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Game Connection EuropeProject HorseshoeGstarInternational Digital Entertainment Festival
 | G A M E I N D U S T R Y Lessons Learned – Hobby Game Development by Lloyd Tullues, posted 11/4/08 After creating a game engine to learn and make prototypes, Lloyd has indeed picked up on many good habits he would like to pass along to the rest of the development community, and other hobbyist developers especially |  | E V E N T C O V E R A G E A Look at Game Connection by Drew Sikora, posted 11/4/08 We have a look at what Game Connection has to offer developers and talk with the founder to learn more about this unique event that's all about the business of making games |
 | S W E E T S N I P P E T Stringizing C++ Enums by Francis Xavier, posted 10/25/08 A simple method to convert a C++ enumeration to its equivalent string representation and vice versa. It's easy to use and flexible enough for most situations, making it useful for both, beginners as well as more advanced programmers |  | B O O K R E V I E W Challenges for Game Designers by John Hattan, posted 10/22/08 What exactly are "non-digital exercises for video game designers"? We find out in this book review. |
| Wednesday, November 5, 2008 | |
| Winners Announced for 3D Art Contest "Battle of the SuperModelers" | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 6:59:36 PM | |
 GameRecruiter, the premier recruitment agency for the interactive entertainment industry, today announced the five winners of their debut 3D artwork contest, the “Battle of the SuperModelers.” The “Battle of the SuperModelers” is a one-of-a-kind digital art contest designed to support and promote both professional and student 3D artists in the games community. The “Battle of the SuperModelers” panel of judges reviewed completed 3D art from game artists around the U.S. who created original real-time character models of a monster, creature, robot or alien that might be found in a fantasy, sci-fi or horror game. The Grand Prize Winner and three finalists will receive a combined total $50,000-worth of digital art tools and technology from contest sponsors Alienware, Autodesk, Wacom and The Gnomon Workshop. More than a 100 game artists entered their work for consideration. The Grand Prize Winner is Eric Claeys, Art Director for Suva Interactive, who offered “I've been drawn to fantasy and science fiction art as long as I can remember. My goal is dive into the industry as a creature/character modeler or concept artist - someday taking on more of a lead/directive role. Thanks again to everyone who was involved in putting the competition together. I think it was handled very well for the first time through. I hope there are more to come.” Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| The Daily GameDev.net | |
| Posted by: Trent Polack at 8:24:34 AM | |
 I'm not as politically inclined as Promit so I'll just say that the only thing I like about our election process are the debates. I'm glad it's over. Also it's me. The ever-lovely Tiffany isn't here today so you're stuck with my wit, charm, and good looks (good looking text?) for the day.Gemma Atkinson is a British actress and model most notable to gamers for her recent work in Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3 as Lt. Eva McKenna where she delivers mission briefings to players in an unusually short dress -- which I'm fairly certain isn't standard UN issue -- and ever-so-slightly unbuttoned blouse. Red Alert 3 is not a game that attains to a high-art status. Ms. Atkinson gave an interview at a Red Alert 3 press event in London about being chosen for a role in the recently released EA-published/developed RTS saying that: "I assumed it would be like me as a character, like a computerized character, like on a blue screen. But when they told me it was me in person, as like you'd see me on telly, I was like, 'Oh my gosh that's amazing they've managed to combine kind of film as well as the game'." This isn't really a story of interest, I've just been playing Red Alert 3 and it's fun and it's interesting to see what some of the actors in the cinematics have to say; Red Alert 3 makes no pretense to high art in any form and the cinematics tell their story in a remarkably over-the-top fashion where the actors involved, unlike Command and Conquer 3, seem to actually be enjoying themselves. Speaking of Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3: there were issues with people not receiving the full twenty letters of their serial keys and, instead, recieving only nineteen letters. The Electronic Arts response to this was: try guessing that last number. I'm not sure what's worse in this situation: that this is EA's solution or that people may not have tried this anyway. There was a strange story a couple days ago that revealed that Hellgate: London is receiving an expansion pack in the future despite the closing of original developer Flagship Studios (development is carrying on at Hanbitsoft). This is strange news because it was revealed that the Hellgate: London servers being operated by Namco Bandai would shut down the game's servers in February 2009. As it turns out, these facts all coalesce neatly: the US is not going to be receiving the Hanbitsoft expansion and, therefore, has no real need to have online servers maintained for the sorry folks still playing the game. I don't think there's a game in existence that needs to just stop more than Hellgate: London; after all, Bill Roper moved on, so should Hellgate. Finally, Stardock announced their Master of Magic-like new game yesterday; it answers to the name Elemental: War of Magic. This is a shameless plug. It was a slow news day anyway. As an aside, in light of the recent THQ scuffle I'd like to extend my thoughts to anyone currently experience professional hardship amidst the number of layoffs that have been going on in the game industry over the course of the last month. Our industry is one that is not overly familiar with the concept of "job security" and shake-ups like this happen all too often. I hope all of the effected developers land on their feet. Read More.. | 3 Comments | |
| Tuesday, November 4, 2008 | |
| Gamebryo 2.6 Rocks the House with Enhanced Support for Wii and DirectX10 | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 5:54:19 PM | |
 Emergent Game Technologies’ Gamebryo 2.6 brings key upgrades to cross-platform support, more than 10 middleware partner integrations and major additions to the core technology. The company demonstrates the advantages of Gamebryo’s flexible architecture to rapidly bring innovations to the market by completing the new version in only 4 months.Gamebryo 2.6 adds features that serve the needs of studios while maintaining a focus on multi-platform, multi-genre and multi-core development. Upgrades to cross-platform support are concentrated on adding greater options for the Wii and PC DirectX10. The partner integrations ensure that top middleware from companies like NVIDIA and Softimage flawlessly operate in the Gamebryo pipeline. The additions to the core technology enable developers to obtain higher performance on all next-gen platforms. Read More.. | 2 Comments | |
| MirthKit releases first ever commercial game which includes source code | |
| Posted by: Curved Infinity Games at 12:27:25 PM | |
