Time for the monthly post where I lump a bunch of stuff together.

ONE: Hey! Have you heard about this Facebook thing? Yeah, me too. In fact, for some reason I created a Facebook page for Psychology of Games which you can access by performing clicking motions here. So far I’m really just using it to announce new posts, but it gives me a little more freedom to comment on them than Twitter does. If you use Facebook, you should “Like” the page so that you become a fan. Because I like it when numbers get bigger. I’m sorry, but I really can’t give you a better reason than that. 1

TWO: Big thanks to Kyle, Alex, and Emerson for sending donations my way via that Paypal button. I’ve used it to buy a few books, including A Theory of Fun for Game Design, Priceless: The Myth of Fair Value (And How to Take Advantage of It, and Buying In: The Secret Dialog Between Who We Are and What We Buy. I’m catching up on my reading lately thanks to some travel. I’m particularly looking forward to getting to the latter two, as I’ve been wondering about a few things along the lines of pricing, sales, and the like. In particular I want to figure out why digital distribution systems like Steam can throw up collections like “Every id game ever made, ever” and we’ll all go bananas buying it even though we’ll never play most of them and we already own the rest.

THREE: As a reminder, I’m going to be giving a lecture 2 at the Login Conference next month. I’m putting the finishing touches on the presentation this week, and by “finishing touches” I mean “starting to write it.” The theme of the talk revolves around what psychology has to say about how gamers behave differently when they’re in groups versus alone, and how the composition of those groups matters. I’m going to be posting a more detailed outline of the lecture this week. If you’re going to be at Login, please come and see me! My talk is entitled “The Psychology of Games: Why We Do What We Do With Friends (and Screw That Other Guy)” and it’s going to be on Thrusday May 13 at 2:00 pm. In the “Harbor” room, apparently, which sounds tres classy. Come shout disruptive things from the back row of seats so that people will mention the session later.