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Game developers say they're working longer hours due to the pandemic
Ahead of the all-digital “GDC Summer,” the Game Developers Conference polled nearly 2,500 game developers to get a sense of COVID-19’s impact on the industry.
Google plans certification program for Android gaming phones
Google is developing a Game Device Certification program to ensure that future gaming smartphones meet minimum standards and pack enough power to behave predictably for Android game developers. Google hasn't announced the program yet, but XDA Developers obtained documents outlining new requirements for manufacturers. In one section, Google details the new Game Device Certification technical requirements, which manufacturers will have to meet in order to declare an Android device is certified and game-ready.
On developer interaction and behind-the-scenes info
There's an interesting thread going on right now on the official forums, concerning the possibility of an ongoing series of interviews or video content exploring the behind-the-scenes at Blizzard. CM Zarhym chimed in with a mention of the A Day in the Life series that was released during Blizzard's 20 year anniversary celebration. But more importantly, he noted that it takes a lot of resources to put that kind of feature together, which is why Blizzard tries to pair things like interviews and behind-the-scenes info with big announcements. And that's completely understandable. It takes time, effort and resources to put together a feature -- time and resources that could be spent on better things, like improving and working on that game we love to play. But after many other inquires and suggestions on the subject, Zarhym shared another, longer post that made everything just a little more clear -- and raised some good points about developer interaction in general.
The Daily Grind: What would you ask your favorite game dev in person?
Let's say you found that golden ticket. Somehow you had the chance to tour your favorite game studio to meet your most admired MMO game developer. There he or she is, standing before you, willing to answer any question you can throw at him or her. As an added bonus, the dev can't avoid your question! So what would you ask? Would you ask Curt Schilling if you could play the Project Copernicus MMO? Would you ask Mike O'Brien when Guild Wars 2 is coming out? Or would you ask anyone at Blizzard what they were thinking when they decided Kung Fu Panda would make a great expansion to World of Warcraft? Let us know in the comments below! Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
China and Korea partner to form a $46M investment fund for game developers
It may seem like a case of strange bedfellows -- China and South Korea aren't exactly buddy-buddy -- but through the magic of gaming, the two countries are growing closer than ever before. Recently, Chinese company Kunlun announced that it's partnering with the Korean government to whip up a $46 million investment fund for game developers. Kunlun is a major player in China, claiming a respective 20% of the market in the country with over $187 million in sales last year, enough to take second place. The company owns Koramgame, an MMO publisher that's made inroads with both the Chinese and Korean markets with titles like Three Kingdoms Online and Dynasty Saga. Koramgame already has over two million subscribers worldwide. Koramgame's Joe Zhou hopes that it'll capture a slice of the American pie, too: "We are catching more and more attention from North American gamers now."
iOS devs appear in new Develop 100 listing
The Develop 100 is a list put together every year of the top video game developers in the world, and this year there's a surprising trend showing up: a lot of iPhone and iOS developers are starting to make the grade. Touch Arcade spotted around 50 iPhone and iPad developers in the list, which is more than I've ever seen in a list usually populated with the likes of Bioware, Nintendo and Blizzard Entertainment. Sure enough, Nintendo is number one this year, but World of Goo creator 2D Boy is in the second spot, with Cut the Rope developer Zepto Lab in third. A little further down, there's Chaos Rings developers Media Vision, along with 1337 Game Design (Dark Nebula), Rockstar Leeds (GTA: Chinatown Wars for iOS) and The Coding Monkeys (Carcassone). That's pretty amazing -- these little iOS developers are beating out much larger devs, like Halo's Bungie and Call of Duty's Treyarch, for the top spots on a pretty prestigious list. One reason for the changes is probably that the list is now weighted more towards the ratings on Metacritic, where iOS games tend to do very well compared to other video game titles (for a number of reasons, from a lower price to a completely different type of media and market). Still, it's interesting to see upstart iOS developers we know and love stacked up in such a favorable way against much larger and more experienced traditional game developers.
