Gabe Newell on Productivity

Gabe Newell talks about how Valve works, monetisation of productivity and stuff.

Piracy Has Cost The US Economy $58 Billion

There are a lot of large numbers floating around when it comes to the cost of Piracy. Rob Reid in his TED talk explains where some of this money is calculated from.



Rob is a writer who is just about to publish Year Zero a novel about what happens when Aliens develop a taste for Human pop music.

Breaking up the Monopoly with Modern Board Game Design

Scott Nicholson is currently on sabbatical at MIT where he is infusing everyone with boardgame enthusiasm. His main research focus while at MIT is to create a toolkit for allowing groups of students to use a boardgame toolkit and simple parameters to develop their own boardgame to learn about a subject.

A few weeks ago he did an open talk about himself, boardgames and what he is doing at MIT and his research focus. He is an excellent lecturer so it is worth a watch.

Sugar Might Be Really Bad For You

Robert Lustig is a Professor of Pediatrics and treats fat kids for obesity. He talks about how the sugar replacement in many sodas (high fructose corn syrup) is worse than drinking a sugared beverage.

Sean Plott's Life Of Starcraft

Sean Plott is a StarCraft commentator, strategist, champion, player and goes by the handle Day[9]. He talks about his love for StarCraft, a history of his life with the game and what is has done for him. More importantly it is a story of hard working paying off.



His brother is Tasteless another player and professional commentator who is so cool he has his own Theme Song. And if you are interested in some Crazy StarCraft II stratagice checkout This IGN Article.

Scott Nickleson's Boardgame Publishing Lecture

Scott of Board Games With Scott was asked by MIT's Comparative Media Studies to talk about Boardgame Publishing. Scott puts together a fun lecture with a lot of information about himself and the industry I didn't know about. Here is a link to the lecture.

Adam Savage On Problem Solving

Another brilliant talk.

Ending Corruption For Proffit

Corruption is a big issue in a lot of countries, where this is the case there is usually a cultural acceptance for bribes and exploitation. Shaffi Mather has had enough of corruption in India and has a plan to stop it with a for profit organisation. It sounds insane and impossible, but I think it can work.

Steven Fry On Music Trading

Steven Fry (man of great noble intellect) did a speech (really it was a lecture or talk) on the subject of Copyright Piracy at the recent iTunes Festival in London.

His belief is that the dogged determination of big media industry groups like the RIAA to hunt down and prosecute to the fullest extent of the law people who share Copyrighted material for personal use, is misguided and against the human desire to share stories and ideas. I agree with him full heartedly, but CopyRight law is founded on the principal that the CopyRight holder is the only person with the right to authorise copying of the original material in full. And that a medium between allowing people to copy and not allowing people to copy will probably never be reached in legal terms or permitted by the industry.

Steven has put up an audio recording of it Here On His Website and I think it is worth a listen to as everything by him is.

Dan Ariely On Cheating

Dan Ariely Professor of Behavioral Economics at Duke University (His Papers) did a TED Lecture about Why we think it's OK to cheat and steal.

Essentially people cheat because of the belief that they can get away with it, but I thought it was interesting to hear that people cheat more if they are disconnected from the consequences and less so if cheating questions their morals.



[Source Derren Brown's Blog]

R.I.P. Randy Pausch

Randy Pausch, lecturer of The Last Lecture, Died Friday.

If you haven't see either his The Last Lecture or his lecture on Time Management then I suggest you go to his Academic Page and sit through them. As much as students like to moan about how boring lectures are, Randy is one of those pragmatic lecturers who are a delight to hear from. Both of these lectures are inspiring and it is unfortunate that it took a terminal illness for him to come to our attention.

Below is a brief clip of Randy addressing members of Congress regarding funding for Pancreatic Cancer research. I know he will be missed by many people.

The Food and Drugs of Gamplay

Last Year at The Montreal International Games Summit, Jonathan Blow did a talk called Design Reboot where he talked about how we might enter a golden age of game design. He talks about how developers are conditioning players to expect predictable rewards thus turning them into reward junkies and that real rewards like a player achieving a personal goal in a game and deriving satisfaction from that, is being ignored because that is harder to architect.

His talk starts well-outside of current thinking, but he states all his points very well and then you will realise that all the best developers in the world have already been applying what he talks about.

I don't like being so cryptic with my writing, but if I cover what is in the talk. I will have written a very long post where I cover everything that is covered by his talk.

[Direct Link: montreal2007.zip ]

Awesome Lecture: Copyright and Fair Use

I have been reading some stuff on Copyright and all the discussion that I have read so far feels beneath my understanding. Most of the time it is like watching two kids fighting over who gets to play with a tennis ball. And I owe that level of understanding to a lecture I once watched by Lawrence Lessig titled Is Google Book Search "Fair Use"?.

I am linking to this now because I only just realised how thankful I am that I watched this lecture. It is one of those things which I was happy with seeing at the time and have re-thought about again and again since.

Lawrence is an awesome speaker with excellent presentation skills. If you have ever had a passing interest in Copyright or Intellectual Property then I highly recommend watching this lecture because he covers the basics and then takes the debate to a much higher level.



[Direct Link]