Getting money to make a AAA game is hard. When anyone is lucky enough to get the funds they need, it usually comes from a giant game publishing company that wants the rights to the game, not to mention complete control. Those publishers have shareholders who demand a high return on their investment, so they avoid risk when choosing game projects to fund.
The Netherlands are a hotbed of indie game development, which seems appropriate for such a brilliant and eccentric little nation. Two man Dutch indie developer Vlambeer have found themselves in the news more often than most companies of their size, thanks to two great games and a third on the way.
Most indie game developers will never see a million dollars in their bank accounts, and I certainly doubt that Eul, the anonymous developer responsible for the original version of Defense of the Ancients (DotA), expected to. But now even the fans can earn a little green. Some lucky and talented DotA players are about to win $1,000,000 for playing the unreleased sequel to the free unsupported Warcraft III mod from 2003.
Making a video game requires an incredible amount of work. It requires people skilled in many disciplines to work together for thousands of hours merging visual art, computer programming, game design, sound design, and music composition into a fun game. The Indie Stone is a Scottish indie development studio started, like so many others, by industry vets who were tired of corporate restrictions and wanted to make the crazy games they had always imagined.
It's called a Quick Response code, but most know it simply as QR code, a matrix barcode dedicated to the world of smartphones. The information contained within the square black modules could be text, a URL, vCard, or some other kind of data. And even though mobile tagging has been around for eight years, it's just now spreading like wildfire across the globe, being incorporated into artistic portraits and wall art. And most recently... "social clothing".
It's no secret. Professional video editors everywhere are irate at the newest edition to Apple's popular non-linear video editing software, Final Cut Pro X. As of right now, Final Cut Pro X has 503 five-star ratings in the Mac App Store. Not bad. But it also has 671 one-star ratings and 414 users who aren't sure what they think. It's such a bad update that it even earned itself a skit on Conan.
Nobody could predict the success of Microsoft's Kinect, not even Microsoft themselves. So, it was quite a surprise when it ended up earning a Guinness World Record for fastest-selling consumer electronics device, and an even bigger surprise to see people buying one that didn't even own an Xbox 360.
In the mid '90s, there was no such thing as a widely available indie video game. Brick-and-mortar stores were the only places for consumers to buy games, and magazines were the only outlets to hear about them. For video game creators, the need for a publisher to market and distribute was logistically essential to attract players.
In my earlier post about long-term strategies I promised I’d ask some of my neighbors who do what I call factory chicken farming (Let 1000 Chickens Bloom) if the coyotes that have shown up will change the way they play the game. The one guy who replied in any detail said that he wasn’t sure what he was going to do yet, but he thought that he was losing 50 chickens each time he harvested them pressing “Collect Bonus” using a coop.
It's currently 2011, but when you fire up your game console, put your hands on the controller and play the new Dead Space 2 video game, you're warped into the future— into the year 2511— just 3 years after the events that took place in the first Dead Space. And it's sure to be a beautiful, frightening, futuristic experience.
Nope, this isn't a flash game version of SCRABBLE. There's already one of those (and a multitude of imitations) for the Apple iPhone, iPod, and Facebook. This is an electronic game, and it's not a "handheld" game like the SCRABBLE Pocket Pogo Touch Screen Game (pictured right). It's an entirely new way to play everybody's favorite word game, and it's called SCRABBLE Flash (BOGGLE Flash outside of the U.S. and Canada).
This one smells like a fish story. It is not. Tuesday April 13, Dave and I got up to surf westward at 7 in the morning. First rate waves. Headache cold water....sun blocked by the cliffs. Fast, clean, beach break. 3-4 foot sets, mostly lefts. About 15 dolphins swam by. Blase blase. We always see dolphins. But then some bigass whale with barnacles breaches. We are speechless. It is about 20 feet from us. We follow it for about thirty seconds and pinch ourselves. Have-you-ever? No...
Get a little perspective on FarmVille hysteria, via FarmVille World, written by tenebrism: Did you know it only took five weeks to make FarmVille? That it currently has over 80,000,000 users? That FarmVille farmers outnumber real farmers in the United States by a ration of 80 to 1?
Did you know it only took five weeks to make FarmVille? That it currently has over 80,000,000 users? That FarmVille farmers outnumber real farmers in the United States by a ration of 80 to 1?
This will show you how to earn the Training Day achievement in StarCraft II on the newest patch, 1.1.2. It's slightly different than before, whereas the Terran Barracks now requires a Supply Depot before it can be built. You can most likely do this faster, as there are a couple of errors here and there, but I scraped in producing the tenth Marine at 4 minutes and 15 seconds - five seconds inside the time limit of 320 seconds (5 minutes 20 seconds) - so it can be done! Races: Terran v Protoss ...
WonderHowTo is made up of niche communities called Worlds. If you've yet to join one (or create your own), get a taste below of what's going on in the community. Check in every Wednesday for a roundup of new activities and projects.
Junk, junk, junk or so you might think. Remember the saying, your junk can be someone else's treasure! This article is going to guide you through a successful garage sale. With the economy the way it is, more and more people are going to garage sales. They are fun to have and you can earn some extra money.
