"It's fun when you win," he said, exhausted. "And boring when you lose. Haven't we moved past that yet?"

Nice site for table top game reviews and news. It's a bit more user friendly than boardgamegeek. Lots of good reviews and articles. 

Just posting this because it's a great reference. 

This looks interesting. It incorporates "sins" as a game mechanic. Plus, it's based on The Canterbury Tales, so it's kind of required gaming for word geeks. ;) 

Hahah. This game evolves from 8-big graphics all the way to textured 3D as you level up. It's an RPG about the history of video games. 

This looks like fun. 

Interesting take on multiple layers of moral dilemmas  vs good-bad dichotomy in games. 

Cool looking kickstarter. These guys have all the right ideas. Player choices, huge worlds, puzzle elements, good crafting matrix, and player mods. I hope they can pull it off.

I'm glad someone if finally addressing this. "The Grind" in games (spending hours and hours doing the same actions to get better items) has long been one of my soap box rant topics. It's interesting that it took "freemium" games on Facebook and iOS to pave the way for big game houses like Blizzard (Diablo and WoW) to adopt a better standard. Still not sure I agree with the in-game auction house, but it's a start.

Abstract. This paper introduces the concept of Narrative Game-based Learning Objects (NGLOBs) as the basis for the creation and control of Story-based Digital Educational Games (DEGs).

Jesper Juul: "A Clash between Game and Narrative". Paper presented at the Digital Arts and Culture conference, Bergen, Norway, November 1998.

The following are archetypes used in Storyteller System system games to describe a character's personality. Architect - Creation is your passion. Autocrat - Control-freak. Autist - One who buries their secrets. Avant-Garde - A fascination with the trendy and new.

The Importance of Motivation By "Zoran Bekric" (zbekric@pplmail.com) Perhaps it's just my dramatic training coming through, but to me it seems self-evident that motivation is incredibly important. It is what defines a character and drives a story. MOTIVATION AND STORY In the classic formulation, 'drama is conflict.'

Just posting some of the links you sent me earlier. This is the article on building choices in games.

This is the Diablo clone with giant skill web that I mentioned. Here's a link to the interactive skill web: http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree Description from page: "Path of Exile is an online Action RPG set in the dark fantasy world of Wraeclast. We're a small independent team of hardcore gamers based in New Zealand and have created Path of Exile as the game that we'd want to play ourselves."