Pyrobits - reference guide

Gamasutra - Video Games: Officially Art, In Europe : "[The French government and European Commission have agreed in principle to fund tax credits for video games, due to their cultural importance - and Gamasutra tagged along with the French cultural minister and Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot to find out why it matters.]"

Gamasutra - Future Publishing Sees Q1 Sales Down But Advertising Up : "Officials from UK based special-interest media group Future Publishing have revealed details of the company’s first financial quarter for the three months ended December 31st, 2007, during which revenues fell by 1.5 percent to £40.6 million ($80.7m)."

Video Game News, Video Game Coverage, Video Game Updates, PC Game News, PC Game Coverage - GameDaily : "Called Ultimate Team Play, the 'serious game' will be a virtual simulator for situations in the hospitality business. Users will be given a grade based on the Satisfaction and Loyalty Tracking scores. Posted by David Radd on Monday, January 28, 2008"

  Guinness World Records today announced that it is offering a "definitive guide to all gaming records, facts and figures." This new publication, titled Guinness World Records: Gamer's Edition 2008 , will be available in the U.S. on March 11. The records inside the book include Halo 3 as the "Highest Grossing Game In One Day" for $170 million in first day sales in the U.S. alone and "Fastest Completion Time For A Game Of Super Mario Bros. " at five minutes flat. Video Game News, Video Game Coverage, Video Game Updates, PC Game News, PC Game Coverage - GameDaily

  As we noted the past two years in our GameDaily BIZ Ad Watch: Year in Review columns, in-game advertising is a mushrooming market. Last year in particular, it became increasingly apparent that the casual gaming industry was benefiting from advertiser support, especially for web based games. At the same time, because of the overlap between the casual and mobile markets, games on mobile phones were also getting a boost [ Where you at? - Ed. ] from in and around-game ads. via: Video Game Features, PC Game Features

GameDev.net -- Making Games with Excel : "Excel CAN make games. As far as I know, I am one of the first people to try to do such a thing, and it is surprisingly fun."

Home of LIGHTSMARK - next generation lighting benchmark : "Before Lightsmark, realtime global illumination was limited to small scenes, small resolutions, small speeds, specially crafted scenes with handmade optimizations. Lightsmark breaks all limits at once, running in reasonably sized scene (220000 triangles) in high resolution (1680x1050) at excellent speed (100-400fps)."

Indiegames.com - showcasing the best in independent games. : "some of the more notable freeware and indie games of this and previous years - hence this special 'best-of' section. Check out the individual charts, and also make sure to read Indie Games: The Weblog for all the latest independent game news, interviews and features."

So You Want To Be A Producer - GameCareerGuide.com : "becoming any kind of producer starts with making sure you have the right skills"

Gamasutra - GfK: Australian Game Market Grows 43% In 2007 : "Independent market research group GfK has released statistics that show Australians spent AUS $1.3 billion ($1.15 billion) on video game hardware and software in 2007, marking a 43 percent increase over 2006 and setting a new record for the games industry in Australia." fonte: http://blogs.theage.com.au/screenplay/archives//008421.html via: http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=17090

Without a Specialty: The ‘Other' Skills Needed to Make Games - GameCareerGuide.com : "Game and follow the game industry. Easy stuff. Everyone has their favorite review site (IGN, Gamespot, 1-UP) but don't forget digest sites like Kotaku.com or industry insider sites like Gamasutra.com and Next-Gen.biz. Be passionate, and be an expert."

Gamasutra - Enterbrain: Wii Hits 5 Million Milestone In Japan : "New sales data revealed by marketing research firm and Famitsu publisher Enterbrain suggest that the Wii has now sold over 5 million units in Japan, since it was launched in December 2006."

Bionic Commando : "The first true sequel to the classic 1988 Nintendo Entertainment System original, Bionic Commando sees the return of the bionically-enhanced Nathan 'Rad' Spencer, voiced by Mike Patton, the former lead singer of Faith No More. Time has not been kind to Spencer: 10 years after his heroic defeat of the Imperials in the original game, he has been betrayed by the government he swore to serve, imprisoned for crimes he didn't commit, and sentenced to death."

Gamasutra - Daz 3D Announces 3D Bridge for Photoshop : "3D and modeling software developer Daz Productions has announced a beta version of its Daz Studio 3D bridge for Photoshop plug-in, allowing Daz Studio users to apply 3D imagery and artwork created in the program to Photoshop projects."

ITwhirled - She's a ten - Top 10 lists from the world of IT and beyond : "SHE'S A 10 'She's a 10' is a collection of the best lists the Web has to offer. Topics run the gamut -- whatever amuses, entertains, enlightens. Look for new additions every week."

