Indie Commercialization: Selling Out?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on April 30, 2012

At the A MAZE Indie Connect festival, Jonaten “Cactus” Soderstrom offered a keynote address commenting on the state of the industry – in particular, the ‘commercialization’ of the ‘indie game scene.’ It sounds like he dished out positives and negatives about how money has effected this side of the industry, particularly with its effect of […]

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

Interview with Wizardry Developer Robert “Trebor” Woodhead

Posted by Rampant Coyote on April 28, 2012

Man, RPG Codex is doing some good stuff these days. Scoring great interviews, getting a monument built for themselves in the upcoming Wasteland 2… it’s awesome stuff. This weekend’s interview is with one half of the original Wizardry development team – Robert Woodhead.  He’s moved on to other things in life, but he does share […]

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One More Eulogy for the Arcades…

Posted by Rampant Coyote on April 27, 2012

Now, let’s say this up front: Life is better for gamers now than it was in the 1980s, by almost every conceivable measure. We have far more options, we can play or download games on the Internet without leaving the comfort of our chair (or toilet seat, if that’s your fancy…). The platforms are amazingly […]

Filed Under: Indie Evangelism, Retro - Comments: Comments are off for this article

Frayed Knights, Crunch Mode, Research, and Development

Posted by Rampant Coyote on April 26, 2012

There are a few advantages to being a part-time indie. You have considerably more freedom to make any kind of game you want, as your livelihood doesn’t depend upon sales. Your “day job” can finance your game development habit. The disadvantages are pretty obvious, however, and a big one is that the indie thing has […]

Filed Under: Frayed Knights, Geek Life - Comments: 9 Comments to Read

A Game Dev’s Story, Part X: Racing Along

Posted by Rampant Coyote on April 25, 2012

We were all pretty exhausted by the time Twisted Metal and Warhawk shipped. Singletrac had a pretty liberal vacation policy, but few had been able to take advantage of it because we were all working 70 hour work-weeks. But we had two more games scheduled for release in less than a year, so we couldn’t […]

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Older RPGs: Not That Hard To Play After All?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on April 24, 2012

Hat tip to GameBanshee for linking this article from Joystiq: “The Surprising Accessibility of Older RPGs” The author (Rowan Kaiser) isn’t really giving a pass for all older RPGs. Specifically, he’s referring to Might & Magic III: Isles of Terra. This was actually my (brief) introduction to the Might & Magic series, many years ago. […]

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 5 Comments to Read

New Voices of Indie Evangelism

Posted by Rampant Coyote on April 23, 2012

I used to call myself an “indie evangelist,” back when nobody knew what “indie” was (or assumed that indie meant casual games).  For me, as a refugee from the mainstream game development industry, the promise of a market for games free from the domination by big publishers was irresistible.  You mean game developers could make […]

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Ludum Dare #23 Game Dev Competition Starts Off With a Bang!

Posted by Rampant Coyote on April 20, 2012

Ludum Dare has been going on for ten years. In a few hours, the latest game-in-48-hours competition will begin. The keynote for this competition – #23 – is exceptional. Chevy Ray doesn’t just give a ra-ra speech… he leads by example. Kind of. It’s just funny and cool. Chevy Ray’s LD#23 Keynote For another amusing […]

Filed Under: Game Development, Indie Evangelism - Comments: Comments are off for this article

Call of Cthulhu: The Wasted Land Coming to PC

Posted by Rampant Coyote on April 19, 2012

I’ve been looking forward to “Call of Cthulhu: The Wasted Land” coming to the PC for a while, as I still have a “dumb phone.” And I’ve been a fan of Lovecraft for a long time. I’m also a long-time player of Call of Cthulhu, the dice-and-paper RPG that this game is (at least loosely) […]

Filed Under: Game Announcements - Comments: 9 Comments to Read

Using Genetic Algorithms In Games

Posted by Rampant Coyote on April 18, 2012

Because my upcoming post on my experiences developing Jet Moto is getting kinda long, I thought I’d break out this story for your entertainment. Programmers will especially get a kick out of it. An interesting aspect of the development of Jet Moto was that we did not do anything like the traditional racing game approach. […]

Filed Under: Design, Game Development, Programming - Comments: 6 Comments to Read

Sinister Design’s New Tactics Game

Posted by Rampant Coyote on April 17, 2012

Sinister Design has announced their newest game – a multiplayer tactics game that’s something of an advanced version of the combat rules in Telepath RPG: Servants of God. Entitled “Telepath Tactics,” it uses oblique projection instead of top-down characters, deeper mechanics, better AI, lots of different unit types, and can be played single-player or multi-player […]

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Writing What You Game

Posted by Rampant Coyote on April 16, 2012

I picked up Fez on Friday, and enjoyed about an hour or so enjoying the game.  It’s a nice twist on the 2D platformer genre. I don’t have enough experience in that genre to say if it’s unique, but it’s certainly new to me, and quite impressive how the game depends on warping a 3D […]

Filed Under: Indie Evangelism - Comments: 5 Comments to Read

The Cabin In the Woods

Posted by Rampant Coyote on April 14, 2012

I’m really seeing some pretty good movies in the theater this year. I loved the indie movie Unicorn City (coming out on DVD and digital download in July). John Carter and Hunger Games were both a lot of fun. And last night, I went to see The Cabin in the Woods. At my wife’s request. […]

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The Crowdsourcing Revolution?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on April 13, 2012

It seems that with DoubleFine’s big adventure (to the tune of over $3.3 million), the floodgates were opened for another source of funding for “niche” games. The old-school style Wasteland 2 has now been funded to over $2.4 million (More, if you include out-of-band pledges) with three more days to go.  And there’s more. MUCH […]

Filed Under: Biz - Comments: 6 Comments to Read

Legend of Grimrock: Exactly What It Says on the Tin

Posted by Rampant Coyote on April 12, 2012

The indie RPG Legend of Grimrock was released yesterday, and I pretty much took night off to play it. I don’t really do reviews here, but I do like to offer my “quick take,” especially when it has to do with indie adventure games and RPGs that I get a chance to play. And after […]

Filed Under: Game Announcements, Indie Evangelism - Comments: 12 Comments to Read

Bugging Out

Posted by Rampant Coyote on April 11, 2012

I have a book that was (or still is) used as a textbook for air-to-air combat for fighter pilots. Parts of the book talk about how to exit combat. It’s not an easy thing, actually. In general, if you wait until you really need to escape, it’s too late. I’ve also been reading about the […]

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 7 Comments to Read



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