| From mirthkit.com... "Curved Infinity Games, through the MirthKit game platform, is proud to present the first ever commercial game to be released with full source code included. Finity Flight: Fight Back, the expansion to Curved Infinity Games' August release, Finity Flight, is the first direct hybridization of commercialism and open source philosophy. When a customer buys Fight Back for $11.99, they automatically download all of the game's source and assets." Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| Monday, November 3, 2008 | |
| The Daily GameDev.net | |
| Posted by: Promit Roy at 11:57:19 PM | |
| It's Tuesday, November 4th and this is the GO VOTE GameDev.Net Daily. If you're a US citizen and registered to vote, go vote. Voting's always been important, but everyone seems to agree that no matter what happens this cycle, it's going to be a historic race and election, and what is decided today will have an impact for more than just 4 or even 8 years. In a lot of places, lines are going to be long. Wait times are going to be long. The weather might not be that nice. People may even try to discourage you from voting because they believe you will vote against their interests. Don't let anything or anyone stop you. Take a DS, a PSP, a book, and an umbrella if you have to. Stay in line. Make your voice heard. Some of you don't know or care about the presidential race. I personally encourage you to pick a side and vote for one of the candidates, but even if you don't, go vote anyway. There's more on the ballot than just that. There's House and Senate races to be decided. Depending on where you live, there are probably referendums on other issues to be decided. (California, for example, has the infamous Proposition 8.) These parts of the ballot can be as important -- or much more so -- than the presidential race, so whether you're voting for a presidential candidate or not, make sure to enter a vote for those races as well. It's important enough that I've gone home today to vote, and mittens has agreed to forward this Daily for me. Okay, I've said my piece, so let's move on to news that is much closer to GameDev. Unfortunately, things aren't looking that good. Trent mentioned on Friday that EA decided to cut some jobs. THQ isn't doing well either; they are shutting down five studios. Juice Games is extant but taking a big hit. Of course, THQ is just one of many big game publishers who is cutting back, as both Sony and Nintendo have also pulled back their expectations for upcoming quarters. it probably won't be the last, either, so keep an eye out for lots of shuffling and consolidation in our industry. Keep in mind also that these are global events, not American ones. The bad news doesn't stop there, as it turns out. Wild Tangent is shutting down its internal studio as well. It's not exactly the biggest loss, as WildTangent's internal studio is small and hasn't done too much of note, but I don't think that will be much consolation to the people there or anywhere else who are losing their jobs. Of course it's not just our industry. People are scared and cutting back spending, and the retail industry is feeling it hard. Very, very hard. Admittedly, Circuit City is probably one of the weakest retailers out there, but shutting down 155 stores isn't a good thing no matter how you look at it. And that's heading into the holiday season, when things should be booming. It's a scant couple weeks to Black Friday. Apparently the plan is to try and bolster the remaining Circuit City stores before then to maximize revenue and profits. This may or may not be bad news, depending on who you are, but Microsoft's head of gaming in the UK has said that, at least in the UK, price drops are unlikely for a very long time. Obviously saying this is just good business sense, because if a price cut is coming soon, people will want to wait until after it to buy. At the same time, he's probably not being unreasonable. Remember that in the US the Arcade edition of the 360 is only $200, less than even the Wii. And that actually comes with (a little) storage, unlike the piece of junk Core edition that was available originally. The PS3 is still fairly pricey, and although its catalog of games is pretty good nowadays the 360 is still probably the strongest console in terms of variety. (Except all the non-music party games suck. What gives?) I mean, with the New Xbox Experience coming, you can even customize your own Mii and use it in game. Er, Miivatar. I mean, Avatar. Right. Avatar. I'll end today's Daily by pointing you all to Smart Voter. This site will let you find out what's on your ballot given your address, and hopefully you can take a little time to catch up on what's going on before heading out to the polling booths. Read More.. | 14 Comments | |
| Winners announced for the Golden Joystick Awards | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 9:07:13 PM | |
| E4.com launched a new category in this year's Golden Joystick Awards called 'Grand Master Flash' which invited web-based flash game developers to submit their completed flash games to E4.com before the winner was voted on by the gaming public. The votes have been counted and it has just been announced that the winner of the Grand Master Flash category who will receive £5,000 and a golden joystick is Goda Januskeviciute for 'Stickman Madness' an untextured wireframe 3D world full of stick characters, with charm, humour, and a large amount of cold blooded violence. Hit the jump for the full list of winners. Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| The Daily GameDev.net | |
| Posted by: Mike Stedman at 11:02:08 AM | |
| It's time once again for another week of the GDNet Daily; this week we have a special election theme. Americans are heading to the polls to elect their candidates, and while I want to try and keep this editorial free of any possible bias, don't make me sad again, America. I know where you live. Those of you who didn't get into the New Xbox Experience might not know what some of the new features are. Well, you can install games to your hard drive to reduce loading time. According to ill-reputed garbage rag Variety, it also somehow makes your game's visuals more vibrant. Presumably this upgrade "tightens up the graphics" by using the higher rotational velocity of the hard disk and the Coriolis effect. No word yet on whether or not the magical enhancement (codenamed "Placebo") also improves the quality of the gameplay; this may be Harvey Smith's plan for Invisible War after all. These feature has already apparently done wonders for Xbox Live Arcade, as low-rated shooter (and car) Yaris has been removed from XBLA. Are you in Seattle? Are you worried that Bethesda's next Fallout game will depict the remnants of Washington State, where upscale WASPs dressed in tattered vests comb the wasteland for delicious Starbucks? Put off that worry by enrolling in the Winter Mystery Project. Develop a prototype, submit it, get critical acclaim. It's easy and fun. If your kids are raving psychopaths after playing popular videogames, it's the videogames' fault. At least, that's what Iowa State University researcher Dr. Craig Anderson tells us. He goes on to say a lot of other things contribute to the creation of school shooters and goes to pains to express that videogames are not a sole cause, but honestly, your mom won't know the difference when Fox runs this later today. Bill Roper has always been one of those industry figures you can't help but admire, especially after he burns through several million dollars, fires a bunch of people and leaves his playerbase in the hands of random Koreans. So it's good to hear that he's bounced back, finding solace at Cryptic Studios, working on a game genre which has never ever failed -- the superhero MMO. No word yet on whether or not I'll ever let up on Bill, but a recent CNN poll indicated that I won't until he sends me free (unpoisoned) eclairs. Speaking of Hellgate, the aforementioned Koreans have promised to update the "world's best game" with a suite of new features. Apparently Koreans have very low standards in terms of best. Finally, before you go today, check out the Left 4 Dead intro and try not to buy the game. Bet you can't. Read More.. | 4 Comments | |
