I'm not sure I'd put a ton of stock in the references the author cited. The primary reference is a book called "Game-based Marketing," which is by two authors who have never made or worked on a game. Zichermann is exclusively a marketer, having only managed game industry conferences, and Linder appears to be exclusively an author.<p>The "Types of Players" is based on the <i>old</i> "Bartle Test," which was based on research from the text-based and early graphical MUD era. The test was significantly expanded and revised as modern MMOs were developed, but Bartle didn't license out the updated version; you have to read his book and do the work yourself to figure out how to apply it.<p>More dangerously in these Cliff's Notes format, the Bartle types aren't classifications; rather, they're like Myers-Briggs types. You can't just say you're going to make a game that applies to one type; your video game has to have mechanics that make it accessible to all types, because we're all percentages of each.<p>The note on "shallow game design" is accurate, although I haven't watched the presentation linked; you can't just throw "badges" or "points" into something and expect it be a silver bullet. Scvngr's game dynamics playdeck is great reading if you already know what you're doing.<p>I did a workshop on adding game mechanics to an existing product (a calendar/dayplanner) and the results varied wildly. One group (Ray and Nicole) integrated social game mechanics into the application really well. Another group (Cecy and Brody) treated each mechanic as a feature, and by the end of the discussion I felt like it was "missing something." You can read the write-up of the workshop here: <a href="http://vi.to/workshop/20100426/" rel="nofollow">http://vi.to/workshop/20100426/</a><p>My own notes include a lot of references from people who actually came from the game industry, as well as images of the handouts and my own distillation of these principles: <a href="http://vi.to/gmnotes" rel="nofollow">http://vi.to/gmnotes</a>