OpenFeint and The9 will stimulate devs to port their games to Android with cold hard cash
Are you a developer seeking the widest and most profitable distribution for your mobile software? The traditional platform for achieving such goals over the past couple of years has been Apple's iOS, but Android's rabid ascendancy has recently turned that into a legitimate question. A question that OpenFeint is looking to sway even further in Google's favor by announcing it will fund the porting of games from "other app stores" to Android with the help of Chinese online game operator The9. The specially selected games will of course get saddled with OpenFeint integration and the whole effort does have the waft of a publicity grab to us, but hey, it's another few pennies thrown into the bottomless well known as "Android gaming." Surely something worthy will eventually come out of it, no? [Thanks, Calvin]
Game developers on iPhone outnumber DS and PSP two-to-one
Game Developer Research has published its 2009/10 survey of video game developers, and the results are pretty impressive for the still relatively fledgling iPhone platform: The number of developers who are working on mobile games increased by 12 percent, and there are actually twice as many developers working on iPhone games as are working on the Nintendo DS and Sony's PSP handheld consoles. That's a pretty amazing number, though it's not quite a surprise when you consider it. First of all, Nintendo DS and PSP publishing takes a much larger investment than Apple's $100 developer fee and an SDK download. Second, while the DS and the PSP are certainly selling a lot of games, they're not actually releasing nearly as many as the hundreds of thousands of apps on the App Store. Finally, new DS and PSP games sell for $30 or $40, while new App Store games sell much closer to 99 cents. So the fact that there are lots more people moving to the much more open and accessible platform isn't really that surprising.
Game developers speak with FCC about bandwidth concerns
Last month, a group of online game developers (from companies like Turbine and Vivox, and even a board candidate for the Independent Game Developers Association) met with the FCC to argue for Internet neutrality, and against Internet Service Providers offering premium access and bandwidth to paying game publishers (here's the PDF of the meeting notes). The argument here, brought up again by a think tank called Digital Society, is about differentiating certain network connections from others -- if you allow ISPs to charge for accounts with better quality of service (QoS), then it's possible, argue these game developers, that companies or customers who don't pay will end up suffering from lag and other game-breaking problems. It's a tough issue. As the game devs told the FCC, bandwidth is already tough to program around (especially in games like FPSes where nanoseconds count), and with the advent of bandwidth-intensive services like OnLive and "peering" rather than dedicated servers, these developers argue that ISPs charging companies for QoS would edge out entrepreneurs and actually discourage innovation in gaming. ISPs answer that a premium service doesn't mean the non-premium service is bad, just that they want to offer premium products to customers (and of course rake in the ensuing fees). Unfortunately, it's going to take more than just an FCC workshop to solve this ongoing concern.
The glamorous life of a game developer
As we all know, being a game developer is the pinnacle of wealth and glamor. Women chase you, men want to be you, and the money just rolls in by the wheelbarrow. Cypress Hill even wrote a song about it. Oh, wait, no. The other thing. Brian "Psychochild" Green treated us to an informative (and very entertaining) look at the life of a game dev, straight from the source in his latest blog post. He includes the aforementioned Cypress Hill song, and he's pretty honest: the likelihood is that the big bucks probably won't be rolling in, big time fame is a faraway dream, you've got to pay your dues and work your way up from the bottom, and every random guy who happens across your game and does not do your job thinks he can do it better (and they are more than happy to tell you about that in great detail.) So why even bother? The answer is obvious: to create games for a living -- getting paid to do what you would happily do for free -- is an up that more than outweighs any down the industry can throw at you. Check out the full entry on Psychochild's Blog.
Sony & Microsoft offer software for UK university education program
Keeping in line with recent contributions to President Obama's STEM education initative, both Microsoft and Sony have signed on for development software support to UK school Kingston University. A recent press release from the school boasts a "state-of-the-art laboratory aimed at providing the next generation of game developers with the skills needed to take computer gaming into the future," even employing "Xbox and handheld PSP game consoles" at each workstation. According to Darrel Greenhill, games technology program head at KU, students are "working to industry standards even before they've left the classroom" with the donated software. Currently the university offers games programming and games technology degrees for undergrads, but will also begin offering post-graduate game development degrees in 2010. Unfortunately, no official date has been set for when computer gaming will reach "the future."[Via Develop]
Chillingo officially launches Crystal SDK for iPhone game developers
Chillingo recently announced that it would be launching Crystal SDK, a service joining the increasingly crowded social network market for iPhone games. Xbox Live on the Xbox is an official social network, but the iPhone has no such official service. A crowd of contenders, from the popular OpenFeint service to ngmoco's Plus+ network, are jumping in and trying to get developers on board with them. Crystal SDK is one of those -- they've now launched the official website and are asking developers interested to sign up and see what their software has to offer. Like many of the other services, Crystal is offering to integrate challenges, achievements, leaderboards, and other social services into iPhone apps. The SDK seems like it's still pre-release, however -- there's only a signup, no information on cost or implementation or anything else on the site. Still, if you happen to be an iPhone developer still looking for a network to hook up with, they might be the one for you. While we're at it: what do you consumers think? Have you actually chosen a network to go with, or are you doing what I'm doing and still basically going game by game? The goal of these networks eventually is to have a unified stable of developers, where you'll jump into a new game simply because it's linked to the network you're signed up with (and your friends will be playing over there and encouraging you to join). But in reality, I haven't seen that -- most people I know are just playing the games they're interested in, and the network the games are connected to hasn't made a big difference.
