This is a concept I have always believed strongly in, and Raph Koster just wrote an excellent blog article about it: Ways to make your virtual space more social. He makes a lot of great points, but I am going to focus specifically on the concept that game developers must engage in some degree of social engineering when they make a game, and for a virtual world game they MUST take steps to force people to slow down, hang out, and socialize with others.

You Can’t Chat While Hammering the 1, 2, 3, Buttons

(more…)