Owner: Game Musings URL:www.gamemusings.com Join Date: Sun, 22 Apr 2007 16:06:43 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: A look at the games industry by a veteran game developer. Site statistics:Click here
Casual Game Wiki 2007-04-14 12:26:00 Hot on the heels of the Indie Game Wiki
comes the Casual
Game Wiki.
It's a growing site where you can add in your game details, articles, information on companies, publishers, definitions - anything relating to casual games.
Go on, check it out now!
Indie Game Wiki 2007-04-12 12:40:00 Indie Game Developer's Podcast has created an indie game wiki.
You can list your games, your game studios and your post-mortems. It's early days so there's not a great deal of content up yet, but it's a great idea to help centralize a lot of indie developer info.
Go check it out here:
http://indiegamepod.com/indiegamewiki/index.php Read more:Indie
, Wiki
Brainiversity Sneak Peek 1 2007-04-09 00:13:00 The game is pretty solid. The only thing left to do is the balancing of the grading system - which I'm doing with the help of beta testers. I'm also working on the Brainiversity web site which will go live when the game launches.
If you signed up for the second round of beta testing, the latest build should be available later this week - so expect an email soon.
If you'd like to sign up to
Beta Testers Wanted! 2007-04-04 13:03:00 I’m opening up a second round of beta testing for my new casual game.
If you're interested in testing please email john AT redspritestudios DOT com.
It's a brain training style game and I'm looking for people to provide feedback and help adjust the game's grading system.
Thanks,
John Read more:Beta Testers
Game On! 2007-04-03 13:23:00 I did my Game On! talk at the Kelvin Grove Urban Village today.
The talk was about how now is an awesome time to be making games - on all platforms. I focused on the independent side of things, covering casual and indie gaming - with examples of successful games made with small teams.
I wanted to show students how they can make a game on a shoestring (hey, if you're reading this, then you
GO 3 2007-04-01 12:42:00 I got home from from GO3 early yesterday morning. I only got to spend Friday at the conference as I had a wedding to attend on Saturday. The wedding went really well - congratulations to Rob and Trudy!!!
However the limited time I spent at GO3 was great fun. I got to meet Masaya Matsuura, Hideo Kojima and Tetsuya Mizuguchi who are all really nice guys and are true "rock stars" of the games
In Beta! 2007-03-27 22:39:00 I've just hit Beta with the new casual game. If you haven't signed up for the Beta yet (you would have received an invite if you subscribed to the Casual Games Arcade newsletter) don't worry... depending on the initial test results I may make an open call on my blog here.
As for the name and details of the game? Stay tuned for more information in the next few weeks!
Upcoming Talks 2007-03-18 12:06:00 I've got a busy month coming up.
I'll be speaking at the GO3 conference in Perth, Australia - talking about how Pandemic Studios localized Destroy All Humans! for the Japanese market (and debuted at number 2 in the PS2 charts too boot!). This talk is being co-authored by Gary Ireland, the localization producer. That's on the 31st of March - check out the official GO3 site for more information Read more:Upcoming
Signed, Sealed and Soon To Be Delivered 2007-03-15 21:41:00 I'm just about to hit Beta and I've already signed my latest casual game!
That's such a nice feeling . The company distributing it does an awesome job so the title will have great penetration to players. I'll post more info about the game once it's about to ship. Read more:Delivered
, Sealed
, Signed
Getting Feedback 2007-02-27 13:39:00 My brother-in-law doesn't play games. So when I showed him the Alpha build of my latest casual game I was excited to see him start playing the game and instantly "get it". But what was really cool was that he didn't read the instructions (just like the average player) yet knew exactly what to do. And he kept playing without me forcing him to.
Now that's great feedback.
Still, I'm about to Read more:Feedback
Go, Go, Go! 2007-02-17 00:23:00 GO3 is a new gaming conference kicking off in Perth, Australia this year. It's aimed at industry people as well game players - and features a 3 day expo showcasing games and a 2 day conference featuring some top notch industry speakers.
Check out their site here: http://www.go3.com.au/
For a first time event they've managed to rustle up some pretty amazing speakers including Tetsuya Mizuguchi
Butterfly Effect 2007-01-01 13:33:00 The other day I got an email from someone who had played my Chilly Willy game as a kid. He said that it inspired him to get into computers and now he’s an IT manager in Hong Kong. <!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--> It’s funny how a seemingly simple thing can shape your entire life. For me it was a similar experience. I grew up in Kyogle, a small country town in Australia and it Read more:Butterfly
Casual Game Market and Pricing 2006-12-11 12:04:00 In his Gamezebo article The Sky is Falling . . . NOT!, Joel Brodie talks about the higher priced PopCap Bookworm Adventures which sells for $30. But in the article he also talks about the expanding demographic of the casual games market and how many young adults and teenagers don't have credit cards or may not necessarily be able to afford the price of these games.
