An Endless Runner Text Adventure
I can’t remember exactly when it was that I came up with the idea for it (It was March 9th), but at one point I had an idea that I thought was amusing pop into my head. An Endless Runner Text Adventure. Not to rag on the endless runner genre… but there’s something about the endless scrolling screen of games like Canabalt, Robot Unicorn Attack, Temple Run that fails to captivate me. And so I felt that a spoof was in order.
My First GDC
Before I go any further, I feel obliged to point out the new News Post. Head on over to learn about our newly released game: “Zombies Are South!“. With that out of the way, as I mentioned last time, I had the opportunity this year to head over to the Game Developer’s Conference and check out what it was all about. It was a cool experience, and my first time attending the conference. Between the Play booth, lectures, awards ceremonies, and the Expo booth there’s a lot happening at GDC so I thought I’d take some time to share with you my impressions of this week-long event.
Baby Steps
Hi world,
I’ve finally squeezed an update of sorts out of my awesome schedule.
Things are chugging along nicely under the hood, although there isn’t a pile of concrete things to show. Building an engine from scratch + a full-time job = death on wheels… but things are up and running, brothers–
GDC 2013
As you’re all aware by now, I quit my job in January and relocated to San Francisco. One heart breaking thing about this, is that in my attempt to live frugally while working indie, I’m not exactly able to splurge on things like the luxurious $1,475 all access pass at GDC. In fact, despite now living in San Francisco, I felt that even the $195 Expo Pass was a tough thing to justify. I’m trying to make my money cover the essentials, and well… sometimes that means eating macaroni and cheese and skipping out on conventions.
Weigh Your Decisions
In what appears to be very timely with what we’ve recently been discussing comes a Kickstarter campaign from nine-year old Mackenzie Wilson forty-three-year old Susan Wilson. It’s a campaign that at first glance appears to be an enlivening battle cry for feminism that tugs at those little heart strings. It’s little surprise that when Susan began bombarding busy celebrities that they answered her call and began spreading the word. The campaign went viral in no time.
Idle but not Idle!
You’ll notice that there was no Progress Report last week! I was out of town, and while I was able to arrange to have some automatically posted regular blog posts, it was unfortunately not possible to get one of these (in my opinion) more interesting posts up. But rest assured, while I may have been M.I.A. for that post, we’re still working away on making Super Hematoma a reality!
I Can Admit When I’m Wrong
At first I was a Kickstarter skeptic. I’m a slow adopter for new things (I hadn’t owned a mobile phone until 2010), and so as crowd funding became a thing all I saw was a platform for people to pan handle. I stuck my nose up in the air and with a holier than thou attitude decided that I wanted nothing to do with it. I felt that if people truly had a great idea for a product, they should go the tried and true method of finding someone to produce and market it on the inventor’s behalf. I wouldn’t be swindled by some huckster out to make a quick buck.
ROM City Rampage
Shamefully, I have to admit that I haven’t played last year’s Retro City Rampage yet. It’s a GTA III inspired retro game that was in progress back when I was still a teenager. As you can imagine, with something that took decade to develop, there must be an interesting story in there somewhere. I think that part of what’s interesting is the care that developer Brian Provinciano took to make it as authentic of an experience as he could manage.
We Need Gaming News
One of the more unfortunate realities of trying to cater to the tech savvy crowd is that you’re catering to a tech savvy crowd. I think that people who know their way around technology want to be catered to very specially, and are quick to react if they think they are being cheated. It creates a bit of a delicate balance between the consumer and the developer. The ire of gamers is something to be weary of.
Girls in Games
Any of you hear about that Tropes vs Women thingy that was announced on the thing back in the day? If you haven’t followed it at all, there’s actually a story within a story going on here. Whilst trying to make a series of videos on the representation of girls in games, Anita Sarkeesian ended up becoming the recipient of quite a bit of castigation. With Part 1 of the series having just been released, it seems like a suitable time to bring up the topic.