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Spotted @SXSW 2009: Jonathan Coulton in a giant fishbowl
Geek songster extraordinaire Jonathan Coulton was on-hand at SXSW, being interviewed in the aquariumrific Studio SX stage. You can watch the full interview at some point later on SXSW.com to hear Coulton talking about reaching his geeky audiences, how he crafts his songs, and why he loves audience misbehavior. He capped everything off with a live performance of the unofficial Portal anthem "Still Alive," which really doesn't get old no matter how many times you hear it.
SXSW 2009: That Doesn't Suck! Inspiring Creativity With Spore
Although Spore's ship date has come and gone, many people are still fervent about creating new creatures, vehicles, buildings, and more for the game, and they've chalked up over 86 million users creations and counting so far. This panel was about the the wealth user created content out there, and also served as a springboard for talking about the first full Spore expansion pack: Galactic Adventures. Caryl Shaw is a producer at Maxis, and she showed off the new expansion pack, and talked about the tools that Maxis and EA strive to give users so that they can create their own open-ended adventures, which is what Galactic Adventures promises to do. She tooled around inside the game for a bit, showing off the planet terraforming features and a combat-focused user created adventure. But what caught our eye most of all was the sheer amount of extremely creative user creations that just stagger the imagination.While Spore might have come out and disappointed some, this panel was enough to make us want to bust it out again when we get home and either get busy creating, or get busy exploring some of the jaw-dropping user content. Check out the highlights after the break.
SXSW 2009: Indie meets arcade in Get Outta My Face
The secluded Snowrunner Productions booth in SXSW's ScreenBurn Arcade housed a rare sight: two actual arcade cabinets. Even rarer: the cabinets featured a new game: Will Brierly's Get Outta My Face: a jittery, slightly psychotic action game about a blue cube who has to dodge a rush of red cubes. It's not just a hobby project, either -- Brierly is planning to market Get Outta My Face to restaurants, clubs, and arcades, and it's already found a home in a few venues. After playing the bizarre novelty (in classic arcade fashion, I failed out of my first session within a minute), I spoke with Brierly about the crazy process of making your own arcade game.
SXSW 2009: Games By the People, For the People
So you enjoy playing video games, right? That's what probably brought you to Joystiq in the first place. But have you ever thought about making your own? Right now you're probably thinking, "But, Kevin... doesn't that take millions of dollars and a huge development team?" Well you happen to be in luck, because the answer is no. You can pretty much do it all on your own for pennies. But what's the secret to making it awesome? 5 out of 5 panelists agree: you need to have a good story, or a really interesting idea. Simple, right? Start thinking, and find out more after the break.
TUAW @SXSW: The iPhone Gaming Panel
Panels at SXSW range from touchy-feely to nuts-and-bolts. This panel was the latter. The panelists came armed with data and didn't pull punches when it came to criticism of the store or other apps.The panelists: Stephanie Morgan from ngmoco, Danielle Cassley from Aurora Feint, Raven Zachary (moderator) and Brian Greenstone from Pangea Software.Raven Zachary is the guy responsible for the Obama campaign app, and he started off with some stats from Pinch Media around how many devices are out there: roughly 20-30 million. We don't know exact iPod touch numbers because Apple doesn't publish those, but there was a huge jump in iPod touch browser detection after the holidays. Thus, factoring in iPhone numbers and an estimate of iPod touches, we get upwards of 20 million devices. Another interesting point: 70% of mobile browsing is done via iPhone or touch. That's a staggering amount, especially in comparison to other platforms, with Java only accounting for 8%, Windows Mobile about the same, and it goes south from there. Plus, games account for most App Store downloads, with puzzle games being the most downloaded genre.Next up was Stephanie Morgan from ngmoco, who discussed some things we all know: the iPhone is unlike any gaming platform or handheld. She explained a sort of tiered approach to ngmoco's efforts: starting with free apps to build awareness, moving up to building a platform for good games, and ultimately expanding into the paid apps -- where the money is, of course. Stephanie did put some stats on the board, however. For one, we found out that iPhone games don't have to be designed for McNugget-sized attention spans. According to ngmoco, the average time spent playing Rolando is over 20 minutes each time it is played. Of course, there are lots of levels in Rolando. By comparison, MazeFinger average play time was around 6 minutes.To find out about Aurora Feint's asynchronous gameplay efforts and Pangea sales numbers, keep reading.
