Writer and game designer based in Austin, Texas, USA. I've designed three published boardgames and the tabletop roleplaying game PARANOIA (2004 edition), and have written two dozen roleplaying game supplements, seven books, and hundreds of articles, columns, and reviews.
In computer games I've worked freelance for Origin, Interplay, Sony Online, and on several occasions for my longtime friend Warren Spector. I've also written extensively for the online gaming magazine The Escapist (www.escapistmagazine.com ). My profile at the Great Games Experiment has a complete list of my Escapist articles: http://www.greatgamesexperiment.com/user/Allen%20Varney
Currently I run the humor site Ninjalistics.com.
Why is it that as this article asserts Sony can reverse its PS3 decline at any time with a price cut, but this idea is never suggested as a solution for the Wii's decline
People conduct all manner of horrendous acts in video games, and oftentimes laugh at them. Of course they don't do them in real life. Huh You're saying there are no jerks in real life Or that real-world jerks don't act like jerks in online games Are you really saying that ...
PARANOIA is still going strong -- see the official development blog at www.costik.com/paranoia . As for its training value for videogames, the central theme of PARANOIA is that the greatest threats the player faces should come from the other players. Aside from routine deathmatch PvP, this idea of mutual suspicion ...
Congratulations on the redesign and the new community tools. Proofreading note: I subscribed to the blog feed, and it showed up in my reader as Gamasuta. Are the member blogs intended to concern themselves solely with electronic gaming, or would you be interested in other kinds of game development as ...
Riccitiello presents Don Mattrick's EA Canada as an example of EA's proper handling of acquisitions, in contrast to the bungle at Origin. Origin survivors may find this a too-sharp irony. While I was researching my 2004 Escapist article The Conquest of Origin, more than a few Origin employees told me ...
