Streaming Colour Studios » Uncategorized http://www.streamingcolour.com/blog The trials and joys of indie games development Tue, 07 Sep 2010 17:55:42 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 H4×0r3d! http://www.streamingcolour.com/blog/2008/11/06/h4x0r3d/ http://www.streamingcolour.com/blog/2008/11/06/h4x0r3d/#comments Thu, 06 Nov 2008 19:23:55 +0000 OG http://www.streamingcolour.com/blog/?p=52 If you’re reading this from inside Google Reader, please DO NOT click on any of the story titles until further notice. It appears that sometime last night my site was hacked. If you arrive at the site from the google.com domain, then you will be redirected to a malicious virus site.

I am about to take the blog completely offline to try to work this out. Please do not visit the site from any Google tools until I have this resolved. I’ll post again once I have everything working again.

My apologies for the inconvenience.

Owen

]]> http://www.streamingcolour.com/blog/2008/11/06/h4x0r3d/feed/ 0 State of the Casual Industry http://www.streamingcolour.com/blog/2008/08/13/state-of-the-casual-industry/ http://www.streamingcolour.com/blog/2008/08/13/state-of-the-casual-industry/#comments Wed, 13 Aug 2008 16:14:47 +0000 OG http://www.streamingcolour.com/blog/?p=11 I can’t believe that I’m still unpacking. It’s all I’ve been doing all day, every day, since our stuff arrived from Vancouver last week. Granted, my wife and I were out of town for 3.5 days over the weekend for a friend’s wedding, but still. I’m getting really sick of boxes. The end is in site, however! The rooms of our apartment are starting to look like rooms. Hopefully only another day or two of unpacking to go, then back to work.

Speaking of work, Gamasutra ran an article this morning on the State of the Casual Games Industry in 2008:

They interview 3 people in the industry: one from Popcap, one from Playfirst, and one from Reflexive. These are guys who ought to know the industry better than most others. It’s interesting to see that they’re seeing trends in the casual space that the “hardcore” industry went through in the last few years. Namely, the drive towards more story and character in the games. The three argue that you couldn’t distribute Tetris today (as a new game) because it doesn’t have a story that drives the player through the game.

I found the article interesting, but also a little disappointing. There is a lot of doom and gloom talk about the future of puzzle games. I’m working on a puzzle game right now and I’ve been debating about whether or not it needs a story to drive the main gameplay. These guys seem to be saying ‘yes’, for the most part.

However, what I found most encouraging was Jason Kapalka, from Popcap, saying that they’ve always just made games that they want to play. This is what I’m trying to do, too. I figured that if I manage to create a game that I really enjoy playing, there are bound to be other people who will enjoy the same game.

I didn’t decide to set out and start an indie company so that I could follow the trends and make clones of whatever games happen to be selling well on a given week. I started doing this because I want to make the kinds of games that I love to play. Hopefully there will be a market for them when they’re done.

Owen

]]> http://www.streamingcolour.com/blog/2008/08/13/state-of-the-casual-industry/feed/ 0 Going Rogue http://www.streamingcolour.com/blog/2008/08/07/going-rogue/ http://www.streamingcolour.com/blog/2008/08/07/going-rogue/#comments Thu, 07 Aug 2008 19:37:52 +0000 OG http://www.streamingcolour.com/blog/?p=10 “The Escapist” had a great article this week on “Going Rogue”. It’s about game industry veterans who left mainstream development to start their own indie games companies:

I’m hoping to be back to “regular” posts (and coding) sometime next week. I’m still swimming through an ocean of moving boxes right now.

Owen

]]> http://www.streamingcolour.com/blog/2008/08/07/going-rogue/feed/ 1 Coming soon… http://www.streamingcolour.com/blog/2008/05/15/coming-soon/ http://www.streamingcolour.com/blog/2008/05/15/coming-soon/#comments Fri, 16 May 2008 05:43:21 +0000 OG http://www.streamingcolour.com/blog/?p=3 Check back soon for updates.

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