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VIEW Conference 2009Project HorseshoeIndependent Game Conference WestIGDA Leadership Forum
 | B O O K R E V I E W Game Development Essentials: Game QA & Testing by John Hattan, posted 11/6/09 We review the latest book documenting the art of game QA and testing. |  | G A M E I N D U S T R Y Game QA & Testing Chapter 3 by Luis Levy and Jeannie Novak, posted 11/3/09 This chapter goes into detail about what kind of testing a game goes through, and the various stages of testing |
| E V E N T C O V E R A G E GameX Industry Summit/Expo by Drew Sikora, posted 10/30/09 An overview of the industry summit and consumer show that debuted this year outside of Philadelphia, PA | | B O O K R E V I E W XNA Game Studio 3.0 Unleashed by John Hattan, posted 10/25/09 XNA Game Studio is the way to go for indie game development on XBox 360 and Zune. We review one of the latest tutorials on it. |
Unity Summer of Code Post Mortem: Terrain ToolkitSándor Moldán speaks to us about the development of his Terrain Toolkit, a project selected for this year’s Unity Summer of Code competition.
| Friday, November 6, 2009 | |
| Weekend Reading: Tales from Journal Land | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 7:49:02 PM | |
 Entries from 10/31 - 11/5Journal Land Pick of the Week IfThen Software LLC - Newsletter #51: A small Halloween game was released; New rendering system; New iScribble sketches; Community spotlight on the interchangeability of mods from SAO to the recent Halloween game Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| The Daily GameDev.net | |
| Posted by: Trent Polack at 12:02:31 AM | |
| I want to point out that yesterday was November 5th and I was wearing jeans and a t-shirt as we walked around in 81F weather. Texas is a brilliant place. Also: every time a girl says "Y'all" I swoon a little bit. The big news of the week that, for once, isn't Infinity Ward causing some crazy scandal, but rather that Epic released a free version of their Unreal Editor called the UDK. This is a vastly improved release of the editor that, supposedly, has features that aren't even in any commercial game yet. More to the point, it's a better mod/development solution than the Unreal Tournament 3 editor which, while powerful, has some stability issues (and a painful Generic Browser compared to the UDK one). And while the release of UDK is huge on its own, Epic has also updated the license terms (quoted from Gamasutra): "[...] creators will still need to obtain an official licensing agreement to develop a commercial project using UE3; according to the new licensing terms, Epic receives twenty-five percent of revenue after the first $5,000 is made, with a per-seat yearly fee also potentially applying if the project is solely used internally." Very cool. Between this and Unity (which serves a very different audience), independent developers are having some high-quality tools in the wild now. In case you didn't already know, Dragon Quest IX is kind of a big deal. For comparison purposes: Madden NFL 2010, a hugely popular game, that has been released across the Xbox 360, PS3, PS2, Wii, and PSP in the United States and the UK, has sold 2.61M copies from July to September (it was actually released in August). Now, Dragon Quest IX, which has only been released on the Nintendo DS (and, even then, only in Japan) tops the chart with 3.92M units sold. My brain has just 'sploded all over your collective faces with how popular this game is. So Halo: Reach screen shots have leaked. Or may be fakes. Either way, that's a thing. There's also an anime which, um, I guess is a thing that Halo fans always wanted. I'd much have preferred the Neill Blomkamp (District 9 director) movie, but I guess anime is a replacement. Bayonetta still looks absolutely insane. Basically it's a game about the life of super-sexified Sarah Palin in bizarro world. Or something like that. I don't know. Video games are really getting bizarre. None of this news is as important as the fact that Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is getting closer to its release. In this case it's a Playstation 3-exclusive demo, but I won't pick hairs. I want this game. Badly. At this point in the Daily, I think it's time for me to admit that I must go play Dragon Age right now. It's not a game that I expected to get, but Tuesday night I discovered that there was a Best Buy near my apartment, so I drove (for the first time in two months) to go get a 360 copy. I am really digging the game, far more than I expected. I'm also, as expected, very engrossed in Forza 3 and all of the things I loaded onto my PSP Go. Yes, I finally caved and got a PSP Go. Don't judge me. I could also tell you about my Halloween night, but I think that's inappropriate for a Daily. Cliff notes: I got in a cane fight with a person dressed as a 105-year-old, Walker Texas Ranger stalked us, there was a Bichon dressed as a Bumble Bee, and if you're the girl that I ran into I could really use your number. Read More.. | 6 Comments | |
| Thursday, November 5, 2009 | |
| OpenFeint Gold Program Highlights Developers | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 9:23:07 PM | |
 Aurora Feint Inc., developer of the most popular social gaming platform and network for the iPhone, announced OpenFeint Gold, a recognition program for the developers of extraordinarily high quality games that use OpenFeint. OpenFeint Gold titles will be extensively promoted by Aurora Feint Inc. on www.openfeint.com, on the openfeint dashboard in other games and on partner websites. "I am personally very excited to bring this program to our game development community," said Jason Citron, Founder and CEO, of Aurora Feint. "When we launched Aurora Feint: The Beginning, on July 11 last year, I was delighted to get recognition from all over including game of the year on the iPhone and this is our way of recognizing other incredible quality games." Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| The Daily GameDev.net | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 9:01:41 PM | |
