Happy New Year!

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 31, 2014

Happy New Year, everybody! I hope 2015 brings you a good deal of real-world joy and success, and virtual-world fun. Be excellent to each other, and party on dudes and dudettes!

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Dating Sim + Horror

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 30, 2014

I can’t say I’m a connoisseur of Dating Sims, but the ones I have played felt like a very interesting and different subspecies of RPG. If you haven’t played one – it’s a specially focused implementation of a “Life Sim.” If you haven’t played one of those … well, you know what “The Sims” is? […]

Filed Under: Casual Games, Indie Horror Games - Comments: Comments are off for this article

A New Addition

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 29, 2014

A little over a year ago, our 15-year-old dog Maya died. She was a rescue – we got her when she was 4 years old, and she came with us through a move and had been there while our two daughters grew up. When she passed away, it was a lot harder on all of […]

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Game Dev Quote of the Week – Spit-and-Polish Edition

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 26, 2014

This week’s quote comes from an older post at Gamasutra – “The Art of Polish: Developers Speak.” There’s plenty of good advice there. Including this: “Polish is often adding things nobody will ever notice, comment on, or appreciate, but will notice, comment on and appreciate when they aren’t there.” – Frank Kowalkowski (of Interplay, Obsidian, […]

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Merry Christmas!

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 25, 2014

Merry Christmas all! I’m off spending time with family, so don’t expect to see me around much. But for a couple of cool Christmas-ish links: GOG.COM – Free Release: Akalabeth: World of Doom John Romero Gets His Own Head on a Stick for Christmas… kinda … Anyway, I hope you have a very happy day. […]

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Updated Video Policy

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 24, 2014

Since I had trouble finding a previous blog post where I granted permission to people to make “Let’s Play” videos, I decided to turn it into a separate, permanent page (which is part of the menu bar at top – “Video Policy”). It’s not a long policy. The short version is – yes, go ahead […]

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The Game Biz is the Same All Over

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 23, 2014

I am happily back from Japan. I had enough time to wash my clothes and turn in an expense report, and now I’m heading off to Cedar City, Utah to spend Christmas with the in-laws. It is in months like these when my laptop becomes my primary development platform. Le sigh… But hey, this was […]

Filed Under: Biz, Indie Evangelism, Retro - Comments: 4 Comments to Read

I Can’t Tell Great from Good

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 22, 2014

I’ve been playing video games for… um, a long time, okay? Seriously, when I was little we had one of those Telstar  game consoles with the built-in knobs that had three variations on Pong. So… yeah. Been a while. And in that time, I have (occasionally) reviewed games, made games, had my games reviewed, and […]

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RPG Design: An Imperfect Union

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 19, 2014

When this article posts, I should be in the air with most of the Pacific Ocean behind me, on my way back from Japan. Didja miss me? Didja even notice I was gone? Spending a week and a half in the Land of the Rising Sun kinda made me want to play Persona 3 and […]

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“Crap Happens” – Risk Management and Gaming

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 18, 2014

When you play Chess, you never have to ask yourself, “If my Knight is unsuccessful in taking my opponent’s Bishop, what is my fallback plan?” Sure, you may have to come up with a plan B if your opponent chooses another (viable) move than the one you expect, but the outcome of a single move […]

Filed Under: Strategy Games - Comments: 2 Comments to Read

Mechanized Masterpieces 2: An American Anthology Cover Reveal

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 17, 2014

It’s still a couple of months away, but my publisher has revealed the cover of the next Steampunk anthology, which includes the story “The Van Tassel Legacy” by yours truly: We’re in the final stages of editing right now. I haven’t read any of the other stories, but I know some of the authors and […]

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Guest Post: Why I Love (and Sometimes Hate) Adventure Games

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 16, 2014

The following is a guest post by my good friend Greg Squire of Monkey Time Games. He has graciously offered to help out while I’m off in the Land of the Rising Sun. Enjoy! The adventure game genre is filled with tons of evangelists and also tons of antagonists. And while I imagine that may […]

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

Indie Game Dev Thought of the Day #1

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 15, 2014

Dumb thought for the day: Being a game programmer will teach you that there’s a very fine line between genius and stupidity. very fine indeed. What sounded brilliant in your head last night may prove to be absolutely unworkable, shortsighted, and stupid when you try to implement it. Or… it might not.  

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Making Money Making Games – Part 4 – How the indies have always done it

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 12, 2014

So in parts 1 and part 2 of the series, I discussed how the games biz has changed over the decades. In part 3, I talked about how many different ways there were to make money from games if you are willing to step outside of the box. That’s a lot of changes and variation. […]

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20 Ways to Make Money Making Games (part 3)

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 11, 2014

A continuation from my talk at BYU. You can read part 1 here, and part 2 here. So… throughout our relatively short history, video games have been treated by the industry as an analog to toys, books, movies, magazines (subscriptions, you know?), services, drugs (first one’s free…), widgets, television shows (advertising-supported), as a benefit of […]

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Making Money Make Games – Part 2 (More History)

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 10, 2014

Continued from Part 1… The 1980s Okay, this is the part of the story where I personally started paying attention and getting involved, if only as a consumer. At this point, especially as things were starting out the decade, there was still a huge question of what kind of industry “video games” were going to […]

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