| Friday, October 31, 2008 | |
| The Daily GameDev.net | |
| Posted by: Trent Polack at 7:57:28 AM | |
| According to my GameDev.net Daily folder in Google Docs, this is my hundredth GameDev.net Daily. That's a lot. It's also Halloween; for everyone currently living on a college campus: I envy you. I no longer get to see exactly how many classical costumes have a "slutty" version. Electronic Arts had a bittersweet second fiscal quarter as they saw a 33% increase in revenue ($864M versus last year's $650M) as well as a rise in the amount of money lost (-$310M versus -$195M last year). As a result, EA came up with a cost reduction plan that which calls for a 6% reduction (about six-hundred employees) in the overall workforce across various parts of the company. EA spokeswoman Mariam Sughayer is quoted as saying, regarding the layoffs, "It's a global reduction, not just focused on one studio or one location, [...] The decisions that impact people's jobs are always extremely tough, but all the people affected will be treated appropriately and respectfully, with the appropriate severance package based on their time at the company and other mitigating factors." According to source Gamasutra, Electronic Arts also cited "a 4 point year-over-year increase in aggregated Metacritic scores on both Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3." I like Dead Space. Harmonix and MTV announced yesterday that there will be a game based around songs by The Beatles. Harmonix's Alex Rigopoulos says of the game that "We have been up and running on this project for some time now... and I want to make it clear that this game is not just a Rock Band song expansion pack. [...] It will be a new, full-blown, custom game title production built from the ground up." I think that's about all there really is to say about this. Two of the really great-looking games that were lost in the hustle and bustle-filled Vivendi/Activision merger were Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena and Ghostbusters: The Game. Well, thankfully, it is rumored that both Riddick and Ghostbusters have found a new publisher in Atari. Assault on Dark Athena is an enhanced remake of the 2004 Xbox/PC game The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay and was a game that, unlike the Chronicles of Riddick movie, was absolutely exceptional. The surpisingly promising Ghostbusters game, being developed by Terminal Reality, was also in limbo after the merger and, despite being as-of-yet unconfirmed, seems likely to have been picked up by Atari as well. Sarah Palin and Barack Obama are making a special appearance in a recently released game. And I don't just mean in the critically acclaimed blockbuster title The Political Machine 2008 (now available in stores!). I mean that Governor Palin and Senator Obama are soon going to be playable characters in... Mercenaries 2? As for me, I'm experiencing a great deal of hardship right now. My poor XNA game had to be put on hold while I'm forced to suffer through some of the year's best games like Far Cry 2, LittleBigPlanet, and Fallout 3. I had the painful journey through my first playthrough of Fable 2 on Sunday and, though excellent, really seems like a game that makes the "goody goody" path boring while the evil players have all the fun (a theory I will test in a couple months). Far Cry 2, LittleBigPlanet, and Fallout 3, though, are all in a class of their own. They sit on a decadent chair high up in an ivory tower as they glance with pride upon every other game on the shelves right now. Sometimes they talk to each other, but they mostly end up just pointing out how awesome they are and go back to eating grapes fed to them by beautiful booth babes. I like video games. Read More.. | 7 Comments | |
| Thursday, October 30, 2008 | |
| Weekend Reading: Tales from Journal Land | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 10:02:09 PM | |
| I'm gone for an early weekend, luckily I remembered today that I wouldn't be able to do this tomorrow! Any Thursday journals that I missed I will cover next week if need be so don't worry. Happy Halloween!! Journal Land Pick of the Week Journal of Ysaneya - he's back, and the post is as epic as ever with a bit of parallelism thrown in regarding last week's featured entry as Ysaneya also takes advantage of Voronoi diagrams in his new implementation of planetary generation. He's also thrown most of it at the GPU instead of the CPU, that bringing about its own host of hardware support issues. But the benefits were ample and he demonstrates with pretty pictures and some source snippets as he creates rivers and craters for his worlds. Forget the game, I'd just have fun zooming in on random planets and exploring. Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| REGISTRATION NOW OPEN FOR THE 2009 GAME DEVELOPERS CONFERENCE | |
| Posted by: Tiffany Leigh Smith at 3:11:22 PM | |
 SAN FRANCISCO—October 30, 2008— The Game Developers Conference® (GDC), returns this year to the Moscone Center in San Francisco with world-class programming for the art, science and business of developing digital entertainment. This year’s conference produced by the Think Services Game Group features five days of top selected keynotes, sessions, panel discussions, and roundtables aimed at furthering the skills and opportunities for game developers and business.Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| Wednesday, October 29, 2008 | |
| Genetica 3.0 Has Been Released | |
| Posted by: CJO at 4:46:31 PM | |
| Spiral Graphics Inc. has announced the immediate availability of Genetica 3.0, the latest version of its popular seamless texture, animation, and HDRI environment map editor. The new version, which includes more than a thousand royalty-free presets, represents the largest upgrade yet in the product's history. A demo is available here. Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| The Daily GameDev.Net | |
| Posted by: Tiffany Leigh Smith at 2:30:13 PM | |
