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…
Speaking in September
I’ll be speaking at two game development conferences during September: CEDEC 2009 in Japan and GDC Austin in Texas. Details and links follow. CEDEC 2009 – CESA Developers Conference 9/1 – 9/3 in Yokohama, Japan Handling Code and Assets for Huge Projects Using State-of-the-Art SCM What I Have Learnt From Japan (panel) – Tuesday 9/1,…
My CEDEC 2008 Presentation: Recent Trends in U.S. Game Development Processes
Last week I spoke at CEDEC 2008 in Tokyo, Japan about "Recent Trends in U.S. Game Development Processes". And then I followed it up with lots of sight-seeing! CEDEC is the CESA Developers Conference, the Japanese equivalent to the GDC’s Game Developer Conference in the United States. My presentation covered Agile development and Scrum, SCM…
Non-Programmer Scripting and a Hybrid Solution
Damien Schubert has an interesting video game development post entitled "No Scripting for You!" on his blog Zen of Design: "Ubiq’s law of scripting: Programmers always say, “No designer scripting!” This lasts until they see the production schedule." I posted a comment about hybrid solutions which can frequently achieve many of the benefits of the…
Star Control 2 Sequel Possible!
Alex Ness, producer at Toys for Bob, posted on their web site that they have re-acquired all rights to their classic game Star Control! If you have not played Star Control 2, I highly recommend you download and play the awesome open source version, The Ur-Quan Masters. Toys for Bob is now owned by Activision,…
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…
Classic Games: The Ur-Quan Masters aka Star Control 2
After finishing Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (yes, the original, I’m always behind on playing computer games), I was looking around for another good game to play. For some reason I decided to search online for Star Control 2, which I had completed again about five years ago (running via DOSEMU under Linux).…
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…