I’ve been trying to write a post about video game User Interfaces for over a year. But every time I sat down to really start writing it, nothing substantial ever came out, even though I knew there was a very important idea in there somewhere.
I’ve played hundreds of games over the years I’ve been a gamer. And every time I play a game for the first time, I like to examine the user interface. User interfaces are interesting because they are understood not to be the game itself, but rather, …

For a long time I’ve had a concept for a World of Warcraft Raid Boss Encounter. The encounter takes place on an iceberg that travels down a icy river. While floating on the iceberg, players must fight off a boss who is destroying the iceberg out from underneath their feet. Players struggle to control the boss and repair the iceberg, all at the same time.
The full concept can be found here, on Scribd:

Preface: this isn’t my idea. It’s not original. It’s been discussed before, by better minds than mine, but I have stuff to say about it. So, here we go:
Today over lunch I was talking with my buddy Shawn about Steam, the social network/storefront for titles by Valve and other games, too. Shawn and I use Steam to play all sorts of games, and consider the Steam interface vastly superior to Windows Live, which does the same sort of thing, but uses that annoying fake currency that so many companies use …