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Gordon Walton lays out landscape for indie MMOs
Bioware co-director and consummate MMO veteran Gordon Walton spoke recently at the Indie MMO Game Developers Conference about what it takes to compete in the increasingly dense massively multiplayer space. Among the most salient points that Walton harps on is the need for smaller teams to really be cognizant of both their capabilities their potential audience. By focusing on what your team is good at and on the needs of classifiable and hungry niche market, indie developers can still succeed amidst the shadows of your WoWs and WARs and Hello Kittys.It's a philosophy and potentially fruitful area of exploration that we've heard people like Raph Koster bring up in conversation and others like the guys at NetDevil profess be putting into practice. While there will always be the juggernaut games around which the assembled millions can gather, future growth for this genre only really seems possible in a niche realm. The successes and failures may well be determined by who can avoid the temptations of emulating the big boys in favor of a more reasonable, scaled down project.
Drone Tactics to bug DS owners April 8
Players eager to harness their inner mesothorax in Atlus' recently announced Drone Tactics for the Nintendo DS will have to keep their antenna and compound eyes in check, as the game has been pushed back from its previously announced March 25 release. The turn-based strategy game, which promises to give players "a deeply customizable army of mechanized insects," is now expected to land and pollinate Nintendo's handheld on April 8. We'd be upset, but honestly this gives us another two weeks to come up with new ways to shoehorn entomology terms into posts while we wait. Excited yet?%Gallery-16305%
Joystiq interview: Atlus goes for Baroque, talks future plans
'The road less traveled' seems the mantra for Irvine, California-based Atlus USA. With an impressive catalog of obscure titles to its credit, Atlus is looked to by many North American gamers as a beacon of originality, having localized such titles and franchises as Odin Sphere, Persona, and Growlanser, among many others. But why does this company remain dedicated to games of such niche appeal? Unable to come up with a consensus, we marched upon Atlus USA itself, and spoke with some of the employees who didn't duck out of sight when they saw us coming, including editor Clayton S. Chan, PR and sales assistant manager Aram Jabbari, production director Bill Alexander, and QA lead Victor Gonzalez.What did they have to say? Read the complete interview, including in-depth insight into the company's upcoming PS2 and Wii 'hardcore' dungeon crawler Baroque, after the jump.%Gallery-14477%
Atlus goes dungeon crawling for the Wii, PS2
When the chips are down and creativity's glass feels half empty, we know we can always look to the mavericks at Atlus to come up with something just a hair shy of normal for an experience that is, if anything, unique. With surgery sim Trauma Center: New Blood's release sewn up and a pair of Japanese-style strategy RPGs for the Xbox 360 on the way, Atlus is one of the last remaining 'garage bands' of video game publishing. Now the company has announced its next project, namely a dungeon crawl-style action RPG called Baroque, describing the game as "hardcore" and "a pure RPG experience" for both the mini-game addled Wii and aging PS2. With an art style that is all its own, Baroque is set for release on both consoles in February, and is a remake of Japanese dev Sting's Saturn/PlayStation original, no doubt throwing yet another log on the fire for those weary of the Wii's growing catalog of last-gen ports. For us, we're just more interested in finding out what a trek through a post-apocalyptic dungeon has to do with excessively intricate art. Color us intrigued.
Cobra to launch five-inch GPS device, another for truckers
While most of the recent attention pointed at Cobra has been in regard to its controversial red-light camera / radar detector, the firm is purportedly looking to bust out another navigation unit before the year's end. While the nitty gritty details are scant, the firm is slated to unveil a five-inch personal navigation device (PND) during 2007, but a concrete release date wasn't given. Additionally, a trucker-centric rendition that presumably offers up every truck stop in the continental US as a POI should follow suit once "new software from TeleAtlas" is available for use. Interestingly, the company insinuated that offering "niche PND products" was one way for it to avoid competing with the smorgasbord of other options strictly on price, but unless this elusive device packs some seriously off-the-wall features that we're not aware of, entering the already saturated five-inch GPS market won't be a cakewalk.[Via GPS Tracklog]
Girls 'n' Games event: this news is so old
While E3's keynotes were kicking off last week, several academics, developers and advocates of women in gaming gathered at UCLA to discuss girls, games and everything relating to the two. However, from Gamasutra's account of the event, nothing new was really discussed. Some of the key points brought up: Girls play games. (Well, duh.) Developers shouldn't try to focus on "girl game design" -- stereotyping game design by gender leads to missteps. Player-generated content is popular amongst girls, as is social gameplay. "Cuteness" in games, like anime and manga culture in Japan, encourages girls to get involved in gameplay. Women gamers and girl gamers are different; women and teenage girls have different demands on their time. Girls and women shouldn't just be gamers, but developers too.
