round-up of the success of the wii, bringing more people together around games. 9/10 games on the top 10 market are on the wii.

Clive Thompson on why he prefers playing on his own. transactional costs in playing with others can be too high. it's not necessarily the explicit playing with each other, but just knowing that people are there and being part of something big

one of the first community driven games. little big planet is allowing users to engage more with each other as well as engaging with the rest of the web

"Playfish now has over 10 million monthly active users on Facebook (around 1.5 million daily) and two billion monthly minutes of play time in under a year." cripes! games must be getting far more attention than tv...

Research that shows that long held stereotypes about girls and gaming are no longer relevant...

computer games drives ties or the other way round? no strong evidence either way...

"three quarters of online role-playing gamers make good friends with the people they meet in their virtual worlds, with almost half meeting in real-life situations and one in ten going on to develop physical relationships." Unofruntately struggling to believe this...

Reputation systems can build community inside social games - Tracking the convergence of games and social networks

Building games through existing ways of doing, making browsing more 'social' and making it easier to play. That's PMOG, Rocket On and Web Wars Eve

good piece by tom armitage. like the idea that games are full of social objects - experiences and incidents in games that we create meanings from - and that these should be exportable to the wider net, or wherever we want to put it.

Top 25 social games on Facebook. For reference.

Gaming is everyware.

social gaming mania from the E3 games show in LA. xbox to introduce wii style 'miis'. the plan is for the xbox to be the centre of every living room. not quite sure what mum and dad will think of that.

Good summary of what makes social media and games appealing, with particular reference to WoW.

Blog by Nicholas Ducheneaut of PARC about the social dimensions of online gaming.