What Modern Gamers Want…

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 19, 2011

Cristoph Harmann, president of 2K games, recently tried to explain about the rebooting of the X-Com franchise as something nothing like X-Com: ” The problem was that turn-based strategy games were no longer the hottest thing on planet Earth. But this is not just a commercial thing – strategy games are just not contemporary.” Well, […]

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Preserving Video Games – and the Right Way to Handle Abandonware?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 29, 2011

An interesting article about the problem of preserving old video games: Grassroots Game Preservation Through Abandonware The focus is (duh!) on abandonware sites. That’s a gray area with me, though it’s not gray with respect to U.S. copyright laws.  Still, it’s largely tolerated by the industry, so long as the sites will take down games […]

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Troll Doll Source Control

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 22, 2011

For those unfamiliar with it, source control is – at its most basic level – a system for archiving and managing updates to the source code for software. It’s particularly useful when you have multiple people working on the software, and you’d like to make sure that they don’t accidentally and irrevocably step on each […]

Filed Under: Biz, Production - Comments: 11 Comments to Read

Shocker! Retail Game Sales Decrease, Digital Game Sales Increase!

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 16, 2011

Who woulda thunk, huh? So almost a quarter of game sales are now through digital distribution. When that number exceeds 50%… well, you are already seeing interesting things happen, you will just see more of it. I suspect that for PC games, that number is even higher. Rock Paper Shotgun opines, “You might still be […]

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Action RPG? Big Whoop.

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 14, 2011

Craig Stern of Sinister Design (Telepath RPG) has now weighed in on the interview that pissed off so many of us with Matt Findley of InXile Entertainment. Craig Stern: “So You Created an Action RPG. Stop Congratulating Yourself.” I’ve said my piece, but I’ll just add my agreement to what Craig’s saying here. Look – […]

Filed Under: Biz, Design - Comments: 6 Comments to Read

Game Scope – Squeezing the Middle?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 13, 2011

Lately, we have two extremes that people tend to see as the norm. Probably because just by being “extreme” they tend to gather attention. On the one end, you’ve got the mainstream games, which continue to grow unsustainably bigger with higher production values, and adapt by basically become more and more generic to appeal to […]

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The Story of Good Old Games…

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 8, 2011

There’s an interesting write-up on the origins of Good Old Games, AKA GOG.COM, at The Escapist: Everything Good Old is New Again The most interesting bits for me were the difficulty of tracking down the rights in order to license them. Also, that some companies remain terrified by the lack of DRM on these games […]

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“There Is Not Really a Business Case Anymore for Making Single-Player PC Games.”

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 6, 2011

The above quote sounds like it might come from the head of a big, fat studio. But no, it comes from one of the more successful indies – who made his business (until recently) out of making single-player PC games. The pirates have won. Of course, I say this as I’m wrapping up development on […]

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“RPGs Were a 30-Year Detour?”

Posted by Rampant Coyote on May 24, 2011

What. The. Frack? Okay, Matt Findley doesn’t actually say this (it’s just in the title of the article) , but he does offer some choice quotes, like: On the fantasy genre tending to be represented by RPGs: “Well, you know, we analyzed the long history of video games. I think these games always wanted to […]

Filed Under: Biz, Mainstream Games - Comments: 32 Comments to Read

Guest Post: Lessons I Learned While Working at Bioware

Posted by Rampant Coyote on April 26, 2011

The Rampant One is off running rampant in New Orleans, and while I’m away, the community gets to play. Actually, they can play any time they want – I love to add extra voices here to Tales of the Rampant Coyote. Today’s post is a wonderful bit of insight from a man who’s been in […]

Filed Under: Biz, Game Development, Guest Posts - Comments: 25 Comments to Read

Fan Remakes: Don’t.

Posted by Rampant Coyote on April 13, 2011

I am personally a huge fan of these kinds of fan-made remakes of beloved older games, and am grateful for the efforts of the dev teams for making them. I really don’t want to be the guy to throw a wet blanket on these efforts at all, but I do feel like I should take […]

Filed Under: Biz, Indie Evangelism - Comments: 31 Comments to Read

Gamestop Buys Impulse

Posted by Rampant Coyote on April 1, 2011

Gamestop, perhaps seeing the writing on the wall that their brick-and-mortar business model is becoming, if not obsolete, at least marginalized the way video stores and record stores have been, has bought Impulse, formerly the online games distribution branch of Stardock (reasonably indie makers / publishers of the Galactic Civilizations series, Elemental:War of Magic, etc.). […]

Filed Under: Biz, Mainstream Games - Comments: 8 Comments to Read

How to Run a Game Company… Into the Ground

Posted by Rampant Coyote on March 21, 2011

I recently re-read the book Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture by David Kushner. I had to buy a new copy, actually, as I can’t remember who I loaned my previous copy out to. I think it ought to be considered required reading by anybody wishing to leave […]

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So You Want to Work in the Video Game Industry…

Posted by Rampant Coyote on March 16, 2011

This video has totally been making the rounds over the last 24 hours or so… or at least, I went from never hearing about it to seeing it in a dozen places overnight. So I’ll make this a baker’s dozen… Now those in the video game biz (or close to it – like game journalists) […]

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How To Become Fantastically Successful and Rich at Indie Game Development Without Even Trying…

Posted by Rampant Coyote on March 12, 2011

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Advice From Experienced Indie Developers…

Posted by Rampant Coyote on March 9, 2011

‘Tis very sound… though I think the quotes at the beginning of the article are a little bit misleading. Indie Revelations from Experienced Developers These guys do manage to smack around a few stereotypes, though.  The bottom line is that unless you are making games as a pure hobby (and that is completely awesome in […]

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