The combined industry knowledge residing in the heads of veterans like Steve Meretzky, Dave Rohrl, and Juan Gril is impressive, but at GDC’s Free-to-Play Summit, Steve put a big question mark over the value of it all with the repeated message: “Nobody knows anything!” Meretzky used the quote from Screenwriter William Goldman’s book Adventures in the…
Who would have predicted eight months ago that, on the tail of the big PS4 announcement, an independent Android-based upstart would be stealing the show? OUYA looks to radically change how consumers access and play games in the living room. With $8.5 million already raised, a super-excited audience, and a sleek, compact form, they are…
Today, the winners of this year’s Indie Show and Tell competition were announced at Casual Connect Europe. The Casual Connect Indie Show and Tell showcases indie games and their postmortems from indie developers all over Europe. The winning developers were awarded 1,000 installs for their games by Jussi Laakkonen, founder and CEO of Applifier. The…
PlayJam’s latest innovation is a device that combines portability, accessibility and affordability with play on the big screen. This new device, the GameStick, plugs into the HDMI slot on the TV and comes with a fully featured blue-tooth controller. The GameStick easily meets the goal of portability by combining neatly with the controller, making a…
Kate Edwards has enjoyed building a fulfilling career in the video game industry (read this interview to find out more). Now she is going another step forward as she accepts the Executive Director role at the International Game Developers Association (IGDA). Being involved with IGDA since 2004, she founded the Localization SIG in 2007, served…
As developers jump ship from jobs as game designers, producers, and developers at large game and film companies to start their own gaming startups, the competition for funding, partnerships and publishing deals are fierce. Accelerators, such as YetiZen’s Get-In-The-Game Competition are one way for developers to get their foot in the door. With over 350…
A new way to connect with friends on your mobile game has just been launched in the beta form of Everyplay® by Applifier. This free mobile network allows players to record, replay and share videos of your game replays. It takes community-building to a whole new level with the ability to share what you love…
It’s one thing to own a successful brand. It’s a different thing entirely to be able to successfully leverage that brand across multiple different products and media. I spoke with Christian Meyer, Senior Vice President and General Manager of GSN.com, about how he was able to pull it off and where he was planning to…
More people have played FrontierVille than all of Brian Reynolds‘ previous games combined. The man known for his work on Civilization II, Alpha Centauri, and Rise of Nations, has been with social-game publisher Zynga for a year-and-a-half, which is a long time in social games, he jokes. Speaking at a keynote for GDC Online, Reynolds…
When Bruce Shelley tells you about the five most important steps on setting up your game design document, you start taking notes. The Ensemble Studios co-founder and current consultant for numerous game studios offered some valuable tips on drafting a game design document.