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Game Connect: Asia PacificPapervision 3D with Flex for Games Training Boot CampIndependent Game Conference - AustinCongreso de Desarrolladores de Videojuegos CDV 2008 (Spanish Videogame Developers Conference 2008)
 | S W E E T S N I P P E T Resolution Independence in 2D Direct3D Games – An Alternative Approach by Paul Cook, posted 11/20/08 using StretchRect() to scale a final frame to the proper resolution rather than manually scaling vertices - the upsides and downsides |  | P R O G R A M M I N G Computation of Bounding Primitives on the GPU by Philip Rideout, posted 11/12/08 Nowadays it's becoming fashionable to use GPU's for purposes other than pure graphics. Learn a sneaky trick that leverages the GPU's horsepower to efficiently compute an axis-aligned bounding box. Includes sample code for DirectX 10, but this method can be used with other API's as well |
 | 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 |
| Friday, November 21, 2008 | |
| Weekend Reading: Tales from Journal Land | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 2:23:14 PM | |
 Journal Land Pick of the WeekGaiiden's Scroll - Yes, I am tooting my own horn. Toot! Toot! This past Tues and Wed I was in Montreal attending the Int'l Game Summit there, and I have summaries and pictures from the event - full coverage coming next week. It seems the holidays are kicking in - journal posts are way down lately. Still some good stuff in what is up though! Read More.. | 3 Comments | |
| Game Design Expo Unveils 2009 Lineup | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 9:33:25 AM | |
 Building upon the sold-out 2008 event, the third-annual Game Design Expo, hosted by Vancouver Film School (VFS), Canada’s premier post-secondary entertainment arts institution, is shaping up to be even bigger and better. Set for February 7 and 8, 2009 at the Vancity Theater at the Vancouver International Film Centre, the weekend will be headlined by Clint Hocking, Creative Director at Ubisoft Montreal (Splinter Cell, Far Cry 2), a popular speaker at industry events, and will feature an exciting lineup of talks and panels with the leading minds in game design.Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| Flash Tower Defense Creators Launch Casual Collective | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 9:15:17 AM | |
 World-renowned indie game developers Paul Preece and David Scott -- the creators of blockbuster Web game hits Desktop Tower Defense and Flash Element TD -- today announced the launch of Casual Collective, a free-to-play social gaming site featuring a range of new Web games created exclusively by Preece and Scott. In the coming months, Casual Collective will introduce an ongoing stream of new titles on its site, with features and content exclusive to Casual Collective, as well as distribute titles to a host of other top game destination sites across the Web.Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| The Daily GameDev.net | |
| Posted by: Trent Polack at 7:45:14 AM | |
| I'm writing to you from a fresh install of Vista x64 after a few too many blue screens every day or so coerced me from my ever-comfortable prior install into a the nerd equivalent of a brand new desk chair. Now, maybe I'm just OCD (little bit), but does anyone else have a very meticulous set of settings/programs that absolutely must be installed within mere minutes of the first boot-up of any new OS install? I do. It took me a few hours. At least. A mere handful of months after it's initial launch, Google kills Google Lively citing that the company needs to "prioritize [their] resources and focus more on [their] core search, ads and apps business." Lively.com will be shut down at the end of December and "everyone who has worked on the project will then move on to other teams." All respect to the Lively team but I hope I'm not the target for Lively because, quite honestly, I wasn't aware it existed. Did I write about it here back in July? The 1Up Network division of Ziff Davis, which shut down the PC gaming-focused superb Games for Windows Magazine back in April and shut down their PC platform-focused PC Magazine yesterday is now contemplating shutting down Electronic Gaming Monthly as well. The New York Times report on the topic, despite offering any direct quotes from Ziff Davis CEO Jason Young, says that "Mr. Young said the company was considering taking its other print magazine, the video-game publication Electronic Gaming Monthly, into an online-only format, but would not make a decision before the end of the year." I've been reading EGM since I was seven-years-old and the magazine, in its current incarnations, is the best American gaming magazines I am aware of and the transformation of that into an online-only form would be sad. In more positive news, Rockstar is giving a late Valentine's Day present to gamers in the downloadable form of Grand Theft Auto 4: The Lost and the Damned. The estimated $15-20 USD DLC will place wanton criminals into the shoes of Johnny Klebitz, a member of The Lost (a biker gang from the original game). I can't wait to shoot run people over with the power of Euphoria again. I like zombies and the Xbox 360 game Dead Rising and I was glad to learn that Capcom won the copyright infringement lawsuit filed by Dawn of the Dead producer MKR Productions. Some of the similarities between Dead Rising and Dawn of the