Of course, the reason for the Casual Connect Conference is games. So, let’s report on some of those. Games that I’ve seen here, or developers/publishers have either mentioned to me or have sent me press releases about: Read the rest of this entry »

If you read this blog, you’ve probably been thinking that for a while now. I haven’t posted a new episode now in over two months. Well, the bad news is that the reason for the lack of podcast episodes is because of some unfortunate happenings regarding MacRadio. The good news is…

I’m baaaaaaaaaaaaaack!

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ETA: The guys from NinjaKiwis mentioned that they wanted to come to Casual Connect and accept their Zeebys award, but they decided that the price for getting to the conference was just too high. Considering that many casual games studios are small one to five people setups where cost is a big factor, and that they live in New Zealand…well, ’nuff said.

I attended The 2nd Annual Zeebys Awards last night. This is an awards ceremony produced by Gamezebo and the Casual Games Association that applauds those in the casual games industry that work hard to produce the casual games titles that many of us love while donating money to the Starlight Starbright Children’s Foundation. My impression, however, is that fewer people than one would think in the industry actually support the Zeebys. Read the rest of this entry »

I am sitting in a hallway…actually, in a corner off of the hallway…in Benaroya Hall in Seattle, Washington. The Casual Connect Casual Game Conference is happening right now. I’m covering it for both iGame Radio and the DigiPen PodClass.

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For those of you who haven’t noticed yet, I suggest that you take a look at Blizzard’s website. You’ll notice the folks there have chosen to tease us all. Over the past few days, this image has been changing, revealing a little bit more each day. So, what is this, exactly? Ice shards breaking apart? Blue glass? And what about the now noticeable eyes and circled images hidden within, slowly revealing themselves? Now, I’m no expert, but I think we’re going to have some excellent news sometime in the next few days. And that excellent news is going to be…

Well, I honestly thought that the next games that Freeverse would announce would be those yummy iPhone games that they are working on. But, they have surprised me with something I didn’t even know they were working on. Today I got a PR from them about Jeopardy Deluxe and Wheel of Fortune Deluxe for the Mac! I used to love watching both shows, though I loved Wheel of Fortune better…I really love word games. Vanna…not so much. Anyway, I’m downloading the demos, and will probably be doing a full review sometime in the future.

In other good news, I really am getting my act together regarding iGame Radio. I’ve finally dug myself out of the hole of work I’ve been in with MacRadio and Sound Podcast Productions (my podcast consulting wing of the business), and am currently tackling the backlog of tasks that I have. I should be able to actually do a podcast for iGame Radio sometime soon. I can’t promise it will be this week. If not, it will be in two weeks, cause next week I will be out of town all week.

Yeah, it sounds like your dog ate your favorite scone, but no, really, it’s a game. My good friend Keith Sink of Piddlepup Games sent me an email to let me know he’s released his new game Crumb for the Mac and PC. I’m downloading the demo as I type. A fantasy adventure that looks like a colorful top-down 2D game for the whole family, I’ll report on it later.

Just got an email from Amazon.com telling me that Call of Duty 4 for the Mac is in pre-order status and due out July 7! Woot! After receiving Aspyr’s delay press release about CoD4, I was gettin’ worried.

Got an email today from Steve Demeter of DemiForce about his game Trism. He’s posted a new video about the game on YouTube, showing off the final features of the game and information about pricing. Apparently the game will have three modes, classic (called infinism), time mode (called terminism) and puzzle mode (called syllogism). There will be online scoring available, and he decided, based on fan feedback, on a pricing point significantly below what many were going to charge for similar games. Check out the video, and check out the game when it is available. I will.

I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and have finally decided to change the days on which I post my podcast from Monday to Thursday. I’ve been posting them on Mondays, but this is actually a holdover from the old Gamesome Mac days when we broadcast the show live on Mondays. I have the ability to decide when I want to post my podcasts that don’t depend on a broadcast schedule, and have for a long time. I’ve just stuck with Monday because…well, because.

But, Mondays are becoming an increasingly difficult day to post on, for a variety of reasons. I have a hard time getting motivated on Mondays (don’t we all). I’m grabbing news from the past week (with two non-news days in between) rather than the past few days. With two non-work days, I find it hard to drop back into my work groove again (back to the motivation thing again). I basically decided that several days of work leading up to the post would suit me better.

Anyway, I’m going to try it out and see how it works. Starting this week I will start posting my podcasts on Thursdays. So, my next podcast will be Thursday, 2/21.