  It's time for another Late Night Daily. I'm not trying to make a habit of this, I swear. As always though, it'll be worth the wait.Studio News - Microsoft, Square Enix, Polyphony Digital. Microsoft has completed its current round of layoffs by letting go of 800 employees, pushing the finally tally to just over the 5,000 estimated to be cut back in January. Of course, there's nothing to stop future layoffs from hitting the company, but for now at least things are back in equilibrium. Square Enix has also been reducing its workforce after being bought out by Eidos, most likely largely due to redundancy. So far the global headcount reduction across SE offices has be pinned at about 10% - Square says the integration with Eidos is proceeding "smoothly". Polyphony Digital's main man, Kazunori Yamauchi, was at SEMA motor show, where he did a rough calculation of the cost of GT5 over its 5 year development cycle. The result? Around $60 million. That's about 35 Bugatti Veyrons. Education News - Penny Arcade, Abu Dhabi, Activision. Penny Arcade has awarded its 2009 $10,000 scholarship, which means it's time for all you kids out there in school to mark your calendars to find out details of the 2010 scholarship, which will be announced this spring. Abu Dhabi, best known as the city Nermal always ends up in, is now starting up a games academy to help grow and attract industry. They've already got Gazillion dabbling in an MMO studio over there, so seems like they're off to a running start. Activision is taking a slightly different tack, creating a video campaign that aims to educate parents on game ratings and the benefits games can have for their children besides teaching them how to get money back from hookers. Litigation News - Activision, Sony. [B]Activision[/b] can't seem to catch a break. First Courtney Love sues them for allowing players to actually play her late husband Kurt Cobain in Guitar Hero 5, and now No Doubt are hopping on the bandwagon based upon the fact that their characters can be used to play any song in the game's album. Now - the key in both these lawsuits is that the artists in question did not expect their virtual selves to be able to sing anything but their own music. So, is it Activision being purposefully (and evilly) sneaky in their contract wording, or did both Love and the group No Doubt (and their lawyers) simply have no understanding of the game at all? Either way looks like a chunk of their massive profit will be going to legal fees. Sony is dealing with another class action lawsuit from PS3 owners who had their consoles bricked due to a firmware update, perhaps spurred on by this one I reported back at the beginning of October. The complaint and charges are much the same, although they've listed every PS3 system owner who installed the firmware. No word on whether the install had to be successful or not. Sure, I'll take a few bucks in restitution for all my non-problems with my PS3. Symbian App Store open for business. If you like going against the grain, or forging out into new territories, or whatever you use to describe your pioneering spirit (or are simply a Symbian developer) then Symbian has details for developers about their new "Horizon" app store, which has launched with 50 apps already in the catalog. Daily Remainders - more cool stories that didn't make the cut along with game dev articles/features. Everyone loves pinning the Devil horns atop Microsoft's head, but every now and then they pull a great PR stunt out of their tails, like this story of the dog who spent $60 on XBL while he chewed up the controller. Instead of ridiculing the guy for leaving his console on overnight and wasting electricity, MS refunded his money (and then some), gave him a new controller and even created a Gamertag for his dog. I have 4 dogs, and one of them is bound to gnaw on my controller if I leave it on the floor overnight. Now, I wonder if Sony would be so generous... Hey, if you were one of the apparently many indie developers that were put off by Game Lawyer Tom Buscaglia's stance on the Langdell issue, he's trying his best to apologize to you. Tom's a personal friend and a great guy, he can do a lot to help you and your business and really does have the best interest of indies in mind. Finally, here's a quick follow-up to the image I used in my last Daily - the orgins of the shirt and the Mac versions.  Read this post in ChineseRead More.. | 2 Comments | |
| Epic Games Announces Free Unreal Development Kit, Powered by Unreal Engine 3 | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 2:31:14 PM | |
| Epic Games, Inc. announces the launch of the Unreal Development Kit (UDK), a free edition of Unreal Engine 3 that provides community access to the award-winning toolset like never before. This software release is available to anyone interested in using 3D game engine technology, including game developers, students, hobbyists, researchers, creators of 3D visualizations and simulations, and digital filmmakers. Anyone can start working with the industry-leading Unreal Engine 3 toolset by downloading UDK at www.udk.com, where detailed product features, technical documentation, commercial licensing terms, support resources and more are also available. Read More.. | 17 Comments | |
| 2010 Independent Games Festival Receives Record Number of Main Competition Entries | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 2:15:35 PM | |
| The 2010 Independent Games Festival (IGF 2010) has received a record number of entries to the Main Competition. In total, this year's Main Competition has garnered 306 game entries, many of which were created by leading independent game developers. The record-setting number of Main Competition entries represents a 35% increase over last year's record 226 entries, which in itself represented a 30% increase over the previous year, providing further evidence of the growing significance and prominence of independent game development. Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| John Ratcliff releases his MeshImport libraries | |
| Posted by: John W. Ratcliff at 12:22:36 PM | |
 John W. Ratcliff has released a demonstration application and binary plugins for his MeshImport library. The MeshImport library is an open source project which allows developers to easily import and export full skeletal, animated, deformed, meshes using a simple API in a wide variety of graphics file formats. This release showcases the EZmesh graphics format.http://www.codesuppository.blogspot.com/ Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| Wednesday, November 4, 2009 | |
| The Daily GameDev.net | |
| Posted by: Oli Wilkinson at 12:41:21 PM | |
