David Edery, Worldwide Games Portfolio Planner for Xbox Live Arcade, just posted an excellent article on developing compelling game demos for downloadable titles.

The best advice in his article? The trial is not just the first five minutes of your game. David recommends showing players the best parts of your game–not just the first part–to peak their interest.

If your game has an incredible mode that fires up anyone who plays it, but that mode is only encountered in the final third portion of the game, think about ways you can expose a slice of that mode during the trial experience. There’s no law that says a trial must begin at the start of a game. And there’s no law that says you should be forced to “level up” in a trial to the point at which you can finally enjoy the most fun aspects of a game.

Read the full article: How to Increase Trial, Improve Conversion Rate, and Sell More Games

“In God we trust… all others bring data.”
– Dr. W. Edwards Deming

AC3D ships with a Milkshape ASCII exporter, but it only exports the geometry and doesn’t export the animation rig. This plug-in supplements the existing exporter by adding an alternate export option “Milkshape ASCII (With Skeleton)”. This allows you to export to Milkshape ASCII format with the skeleton and materials intact.

Download the plugin. (Requires Windows XP, AC3D 6.2 or above.)

From Reuters:

Instead of jetting over to Bali for climate talks, Edward Markey (a Democrat from Massachusetts) will use a 3-D animated version of himself to address the conference at 9.30 am on Wednesday Bali time. It is estimated Markey will save 5.36 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions by doing this.

Watch the speech or the Q&A.

Believe-it-or-not, “w00t” is Merriam-Webster’s word of the year. For those of you not familiar with the term–I’m not sure who, as I’d think anyone reading this blog probably uses “woot” as part of their daily vernacular–it’s an expression of glee or triumph commonly used by gamers.

i.e.:
“W00t! We totally pwnd those n00bs.”
“Steak for dinner? W00t!”

A bit of gamer culture making it as word of the year? Well, I guess there’s only one thing I can say to that: w00t!