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ION Game ConferenceNordic Game 2008CoGames 2008: The 1st International Workshop on Collaborative GamesVancouver International Games Summit
 | P R O D U C T R E V I E W S The Razer Piranha Gaming Communicator and the Razer Destructor Professional Gaming Mat by John Hattan, posted 5/16/08 We review a couple of hardware bits for gamers. Do the products live up to the pretension of their names? Read and find out. |  | B O O K R E V I E W Programming Video Games for the Evil Genius by John Hattan, posted 5/15/08 We review TAB Books' newest title in their very oddly named "Evil Genius" series. What's it all about? Read and find out. |
 | G A M E I N D U S T R Y Business Planning Part 2 by Mona Ibrahim, posted 5/12/08 So you've learned how to set up your business but what about financing? Product Insurance? Working this all into an actual company? Get it all laid out along with a guide to setting up your LLC |  | R E V I E W Express Animator by John Hattan, posted 5/8/08 We review a 2D drawing and animation program with some import and export formats useful to web game programming. |
| Friday, May 16, 2008 | |
| The Daily GameDev.net | |
| Posted by: Trent Polack at 8:15:16 AM | |
 We start the last post of the news week with a quote I can't even fathom: "There is no casual gaming," says Nintendo senior marketing director Laurent Fischer, "For me, you are a gamer or non-gamer [...] I think most of you know that you can spend ten or twenty hours on an internet flash game and have not realised. The guy who plays these games regularly - he's a core gamer." This sounds great from Nintendo's perspective but, for the rest of us, Nintendo saying that there's no such thing as "casual gamers" is absurd. If I asked some of my friends and my family if they are "gamers" they would almost certainly indicate that they aren't. If I, like any good inquisitive friend/relation, pressed the issue and offered up varying definitions of "gamer," "casual gamer," and "hardcore gamers" they would absolutely describe themselves as being casual gamers. Nintendo can play with semantics as much as they want (and I'm, like usual, encouraging comment discussion for this post) but ignoring the categorization seems odd.Valve released their eternally useful hardware survey yesterday and excellent PC gaming site Rock, Paper, Shotgun posted some great observations to go with the numbers. For my part, I'll point out that Intel has a healthy 17% lead on AMD, while nVidia (62%) is wiping their feet with ATI (31%). The average desktop monitor resolution is surprisingly low as well; the most common resolutions for a single monitor setup are 1280x960 (39%) and 1024x768 (32%). And Windows XP continues to absolutely dominate Vista with over 80% of users running it for their Windows flavor of choice compared to Vista's mere 15% of the pie. Anyway, for anyone currently developing a game -- which I assume to be a decent percentage of my readership -- a look at Valve's hardware survey is a great source of average specifications for people looking to release a PC game in the near future. Then there are the April NPD numbers which, to no one's surprise, is dominated by Grand Theft Auto 4 and Mario Kart Wii. I've gone on about the numbers so much this last month that there's nothing much I can add... Luckily, the console manufacturers themselves handled commentary for me. What? Read More.. | 9 Comments | |
| Thursday, May 15, 2008 | |
| The Daily GameDev.net | |
| Posted by: Trent Polack at 8:13:49 AM | |
| This continues to be a slow news week, but the release of Sony's sales numbers for the Playstation 2, Playstation 3, and the Playstation Portable prompted some interesting console war news stories. This wouldn't be of note normally, but one such story spawned from a Microsoft press release. The Xbox 360 manufacturer said that its 19 million units sold is "more than any other current-generation console." At this point it's worth pointing out that the Nintendo Wii has an install base of 24.45 million. Microsoft later clarified that it meant that the 360 has the "largest global install base of any current gen, high definition gaming console" (emphasis mine and GameDaily's). Sony can safely claim, then, that the Playstation 3 with its 12.85 million units sold has the largest global install base of a current gen, high definition, occasionally backwards compatible console with blu-ray support. In-game advertising has been a staple of major sport games for as long as I remember, but recently the industry is seeing advertisements creeping into games which typically wouldn't sport them. There are also games which stream in their advertisements from a third-party such as Massive Incorporated (Crackdown, Rainbow Six: Vegas, etc.). Yesterday came news relating to the product placement in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots which features overt placement of things like iPods, Sony Ericsson phones, and other seemingly random items in a game that takes place well into the future. There is also a duck clock. Personally, I can't believe they only gave Snake a 30GB iPod. Read More.. | 10 Comments | |