| The GDNet daily is decidedly short and semi-sweet today, since I wrote one out once only to have it swallowed by a WordPad unhandled exception. I know, I know, Word Pad, bad idea. Lesson learned. Some good news from Sony today, they are finally relaxing content approval for PS2 development, which will make it much easier for developers to create titles for the console. SCEE developer relations manager George Bain confirmed it recently and indicated that the move was taken as a means to encourage local developers in emerging markets such as Russia and India. Also, there will no longer be any licensing fees involved in becoming a PS2 developer. Although it will still be necessary to purchase development kits, Bain added that Sony sometimes loan out the kits which usually run at $10K or developers have the option of using the PS2 test kit instead which only costs $1K. Small price to pay to give your project a chance to make it to console. WOW has hit the 11 million subscriber mark recently! Apparently the release of the two MMOs which have been billed as rivals ; Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures and Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, have done nothing to slow down the growth of WOW's user base. This news comes just a few weeks before the release of the second expansion pack for the MMO, Wrath of the Lich King, which is coming on November 13. I vote Blizzard for US president! Lets get some Savvy buckets of awesome behind this fiscal crisis. ;) In what has been touted as a move to compete with the big guy, Gamescom organizers have announced their plans to run their event at the same time as the next Leipzig Games Convention.The video games trade fair was going to take place in September, but has now been moved to August where it will clash with the Games Convention. That should make for an interesting week, for those who need to attend both, at least people wont have to make two trips out. The UK Games Industry is adopting a whole new ratings system after admitting recently that the current PEGI system is somewhat flawed due to lack of recognition of the symbols. The new system will be a traffic light system. ELSPA has not detailed when the system will come into effect, or whether the PEGI imagery will be dropped from packaging entirely. I'm all for dumbing it down.. And last but certainly not least, here's a review of Fallout 3, which was released yesterday: http://www.gametrailers.com/player/42068.html ( Europe and Australia release on October 30, and October 31 in the UK). Read More.. | 4 Comments | |
| Tuesday, October 28, 2008 | |
| LOGIN Conference Ready to Energize Online Game Industry Leaders in 2009 | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 10:56:35 AM | |
| Evergreen Events has established a tradition of excellence hosting leaders and influencers in the online games industry at its annual conferences. Beginning in 2006 with the Global Games Summit, and continuing in 2007 and 2008, with OGDC and the ION Game Conference respectively, the tradition is set to continue in 2009 with the LOGIN Conference. LOGIN 2009 brings together three years of feedback from the community and the expertise of an industry leading advisory board to create an innovative event designed to facilitate education, networking, and entertainment for both business and development professionals. LOGIN 2009 will be held May 11th-14th 2009 in Seattle, Washington at the fantastic Seattle Marriott Waterfront Hotel. Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| The Daily GameDev.Net | |
| Posted by: Promit Roy at 10:23:56 AM | |
| I'm afraid I have a Decidedly Un-snarky GameDev.Net Daily today, because first of all most of the news simply isn't that interesting, and second my apartment building lost a package that I was planning to use today. Let's get on with it, shall we? Probably the most interesting bit of news is that THQ is suing Activision over cover art. Their complaint is that the packaging for Activision's Baha 100 is too close to THQ's Baja: Edge of Control. And honestly, taking a look at the two covers, I'm inclined to agree. They're both similar games, so it's not that surprising to feature similar elements. Looking at these though...this isn't just similar elements. They're basically portraying a redrawn version of the same exact scene. Even the angle of the text is the same, for god's sake. Even if we give Activison the benefit of the doubt and assume they didn't know and the similarity is purely an accident, THQ contacted them about it beforehand and Activision told them to get lost. Personally, I go by one simple test. If I told a friend/family member I wanted them to get me Baja: Edge of Control, which game would I be most likely to end up with? Somehow I don't think the THQ title I asked for will be the one in my hands. Nintendo continues to enjoy an altogether fairly decent run in the home console market, by which of course I mean they have crushed and dominated it solidly and indisputably, no matter wheter or not you personally actually like the Wii. Just how well are they doing? Well, they might not meet holiday demand, two years after its release. Even though production is up 33%, it's still not predicted to be enough. I for one am looking forward to seeing ridiculous eBay prices as Christmas nears, not to mention crazy people storming stores on Black Friday because they don't have lives or sanity. There's some happenings on the political front too. The California video game law that was ruled unconstitutional last year is now back for appeal. I'd love to draw some parallels between this stuff and the furor over Rock n Roll back when that happened mid last century, but unfortunately I don't actually know much about all that. Still, I figure every generation has its scapegoat. At the same time, I don't necessarily believe that the attempt to legislate this stuff is wrong -- it's just misguided and overly broad, because the people trying to push it through basically have their own agendas about keeping anything they don't like out of the hands of consumers. Keep in mind that there's no legal requirement that says minors can't watch R rated movies. The movie theaters don't let kids in because it's commonly agreed not to do so. Most video game retailers are the same way, and I've been and SHOULD be carded buying M rated games. We just need to make sure everyone is on board and that parents don't blindly buy games for their kids without being aware of the issues. It's really exactly the same as with movies, and the courts have thankfully done a good job of killing these bogus laws. And a short one -- LittleBigPlanet's servers are down. I don't personally have a PS3, but the thought of all those poor sackboys stuck and lonely on their own consoles makes me sad. I'll close out the day with a Red Alert 3 trailer. I love that game. Read More.. | 9 Comments | |
| New Chairperson for IGDA Women in Games Special Interest Group | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 1:23:05 AM | |
 The Women in Games Special Interest Group of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) has announced their new Chairperson, Fiona Cherbak, a game industry marketing and human resources executive. Committed to supporting women in games, the IGDA Women in Games Special Interest Group is a sub-organization of the International Game Developers Association.Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| Monday, October 27, 2008 | |
| The Daily GameDev.net | |
| Posted by: Mike Stedman at 10:27:38 AM | |
