this Faidutti Factor instead measure published, creative connections, which is a much more rigorous test, and thus it's not a surprise that the number would increase even as the interest group tightens up. Of course you're entirely right when creative endeavors are common enough. The Bacon Number is lowly decreasing to irrelevency because so many people have either a 2 or at worst a 3.
Germans seem to have a much lower incidence of game design collaboration than either Americans or French, and so they're much more poorly represented on the chart. Klaus Teuber, the designer of Settlers of Catan, has only one pseudo-collaboration. He did work with others on a mixed set of Settlers supplements called _Atlantis_, but that branch ends immediately because all of the people he worked with are new designers who have done zero or one games of their own, with no additional collaborations. If any of them become successful, we may be able to link Teuber in in a year or two.
The cover is bigger because it's color. The rest should load faster.
But, yeah, partially a slashdot effect. I've moved somethings around to spread out the load.
Shannon
All received a 9 or 10 out of 10.
The point is that there are more types of social interaction than just those allowed by chat lines. In particular there are many competitive and cooperative actions that aren't generally supported. I'm going to discuss those starting in my article two weeks from now. Shannon
Yes, they clearly originate from the same pool. What Big Brother (and Survivor) does is make the gameplay available to tens of millions of viewers.
Here's some useful links:
RuneQuest: I've purposefully left the question of character modeling to the second article, and you should thus see it in about a week. RQ's skill-based mechanics are definitely an issue to bring up, but as far as I can tell they weren't the innovator. Traveller did it in 1977 while RuneQuest wasn't released until 1978. Granted, RQ took a step further back from class-based modeling, but the skills were all there in Traveller. Toon: I'll definitely cop to leaving out Toon due to lack of familiarity and would love to hear more about how you think it really expanded the genre. Paranoia: I don't see a similarity at all between Paranoia's gamemaster fiat and the issue of spontaneous rules that I discussed for Ars Magica. Perhaps that just means that I should clarify what I'm saying when I revise all the articles for a second printing. White Wolf: Honestly, I don't think the WW games offered much breakthrough from a game design point of view other than the simplified statistics. Yes, they tapped into a market that other people hadn't & yes they developed new ways to sell supplements to players. Those are all exciting for the industry as a whole, but not part of the game design history I'm writing.
I actually have discussed Flying Buffalo in a previous article. This one, part of a series on how to design strategy games, talks about the evolution of web games, and points toward Flying Buffalo and other PBMs as the first step: Strategic Introductions: Web Games