Ascii Dreams: The Death of the Level Designer: Procedural Content Generation in Games - Part One : "Procedural content generation is yet to set the game industry on fire. It has featured in one of the greatest games of all time, Diablo and it's successor, who directly trace their roots to roguelike games such as Angband."

Video Game News, Video Game Coverage, Video Game Updates, PC Game News, PC Game Coverage - GameDaily : "2007 was a magical year for the video game industry. The totals are in, and according to The NPD Group, as was expected the U.S. game industry posted sales of almost $18 billion ($17.94 billion to be exact) – please note that this does not include PC game revenues. This represented a 43 percent jump over 2006. 2007 was definitely fueled by the console war as console hardware sales soared 73 percent to $5.12 billion. Overall hardware sales rose 54 percent, while total video game software sales for the year climbed 34 percent to $8.64 billion. Even video game accessories saw a significant 52 percent increase to $2.26 billion."

Video Game News, Video Game Coverage, Video Game Updates, PC Game News, PC Game Coverage - GameDaily : "The BBC is reporting the U.S. space agency NASA is investigating the possibility of creating a massively multiplayer online game that would simulate engineering and science missions." site da BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7195718.stm via: http://www.gamedaily.com/articles/news/nasa-investigating-mmo-game-development/19124/?biz=1

  The Nintendo DS levels up, and phones make kids safer | The Japan Times Online   Double vision: Nintendo 's two-screened DS is set to become even more of a must-have product thanks to the DSVision, which will allow users to watch videos and read e-books and manga on the portable console. Users simply download the media to their computer, transfer the content to a microSD card, and then load the card into a DS via a custom cartridge. The DSVision set includes a 512-megabyte microSD card, USB card-reader and the cartridge, with AM3 putting the sets on sale in January 2008 for ¥3,980. Downloadable media is set to follow in March in conjunction with e-book distributor Dai Nippon. Of course, sets such as the R4 have allowed DS users to run media and home-brew software for ages — not to mention illegally downloaded games. Whether the DSVision will somehow defy the pirates is yet to be seen.

Interactive Media Awards / Web Design Awards for Excellence : "The Interactive Media Awards™ recognize the highest standards of excellence in website design and development and honor individuals and organizations for their outstanding achievement."

Interactive media - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia : "Interactive media refers to media of communication that allow for active participation by the recipient, hence interactivity. Traditional information theory would describe interactive media as those media that establish two-way communication. In media theory, interactive media are discussed along their cultural implications. The field of Human Computer Interaction deals with aspects of interactivity and design of in digital media. Other areas that deal with interactive media are new media art, interactive advertising and video game production. While some traditional (non-digital) mass media would qualify for interactive media the term is usually only applied to digital media. The significant increase in possibilities for interactivity (especially over vast distances) brought by the internet boosted the availability of digital interactive media. Still, e.g. language in face-to-face communication would formally belong to the in...

Types of Game Designers « Applied Game Design : In the last ten years, but more so in the last five, we’ve seen greater specialization within the fields themselves so that now, and at least in my field, the term “game designer” sounds general. It’s a perfectly okay term to use on indie game projects, but when you’re talking about a big Xbox 360 production, saying “I’m the game designer” is likely to result in a follow up: “Yeah, but what exactly did you design?” Conheça as especializações de um game designer

Indiegames.com - showcasing the best in independent games. : "The power of independent games are undeniable, but what are indie games, and what makes them so important right now? The rise of the Web and digital downloads, both on PC and console, has unlocked a hive of creativity from independent game creators - leading to innovation in a multitude of game genres, the revitalization of classic game styles and the creation of entirely new blends of art and playability."

IndieGames.com - The Weblog : "Organizers of the 2008 Independent Games Festival (IGF) have launched the IGF Audience Award voting website, allowing game fans everywhere to download, play, and choose a favorite all of the eligible Main Competition finalist indie games which submitted a publicly playable demo." Fonte: http://www.indiegames.com/blog/ via: http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=16771

Gamasutra - Opinion: Can A Stuffed Bear Hold The Secret To Game Piracy? : The personalization has to add value, make the game *better* for that individual customer. It could be an object of social status ('Look, Cliffy B personally autographed my copy of Gears and thanked me for my business'), an element of personal integration ('It came pre-built with my character stats already set up, and the villagers were singing songs about the time I single handedly held off that Orc assault!'), or custom fitting ('all the graphics assets and settings came perfectly tuned for set up for my personal machine').... who knows. Sobre o combate à pirataria de games a partir do envolvimento do usuário na personalização do jogo.

Fonte: http://ukchampionofthehousehold.buzzthegame.com/home.php via: http://www.binaryjoy.co.uk/games/games-news/buzz-the-hollywood-quiz/

Tutorial Series Summary and Game::AI++ — AiGameDev.com : List of the tutorials this far: 1.Building AI for a Simulation Game from the Ground Up 2.The Backbone of AI Behaviors: Movement and Animation 3.On the Effectiveness of Random Decisions in Structured Behaviors 4.A Lazy Approach to Designing Consistent AI Behaviors 5.Beyond AI Pseudo-code and Towards Sensory Systems The first items are more design oriented, while the more recent articles get into the coding aspect of things.

