We’re here at Intel Elements 2011, a “one year later” event from where we first heard Peter Biddle lay out a rather large vision for the Intel AppUp Center. Without going back into the history and our previous thoughts on AppUp I find myself feeling increasingly invested in this thing. Far more than getting tied…
One of the most exciting and powerful tools available to the indie developer today is Unity 3D (http://www.unity3D.com), a wildly popular game engine that exploded in popularity when the iPhone app store roared into public prominence. The Unity 3D engine has become so popular in part because of its ease of use, powerful tools, and…
I find myself (Chris) dealing with an ethical dilemma here at Soma Games as we get ready to launch Wind Up Robots. Should we include ads in the game as a way to help pay for the development costs – and hopefully keep Soma Games in business long enough to make another game or two?…
So if there’s one thing I’m learning in my career shift to “mobile developer,” it’s that computer programming is a science and that I’m not a scientist.
Previous thesis statement: memory is a magical unlimited resource. 200 mb webapp? No big deal – my desktop has plenty to spare. Zombie objects? Let ’em be, they’re not hurting any one.
New thesis statement: memory management stinks. Texture memory? Draw calls? GPU? Power of 2 Textures? This is starting to smell a lot like the low lands of computer science and less like the flowered fields of Scriptable Mesa in the land of GigaBytes O’Ram.
The premier entertainment electronics show in the world is going on as I write this and one of the feelings coming out of this year’s E3 is that it’s decidedly underwhelming. Dig this quote from a Wired article: “As the E3 Expo, the videogame industry’s annual bombastic show of force, begins anew Tuesday, it’s getting…
So were just wrapping up the 2011 MeeGo conference (#meegoconf) down here in San Francisco and we’ve seen some really cool stuff, heard some interesting news, and met some awesome people – but the first thing I want to write about is a bit of news I just heard from Tom Sperry of Exit Games.…
If you have hung around with us at any trade shows in the last year you probably would have heard one of us, at some point, as “Where is BlackBerry?” Ever since the iPhone started to eat into the smartphone space like one my famished coffee-bean-headed farm zombies we kept waiting for RIM to respond…
by Ryan Green “So, what is it that you do with computers?” “I make video games.” “Oh! … cool!” “Yeah, I think so…” This is why I got into computer programming. To make games. Any nerd worth their salt in high school wants to make video games. It’s nerd currency. You make games for a…
Our own John Bergquist recently posted a great blog about his observations from our first night here at GDC where we attended an after-party hosted by Facebook. (BTW – thanks FB. Cool event…) His post and our time there got me thinking about the way we are all so powerfully tempted to “make it happen”…
I’m sitting here reading Jane McGonigal’s new book “Reality is Broken” and right in the front she says something like “…[a year after her 2008 GDC rant] everywhere I turned I saw evidence this movement to harness the power of games for good was already happening.” Right next to her book I’m looking at some…