Experimental Game Dev Podcast Show
Experimental Game Dev Interviews — The First Game Dev Podcast Ever
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Metaverse Mod Squad Talks About How They Can Help You Run an MMO
Posted on January 26th, 2010 No commentsMike, of Metaverse Mod Squad, outlines their staffing capabilities for gaming development
You can download the podcast here…
http://www.indiegamepod.com/podcasts/engage-expo-metaverse-mod-squad-interview.mp3Or listen to it here…
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Using Gambit To Monetize Your MMO
Posted on January 23rd, 2010 1 commentNoah, from Gambit, discusses monetizing social games
You can download the podcast here…
http://www.indiegamepod.com/podcasts/engage-expo-gambit-interview-final.mp3Or listen to it here…
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Using Games For Business Training
Posted on January 20th, 2010 No commentsChris, from Forterra Systems, talks about using games for business training
You can download the podcast here…
http://www.indiegamepod.com/podcasts/engage-expo-fortera-systems-interview.mp3Or listen to it here…
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Interesting Insights for 2010 by the Unity 3D CEO
Posted on January 19th, 2010 No commentsHey folks,
Got a link to this blog post by the Unity CEO…a lot of the info is relevant to indie game devs…I’ve reprinted it below…
Original Link: http://blogs.unity3d.com/2010/01/14/2010-trends/
We’re living in exciting times, and in some ways we here at Unity Technologies are in a unique position to be part of them. Here are the trends that we think are most important for the Unity community as a whole in 2010 along with what you can do to be part of them.Without further ado.
The Year of Gamification, Part 1
We call the adoption of game technology and game design methods outside of the games industry “gamification”, and this is a really broad trend.Unity and other game technologies are being used across more than a dozen sectors that have little or nothing to do with games. Architectural visualization is an obvious and older example. But apart from that we have some of the world’s biggest engineering and manufacturing companies, as well as several actual armed forces as our customers. TV production companies use Unity and other game engines to produce live TV shows and Machinima videos. Big corporations make employee training and simulation applications using Unity, and some of our customers have gone into online meeting and collaboration. Game technology being applied to all these areas means that Unity users are valuable to many and not everyone has to make a living from games.
Action item: Sell your skills outside the games industry. With a knowledge of other industries, you can create new and innovative products or businesses servicing these industries. The sky’s the limit.
The Year of Gamification, Part 2
A second aspect of gamification is that game design methods and strategies are being used outside of games to design better products and user experiences. A boring site like Mint.com has experimented with turning personal finance into a game, social networking experiment FourSquare maintains high-score lists for people who bar-crawl, and natural-language search startup Siri hired an accomplished game designer to design their user experience.Action item: Learn game design and apply it to everything – how people sign up for a website, how people “succeed” in using your product, how customers share it with their friends and become leaders of user groups/clans, etc. Game design can be used for all of this.
Another Golden Age for Garage Developers
We are definitely going to see even more quality games done by small teams in 2010. With very little risk and by mainly investing their own time, a small team of 1-2 people can make a hit game that will sell millions of units. More importantly (and what makes this different than 4 years ago), there are now many more channels through which to distribute and sell such a game. Many such games are receiving world-wide acclaim.Action item: Find an awesome partner and go create!
Publishers Continue to be Valuable
With casual, online and mobile games requiring smaller production budgets and eschewing retail (and thus expensive and slow) distribution in exchange for digital, the game industry was expecting to get rid of the publisher as a concept.But as the iPhone ecosystem clearly proves (as well as the web somewhat less clearly with portals like Shockwave.com and distribution companies like Zynga and RockYou), the publishers stay. Though they may not be forwarding cash and fully owning the game IPs, their expertise in marketing, game design and online distribution metrics and strategies make them a valuable, if no longer totally required, partner to the game developer.
Action item: Consider working with a publisher. Fortunately with publishers’ leverage lessened, they are typically less demanding with regards to what they have to own (IP, sequel rights, revenue share). Or become your own publisher by building that expertise. This is not a simple task, but has been done by some of the top online game developers.
Everything Becomes a “Console”
This one is somewhat controversial. It seemed that with the move towards mobile and web, the closed ecosystems of the console world would be under siege and eventually collapse. What game developer (except perhaps the ones most entrenched in with the Nintendos-Microsoft-Sony trinity) hasn’t fantasized about this walled garden having its walls rammed down?Well, welcome to the new world. The iPhone has proven that given the right amount of “openness”, neither consumers nor developers really mind closed platforms.
Even on the anarchic web (regions of which remind one more of a Mad-Maxian post-apocalyptical cyberspace than an enlightened utopia), Facebook is in the process of creating a closed environment within which consumers and game developers can meet and exchange fun and money (more or less) safely.
This section could also have been labeled “the Rise of the AppStore Model”, since it’s more the App Store than the gaming console which inspires this megatrend. And framed like that, it might have made people happy. But this is a problematic trend (to say the least) that should make us stop to think.
Action item: Make use of this. Or if you’re brave, build your own!
Facebook Wallet, Apple Tablet, Unity on Facebook
And then are the obvious ones.Of course Apple will launch its tablet. We even know the screen-size and CPU make. The only uncertainly left is what day it launches. And its price.
Surely Facebook will launch a payment platform which in tandem with Facebook Connect will dramatically transform the face of microtransactions on the internet. If they do this right, it will finally enable the web-wide microtransactions which we’ve been dreaming of since the dot-com era.
And of course Unity will be big on Facebook. Several major games will get launched on Facebook, offering awesome games to hundreds of millions of people (not to mention significantly moving the needle on adoption of the Unity plugin).
Action item: Left as an exercise for the reader
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Developing an Indie Football MMO
Posted on January 17th, 2010 No commentsSam, from Italy, talks about making a casual football game MMO
You can download the podcast here…
http://www.indiegamepod.com/podcasts/engage-expo-football-mmo-interview.mp3Or listen to it here…
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Using Games in Military Training Simulations
Posted on January 14th, 2010 No commentsHoward, from Engineering Computer Simulation, discusses military training and games
You can download the podcast here…
http://www.indiegamepod.com/podcasts/engage-expo-engineering-simulations-interview.mp3Or listen to it here…
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Using Electroserver To Make an Online MMO
Posted on January 11th, 2010 1 commentMike talks about the benefits of using Electroserver for your Indie MMO
You can download the podcast here…
http://www.indiegamepod.com/podcasts/engage-expo-electro-server-interview.mp3Or listen to it here…
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The development of Cyborg Mice Arena
Posted on January 8th, 2010 No commentsMark talks about Cyborg Mice Arena, an Xbox game
You can download the podcast here…
http://www.indiegamepod.com/podcasts/engage-expo-cyber-mice-areana-interview.mp3Or listen to it here…
[wp_youtube]JDL7FxTrOvU[/wp_youtube]
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Using Boku To Collect Mobile Payments For Your Game
Posted on January 5th, 2010 No commentsRon., from Boku, talks about mobile payments for your game
You can download the podcast here…
http://www.indiegamepod.com/podcasts/engage-expo-boku-interview.mp3Or listen to it here…
[wp_youtube]mayQZvbTLUw[/wp_youtube]
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The Development of an Online Wizard-Themed MMO Game + Win a Free MMO Account
Posted on January 2nd, 2010 No commentsJames, from Wizard101, discusses their online wizard MMO.
You can download the podcast here…
http://www.indiegamepod.com/podcasts/agdc-wizard101-interview-podcast.mp3Or listen to it here…
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