Why would one coding team drive itself to the edge of exhaustion to create a fully fledged video game—one featuring badgers—in the course of a single weekend? Why would 20? We sent our man in Australia to a 48 hour "game jam" to find out, and he came back with an amazing 24,000 word answer. If reading this piece doesn't make you want to whip out a laptop and do something creative, you may be dead inside. Here, then, is part one of our three part epic, covering the game jam's first evening; parts two and three will follow over the next two days.

Whenever I visit a developer, I always ask for a tour. Games aren't wished into existence; real people who hang out in real places create the titles we play, and I like to see where that happens. Unfortunately, the office buildings all begin to blend together. They're often dark spaces, they're often covered with action figures and other pieces of geek ephemera, and you'll often see some sad sack developer sleeping under a desk.

But what if you're a tiny outfit who can't afford a fancy office tower—where do you create your next masterpiece? I contacted independent game studios that I respect and asked them to take a few minutes and a camera and show off their workspaces. Some were enthusiastic, others were hesitant, and many seemed almost ashamed; they all assumed that everyone else had better space in which to create games.

Holy god.. that trailer makes me relive so many horrible memories.. yet is just so awesome.

For those of you who dont know, Tommy and i were both documented by a tiny 2 person team called Blink Works on and off for about a year during the middle-end of development of Super Meat Boy. We met them at GDC the year we lost at the IGF.. they approached us after the loss and told us they were thinking about doing a short documentary about indie games. They had been talking to many indie devs and wanted to do something that could show the world the life of an indie game designer, we agreed and they followed us back to santa cruz. For the next 9+ months of development our lives were peppered with their cameras and almost sickeningly kind and gentle nature (they are Canadian).

The history of Flash-game website Armor Games, which both hosts and develops some of the biggest browser-based titles around. Browser games, sometimes referred to as 'Flash games,' are easy to access. There's no install required. They're widely available, with hundreds of websites stabling thousands of games. The price for accessing most of these titles? A highly attractive zero dollars." Our lives changed when the mainstream latched onto the Internet, and it changed again when broadband access replaced dial-up in the workplace. Suddenly, text and images loaded in a blink. Improved streaming technology even let us tinker with games in between waiting for the paperwork or phone call that would fire up their corner of the corporate machine once again.

Sadness. According to a post on MineCraft developer Notch’s blog, PayPal have limited access to his PayPal account due to “a suspicious withdrawal or deposit”. That’d be the same PayPal account people drop money into when they buy MineCraft. In the post, Notch says that there’s more than €600,000 in there, and if PayPal decide something untoward is going on they’re going to keep that money.

Auriea Harvey & Michaël Samyn, zwei meiner persönlichen Indiegame Superheroes die beiden Menschen hinter Tale of Tales, hielten im diesjährigen Februar einen interessanten Vortrag am Art History of Games Symposium in Atlanta (Georgia, USA) über das was sie tun, und warum sie es tun. Spiele entwickeln nämlich

5 Things Big Publishers Don’t Understand About Small Games
Sean Murray, Hello Games

I’m Sean Murray, one quarter of Hello Games. We’re a tiny studio. Four friends. A young startup, we’ve just released a game called Joe Danger on PSN. We’re bedroom developers and bedroom publishers. We published our game as well as developed it.

Matthew Wiggins of mobile developer Wonderland, creator of the chart-topping Godfinger, has claimed that charging any price for an iPhone game is a mistake.

Following the Canada-only release in March, Godfinger went to no 1 in the charts in 36 hours with no promotion. It also topped the charts come its worldwide release in June.

daniel 'sirleto' renkel
independent game developer
technical artist
programmer
designer

bachelor of computer science
living in darmstadt, germany
born 1980 as a leo

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