News Paris, France – September 29th, 2011: Omegame today announced the user interface of Driver: San Francisco has been authored with Menus Master. Developed by Ubisoft Reflections, the game marks the return of the Driver franchise that has sold 14 million copies worldwide. Reflections' team had high expectations, notably on the technical side, by deciding the game should run at 60 frames a second. "It meant we had to draw twice as fast as most games, and that’s a big technical ask" Reflections' studio manager Gareth Edmondson explains. Menus Master has a fully open and flexible architecture, based on drivers.
News - The keys to a company culture that works In a heartfelt talk at GDC Europe, Harald Riegler, co-founder of Sproing, frankly discussed the challenges and advantages of shaping a company culture that leads to respect and success. "The right company culture will bring really good things out of people where you didn't expect they existed," says Riegler, who manages a company of 65 that works on free-to-play and console games in Austria. Unfortunately, he says, forging the right company culture is a challenge -- but it's crucial to shape it, and that every team member understand it. "That culture will largely decide the success of the studio or team," says Riegler. "A bad company culture can even destroy teams completely."
Video: Are some subjects too complex for video games? [This is a repost of a video from GDC 2012. To access chapter selection, click the fullscreen button or check out the video on the GDC Vault website] If you're reading this site, chances are you believe in the potential of video games – that they can evoke powerful emotions, and deeply affect the people who play them. Unpredictability and control in turn-based combat: an examination « sinisterdesign.net Unpredictability makes art interesting. Twists of plot, unconventional characterizations, and surprising character development engage a reader’s imagination; unique instrumentation, sudden shifts in time signature, or an unexpected chord progression delight the ear. So is it with games. Exploration, experimentation, discovery: all of these depend upon unpredictability, on gaps in the player’s familiarity with the game.
Features - Cliff Bleszinski's Game Developer Flashcards Epic Games' design director Cliff Bleszinski profiles common developer behavior in this special Gamasutra feature. As of this summer, I'll have been making games for 20 years professionally. I've led the design on character mascot platform games, first-person shooters, single-player campaigns, multiplayer experiences, and much more. Radiator Blog: Rule Databases for Contextual Narrative... and spelling bees. Valve's Elan Ruskin gave a fantastic talk at GDC 2012 on using "Rule Databases for Contextual Dialog and Game Logic" -- basically, the implementation behind the dialogue response system in Source games, most recently used in Left 4 Dead 2 and DOTA 2. I'm surprised more people haven't picked up on it because I think it presents some really effective research on procedural narrative systems. A lot of game logic / narrative resembles a flowchart, especially with the advent of visual scripting systems like Unreal's Kismet or Twine -- resulting in this deeply entrenched concept of branching structure. Authoring and changing these individual branches is usually very expensive. However, the branching narrative is just the mental model, the conceptual result, the imaginary line of causality that we want players to understand. That doesn't mean we actually have to author our branchy narrative as a branching structure, it just has to unfold like one or resemble one in the player's head.
How to Interview... Your Prospective Employer - GameCareerGuide.com You got the haircut. You had everyone, including your mom, proof your resume. You combed the job sites for that career of your dreams, filled out the apps, and are now sitting in your first game industry interview. And you know what? Things are going amazingly well.
The business model is fine. It is the product that is failing… In sane industries, the product is changed before the business model. When McDonald’s sales go down, they change products. They don’t change their business model (which is extremely successful). In entertainment, the business models have remained the same. Even with iTunes, the business model is still a musician putting music up on a (now digital) shelf waiting for it to be bought.
So you've invented a board game. Now what? An article by William Maclean, the creator of all kinds of fun and games. You've invented a board game, you don't know too much about the business side of board games but your board game is just plain brilliant and the rest of the world will love it. You'll be a millionaire in no time. IndieGames.com's Top Experimental Games Of 2010 [IndieGames.com editor Tim W. presents ten of the best freeware experimental games released in 2010, including IGF Nuovo nominated video-editing game Loop Raccord and video-edited game, Roulette.] Experimental and art games are becoming more and more commonplace these days. Though the IGF Nuovo award is already honoring several of these games, we felt compelled to highlight more exemplary short-form works that deserve a second look from the community. Here are the top freeware experimental games of the year: 10.
Reaching Perfection: Forge Lessons Forge Lessons is a series devoted to teaching readers about the inner workings of level design. It involves the tips and tricks of the trade that allow pro designers to get a step ahead. All Forge Lessons are guidelines and suggestions. Shoshannah Tekofsky's Blog - Why We Play The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company. Ever wondered how you can become so engrossed by those changing lights on a box? I mean, it is definitely cool that the lights change depending on what you do. Still, none of the things you do to the lights will influence reality, except maybe for increasing your energy bill.
Wot I Think: Game Of Thrones Edit – I’ve been asked to note this this piece is based on the US version of the game, as published by Atlus and available for a couple of weeks now. Despite there being no oceans in the middle of the internet, the UK version, published by Focus, is mysteriously not available until June 9. Cyanide’s RPG based on the Game of Thrones TV show has consumed the last week of my life. But should I have allowed this song of stats and fire so much time on my screen and in my mind? We shall Cersei… It goes on far too long, seems to reach a climactic conflict repeatedly but then pull back from it in favour of more stringing along and treats its characters as utterly disposable.