iGame Radio

Today there’s been a flurry of conversation regarding the iPhone in and around the GDC. Seems Apple’s little smartphone has come home to roost as the next big gaming platform, and not just of mobile games either. Some examples include a survey done by VentureBeat in time for their GamesBeat 2009 event set for tomorrow. Based on more than 160 responses coming from people registered to attend the event, 61 per cent voted that the iPhone would impact the industry the most — not surprising, given the rapid rise of Apple’s iPhone as a game platform. Among game platforms, they also saw the iPhone as having the most potential (74 percent), followed by social networks (64 percent), casual web-based (62 percent), and consoles (57 percent).

Better yet, Neil Young of ngmoco gave the keynote today, titled “Why the iPhone Just Changed Everything.” As 1up.com commented “After all, at no point in the past would hundreds of people have roused themselves from bed to attend a Monday morning speech about mobile games. Not in the U.S., anyway. Publishers have been trying and failing for years to achieve any sort of traction in the American mobile gaming market, and it’s only with the advent of Apple’s iPhone that U.S. gamers have started to take the prospect of gaming on a phone seriously.”

Think about it. Where else can you find fart-apps selling side-by-side with Metal Gear Solid?? Seriously, each and every developer has an equal chance of getting the publicity and the attention from iPhone gamers in the App Store. And frankly this enables small developers that actually have good ideas and good games to get the break they need.

But wait, there’s more! Apparently Nintendo is so paranoid about the App Store that, though their official line is “we have no intention of competing directly with the iPhone, iPod, or the App Store”, apparently according to some sources, at a sooper secrit Nintendo meeting, Nintendo is putting some plan in motion to encourage developers to develop “short-form content” for its new DSi handheld. They are encouraging developers to think about making shorter ‘applications’, both games and non-game. It should be very interesting to see what Satoru Iwata, President of Nintendo, says on Wednesday. He will be keynoting the GDC.

Lastly, it seems that Big Daddy may be scheduled for more than just the Mac soon. A question by an attendee made at the GDC to IG Fun CEO Sean Malatesta (who developed the mobile version of Bioshock) about the iPhone resulted in this comment: “Honestly, I can’t comment on BioShock on iPhone right now,” he told the audience. “It’s top secret.” Ooooh, boy! Are we talking Bioshock for the iPhone now??

 

Episode 72 is posted. Cory Tamas and I rap about Mac game news of the past couple of weeks. Check out some of the topics below!

We talk about the iPhone OS 3.0 preview, and what kind of an effect this will have on iPhone gaming.

Two new services have been created for gamers, Deathswitch and Slightly Morbid, so that if you die, your guild will know.

What’s with Amazon and deciding not to include Mac support with their casual game service download??

Braid is coming to the Mac! Thanks to Hothead Games!

What kind of games will you see in 2020 on the Mac?

 

I talk with Andy Korth of Howling Moon Software about Reclaimed, his entry into the uDevGames 2008 contest, as well as his commercial games. Also, a chat with Stephen Johnson, who developed gw0rp for the uDevGames contest, and won in two categories. We chat about his history in the iDevGames community, his previous commercial success, and what his future is likely to be.

Garage Games has announced that they have obtained the IP for the entire Starsiege universe, including the original Tribes, for InstantAction and will be showing it off at GDC.

From their blog:

In addition I’ve got some info straight from the lead on the project:

1. GarageGames purchased the ownership of the Tribes IP (all Tribes games) from Activision/Vivendi late last year.
2. We do have the source code to the game, and the build has been updated with bug fixes
3. The build will be distributed through the website, but still playable as a standalone game.
4. The game will use the existing Master Server system that the original game used. We will provide a new master server address with the release.
5. The game is not compatible with version 1.11 but you should be able to play the same demos as recorded on previous versions
6. Mods and configs used in 1.11 will not be directly compatible, without at least minor changes, as the base game scripts have been cleaned up considerably by Andrew
7. The game does NOT have updated graphics, this was a PR misunderstanding. The game does support modern file formats (PNG textures, Zip files)

Still waiting to hear back on any info regarding Mac support, though. But wouldn’t that be awesome!!

The uDevGames Contest is a Mac indie game contest run off and on throughout the years by the folks at iDevGames. It is an excellent opportunity for Mac Indie game developers to put a game together in a short time, using their skills and trying out all kinds of interesting ideas that might not necessarily fly well in the commercial game industry, especially among the big giants who are quite content with sequelitis.

uDevGames 2008 kicked off last year in early December, and voting just finished a few days ago. iDevGames just announced the winners on Monday.