iQuarterback 1.1 from former Ensemble Studios devs
The folks at FuzzyCube Software dropped us a note that their first game, iQuarterback, is in the App Store now, and it looks all right -- rather than actually quarterback a game, you mostly just try to hit passing targets. And while the game is pretty barebones right now (it's only 99 cents, and they're planning to add new modes to it in the next version), the most interesting thing about the game isn't what it is, but who's making it: the guys behind FuzzyCube are a few refugees from Ensemble Studios, the legendary developer of Age of Empires that got shut down by Microsoft on the eve of their recent Halo Wars release.Now that's interesting -- a big time studio forced to close by their corporate overlords is finding new life in iPhone development (FuzzyCube isn't the only studio to come out of the Ensemble breakup -- Robot Entertainment, Bonfire Studios, and Windstorm Studios are all being started by ex-Ensemble employees right now, though FuzzyCube is the only group to have released a game so far). Lots of game developers are facing a crunch right now, and with the iPhone easy and cheap to develop for, we might see even more of these former larger game devs turn to the smaller screen.Update: My apologies to the folks at Newtoy -- they are apparently the first Ensemble refugees to have released an iPhone game, dropping Chess with Friends in the App Store last December. But the point stands: bigger studios who've been asked to dissolve can seemingly find a nice place developing for the iPhone.
Joystiq @ the Austin Game Developers Conference
What, you thought GDC only happened in San Francisco? Well, so did we. But we've invaded the land of BBQ, music, and Shiner Bock to bring you the latest from the development-heavy Austin Game Developers Conference. This year the focus is on writing and game audio, so we'll bring you the best of the fest as we sit in on panels and talk to people in the game industry. Austin is fast establishing itself as a mini-mecca of gaming companies; already places like Activision Blizzard, NCSoft, Vigil, and Sony Online have offices here, with more opening all the time. Texas Governor Rick Perry announced this summer at E3 that Austin would be heavily pursuing game companies and offering them tax incentives to set up shop here, so if you're wanting to work in the industry, you might consider a move.
Aussie game developers want tax break
Following in the footsteps of the French, the Australian game development industry is seeking tax breaks from the government. The game developers are seeking a similar plan as that afforded their film industry, stating that the only thing holding back Australian game development is lack of investment funds. This would stop the land down under from being a "work for hire" contract destination and give them a chance to make some original games.Australian game developers fear they'll experience the same fate of British developers, which saw a reduction from 400 to 150 studios in six years. The problem is that Australia being a "work for hire" based economy to overseas developers means a lot of those jobs can easily be lost to cheaper markets like China and India. It would be nice to see what an original Australian developed game would look like, but at this point it means the government recognizing the industry and giving it a chance.
Watch out EA, Foundation 9 is behind you
When we hear about big developers, behemoths like EA normally pop into mind; however, there is a player in town looking to make waves. Meet Foundation 9. Foundation 9 -- an indie developer -- made the news last month after snapping up Shiny from Atari, adding another development house to its formidable arsenal. This time, Amaze Entertainment (think licensed handheld games) was caught handily in the buy-out cross-hairs. According to Jon Goldman, CEO of Foundation 9, the move was to better diversify F9's already large (725 employees over 11 studios) house. While we're all for seeing the indie crowd get bigger -- it should help make gaming less stale -- how big can you get before you lose that indie badge? If Foundation 9 gets big enough, they'll be able to wield some significant power over publishers and, if that happens, existing publishers will likely go elsewhere. The only options are to stop expanding or join the ranks of "The Man".
The top hundred game developers -- from Ancel to Zampella
If you're after a "who's who" of modern game development, then Next-Gen's "The Hot 100 Game Developers" list might just do the trick. An A-Z rundown of the 100 "most influential" developers, based mainly on studio success last year, it covers a number of well-known and lesser-known industry figures. Useful if you're trying to work out who to approach at GDC.Incidentally, the developer pictured right is Samantha Ryan, CEO of Monolith, who is also the only woman in this list--draw what conclusions you will.