| Bearing fruit: Apple have confirmed (after third party speculation) that there is now over 100,000 apps on the App Store - a gushing endorsement. Whilst perhaps over editorialising here, I can't help feel that this isn't great news for developers. With such an already huge (and growing) number of apps people are already saying that success comes from being close enough to Apple to get featured. I'm holding out for the "get featured by Apple" app. Ubisoft posts huge loss: Ubisoft are reporting a €80 million loss in the first half of their fiscal year. The company are still claiming to be on track for the rest of the year as it's weighted the biggest titles, games such as Assassin's Creed 2, for the end of this year. Charity Starts at home: At least it does for Zoë Mode anyway. The games industry chraity inititative OneBigGame who raise money for children by the power of gaming have released details about "Chime" developed by Zoë Mode. It's available on XBox Live this winter and has seen contributions from music artists such as Moby and Paul Hartnoll. Nice one, guys. iRage: John Carmack of id Software has talked about his desire to build an iPhone game based on Rage to coincide with its release on the other platforms in 2010. However the team at id are struggling to allocate resources to the iPhone with only 2 people working full time on the platform. Time is money. Money is time. XBox 360 Scuttles Pirates: Modded your XBox 360 console to play pirate games? Well you've probably been forced to walk the plank along with the rest of the scurvy dogs that Microsoft have banned from the service. An important point is raised, however - if you've bought a used machine that was previously banned - you ain't covered due to non-transferrable warranties. Jumping ship: Following on the pirate and sea-based theme, OTX are reporting (via Gamasutra) that up to 15% of people that play on the XBox 360 are looking to buy their sequels on the PS3. I'd say I was included in that stat myself. Odds and Sods
Read More.. | 7 Comments | |
| The 2010 GDC Announces New Summits and Pass Options as Online Registration Opens | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 12:17:09 PM | |
 Registration is now open for the 2010 Game Developers Conference® (GDC 2010). GDC 2010, produced by the Think Services Game Group, returns to San Francisco on Tuesday, March 9 through Saturday, March 13, 2010 for five days of lectures, panels, summits, tutorials and roundtable discussions on a comprehensive selection of game development topics taught by leading industry experts. The first two days of the conference will feature a total of eight summits, two of which are new to the GDC lineup: the iPhone Games Summit and the Social & Online Games Summit. GDC 2010 will also play host to the GDC Expo, the GDC Career Pavilion, the 12th Annual Independent Games Festival and the 10th Annual Game Developers Choice Awards. GDC continues to serve game developer attendees with core educational one and two day tutorials and sponsored developer days. Registration and conference information is available online at the official GDC website http://www.gdconf.com.Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| Tuesday, November 3, 2009 | |
| The Daily GameDev.Net | |
| Posted by: Promit Roy at 5:38:34 PM | |
| I apologize for the late evening post, but I've been mired in exams once more. Let's move forwards with an Unproductive Evening GameDev.Net Daily, shall we? I thought I'd mix it up a bit today and start at ShackNews, where it seems that World of Warcraft has been ordered to shut down in China. I'm a little confused about why exactly they're supposed to shut down, but it seems to be related to the Ministry of Culture not liking certain elements of the beta. It's not clear what'll happen at this point, although personally I'm assuming that all WoW players in China end up at internet addiction treatment centers anyway. In fact I have a few friends who could do with treatment. In any case, Joystiq has some more info about the whole thing. Remember they're making a Prince of Persia movie? Well, the trailer is out at least. They've gone for an adaptation of the Sands of Time plot from the look of it, and I think the special effects may have all come from The Mummy. (Except that first shot, which is clearly Assassin's Creed.) The dialog is cheesy, and the story sounds generic. My guess is it will be like the first Tomb Raider movie -- pretty decent in its own right, but unremarkable except for being based on a video game. Except this time, you'll be staring at Jake Gylenhaal instead of Angelina Jolie. On GamaSutra, there is an interview with Scribblenauts designer Jeremiah Slaczka. I'm quite fond of Scribblenauts, so it's very cool to hear more about the design process. The interview is unfortunately very short, but still absolutely worth a read. Oh, and Mass Effect is confirmed for January. Hooray! Write me down for a gift card for Christmas. Forza 3 came out last week, and in case you haven't heard, it's brilliant. Reviewers have hailed it as basically perfection in racing game form, raising questions about just how Gran Turismo 5 will raise the bar when it finally arrives. One crazy rumor is that it will have a track editor. No real information on how reliable this is, but it sounds like a real opportunity to construct hellish deathtraps that no one would dare drive in real life. Also known as the Nurburgring in the 60s. Also on GamaSutra is an interview with Valve's writers. I have mixed feelings about the writing approach in Half Life 2, but I am a big fan of their games overall. As usual, it's a solid interview, and I'm forced to repeat myself -- read it! Hm, I believe that we just went through an entire Daily without any sarcastic jabs at all. I must be tired today. In any case, I thought I'd point out that DJ Hero is out this week. My friends tell me it's actually really very good. Check out the GameTrailers review and make up your own mind. My question is, will it allow me to avoid talking to people at parties? Because Rock Band does a wonderful job of that. Read More.. | 5 Comments | |
| Unity Technologies Announces Education Partnership to Accelerate Game Dev Worldwide | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 12:59:07 PM | |
 Unity Technologies, the leading provider of the multi-platform game development platform for Web, PC, Mac, Wii(TM) and iPhone, today announced a worldwide education distribution and training relationship with Noesis Interactive.Educators around the world have begun to develop academic programs to teach students how to develop video games as part of a game development track, certificate or degree. To enhance and accelerate this opportunity, Noesis Interactive will serve as a one stop shop for education customers to purchase both the Unity Integrated Development Environment (IDE) and Noesis created Video Courseware at special educational prices, along with extensive instructional materials for the Winter Terms beginning in January 2010 Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| Casual Connect Kyiv 2009 - Content Ready for Download! | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 12:47:45 PM | |
| Many have told us this year's Kyiv show was the best ever. Who are we to argue? With nearly 600 professionals from all over the world, all the top portals, distributors, and publishers in attendance, (and lots of vodka), they just might be right. Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| Monday, November 2, 2009 | |