| Throughout history, the Daily has followed adventurers, explorers and rogues on their journeys. Christopher Columbus himself was covered in an episode of Ye Olde GDNet Yearly which made light of his embarrassing .plan update regarding project renaming. Unpopular Diabloesque Hellgate: London will be closing up around February 2009, no doubt sending gold sellers and brick-and-mortar retailers stuck with unsold inventory into a panic. Those same gold sellers will most likely be crying, as Mythic (not to be confused with Hellgate's more popular sibling, Mythos) has been getting their ban on. Not only that, but being detected as a gold spammer launches a bounty hunt to run the unsuspecting victim down and brutalize him. As a moderator, I completely support this decision and encourage its adoption for the GDNet v5 codebase. I suspect we've talked about Bioware's Star Wars MMO previously in this column, but for the sake of repetition, here are some more details. From what I can see, new core features include not being World of Warcraft, seriously not being World of Warcraft, and stop comparing us to World of Warcraft you jerks. Star Wars Galaxies will continue, but we'll see how long that goes for. In any event, you should stop playing MMORPGs and instead opt for quality single player content like Call of Duty: World at War, which now features zombies. This improves the game (by rough estimate) by over 1100%, and turns it from "just another WWII shooter" to "just another WWII shooter with the ravenous hordes of the undead." No word yet on a Bruce Campbell cameo. In semi-indie news, N+ porthouse Slick Entertainment have announced their new game, Scrap Metal, which looks like Rock & Roll Racing on some form of illegal street drug. Excellent. Recent events have prevented me from taking place in the TIGSource Commonplace Book Competition, which I've mentioned previously. However, my life hasn't stopped other people from molesting Lovecraft's work, and disturbing titles such as Rat King and The Cursed Rock are under rapid development. Before you go today, I want you to reflect on how the world's heaviest man can find a girlfriend. Read More.. | 6 Comments | |
| Friday, October 24, 2008 | |
| Weekend Reading: Tales from Journal Land | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 2:40:57 PM | |
| Journal Land Pick of the Week ... - while to artists it may seem like a totally round-about process, JTippetts has crafted some source (included) that generates what is known as a Voronoi diagram from which he takes into an image editor (in his case GIMP) and through a few steps of kneading and rolling, churns out a very passable stone floor texture... that tiles. Sweet. Pretty cool for us who can't draw worth a crap (like me) Read More.. | 7 Comments | |
| Dubai World Game Expo Announced the name of speaker from Sony Computer Entertainment | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 12:31:53 PM | |
| Today, the organizer of Dubai World Game Expo (DWGE) announced that Albert Marshall, Legal and Business Affairs Manager - Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (SCEE) will deliver speech at Game Anti-piracy Session along with Scott Butler, CEO - Arabian Anti-piracy Alliance (AAA) during the Dubai World Game Summit 2008 to be held at Dubai International Convention & Exhibition Centre in United Arab Emirates from 28 – 30 October, 2008 Read More.. | 1 Comments | |
| The Daily GameDev.net | |
| Posted by: Trent Polack at 7:14:57 AM | |
| Other than the new/old/new E3 news it's been a pretty quiet week within the game industry. Here is your completely non-scandalous news complete with a former Activision employee turned Playboy Playmate. That's what we in the writing biz call a very cheap hook. Sony is looking to close its calendar 2008 year with net profits 38% lower than expected. Quoting source Shacknews since I'm not a financial analyst and don't keep close tabs on the numerical specifics of various companies, "Video games are part of Sony's problem, as the games division has failed to recoup the PlayStation 3's $3 billion development cost and hardware losses despite what Forbes refers to as "early 2008 promises of profits."" The most notable portion of this story comes from a quote that a Tokyo financial analyst gave to Forbes: "This is just the beginning of a big earnings collapse, [...] Given the track record of this company, it will under-deliver all the way." Eek. Good Old Games is now open to the public after being in a closed "beta" for the past few weeks. The site is reportedly in an open beta format which, as far as I can tell, simply means that CD Projekt is taking a page from Google's playbook. From the site: "From today on, GOG.com is officially available to every classic PC games fan that wants to satisfy his need for DRM-free Good Old Games. "The success of the Early Access Beta showed us that there is huge demand for DRM-free classic PC games, and it helped us to prepare the site for the public launch. We are endlessly grateful to the users for their support and assistance," said Adam Oldakowski, Managing Director of GOG.com. Don't wait, create your GOG.com account and dive into the world of classic PC gaming." Grace Kim's career has taken a turn from ex-Activision PR lead for Guitar Hero to Playboy's Miss November. Which is good and well on its own, but I actually like this quote the most: "I love the gaming industry, I really do [...] It's so cool, and everyone is so passionate, and you get to test out the prototypes but, then, the guys, if they find out a co-worker's gonna be in Playboy... you know, they're gonna act a little bit weird." Given some of the people I know in the industry, a "bit weird" is probably Understatement of the Month for November. The best part of the story is still to come: "In fact, the guitar Grace posed with in her Playboy pictorial -- by now on newsstands [...], is her own Fender Stratocaster made by Harmonix exclusively for the original Rock Band." That's right. She quit her job at Activision and posed in Playboy with Rock Band peripherals. I love it. I love it so much. I wasn't going to mention my tales of SOCOM: Confrontation (Playstation 3), but Drew mentioned it so I might as well follow-up. It's a sad day for console gaming when a new game launch is riddled with problems like those described on the game's site and in the game reviews. Having played the game, I can say with a relatively high amount of confidence that had the game not been so buggy and unfinished in its release state that every single review would be approximately twenty-thirty points higher (if not more). Here's a segment from the 1Up Review: "I've already talked about the rampant problems with getting into the game at all; imagine spending hours just trying to log in and finally joining a game successfully, only to discover that the game locks up your PS3 after just a couple of rounds of play. Or to get into a game, only to find yourself being shot through walls or by apparently invisible enemies, as the servers scramble to update the location of all the players. Or to finally complete a game and discover none of your statistics were recorded." Since this is the weekend Daily, I like to try and provide at least one news story that is good for discussion. This time it's this: what do you guys think of a console game shipping with as many problems as one like SOCOM: Confrontation has? Even most PC games are able to escape these amount of problems; one of the benefits of a closed console system is that usually gamers can avoid such troubles. Also: Fable 2 and Far Cry 2. Buy them if you love fun. Read More.. | 7 Comments | |
| Thursday, October 23, 2008 | |
| The Daily GameDev.Net | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 8:02:39 AM | |
