iGame Radio

We have our first submission for the iGame Radio Logo Contest! I’ve created a Flickr account where you can view the submissions, become members of the group “iGame Radio”, and make comments on the submissions. I’ve decided to allow submitters to resubmit their originals (as long as they are not submitting something that is totally new) based on the feedback they receive, so feel free to comment away.

The Logo Contest is heating up! Our newest sponsor is Howling Moon Software, developers of ScribBall 2 and ScribBall for the iPhone. You can check out my interview with Andy Korth of Howling Moon regarding his uDevGames entry, too. Check his games out. :D

Or, at least, no nasty invasive DRM that makes half your user-base scream at you. According to this article in GamesIndustry.biz, Sims series’ executive producer Rod Humble has stated on the Sims 3 website that no online authentication will be needed…only CD-key copy protection. No limit on the number of computers is mentioned, so one can assume that no limit will exist. Considering EA’s insistence of the need for this type of DRM for Spore to protect against piracy, that’s a bit of a turnaround.

Weeeell. It seems that when a whole bunch of gamers stand up and shout for their rights, they get heard. Fancy that.

For some reason, I thought that the Independent Games Festival Awards Ceremony was last night, not Wednesday night. That’s what happens when one doesn’t attend the GDC, I guess. Anyway, kudos to everyone who entered the event, and especially to the winners. And major congratulations to the ones who won that have Mac clients! For your reading pleasure, the winners of the IGF 2009 (I bolded the ones with Mac clients or who would be bringing out Mac clients soon after the contest):

Seumas McNally Grand Prize ($30,000)
Blueberry Garden, by Erik Svedang

Innovation (Nuovo) Award ($2,500)
Between, by Jason Rohrer

Excellence in Visual Art ($2,500)
Machinarium, by Amanita Design

Excellence in Audio ($2,500)
BrainPipe, by Digital Eel

Technical Excellence ($2,500)
Cortex Command, by Data Realms

Excellence in Design ($2,500)
Musaic Box, by KranX Productions

Best Student Game ($2,500)
Tag: The Power of Paint, by DigiPen Institute of Technology

Audience Award ($2,500)
Cortex Command, by Data Realms

D2D Vision Award ($10,000)
Osmos, by Hemisphere Games

You can check out the interview with Jason Rohrer and Phosphorous of Digital Eel. I also did an interview with the guys who developed Tag for DIT’s podcast. The GDC got in the way of the rest, but I hope to have interviews with Data Realms, Amanita Design, and a few others shortly thereafter.

Freeverse announced today that they will launch Flick NBA Basketball, the first NBA branded game available on the App Store, during the 2009 NBA Playoffs which tip off April 18.

From the press release:

The new game, which is still in development, will feature dozens of NBA players from all 30 NBA teams. By flicking a finger on the touchscreen, players will have the opportunity to test their skills in a variety of NBA style events and challenges. Choose your favorite player, and compete against the computer or your friend. Flick NBA Basketball promises to bring all the action and excitement of the NBA to the palm of your hand!

Yeah, I know which finger I’ll be flicking! Okay, so I just don’t get into a bunch of guys running back and forth across a field in their boxers trying to throw a ball into a circle. Football is my main sport. Sue me.

I’m just finishing up writing a review of Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones (yes it took a while…I’ll tell you about it during the review), and one of the things that struck me is that this game was released for the PC in December of 2005, but for the Mac in October 2008, just about three years later. Now Prince of Persia (no relation content-wise to the original 1989 version that was released on the Apple II) has been released for the Mac, only about three months after the PC release in December 2008.

Now, beyond being simply awesome in and of itself, we are seeing a logarithmic scale here. First it was three years, then three months. If the scale holds, the next game in the series would be released for the Mac merely three weeks after the PC version, and the one after that just three days.

I believe in math.

I’ve extended the deadline for the Logo Contest, plus included information about some of the prizes available. Launched in February, the logo contest seeks everyone with an itch to draw, paint, or move those pixels to create the right design for a new logo for the podcast. The deadline has been extended to May 22, 2009. The prize package has been building as well, and includes prizes from MusicSkins and PopCap Games. As more prizes are added to the package, they will be included on the website.

All information about the contest, including rules for format and submission, are located at the iGame Radio Logo Contest page, http://www.igameradio.com/igame-radio-logo-contest/. The contest will run until May 22nd, after which the logo will be chosen through a public vote over a week span. The prize package valued at over $500 will be offered to the grand prize winner, but all entrants will gain a free t-shirt of their choice from the iGame Radio Café Press store.

So make sure to enter the contest!

Folks from Feral Interactive just pinged me that their LEGO Batman the Videogame minisite has just gone live, complete with a demo and pre-order (look in the upper right hand corner where I didn’t). The real coolness is that the demo is being delivered via BitTorrent technology, which they say has really enhanced the downloads and made a lot of people happy. So they are now doing all their recent downloads using it.

OnLive is a new gaming service that has just been announced this week. Developed by WebTV founder Steve Perlman and former Eidos CEO Mike McGarvey, OnLive is a streaming videogames service that will enable digital distribution of first-run, AAA games from publishers like Electronic Arts, Take-Two, Ubisoft, Atari, and others, all at the same time as those titles are released into retail channels. And best yet, those titles will run on any Intel-based Mac or PC running XP or Vista, regardless of how powerful the computer.

Isn’t it nice to be remembered??!

The system will also stream through your television through a small set-top box. Players will be able to use custom wireless controllers, which I guess means you have to purchase what they sell you (which sucks) and VoIP headsets (which I will guess will fall into the custom category as well). Players also won’t be downloading games (thus the streaming aspect) but will be streaming them with little to no lag from high-end servers. One wonders whether we are talking cloud servers with push technology during play. Minimum threshold for the Internet connection would be 1.5 Mbps, going upwards from there to 5 Mbps for hi-definition. Which means you could start seeing this in some gamer cafes and such.

They haven’t released info on a payment structure, but CNet surmises a subscription model. This would be a duh, and I’ll add to that that they’ll also probably add in microtransactions too. I can’t imagine that they wouldn’t add in tiny payments for things such as additional clothing, levels, music, etc.

CNet says that the service is currently in a closed beta, set to go into open beta this summer. However, if you go to the site right now you will find that there is a countdown of 5 hours…to what? I guess we’ll find out in 5 hours.

Some of you may have already heard that Garage Games has made their great announcement regarding Tribes, that they’ve obtained the IP for the game, that they are going to implement it into the InstantAction format (like Legions) available in a browser-format, and that the game will be available as a stand-alone as well. Nothing will be changed content-wise, but a lot of the format for things such as images have been changed so that things are now open source or at least not proprietary.

But…no Mac support.

Cause, see, Tribes 1 came out back when Mac was OS 7, and Windows was 95/98. And whereas as much as Microsoft would like to babble about how it’s made such vast changes and improvements to Windows, it just hasn’t made the kind of changes that the Apple OS has going from OS 7-9 to OS X. Which means that to actually release Tribes 1 for the Mac or port it into InstantAction would mean an almost complete rewrite from the bottom up.

And GarageGames just ain’t willing to do that.

So, I’m going to propose something. GarageGames has the source code for Tribes 1. What if some energetic and inspiring group of Mac developers were to pull together and decide that they would actually rewrite Tribes 1 for the Mac, and in exchange, GarageGames would pop it up on InstantAction? This would not just be cool. It would be an example of the power of the Indie game industry at work.

Otherwise, maybe, just maybe, we’d see Tribes 2 for the Mac. I mean, didn’t someone out there almost complete a Mac build and then drop it?