Dead, as listed by MKR Productions, included: "The mall has a gun shop, in which action takes place" (!), "Both works use music in the mall for comedic effect" (like every movie with an elevator!), and, undoubtedly the worst offense, "Many of the zombies wear plaid shirts" (oh, the horror). I love the world sometimes. As a final, incredibly important, reminder: Canadians are working on Dead Rising 2 -- a game I'd like injected straight into my cerebral cortex. Finally, Sony has realized that if their system of gamer achievements is to take off then, like Microsoft, developers/publishers must support Playstation 3 Trophies in all games. I prefer the simplicity of the Xbox 360's achievement system (pseudo-tiers of achievements determined by a common "gamer points" currency) over the three-tiered trophy system of the Playstation 3 but, really, I just like the idea of achievements so anything is good. You should be playing games this weekend. It's a good weekend for it. We've got Left 4 Dead a zombie game (!) which GameDev.net'ers like myself, Ravuya, and Run_The_Shadows have been playing all week. Alongside that I will also be acting all tactical-like in Valkyria Chronicles. Also zombies. Read More.. | 6 Comments | |
| Firelight Technologies release FMOD Ex for iPhone. | |
| Posted by: Firelight Technologies at 6:38:06 AM | |
 Audio middleware company Firelight Technologies today released its popular FMOD Music and Sound Effects System for the iPhone platform. FMOD Ex is a library and toolset that enables developers to take advantage of the latest audio technologies in their software titles. With this release, iPhone developers can now use the same high quality FMOD audio engine that is widely used throughout the games industry.Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| Thursday, November 20, 2008 | |
| Women in Games International Launches Online Auction | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 7:56:17 PM | |
 Women in Games International (WIGI) today announced their WIGI Celebrity Ebay Auction, a collection of over a hundred video games and game-related merchandise items -- much of it signed by industry leaders -- being auctioned to raise funds for Women in Games InternationalRead More.. | 0 Comments | |
| The Daily GameDev.Net | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 2:12:43 PM | |
| Although I'm trying hard to change the perception that Thursday Dailies are late in coming, today I didn't get back into the country from my jaunt out to Canada until early this afternoon. So - reasonable excuse? You decide! Speaking of Canada, apparently the Quebec game industry has shaped up to be the sixth largest in the world, according to a recent study reported on by Gamasutra. The top 5 spots (starting from the top) go to Japan, California, South Korea, the UK and then Washington. However, if you replace total number of industry employees with total number of industry employees per thousand people, then Quebec comes in third as the densest concentration of industry members, beaten only by Washington and British Columbia. The province is looking to continue building out its development community. [Full Story] Still on the subject of Canada, and specifically Quebec, I just flew back in from attending the Montreal International Game Summit over the last two days. While full coverage is coming next week of all the sessions and events that I attended, you can catch summaries of MIGS sessions/events in my journal, and of course Gamasutra has their own coverage - although I wish it were easier to list all together rather than searching out MIGS in the headline. MIGS's counter-part conference, the Vancouver International Game Summit, is being expanded next year by Think Services and has been re-branded GDC Canada. A call for submissions for GDC Canada has just been sent out, and while I could link to the Gamasutra report, I find it far more interesting that it's being broadcast as well by IGN Games. [Full Story] Okay, slowly working away from MIGS, Autodesk completes their acquisition of Softimage. This is slightly MIGS-relevant because I happened to be introduced to Autodesk's Public Relations Manager for Worldwide Marketing and she was very excited about the closing of the deal. She'll also be sure to keep us here at GDNet informed of the new developments stemming from the acquisition. The deal closed at $35M, and Autodesk is now in control of Maya as well as all the various Softimage products. [Full Story] So it should be no surprise to anyone that of course Nintendo is running short on stock for their Wii Fit product. The company is hoping to have enough Wii console units this year, however - but Wiitailers aren't so sure. That was a while ago though, so hopefully Nintendo's recent reports hold true for those seeking Wii's this holiday season. Oh, I also find this part confusing: "According to Fils-Aime, Wii owners want to see more games that perform well on rival systems, like the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, brought to the Wii." Define "perform well", please. I'm guessing sales, not graphics. [Full Story] Annnd for our final story we have the sad case of a 15yr-old boy going into convulsions after a WoW:Lich King marathon. Sad of course because he couldn't tear himself away from the game before doing himself harm (from which he will thankfully(?) recover). Too bad he's in Sweden and not Vietnam or he could seek help. His binging may have been an attempt to level his character to the new cap of 80, however he should have strategized a bit better like these guys, who did it in only 27 hours and survived to talk about it. [Full Story] Your cool link of the day is - What Photoshop Would Look Like in Real Life | |
