Ok, I will admit it, this is a bit anal of me but after years of working in an architects office being told that clear communication in king the architectural plans (with ceiling markings) we are being asked to use to navigate the GDC 2010 Expo hall just pissed me off.
So I took 20 mins. and cleaned them up a bit, here is a much more readable plan for anyone who cares. Click on the image below to get a larger (400k) version that works and is clear enough that you can read who is in the small meeting rooms.
See you at the show.
Every industry is technology driven to some extent. I am sure that if you could find a young blacksmith they would tell you about some new alloy or furnace that is going to change their business.
In the beginning technology sells; this car is faster than the competition, this camera has more megapixels, this phone works oversees. Design, quality, user experience all matter, just not as much in the early days.
Then the balance shifts and every car is fast enough, every camera has enough megapixels, technology begins to deliver diminishing returns to the consumer.
Design and quality take over driving adoption. The technology race moves behind the scenes, now it’s about fast production, flexible production, easy production, distributed production. Read the rest of this entry »
Every year the leaders of the video game industry make a pilgrimage to Las Vegas… well Read Rock Casino and Spa, about 10 miles outside of Vegas to be precise.
Being off the strip is a big advantage as it helps keep the attendees together making DICE the most powerful C-Level networking events on the game calendar.
Last year the chatter was about how hard it was to be an independent studio, this year it was about how great it is to be an independent studio. What a difference a year makes!
Many of the game technology people were there; Read the rest of this entry »
Genevieve Laberge, VP Sales at Audiokinetic was kind enough to answer some questions about growing the business. Her top down approach to the market has helped establish Wwise as a AAA sound system quickly. The Wwise licensing model also challenges the industry norms, free to use with very easy access to the tech for all.
Thanks Genevieve for sharing.
Q; One of the first things you did when you joined in 2005 was build a publisher agreement strategy, can you tell me a little about it and how you made it work?
Looking at the overall game development market, I took some time to review what the top publishers have been releasing over the course of the years: types of titles, quantity of titles, audio innovation, who had internal technology vs middleware, what studios they were working with… Keep in mind that in 2005/2006 we were dealing with the arrival of new consoles and that the major publishers were shifting their development priorities to grow their market share. Read the rest of this entry »
I had the opportunity to interview Dag Frommhold, Managing Director of Trinigy, and Felix Roeken, General Manager of Trinigy, creators of the Vision Engine. This is the transcript. It’s longer than my usual post, but their insight into the middleware market is interesting.
Q: Lets start at the beginning, can you share some of the background of Vulpine.
Dag: As you know, Vulpine was a company that was backed by VC’s, so we had some VC’s on-board from the beginning even though when we started Vulpine we already had some technology so it was not development from scratch. We already had something we could build on but it was more of a hobbyist project at the time we started.
Vulpine was our way to found a professional company doing middleware, making game engines. We founded it in 1999 and it existed until 2002. It turned out that the business model as we had it in mind back then did not really work out and I think the whole VC part of it was a big part of the reason for it not working out. Read the rest of this entry »
Jusso over at gameproducer.net posted this:
Creating games has many beneficial things in life whether or not you plan to sell any games: team work, social skills, organizing work, creativity, writing, networking skills… and tons of more.
And asked “what you’ve got from this thing we call ‘game dev’?” so I thought I would have a stab at it.
Every day of the last ten years I worked with people passionate about what they do. Almost every one of them could earn more money and work more family friendly hours in another industry but they don’t. I always find their passion for what they do inspiring. Read the rest of this entry »
If you mix great people, passion, initiative, risk and a little bit of crazy; anything is possible.
I started this blog a little over six months ago and have posted over 80 times on various topics surrounding the middleware space. In all that time I have only mentioned Emergent once in passing.
Some have read into this that I want to put my time with Emergent behind me or that I don’t think they are worthy of mention. In fact neither assumption is close to accurate.
I sense the last 6 months have been hard for Emergent. They have stared into the abyss; have had to let good people go and have looked very hard at who they are and what they value.
This struggle to define themselves has in truth been going on for a few years and the lack of progress was one of the reasons I left but from my job interview in 2007 to today I believe in the people and their passion for video games.
Today was therefore a great day! Read the rest of this entry »