WarCry Network : Editorial: The Year The Subscription Model Died : When people remember 2007 in the MMORPG genre, it will be remembered as much for what didn't happen as what did and for a game launched years before. Of the four major scheduled 2007 MMO launches, two slipped into 2008. EA Mythic's Warhammer Online and Funcom's Age of Conan were delayed, while Turbine's Lord of the Rings Online - which was supposed to launch in 2006 - made its mark and NCsoft's Tabula Rasa struggled in the tail end of the year. O modelo baseado em pagamento de assinaturas para jogar MMORPGS sofre perdas quando o game não é World of Warcraft...

"'...when you buy furniture, you tell yourself: that's it, that's the last sofa I'm gonna need. No matter what else happens, I've got that sofa problem handled.' - Edward Norton in Fight Club When I have a lot of things to do in little time, I feel a palpable sense of anxiety. Similarly, when I clear one of those things off my plate, I feel a sense of relief. These are emotional responses tuned to push us into action when situations threaten to get unmanageably complex. Games can trigger these same emotions -- both the anxiety related to an unsolved problem and the reward that comes with resolving it." Fonte: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3495/compulsion_engineers.php?print=1

  Stratagus is a free cross-platform real-time strategy gaming engine. It includes support for playing over the internet/LAN, or playing a computer opponent. The engine is configurable and can be used to create games with a wide-range of features specific to your needs. See the Games page for a list of current games using the Stratagus engine. Stratagus | Home via: http://pauloandrade.com/?p=50

Conteúdo Programático : Aula 1: Tecnologia dos Games Aberta aos Jogadores. Aula 2 : Construindo fases com um Editor de Fases. Aula 3 : Criação de terrenos e Skyboxes. Aula 4 : Criando Volumes, Luz e Elementos Interativos. Aula 5 : Texturização para Games. Aula 6 : Criando objetos para games em primeira pessoa. Aula 7 : Otimização de fases. Aula 8 : Construção do projeto final de uma fase. CGMAX - Computação Gráfica e Educação Tecnológica - Level Design

Glossary of Terms 1 * Tabletop - A ‘conventional’ role-playing game; for the purposes of these articles, I’m specifically talking about traditionalist tabletop play. I’ll occasionally use the phrase ‘paper and pencil’, which means the same thing. * CRPG - A console (or computer) role-playing game. Includes MMORPGs, JCRPGs, and others; with no further specificity, refers to games that are single-player (or very limited multi-player, vis Baldur’s Gate 2) and generally follow a single or a few major plot threads with varying degrees of linearity. Examples: Baldur’s Gate, Morrowind, Knights of the Old Republic * JCRPG - A Japanese console RPG, usually a single-player, highly linear game, strongly focused on a single or a few major plot threads, that tends to have little or no player agency over major elements of story. Full examination of JCRPG conventions and artifacts is beyond the scope of this series, but it is a different beast compared to other CRPGs. Examples: Final Fant...

Do you see a lot of limitations on what kind of games you guys could be making? GH: I think we have certain, if you like -- how should I put this? -- philosophical reservations in the kind of game that we want to make, so I would really not expect to see a Grand Theft Auto game coming from us. It would come from other people, but it won't come from us. But the idea of cutting-edge, high-quality, great entertainment is something you can expect to see from us on an ongoing basis. Some of it's going to be younger, and some of it's going to be older, and some of it's going to be mass, and some will be quirkier. It will be all of those things. via: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3494/evolving_disney_graham_hopper_.php?print=1

Video Game News, Video Game Coverage, Video Game Updates, PC Game News, PC Game Coverage - GameDaily : Majesco Entertainment continues to improve its business with its new casual focus on games like Cooking Mama. Although revenues are expectedly down, the company is narrowing its losses.

How I broke into the Games Industry « Parabellum Games : How I broke into the Games Industry A small recap of events starting from I decided I wanted to be a games developer to present day including all the mistakes and turning points along the way.