| StemCell Game Engine - Oil Platform Demo | |
| Posted by: DevCell Software at 10:45:02 AM | |
| A new StemCell Game Engine-powered demo is available for download. It emphasizes on soft shadows and good illumination, physically driven player control, in-game extensible and configurable GUI, real-time physics and controllable physical machineries, in-game scene loading, multiple rendering viewports, immersive 3d sounds and a lot more. Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| Xoreax Software Releases IncrediBuild 3.32 Release Candidate | |
| Posted by: Ron Lehrer - Xoreax Software at 5:35:53 AM | |
 Xoreax Software announced today the release of IncrediBuild 3.32RC. IncrediBuild is an easy-to-use platform for accelerating Windows-based processes such as code/data builds, scripts and tools through advanced Grid Computing technology. IncrediBuild 3.32 features enhanced performance and networking, new monitoring options and additional new features.Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| Wednesday, November 19, 2008 | |
| The Daily GameDev.Net | |
| Posted by: Tiffany Leigh Smith at 11:29:50 AM | |
| I know Promit covered NXE yesterday, but I think it deserves another day of coverage, since the official release is today. As previously stated, Microsoft have launched their latest update to the Xbox Live. The New Xbox Experience, NXE, gives users a few new features, such as the ability to choose their own customized animated avatar, a new interface and play from hard drive. You can also access your Xbox live market place on the web, the Xbox LIVE Party which allows users to talk to friends from the dashboard rather than just in game. In related news, Gamesindustry.biz are reporting that hundreds of titles from Sony Pictures Entertainment made previously available to stream via Netflix on Xbox Live have been withdrawn. The movie titles have only been restricted on the Xbox 360, apparently since the announcement of Microsoft’s NXE. Netflix's VP of corporate communications Steve Swasey says they hope the Sony Pictures Entertainment titles will be licensed for Xbox 360 shortly. Need for Speed: Undercover was released yesterday and its looking pretty hot! Read More.. | 7 Comments | |
| MIGS Summaries | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 8:40:58 AM | |
| I'm at the Montreal International Games Summit, which runs through today (it started yesterday), and providing summaries of the sessions that I attend in my journal. They're just highlights to give you an idea of what each session covered so you can see if you'd be interested in checking out the full coverage coming next week, where each of the summaries in my journal will be expanded to cover all the features of each talk. Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| New Quotix Texture Collection for game development | |
| Posted by: Quotix Software at 1:06:40 AM | |
| Quotix Software is released the fourth collection of high quality textures for game development. In this collection there are 110 textures in 512x512 resolution. Normal, specular and bump maps are included. For more details visit www.quotixsoftware.com Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| Tuesday, November 18, 2008 | |
| Game Design Expo 2009 | |
| Posted by: Vancouver Film School at 11:49:11 AM | |
| Game Design Expo Unveils 2009 Lineup Vancouver Film School to Host Weekend with Game Industry Luminaries; Ubisoft's Clint Hocking Announced as Keynote November 18, 2008 – Vancouver, BC – Building upon the sold-out 2008 event, the third-annual Game Design Expo, hosted by Vancouver Film School (VFS), Canada’s premier post-secondary entertainment arts institution, is shaping up to be even bigger and better. Set for February 7 and 8, 2009 at the Vancity Theater at the Vancouver International Film Centre, the weekend will be headlined by Clint Hocking, Creative Director at Ubisoft Montreal (Splinter Cell, Far Cry 2), a popular speaker at industry events, and will feature an exciting lineup of talks and panels with the leading minds in game design. Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| The Daily GameDev.Net | |
| Posted by: Promit Roy at 11:23:20 AM | |
| Oh have I got good news for all of you. Since you've been such loyal readers, I am presenting to you today the New GameDev.Net Daily Experience! By providing a shiny new Experience for Daily reading, I am confident that I can distract you from basic failings in my Daily posts, such as the lack of content that isn't already highly visible elsewhere. Welcome to the New GameDev.Net Experience. Read in. Of course I'm just following the lead of Microsoft, because word is out that everybody who signed up for the preview of the New Xbox Experience now has access. That's an entire day early! I of course did not sign up because I figured I wouldn't end up getting a preview so screw the whole thing. Oops. Anyway, lots of people are going to get their New Experiences tonight, and I suppose the rest of us will have to wait until tomorrow. The biggest news of course is the Xiivatars, customizable characters that can even be used in games (though sadly they're not supported in XNA right now). I'm very impressed with Microsoft's creativity and originality on this one, which should come as no surprise to anyone who reads my Tuesday Dailies. I just wish they'd creatively add a web browser to the thing. A Blu-Ray addon would be good too. Maybe I'm being unfair to the NXE, though -- it does add streaming from Netflix (including HD), hard drive installation of games, and XNA Community Games. In the world of computer hardware, Intel just launched their Core i7 processors. If you haven't been following the development and previews of this chip line, I will go ahead and summize: they're goddamn processing monsters. They're even unlocked for overclocking, so you can pull out that unused can of liquid nitrogen and go wild if you want. AMD meanwhile is counting on earlier availability of multisocket configurations for their new chips to give them an advantage. This is of course because their processors are simply no match for the Intel offerings one on one. I'm kind of disappointed, personally, because in the Athlon64's heyday, the competition between Intel and AMD was really impressive and interesting. Now it seems to be mostly about Intel pummeling AMD in new and more creative ways while AMD reconfigures itself. Remember that lawsuit against Microsoft about "Vista Capable" branding? Basically it's a class action claiming that the branding of computers as Vista capable was deceptive advertising by Microsoft because those computers could only run the Home Basic edition (which sucks). Anyway, although the details of the actual lawsuit are kind of tedious, it has resulted in a lot of emails within Microsoft being made public by the court system, and there's interesting stuff in there. In particular, it's interesting to see how pressure from Intel on Microsoft caused the rules of the branding to be changed. It's best to read the article (and follow some links) for the full story, but suffice it to say there's a lot of angry hardware vendors, a lot of angry and confused consumers, and one operating system standing very awkwardly in the corner as a storm continues around it and its successor looms on the horizon. This is what makes technology fun. Lastly, we can get back to game development news with a Q&A with the Ensemble Director of Technology, discussing Microsoft's decision to shut the studio down. (Also linked yesterday.) He also talks about the Halo MMO a bit, and openly admits that World of Warcraft was being used as the model. (Personally I subscribe to Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw's theory that all MMOs want to be World of Warcraft.) It's a fairly short interview, but there's also an interview with Stardock CEO Brad Wardell. As usual, Wardell is a pretty cocky and self-confident sort of guy, but it's interesting to see what the smaller independent studios are interested in doing. I have a question. Can you have too much LittleBigPlanet? I'm thinking no. Yes, even despite cheesy Steve Irwin imitators. Read More.. | 9 Comments | |
| Monday, November 17, 2008 | |
| The Daily GameDev.net | |
| Posted by: Mike Stedman at 10:33:09 AM | |
| It's a slow, cold Monday here, so here is an attempt to put out a GDNet Daily to stoke the flames of righteous outrage. I'm sure I've been blacklisted from 96% of game studios out there, and probably marked for death by Bill Roper's squad of elite assassins. Ensemble, makers of fine RTS titles and the unreleased Halo Wars, is finally speaking out about Microsoft's treatment of them. Insomniac also gave an interview. Am I the only one who constantly confuses them with Naughty Dog? Greatly despised antagonist Games industry juggernaut Nintendo has announced that they won't make a Wii successor any time soon, most likely because the console is still selling like crack-infused hotcakes. If your grandmother is looking for more games to play in the nursing home, therefore, you might want to buy her Guitar Praise, a Christian rock Guitar Hero clone. No word yet on whether Judas Priest is on the tracklist. Capcom made me cry by refusing to put Street Fighter IV in arcades. This is despite the fact that I have no idea where a local arcade stocking fighting games is, other than at a movie theatre several dozen miles from my place of residence. In indie news (finally!) Ludum Dare 13 is the Dec 5 - 7 weekend, so mark off your calendar. I will try to keep notifying you of this advancing date, but the LD squad are nice chaps and you could do much worse than to spend 48 hours straight kept awake through drug abuse and pinching yourself as you wait for your code to compile. Finally, before we go today, I must remind U.S. Americans that Black Friday is coming soon, and many of your favourite game-stocking retail outlets have deals on videogames. You should consider holding purchases off until then, which adds the metagame, I am told, of being forced to brutalize housewives and fight for your life in the parking lot before you even get the game. Read More.. | 2 Comments | |
| Friday, November 14, 2008 | |
| SlimDX November 2008 Released | |
| Posted by: Promit Roy at 10:08:16 PM | |
