Inside the Game Developer Studio

Video games are suppose to be fun to play, but what about to watch? A famous name in Japan’s video game culture is Takahashi-meijin who’s special gift is making games look fun.
In shooting games, if you want to get high scores, you shoot the enemies as soon as they appear on the screen, but if […]

[Read more →]

One of the big bogeymen in stories that developers tell each other is the “Marketing Department.” The story always ends up the same way, “and then we had to change the game … for the worse.” If you read any developer’s blogs, it is clear that most don’t hold marketing in high esteem. They are […]

[Read more →]

Two words, “Battery Life.”
I have no doubts about Mr. Carmack’s technical ability. His games defined ‘cutting edge’ graphics on the PC for many years. But even he can’t fight against the biggest weakness of the iPhone, a short battery life.

[Read more →]

Apprently it is news to some people that E3 is dead. I wrote my own eulogy to E3 a couple of month ago, around the time E3 is suppose to take place. The real E3, not whatever just happened last week.
E3 was important to the industry because it represented gaming as a “Culture” and that’s […]

[Read more →]

Square-Enix announced that Final Fantasy XIII is coming to 360 during Microsoft’s E3 press conference yesterday. It came as a surprise to many people and has already gotten plenty of reaction from people.
But I bet it wasn’t a surprise for Sony, since a deal between Square-Enix and Microsoft must have been in the works for […]

[Read more →]

If you want to work in the games industry, know that it is filled with geeky guys. Be prepared to put up with a certain amount of ‘eccentricities.’ In this series, I offer up a sampling of the types of people you might meet in your journey.
Last time I talked about the ‘Burnout’, this time […]

[Read more →]

Most people believe that interactivity is what separates games from other kinds of media, so how can you make games better by taking away that advantage?
Back when we were creating the interface on BioShock, Ken was the one who always pushed for a simpler interface. The main method we used was to remove options from […]

[Read more →]

Today, I finally announced a project I’ve been working on. It is a service called “AlwaysOn SaveGames” that provide remote storage of save data similar to Valve’s SteamCloud but open to Flash developers. You can read the announcement for more details, or the about page for an overview of what I am trying to provide.
This […]

[Read more →]

The cost of developing a game has increased exponentially over the past few years. The first game I worked, ‘The Punisher,’ had a development budget of six million dollars. I would say that’s in the middle range of development cost during that time.
Nowadays, just marketing a high profile game will cost that much, with twenty […]

[Read more →]

If you want to work in the games industry, know that it is filled with geeky guys. Be prepared to put up with a certain amount of ‘eccentricities.’ In this series, I offer up a sampling of the types of people you might meet in your journey.
The first personality I’d like to talk about is […]

[Read more →]