iGame Radio

Penny Arcade has announced that David Jaffe of God of War fame will be keynoting PAX Prime 2011. The keynote will kick off three days of demos, speakers, competitions and concerts by some of the biggest names in gaming.

PAX Prime will include some of the hottest new games in the gaming industry including 2K Games, Activision, Bioware, Capcom, NCsoft and Turbine as well as table top/CCG power houses such as Wizards of the Coast and Privateer Press. Microsoft is hosting Halo Fest – the largest and most expansive live Halo experience anyone has ever seen – at the third floor annex of the Washington State Conference Center.

Attendees will also get their fill of nightly nerd concerts, including the return of favorites Jonathan Coulton, MC Frontalot, Metroid Metal, Minibosses, and Paul and Storm, as well as newcomers Supercommuter and The Video Game Orchestra.

PAX Prime is scheduled at the Seattle Convention Center on August 26 – 28. Passes are sold out, but you might still find one by searching the forums.

Have you ever wanted to write for a gaming site? Do you look to see if a game has been released for the Mac before you look at the description? Do you tap on the screen of your iPhone while gaming till your fingers bleed (ewww, hopefully not all over your screen!). Do you drool every time a new iPad game has been released? iGame Radio may have the gig for you!

We’re looking for a Writing Assistant to help increase the content on the website and expand the site’s social connections. This position will start as part-time, but may become full-time in the future.

iGame Radio is a video game blog and podcast based on Mac and iOS games. We post news/editorial articles and several weekly podcasts that include industry commentary, game reviews, and interviews with game industry figures.

This will be a great position to get into video game journalism and get your name out onto the internet in a location that is seen by thousands every week.

Requirements:

• The ability to write quality articles about the Mac and iOS game industry and stories related to such.
• Be able to work with social media sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, using it to expand the fan base.
• Be able to keep to deadlines.
• Can work remotely, keeping in contact via email, chat tools, and Skype (both audibly and visually).
• Be able to work a variable schedule (though the majority of the schedule will be a standard one).

The position will start unpaid but it is intended to become a paying position over time. Contact us for more information.

PopCap Games has launched an auction of cool and unique PopCap art pieces on eBay whose proceeds will support two nonprofit organizations. Launched last week, the auction will continue through July 12 in a series of weekly auctions.

The collection includes a 6 foot-by-6 foot DJing Plants vs. Zombie painting and other sketches, a Zuma-themed ceramic tea set, a Peggle-themed ceramic sake set, original hand-drawn concept art from several PopCap franchises, and more. There will be nearly 40 one-of-a-kind items up for bid, each representing a piece of PopCap history. All of it is for sale with 100% of the proceeds benefiting the Starlight Children’s Foundation (U.S.) and SpecialEffect (U.K.) to help children with serious illnesses and their families cope with their challenges.

The items will be auctioned in four waves of nine items each available for just 7 days. The first week’s worth of items will finish bidding in just under an hour, and the amounts show how much fans are interested. The personalized sketch that will be done with input from the buyer post auction opened bidding at $1 and was well over $400 yesterday. The second week’s bidding has already begun, so bid early and often!

Editor’s Note: Our intern Ben Heindel is ending his time with us. But before he goes, we thought we’d post one of the articles that he wrote as a guest column. This is in response to the interview given by Gabe Newell of Valve Software, in which he stated that he was interested in employing a game system where payment was based more on how good players are to each other, rather than the value of the games themselves.

Would you want to pay more for not being fun to play with? Valve Software founder Gabe Newell, in an interview with Develop Online, talked about a concept for how to set up a new purchase system to reward kinder players with discounts and even free games, and hamper annoying players or griefers by forcing them to pay more or even make them pay to use other features of the game that are normally free. Really this sounds great but the chances for problems to crop up are quite numerous.

