I will be on Strutta Live tomorrow at 4PM. I’ll be sitting down with Jordan Behan and Dustin Sacks. We’ll be talking about games, game development, iPhone development, and how to make all of this stuff as an independent studio. Me on a couch with a beer in hand. Watch it! I guarantee I will say something [...]
I will be in Seattle December 9th for Apple’s iPhone Tech Talk World Tour. There is an agenda [PDF] available. The topics seem fairly straight forward and basic. However, it should be a good place to directly ask Apple questions related to iPhone development. I am a prolific note taker. You can read my notes from GDC [...]
Steve Wart has organized another meetup for iPhone Developers in Vancouver. More information can be had at the Vancouver iPhone Developers Group page. There is also an event up on the crazy, magical Facebook. Here are the details: BCIT ROOM 353 – 555 Seymour Street Vancouver BC Thursday November 20 : 6:30PM – 8:00PM Topics [...]
When teaching Objective-C, I’m finding that some have trouble reading method signatures. Reading Objective-C methods can be made easier if proper spacing and indenting is used. This is what a method looks like in Objective-C: – (ret-type) keyword:(arg-type)arg-name keyword:(arg-type)arg-name It is much easier to read if it is typed as such: – (ret-type) keyword:(arg-type)arg-name keyword:(arg-type)arg-name [...]
I am often asked what I mean when I use the term meaningful with regards to games. Most people consider games a distraction or a chance to turn their brains off at the end of the day. The word game has a negative connotation. Adults have hobbies and pastimes and play sports. Kids are supposed [...]
I don’t like the term gamer. It is a limited viewpoint of how a game is actually experienced. When I was young, the game console was usually connected to the second TV in the basement. I played Doom or Warcraft on the PC in the bedroom. Games were played between 10pm and 2am. It was [...]
Jamie’s recent blog post reminded me that I never got around to posting my notes from Josh Resnick’s talk on entrepreneurship. Jamie pointed to a great interview over at GameIndustry.biz. Friday was the last day of GDC. I was planning on going to David Jaffe’s keynote in the morning. However, Jaffe was a no-show. Lucky [...]
N+ is a game that game out on XBox Live Arcade this weekend. The orginal game, N, was developed by Metanet Software. Slick Entertainment took this game and ported it to XBLA. One of the cofounders of Slick is Nick Waanders. Nick is another one of the guys that I worked with back in the [...]
Dylan Cuthbert of Q-Games did a postmortem on the first two games in the PixelJunk series. He previously worked at Sony on the Ape Escape series out of the Japan studio. There are a number of common themes that are consistent through the PixelJunk series of games. 1) Simplicity 2) Familiarity 3) Originality 4) High-definition [...]
Introversion Software considers themselves The Last of the Bedroom Programmers. They are company of 8 full-time employees based out of the UK. They have made the games Uplink, Darwinia, and Defcon. Victoria Arundel, their Marketing & PR person, did a talk about how Introversion goes about creating buzz about their company and their products. Introversion [...]