And now, iDevGames is proud to announce the winners of uDevGames 2008:

Best overall Game
Laserface Jones vs Doomsday Odious – Justin Ficarrotta
Constellation – Matthew Woods
uDeadGame – William Griffin

Gameplay
Laserface Jones vs Doomsday Odious – Justin Ficarrotta
Constellation – Matthew Woods
Maneuv’It – DGuy

Graphics
Laserface Jones vs Doomsday Odious – Justin Ficarrotta
Surrounded By Death – Matt Hergaarden
ChasmBowling – Ben Mildren

Audio
Laserface Jones vs Doomsday Odious – Justin Ficarrotta
Maneuv’It – DGuy
ChasmBowling – Ben Mildren & Simoebic Dysentery – Joe Flores

Story
Boston: Mouse in the Sewer – Lincoln Green
Gw0rp – Stephen Johnson
Laserface Jones vs Doomsday Odious – Justin Ficarrotta

Presentation
Laserface Jones vs Doomsday Odious – Justin Ficarrotta
Constellation – Matthew Woods
Maneuv’It – DGuy

Originality
Simoebic Dysentery – Joe Flores
ChasmBowling – Ben Mildren
Gw0rp – Stephen Johnson

Congratulations to everyone who worked hard on this. You can check out their games and indeed all 20 of the games that entered the contest here. Also, I’ll be posting an interview with two of the developers (one of them a winner) later today. Hopefully, I’ll have some more interviews a little later on.

ETA: I discovered you can opt-out of interest-based advertising on Google AdSense. Read here for more info.

I don’t have any ads currently on my iGame Radio website, but I’ve dealt with Internet ads for a while, and intend to be displaying ads when I relaunch my new site design soon (don’t forget the Logo Contest!) And I have been working with Google AdSense for a long time, especially on MacRadio.

So, when I received an email the other day from Google AdSense informing me that Google would be launching soon a new AdSense technique, called interest-based advertising, I thought, hmm, I should check this out. Especially since it would require changes to my privacy policy. I was quite distraught by what I read.

Interest-based advertising uses cookies that Google AdSense will drop on your browser to keep track of what sites you go to. Then AdSense will develop a profile of you, which it will place into one of several pre-existing categories, such as “sport’s enthusiast”, or “travel enthusiast” (what, no “porn enthusiast”??). Then it will deliver targeted ads to whatever site you go to that serves Google AdSense ads…ads based on other sites you have gone to already.

Now, some might consider that this is a great idea. Google is targeting ads more specifically by what your interests are, and delivering those ads directly to you.

Let me point out to you the innumerable problems with this.

First, consider that you are probably going to end up seeing a set number of ads that are targeted to you, and after a while, you will get really tired of seeing them. I mean, doesn’t that already happen at many sites now? The ads are targeted based on the content of the site, which doesn’t change a huge amount beyond a certain extent, and eventually you’ve seen all of the ads in the rotation. If you are dropped into a category, you’ll experience the same thing…only, it could be worse, because even though a site could eventually evolve, your category won’t.

And let’s talk a little bit about that site content targeting, too. Google has not yet detailed, as far as I know, whether the interest-based advertising will be working in conjunction with, or replacing, site-targeting ads. The information so far seems to imply replacing, so that’s what I’ll go with at the moment. Which means that you could be a “sports enthusiast” because you spend about 75% of your time on sports-related sites, but then you go to a relationship site because you want to read some article to help with your relationship with your spouse…and see sports memorabilia ads all over it. Yeah, that makes me feel like the site is streamlined and tight. Or, consider that you are using a public computer, at a library, or worse. Go to a cooking site…and see porn ads.

But the real issue for me is privacy. The moment I read it I had visions of portfolios of my browsing habits kept in secret computer files. Think about it. Google will now be collecting a file of each and every one of us about every single website we’ve gone to…how long we were there, how often, what IP address we used, etc. And we can all believe that Google would never use it for anything other than the AdSense program even…until the government issues their illegal warrant demanding the information for “security purposes”. Telecom redux, anyone?

If you look at the Google AdSense blog announcing it, my fears are not singular. I would say 75% at least of the people who have posted in this blog have issues regarding Google’s decision, and many of them are privacy based. It’s a popular issue, because unlike most of Google’s other posts in this blog (which usually range around 10 to 30 comments) this post has blown to almost 100 comments.