SXSW 2009: A lifetime of gaming in a single booth
It is not my intention to shill for a beverage, but Mountain Dew's installation in SXSW's ScreenBurn Arcade was too cool for me not to share. As I walked by, I noticed a cozy little setup with a couch, a vintage TV, an NES, an Atari 2600, and a pile of games; a booth employee was playing some Super Mario Bros. I looked around a bit and found that Mountain Dew's expansive booth featured separate areas dedicated to discrete eras of gaming.In addition to the early-mid '80s corner, the booth featured an SNES/Genesis shrine, a setup with a PlayStation, N64, and Xbox, and, of course, modern installations, one of which featured Wii Sports and the other Rock Band. The whole effect was more than nostalgic, it was soothing -- I can definitely imagine getting away from the stress and crowds by whiling away time in 1985. And more than that, it was like seeing my own life in distinct little pieces. That PlayStation/Xbox room might as well have been my dorm room -- except for the nice furniture and TV.As great as the booth was, it didn't necessarily make me crave any Mountain Dew, though the booth staff gave me some anyway. Kudos to the Dew for abandoning the "extreme" for a bit and doing something incredibly sweet.%Gallery-47701%
Joystiq invades SXSW 2009!
If you're in the vicinity of Austin, Texas, then you're probably in town for SXSW - the interactive, music, and film festival. We are too! Both myself and JC Fletcher will be here bringing updates from panels, attending the Screenburn Arcade, and checking out the gaming scene here at the festival. If you're in town, leave us a comment and say hi. Who knows, we might buy you a Shiner Bock. Stay tuned for more SXSW coverage, and check out years past right here.
Multiverse co-founder describes new virtual world order
Multiverse's Corey Bridges spoke at the SXSW conference about the effects digital distribution and the democratization of advanced development tools will have on the industries of gaming, social networks, and virtual worlds.Gamasutra put together a great summary of the talk. The thesis: just as they are stripping the entrenched establishments of the music and film industries of much of their oligarchical power, new technologies will transform online gaming and virtual worlds. According to Bridges, virtual worlds are just getting started. "WoW is not a fad," he said, "it's a harbinger." Furthermore, the virtual worlds will be in the hands of indies, not the major conglomerates, and they'll be synergized with social networks.Bridges also touched on the notion of a more splintered industry made up of smaller projects catering to lots of niche tastes, as opposed to the huge Hollywood-budget productions we see today. A while back someone said that it would take at least a $1 billion super project to take on World of Warcraft. But maybe, as it was with the Roman Empire, the wolves at Blizzard's gate will be countless smaller tribes made up of the so-called unwashed hordes.
PMOG beta opens up for passively multiplayer fun
PMOG, the "passively multiplayer MMO," has been seeing some action around the virtual Massively office lately -- the game is basically a Firefox extension that sits in your browser, and lets you deploy mines, leave goodies, and create quests out of the actual webpages that you visit, and since we visit lots of pages around here, we're some pretty good players.And now, after a showing at SXSW this week (which we should hear about soon), PMOG has opened its doors to the beta -- if you haven't started playing yet, you can sign up on their main page. In fact, here's an even better deal: I'm working on an achievement in game for inviting people, so you want an invite, leave a comment below, and I'll send you one myself.It remains to be seen how the folks behind PMOG are going to fund this thing, but while it's in beta, things are ad-free and passively fun. The virtual landscape is still a little empty (most geek sites are pretty much plotted out, but some of the farther reaches of the net are completely quiet), but the more people that get in the beta, the more fun this game promises to be.