 The November 2008 release of SlimDX is now available for download! You can get it, as well as information about the new release, from our Downloads page. The Release Notes cover the changes, although to be frank, they completely miss the important stuff this time around because only code changes are listed. For this version of SlimDX, there has been a heavy focus on making it easier for developers as well as users to work with SlimDX. There are plenty of bug fixes, but the big news is updated and revised documentation, along with a completely rebuilt installation system.Read More.. | 5 Comments | |
| Weekend Reading: Tales from Journal Land | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 11:00:46 AM | |
| Note: This was a pretty slow Journal Land week so I also pulled entries that were posted today by the time of this writing. Journal Land Pick of the Week Readme.txt - Khawk's been posting coverage of the Software Development Best Practices conference that was held last month in Boston. This week he shares his notes from Joel Spolsky's keynote "Making Great Software". Be sure to check back earlier in his journal for more posts covering sessions from the event Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| Blender Game Engine Competition | |
| Posted by: AtomHamster at 8:34:34 AM | |
 Now that the Blender Game Engine got its long awaited overhaul with 2.48, here follows your excuse to play around with it:Mal from CanDo Interactive is hosting a Blender game engine contest. Currently, the prize is 500 Euro, split across three categories. More prizes might me added and you can even add your own. Submissions will start early February and end on March 16th. Rea more about it here: http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Game_Engine/Competitions/2008_Q4 Read More.. | 1 Comments | |
| The Daily GameDev.net | |
| Posted by: Trent Polack at 8:10:16 AM | |
| Video games. The October NPD results are out now and it shows that the Nintendo Wii and Nintendo DS continue to absolutely thrash console/handheld sales. That's not much of a surprise. The Xbox 360 vastly outsold the Playstation 3 by about 180,000 units which is actually quite strange considering that the Playstation 3 saw the debuts of two of its bigger exclusive titles: LittleBigPlanet's (a late October release) and SOCOM: Confrontation. Both of these games can be found on the top ten for game sales as well (#8 and #7, respectively), but the big winner this month was Lionhead's Xbox 360-exclusive good/evil fantasy romp Fable 2 which sold through 790,000 units. Also finding places on the list are Bethesda's hugely successful Fallout 3, Volition's vulgar/profane/amazing Saints Row 2, and EA Redwood's Dead Space. It's been a good fall for gamers. In what is yet another blow to the integrity of the PC gaming platform, 2D Boy's superb World of Goo has a staggering 90% piracy rate according to World of Goo co-creator Ron Carmel in a comment to the Rock, Paper, Shotgun story. According to a Joystiq story that picked up on this fact, Carmel went on to say that "We're [2D Boy are] doing ok, though. We're getting good sales through WiiWare, Steam, and our website. Not going bankrupt just yet!" On one hand, yes, 2D Boy does have what are hopefully lucrative sales off of its WiiWare release of the game, though I don't have any real sales information for the typical platform release, but this kind of excessive piracy is going to just slowly drive more and more developers away from the PC platform as a whole -- even moreso as a practical arena for an exclusive release. Piracy is to be expected on any open platform, but numbers like 2D Boy's 90% are just unreasonable. What They Play is a site that functions as a parent's guide to the kinds of video games that kids are playing and, yesterday, released an article detailing their discoveries during their first year of operations. It's a fascinating read that contains various findings from a more parental-focused point of view, such as: "When asked what you would find the most offensive in a video game, you said that a man and a woman having sex would be most offensive, followed by two men kissing, and then the sight of a graphically severed human head" and "Game reviews have a strong influence over your buying decisions." This isn't really news, I suppose, but And a little story wrap-up before I'm off to play more Far Cry 2, Sacred 2, and Call of Duty: World at War (yes, I bit): Left 4 Dead is gold and you should buy it, violent video games have logical physiological effects, and Sony moderates creativity in an E-rated game with a powerful level editor. Read More.. | 10 Comments | |
| Thursday, November 13, 2008 | |
| GarageGames Announces TGEA 1.8 for 3D Game Development on a Mac | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 9:29:35 PM | |
 GarageGames, the leading technology provider for independent game developers, announced an update to their Torque Game Engine Advanced (TGEA), free to current licensees. This update adds an OpenGL graphics implementation and support for Mac OSX. "With this update to TGEA, cutting-edge games for both Mac and PC can finally be created in one development cycle," said Brett Seyler, GarageGames' VP of Business Development.Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| Nominees and Categories Announced for Spike Video Game Awards | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 11:16:56 AM | |
