LBP Levels You Must Try
I know LBP2 is out, and it’s great. But don’t forget the original with these amazing user-created levels. This is my personal pick of the list…
Little Big Calculator By Upsilandre
Many of you might have already seen this excitingly named level on YouTube during LBP’s public beta phase, and those of you who have already know its secret: while a simple calculator that can add and subtract might not seem like much, the real draw here has nothing to do with the equations. No, the reason to dive into LBC is the machinery behind it all, which extends for what seems like hundreds of feet above the main calculator interface and consists of an insanely complicated-looking network of color coded switches encased in a few dozen floating enclosures.
The level even includes a jetpack, enabling you to fly up and see it all for yourself once you’re done playing with numbers, although you won’t reallyget the full effect until you’ve looked at it in the game’s Create mode. Do that, and you’ll see an enormous network of wires – normally hidden during the Play mode – that make everything more mind-boggling and confusing than you already thought it was.
So while Little Big Calculator is far from being one of the most enjoyable or exciting LBP levels, it’s definitely one of the most technically impressive – as well as one of the few that indicates a level of dedication that may border on insanity.
Huge Milestones for the #Games Industry – As it Beats #Hollywood to the $Billion Mark
Yes indeed. The Mac Apps store passed its 100th million download in December. Most of these being games. A major milestone for that platform and while it’s small next to the 15 billion milestone for the iOS apps, it shows the proliferation of easy-to-use app platforms. Also the games industry beat Hollywood in the fastest-ot-make-a-billion competition:
According to data from Charttrack and retail customer sell-through information, Activision’s franchise reached $1 billion in revenue one day quicker than James Cameron’s Avatar – currently the highest-grossing film of all time.
#TheWastedLand Release Date and HD Screenshots…
After much chanting and summoning of dark forces, indie developer Red Wasp Design today announced that the stars will be right for the release of Call of Cthulhu: The Wasted Land on the 30th January 2012. To seal this pact with expectant gamers they have accompanied the date announcement with a slew of never-before released High-Definition images.
Coltan: Blood in the Mobile
I’ve written before about the topic of Coltan and how our industry needs it (and all digital tech), yet the mineral comes at a huge human cost. Well things are starting to move – there is a new film out about the issues, Blood in the Mobile. Here is the trailer:
And you can take the first step of action by writing to your MP:
I don’t think this is right. While it’s an inescapable reality that we’re all going to keep using our mobiles and other technologies now part of our everyday lives that contain Congolese minerals, this shouldn’t be at the cost of fuelling a conflict. Companies that use these minerals in their manufacturing processes must ensure that in doing so, they are doing no harm.
Don’t Get Comfortable in #Technology
One of the things about working in games is that the pace of change; creativly and technologically is so relentless, you can’t get comfy – as Yahoo shows:
Indeed, Yahoo has been stumbling about for quite a few years, with nobody quite clear what its purpose is. I asked the recently departed chief executive Carol Bartz precisely that question a year or so ago, and she burbled around the answer. Really, all Yahoo is there to do is vacuum up spare display advertising while it provides a bit of news, and photography (hello Flickr!) and also be an intermediary for lots of email. Revenues are on a downward slide; Facebook and Twitter are sucking up the display that it used to thrive on.
…
For the rest? Yahoo offers a case study in why you must never get comfortable. It has failed to focus on the money, buoyed by its success in one narrow area. In contrast, Google has tried and tried to find new avenues for making money: it bought Android, the company, in 2005 (Page and Brin didn’t tell their then-chief executive Eric Schmidt). It’s tried multiple times with social networks. It’s never satisfied. Yahoo, and Yang, got comfortable. That’s what will kill your business.
New Games Platform News…
Microsoft are going to go all ‘appy’ with Windows 8 – and if you sell enough offer 80% of the income from sales:
During a Windows 8 preview program for developers, Microsoft vice president of Windows web service Antoine Leblond said that the upcoming Windows Store would be an “opportunity” for developers.
“We want to return as much money as we can into the hands of developers,” said Leblond. “And we want to provide the best economics of any platform. It’s not a small opportunity. It’s not even a medium one or a large one. In fact, it’s the most significant developer opportunity ever.”
Developers keep 70 percent of the revenue made until their app reaches $25,000 in total sales. That cut goes up after that point, moving to an 80 percent take.
While a new indie game finding service aims to help connect gamers with new games:
IndieCity, a digital games destination for independent developers only, incorporates an Amazon.com-like recommendations system that customises the storefront for each individual user.
The platform’s creator, Blitz Games Studios, believes the sophistication of the recommendations engine is an elegant solution to discoverability issues within the oceanic indie games market.
