Hit Games Developed in Austin

I recently heard from a friend that past (and maybe present) West Coast game industry executives view Austin as developing no successful titles generating significant profit and/or receiving critical acclaim. I want to convince them otherwise, so here’s the a partial list of hit games developed in Austin: Dishonored (Arkane/Bethesda) – Released October 2012 Sales…

Games as Art and NPC behavior

Update: If you want to find out more about the meeting, Gamasutra published a summary of the meeting, "But Seriously Folks: Austin Game Developers Panel", written by John Henderson. Summary of my own thoughts: Improved NPC AI could make characters in games more believable and entertaining, and increase player empathy and emotional indentification with the…

Nexus: The Jupiter Incident

As usual, I’m at least a year behind playing games on my "to play" list compared to their release dates. I’m currently playing Nexus: The Jupiter Incident, a strategic space combat game with a good storyline released at the end of 2004. The graphics are incredible, creating a beautiful rendering of 3D combat between large…

Tron 2.0

I played and completed Tron 2.0 last week. Pretty cool game, especially playing it on a 61" wide screen display with 7.1 surround sound! 🙂 Monolith and Touchdown did a really good job on the Tron glow effect. I also liked the Tron fiction, look, and especially the disc weapon. My favorite levels were the…

Origin: The Final Goodbye

Richard Garriott hosted a final farewell party to Origin at his new place on Lake Austin last night. Many past and present Origin faces attended to say a final goodbye to the creator of worlds we all loved. A bonfire provided emotional release as we burnt many relics of Origin’ s past. Fortunately, Ultima itself…