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GDC Online 2010: Hands-on and preview of WINtA
WINtA is probably the best brand new game that I've seen so far at GDC Online 2010 (this week in Austin, Texas). It's a title published by a group called OneBigGame, which is a nonprofit video game publisher. They commission and publish games, which are created for free by luminaries in the video game field, and then they sell them to customers for money that goes straight to charities around the world. Founder Martin de Ronde took the stage at GDC to allegedly talk about how to take an app from iPhone to the iPad, but what he actually did was show off this really amazing game and music platform, and he gave a road map to where the iPad version will eventually go. "WINtA" stands for "War is Not The Answer," which is what game creator Masaya Matsuura felt after September 11th, and that's what he wanted to transfer into game form. WINtA itself is actually a rhythm game -- Matsuura is well known in the gaming community for making PaRappa the Rapper, which is a highly regarded PlayStation game known for pioneering the genre that eventually launched Guitar Hero and Tap Tap Revolution. de Ronde approached Matsuura under the OneBigGame banner, asking if he would create a game to sell for charity, and with the help of Dutch developer Triangle Studios, Matsuura came up with WINtA. The app will be out on the App Store for free later this year. Check out more, including a video of the demonstration, after the break.
Guerrilla co-founders form Vanguard Entertainment
The original co-founders of Killzone developer Guerrilla Games, Martin de Ronde (pictured above) and Michiel Mol, have founded a new studio named Vanguard Entertainment. The new company combines the duo's current online dev house, Karami, with Greed Corp developer W!Games and will focus on taking "the fundamental mechanics of the fast growing market of PC online games and applying them to products for consoles and other premium platforms." That idea's got promise, especially coming from experienced industry pros like de Ronde and Mol. However, we think it goes without saying that if we ever log into Xbox Live and there's 30 Mafia Wars requests waiting for us, we're going to quit playing video games forever. [Image credit: Gamedev.net]