| Wednesday, May 14, 2008 | |
| The Daily GameDev.net | |
| Posted by: Trent Polack at 7:18:08 AM | |
| Silicon Knights President Dennis Dyack wants to be deknighted and have someone else take over the position so that he can focus more on the creative portion of the company's development. "I've been involved in a lot of IP creation within Silicon Knights and as the company grows, I have to look at whether I want to continue to be president and director, and I'm leaning towards staying creative," Dyack said in an interview with GameDaily. This doesn't strike me as being a bad thing as Silicon Knights' past games, specifically Eternal Darkness and Blood Omen: The Legacy of Kain, have been absolutely spectacular. In your daily Electronic Arts news comes news that the ginormous gaming entity's Q4 revenues are up to $1.13 billion (up 81% from last year) with the total year's revenue at $3.67 billion USD. Unfortunately, the company had a net loss of $454M (compared to a profit of $76M the previous year). EA CEO John Riccitiello remains optimistic for the upcoming fiscal year, though: "[...] we're very pleased with our revenue growth, but not yet happy with our profit margins. In fiscal 2009, we expect to deliver another USD 1 billion in revenue growth and to double our operating profit on the strength of our slate of titles." On the non-business front of things Riccitiello also commented on the state of PC games at retail where he discusses that, if not for World of Warcraft and The Sims, the "box side" of PC games at retail would be a "pretty dismal sector." And Grand Theft Auto 4 smashes the Guinness World Record for the highest-earning entertainment product within a twenty-four hour span ($310M USD). It is topping the previous record held by Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows ($220M). To be fair, a single copy of Grand Theft Auto 4 retailed at nearly three times the price of a copy of Harry Potter. And for three times the price GTA4 provides for more hot, saucy romance between Niko and Michelle (and Kate, Carmen, Kiki, etc.) instead of just Hermione and Ginny. Read More.. | 10 Comments | |
| Tuesday, May 13, 2008 | |
| The Daily GameDev.net | |
| Posted by: Trent Polack at 8:18:04 AM | |
| As I'm sure all of you are aware, we experienced a little bit of downtime yesterday but, fear not, because the site is better now. I instantly posted yesterday's daily to ensure that no one would suffer a withdrawal (that and I'm going for a full year without missing a single day). So, hopefully, no one had the shakes too bad. VideoGamer.com ran a particularly detailed interview with Cameron Suey, producer of the Xbox 360 and PS3 version so of Lucasarts' upcoming game Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. Interviews with developers before a game's release date aren't typically anything but bad jokes interspersed with PR speech snippets but, in this particular interview, Cameron answers the oft-asked question about why The Force Unleashed is coming to every imaginable platform except the PC. His answer is long and contains a lot of words, but the gist of it is that the development team felt that, for this game, development for platforms with consistent hardware specs was a necessity: "with the known quantity for the consoles, and every console is the same with the same processing power, it made sense for us to develop for those consoles." The Wall Street Journal published an interview with Rockstar co-founder and President Sam Houser which the writer titled: "Studio Is Prize in Takeover Duel." I envisioned the money fight between Electronic Arts and Take-Two as more of a means for EA to corner parts of the sports game market by shutting down 2k Sports the moment they get their ownership hands over Take-Two's pulsating heart and then EA looks upon the heart in their hands and they can extract the Rockstar diamond within. Either way, the WSJ article also points out that Rockstar hired a "spiritual healer" to "exorcise" potential demons after the death of two employees. Houser also pointed out that he has no problem becoming "much smaller fish in much bigger pond" if the EA acquisition ever takes place. It was a slow news day. Read More.. | 3 Comments | |
| Monday, May 12, 2008 | |
| Interview with Surround Sound Specialist Rik Ede (GAMESOUND Ltd) | |
| Posted by: Music4Games.Net at 4:46:03 PM | |