10 Ways to Make Your Goals Easier to Achieve Do you have goals in your life? Most people do. You may want to lose weight, advance your career, or make your relationship better. You think about where you want to be and then find a way to get from where you are to where you want to be.
Yes, you read the title correctly. GameStop has problems, and if you're lax in morals, you can take advantage of them for free games and cash. I'm bringing you all yet another exclusive Null Byte that falls into the fascinating category of life hacking.
This week's FIGRR is all about games that are old-new (or new-old, if you like) school. Each celebrates a different vital, yet largely taken for granted, aspect of video game history in the decidedly new-school world of indie games. Their titles betray them. Blocks That Matter is all about blocks. Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is all about item shops. Neither are particularly sexy aspects of gaming, but both are ubiquitous elements of great games that can stand on their own.
As Google+ hums along, releasing new updates and unveiling new features every few days, Facebook seems to be in panic mode. Every week, they've been revealing new features that seem suspiciously similar to Google+.
Dead Island (PC, PS3, 360) had the worst launch of any game in recent memory. The wrong version of the game was released on PC, matchmaking was down for three days on PC, saves were deleted without notice making people start from scratch, and the Feminist Whore (a file found describing one of the character's skills) fiasco. The game just wasn't ready for release.
What's more fun? Winning against your friends or winning against others with them? It's an age old question, and in video games, the former one-on-one multiplayer has been the norm. But cooperative multiplayer has made a comeback, with Halo and Diablo II starting the trend, the first mainstream shooters and RPGs with great co-op modes. And now good local and multilplayer co-op games are available in almost every genre.
Deep in their heart of hearts, most Americans dream of having their car festooned with missile launchers and machine guns. Anyone who cuts them off or looks at them funny in traffic could be dispensed with quick and extreme justice, leaving a real-life James Bond and his passengers free to pursue their American dreams faster than everyone else. Racing games and shooting games are among the two most popular types of video games. So why aren't there more games where one can race cars and shoot ...
Dropbox continues to make headlines with their recent programming blunder which left the accounts of its 25 million customers wide open during a four-hour time span. During the duration, anyone in the world could access any Dropbox profile by typing in any password. And seeing as this wasn't the first security failure, everyone, including the most loyal users are considering dropping the Dropbox.
The widely used expression "free as a bird" intimates an enviable existence: delicate, yet mighty wings transporting to destinations no human could so breezily venture. But despite their fanciful, superhero ability, in truth, the avian race leads one of the most difficult existences in the animal kingdom. Yes, birds have existed for eons—they likely evolved from small dinosaurs of the Jurassic period—but for these creatures, life can be ruthless.
It's really a shame that it is so hard for people to make money on the internet these days. The dot com bubble has receded and scams are plentiful on the web. There are, however, a couple of legitimate ways to make a few extra bucks online, Amazon Mechanical Turk, or MTurk for short, is one of them. The idea of MTurk is to hook up programmers with people that do tasks that computers can not, these tasks are called HITs (Human Intelligence Task). These tasks include article creation, creative ...
MyShoppingGenie is an online shopping application that can help you find the best deals on products you search for.
We all remember the controversy of SCRABBLE Trickster back in April. SCRABBLE + Mattel + Proper Nouns = BLASPHEMY!
DRUM! Magazine — the leading magazine for drummers and percussionists worldwide — has announced the biggest drumming event ever to take place in Northern California. On Friday, August 13, drummers will descend on the San Jose Repertory Theatre in the heart of Silicon Valley to witness three of the world’s most exciting drummers — extreme drumming sensation Marco Minnemann, Tower Of Power funk master David Garibaldi, and former Mars Volta wunderkind Thomas Pridgen — for an evening of mind-blow...
ATA Airline Pets are accepted in the cabin and in the baggage compartment.
Back in the eighties, I used to hate television commercials, but I eventually got used to them. Had to, in order to enjoy my favorite shows. Then, the increasing number of billboard ads annoyed me in the nineties. They followed me everywhere I went—no escape—persuading me to buy the newest whatever. It seemed like Big Brotherism—like They Live. But, I got used to it. When I finally entered the digital age and became a web addict, I was peeved at the constant sight of online ads everywhere I v...
After years of false rumors and abandoned hopes, the day has finally come. Verizon Wireless is finally getting the Apple iPhone!
It's December 11th. Only 14 days left until Christmas. But today is something more than just a countdown date for the quintessential holiday—it's Angry Birds Day, which marks the one-year anniversary of the popular mobile video game.
This is a game for however many people would like to participate. The game is simple. Everyone plays a hand of poker, whoever has the lowest hand has to make a concoction. The person who loses has to role two dice. Each die and the six numbers on it corresponds to a different list of ingredients that must be mixed into a shot glass to drink.
Planning the Trip Get lots of brochures
Here are some charts I made to help you master crafting recipe levels. Don't forget to note the rewards at the bottom of each chart!
Welcome to Minecraft World! Check out our tutorials, post to the community corkboard, and come play on our free server!
Accounting and Finance Degree