DLC for the Next Gen

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 5, 2013

I don’t know who made this, but it feels painfully accurate. Click on it to embiggen…   I was particularly amused by the 2005 expansion offering… more of the same. It’s one thing when you have “freemium” games that make up for free or really cheap installation & gameplay in exchange for several layers of […]

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Heading For Another Video Game Crash?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on November 13, 2013

Sounds like some folks are predicting it over at GamesIndustry.biz. I dunno. If I was a console manufacturer, I might be nervous. If I was primarily a publisher of high-end console games, I might be nervous. While I was too young to really understand the North American 1983 video game crash, I can probably draw […]

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Jeff Vogel Reminds Indies That Reality Is Inevitable

Posted by Rampant Coyote on November 6, 2013

It’s funny — I didn’t think of this article as depressing at all. I actually find it somewhat refreshing…. The Bottom Feeder: Marketing, Dumb Luck, and the Popping of the Indie Bubble At this point, I’d say, just read it. Come back here if you want to later, but really… read what Vogel has to […]

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The Blackwell Give-Away – A Halloween Horror Movie

Posted by Rampant Coyote on November 5, 2013

While it wasn’t a horror movie, it sounds like it could have been. An innocent, fun Halloween celebration goes terribly wrong for an indie game developer. If you haven’t heard the story already, here’s my break-down, re-told as a horror movie plot. Hollywood, take note! Like many a good horror movie, the establishing shot shows […]

Filed Under: Adventure Games, Biz, Indie Evangelism - Comments: 7 Comments to Read

The Ol’ Kickstarter Shuffle…

Posted by Rampant Coyote on October 31, 2013

Since the Red Baron Kickstarter campaign didn’t have such an auspicious start (mainly because of the lack of pre-KS marketing, IMO), Mad Otter Games has decided to cancel it… with full intentions to bring it back in the not-too-distant future, with a better, more finely-tuned campaign. It’s the way of things these days, I guess. […]

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Selling Incomplete Games

Posted by Rampant Coyote on October 21, 2013

Games released in what customers consider an unfinished state is nothing new. Some more picky customers are quick to declare any game with flaws (and that would be… hmmm… all of them) “unfinished” out of some view that imperfection means it wasn’t cooked long enough. However, there are many games that a more reasonable majority […]

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What happens when everybody loses the race to the bottom…

Posted by Rampant Coyote on October 1, 2013

So the gold rush that was once mobile game development is hitting its inevitable bust cycle. Not that it’s “tapped out” or anything – there’s still plenty of money to be made there – but the competition is fierce, and the results are usually disappointing. Kinda like the PC has always been. It’s been the […]

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SteamOS?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on September 24, 2013

Just after me worrying about the juggernaut of Valve becoming too dominant, here comes this… 🙂 Linux-Based SteamOS is Valve’s big play for the living room IMO, anybody who didn’t see this coming wasn’t paying attention (and if you aren’t in the industry, you are forgiven for not needing to pay attention…). Given Newell’s sudden […]

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Fighting the Good Fight Without the Juggernaut

Posted by Rampant Coyote on September 20, 2013

Is releasing a game on PC without being guaranteed on Steam a losing proposition? Maybe. The Racing the Sun team probably thinks so. Seriously, this scares me. There’s a whole lot about this that scares me. I don’t want to have an entire industry completely beholden to a single company (oh, wait, there’s Microsoft… we’re […]

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Ouya Implements the Wil Wheaton Rule

Posted by Rampant Coyote on September 19, 2013

Ouya’s “Free the Games” fund was pretty much waiting to get abused. Sure enough, that’s exactly what happened. After lots of complaining, some very public displays of frustration, and a few (very few) defenders, Ouya has changed its policy. Effectively, they’ve invoked with Wil Wheaton “Don’t be a d**k” rule, stating that if they or […]

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Game Biz: Serving Two (Or More) Masters

Posted by Rampant Coyote on September 18, 2013

Blizzard officially announced the shut-down of their auction house for Diablo III. There are several more months of operation before it gets phased out, but Blizzard has thrown in the towel on this controversial in-game feature. I don’t play Diablo III, myself. Oh, I was going to. I very nearly pre-ordered it. But then I […]

Filed Under: Biz, Design, Production - Comments: 5 Comments to Read

Sturgeon’s Law and Curation

Posted by Rampant Coyote on September 11, 2013

“Ninety percent of everything is crap.” – Sturgeon’s Law. This is the commonly rephrased version of an adage by Science Fiction author Theodore Sturgeon, when he was defending science fiction – explaining that it was hardly unique in having lots and lots of bad examples out there. The thing is, Sturgeon’s Law was coined in […]

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Art. Or Not.

Posted by Rampant Coyote on September 2, 2013

I’ve recently read a few older books and short stories. By older, I’m talking stuff from the 1800s and early 1900s. In particular, I’ve started exploring “pulp fiction” – the short stories or serials from the super-cheap fiction magazines that were popular from about 1890 to the early 1950s. Traditionally, “Pulp Fiction” is a term […]

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The Indie Flood Continues…

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 30, 2013

Steam just Greenlit 100 new games – the largest ever. It gave Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon greenlight page a nice little boost towards the top 100. It is apparently Valve’s intent to phase out Greenlight in favor of a better system that removes most barriers to getting a game on Steam. The 100 […]

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Big Indie, Little Indie

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 2, 2013

It’s become increasingly clear even to the major players that indie games are no longer a tiny niche hobby, or a minor exception to the rule. If you measure in terms of number of titles released, of course, the indie games outnumber those of the mainstream publishers by an overwhelming margin. I think you’d have […]

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The Trolls Devour Fish

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 29, 2013

Crab mentality. It’s a thing. Individually, crabs could escape an open-top bucket. But if you add other crabs, and they’ll keep pulling each other down as soon as one rises, so that none can escape. Now, it drives me crazy when people brush off criticism by saying, “Oh, they’re just jealous.” Nine times out of […]

Filed Under: Biz, Geek Life - Comments: 12 Comments to Read



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