As a game developer, which of these sounds more desirable to you?

1. A really fun 5 minute game that took ten hours to make
2. A really fun 5 minute game that took one hour to make

Assuming that they are equally enjoyable to the same group of people, most of us would go with the one hour version. Sure, in nine more hours there is a lot that can be done. You can add more artwork, add social aspects, add multiplayer or extra modes. But if we are just focusing on fun, which I believe tends to max out on a relatively small scale, then time of of the essence, and if you only have an hour or so, you want to put it in the right place. As game developers, our time is very valuable.

Screenshot: Momiga

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This is a guest-post by Brice Morrison from The Game Prodigy. As a game developer, which of these sounds more desirable to you? A really fun 5 minute game that took ten hours to make A really fun 5 minute game that took one hour to make Assuming that they are equally ...

At The Game Prodigy Blog I found a posting, that analyses the success-criterias of the “sandbox-game” Minecraft. Indeed, I think this is only a starting-point for a deeper analysis, but at least it is a good a starting-point!

This are the rules, they figured out:

“Catering to the Prolific 1%, and making sure that the Sandbox has a lot of Sand.”

Read the whole article.

At The Game Prodigy Blog I found a posting, that analyses the success-criterias of the "sandbox-game" Minecraft. Indeed, I think this is only a starting-point for a deeper analysis, but at least it is a good a starting-point! This are the rules, they figured out: "Catering to the Prolific 1%, and making sure that the ...

Unfortunately making games is much, much work. Execution takes for more time, that having great ideas. But if you ever stuck on having cool ideas (for example at one of the “make a game as fast-as-you-can” events), let’s use this tool! With the game idea generator you can generate hundreds of cool game ideas in no time: Just press the button for having another one! Why not make a “calm, music game combined with sports game, set in space.” Or go with “ugly, boring, adventure game combined with FPS, set in a slum”? Hard choice..

Wow, I can feel the creativity floating around here and there suddenly now! I don’t know, who came up with this idea first, but following this thread at the cocos2d-forum and the Streamingcolour-generator, this thing was inspired by the Creative Unblock generator and made first by Streamingcolour. Struct made a similar one, that seems to be a rewrite of a flash-based version, he made two years ago. (Thanks Nico for the hint.)

Unfortunately making games is much, much work. Execution takes for more time, that having great ideas. But if you ever stuck on having cool ideas (for example at one of the "make a game as fast-as-you-can" events), let's use this tool! With the game idea generator you can generate hundreds of cool game ideas ...

“Beet Fleet” is the name of a work, that was made Filip Kostovic as a result of the Bachelor course of studies Game Design 2010 at the HdK Zürich. The sort of game uses two turntables as input devices, that controlles the action on the z- and x-axis. The visuals are abstract and strong, with parallels to Tron or Rez. The longer I think about this, the more it seems, that Beat Fleet is a consistent extension of the basic idea of Rez, taking real “analog” hardware controller into account. Will DJs keep on playing games in the future at work? Also check out the other works, they all look interesting. (via)

"Beet Fleet" is the name of a work, that was made Filip Kostovic as a result of the Bachelor course of studies Game Design 2010 at the HdK Zürich. The sort of game uses two turntables as input devices, that controlles the action on the z- and x-axis. The visuals are abstract and strong, ...

I am sure you already read somewhere about the Wolfire Humble Indie Game bundle. A whole bunch of great Indiegames for “Pay what you want”-price and DRM-free. The offer closes and slightly over million dollar were rised this way. Also two charity-oragnisations are supported by that amount of money raised (EFF and Child-Play), as well as the indie-developers itself. 4-color-rebellion wrote an interesting article about the money raised, the operating-split of the buyers, as well as piracy. About the piracy:

Well, over the past few days, Wolfire has seen 49.3 TB of raw downloads. The average user has downloaded about 490 MB of data (again, this is skewed by outliers – one user downloaded 10.3 GB). If you do some simple math, you find that there have been 105,497 downloaders. At the time that these numbers were released, there has been 79,000 paying customers. So, how about that? At least 25% of downloads of the Humble Indie Bundle have been by pirates (this doesn’t even include those that copied all of the games and mirrored them off-site).

Update: I just seen, that some of the titles are going to be released as open source: Aquaria, Gish, Lugaru HD and Penumbra Overture.

I am sure you already read somewhere about the Wolfire Humble Indie Game bundle. A whole bunch of great Indiegames for "Pay what you want"-price and DRM-free. The offer closes and slightly over million dollar were rised this way. Also two charity-oragnisations are supported by that amount of money raised (EFF and Child-Play), as ...

Found the blog “Little-Scale” from Sebastian Tomczak, where he presens various experiments with sequencer, hardware and waveform-modulators. The combination of weird hardware, devices with a raw pixelated sound make them unique works, that got into my heart right from the start. A cool combination of old meets new, like a MIDI-Sequencer for the Sega Mage Drive or iPod Touch controlling a C64.

Found the blog "Little-Scale" from Sebastian Tomczak, where he presens various experiments with sequencer, hardware and waveform-modulators. The combination of weird hardware, devices with a raw pixelated sound make them unique works, that got into my heart right from the start. A cool combination of old meets new, like a MIDI-Sequencer for the Sega ...

The Love-Toolbox

Love – an indie online multiplayer-game, that look absolutely cool! “Love” created something, I am still speechless about. It fits a style, I never seen before anywhere. Feels a little bit like walking through an impressionist-painting, with little dashes of magic runes, Myth and something like Monkey Island. The online-multiplayergame got also something more interesting. Beeing indie, resources are limited. You pay 10 Euros in advance for one month of play – but only a limited number of players is allowed to play the game. The world is constantly changing, though the building abilities from the players. Looks like a very interesting project, we should keep an eye on it. There is a fantastic widescreen introduction video available.

The reasoning about the business model also absolutely makes sense to me. I meanwhile see it like Eskil Steenberg (Quelsolaar) and really hope to see the death of the “low-end ad-market” soon, that makes you drive millions of page impressions on crappy websites – just to get half of you living cost. Quality is not about cent-money. Quality is here to stay.

(via tigsource)

The Love-Toolbox Love - an indie online multiplayer-game, that look absolutely cool! "Love" created something, I am still speechless about. It fits a style, I never seen before anywhere. Feels a little bit like walking through an impressionist-painting, with little dashes of magic runes, Myth and something like Monkey Island. The online-multiplayergame got also something ...