HEAVY PIXELATION

Not only is this incredible cool, but it has some awesome UI design work/flow…

SurfaceScapes Gameplay Session from Surfacescapes on Vimeo.

Wow… not bad!  We talked about a “ship it” award for the development team to be a deck of Fortune’s Tower cards, but we never got around to doing it.  Now, lets seem him make a Spinnerbox!

for more pictures, go here -> My Hand Made Fable Fortune’s Tower Set

Yes, the same engine that powers Gears of War, Bioshock, Shadow Complex, and about 50% of all the other games out there is now free (for personal use).  But if you want to sell the game, Epic will take 25% of the profits after the first $5000 (not to bad since most deals are 30/70).

Or you could just make a game for free and give it away for free… nothing sells better then a free game!

http://www.udk.com/

Very cool idea.  I would like to see Pipe Dream type a game work the same way.

speed + jumping = good

Go download the demo here http://www.igneousgame.com/index.html

Someone over at Remedy Entertainment is smart.  You see, the game industry can’t hold a secret.  Doesn’t matter how hard you try, everyone knows everything about a game before it’s launched.  People who get paid and call themselves ‘game journalist’ feel it’s their right to tell their readers everything about the game they’re reviewing.  Guess what, we don’t want to know everything!  Tell us how the gameplay is, any new features, online play, maybe a little about the storyline… but don’t go and spoil everything about it.  Sure, you can use <spoiler> tags or I don’t have to read the review but other gamers are going to post that information just to spoil it for others.

But finally, Remedy Entertainment is thinking about withholding the ending of their new game, Alan Wake…

http://kotaku.com/5394747/alan-wake-devs-might-withhold-ending-from-preview-copies

…personally, I HOPE THEY DO THIS!  There isn’t any surprises anymore, everything has been done before, we’ve seen everything.  So if I can play a game without knowing the end boss, or how it ends, I would be happy.

Some people over at Kotaku are commenting they want the reviewers to play the whole game so they can give a complete review.  This is dumb.  If Remedy gives them 95% of the game to play, and they say the game is great, I don’t think the final 5% is really going to matter.  If that was the case, Gears of War 1 & 2 and Halo 1 & 2 would be the worse ranked games ever because (frankly) their final boss fights were not the most memorable moments in those games.

Sure, the Xbox 360 XNA Community Indie Games have had their growing pains, but the service is making strides and shaping up.  But PLEASE, do we have to show the community classification rating right on the top of the page, BEFORE the description of the game?

Here is how it shows up on any game page…

This game was classified by the community with the following category scores – Violence=0/3, Sex=0/3, Mature Content=0/3. Horizontally scrolling racing action for 1-8 players. Weave your vector line through ever more challenging environments as pounding synchronised music reflects your every action. Includes 4 full tournaments, online highscores and a music creation mode.

I would think most people don’t care about a rating of a game.  And if they do care, and want to keep their children away from “mature” games, use the built-in parental controls on the Xbox.

http://aliceandkev.wordpress.com/

This is an experiment in playing a homeless family in The Sims 3. I created two Sims, moved them in to a place made to look like an abandoned park, removed all of their remaining money, and then attempted to help them survive without taking any of the game’s unrealistically easy cash routes. It was inspired by the old ‘poverty challenge’ idea from players of The Sims 2, but it turned out to be a lot more interesting with The Sims 3’s new living neighborhood features.

I have attempted to tell my experiences with the minimum of embellishment. Everything I describe in here is something that happened in the game. What’s more, a surprising amount of the interesting things in this story were generated by just letting go and watching the Sims’ free will and personality traits take over.

Pretty interesting way to play The Sims.

I wonder if a full blown “homeless” game or add-on to an existing game (like World of Warcraft and or Grand Theft Auto) would work… and sell?  Players would have to make decisions like finding work, begging, and or committing crimes (and having to deal with the consequences from those decisions).  Imagine playing a game and being yelled at by people for being homeless, or having to try to talk to your family who no longer wants anything to do with you.  I guess it wouldn’t be one of those “feel good”.

Speaking of homelessness, former co-worker Scott Brodie has a game based on begging for cash, called Beggar.

This is a follow up to my earlier blog entry about 2DBoy letting people choose how much they want to buy their game, World of  Goo.  Well, results are in, and they made over $100,000 in one week…

Not surprisingly, the vast majority of people paid $2 and under. But I think things worked out well for 2dBoy in the end – they made 57,000+ sales and generated $100,000+ in one week. Not a bad present for the young game (and its proud papas)!

A survey that players could take after purchasing the game reveals more interesting information.

http://tigsource.com/articles/2009/10/20/world-of-goo-birthday-sales

http://unrealart.co.uk/

All artworks have been created using data from the game “Unreal Tournament”. Each image represents about 30 mins of gameplay in which the computers AI plays against itself. There are 20-25 bots playing each game and they play custom maps which I create. Each map has been specially designed so that the AI bots have a rough idea of where to go in order to create the image I want. I log the position (X,Y,Z) of each bot, every second using a modification for the game, I also log the position of a death. I then run my own program written in Processing to create printable postscript files of that match.

And who said video games isn’t art?  Limited prints are available.

Radiohead did it, NIN did it, now 2D Boy is letting you buy their product for as much (or as little) as you want to pay.  I hope they make good money off this, because more and more games should do this.  The die hard fans will make up for the people who spend $1 and (hopefully) even itself out.  Personally, I like what NIN did with GHOST I – IV and have several different products at different prices.  If you notice, NIN sold 2,500 versions of his $300 set (total of $750,000)… not to bad.

Also, 2D Boy could use the help since World of Goo saw a 90% piracy rate when it was originally released.

So go buy a copy!  http://2dboy.com/2009/10/13/happy-birthday-world-of-goo/

I have to admit, I have a guilty pleasure… I love mashups.  You can take two of the worse songs, put them together, and I love it.  Pussycat Dolls, Fergi, Gwen Stefani, that Milkshake song… doesn’t matter, I love it!  But DJ Hero looks to have a pretty badass tracklist with actual good artists!  Daft Punk vs Queen, Gorillaz vs Blondie, Public Enemy vs Beck, and maybe the best mashup ever, Vanilla Ice – “Ice Ice Baby” vs MC Hammer – “U Can’t Touch This”…

full list over here –> http://kotaku.com/5375246/all-93-of-dj-heros-mash+ups

When I first saw DJ Hero, I didn’t really care about it.  The turntable didn’t look “fun” to play with, but the early reviews are saying it very satisfying and it’s a good solid game.  I wonder if the turntable will make it’s way into Guitar Hero (“Bring the Noise” – Public Enemy/Anthrax anyone?)… oh wait, it’s Activision, of course it will.

Also, if you enjoy Mashups like I, download Best of Bootie 2008 (2005 – 2007 can also be downloaded and the older ones are better)

Originally, I wasn’t to hyped for ODST.  But the more I read about it, the more interested I am in playing it.  The fact they took Master Chief out of the game created a huge design challenge, something addressed in the following video…

Jury is still out, but I think the changes they made might of been for the best… I can’t wait to play.

[original story over at Joystiq]