Another busy day of touring the expo floor of PAX. My gods, it’s busy today! I’m hoping that it might be a little bit less busy tomorrow. I had an appointment with EA today to review a bunch of their games, Read the rest of this entry »

Just finished posting my first podcast episode. Haven’t updated the website yet…I’ll get to that later. Also, this is just a basic episode…I’ll get to the enhanced version a bit later when I get some of the assets (screens and such). I’ll be honest and say that I’m beginning to think that maintaining an enhanced version is becoming a pain, and rather unrealistic, as anyone who is listening to the show can pop on over the the site in their iPhone/iPod Touch/Webpage while listening, and if using an iPod Classic or such, will only be able to see the pictures.

So, here’s a quick survey question:

Would you like to continue having me post enhanced podcasts or not? Post your responses in the comments (or email me at omaha@igameradio.com).

In other news, remember that announcement that Epic’s Mark Rein mentioned last year in July about Gears of War for the Mac, and then heard nothing else about since? Yeah. You’ll be hearing something about it in the next month or so. :D

I hit the Exhibition Floor running, ready to try out every game I could that I didn’t already have an appointment for (and some that I did). I hit Blizzard’s booth and looked at Starcraft 2 and WoW: Wrath of the Lich-King, I hit Turbine’s booth and looked over Asheron’s Call (yeah, it still exists, and even Mac users play it), I hit Bethesda’s for Fallout 3. I hit GarageGames and took a look at their InstantAction beta for the Mac (which I’ll look in more detail later this weekend). And I recorded a whole bunch of thoughts about these things on my mobile recorder…

…only to realize that I’d brought the wrong cord and can’t hook it to my Mac to upload the recordings. Yeah, it would be nice if I wanted to upload my schedule from my PDA. But that isn’t what I’m interested in. Ah well, I’ll see if I can get someone from home to pop over here and bring it to me. Otherwise, you’ll hear nothing from me until tonight. Sorry ’bout that.

Yes, through hardship and difficult weather, through pain and suffering, through…

Okay, yeah, I took a bus, the sun is shining, and I spent about ten minutes in line. Sue me. Still, things are already revving up, even though the keynote speech won’t happen until 4:30 pm, and the Exhibition Hall doesn’t open to the general public until after 2 pm. I’m very much looking forward to viewing the game offerings that are here. I’ve run into my friend Brian Robbins of Fuel Games. They are putting together some iPhone games (one he says is already up in the App Store), so I’m looking forward to seeing what they have to offer.

I’ll also be dropping by the Blizzard booth today and seeing where they are with both Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3, as well as looking at other booths. And I have a meeting with Meteor Games and Destineer today. Meteor Games is offering Twin Skies. Though it’s not available yet for the Mac, there are some hints of possibility…and the flash version is very playable on the Mac. And Destineer…well, they own MacSoft, so some of the games at the show just might show up for the Mac (I’m so going to look at Little Red Riding Hood’s Zombie BBQ!!).

I’ll report back in a bit.

Yup, I’m heading to PAX this year. I’m ashamed to say it…this will be my first year. You’d think that I would have attended an event like this in my backyard before now, wouldn’t ya. Well, I haven’t.

I’ve got a series of meetings set up, as well as panels I’ve already scheduled to attend. For example, I’m meeting with the folks at EA, at which I will be asking if they’ll ever release any other games for the Mac; and meeting with Destineer to see if I can finagle any more Mac news from their MacSoft side. I’ll be hitting the Game Criticism and Old Game Journalism panel, as well as Video Games: Politics and Beyond. Below is a complete tally of the panels I’ll try to be hitting, btw.

If you intend to be there and you want to hook up with me, for chat or gaming or whatever, drop me an email at omaha@igameradio.com, or send me a tweet at omahas. Otherwise, hope you have fun!

Panels/events:

Video Games, Politics & Beyond
scheduled August 29, 2008 from 4:30 PM to 5:30 PM
Location: Wolfman theatre

Video Games and Piracy
scheduled August 29, 2008 from 7:30 PM to 8:30 PM
Location: Wolfman theatre

Cryptic Studios Party
scheduled August 29, 2008 from 7:00 PM to 11:30 PM
Location: Seattle Public Library

The Guild screening
scheduled August 29, 2008 from 9:00 PM to 10:00 PM
Location: Raven Theatre

Friday Night Concert
scheduled for August 29, 2008 at 9:00 PM to August 30, 2008 at 1:00 AM
Location: Main Theatre

Game Developer Parents
scheduled August 30, 2008 from 10:30 AM to 11:30 AM
Location: Raven Theatre

Casual Q&A with Hal Halpin
scheduled August 30, 2008 from 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM
Location: Raven Theatre

Game Criticism and Old Game Journalism
scheduled August 30, 2008 from 1:30 PM to 2:30 PM
Location: Wolfman theatre

The Giant Bomb Reunion Tour
scheduled August 30, 2008 from 5:30 PM to 6:30 PM
Location: Walrus Theatre

Is Casual Killing Core Games
scheduled August 30, 2008 from 6:00 PM to 7:00 PM
Location: Raven Theatre

Meet the PAX 10
scheduled August 30, 2008 from 7:00 PM to 8:00 PM
Location: Walrus theatre

Sex in Videogames: A comparative study
scheduled August 30, 2008 from 7:30 PM to 8:30 PM
Location: Wolfman Theatre

Podcasting: the new media
scheduled August 31, 2008 from 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM
Location: Walrus Theatre

Wil Wheaton Panel
scheduled August 31, 2008 from 11:30 AM to 12:30 PM
Location: Serpent Theatre

Gamer Dad’s “Gaming with Children”
scheduled August 31, 2008 from 2:30 PM to 3:30 PM
Location: Serpent Theatre

Sex, violence, and video games
scheduled August 31, 2008 from 3:00 PM to 4:00 PM
Location: Raven theatre

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 »

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’m back from Macworld and exhausted and ready for some rest. Just a quick note to let everyone know that I’ve posted my first podcast from Macworld SF 2007. You can open up your podcast catcher and download it (you *are* subscribed, right? ;-), or you can surf to iTunes, Yahoo Podcast, Odeo, iPod Nova, etc and download it that way. I don’t yet have it up on the MacRadio site.

Right now I just want to relax. Play some games for fun. I’ve been playing Quake IV multiplayer deathmatch. I’ll probably play Civ IV and Legion Arena later too. Oh, and I found out how to fix that nasty problem that some players of Legion Arena have (including me) where the battle button gets greyed out after the third level. Thanks to Justin from Freeverse for letting me know about that! I’ll post about that in a bit too.

If you have a question about Macworld that you want answered, or a comment you want to make, post it here. I’ll be happy to answer questions, even going out and locating stuff if you are interested. Want a picture of something? Let me know. Want me to tell you about whether something sucks or not? Tell me, I’m your gopher. Well, maybe not, but this is as close as you’ll get.