| Emmanuel reported in AFK on Monday so I've picked up the role of Thursday GDNet Daily Editor for this week. Let's get to it: Opinion: E3 - Back To The Bad Old Days? So, I've never been to E3 and therefore can't comment myself much on all the hubbub surrounding the event lately, but luckily Christian Nutt over at Gamasutra can take us all back to the heyday of E3 and let us in on why this reversion to old form may not be what the event needs to continue to survive. What say you, dear readers? Have any of you been to E3 both in the past and in its current "reformed" state? Continued strife over the LittleBigPlanet recall. While it seems that Phil Harrison agrees with Sony's decision to yank the very-much-anticipated LBP off store shelves, as reported by Ravuya on Monday, on the flip-side of all this we hear from an Islamic group that has spoken out against Sony, calling the move "censorship". And of course, sitting in the middle of this whole mess is the musician that wrote the song, who talked to MTV Multiplayer (as reported by Gamasutra) and is trying to make sense of it all, saying that his lyrics would be considered "quite normal" in his country in Mali. The best part? Despite this whole escapade people have still managed to turn a profit off of it. I don't know why I'm surprised. Analysts say "more peripherals", retailers say "uh, no". For retailers, it's all about the shelf space. The more shelf space, the more product that they can display and thus move into the hands of consumers (cha-ching). Therefore it's no surprise that they're beginning to get rather fed up with these huge game bundles taking up their precious spaces. We won't name any names but their initails are Rock Band and Guitar Hero: World Tour. If that's not enough, soon they'll need to make more room for skateboard peripherals (possibly). Then again, they could just make some extra space by putting a couple dozen copies of Madden and FIFA back in the stock room as music games overtake sports games in popularity. 3D Realms: "We To close, and because I'm a total Star Wars fanboy, here's what is known so far for Bioware's recently announced KOTOR MMO. If you want more details, I'm afraid you'll just have to wait... or kidnap a certain Bioware employee who resides here for questioning... And, since I predict that mittens is going to rant tomorrow about SOCOM's terrible game launch, which has made some small waves in the newsphere and big ones on his twitter feed, here are 10 more ways that things can go bad to get you all prepped. Read More.. | 5 Comments | |
| Wednesday, October 22, 2008 | |
| The Daily GameDev.Net | |
| Posted by: Tiffany Leigh Smith at 11:14:25 AM | |
| A small New Zealand developer, Sidhe Interactive, recently managed to aquire funding from the New Zeland TechNZ agency, in order to create a new game development framework. Sidhe Interactive is best known for the racing/puzzle hybrid GripShift, and licensed Jackass games, will use the funding to create a new game development framework intended to aid multiplatform development, saving wasted man hours of programming and reducing platform compliance issues on future projects. Sidhe Interactive says they are confident they're "addressing one of the largest issues for this and future generations of game development and the TechNZ funding will enable us to reach our goals faster". This is good news for Indy's looking for an alternate source of funding, now just to find out if there is a similar agency for the US. Unity has been released for iPhone development! Unfortunately for those of us who don't own a Mac, the development environment only works on the Mac, but a Windows version is said to be in the works. A precise release date for the Windows compatible version is yet to be decided. The iPhone license is available on two levels, either as a full license for $1499, or as a basic edition including a Unity splash screen for $399. Amazon.com have acquired PC developer and casual games portal, Reflexive for an unspecified amount of money. The company's already established distribution network is going to get a huge leg-up by Amazons own super distribution channel. Reflexive say that they "intend to provide the best distribution platform anywhere, and to continue working openly with all the participants of the casual games space." Are Amazon intending to create a Steam like service? Potentially adding a game portal portion to their already diverse Amazon Web Services, only time will tell. To wrap up today's daily here's a video of the upcoming Nintedo Wii title, Wii Music. The final version of Wii music will be released in the US this week as a Wii Remote and Nunchuk-controlled free-form musical creation tool with an emphasis on improvisation and multiplayer play. Read More.. | 1 Comments | |
| Tuesday, October 21, 2008 | |
| The Daily GameDev.Net | |
| Posted by: Promit Roy at 9:54:20 AM | |
| You ---s can enjoy today's Totally ----ed up GameDev.Net Daily, because you're all a bunch of -------s anyway. There's no ----ing way these teams are fair anyway, you ---- ---s with your ----ing ----s. That's what today's Daily intro blurb might sound like over Xbox Live in the not too distant future. You see, it seems that Microsoft has patented real time censoring of audio streams. I haven't READ the patent, since technical diligence isn't part of my responsibility in writing these dailies. However, it seems reasonable to assume that Microsoft will use this technology to take over the entire world by removing the ability of everyone to anonymously curse each other out and use racial epithets that would land you in the hospital if uttered out loud in my home town of Baltimore. That, or it will encourage the creation of newer, ever more creative racist slurs and sexual metaphors that make even less sense. God----ed blorkers. The Max Payne movie is finally out, and I have to warn those of you with weak constitutions that this might be a shock. Some people think it sucks. A bad video game movie. Inconceivable. I mean come on, the original Super Mario Bros was a miraculous triumphant pinnacle of film making. Where did we go wrong? Edge Magazine talked to the CEO of 3D Realms (they're the guys who made the game), and he is not thrilled by the movie, saying that "there are several fundamental story flaws [...] in the film that have me shaking my head in bewilderment[...]". He enumerates a number of complaints with the movie, although according to the article they're still pushing forward with a Duke Nukem movie. Maybe 3D Realms has learned to vet the stuff people do with their hard earned IP and will ensure that the Duke movie has all the R-rated stripper and killing action that it's supposed to. Then again they're still making Duke Nukem Forever, so crediting them with the ability for basic logic might be overly optimistic. Video games can harm a lot of people, as you all know since you're the vile villains intent on violation the previously vivacious lives of...okay, I'll stop the V for Vendetta thing now. As I was saying, you're all evil for making video games. Dr Phil was talking about it just yesterday. But video games have farther reaching consequences than that. It seems that they're a major hazard to pets. Of particular interest is that the Nintendo Wii and DS are amongst the most dangerous, along with iPods. Literally billions of pets are in mortal danger every second of their lives. Of course, since the article mentions a cat who tried to sniff a candle and an underwear eating dog, it's unfortunate that the survey results are not readily available. That's enough for now. I have to go get my car worked on. In the meantime, I'm going to channel mittens, because I know he'd want these mentioned. Fable 2 is out. Far Cry 2 is out. Go play them. Read More.. | 12 Comments | |
