I play 'World of Warcraft,' which means I end up hanging out with teenage boys a lot.
Game developers know that people have more fun when they're in large groups. They feel more fired up when the challenges are more epic.
If I had a day to myself I would just play video games with my brothers.
Nintendo has paid a great deal of attention to the dynamic of people playing video games together in the same room.
I think I give myself high marks being an entrepreneur and entrepreneuring a big idea about how popular social gaming could be. But I learned a lot of hard lessons on the CEO front... and do not give myself very high marks as a CEO of a large-scale company.
I got involved early on in social media - I created one of the first social networks - and for me, social gaming was a natural evolution of that.
'Pong' hit the fancy. It was sort of the perfect storm of a game which has two players highly social, a game that women could play better than a guy, and sort of an acceptance of this social nature of games in a bar.
The overall tectonic shifts that are going on in games and more broadly in media are that everything is moving to becoming free, social, and accessible. But we're just at the beginning of that. We can get to a day where short-session play can enhance, if not replace, text messaging as a way to stay in touch with people.
One of the things I loved about working on 'Portal' was that we'd get emails from people saying, 'I love to play first-person shooters but my girlfriend won't play them with me. But I got her to play 'Portal' and she had a blast.'
As players ourselves, to inspire other players to do what we do is awesome.
People talk about games and loneliness - it's a lonely activity. I didn't understand that. 'Gears of War' was the first multiplayer game for me that I enjoyed. But I wasn't sad. I liked being alone. I liked playing games by myself. I had lots of companionship at the house.
As much fun as it is gaming, I have so much to do that I've had to get away from them. I still enjoy them. When I go to a friend's house and they have a game on, I'll happily join in and play.
I think what HQ Trivia's done is taken the old-school idea of a trivia show - a quiz show - which has been around since the dawn of television, even radio, and made it a participatory event versus a spectator sport.
Discord says it's a good idea. That's comforting.
Whenever I'm around my guy friends, I'm always playing video games. I've always enjoyed the graphics side of them, how they look.
It may have once been true that computer games encouraged us to interact more with machines than with each other. But if you still think of gamers as loners, then you’re not playing games.
I like the first-person games, but I like the two-person element in terms of playing basketball games with my friends. That's a good time; we have tournaments and things.
If you were building a real-time game like one of Zynga's games, the WordPress model wouldn't work well for that.
At home I mostly stick to online Scrabble, or chess or Risk - games I find far less addictive than the spectacular games created for consoles these days. But, whenever I get the chance, I head over to my friend Kyri's house to play his PS3.
I think playing solo is a second rate activity, really. For me, playing is about playing with other people.
For me, I have a bunch of friends back home in Canada who play online all the time - so we get mic'd up, join the same party, and just play. We are good enough to compete with 'Call of Duty' pros, so, the competition is what keeps bringing me back.
Machine Zone is redefining the face of social mobile MMO games.
I've never played Dungeons & Dragons, but I'm actually pretty familiar with it.
A lot of times, when we travel, a lot of people on the road have the Switch going. We will all connect on the Switch and play the games against each other. It's obviously the healthier alternative than partying, but it's great.
Facebook didn't know how successful Zynga would be.