| Unity Technologies Announces Award Winners of Its Third Annual ‘Best of’ Contest | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 4:50:51 PM | |
| Today at the Unite conference, Unity Technologies, the leading provider of the multi-platform game development platform for Web, PC, Mac, WiiÔ and iPhone, announced the award winners of its third annual contest. This year, there were 129 submissions, twice the number of submissions last year, spanning four categories: Best Overall, Best iPhone Game, Best Visual Design and Best Technical Achievement; prizes totaled $9,500. Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| UFEC Game Programming Contest Starts | |
| Posted by: Petr Hudecek at 1:06:04 PM | |
 UFEC (Unofficial Four Elements Contest) is a game programming competition that started just 3 days ago. The participants' goal is to create a full game containing all four chosen elements (Proliferation, Evolution, Fire, Water) within a time frame of 5 months. The contest is based on Gamedev.net's Four Elements and you too are welcome to join!Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| The Daily GameDev.net | |
| Posted by: Mike Stedman at 9:48:41 AM | |
| Some say that reading the GDNet Daily will render you immune to all known forms of infectious agent, bio-hazard and general punky feeling. Others argue that that is absurd and insulting to the intelligence of the reader. Either way, it can't hurt to read more of the Daily, right? So what's coming out this week? It probably doesn't matter, since Forza 3 and Borderlands are already out. I guess there's the small matter of Dragon Age, if you're one of those people who like sweeping, epic RPGs designed by people who are arguably at the foremost of their craft. If you liked Wolfenstein on the iPhone, there's also Doom for the iPhone. GDNet Daily Hero™ Jeff Minter appears to also be getting into the iPhone. In indie news, aside from Unity Indie being free, there's Hammerfight, a game you can check out on Steam right now. The deadline for the IGF main competition just passed yesterday, but if you're a student, you still have two weeks to enter in the IGF student competition. The Graveyard is free today only, and Lugaru is on sale for 75% off. You really have no excuse not to at least pick up the free one. Before you go today, check out all this stuff that didn't make it into Fallout 3. While you're at it, feel free to browse around there and see cancelled games that you lusted after but had your hopes dashed on the rocks. Read More.. | 6 Comments | |
| Friday, October 30, 2009 | |
| Weekend Reading: Tales from Journal Land | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 6:35:59 PM | |
| Entries from 10/23 - 10/30 Journal Land Pick of the Week Skipping a D - It's time for a community support featured post: JPatrick details the detective work in unraveling a bug in his code and is left wondering: Is calling back into CLR code from a native fiber known to be unsafe? Welcome back, Trefall! Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| The Daily GameDev.net | |
| Posted by: Trent Polack at 12:07:45 AM | |
| So it's Halloween today. I was going home from work last night and I witnessed what I can only assume to be the prelude to the most glorious weekend ever. See, in Michigan, Halloween was a neat thing where guys dressed up like whatever and some girls dressed up in whatever and some girls tried to out-do one another in revealing takes on classic costumes. In Austin, as I witnessed last night, I just saw guys dressed in whatever and angels of perfection dressed in well. I don't know. Loosely associated straps of cloth or something. Either way. Halloween is rad. Insomniac released Ratchet and Clank: A Crack in Time this week and, yesterday, talked about the critical value of 60fps as opposed to the more commonly-adhered to frame rate minimum of 30fps. Mike Acton, the studio's engine director (and a cool dude to follow on Twitter), said: "There is virtually no advantage in sales or reviews of a 60 fps game versus a 30 fps game [...] However it does appear that gameplay scores are also influenced by graphics scores. i.e. Better looking games appear to be more 'fun' to reviewers." And, honestly, as much as I love the silky smoothness of 60fps in some games, I completely see and understand Acton's point. More people will recognize amazing graphical fidelity than will notice the difference between 30/60 frames per second. I'm attuned to the difference and, lately, I've been playing Forza 3 (more on this later) which has a framerate of 60fps and, for that kind of game, I think I may actually prefer more detail given to the composition than the speed. In a game like WipEout HD, however, the 60 frames per second are absolutely crucial to the game's speed. Video games! Speaking of video games, Divine Divinity is on GOG. It's a rad hack-and-slash game that you should play. Speaking of hack-and-slash games, you should be playing Torchlight (more on this later). To reiterate the big news of the week: Unity 3D's Indie license is now free. It's a fantastic engine that I can't recommend enough. I've used it for my personal projects and, like I just said, I can't recommend it enough. See? Not recommending enough in action. Battlefield: Bad Company 2 sure does look gorgeous. In what is actually kind of a surprising move, Nintendo is coming out with yet another take on the Nintendo DS. The Nintendo DSi XL is a Nintendo DSi with a larger screen. And... Uh. Well. The screen is larger. David Surman, a senior lecturer of game design at Newport Art School, says game designers are undervalued. The statement was given at Nottingham's GameCity, a British game conference. Surman says: "Because we don't value the game designer's role, their vision is often subsumed within the views of the higher-ups, when really their contributions should be the most highly-prized in the development process." His message seems to somewhat contradict that statement when he goes on to say that what's the most important is "bringing together the fractured, disparate roles of game creation to reach a language and conversation that goes beyond technical frigidity." So, basically, the "can't we all just get along" of the game development process. As a game designer in my only role as strictly a game designer in my career thus far, I can say that I don't feel my position is undervalued, but the role of a designer varies wildly from company to company. Have a happy Halloween you crazy, nutball kiddos. I don't like dressing up in costumes, so as a compromise I'll probably go as "Dr. House" which is to say I'll get a cane. Yeah. I'm one of those people. I'll also try to balance time playing the amazing Forza 3 and the superb Torchlight this weekend, both of which are games I'm comfortable with saying: buy them immediately or I'll hate you forever. Read More.. | 6 Comments | |
