Things today that made me laugh until I snorted: Translating a boring work conversation into hula Faygo Rock n Rye soda exploding in a Last Stand sort of way inside Chuck’s motorcycle case Blurting out “stranger danger!” when surprise-hugged by my friend Rayne in the subway Getting my butt handed…

A lovely fellow from The Austin Chronicle wrote to my fellow South by Southwest panelists asking for a definition of our enigmatically titled presentation. He wanted to know what a “Funologist” was, and rather than sadden him with the news that our moderator made it up, we all took a…

Greetings from an ethnic librarian working in the games industry! I’m posting this review of my experience last year at GDC (the Game Developers Conference) held every year here in San Francisco. It was originally part of a letter to my team here at Linden Lab, but I thought you…

Happy news! I was invited to be a panelist at the South by Southwest Interactive conference next month, as part of their ScreenBurn track. I’m on a panel called “Funologists live and in person: Guerilla Game Research.” I’ll share my experience starting some low-budget user research cycles for Second Life,…

With the recent news of Yahoo’s potential acquisition by vile Microsoft and its prior layoff of 1000 hardworking geeks, there was a bit of an air of piracy in the office last week. Linden Lab is going into another round of recruitment, focusing on web developers, QA folk, and other…

Gus, housemate, and Erica, me, were having a discussion on the airplane to Michigan. Gus is getting her PhD in something nifty, like Education and Video Gaming, or MMORPG Search Behavior. Or something. I dunno. I kinda tune out a bit. Ever asked a social scientist about her thesis? Don’t….

Auditions are rough. They test the courage of an actor. They test the patience of directors. They inevitably yield surprises. Here, for the first time, we can watch the dramatic casting process for one of my generation’s favorite games…  Super Mario Bros. Villain Auditions

NYC game developers Large Animal Games have created a downloadable PC video game based on bird sounds and expertise provided by the Macaulay Library at Cornell’s Lab of Ornithology. Which is where I work. The game is called Snapshot Adventures. It was recently was acquired by Yahoo! games, which is…