| Spike TV announces the nominees and categories for the year’s most acclaimed celebration in the excellence of gaming – the 2008 “Video Game Awards.” The sixth annual “VGAs” will bring together megastars from the worlds of video games, Hollywood, music, sports and more to celebrate the outstanding achievements within the video game industry over the past year. The 2-hour extravaganza will premiere LIVE on Spike TV Sunday, December 14 at 9:00pm, ET/PT (tape delay west coast) from Sony Picture Studios in Culver City, CA. Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| The Daily GameDev.Net | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 9:08:25 AM | |
| The Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) has released a new ratings summary system to accompany the standard box ratings and short list of one-word descriptors already displayed. Obviously there's not enough room on a game box anymore for an entire summary, so the ESRB has attached them to the game's rating on their website. They also have a mobile website so parents with access can check the summaries of games while they are still in the store. The summaries are only in effect for games rated since July 1, 2008. Seeing as this is simply an expanded result of the normal ESRB rating system, no real additional review work is needed - a win/win situation for developers and parents. [Full story] The SciFi channel premiered a new reality series this week called Cha$e where contestants run around an enclosed location or specified area while being pursued by hunters, solving puzzles and collecting items they can use to defend themselves from the hunters. The first person to last 60 minutes and make it to the exit wins all the cash they earned from simply staying alive and additionally collecting items and solving puzzles. It's being billed by the network as a real life video game, but it's more like an over-glorified version of "tag". Still, I can't deny the videogamey aspects of running around a "game board" and collecting items, dodging bad guys, etc. If you want to check it out, they already have the full first episode online at SciFi Rewind. Promit was kind enough to update my story on Rare's SD text issue, so I'll return the favor with his story of Curcuit City going out of business. Apparently they somehow, in this supposed time of credit crisis, managed to secure a whopping $1.1 billion loan to help them stay afloat until they supposedly come out of bankruptcy next year. Uhm. Wat? I bet any stores near Detroit will be boycotted. [Full story] Yes it's been done many times before but somehow it never gets old, at least for me - Real Life GTA IV Read More.. | 2 Comments | |
| Wednesday, November 12, 2008 | |
| Facebook Fan Photo Contest | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 12:58:46 PM | |
| We're kicking off a new contest today for all 1,000+ of our Facebook fans to thank you all for your show of support. The ingredients are simple: Be a fan on Facebook, have a GDNet t-shirt, and get access to a camera. Simply take a photo of yourself wearing the shirt and add it to our Facebook photo album and you're entered to win! What's the prize? Well there are two prizes because there are two ways to win. The first prize is a year's free subscription to GDNet+ and is given to a random photo submitter. The second prize is a grab bag of game dev goodies like GDNet stickers, conference swag, and Edmund McMillen's art cd. More things will be thrown in over time as well. This prize goes to the wildest/craziest/funniest photo that is submitted. No, we can't say precisely what we're looking for, because we don't know - so be creative in your photo taking. You have one month so get to thinking! Full rules and all that after the break. Read More.. | 3 Comments | |
| The Daily GameDev.Net | |
| Posted by: Tiffany Leigh Smith at 9:59:08 AM | |
| I made it back in one piece after an extremely hectic last week. Thank you, Mr. Mittens for providing a wickedly awesome Wednesday GDNet Daily in my absence! Good news in these fiscally hard times! It would seem that both Gears of War 2 and Far Cry 2 are doing extremely well! Gears of War 2 hit over 2 million sales in its opening weekend, largely due to the fact that it released internationally on the same day, 1.5 million Xbox Live account holders logged 15 million game play hours over the weekend, unlocking 19 million achievements. Also doing well is Far Cry 2, which has sold one million units in less than three weeks. Blizzard has seemingly banned over 350,000 Battle.net accounts due to cheating. The 350,000 StarCraft and Diablo II accounts were said to be using 3rd party hacks. The CD keys for Diablo II that were used with the closed accounts will be barred for 30 days and repeat offenders were warned of a permanent ban. With less than a day left for the launch of World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King BigDownload.com have made note that the timing could be to get people ready for the company’s plans to have players sign into one Battle.net account to play all of Blizzard's current and upcoming titles. More news of bans today, as Microsoft have recently banned a number of Xbox 360 consoles that were modified to play pirated games, says Xbox Live's Major Nelson in a recent blog post. Major Nelson pointed out that any modification to an Xbox 360 was a violation of the terms of service and that the health of the video game business depends on customers paying for the genuine products and services they receive. A marketing executive for iPhone has recently spoken out, claiming that the iPhone is the “future of gameplay” unlike other “devices”. Speaking in an interview with T3, marketing executive, Greg