 Rik Ede is considered to be the world’s leading authority on surround sound in games having spent 5 years working for Dolby as 5.1 evangelist, 2 years as a consultant to DTS and more recently he just finished a 2 year stint as the PLAYSTATION® 3 surround consultant to Sony's R&D group.Source Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| The Daily GameDev.net | |
| Posted by: Trent Polack at 4:21:32 PM | |
| In a manner that is best described as Neo-EA (I plan to continue championing them), the company listened to the nerdrage that surrounded the news regarding SecuRom's copy protection measures for the upcoming Mass Effect (PC port) and Spore and responded by removing the every-ten-days legitimacy check. As far as I understood the situation, this check was going to be used as a means to "allow" gamers to play the aforementioned titles without a CD/DVD and whether or not people will be able to play the game without a CD still is unknown. The new and "improved" copy protection method for the two games will check the authenticity of the install whenever a player wants to download new content or, presumably, patches. United States representative Lee Terry (Republican from Nebraska) and Jim Matheson (Democrat from Utah) are proposing a bill which would require retailers to check for identification when buying a game "intended for adults." The proposal, titled the Video Games Ratings Enforcement Act, would enforce a $5,000 civil penalty upon any retailer who does not check whether a customer is above the age gate for an M-rated (17+) or Ao-rated (18+) game. As the Variety piece points outs, "several state legislatures have enacted similar laws, but each has been struck down by courts on First Amendment challenges." This bill, as Terry points out, does not actually make any claims or restrictions as to the content of games, just that the ratings scale should be enforced. Several game stores already do do this so, from my mind, having it be a requirement isn't a terrible idea and may actually help to limit unnecessary litigation against violent games in the future. And, in other news, Sony is competing for world domination. I mean, they're actually competing "beyond" Microsoft and Nintendo within the scope of the entertainment industry. Kaz Harai, the president of Sony Computer Entertainment, says that he thinks the "PS3, PS2 and PSP are all entertainment platforms so I feel that our competition is not Microsoft or Nintendo, but basically any form of entertainment that is competing for the consumers' attention." As absurd as I thought the quote was on Friday, now I think it makes sense. Sony always intended for the Playstation 3 to be an all-in-one entertainment system (rather than Nintendo's firm stance that the Wii is solely a gaming system) and, from what I understand, the PS3 is one of the best Blu-Ray players on the market. So we're back to Sony taking over the world. Read More.. | 1 Comments | |
| Friday, May 9, 2008 | |
| Weekend Reading: Tales from Journal Land | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 6:15:51 PM | |
| This week from Journal Land we have 16 notable updates from various developers on all sorts of topics: programming, business, project updates, freebies, DRM, and more! Read More.. | 2 Comments | |
| New networking community premieres at Nordic Game 2008 | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 2:22:11 PM | |
 The world’s most popular video games industry website in partnership with the Nordic Game conference launches the new Gamesindustry.biz Network community and meeting planner at this year’s event.Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| Games Convention Asia Conference Opens Call for Papers | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 2:18:52 PM | |
 Games Convention Asia Conference (GCAC) today opened its call for papers. From now until June 15th, experts from the international game community can submit speaking proposals for the upcoming Games Convention Asia Conference, taking place at Suntec International Convention & Exhibition Centre Singapore, September 18-19, 2008.Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| Final Day to Register Online for the 2008 ION Game Conference | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 2:13:14 PM | |
| High-level networking and knowledge-sharing between online game industry professionals starts on May 13th, at the Seattle Marriott Waterfront Hotel for those attending the 2008 ION Game Conference. Over 500 attendees representing 260 globally diverse companies have already signed on to participate in the ION experience. Only one day, Friday, May 9th, is left to register online for ION. Online registration ends on May 10th at 12 AM Pacific Standard Time. Read More.. | 1 Comments | |