| Thursday, October 29, 2009 | |
| The Daily GameDev.net | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 7:14:20 PM | |
 It's time for another Late Night Daily - apologies to you over in Asia who had to go the day without a Daily. Seeing as statistics (somewhere, no doubt) show that images make anything better, here is your awesome Daily image for the day.Studio News - Gravity Bear, Valve acquisition rumors, Arc Interactive You may recall the spectacular sinking and burning wreck of Flagship Studios late last year, but its corpse has really only enriched the game industry with new ventures and employee acquisitions. The latest growth from the embers is Gravity Bear, a social gaming studio that actually formed not long after Flagship's closure but is just now being "officially unveiled". Rumors are flying left and right about big companies sniffing around the butts of other big companies (to use the dog analogy). MaximumPC has reported the possibility that Bethesda, still relatively fresh from its purchase of id Software, is giving Valve some consideration. Then you read over at GameSpy that Zenimax is also looking to buy Valve - until you read further and are reminded that Zenimax now owns Bethesda after they bought them... and id Software. This all makes my head hurt. Perhaps I just should have said "Valve is possibly open for purchase." There, that's simple. Finally, let's give some love to Arc Interactive, who announced their new Netherlands-based indie games company right here on our forums. Check em out! Borderlands runs into problems down under. I'm feeling really bad for the Aussies right about now. Not only does their country have a joke of a rating system for their video games, but now games that don't even need to be censored are winding up censored anyways. 2K has no idea how the "low violence" version of Borderlands wound up downloading for Australian Steam users, and is working to fix it before the game unlocks tomorrow. Unfortunately, this means a re-download for anyone with the wrong version and apparently limited bandwidth runs rampant over there as well. Also - if the low violence version wasn't meant for Australia, then who was it meant for? My guess would be it was simply a back-up option in the event that the game was refused classification, which it wasn't, but then someone obviously forgot to flip a switch. However, those in the land Down Under aren't the only ones having troubles, and once they get their proper game version, they'll still have to contend with these bugs. All this aside, I hear all over that it's a pretty awesome game, so no doubt players will find the trouble worthwhile. Indievision supports small indie game devs. A new website has popped up that seems to be based in Europe for all of you across the pond. Dubbed Indievision with the catchphrase "Supporting Small Indie Game Developers", it's a site not to dissimilar to us - it has articles, forums, etc but is specifically tailored towards small development companies. I see that EDI already has a profile over there (although this may come as news to Raymond :P). We're seeing more of these niche sites coming into existence and do like to hear about it so if you know of anymore, tell us! GarageGames retires brand, switches to TorquePowered. While it's not going to happen overnight, GarageGames has announced via Business Director Brett Seyler's blog that the GG brand will be "sunset" in favor of the Torque brand, which better encompasses the company's focus since it no longer primarily develops games. This is also after GG retired the Torque Game Engine with the release of Torque3D a little over a month ago. Jeff Tunnell, one of the original GarageGames founders, has a post on his blog about the end of the GG brand. I too am hoarding all my GG merchandise - collectors items! Daily Remainders - more cool stories that didn't make the cut along with game dev articles/features. If you're looking for an excuse to buy a game right now (and there are lots of good excuses out there at the moment) then check out Amazon's latest deal of spend $80 on games, get $40 in credit. And this isn't just for random largely-unheard-of games either, but games you'd actually want. Barring that, you could also keep your eyes peeled for a buy 2, get 1 free deal. And don't forget that Black Friday/Cyber Monday is less than a month away. Ok, I know some of you would like to forget. Read this post in ChineseRead More.. | 5 Comments | |
| Wednesday, October 28, 2009 | |
| Chris Swain, Director USC Games Institute, To Give 2nd Keynote For IGC West | |
| Posted by: Game Path at 3:37:38 PM | |
| Chris Swain, Director, USC Games Institute, will highlight why it’s a great time to be in game development Friday, Nov. 6 at IGC West, a Game Path event for indie studios and those seeking a career in game development, at the Marina del Rey Marriott. Read More.. | 1 Comments | |
| The Daily GameDev.net | |
| Posted by: Oli Wilkinson at 2:58:39 PM | |
| Unity goes Free: Good news for Indies. Those nice people at Unity have slashed the price of Unity Indie to a pocket-friendly $0, that's right - zip, nada, nowt. Along with this they've also changed the name to just "Unity". It's great news for what is already a popular platform for indie developers. In the same Gamasutra article, it's also revealed that Unity is coming to the XBox 360. For the next 4 weeks, GameDev.net are running post-mortem interviews with this year's Unity summer of code projects - we kick off with Ben Throop's Detonator project. So now you get free Unity and free tools to make things go 'splodey. Eurogamer Expo - Leeds: For the last two days Leeds has hosted the northern UK leg of this year's Eurogamer Expo and it's been a great success; I toddled along yesterday and got to play some great game demos. There were two that I kept going back to, the first was God of War III which is simply awesome in its polish and brutality - online gaming mag "Resolution" has a nice coverage of the game. As well as God of War III, I played Black Rock Studio/Disney's arcade racer Split/Second which is breathtaking in its cinematic glory. Also on show was Heavy Rain, Alien vs Predator, Left 4 Dead 2, Star Trek: Online, Mass Effect 2 and the curiously charming indie game Cletus Clay. I could keep talking, but I won't as I'll go on forever. UK Tax Breaks "Last Resort": Prominent politician and longstanding game advocate Lord Putman told people at Nottingham's Game City event that tax breaks for game developers in the UK is a "last resort" and that the industry