I don’t foresee that Google is going to just drop this launch. I am expecting they are going to test it out in the limited beta that they mentioned, and hopefully will see that, no, really they need to make some changes. Changes which I hope will include an opt-in option (although an opt-out option will work…right now there isn’t any option to be removed from the program at all other than disabling cookies).

I hope that Google understands that “Do no evil” really does include “Don’t invade our privacy”.

 

I’ve uploaded a little while ago the first of the Gaming the IGF 2009 series, about Mac game finalists in the IGF 2009 competition. First up, Phosphoros of Digital Eel, whose game Brainpipe is a finalist in the Excellence in Audio award category, and Jason Rohrer, whose game Between is a finalist in the Innovation award category. Enjoy.

Apocrypha, the tenth free expansion for EVE Online, has been deployed. Now you too can go flying through unstable wormholes in a desperate attempt to discover unexplored regions of space and yell “First!”! You too can be the first to discover hereto undiscovered bugs created during CCP’s shortened production schedule! You too can take advantage of staggering ship production and a re-imagined introduction for rookie starship pilots that will result in unimaginable amounts of wedgies!

Okay, I’m being bad. But, really, when you have to post these press releases all day long, you start getting creative.

Here’s more from the press release:

Apocrypha’s improvements include these highlights and more:

• The sudden appearance of unstable wormholes in space, making the universe 41% larger and much more dangerous. On the other side, a first acquaintance awaits to a formidable NPC group that guards the key to the next level of technology. This unknown, uncharted space allows for a true sense of exploration for those brave enough to grab hold of the dynamic new scanning mechanics.
• Strategic Cruisers come with the introduction of ancient technology into production. These modular ships allow for an extravagant level of customization and versatility.
• The first Epic Mission Arc joins an enhanced new player experience to guide fledgling pilots toward the opportunities space has to offer. This massive branching set consists of dozens of missions that are guaranteed to forge any soft-shelled rookie into a battle-hardened veteran.
• Massive sensory improvements for every player: an upgraded sound engine, brand-new animations for almost every effect in game and beautiful original assets in wormhole space.
• A newly designed skill queue allows EVE’s unique character progression system to truly shine and Neural Remapping provides an opportunity for players to refocus their development as they so choose.
• We are releasing our Premium Graphics client for Mac users and introducing Premium Lite as our new lower-end graphics suite for a more beautiful experience all around.

Go to EVE Online: Apocrypha for a full list of features and more.

 

Episode 71 is live, featuring reviews of Spiderweb Software’s Geneforge 5: Overthrow, Aquaria by Ambrosia Software, and the Psyclops Dance Mixer iPhone App. Also, I do an interview with Gamerizon CEO Dominique Belanger.

Geneforge 5: Overthrow

The classic old-school RPG series of conflict between the magical Shapers and the Rebels draws to a close. But is there enough in the game to draw both old and new gamers alike?

Aquaria

Winner of the 2007 Seumas McNally Award, Aquaria blends beauty and exploration with a bit of destruction to cook up an underwater winner.

Psyclops Dance Mixer

Teens and pre-teens alike will love the ability to create a mini dance video right on their iPhone. But the interface is nothing to dance about.

Gamerizon

Gamerizon is moving into the Mac casual game scene with their first offering “QuantZ”, a bit of Action-Puzzler, Match-3 and Marble Popper all mixed into one.

Control little stick figures. Order them into battle. Watch them die in horrible, screaming agony. Wait…what?

Ambrosia has released their next game, Multiwinia. If you’ve been listening to my podcasts (you have, haven’t you?!) you already know something about it.

Multiwinia is a multi-player real time strategy war game using stick-figures. That way, when you maim and murder them, you won’t feel so bad. Developed in partnership with Introversion Software, the game is available for an immediate download (30 day free trial) and sells for $19.

From the press release:

A chaotic war is raging in a fantastic fractalized world populated by bloodthirsty little stick men with a mission: follow your orders to annihilate their enemies. They will do your bidding no matter what the cost: order them to take that hill, flank the enemy or run screaming towards the flame turrets. The Multiwinians are bent on destruction, and if a few hundred of them have to be incinerated to get that flag, so be it!

Mmmmmmmm! Stick figure mennnnnnnnnnnnnnn!