| fmx/08 in Stuttgart, Germany - In Review | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 2:09:03 PM | |
| In its 13th annual appearance, the fmx/08 has once more lived up to its reputation. For four full days, the conference on all things relevant to digital entertainment drew the international cg community to Stuttgart's Haus der Wirtschaft to inform themselves about the latest developments and – more importantly – to exchange ideas and experiences. The comprehensive and first-rate program is decisive in making this event the best of its kind in Europe, but other factors also play a role. Under the Animation Institute's lead, the FMX has been able to garner an atmosphere in which students, companies and world- class speakers engage in heartfelt discussion. The spirit of FMX is entrenched in the participation that the visitors bring with them. Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| Vancouver International Game Summit features Call of Duty 4, May 21- 22 | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 2:02:23 PM | |
| The agenda is now finalized and this is one Game Summit you don't want to miss! The Vancouver International Game Summit and its Advisory Board are pleased to announce that this year's closing keynote event will feature the key leaders behind the 2007 Game of the Year: Call of Duty® 4: Modern Warfare™. Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| The Daily GameDev.net | |
| Posted by: Trent Polack at 7:42:21 AM | |
| So, Activision had a good year with its total revenue for the fiscal year at $2.9 billion USD (up from $1.5 billion the prior year) largely do, no doubt, the the massive success of Call of Duty 4 with its nine million-plus sales. The publisher says that about 82.8% of its earnings came from consoles, 10.8% from mobile gaming, and a mere 6.4% from PC games. In an analyst conference call, Activision CEO Bobby Kotick made statements on how the Guitar Hero franchise has sold more than 19 million units to-date and adds: "versus only three million from our only competitor" (Rock Band). So, just so we're clear, the franchise started and made popular by the Rock Band developer (and which has three games in it each available for numerous platforms) is outselling a single game by the same developer and this is a point of pride. I was told by a GameDev.net staff member that it's no longer acceptable to talk about Grand Theft Auto 4. So now I'll talk about how a rumor about how David Jones, the creator of Grand Theft Auto, may have bought the rights for APB (All Points Bulletin) so that he could propose it to Rockstar as the GTA MMO. I don't usually report on rumors but, as a gamer typically uninterested in the massively multiplayer "arena," I must say: do want. Over at Gamasutra there's an interesting article about the Playstation Network and Downloadable Games. The opinion/editorial piece is by no means an official work, but it's something I've noticed on my system whenever I browse the list of downloadable games. Unlike Xbox Live, which has its share of non-indie titles too, the Playstation Network's best games are all produced by Sony's Santa Monica studio and, for the most part, pass through an official Sony production pipeline despite the development being done by indie studios. Update: Apparently Electronic Arts has responded to the SecuRom outcry over the every-ten-days activation requirement. Kudos to EA. May want? Read More.. | 5 Comments | |
| Thursday, May 8, 2008 | |
| UCSD scientists create more efficient photon mapping algorithm | |
| Posted by: The American Narrowcast Networ at 11:44:25 PM | |
 Sciencedaily.com reported UC San Diego computer scientists have created a fog and smoke machine for computer graphics that cuts the computational cost of making realistic smoky and foggy 3-D images.Read More.. | 1 Comments | |
| UCSD scientists create more efficient photon mapping algorithm | |
| Posted by: The American Narrowcast Networ at 11:44:16 PM | |
| Sciencedaily.com reported UC San Diego computer scientists have created a fog and smoke machine for computer graphics that cuts the computational cost of making realistic smoky and foggy 3-D images. Read More.. | 3 Comments | |
| Interview with David Lakritz: The Language of Localizing Online Games | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 1:40:17 PM | |
| David Lakritz, President & CEO, Language Automation, Inc., previews his “Top Global Markets for Online Games (and How to Speak to the Gamers)” lecture at the 2008 ION Game Conference. Additionally, in this interview he tackles what has often proven to be a tricky subject for online game developers – localizing game titles to match the language and culture of an international market. Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| GameInstitute Continues Development Challenges | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 11:23:17 AM | |
