Via a Clickable Culture entry I just read a New York Times article carried over on the International Herald Tribune called “Boring game? Hire a player“. For anyone who hasn’t read some of my past posts concerning virtual “gold farmers” (people who make a living playing videogames and selling the virtual items they win on sites like eBay) it’s a good read. What struck me however is that this whole set-up is ripe to be gamed by these hired players. I fully expect that we’ll soon be reading stories relating how some of them set up their own accounts on the side and funnel some of their in-game winnings to those accounts.

And if you know about this activity, it’s still worth the read if only for the one quote near the end: “They all know how to play online games, but they’re not willing to do hard labor.” Refreshing to know that Chinese and Americans aren’t really so different.

{Updated – WorldChanging has added an entry on this story and the comments there are usually worth reading. Here’s the Link.}

Car Design News has posted a nice little piece covering the University for Fine Arts at Braunschweig degree show 2005. The best part for me is their discussion of the the ‘Microcar’ concepts presented by eight other(?) students. Fun stuff. And while I liked the brash VW Scrambler concept, I would have also enjoyed something in the article about Malte Hammerbeck’s concept (shown above). Both were nice.

{Image Copyright © 2005 Car Design News Ltd}

Yesterday I caught an entry on Core77 about a Forbes article, “Tastemakers: Industrial Designers“. It’s always great to have Industrial Design in the spotlight. And I can forgive the author calling Symbol Technologies “an industrial design firm in Holtsville, N.Y.”, when they’re obviously a manufacture of scanners (I’m wondering if the Forbes website software automatically added the NYSE link/symbol in the piece since it doesn’t seem like the author ever checked the company profile page on their site). However, a review of their Top Designer List slideshow had me thinking the author or whichever people making these lists and writing these stories need to do a bit more research into the field (and then maybe they won’t make boner mistakes like the one above).

Rather than just post this entry when I first read the article, I decided to post a thread on the Core77 Industrial Design forum. You can read the issue I have with the List there. The discussion has been remarkably good for an unregistered space and you can check it out at this Link.

MIT’s Advertising Lab posted an entry about in-game advertising that caught my attention. I’m fairly sure this is the same report that’s gotten some earlier play, but the last excerpt in the post taken from a Boston Globe article is what made me look twice:

Costs for advertising in video games have grown exponentially. They can range from $5,000 to $500,000, prices that rival spots in small films, according to some agencies.”

I know what I should be doing which seemingly so few people can do. Have to give it some consideration.

Excellent post over on Brand Autopsy about the Broken Window Theory and how author Michael Levine applied it to business practices in his book, “Broken Windows| Broken Business“. Brand Autopsy includes an excerpt from an online introduction and when I read it I couldn’t help but mentally add the line “When a consumer struggles with a product that didn’t benefit from an industrial designer ensuring their interaction was pleasant and their experience satisfying it’s a broken window.” Great post.