jason-della-rocca
Latest
Canadian Game Development Talent Awards announced
The Alliance numérique is a Canadian digital industry network that's putting together, in conjunction with the Canadian Interactive Alliance, the first-ever Canadian Game Development Talent Awards. This ceremony will honor Canadian finalists and winners in a number of different categories around video gaming, putting a spotlight on the creative talent available in America's neighbors to the north. The Canadian video game industry is growing by leaps and bounds. Not only is the audience surprisingly large up there, but Pierre Proulx, General Manager of Alliance numérique, says that Canada is "now the third most important cluster in terms of video game development in the world," presumably after Japan and the United States. The awards ceremony is being chaired by developer Jason Della Rocca, and will take place on November 2, 2011 at the Montreal International Game Summit. You can see the full announcent after the break.
Idea pitch-to-publish ratio low in gaming industry
Jason Della Rocca, former executive director of the International Game Developers Association just put out an interesting editorial at GamesIndustry.biz. He talks about the importance of having great ideas for games versus the ability to actually execute them. This piece is written about the gaming industry as a whole but it sounds all too familiar for MMOs specifically.One thing in particular that caught our eye is the concept of idea pitch-to-publish ratios. In most businesses, many ideas are tossed around before anything is ever acted upon. Based on Jason's experiences, he feels that game developers can become way too attached to their ideas and as a result, the gaming industry has a much lower pitch-to-publish ratio. This can lead to bad situations for both the game studio and to an extent, the players. From a business point of view, investors care much less about your ideas than they do about how the implementation of your ideas can make them money. As for players of MMOs and beta testers especially, when an idea has become too precious to the developers, does your feedback even matter?
Jack Thompson responds to Rocca as we Zen on Take Two
After the break we have a video of Jack Thompson responding to IGDA Director Jason Della Rocca's quote about him being a "massacre chaser." Particularly choice moments are when Thompson calls Della Rocca an "idiot" and "jackass" on national television. The anchor concludes the piece, "Clearly on a campaign, we appreciate your sharing, attorney Jack Thompson."Something worth thinking about as this Thompson "jacklash" continues, we sorta passed over a major event this week: Thompson can't mess with Take Two anymore. This was part of a settlement reached between Take Two and Thompson following a string of lawsuits going back to the Bully case. GamePolitics has the terms of the settlement in a handy PDF download. The big question is if Thompson can't go after Take Two's GTA IV or Manhunt 2, the VT Massacre angle isn't quite going his way, then what is there left to go after? Any violent game Thompson could decide to take on would probably pale in comparison to the carnage in either GTA IV or Manhunt, which he legally can't attack anymore.So, take a deep cleansing breath and ponder: Without the ability to go after Take Two anymore -- what can Thompson do?