Joswiak referred to the existing titles for the iPhone and iPod Touch saying "The gameplay I think has surprised a lot of people, because it’s not just the casual games. There are already so many games and as we look at it, to us it really seems this is the future of gameplay." Also stating that "a lot of these devices are more in the past". Joswiak went on to say "a big part of that is not just the device itself, which is easier to carry, and has the touch display and accelerometer which is great for gameplay, but it’s the electronic distribution of the apps as well." He also pointed out the less costly games for the iPhone and that future games for Apple products will "blow everyone away". "Because again the computer power and the 3D graphic power here," he said, referring to the iPod Touch, "Is significantly greater than what you have here," he added, picking up a Nintendo DS. Does he have a point? I could see where the iPod store adds a lot, but I don’t really see any competition there. For a video link today, the third installment of the The Warcraft Retrospective is up on gametrailers.com. Read More.. | 1 Comments | |
| Tuesday, November 11, 2008 | |
| The Daily GameDev.Net | |
| Posted by: Promit Roy at 10:47:55 AM | |
| Hey, yet another Tuesday, which means yet another Daily from me. The I Refuse to Acknowledge WoW GameDev.Net Daily, in fact. However, it has come to my attention that I am supposed to gossip about Hellgate, the world's best game. That is of course a load of cockamammy, because there's a video of the world's best game at the end of this Daily. Dream on, Ravuya. Drew reported last week that Rare didn't want to fix the impossibility of reading text on a standard definition screen, and I didn't blame them. Seriously, I played my 360 on an older SD set for a year and tons of stuff isn't readable. I simply grew to accept that I'd never know what exactly that text message from my cousin in GTA said. And that wasn't necessarily a bad thing. Still, it seems that Rare has had a change of heart. They're going to patch it in the next thirty days, so chalk that up as a win for the poor bastards who still have to suffer SDTVs. Seriously, I feel you guys. It sucks. However, it does not suck to be the founders of Harmonix, the people who created first Guitar Hero and later Rock Band. In fact, it doesn't suck to the tune of three hundred million dollars. Yes, that's a hundred and fifty with six more zeroes for each one of them. While it's undeniable that they created one hell of a juggernaut (an entire aisle of a Walmart I visited yesterday was Rock Band and Guitar Hero), that sure is a lot of money. It's more than the revenue Rock Band actually generated in the last quarter. Each one of them now has the funds to personally bankroll maybe six all new AAA titles. Personally if I were working at Harmonix, I'd love it if the bosses would show a little love for all the people who poured their days (and probably more than a few nights and weekends) and tipped them a bit of cash. Not much, maybe a hundred grand here or there? Trust me, it'd sure boost morale. And I'm pretty sure all of the Harmonix employees would owe it to me to read my dailies after that. It's a win for everybody! Other developers, however, are not doing so hot, reminding us once again that the economy has been altogether kind of bitchy lately. Midway lost $76 million, which is 130% worse year to year. (For those keeping count, that is one quarter of what the Harmonix guys were just paid.) Apparently the revival of Midway that was planned with Shari Redstone as the board chair has not worked out so well, and so she has resigned her position, apparently to deal with the bigger, even more troubled company that owns Midway. Yes, of course that makes sense, don't be silly. And of course the company will be continuing to cut jobs. Maybe there's some new openings at Harmonix. The best part of it all? The company is pinning its Q4 -- that's the holiday quarter -- on Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe. Yeah, good luck with that. Somehow I always seem to end up covering the bad news. Or is there enough bad news to go around? Anyway, Circuit City's bankrupt. I mentioned their store closings last week (which includes a 17% workforce reduction, or 7300 jobs), and now they've gone chapter 11. It might be time to keep an eye on that local neighborhood Circuit City you've always considered entering. It sounds like they're about due for a pre holiday liquidation sale. There's an imperial tonne of new games this week (stay tuned for Treyarch to make asses of themselves yet again!), but I will point you to one, and only one. Mirror's Edge. YES PLEASE. Read More.. | 7 Comments | |
| Monday, November 10, 2008 | |
| 10 Years of Independent Art on CD from Edmund McMillen | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 8:13:04 PM | |
 Edmund McMillen has done the visuals for many indie projects, including IGF Finalists (and winners in some cases) Gish, Tri-Achnid, and Blast Miner. He's recently compiled work from those games plus everything else he's done in the past ten years and packed it all onto a CD for any artists (and fans) interested in getting a closer look at his artistic side.Read More.. | 1 Comments | |
| Game Connection Europe, THE Business Meeting Machine | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 7:51:53 PM | |
