I gave an AGD talk late Thursday on Casino Design, and how it can inform MMO design. I think more than a few people were surprised that I didn’t talk about the games at the casinos at all, and talked instead more about interior design of these spaces. I’ve put the Power Point presentation up for download here.

A quick and dirty bibliography:

  • The maverick designer I mentioned was Bill Friedman. Here is Bill Friedman’s web page, where he sells his book. Here’s one of many articles that has Bill talking about his theories, and how they’d apply to the Aladdin.
  • The story about the MIT kids who successfully gamed blackjack tables until they were drummed out of every casino in the world comes from Bringing Down the House by Ben Mezrich. It’s a great book, and it’s such a page turner you’ll be shocked it’s non-fiction.
  • The metrics bit was inspired directly by one of Larry Mellon’s metrics talks about Harrah’s. Larry is possibly the best advocate for metrics in MMOs. Searching for Harrah’s and Metrics will yield many glowing reports, including this one.
  • The potato peeler history comes from Small Things Considered by Henry Petroski.

I’m told I did well, but then no one’s going to come up to you after a talk and say ‘Hey, your talk stunk’. Raph has blogged about it on his shiny new blog. So did Oliver Smith, who works on World War 2 online. My fiancee’s primary comment was that I say the word ‘fundamentally’ about six times a minute when I get nervous.

Original comments thread is here.