GDC 2014 Begins Today…

Posted by Rampant Coyote on March 17, 2014

It’s been a long time since I last went to GDC (I can’t really afford it on my own right now), but I still miss it. I expect a great deal of game development news and announcements over the next three days. How all this will effect us as gamers remains to be seen. Most […]

Filed Under: Biz - Comments: 2 Comments to Read

Why Indie Is Important…

Posted by Rampant Coyote on March 13, 2014

I’m not going to offer much commentary here, and it’s a big article. From my perspective, this is a story about exactly why there is such a thing as “indie” – bypassing the gatekeepers, the publishers and manufacturers, as much as possible. Because, simply put, if your business is beholden to another that doesn’t have […]

Filed Under: Biz - Comments: 3 Comments to Read

Are the New-Gen Consoles Stumbling?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on March 11, 2014

I wasn’t sure what to make of things when, right after the launch of a new generation of consoles, EA and Disney Interactive started laying off game developers and claiming that they were enhancing their “focus on mobile.” I mean, hello? In my experience, the first couple of years after a console’s launch is the […]

Filed Under: Biz, General, Mainstream Games - Comments: 10 Comments to Read

Indies, Integrity, Reputation, and Crowdfunding

Posted by Rampant Coyote on March 5, 2014

I’ve warned about Kickstarter before. I’m hesitant to throw any support behind crowdfunding campaigns here unless I know the creators, either personally or by reputation. And reputation is an interesting thing. It usually originates in personal character, but it also makes good business sense. A good reputation is something that’s very hard to build up, […]

Filed Under: Biz, Geek Life - Comments: 4 Comments to Read

Irrational and the “Death of AAA Games”

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 24, 2014

By now, most of you have heard about the closing of Irrational Games (makers of the Bioshock series and… well, perhaps more importantly for me, their less-well-remembered but awesome Freedom Force series…). Now, the official reason is that founder Ken Levine wanted to switch gears and work on smaller games with a smaller team. That’s […]

Filed Under: Biz - Comments: 7 Comments to Read

Legally Rewriting History to Screw the Little Guy

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 18, 2014

This is a few days old, but I thought I’d share this little open letter from Albert Ransom. Just in case we’d forgotten who the real nasty douchebags of the games industry were… Open letter to King.com who wants to cancel the registration of the CandySwipe trademark. So if you didn’t get the complete picture […]

Filed Under: Biz - Comments: Comments are off for this article

Game Journalism and the Challenge of Early Releases

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 6, 2014

When I complained about “Early Access” games a month ago – games that are released (and sold) to the public in an unfinished state, I neglected one of the critical aspects of gaming that it impacts. What are game reviewers supposed to do about rating early access games? The only thing I can figure, like […]

Filed Under: Biz - Comments: 8 Comments to Read

Wizardry Online: So long, and thanks for all the death, or something

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 28, 2014

Looks like Wizardry Online didn’t last long. At least not in North America. Sony Online Entertainment is shuttering four MMOs this year, and that’s one of them… It was a pretty hardcore online game featuring permadeath, no auto-healing, and server-wide PVP. While my own history comes from somewhat more hardcore role-playing games, this always sounded […]

Filed Under: Biz - Comments: 4 Comments to Read

The King.com “Saga” gets funnier and funnier

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 27, 2014

So you know how King.com was claiming that their efforts to trademark (and monopolize) the words “Candy” and “Saga”  for videogames were supposedly to protect themselves from evil cloners just trying to cash in on their IP rights? Well, they weren’t wrong. There are some unethical, despicable douchebags who will blatantly do that, and worse, […]

Filed Under: Biz, Politics - Comments: 8 Comments to Read

The Trademark Bullies Strike Again

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 22, 2014

When I heard that the Candy Crush Saga creators actually hired gambling industry experts as consultants to help them extract the maximum amount of money from their players, I thought they were real scumbuckets. Apparently, that comparison was completely unfair to actual scumbuckets. Now they have gone and trademarks words commonly used by games. Like […]

Filed Under: Biz, Indie Evangelism, Politics - Comments: 5 Comments to Read

Steam Dev Days Reports

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 20, 2014

I can’t comment on the details, as I wasn’t there. But here are some of the bits coming out of Valve’s big (industry-only) developer conference: Cliff Harris: Steam Dev Days Afterthoughts Gamasutra: Steam Dev Days Tweets, Day 1 Gamasutra: Steam Dev Days Tweets, Day 2 Valve’s Michael Abrash shares his Steam Dev Days VR slides […]

Filed Under: Biz - Comments: Read the First Comment

Game Development: Looking at Hard Numbers is Hard

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 16, 2014

How much does it cost to make a mainstream video game? Kataku mines out a few numbers. I remember being told that our games at Singletrac cost closer to $1.5 million to make… but that may have been in the Twisted Metal 2 era. Jaffe would know better than me, as he was one of […]

Filed Under: Biz, Production - Comments: 3 Comments to Read

Is Broken Age Telling the Story of Gaming Independence?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 15, 2014

Yesterday, two hotly anticipated Kickstarter-funded games were released… or at least “beta” released.  It was a busy day, so I haven’t had a chance to play as much as I would like, not play The Banner Saga at all. In fact, by the time I managed to wrestle my key from servers that seemed to […]

Filed Under: Adventure Games, Biz - Comments: 3 Comments to Read

So if AAA is screwed and mobile is screwed, what’s left?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 14, 2014

These are an interesting (in the Chinese curse kind of way) pair of articles, if true… First off, mobile is in trouble. The cost of acquiring a customer ($2.75) has officially exceeded the amount by which the average customer will actually ever pay ($1.93). Developers, brace for a bloodbath: The cost of getting a new […]

Filed Under: Biz - Comments: 6 Comments to Read

An Eldritch Post-Mortem

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 8, 2014

I haven’t played Eldritch as much as I would like (but then, seriously, how much have I played ANY good game as much as I would like…?). My best description of the game would be equal parts Roguelike, Minecraft, Thief, and of course Call of Cthulhu. I like what I’ve played. It’s so rare that […]

Filed Under: Biz - Comments: Read the First Comment

The Death of Deathfire?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 23, 2013

I’m saddened. Guido Henkel and the Deathfire: Ruins of Nethermore have officially pulled the plug. The Deathfire Team: Thanks you for all your support This crap happens all the time, really. Games get canceled, for many reasons. But in this case – with the failure of the Kickstarter and the episodic alternative – the reason […]

Filed Under: Biz, Production - Comments: 13 Comments to Read



« previous top next »