needs more structure to it. It comes as a bit of a blow to proponents of the scheme. PC Download charts: Chart-Track have confirmed that they are to start including download statistics for PC games at the start of next year. Several big publishers are already on board with the plan. There are no plans to include console downloads at this time due to it being a "closed market". Take to the skies! Yesterday Microsoft launched it's Sky TV player on the XBox 360 which allows people in the UK and Ireland to watch the service through their box. At least, that was the plan until it was pulled today following an "unforeseen technical issue". Doh! Microsoft not threatend by streaming: Microsoft's Jerry Johnson feels that streaming game services such as OnLive and GaiKai don't currently have the scalability to threaten the current DVD+DLC content model currently on the XBox 360, instead he predicts the parity of digital distribution will be reached in 2014. Taking the Mickey... Mickey Mouse has gone Epic and has been reinvented for the game "Epic Mickey" on the Wii. I'm not sure what I think. iPirate: As I mentioned last week, the iPhone isn't immune to piracy. Today Fishlabs have added to the fears by revealing that their game Rally Master Pro 3D had a release day piracy rate of 95%. Midway execs cleared: The five former Midway execs accused of conspiring to hide the state of the company to shareholders have been cleared by a US district Judge. Although the company filed for bankruptcy in Febrary with debts of $281 million, the judge held that the execs did little more than "publicly adopt a posture that its strategic plans would pay off". Sounds like heads in the sand to me. Read More.. | 7 Comments | |
| Unity Technologies Launches Version 2.6 and Makes Unity Freely Available to Indies | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 1:25:48 PM | |
| Today at the Unite conference, Unity Technologies, the leading provider of the multi-platform game development platform for Web, PC, Mac, Wii™ and iPhone, announced that version 2.6 of its Unity Platform is available and that the feature-packed Unity (formerly known as Unity Indie and priced at $199) is now available at no cost at http://unity3d.com/unity/download to make it possible for all developers to get access to the best development platform available. Unity Pro will continue to be priced at $1,499 per license. Read More.. | 5 Comments | |
| EMotion FX v3.8 released, now including a completely new EMotion Studio | |
| Posted by: MysticGD at 3:31:07 AM | |
| MysticGD, a leader in real-time character animation middleware, today announced the release of its latest version of EMotion FX, the real-time character animation and model export system. "This release is a major step in the development and future of EMotion FX. A lot of work has been put into the new EMotion Studio. We believe good tools are the future of successful game middleware. Therefore we spent a lot of time writing a completely new EMotion Studio until we knew for sure that it was better than any existing on the market." said John van der Burg, Development Director. Read More.. | 1 Comments | |
| Tuesday, October 27, 2009 | |
| GDC 2010 Debuts Call for Submissions for Summits | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 2:04:41 PM | |
| Game Developers Conference® 2010, presented by Think Services, has announced that the call for submissions is open for GDC's suite of Summits, which take place on the first two days of GDC week in San Francisco, March 9th-10th 2010. This year's GDC Summit line-up includes two new events in the form of the Social & Online Games Summit and iPhone Games Summit, alongside the GDC Mobile/Handheld, Independent Games, and Serious Games Summits, which are all accepting submissions through November 13th Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| The Daily GameDev.Net | |
| Posted by: Promit Roy at 10:26:18 AM | |
| Sorry about the hiatus. I accidentally died a few weeks back and because I once played D&D and Magic: The Gathering, had to fight my way out of the burning fires and past the three headed dog Cerberus. I got better, though, and so it is now time for a Truly Colossal GameDev.Net Daily. (Unfortunately my Xbox 360 did not survive the struggle and has been rerouted through the repair department.) We start our adventure, as usual, at GamaSutra. If you were planning to enter IGF, hurry up -- the entry deadline is November 1! I shouldn't have to tell you how great the IGF is, of course. A quick glance at the games that have come out of that competition makes it clear that there is some real talent to be reckoned with there. And if you've been procrastinating on starting your entry...well, you might just want to consider waiting until the 2011 competition. Hopefully we'll get some awesome new games this year, which will then be bundled into an absurdly cheap Steam weekend deal next year for me to buy. Mike mentioned that Forza 3 is out today, but I just wanted to make one thing clear. Forza 3 is out. Today. You can go out and get it anytime. I'll wait. Actually I have to wait because my 360 is red-ringed. But I suppose my main point is that Forza 3 is out today. Unless you're in the EU of course, who've had it since Friday for some reason. Trent didn't mention that, but I'm just too nice to make a joke about his car. That man is in pain. Also via GamaSutra, Changyou.com signed an agreement to license BigWorld for its future MMO development. I've never heard of the place, but apparently they're Beijing based, have quite a lot of money, and run several games. I also want our Chinese readers to feel the love. I haven't forgotten you guys! I don't know how many homebrew-oriented developers are out there, reading this post. I'll be honest. You guys are absolutely crazy, in both the good and the bad way. In any case, if you've been thinking that your SNES just isn't getting the love it needs, Quickdev16 has got just the thing for you. Last time I was in India, they had these consoles that played hundreds of SNES bootlegs off a single cart, with various hacks. I have no idea if this developer cartridge works with those, or really why I brought it up, but maybe it's worth a shot. Alternately, just buy the SNES off Amazon, or these guys. No official word on whether IGF will accept SNES submissions. For some reason, I missed the announcement that Netflix is coming to the PS3. Finally I won't have to wait for them to mail my Blu Ray, then lose my disc somewhere in the house, find it a month later, decide I don't want to see the movie after all, and send it back for something else. Sure it requires a free disc, but on 360 it requires a (not free) Gold account. Guess which one I'll be doing? I've heard 360s are very unreliable, too. You do know World of Goo developer 2D Boy, right? If not, visit them and go play World of Goo. Seriously. I'll wait, cause I just got an iPod Touch over the weekend to help spend my time. In fact, the game is coming to the iPhone! But I digress. 