I’m back. This time, I’m ready for GDC! Come take an early look at the madness I’m bringing with me to the conference. As you can probably guess from the lack of Smiles PC/HD progress posts, I will not be demoing it at the conference. I am still bringing both laptops though. The big one will be doing something else instead. Enjoy! 🙂...
Yet another series, but video. Part 1 of hopefully a few videos of me showing off my IGF preparations. Sinage, computers, etc. 3 weeks left and counting. A bit roughly put together, but that’s half the point. I didn’t want it to eat up that much time, though it did take me some time to remember how to edit and encode a video (without my software crashing). It’s no Goo Road to the IGF, but hey....
Alright, so the clock says it’s Friday now. According to my whiteboard, that’s 29 days before I leave for the Game Developers Conference. Between now and then, I have a few commitments to take care of. Possibly a 2nd draft for my writing engagement, jury (selection?) duty, in addition to IGF preparations. It’s also an important turning point for Smiles as a product and a brand. Lets talk about that....
I know my track record for completing a blog series is pretty lousy, but this one should be easier. I kept a personal log with pictures during the development of Smiles, so most of the work is done for me. I just need need to go through it and regurgitate my notes. To start, I’m going to give a bit of insight in to what happened when I stopped writing my Engines, Names and Evolution blog series last year....
Wow, and yikes. Time flies. IGF Submission time again. October 1st ‘eh? I should probably enter. shrug Here’s something interesting. The 2008 IGF Main Competition will again be open to all independent developers to submit their games – whether it be on PC, console digital download, Web browser, or other more exotic formats. Cool, but doesn’t that have to mean your game is already available/to be available by October?...
I think I’ve already posted about this everywhere, except here. If you’re like me, and decided to skip out on Travel, Hotel, and admission to GDC, you can get the meat of the event for a fair $32. GDC Radio Store $8 gets you a day (about 6 hours of talks) for either the Indie Games Summit or the Casual Games Summit. Nice. Buy ‘em all for nearly 24 hours of interesting discussions and talks....
I like Slamdance. I entered PuffBOMB last year, and was a finalist for the casual game award. Since then, I’ve been excited that a more “artful” game competition was beginning to take off. Winners receive a funky ugly dog statuette. Cool! Then a controversial game was pulled. Things are not going well now. It’s a real shame, and I hope something good comes from the controversy, rather than developing in to more Jack Thompson style heat for our industry....
It seems I missed the memo. The 2nd Independent Games compilation was released back in September (25th), and that PuffBOMB game I seem to talk about all the time was included. As well, there was a set of concept art included in the package. Said art can also be seen right here. I suppose I should go find a way to acquire a copy, ‘cause I’m not sure what happened to a complimentary one....
Thursday, another big day at the Game Developers Conference. Yesterday had some good events. The IGF results were announced, and the evil forces of Darwinia ran away with most of the prize money. Curse you Darwinia, I will have my revenge! Sony also spilled the beans, announcing a service “like” Xbox Live Arcade, but neglects to invite Indie’s. How rude. And everyone’s talking about Duke Nukem Forever 2. It’ll be tough to beat a day as grand as yesterday, but today is always looking for a challenge....
Slamdance was last week. PuffBOMB was a finalist for the PopCap award. A game by the name of Odyssey took the award. Congratz to them. The rest of the results can be found here. It’s a shame, but I couldn’t make it out this year. That, and I’m still getting things off the ground here at Syko. I had heard from my “contact” there would be some PuffBOMB action at the festival, but so far my search for evidence has come up short....