| Monday, October 20, 2008 | |
| The Daily GameDev.net | |
| Posted by: Mike Stedman at 11:11:36 AM | |
| Another week of Dailies begins now. Well, it already began, before this sentence. Kind of up in the headline region. You know what? Just back off, alright? I'm only a colour paragraph. I pay the rent around here, just like everyone else. First off is a story which emerged late Friday, somewhat after our illustrious Friday Daily writer had retired to the local boozatorium. Sony has recalled and delayed the highly anticipated physically-accurate dong simulator Little Big Planet as some of the music tracks reportedly contain bits from the Quran. This means two things: one, that fundamentalist religions can alter the content of secular media, and two, any of the recalled copies of LBP are going to fetch a buttload on eBay in 10 years. The delay will also give Sony more time to come up with a better terms of service so they can steal your penis levels. The horror. Speaking of horror and penises, yet another TIGSource competition is on its way to you; from last Friday to November 27, you too can participate in the Commonplace Book Competition. If you like Lovecraft, then you should take it upon yourself to steal his lesser ideas wholesale and turn them into flashing amusements that will make him turn in his grave. I can't wait to see some of the eldritch horrors unleashed by the Tigers. If you're looking forward to Cave Story for the Wii, you can check out this interview which should fill you in more about the artistic alterations to the game, as well as its relation to Pixel and the price point. It's shaping up to be a worthwhile port, and it has the backing of its original developer, unlike certain other indie game console ports. I'd say it's definitely worth the price they're asking. In other industry news, Valve's delay on Episode 3 is completely understandable, considering their recent disaster with bringing advertorial art film Meet the Sandvich to the silver screen. This week is going to be another rough one for your pocketbook. Malaria simulator Far Cry 2 as well as dog abuse simulator Fable 2 are out. This means that you should really get to finishing all those games you bought last week. Finally, if you live in England, you should look out for a simulacrum of Paul McCartney's severed head, just in time for Halloween. Read More.. | 2 Comments | |
| New StemCell Game Engine licensing offer - Indie license type | |
| Posted by: DevCell Software at 5:49:39 AM | |
| DevCell Software is proud to announce a new licensing offer for Indie game developers. All the details about the Indie licensing conditions are available at : http://www.devcellsoftware.com/sales.php Read More.. | 1 Comments | |
| Friday, October 17, 2008 | |
| Weekend Reading: Tales from Journal Land | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 12:37:02 PM | |
| I'm going to not talk anymore, unless I have something worthwhile to say... instead from now on I'm ceding my ramblings to the Pick of the Week here on the front page. Maybe I'll ramble on after the jump. Or maybe not. Anyways here's your... Journal Land Pick of the Week The Bag of Holding - I want people to pay close attention to what's going on here. ApochPiQ is starting a series of tutorials on designing a robust memory management system for C++ and he's doing it in his journal. Not as a featured Article. This will be significant as we move on to V5, so obviously this post lands the top spot for this week. Soon we'll have a better way to publish peices like this without me having to dig them up for you! Oh and don't miss out on ApochPiQ's tips and tricks for memory management in an earlier post this week. Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| Leipziger Messe Boss Opens Italy's First Developer Conference | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 12:01:30 PM | |
| An Italian premiere: Italy's first developer conference for video games is being held in Milan on 21 and 22 November 2008. The Italian Videogame Developers Conference (IVDC) provides professionals from the Italian game industry with a get-together where they can find out about the latest trends and market developments. The event will be opened by Wolfgang Marzin, CEO of the Leipziger Messe and organiser of the world's biggest gaming fair, the GC – Games Convention in Leipzig. Read More.. | 11 Comments | |
| The Daily GameDev.net | |
| Posted by: Trent Polack at 8:38:44 AM | |
| Haaaaaaay. The New York Police Union doesn't want kids playing Saints Row 2 saying "These horrible and violent video games desensitize young people to violence while encouraging depravity [and] immorality, while glorifying criminal behavior." I absolutely agree: I don't want kids playing Saints Row 2 either but I'm all for adults playing the game. I know I am right now. I'm actually really enjoying playing Saints Row 2 and, to add to that, I have yet to John Riccitiello, the CEO of Electronic Arts, must be playing the part of the gaming news prostitute as he's been the topic of at least one story per day for the last week and a half or so but, anyway, he also was all for mirrors and risks in regards to Mirror's Edge. Quoting source Shacknews in regards for Riccitiello pushing for a third-person perspective in Mirror's Edge: ""I was really wrong about the third-person thing," [Riccitiello] admitted in the wake of rising hype for the game. But he got what he wanted in the concession of adding mirrors. "I got mirrors so you can see [Faith, the game's protagonist]."" Riccitiello also made a point of referencing Electronic Arts' recent push for increased creativity in its game releases throughout the year, citing games like Mirror's Edge and Dead Space as containing "a degree of risk for a large publisher" and pointing towards the publishing deal with Grasshopper Manufacturer as an example of a deal that he" agonized about [...] a little bit." In the end, though, Riccitiello says "As a general thesis, I talk a lot about trusting creative people and supporting them" and, for such a statement, he should be appreciated amidst the game industry. Under the helm of Riccitiello, Electronic Arts has done a great deal of reinvention and, as a result, have been an absolute powerhouse within the industry this year between EA Partners and EA Blueprint in terms of game development and then releasing a host of M-rated new properties like Dead Space and Army of Two and then other new games like Mirror's Edge, skate., and Spore. To riff off my Daily cohert Tiffany Smith's recent GameDev.net Daily; Riccitiello had a quote saying that someone would "be hard pressed to go to a forum and not see a lot of people defending EA and its products." If this isn't true now, then I don't think gamers deserve the kinds of excellent games that the publisher has been putting out. Readers may retort with a line nerdraging against the DRM found in Spore and Mass Effect but, and I say this as someone who is against the whole idea of DRM, that's the kind of thing that I'm willing to put up with if the publisher is making