We knew it was coming. There were signs. And now, from the clutches of devastating Indie game developer claws comes….

THE HUMBLE INDIE BUNDLE 2: THE BUNDLE REBORN

Brought to you by Wolfire Games, The Humble Indie Bundle 2 features five of the most awesome games the indie world has to offer, all available for Mac, Linux, and Windows platforms.

Braid: manipulate time to move our lovelost hero to certain…well, we’re not certain what happens to this dude, to be sure. But it’s an awesome game!

Cortex Command: Manipulate forces above ground with a disembodied brain. Ewwwwww.

Machinarium: A robot seeks his girlfriend that has been taken from him. Not a WALL-E remake.

Osmos: The mote in God’s eye…no, wait, let’s try that again. Little mote eats smaller motes, gets bigger. Becomes god. Yeah, that’s it.

Revenge of the Titans: Zeus, Kraken, you get the idea. Wait, no? It’s an RTS tower defense strategy game? You mean, NO KRAKEN??

And these Indie Game Developers…they seek to fool you. They rope you in with the belief that you can pay whatever you want to purchase these games, and choose how much of your payment will go to the developers and how much will go to the charities Electronic Frontier Foundation and Child’s Play Charity.

But once you’ve paid, then…THEN…

BWAHAHAHA!!!!

Then you will be forced to…um…well, play awesome cool games, and, uh, feel good about helping out Indie developers and charities and…uh…

Wait, what was the point of this, again?

About 2 weeks ago, John Graham of Wolfire Games issued an ultimatum to the fans of the studio. Get 5000 subscribers to their YouTube Channel and John would shave off his beard on live-streaming video.

Wolfire now has over 6000 subscribers, and that means it’s beard shaving time! The event is scheduled for Wednesday, November 17, at 3:30 PM PST (that’s today). Join the fun!

 

What’s inside this episode:

• Host Omaha Sternberg and co-host Peter Cohen of The Loop talk about the week’s news in Mac and iOS gaming. Feral Interactive announced this week LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga. Omaha and Peter talk about what you can expect in the game.
• Mac OS 10.6.5 was released this week, and iPad OS 4.2 is pending. What can you expect for your games from these OS releases, and how much longer will we be waiting for 4.2?
• Mark Zuckerberg made his opinion known about what a mobile device is…and isn’t. Omaha and Peter talk a bit about what they think it is, and what mobile games are, and what they think games will ultimately be called in the future.
• Apple opened their App Store Essentials: Hall of Fame this week. But there’s already an App Hall of Fame! Is this a conflict, or a boon?
• Will John Graham really shave his beard on live streaming Internet? Will Omaha really get a tattoo on live streaming Internet?
• Omaha announces the results of last week’s iGame Radio poll, and Omaha and Peter talk about games they’ve played.

Music Notes:

• Digital Droo produced our theme music here at iGame Radio.
• Rich Carlson featured music from Weird Worlds: Return to Infinite Space.
• Digital Droo featured music from Neon Tango.

If you are familiar with Wolfire Games, you’ll know that they are famous for more than just their ninja rabbit games. They are also famous for John Graham’s beard. In a blatant PR attempt, John has issued the Beard Ultimatum…if the Wolfire YouTube channel reaches 5000 subscribers within 2 weeks, John will shave it all off.

This ultimatum was actually made two days ago, and already they have exceeded the 5000 mark. Now John is a little worried. See, that 5000 mark wasn’t the only part of the ultimatum. He also stated that if the YouTube channel hit 7500 subscribers that he’d shave his beard AND his head. If it hit 10,000, he’d let the community decide what to do about his head hair.

Having already hit the first ultimatum in just 2 days, one wonders if he shouldn’t be worried about that 10,000 mark. I’m rooting for a set of pink curls, myself.

 

What’s inside this episode:

• Host Omaha Sternberg and co-host Peter Cohen of The Loop talk about the week’s news in Mac and iOS gaming. Valve announced Dota 2 last week, but now they are seeking to trademark the word “Dota”. This has caused confusion to some, anger to others. Omaha and Peter discuss the ramifications of this move, and how it might end.
• Ten years ago, Bungie needed money. They asked Apple, but Microsoft bought them. Rumor has it that Steve Jobs got pissed. What would Apple have been like if they had not turned Bungie down? How will this inform any decision Apple makes for rumored company purchases now?
• The Independent Games Festival (IGF) has released their submission list, and it’s almost 400 games long! Omaha and Peter chat about some of the games in the list, and why you might want to take a look too.
• Wolfire Games gave a hint about another Humble Indie Bundle. Will there be a HIB2? How will the Mac App Store impact Indie sales events like this?
• Omaha announces the results of last week’s iGame Radio poll, and Omaha and Peter talk about games released, soon to be released, and that they’ve played.

Music Notes:

• Digital Droo produced our theme music here at iGame Radio.
• Digital Droo for featuring music from Burning Monkey Solitaire.
• Rich Carlson for featuring music from Dr. Blob.

Lot’s to post about today, so let’s get the ball rolling with a new trailer for the upcoming ninja rabbit fighting game Overgrowth from Wolfire Games. Unlike many previous trailers, this one is much more serious, and is a showcase of all that the current Alpha has to offer.

