I’m in Love in the Courier
I've posted a couple times about my notebooks in which I constantly scribble and doodle ideas.
Here's a post with some of them:
http://arcadeberg.com/causerie/organize-my-designs/ (23/9/2009)
And here's even one where I talk about a special kind i like:
http://arcadeberg.com/misc/swedish-innovation/ (23/9/2009)
But I think the "Swedish Innovation" has some serious competition now. If the Microsoft "Courier" is real, then it's love at first sight!
Just look at it! And watch the video!
I can really see myself using it. Constantly! I want one. Now!
Isn't this any designers dream? (Let's leave out the popular hate for Microsoft.)
The only thing that could make me fall less in love right now, would be if Apple came and said: "Yeah well, look at this!" and BAM they slam a better tablet/booklet down Microsoft's throat!
Oh, and if all the water marks didn't help you out; I found it over at Gizmodo:
http://gizmodo.com/5365299/courier-first-details-of-microsofts-secret-tablet (23/9/2009)
Peculiar Art Style
I love it when developers try out alternative art styles. Even if they don't all suitable to my taste, I still appreciate them doing it, because diversity is needed.
There's finally some video of gameplay available on Deathspank from Ron Gilbert with a 2D/3D-mix.
http://www.gametrailers.com/video/pax-09-deathspank/55826 (15/9/2009)
But the one game that has really caught my eye for its' art style alone is definitely 3D Dot Game Heroes.
What is this? Pixeled 3D-art? Well, it's different, hence you should have a looksie. As far as I know, there are no news about a US/European release.
Oh, and btw; I for one actually thinks the game looks like fun to play as well!
Disney buys Marvel – Give me a game!
It's announced that Marvel has agreed to sell their souls to Disney for about 4 billion dollars. It's not a typo; billions.
I'm a big Marvel fan and Disney is fine I guess. But regardless of what I think I can't help to wonder what kind of game this will spawn?
We've previously seen a cooperation with Disney and Square Enix with the Kingdom Hearts games where stars from both the Walt Disney Universe as well as characters from Square Enix's games are present and playable. I'm wondering if we'll see:
A) Disney + Marvel game with character from both universes.
B) Marvel in an upcoming Kingdom Hearts game. Disney + Marvel + Square Enix.
I'm just thinking out loud here, but it could prove to be an interesting mix!
As a fan of Marvel and gaming, I'll follow this one closely. Ooh, btw, can't wait for the new Ultimate Alliance game!
Stolen from random image board on the Internet. Sorry copyright owner, but it stole it from a thief.
No more GRIN
GRIN are closing their doors in the main office as well.
"It is with a heavy heart we announce today that GRIN has been forced to close its doors. This as too many publishers have been delaying their payments, causing an unbearable cashflow situation."
http://www.grin.se 12/08/09
Not smiling anymore
It feels weird; the company that got me into "the biz" are shutting down.
It was a learning experience with both ups and downs and I don't regret taking a job there. Heck, I was lucky that there were people there at the time, seeing potential in me. I got to do a work sample like everyone else and sure, I think I did good but still, it was all about what they thought and what I did just happened to be what (at the time) the Lead Design in Gothenburg liked.
Oh yeah, I should post my work sample here.
I left GRIN over a month ago, but it was still nice having the name of that company on the resume. It sucks that they are closing for several reasons, one being that my CV is less heavy with a company that has shut down.
What the higher ups are gonna do now, I don't know. But hopefully they'll start some new company; helping Sweden keeping a good reputation in the game industry.
To all the people I worked with at GRIN:
Thank you all and good luck in the future!
How to think outside “the box”
It's 4am, I just got home and I'm not 100%...antything right now.
But, once again, like so many other times, I'm just thinking out loud. There's this expression "thinking outside the box". And the thing I'm thinking is, is that something that some people just have a gift for, or is there some way for every to do it? And I'm thinking, no surprise, maybe being drunk helps?
I'm not saying that having a drunk game designer will do the job, but I'm just curious. Maybe that's one way to get people to "think outside the box". To disregard current standards and just express their minds. There are many developers today that say that they're looking for that kind of people. People that can think outside the box, not drunk people.
I'm sure people are better at it than other. Of course, like any game designer, I want to believe that I'm one of them, but I might be waaaay wrong! But I think there are many techniques, including those without alcohol to stimulate this kind of thinking. I don't know what. Road trips? Isolating the designers in a cabin somewhere or just locking them into a cellar.