SXSW08: ScreenBurn Arcade in pictures
Despite being the centerpiece of SXSW Interactive's game-focused ScreenBurn Festival, the ScreenBurn Arcade has yet to achieve the expansive grandeur of other conventions' expo floors. The entire floor was enclosed within less than half of the Austin Convention Center's convention space. Most of the real estate in there was taken up by just a few exhibitors. The Championship Gaming Series held a draft at ScreenBurn, and had a large, flashy area of their own on one side of the floor, with constant bouts of Dead or Alive 4, Forza 2 and other games taking place. Wizards of the Coast had one of the largest installations directly in the middle of the floor, with space to play board, card, and miniature games -- as well as, of course, space to buy said games. The relative size of the booth actually made it seem more important, and almost drove me to buy some Magic cards or something.Many of the booths were playing popular released games -- GameTap, of course, had a selection of classics, and Guitar Hero III and Rock Band were mainstays. The only booth I could find that was demonstrating any pre-release games was Gamecock, who brought the demos of Pirates Vs. Ninjas Dodgeball, Hail to the Chimp, Insecticide, and Legendary from EIEIO, as well as Dementium.The most popular booth in the Arcade was not really game-related: Austin Laser Art offered laser etching of cellphones and other items, and had conventiongoers waiting over an hour for the chance to burn their expensive stuff.ScreenBurn is just in its second year, and we're certain that the festival and the Arcade will continue to grow in size and popularity. This year, however, it was a great place to play some Rock Band and lose at Dead or Alive 4.%Gallery-18104%
SXSW08: Virtual worlds and indie games to dethrone publishers
Multiverse cofounder Corey Bridges' talk at SXSW Interactive may have had the title "Virtual World and Game Development: Rise of the Indies," but it soon became clear that "Rise of the Indies" was a nicer spin on "Fall of Publishers." The talk turned out to be surprisingly inflammatory as Bridges predicted the death of the traditional video game industry in favor of near-universal adoption of virtual worlds. "Video game publishers are dead. They're walking corpses. They just don't know it."Bridges has the track record to back up wild predictions, having been right about things like graphical web browsing, online mail-order DVD rental, and, uh, computer security (by association, as in he was involved with each of these early on). To see this person attached to an MMO development platform is basically troubling for people who would like to continue ignoring MMOs.
SXSW08: Inside Austin's Developerscape
In this panel, a group of Austin-based game developers set out to discuss the unique Austin game development community, moderated by journalist (and Joystiq contributor) N. Evan Van Zelfden. In the course of the discussion, a bit of neuropsychology and hilarious anti-MMO (and pro-MMO) vitriol also came out, along with a lot of reminiscence. According to Junction Point's Warren Spector and NCSoft's Dallas Snell, the Austin game development scene, as well as its current MMO focus, have their origins in, uh, Origin. The Ultima developer moved in Austin in 1986 from New Hampshire, and many companies spun off from ex-Origin personnel. Spector was hired at the company after time spent teaching at UT and working at Steve Jackson Games, and then a stint in Wisconsin at TSR. Snell was at Origin during the 1986 move.
SXSW08: The Female Takedown of Casual Gaming
A panel of game publishers, analysts, and investors met at this SXSW presentation to discuss the numbers and trends involving the female audience for casual games. For this talk, "casual games" comprises mostly web games and downloadable shareware games, and not, say, Wii party games or console downloads.Parks Associates' Michael Cai began with some charts. According to the data, female gamers heavily prefer computers to consoles: female gamers spend an average of 70% of their gaming time on computers, versus male gamers' 56%. Female gamers make up 62% of the casual game audience, and this group, especially those age 13-17, play more sessions per month. There is less diversity among genres for female gamers as well: across age groups, puzzle and card games are the most popular casual games.
SXSW08: GameTap party lets the free games flow
Augmenting their usual Internet-based strategy of giving people free games to lure them into a subscription service, GameTap treated SXSW attendees to a party at Austin's Parkside restaurant Saturday night. Along with the laptops set up for free play of a selection of classics, partygoers were treated to fancy hors d'oeuvres (ceviche, croquettes, uh, tiny hamburgers), drinks, and excellent DJ-provided music. Also, projected logos that only shone directly into my eyes a couple of times.It should be noted that these pictures were taken soon after the beginning of the party. It was already picking up as I left. There were still plenty of people in Parkside enjoying the crowd, the food, the beer, and the Metal Slug. If more parties had Metal Slug stations, well, I'd go to parties.%Gallery-17995%
SXSW08: Booth Hero
What's better for attracting people to your booth than a fake guitar? Apparently nothing! Walking around SXSW's ScreenBurn Arcade, I began to notice that I was seeing a lot of Guitar Hero III and Rock Band setups. The guitars and drums are a lot showier than most game controllers, and are thus a lot better at getting attention than other games. I understood the power of these two games.But that doesn't mean I didn't find it a little weird that groups who had basically nothing to do with Guitar Hero III or Rock Band were featuring it at their booths. I was also amused by the number of booths that featured guitar games, compared to the total number of booths in the ScreenBurn Arcade. It almost seemed like these two games outnumbered not-music games.%Gallery-17993%
'Overheard' @ SXSW: What does green mean to you?