 With challenge #6 currently being judged, GI has already set its sights ahead for challenge #7, set to run from May 30th - July 12th. Hit the jump for rules and info.Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| TalentRaspel publishes Open Source system for development of MMORPG systems | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 11:00:20 AM | |
 Now available free of charge, a production-proven and professionally supported system to develop massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) - a completely revised version of the Torque MMO Kit has been introduced in April 2008 by the German company TalentRaspel.Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| The Daily GameDev.net | |
| Posted by: Trent Polack at 7:22:36 AM | |
| Leave it to me to write a solid paragraph about the mystery behind Take-Two's silence regarding the Grand Theft Auto 4 sales numbers and then, when I wake up to post the news (written the night before), see that they were just waiting to ambush me. So, yeah, GTA4 sold 3.6 million copies on its first day and some 6 million by the end of its first week. All of this equates to about $500 million in sales. Which is a lot, in case you were unaware. Electronic Arts Vice President of Corporate Communications, also known as Jeff Brown, says, now, that Take-Two is "at best [...] a 50/50 proposition." Brown's remarks on this matter are actually interesting and well worth the read. Sure, this particular story can be found a handful of entries below the one you're reading right now, but the XNA 3.0 community technical preview release is something I feel the need to re-link. I maintain my view that everything Microsoft is doing with XNA is absolutely spectacular and deserving of praise. This technical preview offers support for the Zune (though 360 support is missing for this particular release), Visual Studio 2008, and various framework changes. If anyone is looking for a new sort of development platform for their next project, I'd say that XNA is well worth a look. Coming to the realization that every gamer and developer has known for years, nVidia plans to simplify its product range. Roy Taylor, Vice President of Content Business Development, says "We think that the people who understand and know GeForce today, they're okay with it--they understand it. But if we're going to widen our appeal, there's no doubt that we have to solve that problem." I'm pretty "up" on my nVidia cards and keeping straight the fact that the 8800GTX outperforms the 512MB 8800GTS which outperforms the 640MB 8800GTS which are all superior the new 9600GT is by no means an easy or straightforward endeavor. At least they acknowledge that it needs to change. Kind of. Poor THQ employees. Read More.. | 2 Comments | |
| Wednesday, May 7, 2008 | |
| Notes on Game Dev Game Art Competition | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 7:14:00 PM | |
| The 2008 Notes on Game Dev 2D/3D Environment and Character Design Competition is now open for entries. Art will be judged by some of the top talent in game development today including Damian Pannell (Artist, Relic, Vancouver, British Columbia), Doug Oglesby (Concept Artist, Red Storm Entertainment), Jesse Brophy (THQ, Phoenix, AZ), and Nate Purkeypile (World Artist, Bethesda). Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| XNA Game Studio 3.0 CTP is now available through the XNA Creators Club Online site | |
| Posted by: Paul Evans at 9:46:49 AM | |
 XNA Game Studio, the technology that allows you to develop C# games on the PC, 360 and utilise Live has a new update. Note how "Express" is now not affixed to the end [smile]This preview (CTP) release of XNA Game Studio 3.0 is now available through the XNA Creators Club Online site (http://creators.xna.com), with a final release scheduled for Christmas 2008. More after the jump. Read More.. | 7 Comments | |
| The Daily GameDev.net | |
| Posted by: Trent Polack at 8:25:22 AM | |