Would the execution of this system be worth it for Valve to implement it at this time? There are a few ways that this could be executed. It could be an automated process based on how quickly people leave after you showed up in the game or on your profile views or something along those lines. But any automated system can and will be abused after people do the number crunching and find out the conditions. Maybe Valve could go the route of a ranking or point system, allowing the players to decide who is good and who is bad with votes and such. But once again there is the same issue of abuse, but this time it is cranked up to 11 with an overall inability to save customers from being raided by the same trolls that they are trying to avoid.

Will Valve or other companies connected to Steam expect this plan to create a steady form of income compared to the current model? With the possibility of free games on a larger scale, smaller developers will see a falling out in income to support their projects. In the case of larger publishers, they probably won’t be very happy about having their games prices lowered for various people who just happen to be good in their little community. Also, if Valve starts increasing the charge for certain games then gamers will turn their money elsewhere instead of paying through Steam. There will also be the people who do get the benefits being the litmus test for who are Steam’s “best community members” which may make a wider slash in the community then the Marianas Trench. With the added power, some players may get very arrogant, turning them into less likable individuals…all the while, others will keep these players up there regardless of if they are still as likable as they were before for personal reasons. This may cause the general gamer population to look at these players as the kind of person the Steam community likes, making them avoid steam and move to another platform of distribution.

Another issue that could occur might come from personal attacks. There are many kinds of communities that may use this as an excuse to attack people that they don’t like. There is the side of communities that believe in very specific rules, whether its immature communities that think everybody are jerks to uptight communities that don’t believe in that whole “playing the game for fun” business. Then there are the individuals who take many games too seriously; attacking players en-masse would cause a massive chance of collateral damage of people who just want to have fun playing the game.

Overall this seems in the same vein as trying to keep everybody equal; in theory it sounds like a great idea but there will always be someone to make it a pipe dream, only looked upon with positive light by the top leaders and bright eyed teenagers who don’t look at the plan hard enough. At its worst Valve would be playing Teacher to everybody in its community; rewarding good kids and tattle tales with treats and gold stars and giving the bad kids and misunderstood kids time outs and making them stay in from recess. There are times when the conventions of industry need to be challenged, there are places where it requires major overhauls to get it into order. This is neither the time, nor the place, to try.

As of today, the number of individual apps approved by Apple for its iOS platform has exceeded the 500,000 mark. Though the number of active apps available in the App Store is roughly 400,000, the number of approved apps is a proven milestone for developers and app seekers alike.

As part of the milestone announcement, 148Apps, the independent mobile app blog, along with Chomp, the leaders in app search technology, and Chillingo, a top app game developer, have released an infographic, celebrating the milestone and highlighting others since the Apple App Store launched on July 10, 2008.

Featured data includes top apps of all time, number of developers contributing to the 500,000 number, a timeline of approved apps, growth projections and more. Some of the more interesting statistics from this infographic include that the most popular category of app is Games (at 58699 active) followed closely behind by books (at 54448 active). Also, while the current average non-game app price is $2.27, the current average game price is only $1.06, bringing the overall app price for the App store down to $2.11. And the most expensive game? A whopping $299.99!

In comparison, the Android Marketplace, the closest competitor to the iOS App Store launched 8 months after the Apple App Store in March 2009, currently contains roughly 294,000 apps and 3 billion app downloads. In fact, recently mobile research specialist Research2Guidance claimed that the Android Marketplace would overtake the Apple App Store in app by August of this year with 425,000 apps. Considering that the App store has already reached the 400,000 active apps number in May, that hardly seems likely now.

The infographic is available via the 500k apps Facebook fan page. For more app data, visit 148Apps. To access Chomp’s monthly proprietary metrics report, go to their App Search Analytics page.

UPDATE: Jason of the ECA pointed out the Flash ECA ad on the right hand side. If you click on the lower bar that says “Click Here”, a drop down menu will appear allowing you to sign up.

The Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA) has announced a cooperation with Red Bull Gaming to offer a one year free ECA membership to those who sign up through the Red Bull Gaming homepage.