Video Game Features, PC Game Features : The World Series of Video Games may be no more, but its organizers, Games Media Properties, are alive and kicking and believe they have the perfect vertical ad network to reach the highly coveted gamer (16-34 male) demographic. Posted by David Radd on Monday, January 14, 2008"

ioquake3 : This project, ioquake3 (or ioq3 for short,) aims to build upon id Software's Quake 3 source code release. The source code was released on August 20, 2005 under the GPL. Since then, we have been cleaning up, fixing bugs, and adding features. Our permanent goal is to create the open source Quake 3 distribution uponwhich people base their games and projects. We also seek to have the perfect version of the engine for playing Quake 3: Arena, Team Arena, and all popular mods. This distribution of the engine has been ported to many new platforms and has had a slew of new features added, along with massive bug extermination. While we don't have PunkBuster (and never will), we do havemore security for servers and clients from various bugfixes which aren't in id's client. Please also note that the name of this project is ioquake3, as derived from the old name icculus.org/quake3. Our gracious hosting benefactor (Subversion and mailing lists) is icculus.org, which is als...

Overview ¶ libRocket is a C++ interface middleware package designed for game applications. At its core it is based on the popular HTML and CSS specifications - we've taken most of the latest implementations used in web browsers now as well as a few of the most useful proposed additions to the specifications. It contains a full set of widgets so you can get creating screens right out of the box." fonte: http://librocket.com/ via: http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=478704

Character Arc & Development - Novel Writing Tips : " Role of a Character Arc * Keeps the tension high and the conflict going. * Serves as the “inner” conflict and is always mirrored by the story's “outer” conflict. o e.g. DieHard: Inner conflict = overcome internal weaknesses to be able to get back together with wife; Outer conflict = fight bad guys who have taken over wife’s building. * The Arc is the internal change the hero goes through in a story. o It can be positive change of character—a happy ending o Or a negative or no change—which gives us a tragedy. + Characters who remain essentially the same from beginning to end are fatally flawed. They have learned nothing from their experience and have shown no growth. o Or the character is already ‘good’ and doesn’t change (e.g. James Bond, Braveheart, John Wayne)."

Character arc - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia : "Character arc From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search A character arc is the status of the character as it unfolds throughout the story, the storyline or series of episodes. Characters begin the story with a certain viewpoint and, through events in the story, that viewpoint changes. Some examples include: * In Tootsie, Dustin Hoffman’s character begins as a misogynistic chauvinist but when he is forced to play the part of a woman, he also experiences a change in how he views women and becomes a different character by the end. * In Empire of the Sun, Jim begins as a carefree young boy. After the Japanese take over Shanghai and he is separated from his family, he is forced to suffer trauma because of the war. * In The Godfather, Michael Corleone at first does not want to have anything to do with his father’s crime business. When his father is attacked and barely survives, Michael realizes his l...

Associação que promove enventos e recursos para desenvolvedores e estudantes de games casuais . Casual Games Association Events are the premiere events for the casual games industry with over 2,500 professionals attending Casual Connect Conferences each year. Casual Connect Europe brings together the most talented and knowledgeable experts in the casual gaming field to further the casual games industry with the best of networking and learning. http://amsterdam.casualconnect.org/

Learn about wolf ecology by living the life of a wild wolf in Yellowstone National Park. Play alone or with friends in on-line multiplayer missions, explore the wilderness, hunt elk, and encounter stranger wolves in your quest to find a mate. Ultimately, your success will depend on forming a family pack, raising pups, and ensuring the survival of your pack. The WolfQuest experience goes beyond the game with an active online community where you can discuss the game with other players, chat with wolf biologists, and share artwork and stories about wolves. The first episode of the game, WolfQuest: Amethyst Mountain, is available for download! Fonte: http://www.wolfquest.org/ Download: http://www.wolfquest.org/downloads.php

Game Innovation Database um site que mantem um banco de referência sobre inovações em games fonte: http://www.gameinnovation.org/ via: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/?p=836#more-836 The concept of a Game Innovation Database came about in 2004, as Jesse Schell observed the rapid disappearance of many games from collective memory. A professor at Carnegie Mellon University's Entertainment Technology Center, he was able to recruit students for an independent study and guide them, completing a system by which to classify innovations. As taxonomy model was put to use, it became apparent that this rigid framework would not mesh with fluidity of game design.

Jogo em flash com inteligência artificial voltada à cooperação um jogador http://www.nekogames.jp/mt/2008/01/cursor10.html via: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/?p=838

Sobre a possibilidade de novos usos de inteligência artificial em jogos orientados por estórias #3 Emergent Behaviors within Stories The Ecology of BioShock Screenshot 3: Group dynamics form the story within BioShock. Game developers are also becoming increasingly skilled at integrating forms of emergence within linear story-like progressions. For example, the ecosystem in BioShock is designed in such a way that you have to understand its functioning to use it to your advantage. The enemies in Halo 3 also exhibit forms of emergent group behaviors when you fight against heterogeneous groups (e.g. and take out the leader). Prediction: Even in story-driven games, developers will increasingly use pockets of emergent behaviors to increase variety and replayability. This is a great way to bring a sandbox-like environment into a more traditional AAA form, getting the benefits of both. Tip: Design groups of characters together, and build the AI so that it responds to the rest of the group and ...