Archive for the ‘Opinions’ Category
Posted on October 18, 2009 - by Eric
Virtual Game Development pt. 1 – People
Here at Cavalcade Games we create games in a virtual office setup. Both me and Shikii, live in the same city but create games virtually. With games being a highly collaborative and creative product, this setup has molded our output in more ways than one. In the next year, we will be moving into a physical office. This makes for a good time to conduct a roundup of what we learned during our time with virtual game development. Part 1 – will be about the people component of a virtual game developments setup, part 2 will be about the tools and part 3 will be about everything else.
As a background, virtual office is defined as replicating a working environment – online. This mostly involves substituting concepts and tools found in a physical environment with web or desktop applications. The substitutions starts from the very act of talking to emulating office fixtures such as whiteboards and the conference room.
Virtual Game Development is defined as creating games in a virtual office setup. Virtually creating games is a special case in the sense that, first, the discipline is a creative endeavor in nature; second, it requires participants to be constantly in-step (requiring varied types of communication) and third, game development is known as a huge hard slog to the playable part, much more so when done with less human interaction. So with these characteristics, Virtual game development is much more under duress than the typical virtual office setup. Hopefully, with these tips, other game developers planning to go virtual can get off to a good start. First up! – the people.
Posted on October 1, 2009 - by Eric
Unity3d Game Portals
In Flash game development, the primary way developers earn is to have flash game portals sponsor their game. Sponsoring primarily means turning a game into a traffic building content as well as a brand-building product. This is done by inserting sponsor’s logos all around the game’s scenes. This has been the main driving force in the flash game content business for some time.
Unity3d on the web is slowly but surely gaining traction amongst game developers. So its only a matter of time before the sponsorship model will be adopted in the space as well. A few pieces of the puzzle need to be in place for that to happen. One vital piece that is missing are game portals. 3 notable ones are gaining momentum and may become the Kongregate, Newgrounds or Miniclip of 3d games in the near future. Let us take a look at each of them.
Muse games is first with a pure Unity3d slate of games. As you’d expect its a slim selection with only 4 games but the site’s got a strong stake on microtransactions with a store for some of its game. A card deck and some clothes, furnitures are available for purchase.
Still in top secret beta phase, dimeRocker seems to be poised for some action with zombie and pirate games in tow. They are a constant presence in activities where the Unity devs are so hopefully this close association will result to something awesome when they go live. Perhaps some plugins for high scores and trial / full version locks.
Finally, there is Wooglie.com who is actively courting Unity developers to upload their games to their site. Some sort of CPM-sharing is offered there. Its got a good approach of mixing flash games and the unity3d games. Flash games drive the traffice while the unity games gives it differentiation. It seems it only looks like flash game portals and do not have any flash games at all. Still its a good strategy to capitalize on the familiar user experience. Wooglie has the best selection of unity3d games amongst the sites featured here.
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These game portals are trying very different approaches to building their audience and its very interesting to see how it plays out. But one things for sure, any success from these website will grow the whole 3d web games market and when the rising tides comes, all boats are lifted.
Posted on September 9, 2009 - by Eric
Social Platforms Revisited *Updated
Over the last few weeks, the Social Platform segment for the iPhone exploded! New developments and some hands-on experience have changed the valuation of the providers drastically that it merits a re-examination. Without further ado here is our opinion, as well as suggestions for each of these providers.
Update (Sept 09) – re-evaluation based on the OF 2.5, Scoreloop ver. 7195, Agon Online 1.2.5
Posted on September 2, 2009 - by Eric
The ABC of Future Adobe Flash
Over the years, Flash has evolved into a tool for three professions, namely the; animators, user interface designers and developers. It has been proven that this was a huge boon to adoption rates and critical mass of Flash but now, it creates a real danger of turning the platform into a jack of all trades but a master of none. With the recent outburst of contempt and frustration from developers in the scene, its appearing that the inevitable has reached us. In the effort to please everybody, Flash is now (slowly) pleasing no one.
Posted on August 19, 2009 - by Eric
Fixing the App Store
The runaway success of the iPhone finds Apple in new and unexplored territories. With it comes new and interesting challenges, including a big one concerning its innovative app store. Much has been said regarding the app store and how its utterly broken. Interestingly, its only broken for developers. The other participants on the platform, namely Apple and the device owners are in a state of contentment. But its not rocket science to know that for a platform to have long term sustainability, it has to maintain equilibrium – meaning each of the participants need to be equally benefiting from each other. This equilibrium is threatening to disappear with the ‘broken’ app store. While the approval fiasco sparked by the Google Voice rejection has garnered more column inches, it’s the app store issue that is most crucial and relevant to us developers.
Posted on May 3, 2009 - by Eric
iTablet and It’s Role in the Game Sector
so so sexy
The rumor of an iTablet debuting alongside new models of current iDevices has been too tenacious to ignore. While I personally believe a tablet product from Apple will come out, at the soonest, in the next year, let us still have fun and analyze its role in the ecosystem should it arrive. Here are my estimate on the device itself;
- priced around $600 to $800
- targeted towards the Netbook users, Wacom professionals, and the usual Mac zealots
- possibly also the Kindle market
- 10-inch to 12 inch (too large i would guess), intel atom processor, nvidia grafx (capable of generating at least ps2 quailty grafx)
- won’t be named iTablet
Now here is where I will be bold and predict the following features;
- 2nd generation VoiceOver software (found ipod shuffle)
- Iphone-like App store for games and applications
- Iphone to Itablet software portability
Of relevance to our line of work here in Cavalcade Games are the 2nd and 3rd items.
The way I see it, the iTablet is a pre-emptive move against the inevitable challenges Apple has to face. Namely the popularity of the netbooks, Windows 7 and the contracting economy. iTablet fits too nicely in these holes not too pass up the chance to strengthen these weaknesses with one product instead of multiple ones.
Also, iTablet is well-positioned to ride the wave on several favorable developments;
- The Iphone, and Ipod Touch has proven very effective in exciting the customers in the mobile space. [What if this proves true in the desktop space?]
- Windows brand is at its weakest point [Now, is the time to strike!]
- Games and Entertainment software has proven to be very effective adoption drivers. [After years of ignoring games, Apple has found a curious but effective formula. Democratize the whole game dev - platform chain. Be the middle man to gain more profit in the process as well as have less Windows hand-me-downs.]
- Wacom, Kindle, Mac devotees, Vista victims are now a huge enough pool of potential buyers to make this foray at least moderately successful.
- The App Store will prove to be decisive in winning over software developers as it will give them a complete publishing and billing solution while leaving them more mindspace to design / build products.
- The unified hardware spec, larger touch screen, powerful hardware, in-App purchase, the mobility and keyboard-mouse option will all present an exciting new playground for us app developer.
- imagine Iphone apps being easily ported to the iTablet with just a few line of code.
- or having some iTablet and iPhone interaction
In the end, this is how I would think Apple would disrupt the console market stealthily. That is by aiming at a small space between Windows and the Xbox 360 and attracting the thousands of small developers to compete with the big ones in an even-level paying field.
All in all, its a high risk / high reward maneuver. There are too many volatile factors in the current year that if this rumor is to be true then the timing needs to be pitch perfect and the product very enticing (lower the price than anticipated). I have no facts nor research material to back me up on these predictions but I am sure the Apps store, Iphone model and the Ipod model are influencing Apple’s plans in attacking markets where they are struggling in, namely the desktop space.
Wishful thinking or a very exciting possibility? You be the judge…