So how do we make it easier Read more:Casual
, Market
, Pricing
Sound Advice 2006-12-05 11:47:00 Work on the new casual game is progressing smoothly.
Here's a sneak peak from the game courtesy of artist Pete Mullins...
Recently I've been adding in sound effects to give the game some oomph and I thought it would be cool to talk about some of the resources that I use for sound.
The major sound tool I use is Audacity - a very nice and very free audio editing tool. I use it to capture my Read more:Sound
GCAP Weekend 2006-12-03 04:50:00 This weekend I spoke on a panel at Game Connect Asia Pacific (GCAP) entitled "Letting Designers Design". It was a fun panel that I shared with Chris Avellone, Matt Ford and Ed Orman and was hosted by Tony Reed.
But the real highlight was the Awards Night. The game I worked on, Destroy All Humans! 2, picked up three awards - Best Audio, Best Console Game and the biggie of the night, Best Game. Read more:Weekend
Halloween Media Consumption 2006-11-01 11:30:00 How cool is this? I'm featured in Gamasutra's Media Consumption
on Halloween
!
And speaking of Halloween, the exceptionally nice DOSBox Crew have made sure that Halloween Harry/Alien Carnage will run under Windows XP in the next release of DOSBox. This is pretty neat as Harry stopped working under Windows ages ago.
New Version of Word Shake Out Now 2006-08-19 05:02:00 The latest version of Word Shake
! has just been released across the Oberon-Media network this week.
This updated version includes a number of new new features such as eight trophies of achievement, an enhanced save system and an updated word list.
You can download the new version from Oberon Games right now.
Halloween Harry's 21st Anniversary 2006-07-15 12:09:00 It's hard to believe it, but HalloweenHarry
turned 21 this year!
When I made the first Halloween Harry game all those years ago I had no idea that I'd be still making video games 21 years later. But here I am, so I figured I'd give you a little insight into the creation of the first game and follow up with some more entries on the other games later.
Most people remember the PC version of Read more:Anniversary
Supa Nova Day 2 2006-04-23 14:17:00 Well Supanova has wrapped and what a weekend it was. I didn’t get much of a chance to check out the non-gaming side of things, but I did see some cool comics and toys during my brief walk around the expo. One of the highlights of the day was attending Tommy Tallarico’s talk. I assumed it was going to be all about Video Games Live but he actually talked about so much other cool gaming
Scumm 20th Anniversary 2007-04-28 01:35:00 IGN has an interview with Ron Gilbert about his days at Lucasfiilm Games and his work on the SCUMM adventure game engine. It's hard to believe that it's 20 years since the first point and click graphic adventure game was created.
Monkey Island was a huge inspiration for my Flight of the Amazon Queen graphic adventure game. I was a huge comic fan and had been making arcade style games prior to Read more:Anniversary
Brainiversity Sneak Peek 3 2007-04-26 14:06:00 I've set up an online survey for the beta testers to fill out using Survey Monkey. It's a great way to track what people think of the game. I'm finding out what activities people like best, what their intent to buy is as well as what features they'd like to see in future versions. I'll definitely use Survey Monkey for the final release of the game.
Well, we've entered the home stretch now.
Color Blindness and Games 2007-04-24 14:30:00 I've just made a change to Brainiversity to take into account people with color blindness.
Deuteranopia, or Red/Green color blindness, is the most common form and affects about 8% of Caucasian males and 0.5% of Caucasian females.
So I've adjusted each of the tests that require the player to look for particular colored items or words to not use both green and blue at the same time. The Read more:Color
, Games
Off to the USA 2007-04-30 12:16:00 I'm heading over to the good old US of A this Wednesday. I'll be there for a week, which means I'll miss out on seeing Spiderman3 in Australia with friends... but hopefully I can hook up with some of my LA pals and catch a session with them.And what's a plane trip without a load of handheld games to play? I'm still playing Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters on PSP, so I'll give that a good bash on my trip. I'll also be picking up some DS games while I'm over there - notably Pokemon Diamond and Puzzle Quest. That should keep me busy on my flight back.
Diamonds and Pearls 2007-05-03 03:35:00 Well, I did it. I bought Pokemon Diamond Version today. Got it at the local game store here in LA. Haven't played too much yet, but it seems like fun. Now, I just need to keep an eye out for Puzzle Quest.Speaking of Puzzle Quest, Infinite Interactive are giving the space saga setting the same treatment that Puzzle Quest gave fantasy RPGs with their new game Galactrix. Looks like these guys are going to own this genre. Good on 'em! Read more:Diamonds
, Pearls
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