good games. Electronic Arts is an absolutely enormous, behemoth of a game publisher and they, being a public company, also have to reassure their shareholders that they are making strides to protect their investments. DRM isn't a solution to piracy, of course, and it's a pretty ugly attempt to curb piracy but, in the end, the games are what matter. In other news, this month's NPD numbers have been released for console sales and game sales. The console numbers shouldn't be surprising; Nintendo's Wii is reigning supreme once aga--yawn. The game sales are more interesting as LucasArts makes a strong showing with Star Wars: The Force Unleashed popping up on the list three times for its Xbox 360 incarnation (#1), PS3 SKU (#5), and Wii release (#9). Mercenaries 2 also managed to make a #6 showing for the Xbox 360 with all of its explodey goodness. And in what should be a surprise to no one, Valve doesn't really get the episodic part of episodic content. I hope we get another Orange Box worth of games when Episode 3 is released. That would be neat. I had an entire paragraph for this Daily dedicated to opinion; that's why I'm an innovator. Also, I have today off from work so I'm going to be playing Dead Space, Saints Row 2, and SOCOM: Confrontation (maybe?) all day. Oh, yeah. Read More.. | 9 Comments | |
| Thursday, October 16, 2008 | |
| Frank Sliwka to organise 2009 developer conference as part of gamescom in Cologne | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 7:11:46 PM | |
| Programme highlight: a meeting place for over 1000 developers of games from around the world. The industry and trade fair expert is also working on the expansion and strategic development of gamescom Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| The Daily GameDev.Net | |
| Posted by: Emmanuel Deloget at 7:06:47 PM | |
| I feel that some of the early week dailies are more entitled to developers than mine -- where I tend to rant more about games and industry news. I don't know if you like it. If you don't, this is not good, because there is no chance I will change that. No daily is even remotely full if I can't talk about DRMs thus let's begin with this. So, if you're a game publisher and want to have a line in any of my dailies, it's in fact very easy: you just have to say either "my DRM is rock solid and will annoy you to the best of our abilities" or, on the contrary "my DRM will probably let you play without telling you you're a pirate, at least not that often". Good thing is that today, we get both: FraCry 2 will use SECUROM (because, you know, gamers love it. Probably) and Diablo III's most effective DRM will be battle.net. I don't know for you, but I certainly prefer SECUROM. There is no way I can install a game on my PC and then play. No way. I have no time for this (if I had time, you'd have dailies earlier in the day). So go for FarCry 2. Speaking of class actions (what? yes, I was speaking of class actions. Read again), Microsoft is finally sued for their failure to deliver a console system that doesn't need to be sent back to customer service every two weeks. That's a long link. Customers decided to attack Microsoft because they are sure that MS knew very well that the RROD was a widely spread problem - but decided to ignore it in order to compete against the PS3 and the Wii. Things like this happen only in California - don't know why, but it seems that if MS loose, it will be forced to institute a refund programme in California. So if you had the problem and went into many troubles to get your working XBox360 back, you now have a chance to get a hefty refund of 800 points. In the series "I have some bits of money, what could I do with that?", let me introduce you our well known Richard "Lord British" Garriot. There is little doubt that the guy have loads of money. There is also little doubt that the guy don't know what he can do with it. I have many ideas on the subject (some of them involving my own bank account, which is depressively low, but most of them are more or less about helping people that are experiencing small problems like hunger, illness, or death around the world. But the idea with my bank account is not totally rejected), but it seems that these ideas are not that interesting when you compare them to exploring space in a 40kg suit. Now, that could be quite fun: according to hos own words, he will bring Tabula Rasa and the game will be "launched into outer space" -- I suggest him to just play the game, as there is no way to predict where the game box will land if he throws it from the shuttle. Finally, and because I can't let you go without giving you a link to some superior humor, let's try to answer this question: how many Japanese gamers would cry while playing, and what kind of games make them cry?. Read More.. | 6 Comments | |
| Wednesday, October 15, 2008 | |
| The Daily GameDev.Net | |
| Posted by: Tiffany Leigh Smith at 1:34:24 PM | |
| I apologize for the late posting today, I had my daily ready but when I went to post it I couldn’t find Gamedev! I haven’t had any word on why Gamedev.net was down this morning but it looks like the little Mice resumed their positions at their respective cogs and we are all back up and running smoothly. I don’t want to delay your wait any longer so here’s your somewhat straight-to-the-point Wednesday GameDev.Net Daily. Following all the DRM and Spore hooplah, John Riccitiello, EA CEO says he personally hates DRM and equates it to having to lock up your house or car (which seems like an interesting comparison), in a recent interview with Gamasutra. Also in the interview he mentions that although a year and a half ago EA was well hated, he says nowadays you’ll “be hard pressed to go to a forum and not see a lot of people defending EA and its products.” Hrmm, I’m wondering which websites he’s visiting. Sony Computer Entertainment America have announced the launch of their own PlayStation YouTube channel. The channel will launch today and deliver video content to the platform's community worldwide. It will offer fans access to new trailers and game footage, interviews with publishers and developers, share user-generated content and participate in promotions and contests. Sony also revealed that it plans to evolve the channel over time, starting with features and promotions for its top games and eventually developing in a hub for user-generated content. For those just breaking in to the industry, BAFTA is set to offer two days of BAFTA surgeries, where industry professionals will offer advice to those seeking employment in the games industry. Offering practical advice to small groups of four students or career starters at a time. They are also currently asking for help from established professionals in design, music, programming and art. Also for those who are just breaking in, GameCareerGuide has just posted an article for aspiring game developers, on why it is critical for designers to think beyond their own preferences about why other people choose to play games. Game designer and educator Dr. Lewis Pulsipher examines that question, which all game designers must ask themselves to expand beyond their own tastes. He also cycles through some of the more popular answers other game designers and theorists have come up with. I’ll leave you today with this game trailer for Gears of War 2 and would love to hear your thoughts. Read More.. | 25 Comments | |