I didn't actually need to hear anything to get the story here. The interview crew were wearing shirts featuring the title question (which I really thought would show up in the picture, but just trust me), and they cornered this Spartan from the 405th Infantry Division. What does green mean to you, guy dressed like the Master Chief? I felt very lucky to witness this convergence. Such a perfect meeting is like a lol-ar eclipse.
SXSW08: How gamers are adopting the wiki way
One of the many excellent sessions in the ScreenBurn track at SXSW Interactive this year, the "How Gamers Are Adopting the Wiki Way" panel featured George Pribul (lead admin of WoWWiki.com), April "CuppaJo" Burba (Community Manager for NCsoft's Tabula Rasa), Angelique Shelton (GM of Wikia Gaming at Wikia Inc), and Jake McKee (Principal at Ant's Eye View) talking about the symbiotic relationship between gamers and wikis. Interesting factoid: WoWWiki is now the second largest English-language wiki in the world behind Wikipedia. At 3 million unique users per month, a full half of English-speaking WoW players visit WoWWiki every month. Head on over to our MMO-besotted sister site Massively for the complete writeup.
SXSW08: Edit Me! How Gamers Are Adopting the Wiki Way
With such a strange and specialized topic, I couldn't help but stop into this SXSW panel with speakers Jake McKee (Ant's Eye View), April Burba (NCSoft), Angelique Shelton (Wikia) and George Pribul (WoWWiki, the second largest English-language wiki in the world by traffic, according to the panel). The basic topic: the state of gaming wikis, particularly those built around MMO games. The panel began with a call out to the audience to determine what people wanted out of the presentation. One attendee wanted to better serve business clients with a wiki; another wanted to get a sense of the wiki world beyond Wikipedia; another wanted to use wikis for science education. It wasn't an entirely game-focused crowd, but the emphasis was on emergent information organization anyway, and not necessarily any one game.
SXSW08: SXSWag
My first task upon entering the Austin Convention Center was ... well, it was to challenge the Labyrinth of Press Registration (instead of a minotaur at the end, there is a nice-but-flustered volunteer). But after that! I went for the swag bag. I just wasn't carrying enough stuff! It's stuff. How could I resist? SXSW Interactive is not strictly about video games, and the free stuff in this bag is similarly focused on interactive technology in general. Microsoft is promoting their Flash-like Silverlight browser plugin, Opera's pushing, uh, Opera (via koozie!) and Fuze is putting their marketing effort behind their thirst-quenching technology. By far the most enjoyable bit of swag was Adobe's ad-filled fortune cookies. Or, as I like to call them, breakfast. I am literally a consumer of their ad material!I laid out everything that wasn't an advertising flier and took pictures to provide you with the immersive SXSW swag bag experience. Check our gallery and imagine what it must feel like to have things from a convention!%Gallery-17911%
How a MacBook Air baffled airport security
Alternate title: The MacBook Air is a device, but it's not a "Device."Programmer Michael Nygard is used to travel. He's got the process down, from airport to hotel. Unfortunately, the TSA isn't as prepared. While passing through airport security recently, he was pulled aside and made to sit in the holding area. He watched as a gaggle of TSA workers examined his things, especially his laptop ..."'There's no drive,' one says. 'And no ports on the back. It has a couple of lines where the drive should be,' she continues...."As you've probably guessed, Michael's MacBook Air had them all baffled. Fortunately, a younger member of the team eventually arrived and explained that it's not a "device," but a computer with a solid state hard drive. It's good to know they're keeping up with this kind of thing.Here's a warning to everyone traveling to SxSW this weekend with a MacBook Air: schedule a few extra minutes for the airport.