Overgrowth is the spiritual successor to the popular game Lugaru by Wolfire, and has been in development using the pre-release subscription business model (where subscribers get access to the alpha/beta versions before anyone else, and can directly impact the continued development of the game).

One aspect that the trailer highlights is the editor used within the game for both map and level editing. This will be released with the game for player use as well, and looks very powerful for creating a lot of custom-made maps and levels for long replayability.

Wolfire Games’ Aubrey Serr and John Graham attended the Fantastic Fest Arcade, which is the film festival’s first foray into indie games. Fantastic Fest is an independent film festival, and this year they decided to include indie games, feeling that the two had a lot in common. I so wanted to go, but Blogworld is two weeks hence, and I just didn’t have the cash or time to do two out of town conventions in two weeks.

The relaxed turnout that John talks about sounds really appealing, and I will definitely try to make it next year.

Wolfire Games has posted a wonderful discussion regarding the OnLive streaming game service that launched officially (for some definition of “officially”) yesterday at 6PM PT/9PM ET. Jeff from Wolfire Games has been participating in the Beta for OnLive, and had some very good and smart insights into the service that detail the merits and downfalls of OnLive well.

However, during the post, he let slip an interesting tidbit that lead to some exciting thoughts.

From the OnLive FAQ:

Unfortunately, because of licensing restrictions, we can only offer Mass Effect 2 for play under Windows. So, if you do not have access to a PC, your only option to play it on a Mac is under Windows using Boot Camp or a similar system. We apologize for the inconvenience. OnLive has no other games in the pipeline that are Windows-only, and we do not expect to have any others.

This is ridiculous on so many levels and a great example of why OnLive is so fascinating and controversial. I might be able to virtualize OnLive in Parallels, so that I would be playing Mass Effect 2 through OnLive on Windows running inside of Parallels virtualized on Mac OS X. It feels bad enough when publishers don’t make the effort to support Mac OS X and Linux, the fact that EA has actually gone out of their way to make ME2 inacessible to Mac OnLive users is worth examining in its own blog post.

Worth examining indeed. So I’ll beat Jeff to the punch and examine it now. Why would Mass Effect 2, amongst all the other games available on the OnLive service (such as Assassin’s Creed 2, Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands and Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Conviction from Ubisoft, Batman: Arkham Asylum and Just Cause 2 from Square Enix, etc) be unavailable on the Mac through OnLive?

I think it’s because EA, or a Mac publisher in conjunction with EA, has Mass Effect 2 for the Mac in the pipeline right now.

OnLive right now is still an experimental service. Let’s face it, most of the people who are going to sign up for it are early adopters (like me) who can’t wait to try out something new and cutting edge. My neighbor next door isn’t going to try it out now (Mac user though he is). And certainly my older friend whose laptop I just helped fix won’t. It’s going to be another year or more before this service is going to be anything other than early adopter fodder.

We early adopters are also the biggest source of revenue for a new game on the Mac that requires a higher end Mac. Like Mass Effect 2. If EA were to bring Mass Effect 2 to the Mac in another 1.5 years or longer, those “higher end Macs” would start to become lower end Macs. A wider audience would be picking the game up.

Except that biggest group would have already played it. They’ve played it on their boot camp partitions. They’ve played it on their Parallels/VMware Fusion/Crossover virtualized Macs. They’ve played it on their PCs (horrors!). If any buy it at that time, it’s for nostalgia and because they want to see what it’s like to run a native game on their Mac.

Why wait if EA can get in the high-end, early adopter range to buy the game now, from OnLive? Then they could bring the game to the Mac natively later, if they still want to, for the lower end machines.

That would work…only if they didn’t have a Mac version in the pipeline now.

I dunno…maybe I’m dreaming. But this certainly seems to be the most logical answer to that question to me.

You know that someone has fallen to the lowest of lows when they steal a luxury for a penny. No one can say that video games are a necessity in life. You can’t eat them. You can’t put them over your head to keep out the chill and protect you from the elements. You can’t drink them to stay hydrated. So, buying them means that you’ve decided you have enough of your necessities and have enough left over to get a luxury or two.

When a company like Wolfire Games, in conjunction with a bunch of other awesome companies, decides to offer the work that they have sweated over for whatever price you want to pay…basically, a penny…and you steal it anyway? That’s pretty pathetic. And yet, this is what Wolfire has found is happening with the Humble Indie Bundle. Read more

On Tuesday, May 4, Wolfire Games, in conjunction with four other Indie game developers, started the Humble Indie Bundle, a charity drive to sell five games in a bundle for Windows, Mac OSX, and Linux, at the price point that anyone wants to pay. The proceeds would be split between the developers and the two charities, EFF and Child’s Play, in whatever way that the buyer wished.

In three days time this charity drive has raised almost half a million US dollars, from more than 57,000 contributions. Up until recently, the average contribution was holding steady at just under $8.00, but that number is now going up.

The reason may have to do with an update that Wolfire Games made to their website in which they broke down the numbers to show who had been contributing what. Read more