August 09, 2006
PlaydoJam a finalist in the Flashforward Film Festival
PlaydoJam, a Shockwave 3D game incorporating Flash content, is a finalist in the Game category of the Flashforward Film Festival. Folks familiar with the game know why it's regarded as a great piece of content. Those not familiar with PlaydoJam should give it a look today:
It requires Shockwave and a web cam to play, but failing those there are also trailer videos which you can watch in a trio of formats.
PlaydoJam is a 3D game that utilizes a web cam image (via a SWF movie and the Flash Asset Xtra in Director/Shockwave) to allow you to shoot hoops and score points. Your live video feed is rendered within the 3D scene and your hands/head/body can be used to hit the ball! It's really quite amazing and I certainly hope it wins the Game category of the Flashforward Film Festival.
I for one have cast my vote for PlaydoJam already! It's not that I did that solely based on it being a Shockwave piece, it's because I truly think it deserves to win. The other games are all top-notch and the production values extremely high, it's just that I feel that PlaydoJam stands alone as a whole and definitely deserves top honors. We'll see how well my opinions match up with reality once all the votes are in... :)
Kudos to Andreas Rehnberg for his phenomenal effort in creating PlaydoJam, well done!
Posted by thiggins at 10:13 AM
August 07, 2006
Austin Game Conference
Just a quick announcement to let folks know that Adobe is sponsoring and will be on the exhibition floor at the Austin Game Conference in Austin, Texas next month. The conference runs for 3-days, September 6-7-8, and it makes for the third game conference Adobe will have attended and sponsored in 2006 (Minna Mingle at GDC in March and Casuality in Seattle being the other two). While we'll be there ready to discuss all Adobe products and how they apply to game developers, our main effort is to promote Director and the Shockwave Player in particular. If folks are there then please make sure to stop by our booth and say hi!
Posted by thiggins at 12:24 PM
January 31, 2006
Director as a game tool covered on gamasutra.com
There's a good article on gamasutra.com that highlights the benefits of using Director as a games development tool. It does so via an interview with the man behind the game Dodge That Anvil, Jake Grandchamp from Rabidlab (I'll spare exposing his secret mailing list identity, ssshhh!). It's worth a read not only for those that use Director, but for anyone in the games development field:
Road To The IGF: Jake Grandchamp, Rabidlab (Dodge That Anvil!)
Enjoy!
Posted by thiggins at 08:50 AM
January 30, 2006
Halo UI Prototyping and Director
I have an interesting bit of news I'd like to share that came my way via Mike Chambers. You see, not only do Mike & I have the whole Macromedia-to-Adobe thing in common, but we're both also fans of Halo and Halo 2 in a big way. And late last week Mike sent me a link to the following bungie.net article about how Halo is developed:
Bungie Weekly Update, January 27th: User In Yer Face
While I think the article is a good read in general about UI development, especially for a complex and involved game like Halo, the important bit for me at the moment is the fact that Director was used for UI-prototyping as it allows quick development of complex UIs, thus allowing for shorter design iteration loops before going off into their native engine code to implement to proper in game UI experience.
Anway, give it a read if this sort of thing interests you, enjoy!
Posted by thiggins at 11:20 AM
November 08, 2005
In-Game Advertising for the Casual Games Market
An obviously important item in any software development field is revenue, how does one go about making sufficient revenue in order to fund continued development of content? In the casual games space there are many ways in which folks are driving revenue, subscription services that offer games for a monthly fee, pay-per-play or games that offer a free trial download followed by an offer to purchase the full version, and so on... But one revenue stream that seems to be cropping up more and more lately is in-game advertising. This is advertising that's built right into the game much like we've started to see in movies. For example, imagine you're playing a car driving game and you're driving along a highway and the billboards going by have actual sponsor ads on them. It's an interesting option for those in the games development world, especially those that have sufficiently high traffic levels to command good advertising prices. ;) Here are few articles that appears in my Google Alerts today, they all discuss how shockwave.com is adopting this advertising mechanism in some of their game titles:
Shockwave launches in-game advertising
Shockwave Brings In-Game Ads to Online Casual Games
Ads Start To Pop Up In Web-Based Games
I think for myself this is a good opportunity to keep an eye on both in terms of revenue potential for games developers but also in terms of ensuring that the game play experience isn't degraded too much. While I personally wouldn't mind billboards and whatnot to appear with real ads in the games I play, I don't want to feel as if the game is one giant commercial.
Eh, food for thought. Read the articles above as they will hopefully get the juices flowing in your own mind about how you feel about (for or against) this new way of driving revenue.
Enjoy.
Posted by thiggins at 09:52 AM
October 24, 2005
Launch Now - get a free arcade for your site?
The answer to my own question is yes, you can get a free arcade for your own website, blog or online forum courtesy of GameTrust's Launch Now program. I'm light on details but at first glance this looks to be a great attempt at expanding the world of casual game play by allowing folks to host a free arcade on their own site. Something to look at if you're at all interested in games or game development.
Note: what's even more interesting is that there is currently a contest open in which the winner gets to be a part of a sub-space flight on board a Mig 25!!! Wow, how fun! :)
Enjoy!
Posted by thiggins at 11:45 AM