| Instead of jumping on one of the more established and prolific digital distribution methods for games Blizzard Entertainment has, quite predictably, created their own solution. Aside from the ability to digitally purchase super-amazing games like Warcraft 3 and Starcraft (for some reason, Diablo doesn't get digital versions), Blizzard did what can best be described as a common-sense-move-that-no-one-else-is-doing in allowing users to utilize their current CD keys for games and then digitally download them for future use. I know that I love Gran Turismo 5: Prologue and am eagerly awaiting when I get to buy the full game for a price that's a mere twenty dollars more ($60) than what I paid for the Prologue quasi-game ($40). Anyway, despite the lack of concrete details, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe and Nissan have announced the Gran Turismo Racing Academy. In what is bound to be an exercise in comedy, the GT Racing Academy will "give gamers a chance to show if they can drive in real life like they do in Gran Turismo." I'm pretty good at Gran Turismo but, let me tell you, I'm glad when I make it through a day where I don't feel minutes from an imminent crash that will set my status as dead. Luckily, as Kotaku reports, "every step of the academy will be filmed and later made available on the Playstation Network." There's no way this event won't be a gold mine of epic YouTube clips. Despite last week being a Grand Theft Auto 4 frenzy within the game industry, the lack of Take-Two announcements regarding the US games sales is absolutely mystifying. Yesterday, reports came from both Gamasutra and GamesIndustry.biz about the game's enormous sales numbers in the UK (926,000 copies in five days across the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3). GTA4 also topped off the Xbox 360 LIVE charts. Given all of this, it would seem to indicate that the game sold fairly well... So why no announcement from Take-Two about the game's sales numbers? Popular opinion is centered around the idea that, if the game didn't far exceed expectations, that the Take-Two shareholders may get angry about Take-Two's rejection of the buyout offer from Electronic Arts and that, while Grand Theft Auto 4 without a doubt sold well, it may not have been the single biggest game release that Take-Two needed. Update: Nevermind. Apparently Grand Theft Auto 4 did pretty well. Read More.. | 8 Comments | |
| Visualization Library alpha 1 released! | |
| Posted by: Michele Bosi at 1:54:01 AM | |
 Visualization Library is an open source C++ middleware for 2D/3D graphics applications based on the industry standard OpenGL 2.1, designed to develop professional applications for the Windows XP, Windows Vista and Linux/X11 operating systems.Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| Agenda Online for Bleeding-edge .NET Conference | |
| Posted by: Shaguf at 12:52:54 AM | |
 At Developer Summit 2008, be a part of this golden period of bleeding-edge enterprise development solutions that use Microsoft’s powerful developer tools, frameworks, and platforms.Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| Tuesday, May 6, 2008 | |
| UNT to offer certificate in computer game programming | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 5:36:39 PM | |
| Building on a program established in 1993, the University of North Texas' Department of Computer Science and Engineering will offer a certificate in game programming starting this fall. Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| The Daily GameDev.net | |
| Posted by: Trent Polack at 7:47:45 AM | |
| Midway published their first-quarter results yesterday and revealed a $34 million USD loss. The companies net revenue was $29.9 million (up from $11.1 million last year). Midway's CEO, Matt Booty (who recently replaced David Zucker), and interim president remains optimistic for the company's future, though: "Midway has the products, the talent, and the technology infrastructure to succeed in the industry, and this management team is committed to improving execution." In terms of other really big numbers comes a report from THQ that it has sold over fifty million Nickelodeon titles worldwide for a grand total value of one billion dollars. While I never really thought of THQ as a "family entertainment" publisher/distribute, Director of Global Product Management Jim Huntley firmly disagrees with me in a conversation we never had: "With the enormous popularity of Wii and DS coupled with our exceptionally diverse portfolio of Nickelodeon-based games, THQ continues to lead in family entertainment." That's cool. Anything that allows THQ to do well also allows its Real-Time Strategy games (Supreme Commander, Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War, and Company of Heroes) to thrive and flourish with their respective developers. And RTSs make the world a better place as indicated in a scientific study performed on me, by me, at 12:42am this morning. Epic reported that there were an astonishing forty million illegitimate attempts to access Unreal Tournament 3 servers. I mean. Everyone thought they gave that figure, anyway. Apparently they didn't. This is the news equivilent of 40000000*0. Which is to say this isn't news at all. Since we're on the topic of piracy, I might as well point to the most logical, fool-proof means of piracy prevention ever invented by man which can be found in the PC port of Mass Effect (and Spore): super SecuRom (fourth