2D Boy is well known for having a pretty creative approach to the market, and their latest experiment was "pay what you want" to get the game. Well, the results of that experiment are out. Contrary to what I always say to annoy people, it turns out that Linux users DO in fact pay for games. Windows made up a surprisingly weak 65% of total sales. It also turns out that Americans are really, really cheap. In fact, our average payment was slightly higher than Mexico's, and compensated for per-capita GDP we just barely beat out the UK in "generosity". Brazil took the top of the chart in generosity, prompting players everywhere to yell "GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLL!" This kid went on a murderous rampage. He's schizophrenic, and also played GTA at some point. Which one will the mainstream media pick up on? Also cool, Shacknews has an interview with Matt Uelmen. This is the guy behind the music of Diablo. Shack mentions that opening chord to the Diablo town, and damnit I love that song. In fact I'm listening to it now. I've made a mockery of that song more than once, trying to play it or remix it. And sorry OCRemix, but you guys haven't got it right either. Not only that, it seems Disney is starting to show Prince of Persia around. I can only assume those who are hot for Jake Gylenhaal are thrilled, but I'm a little worried about just how mangled this movie will be. My 360 may be dead, but I still have a PS3 and I could use some new games. Ratchet and Clank Future: A Crack in Time just came out, and I think that might be my weapon of choice. Insomniac's old Spyro the Dragon game is what made me a game developer, and I've always been blown away by their work. This latest title looks every bit as incredible. And in case you're wondering, yes the Daily is actually over now. I have to go to class, sadly. Before you go, though, you should look to the right of this post on the GameDev.Net front page to the poll. (Get over here, RSS punks.) Now, vote in that poll! There are new polls weekly, I believe, and Drew posts threads about them in the forums later. And if someone could explain to me just what Google Wave is, that would be great. Read More.. | 9 Comments | |
| Monday, October 26, 2009 | |
| Indie Game Challenge Deadline This Week | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 8:20:08 PM | |
| The Indie Game Challenge has categories for both professional and non-professional teams or individuals and provides aspiring game developers the opportunity to showcase their skills, break into the business and get their game published. Winners in various categories will share in a total of almost $300,000 in prize monies and scholarships, including $100,000 grand prize awards for both the winning professional and non-professional games. For complete entry details, visit http://www.indiegamechallenge.com Deadline is Oct 31st! Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| The Daily GameDev.net | |
| Posted by: Mike Stedman at 9:55:33 AM | |
| Is GDNet a true friend? It's there everyday for you, rain or shine, and once I think I even saw it fetch your slippers for you when you thought you had lost it. This easily outdoes the bad, horrible things GDNet does, like hiding forks in your computer case or forcing you to marry the Incredible Hulk at gunpoint. In conclusion, I would argue that yes, GDNet is your true friend. It might be your only friend. You might want to check out the Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 technical comparison to see which platform's release is better, and if the very thought of picking up another Ninja Gaiden game is making you cry, there's always MeowWalker. Is that a independent game development competition on the horizon? Yes it is - TIGSource has provided us with Assemblee, where artists slave endlessly to provide you with juicy content for you to plug into your lushly-programmed games. One of the biggest problems I've always had with these competitions is the art requirements, but this solves it. Toil, artists, toil! If you're an artist, you should read the previous sentence as "do what I want, programmers, do what I want!" You should join up right now. Some other notable independent games recently include Fatale, Capsized, Hydorah, and a new version of everyone's favourite shooty-roguelike, DoomRL. The chaps (and chapettes) doing the La Mulana port to the Nintendo Wii have posted some new screenshots as well. In downloadable content news, Nintendo is going to make me love them no matter what with their release of what appears to be the SNES version of Zombies Ate My Neighbors. Uncharted 2 is to receive downloadable content expansions, Trine is finally available for PS3 and, if you jumped on Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 unlike yours truly, who forgot, you can soon play as everyone's favourite time travelling shooty dude Cable. Also, Dragula is coming to Rock Band. What's coming out this week? Forza 3, and some other stuff that isn't driving cars. Honestly, if you're playing anything other than Forza 3 this week, you either don't own a 360 or are trapped underneath some kind of rubble and should be using your Internet connection to notify the authorities instead of troll message boards. Seriously, man. Email the police or something. If you live in Canada, you should have stayed off the roads a few months ago because apparently another season of Canada's Worst Driver premieres tonight. For those foreigners not aware of Canada's Worst Driver, it is a show where we force our entitled, elderly and incompetent to fight to the death in a closed arena using only up-armoured Yugos and fifty caliber anti-tank machineguns. But why would you believe my patented brand of lies and half-truths when you can see the trailer? Read More.. | 7 Comments | |
| Friday, October 23, 2009 | |
| Weekend Reading: Tales from Journal Land | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 10:23:30 AM | |
| Entries from 10/16 - 10/22 Journal Land Picks of the Week Once again giving some release love to a few projects that saw the light of day this past week: OddGames development journal - O-san's iPhone game, Apple Catcher, is now available in the App Store. Congrats!! The Broken Mind - Another congrats on a game release is in store for Azh321, who released his second Flash game to Newgrounds. Go check out Tunnel Syndrome! Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| The Daily GameDev.net | |