| Projecting the future of the game industry, Game Connection Europe last week brought together hundreds of developers, publishers, and service and technology providers representing all genres, platforms, and distribution channels. More than 320 projects on all main platforms (Wii, PS2, PS3, Wii et Xbox 360) and also Iphone applications, web-based games, Wii-Ware, XBLA, PC games, and outsourcing services) caught the attention industry professionals coming from 34 countries who held a total of 5900 meetings. Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| The Daily GameDev.net | |
| Posted by: Mike Stedman at 2:10:43 PM | |
| This week of the GDNet Daily contains 50% less Trent, but that's okay, because Trent is known to the state of California to cause cancer, birth defects or other reproductive harm. In news that is new to absolutely nobody, developers are fighting back against the scourge that is used games. Perhaps they should convince their publishers to offer their games over digital distribution more frequently, or perhaps have a conversation with the firms that have gotten stupid rich off of reselling their 6-hour, $65 magnum opuses. Or they could just do what PC developers do, and cram their software full of so much DRM that they get sued. Turns out that "community managers" for games frequently have aggressive opinions about what publishers' PR representatives say about the developer they work for behind their backs. In this case, one of Infinity Ward's community managers, worn out from having to corral homophobic five year olds on their intertube forums, has snapped and told Activision's producer for Call of Duty 5: Electric Boogaloo (Yet More Nazis, But Also Zombies) that he should stop doing interviews and maybe fall off a bridge or something. He also calls him a "Super Senior Douche," which I'm told is some kind of kitchen cleaning agent. I posit that we should provide a proper venue for these opinionated and well informed men to do battle; to that extent I've rented a small dockside property in San Francisco, put up a rusty cage and stocked it with well-fueled chainsaws. If you guys want to throw down, you know where I can be reached. Some short bits: inquisitive gamers have pulled apart Valve's recent Left 4 Dead demo and have found a bunch of new features which may extend your playtime until the game's release, the "New Xbox Experience" will feature parties with people who you would never ever invite to a cocktail party, and Burnout Paradise will soon have a Delorean, which is awesome. Chrono Trigger DS has a different ending. Foreign MMORPG concern Nexon is offering to Maple Story up that Slurpee, and someone, for some reason, is making a Dance Dance Revolution musical production. I'm told this is one of the signs of the apocalypse, and you should proceed accordingly. In more independent news, TOJam (which is at least partially made of GameDev members) had its "Artcade" installation. Be sure to check out the set of games displayed and read up on how you can start your own independent arcade show. A similar arcade was also featured at the Eurogamer Expo, and noted indie personality Edmund McMillen (Gish) is selling his entire life's work on a single polycarbonate disc for just $10. That has to be pretty humbling. Tomorrow, Promit will share in-depth insider knowledge about the game industry, hopefully including some more gossip about Hellgate, the world's best game. Read More.. | 12 Comments | |
| Three Rings Opens "Whirled" for Business | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 1:56:41 PM | |
| Three Rings, a leading independent developer of casual massively multi-player games, has opened Whirled, its player-created virtual world, for business. A full suite of rich APIs, example code and a growing audience of players await monetization by skilled developers. Players can explore a rich catalog of games, customize social areas and begin uploading games and other content to www.whirled.com today. “Whirled delivers a complete platform for Flash games and virtual worlds” said Daniel James, CEO, Three Rings. “Our proven infrastructure is now officially open for business and developers are making money. Join them!” Whirled is an in-browser virtual world that is open to player creations and customizations; anything can be uploaded to the Whirled, from simple image furniture to mini-MMO games. Sophisticated avatars, pets, toys and games are coded to Whirled’s Flash ActionScript APIs, which support multi-player games with arbitrary numbers of players driven by client or server-side code. Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| Saturday, November 8, 2008 | |
| Sim-O-Box | |
| Posted by: TalentRaspel virtual worlds Lt at 9:56:13 AM | |
 "The world is a disc." - At least the virtual world system created by TalentRaspel virtual worlds Ltd. with their new Sim-O-Box fits on a disc now. The TalentRaspel Sim-O-Box HE (HomeEdition) is free of charge and now available for alpha testing. It consists of a bootable ISO image that can be written to a CD and used to start a PC as dedicated OpenSimulator server and enable it for connections from other computers running the standard Second Life viewer as 3D client software. Alternatively the TalentRaspel Sim-O-Box HE can be started within a virtualization package provided on the same CD and run on Windows, Linux, OS X, using the server computer for running the 3D client software too.Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
