Dissecting (& creating) videogames

Now this is interesting: There are basically 4 types of characters in multiplayer online games (MMORPGs) like World of Warcraft, the New York Times reports: the Socializer, the Achiever, the Explorer, and the Killer - and guess who's at the top of the food chain? Reporter Seth Schiesel visited 30-year-old instructor Nick Fortugno's Thursday seminar for "14 undergraduate and master's-level students" at Parsons the New School for Design in Greenwich Village. These students will definitely find jobs, because "the burgeoning game industry is famished for new talent," Seth reports, and its market is probably increasingly hungry for greater sophistication in character development - but of course, part of what makes online games so interesting is players' role as co-creators and -writers, in a sense. The president of Parsons, former Nebraska senator Bob Kerrey, had something really interesting to say about that in the article, which mentions a number of programs like Parsons's. Seth writes: "According to the International Game Developers Association, fewer than a dozen North American universities offered game-related programs five years ago. Now, that figure is more than 100, with dozens more overseas."