Dec

Jonas Smith opens up with an analysis of the criticism that games have received for being labeled an ‘interactive’ medium, and then dives in deep on the divide that has kept female gamers out of the mainstream gaming spotlight for so long.  His in depth look on this masculine divide provides much insight at what we as an industry can do to create more products that appeal to female gamers.

Title: “Computer Games, Media and Interactivity‘ – Original Article

Written by: Jonas Smith (www.jonassmith.dk)

Read aloud by: Ryan Wiancko on December 30th, 2008

Dec

Noel Llopis shares his insight on the plethora of benefits with using Agile Development in the games industry and goes into a little more detail about the facets of this methodology that make it so useful and beneficial in the ever changing process of Game Development

Title: “Fundentally Agile‘ – Original Article

Written by: Noel Llopis (www.gamesfromwithin.com)

Read aloud by: Ryan Wiancko on December 29th, 2008

Dec

In today’s article, writen by Soren Johnson, we go into the issue of 2D vs 3D graphics styles in today’s games, more specifically where they are best suited, their strengths and their weaknesses lie.

Title: “2D vs 3D‘ – Original Article

Written by: Soren Johnson (www.designer-notes.com)

Read aloud by: Ryan Wiancko on December 28th, 2008

Dec

Joris Dormans delves into the subject of Iconic and Indexical simulations and re-opens the debate of if ‘realistic’ games are actually trying to be realistic and more importantly if they should be or not.  Overall covering a huge discussion on how we approach game design and how we, at the expense of emergence and progressive gameplay cling on to tried and true methods from more established mediums.

Title: “Beyond  Iconic Simulation‘ – Original Article

Written by: Joris Dormans (www.jorisdormans.nl)

Read aloud by: Ryan Wiancko on December 18th, 2008

Dec

Today we are proud to bring you the first shwack of insight from Indie Flash Developer Troy Gilbert, proud creator of Mockingbird – The Game Making Game .  In this 3 part piece we open up with some basics about flash, lead into a general overview of why Troy loves Flex so much and finish off with how to use PHP to dynamically generate your code for your flash games.  Great stuff for anyone looking at getting into Flash Game development and we can’t wait to broadcast more from Troy in the Future!

Title:

A: “Getting Started with Flash Game Development‘ – Original Article

B: “Flex rhymes with…” – Original Article

C: “Using PHP for Dynamic Code Generation” – Original Article

Written by: Troy Gilbert (www.troygilbert.com)

Read aloud by: Ryan Wiancko on December 17th, 2008

Dec

Another GREAT article set from the iconic Jeff Tunnell over at makeitbigingames.com.  Today we discuss in depth some of the finer workings of the XBLA market place, the rising competitive nature of it as well as what developers seeking to get their feet wet with XBLA can expect and if they should even bother in the first place!

Title:

A: “XBox360 Live Arcade Opportunities Get Competitive In A Hurry!‘ – Original Article

B: “How Much Money Can Your XBox360 Live Arcade Game Make?” – Original Article

Written by: Jeff Tunnell (www.makeitbigingames.com)

Read aloud by: Ryan Wiancko on December 16th, 2008

Dec

The wise and revered Mr. Kennerly brings us a great article today about not only the finer points of interface design but on the importance that spatial reasoning has had in interface design tracing all the way back to Text based games and ending with an analysis of WoW’s design success’s and shortcomings to wrap up his recurring comarison of MMP UI’s compared to single player UI’s.

Title: ‘Game Interface Design‘ – Original Article

Written by: Ethan Kennerly (www.finegamedesign.com)

Read aloud by: Ryan Wiancko on December 12th, 2008

Dec

Jake Birkett helps us kick off the first Indie Audio Article with a compilation of his articles comparing the Affiliate Schemes of two major game portals: ‘Big Fish Games’ and ‘Reflexive Games’, finally ending with a quick run down on what to expect when getting your gameup on a Game Portal.

Title: ‘Affiliate Schemes and Game Portals‘ – Original Article

Written by: Jake Birkett (www.greyaliengames.com)

Read aloud by: Ryan Wiancko on December 11th, 2008

Dec

Today marks the first insightful piece by Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen Ph.D .  In this article he goes into detail on the results of one of his studies that involved the use of Computer games in a traditional classroom settings and the lessons he learned the hard way of the Barriers that stand in the way of successfully implementing Computer Games into an Educational Institution

Title: ‘Practical Barriers in Using Educational Computer Games‘ – Original Article

Written by: Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen (www.egenfeldt.eu)

Read aloud by: Ryan Wiancko on December 10th, 2008

Dec

We are more than pleased to present you with more insight from the mind of Daniel Cook.  This time Daniel looks at the correlation between innovation and success in the Video Game Industry and shares his thoughts on why it is a fatal mistake to Innovate Half way

Title: ‘Never Innovate Half Way‘ – Original Article

Written by: Daniel Cook (www.lostgarden.com)

Read aloud by: Ryan Wiancko on December 9th, 2008

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