| Posted by: Trent Polack at 12:03:19 AM | |
| It's almost the weekend! I mean. It pretty much is. Today is Friday after all. So basically the weekend. League of Legends is now in open beta in anticipation of the game's release next week. It's a fantastic DOTA-esque game that deserves your attention. Of the Heroes of Newerth and League of Legends DOTA clone rivalry, it is my opinion that League of Legends is far and away the more enjoyable and more evolved take on the very niche genre. Check it out. The Modern Warfare 2 PC specifications are now out and if you're interested in the PC release of what is sure to be a most excellent video game, you should probably read 'em. I'm a 360 man for this one (much like most other games). After playing the incredibly well-done Uncharted 2, it's going to be nice to play another game that I think will be just an amazingly polished and carefully crafted game experience. Call of Duty 4 was a superb game and it's silly to think that Modern Warfare 2 will be anything but a fantastic game (though it probably won't top Uncharted 2 as my current favorite for the year). It's a Left 4 Dead 2 leaked trailer! It's pretty much one of the most glorious things. And while we're on the topic of Left 4 Dead 2, the Australian appeal, unsurprisingly, failed. That's pretty much one of the most absurd things. I don't know about any of you, but when I think of Earthworm Jim, I think gee, I really want awkward touch controls plastered onto an iPhone port, because that game just isn't frustrating and difficult enough with standard controls. As for me? I think Borderlands is in order for this weekend's frolicking. It just seems like the right thing to do. And I'm pretty sure I'm going to see The Evil Dead musical. I have no idea what on Earth to expect from that. Probably blood. Read More.. | 7 Comments | |
| Thursday, October 22, 2009 | |
| 2010 DICE Summit Announces First Speakers | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 1:49:15 PM | |
| The Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences® (AIAS) today announced the initial speakers for the 2010 D.I.C.E. (Design, Innovate, Communicate, Entertain) Summit®. The event will be held at the Red Rock Resort in Las Vegas, February 17-19, 2010, and feature a line-up of industry leaders, decision makers and visionaries from the disciplines that are shaping the future of interactive entertainment. “Our program for 2010 is fast becoming the most prolific line-up we’ve ever produced,” said Joseph Olin, president of the Academy. “From the industry’s most gifted minds behind some of the greatest entertainment properties, to leading edge thinkers steeped in the nature of creativity, there will be a lot to talk about at this year’s Summit.” Read More.. | 0 Comments | |
| The Daily GameDev.net | |
| Posted by: Drew Sikora at 12:28:23 PM | |
| Another day, another Daily! Let's get you all caught up on what's going on in the industry as it happens. Well, ok not really but I've always wanted to say that. I think it's one of the cooler news anchor phrases. I can at least give you what's been cooking since last week and yesterday's Daily. Studio News - Idol Minds, Slipgate Ironworks, Blade Games, EA/Playfish. In addition to the layoffs that hit Slipgate Ironworks and Transmission Games earlier this week, reports have come out revealing that Idol Minds, developer of PAIN for the PSN, appears to have been sacked with at least 17 and as many as 26 employees being let go. No confirmation of these layoffs have been received yet - the original source was a former employee with the company. And speaking of Slipgate, its parent publisher Gazillion just reported that John Romero is still large and in charge after the "change in format" to the company. In a time where layoffs run rampant, hirings also tend to make headlines, like Blade Games' recent acquisition of two vets from Microsoft and EA. Nothing really huge there except, hey - the industry is still hiring big! Finally, there's another source that claims EA has indeed purchased Playfish for a very decent chunk of small country(side), but still no official announcement from either company. Why the hush hush? EA's Dead Space: Extraction "test" off to slow start. Despite that the game was only out 5 days in September, analysts and EA are still calling the NPD numbers below satisfactory with only about 9,000 copies sold, although everyone does acknowledge that very little marketing push was put behind the game, which EA calls a "test" to see if they can attract gamers with multiple platforms to extend their mature play experience across two or more consoles that aren't just Xbox and PS3. While Dead Space: Extraction does have the success of the original Dead Space pushing for it even if EA doesn't lift so much as a marketing finger, the outlook is pretty grim - the other two mature Wii titles MadWorld and The Conduit have both sold less than 100,000 copies. We'll be hearing more on this experiment as the sales data continues to roll in, especially with the holiday season revving up as I type this. Pitchford's accusations against Valve remain ignored. Kotaku did a quick summation of the fact that no one really seems to have reacted much to Gearbox's Randy Pitchford making some pretty hefty accusations against Valve taking advantage of small developers and having an ongoing conflict of interest regarding Steam. I'm sticking the headstone in this story, which I filled up last week with dirt from Tripwire Interactive's defense in favor of Valve. Valve itself has refused any comment at all. If this comes back to life they will most likely cap it in the head, Zombie-defense style. Don't forget the double-tap - that's Rule #2. Dev Asserts Ownership Of blah blah blah Controversy. It's kinda cool how I was drawn to this headline simply based upon the fact that it included the word "controversy". Who doesn't like a little controversy? I have no idea what it's about, I didn't actually read it, but I guess it did get me partway there. Just saying. Daily Remainders - more cool stories that didn't make the cut along with game dev articles/features. Tickets are now on sale for PAX East, which is a damn shame because I can't go. And neither can a good majority of the 11,000-ish people that will be attending GDC that same week. Gabe and Tycho have mentioned that they don't see the conflict as anything major, but here's hoping they don't do it again next year (and that GDC doesn't screw everything up with a weird schedule that lasts into Saturday) So yeah... discussion is cool. I'm hearing lots about Borderlands. A friend of mine was audio director for that game, but I'm still on the fence as to whether it's my cup of hot chocolate. Read this post in ChineseRead More.. | 0 Comments | |
