Goliath wins at IGF

Goliath has been selected as a winner in the 2006 Independent Games Festival Student Showcase. We were one of two winners selected from 17 international entries in the middleware-based game category. So some of us will be off to GDC in March to show off our game

The Independent Games Festival was established in 1998 to encourage innovation in game development and to recognize the best independent game developers. The IGF Student Showcase is one of three competitions in this year’s Independent Games Festival. Ten outstanding Student Showcase winners were selected to be displayed at Game Developers Conference in San Jose this March.

Gamasutra – 2006 IGF Student Showcase Winners Announced

Kotaku laments the game industries lack of testicular fortitude

I wanted to comment on this Kotaku article lamenting the lack of original games on the next-gen consoles, but they have some kind of “exclusive” invite only commenting system. To answer their question;

Is there a way for developers to make the games they want to make and still have publishers be happy with the revenue? New IP rarely sells as well as established IP, but relying too hard on existing franchises isn’t going to bring anything new and exciting to the table, either, is it? Any solutions from the Kotaku peanut gallery?

I say The Long Tail is a possible solution. More sales for original IP (non-hit) titles translates to more money for developers to make original titles.

WordPress 2.0

I just upgraded my blog to WordPress 2.0 and I have to say it is totally sweet. The admin interface has been revamped. No more html knowledge is required to make a post, it’s wysiwyg posting all the way.

Decadent Action Manifesto

I read an article on Stuff today about the apparent impending New Zealand economic reccession. It got me thinking, I never could work out how spending money could lead to a current account defecit until AM pointed out that it’s people spending money they don’t have that causes defecit. Ahh, I see.

On that subject, here’s a satirical piece on consumer spending as a revolutionary device entitiled the Decadent Action Manifesto.

We use the simple economic principles of supply and demand with their intrinsic link to inflation to establish our theories. The state must control these factors to run the economy efficiently; throw in the wild card of massive irrational overspending on seemingly random luxury goods and the government is unable to take control. This will lead to hyper inflation and large scale social unrest, leading to the collapse of the monetary system and disintegration of the state apparatus.