Posted by: Trent Polack at November 27, 2009 1:04:37 AM
Happy Black Friday (in the US) and Just Another Friday (elsewhere). Since yesterday was Thanksgiving us here in the US, it wasn't much of a news day. I'm not really sure how much valuable information I can give you all today. I could tell you about my somewhat unwilling foray into an attempt at online dating, but, yeah, no. So video games!
The big news for anyone right now is probably about sales (Black Friday thing) and in that spirit I give unto you an enormous array of discount video games. Steam's list is particularly brutal.
Gamasutra has a great piece by the consummate thinker Chris Remo entitled "Looking for Meaning in Games." In the piece, Remo analyzes what he felt to be a recurring theme of the Montreal International Game Summit (MIGS) which was to "reconsider the expressive or creative possibilities of games." It's been kind of a theme in the game industry as a whole this year as we've seen a major rise in the activity of the independent game development space. I won't do the piece a disservice by summarizing it; you should just read it. Imminently.
On the topic of Gamasutra, the site ran a postmortem piece with developer 8Monkey's about the development of Darkest of Days. Postmortems about super successful games are always interesting, but there's something amazing about an honest postmortem about a somewhat less-than-stellar game. Darkest of Days was a game that had an amazing and fantastic concept and, while I didn't play it, appeared to be executed very well all things considered.
Square-Enix Europe announced on Wednesday that they are "restructuring" the UK-based game development company Beautiful Game Studios. Beautiful is the developer of the Championship Manager games. According to Square-Enix: "We have taken a decision to re-focus our vision for the franchise and redefine our business model to build a successful commercial future for the Championship Manager brand. Our current business model does not allow us to compete in a fast-changing industry with any degree of flexibility or commercial confidence. [...] To achieve this, we will be re-structuring Beautiful Game Studios, which will regrettably bring with it unavoidable job losses. We aim to have this completed before the end of this calendar year." According to Gamasutra, roughly 80% of jobs are being cut or relocated.
That's all I've got for you today, folks. Enjoy your (hopefully) long weekend. Play some video games, eat an over-abundance of food, and check your e-mail inbox constantly. Erm. That last one is more for me.
eedokMember since: 9/15/2003 From: Edmonton, Alberta
Posted - 11/28/2009 2:37:33 AM
hrmm the execution of darkest of days as indicated by the demo is the reason I didn't buy the game, if I had fun playing the demo I would have easily bought it but the demo didn't impress at all
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frob
Member since: 3/12/2005 From: Salt Lake City, UT
Posted - 11/28/2009 1:13:12 AM
