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This in from the adroit falconr, a UFie based in Atlanta and an Undernet #userfriendly channel regular:

Seattle Washington, Friday, March 2nd, 7:00 pm until whenever, under the group name of User Friendly. It will be at: Chang's Mongolian Grill Capitol Hill, 1827 Broadway SEATTLE WA 98122-2415 (206) 325-6160

Please RSVP to wanderer@wolfenet.com by Friday (Mar 2) morning so we can give the restaurant a reasonably accurate headcount.

I've been made to understand that Yohimbe and WebDiva will be making the trip down from Vancouver. No telling who else might be in their trunk.

Let's have a great turnout and a great time! There's nothing like taking over a restaurant with a bunch of geeks. :)

In this virtual epoch of dot com "correction" and companies that hold no value other than vague promises, the other side of the coin is being ignored: more individual creators than ever before are coming to the 'net and launching their visions into the chaotic whitespace of the Web, with hopes of drawing an audience and sharing their creativity. Hundreds, quite possibly thousands of webtoons are now in existance, tackling subjects as esoteric as transdimensional travel and as mundane as college life. And they all have audiences, from tiny to massive in number. This is something that many of the traditional gatekeepers either didn't forsee or are struggling against.....
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I've attacked the calendar this month, but am *really* tiring of net-searching trying to pick out the cool stuff amidst all the dreck and porn. :)

I need help! Please submit unto me GEEK EVENTS! The calendar is focused on the kind of stuff *you'd* be interested in going to. Nice and vague? If you check out the current calendar then you'll see what I'm looking for. I need the event title, location, dates and a url in order to put it up. A contact e-mail address is also nice, however omission of one is NOT punishable by death.

Please send all events to calendar@userfriendly.org.

The response to my previous post (On Games and Game Design) has proven to be really promising. Given that we know how easy it is for purely volunteer projects to go by the wayside, I'll ask this question with a grain of salt: how many people would be seriously interested and devoted enough to help develop a community-sourced game to completion?

I do firmly believe that you don't need a huge team to produce a great game. Large development teams are very useful when producing a multimedia blockbuster, but the "garage games," like indie films, have a charm that evolves out of the vision of a very few people.

Hypothetically speaking, if I had a design document that was largely fleshed out, and we needed a few community members who could code, do visual and audio art, and stick to a schedule, all for the glory of producing a game with a great game model to be published for free on the 'net, who would be up for it? Hypothetically speaking, of course. :)

Post a comment here for discussion, or email me directly if you have a private thought or question.

There's a very interesting article (which I spotted on /.) on Gamasutra that raises some points about recent game design trends in the computer gaming world that I've always felt strongly about. Essentially the article challenges game developers to actually spend some time designing the game as opposed to just sprucing up technology. Granted, spiffy technology is always a plus, especially when you consider the visual appeal of games like Quake 3 Arena but technology doesn't make a game interesting by itself; you need a decent game design. I propose, however, that the reverse isn't true. You can develop an awesome game by producing a sound and imaginative game design without supporting it with ground-breaking technology. Example: Civilization, which still holds appeal for me and many thousands of others.

You can see the challenges being waved in front of game designers in the article here. Adams, the author of the column, isn't operating in a vacuum. He realizes that the money is in games that appeal to adolescents and adolescent fantasies (blow things up real purty and rescue a babe in diaphanous clothing) and even states that "...nobody at EA or Sony or Blizzard is going to pay the slightest attention to [this challenge]. This isn't a formula for commercial success, it's a challenge to think outside the box..." Sad but true. Hopefully, a development team out there will take on the challenge and prove Adams and the rest of the industry wrong and produce a game that not only offers a seriously potent game model but is a raging commercial success as well.

I confess I have some personal stake in seeing that sort of outcome. I've worked as a game designer before (in the paper RPG and wargames industry) and have always considered those roots to have taught me far more about game design than any computer game ever has, with the exception of notable classics such as Nethack, M.U.L.E. and Civilization. Predictably, I've chafed at the offerings that a large part of the computer game industry has produced in the last while. I've bought maybe three computer games in the last twelve months (whereas several years ago I'd buy one every month or so), and I'm just not really all that excited about what's coming down the pipe. Maybe it's because I didn't grow up surrounded by the visceral overload that so many of today's games offer, so I'm always looking for depth in gameplay as opposed to flashy special effects. Either way, I still think that game models can be taken up several dozen notches. I can think of half a dozen designs off the top of my head that would fit the gameplay bill, so I'm sure that people currently working in the industry could do the same or better. Maybe they're just hampered by the money people upstairs who want to stick to tried and true formulas. I can't blame them for that: they're just giving the consumers what they want. So perhaps the change needs to come from us, the customers.

Anyone have any ideas or comments about how we can do this?