Linux Game Consortium

5 Winning Trends from GDC

Mon, 14 Mar 2011 21:06:51 GMT

5 Winning Trends from GDC

The Games Developer Conference (GDC) has come and gone. Which top 5 game trends, as Charlie Sheen would say, are the #winners at GDC? And what game trends didn’t make the cut?

Android

It may be pain to develop for and the billing infrastructure is still not up for snuff, but the hottest trend of GDC this year is Android. Everyone I spoke plans to release games for Android handsets and tablets.

Google should be given credit for improving the micro-transaction infrastructure and they had a huge presence at GDC (Apple, announcing the new iPad 2, was no where to be found).

The reason everyone is gung-ho about Android is that there will be more Android than iOS handsets and tablets sold this year due to their open system and there is a feeling that the iOS space too crowded for any new developer to get noticed. Android on the other hand... is a wide open field.

iOS Game Publishing

Every game company that has remotely had success on the iPhone wants to be an iOS game publisher.

Why? As mentioned, the iTunes market is too crowded for any app to get noticed. Unless you spend big marketing dollars, have a big company behind you sharing the risk, give your game away (which sort of defeats the purpose of making money) or wait for lightening to strike (for example, Tiny Wings), good luck getting into the iTunes Top 50 Lists.

Enter the publishers, who can share the risk, provide support, and fund marketing and even development. Which, of course, is ironic, since Apple’s 70-30% split was supposed to empower developers and make publishers obsolete.

Of course, not all publishers are bad. EA Partners plans to spend big money to fund iOS game development, Fuse showed me an amazing analytics program that would be a huge value add to any developer partner, and Playphone is offering a social mobile platform and a $10 million marketing fund for its partners.

Mobile Social and Location

I didn’t need to attend GDC to know that 2011 is the year of mobile social (playing Facebook style games on your mobile phone), but GDC confirmed it.

What’s interesting is how mobile social is going to develop. We saw many games that are being developed to be played cross-platform, between the iPhone, Android, and in sometimes, Facebook. The coolest cross-platform game I saw was Blackstar (screen shots do not do it justice).

We also are starting to see mobile social games that integrate geo-location (the upcoming, Nightclub City: DJ Rivals, though not sure how mass market DJ culture is) and alternative reality mobile games (Shadow Cities). We know people like to check in via location on their phones. Now game companies are developing game apps to make checking in fun.

Critter Games

Hot off the success of Angry Birds, Rovio is working on giving us...more Angry Birds (Facebook version, coming soon).

Everyone else is working hard at creating critter games, or games that involve cute little critters like birds, squirrels, monkeys, generally doing physically violent things to each other in a cute way. A good example is Namco’s upcoming Bird Zapper.

Gamification

The big trend around gamification (which is adding gaming elements to non-gaming experiences) is that a lot of people seem to hate it. Apparently, it’s not enough of a game for the true game developers to like it.

My observation is that if enough game developers bash something as not a game at GDC, it means it will be super successful. Last year, the gaming intelligentsia bashed social and Facebook games as not real games. Before that, it was casual games that was destroying the video game industry. Both social and casual games, of course, are worth billions of dollars a year in revenues a year while the traditional video game market stands still.

So, buck up, gamification companies. Based on how much hate you felt at GDC, you are going to have a very big year (and get the last laugh).

The Biggest Losers

Take this with a grain of salt, but not one company I talked to is developing a game for Facebook because they think the marketing costs are too high. It could also be that people people that Facebook games is a mature market and that it's challenging to compete with the likes of Zynga. I saw a lot of cool games that are coming out on Facebook, but only from the big players or if tied to a mobile version.

Also, not many people, aside from game developers based in Russia or Eastern Europe, are bullish about the downloads market. In fact, I felt like I was the biggest cheerleader of downloads at the show. Personally, I think 2011 will be a big for Downloads and I'm very gung-ho about the impact of cloud services (for example, Spoon), and expanded casual game services, such as Direct2Drive, Google Chrome, and Mac game apps, on the downloads market.

Adafruit offers $200 for open source drivers

Fri, 05 Nov 2010 18:42:48 GMT

Adafruit offers $2000 bounty for open source Microsoft Kinect drivers

posted November 5, 2010

DIY hardware company Adafruit has announced it will give a prize of $2000 to the first person who is able to write a open source and well documented driver for Microsoft’s Kinect.

Amnesia: The Dark Descent

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 00:47:03 GMT

A teaser consisting only of gameplay taken directly from the game.

Amnesia: The Dark Descent is a new game from the makers of the cult horror series Penumbra. There goal with this game is to create the most frightening and disturbing experience possible. Yeah, no kidding. It's interesting to get a slight idea of what's chasing you.

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Mon, 14 Mar 2011 21:14:11 GMT

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Valve Updates Its Unreleased Steam Linux Client

Tue, 27 Apr 2010 23:01:48 GMT

Valve Updates Its Unreleased Steam Linux Client

Posted by Michael Larabel on April 23, 2010

Two days ago we started our exclusive coverage of Valve's soon-to-be-released Mac OS X Steam client showing Linux support after saying two years ago Steam/Source is coming to Linux and then yesterday finding more Steam Linux references and even the unreleased Steam Linux client binary and libraries. This has stirred up attention elsewhere on the Internet and within our forums there are now many users dissecting and discussing this soon to be monumental event for the Linux gaming community.

For those still not believing the situation and thinking this is just some hacked-up client in a back-room at Valve Corporation, their Steam Linux libraries were just updated in the past hours. From their Steam Linux client file that hosts the checksums, their Linux libraries file was bumped from bins_linux.zip.dc36f31374267ad4a740762a6cf1925ed30bcab9 to bins_linux.zip.232c70b3e732009cab1858499ca4f1c92ffd7367. Running a strings check against the shared objects on the two versions, there are multiple string changes to be found (particularly within linux32/steamclient.so). In other words, the Steam Linux client is still actively being worked on. This is Linux-specific work and not generic Steam platform bits, which are hosted in other files.

Valve Corporation on Monday will apparently be rolling out the new user-interface to all Steam users that has been in development for sometime and next week it's also looking like Steam's Mac OS X client will be leaving the closed-beta testing. Let's hope during next week's announcements from Valve they will also shed more light on their Linux client, which would put it ahead of the June target we originally reported on yesterday, but with the attention this news has been generating, it may place greater pressure on Valve to shed some light on the situation quickly. Also worth noting that Valve Corporation has not retracted these Linux files even with the attention that it has been receiving.

Head on over to our forums to continue discussing this and if you have been exploring Steam's secret Linux client.

What are you looking to see on the Linux Game Consortium?

Mon, 14 Mar 2011 23:55:00 GMT

As a linux user/gamer. What sort of gaming are you doing?
Are you a developer looking to showcase? Recommended game engine(s)?

What do you want to see on the LGC?