This article from the social games event held recently is also worth a read.
Game of Phone: #RIM Takes a Tablet Dive
Ooops, I think:
The PlayBook is beginning to look like the worst and most expensive decision that RIM, the maker of the BlackBerry smartphone, ever made.
Not only that: preliminary results issued by the company on Friday indicate that it is struggling to maintain pricing of its flagship phones, even though the new devices introduced last quarter were meant to push that pricing up.
The company announced on Friday that it is writing down the value of unsold PlayBook tablets in its warehouses by $485m, which will be taken as a charge against its pre-tax profits for the third quarter which ended in November.
That announcement indicates that RIM has now given up hope of charging the original price – which began at $399 for the 7in version, the same price as Apple’s 10in iPad.
Digital into Real: Games That Link the Physical & Digital
I’m getting increasingly interested in the idea of games that break out of the digital space, to partly co-exist in the real world. This has been called ARG, or Augmented Reality Games, but I’m getting more interested in games that interact more around a physical object, than a physical space (which is what I associate more with ARGs). We’ve been playing at Red Wasp Design, with 3D printing technology and I think this is facinating stuff. Not only does 3D printing promise to be another technological revolution – a sort of personalised industrial revolution, but it also offers some intriguing ideas for games and gaming.
Here’s a couple of things that are shaping my thinking in this area:
- Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure – Action figures that interact with the game – what’s not to love? (And it’s got a Dragon in it too!)
- Eye of Judgement – This was (is?) Sony’s PS3 title that used the PS3’s Eyetoy and allowed you to play a battle-cards game on a special mat, in a way that linked the game on screen with the player’s action with the cards. It was quite a good strategy game and the cards/graphics thing was fun. The main problem with it was that the card functionality was a little fiddly and ultimately would have been better had the whole thing been implemented digitally. What it needed to do was to make the real-world cards have a functionality that could not be done better in a digital space; else what is the point?
- Tamagotchi – This was a huge craze a few years ago. Tiny little virtual ‘creatures’ that needed you to care for them. Why it worked was that the device that they lived in was something that you could easily carry with you. Thus it extended the virtual into the real.
- Thingiverse – An amazing site where people can upload and download 3D models for use in the 3D printer.
- Fab Labs – A global series of projects that create spaces filled with 3D printing and related technology and aim to create communities of people working on new ideas. A great summary of the power of this idea came during BBC’s ClickOn radio show on 17th November by Neil Gershenfeld of MIT; “We ended up at a point in society where engineering is somthing done to us by other people… something very powerful happens when you get to do it for yourself.”
Amsterdam Fab Lab at The Waag Society (Wikipedia)
Non-Smart Phone Space Eaten by Smart Phones
This is a really interesting graph/article looking at the different smart phones and their uptake by users:
What you can see is the steady eating away of the non-smart phone market by smart phones. You can see Android rising dramatically in the space, Apple steadily claiming territory. Windows has not claimed much space as yet and older systems like Palm are exiting altogether…
Games & Science in the Livingstone-Hope Review
A commissioned report into the skills needed to support the games and visual effects industries, called the Livingstone-Hope Review, was recently published. At its core was a much greater push for computer science. (Link to the PDF) For example:
Bring computer science into the National Curriculum as an essential discipline.
One of the other interesting points was a recognition that games are a great way of interesting schools in the core sciences:
STEM subjects – the sciences, technology, engineering and maths – and art are key to success. Raised awareness of this will alone make these subjects more attractive to young people. But video games and visual effects have a much more direct role to play in addressing the UK’s STEM needs: increasing numbers of schools are recognising that games can be used to improve maths, physics and computer science outcomes in the classroom itself.
Or indeed:
The more fluent that we can make our school children, not just in using the software that sits on their computers but also in using the computer languages that sit behind them, the better. So science and computer science are key skills for VFX and video games.
I also thought that it was of interest that the review builds on the games-science link to see games as a ‘marriage of art and science’:
Video games are now accepted as a genuine art form, capable of evoking emotional responses from players. The industry was built on two of the core strengths of the UK – creativity and high technology. It was a marriage of art and science.
Here’s another quote on the same theme of games being a union of art and science:
Once you have the science, you then need to take an artistic eye to it. While the equation borrowed from physics may accurately describe how the water moves, it is not perfect and needs a subjective and creative decision made about what ‘feels’ right. Once you’ve created the tool in the computer to light the water realistically, you still need the artistic flair of a cinematographer or a painter to make it look great. At every turn, the VFX artist is combining maths, physics, computer science and art to create.
The full report is here (PDF). It is claimed the report is already having an impact.
A Great Becoming... 