My point, and well, question is. What is the best way for a designer to "think outsside the box"?
Aw crap... G'night people.
My Favorite 100 Games
I'm not sure it's right of me to say that I've been busy today.
I went to an job interview today before lunch and one question I got was "What was the last game you played that changed your life?". Quite the question, right?
Anyway, I answered Fable 2 but it got me thinking about all my favorites games, so I decided to write down a list of my 100 favorite games. It's quite interesting actually, since I can see how much of it is from the same publisher, etc.
Disclaimer: These are the first 100 that came to mind. The list is already over 100 and I haven't arranged them by rank. But they're all good games! Games that were/are incredibly fun for me to play as a gamer, not necessarily the games with best "game design".
- I've finished 78% of the games.
- The most commong genre tags are Platformer and RPG.
- The games are somewhat evenly spread over the years of release. (Cool!)
- I seem to like the games published by Nintendo, EA and Konami
- Most of the "retro"-games are for the SNES.
There you have it. My gamer's haven!
(Damn it... "Search and Replace" Platform with Platformer also took effect in the title of column 2....)
Video Games and the Female Audience
Daniel Floyd, character animator from Animation Mentor (http://www.animationmentor.com/) has a serie on YouTube about Video Games.
The latest episode "Video Games and the Female Audience" is a must see, as I think it's really clever and does bring up some really valid points as how to handle the current situation.
Episode six in my series of video "lectures," with special guest star: Gamasutra's Leigh Alexander! I can be reached at floydo_animation at yahoo dot com. You can reach Leigh at leighalexander1 at gmail dot com.
- kirithem on YouTube
Direct link to the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8ZVZRsy8N8
User profile: http://www.youtube.com/user/kirithem
All URL's from 30/6/2009.
The female gamers are here and I agree with Daniel and Leigh; Let's try our best and not scare 'em off.
Featured on Gamasutra
I'm very pleased to have found out that my Terminator Salvation analysis which I also posted on Gamasutra's Blog is now featured and is shown on Gamasutra's Frontpage. I'm thrilled!
Flash Game Engine – PushButton
There are some different game development environments our there for people to "easily" create games. A personal favorite is the classic; GameMaker over at YoYoGames. (http://www.yoyogames.com/gamemaker/ 26/6/09)
I just came across a Game Engine for creating Flash games. I haven't tried it myself, so I can't say for sure if it's good but it seems promising. So if you're into Flash development or are looking for a way in and want to create games, have a look at PushButton Engine from PushButton Labs:
http://pushbuttonengine.com/ (26/06/09)
The PushButton Engine is an Open Source, Flash game engine and framework that's designed for a new generation of games. PushButton Engine makes it easy to bring together great existing libraries and components for building Flash games. Spend less time on code, more time on building fun games.
- PushButton Engine
But after seeing GaiKai, maybe Flash seems kinda lame...
If you do try it out. Please, lemme know what you think of it.
GaiKai – Streaming High End Media
A while back a service called OnLive was introduced. Immediately afterwards several other companies came and said:
- Hey, we got something similar!
One of them was Dave Perry with GaiKai. The idea is that you can play games by streaming only the video and audio, having a super computer somewhere do the actual computing. Hence, you can play demanding games like Call of Duty on a low end netbook if you have the bandwith.
If this works well, it could pretty damn well revolutionize the entire gaming industry.
Perry has just posted a video of him demoing the GaiKai service. If it's the real deal and no Wizard of Oz-thing it's friggin' amazing!
http://www.dperry.com/archives/news/dp_blog/gaikai_-_video/
Gaikai Technology Demo (JULY 1, 2009) from David Perry on Vimeo.
This is just a simple demo of our Gaikai video game streaming technology working in a Firefox browser with no installs, no plug-ins. These retail games (selected because we think they are cool) are all being played on a remote server with a 800 mile round trip to my PC.
The games are unmodified and are completely virtualized so we can run multiple different games on the same server at the same time. One of the reasons the iPhone has over a billion downloads now, is because they made access really easy (click to download, click to play), we have managed to get our technology down to just the single "click to play" so you can play anywhere on the web (home, work, school, on the road), and the games can come to you (on a Facebook canvas page, Myspace, Flash sites etc.)
We will start buying bulk servers soon and after that, we will begin closed beta in California, so make sure to sign up at: www.gaikai.com if you want to help us out. My blog is at: www.dperry.com
(Links and embedd, 1/7/09)
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