post, written by Derek French, Bioware's Technical Producer). The explanation of the copy protection is this: "After the first activation, SecuROM requires that it re-check with the server within ten days (in case the CD Key has become public/warez'd and gets banned). Just so that the 10 day thing doesn't become abrupt, SecuROM tries its first re-check with 5 days remaining in the 10 day window. If it can't contact the server before the 10 days are up, nothing bad happens and the game still runs. After 10 days a re-check is required before the game can run." So, while the game doesn't require the DVD to run (unless you don't have an Internet connection) it will still check with a server every ten days to ensure your key is still valid. And this is on top of the fact that users are allowed only three activations of the game. Read More.. | 13 Comments | |
| ICO star joins a roster of over 100 speakers at Nordic Game 2008 | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 1:39:06 AM | |
| A record-breaking gathering of more than one hundred industry profiles will crowd the stage of the Malmö Exhibition & Convention Center for this year’s Nordic Game conference. The creator of ICO and Shadow of the Colossus is the latest celebrated name to board the conference flagship of the Nordic games industry. Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| Monday, May 5, 2008 | |
| Interview with Nicole Lazzaro: Social Forces Impact Online Gaming | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 12:03:10 PM | |
| Nicole Lazzaro, President of XEODesign, examines the powerful new forms of Web 2.0, emotion and social play redefining the way many of us see online games in a preview of her 2008 ION Game Conference lecture, WOW vs. Facebook: Is Social Networking the New Casual Game?. Read More.. | 2 Comments | |
| The Daily GameDev.net | |
| Posted by: Trent Polack at 8:00:38 AM | |
| "Fuck all this stuff about casual gaming" said Rockstar Vice President Dan Houser in an interview with New York magazine. Houser goes on to say that far too many video games cover topics that are typical video game fare: "orcs and elves, monsters or space" as he lists. I thought there were books and movies on these topics too, but I digress. Houser's best and most accurate quote, though, is best unsummarized: "There is nothing in [Grand Theft Auto 4] you would not see in a TV show, or a movie a hundred times over [...] We set out to make games that felt like they could culturally exist alongside the movies we were watching and the books we were reading, and hopefully we're getting close to those goals." And this is true; games are consistently held to different standards than other mediums, especially movies, and the more games like GTA4 and Bioshock that we see, the closer the medium moves towards being held to the same artistic standards. The most surprising story of the weekend goes to one which states that Chinese gamers spent $1.7 billion (USD) on online games last year. This is not news due to a high monetary value -- because, given China's population, that's nothing remarkable -- but its news due to the massive amounts of game piracy that China is typically representative of. Niko Partners, the marketing intelligence firm responsible for the numbers, predicts that this number will hit $2.5 billion this year and then jump to $6 billion in 2012. And, despite their sale being banned in the country, "the Wii, Xbox 360, PS3 and PS3 reached 2.48 million units" in 2007 in what has to be the nerdiest black market in existence. Street Fighter 2 creator Yoshiki Okamoto says the Nintendo DS market is going to crash much like the North American video game crash of 1983 -- the game-focused version of the great depression. "You've started hearing the phrase 'Atari crash' pretty frequently," Okamoto says (and, no, I haven't heard it frequently at all). He attributes the likeliness of the crash due to the huge popularity of Nintendo's portable system along with the absolutely mind-boggling number of games which are available for it. It's worth noting that, in the instance of the Atari market crash, the games industry was but a fraction of the size it is now. And I don't want to say that things have changed in twenty-five years, but... Happy Birthday, Wolfenstein 3D. Read More.. | 9 Comments | |
| Saturday, May 3, 2008 | |
| Mockingbird - The Game Making Game | |
| Posted by: Troy at 10:55:31 AM | |
| Mockingbird - The Game Making Game - has launched. Change and make games, no programming required. Make a game and embed it on your blog or MySpace page. Share it with friends. Change each others' games. Make a game in five minutes. It's a new approach to games, more like a blog than a traditional game making tool. Read More.. | 3 Comments | |