The ECA says no credit card will be required for activation. Members who sign up in this manner will be able to enjoy the numerous ECA benefits, including educational resources, advocacy efforts, and affinity benefits instantly. Also, the ECA and Red Bull Gaming will continue to introduce more programs and events that will be announced in the coming months.

We checked out the Red Bull Gaming site, but couldn’t find a link or page that was specifically for signing up for ECA membership, however and if you click on the Flash ECA ad on the right hand side, on the lower bar that says “Click Here”, a drop down menu will appear allowing you to sign up. We’ve emailed the ECA asking for clarification regarding these procedures, and will update when we get a response and they updated us right quick!

Meantime, go to the ECA website for a full list of ECA partnerships and membership benefits, to learn how to become a member, or to find out more about the organization.

Valve Software has released Portal 2: The Final Hours, a “digital book” that takes you behind the scenes within Valve for an unvarnished look at the creative process behind Portal 2.

Journalist Geoff Keighley was granted unprecedented “fly on the wall” access to Valve to create a 15,000 word multimedia experience, including exclusive photos, videos, interviews, interactive experiences, and more. The Final Hours includes a lot of previously unknown information, such as the fact that Portal 2 actually began as a prequel to the first game without portals or GLaDOS. A video of a never-before-disclosed project, Two Bots, One Wrench, shows examples of Directed Design Experiments created after Half-Life 2: Episode 2. You’ll also see images and read details regarding the evolution of the Portal 2 story as the game was developed.

Interactive highlights include:

• Play with portals in an interactive diagram where you learn how portals work.
• 360 degree panorama photos of the Valve office and design labs.
• Listen to the songs that inspired the Portal 2 development team.
• Hear Jonathan Coulton’s Portal 2 song in various stages of development.
• Puppet Wheatley in an interactive experience.
• Destroy Aperture Science by wiping your fingers over the screen.
• Interact with fans and voice your opinion via polls and a feedback form.

The cost for his multimedia experience is $1.99, and SteamPlay is required.

iGame Radio received an email from Valve this week that stated that they would not be showing anything at E3 this year:

Lots of folks have mailed asking about appointment times, etc., with Valve.

Well, we are not showing any titles at this year’s show. So no appointment is needed.

This has set tongues wagging, as we know of at least one title that Valve is actively working on (DOTA 2), and the hopes have been with many that they are also working on Half-life 2: Episode 3, though there is no absolute evidence of that. But that statement leaves many to wonder whether DOTA 2 is further off than many thought, or whether Valve does not want to show any work at E3.

A disappointment indeed, as we all would have liked to see more of DOTA 2 and any other Valve work.

• Omaha Sternberg interviews Mike Gnade of Indie Game Magazine. Gnade recently ran a Kickstarter Campaign to restart Game Tunnel which Indie Game Magazine had purchased. Omaha talks with Mike about the history of the magazine, the reason why they purchased Game Tunnel, and what the future holds in store for that venerable indie game site.

The Khronos Group has announced the new Streaminput working group, which will create an open and platform-independent standard for accessing a wide array of input devices. Transgaming has volunteered to chair this new group.

The Streaminput working group’s goal is to create a cross-platform API that will provide applications for high-level semantic to low-level device management capabilities. The new API will support a framework that will handle both traditional devices, such as keyboards, mice, track pads, etc, as well as next generation devices coming down the pipe. The API will also provide for system-wide sensor synchronization for advanced multi-sensor applications, such as with augmented reality, and use Khronos’ extension mechanisms to allow the easy addition and support of new devices.

The decision by Transgaming to chair this working group is especially interesting in light of their recent announcements in the past year, such as the launch of GameTreeTV, an on-demand Smart TV gaming platform, and their collaboration with Softkinetic to bring gesture-based gaming to their gaming platform. It seems that Transgaming has a lot in store for the future of gaming and input devices.