For The Birds

Posted on March 5, 2011

Well, it’s finally time for a bit of a recap of the last while as many of these things have been kept under wraps far too long.

For well over a year we have had the excellent opportunity to work along side the fine people at Visual Sports. Their quest to bring a new hardware peripheral to the casual gamer market has been an interesting adventure. We’ve gotten to create some fun casual games included in their Visual Sports Arena package.

We’ve also been hard at work at the technology behind Demons Past, and hopefully will be releasing what we’ll be calling a technology demo for the iPhone/iPad in the not to distant future.

Last, but not least, GameForge. This is something that we did not expect to evolve as much as it did; however it became immediately evident that this was something that we could not ignore. GameForge, at its core is a data analytics system; much like Google Analytics, but with one big difference. It’s built with game development in mind, from the ground up. The technology behind this has already been licensed for use in commercial applications, and we cannot wait to get this in the hands of other game developers. We’ll be posting more about this as things evolve, but in our standard fashion we really don’t say much till its ready. Our motto for the project is quite simple, “You Data, Your Way”. A beta application form has been posted, and will be contacting people when its ready.

See? We have been a bit busy, and this is just the exposed tip of the iceberg …

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Hindsight Is A Pain

Posted on August 25, 2010

So long as you have not been living in a cave for the last year or so, you have probably heard of the game Angry Birds (and its numerous versions). Rovio has done a great job with this title and its quite fun. The controls are intuitive, the gameplay is addictive, and the mechanic is developed.

Angry BirdsAngry Birds

A few years back we were contracted to come up with some game ideas that involved some educational elements. Ultimately, Kelvin Adventures, came out of that, albeit not in any of its original forms. After a ‘Game Jam’ like evening, we were looking back over previous concept art and remembered one of our first pitches for Kelvin Adventures. It was unfortunately turned down by the client, but there definitely is a lesson to be learned from our ‘could of sold 6.5 million copies’ game concept.

Kelvin Adventures ConceptKelvin Adventures ConceptKevlin Adventures Concept

We can come up with great ideas, we just need to bring one to market! A few ideas came out of that session, but that is all we will say for now.

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A Poem Is Never Finished, Only Abandoned

Posted on August 9, 2010

Some pretty famous words from French poet, Paul Valery

Since we heard this a few weeks back, it really served as a clear and decisive way of describing how game development or really anything artistic plays out. There is just so much put into a project when you have your heart behind it, that there is always so much more that you ultimately want to do with it, but eventually you have to put it down and release it out into the world.

Duke Nukem Forever — they unlike so many other developers kept putting more and more of those awesome ideas back into their game. All the while, being harassed about when it was going to get released. Clearly, they went through numerous reiterations; and engine changes (which hurt timelines), but ultimately the ideas for that game have been distilled for many years. We can only hope at some point that it sees the light of day.

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