Not many industry execs can lay claim to the coining of a gaming term, since most of the words and phrases used in discussion of the pastime were born in the community.
Cannon Cat is distraction gaming at its warmest, its most blessedly inane. A blend of vector guesswork and one-tap controls, it plays out in swift little bursts as you fire a red-jumpsuited feline from cannon to cannon to cannon, and then on to the end-of-level warp-gate. Done! There are thousands of offerings like this on iOS already, of course, with dozens more piling up every day.
Novelist Iain Banks might be better known as Iain M Banks, the pen name under which most of his speculative fiction is published. Of this oeuvre, his Culture series is most widely celebrated, depicting a utopian, galaxy-spanning civilisation whose citizens (when they aren’t meddling in the affairs of lesser races) have plenty of time for gaming.
Zynga has unveiled its latest Facebook game, Bubble Safari, which bears a more than passing resemblance to Taito's Puzzle Bobble, known in the west as Bust-A-Move.
London-based charity and museum Wellcome Trust has a space for a project manager of broadcast and games. Working with the senior broadcast and games project manager, as well as external consultants, you'll be tasked with increasing public engagement in biomedical science and the exploration of medicine in its historical, ethical, social and cultural context. It's an unusual outlet for your game development experience and should prove fascinating.
No self-respecting long-running game studio would think of furnishing a lobby without wall-mounted glass display cases. Gearbox Software, just down the road from Dallas, Texas, has plenty to showcase, having ported versions of Halo and 007: Nightfire, and created original IP such as Brothers In Arms and Borderlands. But one of the Gearbox lobby’s cases is curious, because it’s dedicated to an unfinished game.
Zynga is working to stem a decline in users of Words With Friends, asking players for their thoughts on possible new features to lure lapsed users back to a game which has lost 1.9 million users in the last month.
Halo 4's composer Neil Davidge has been working in a cocoon of secrecy for the past year and a half since signing on to Microsoft's marquee shooter series. With the game's development shifting from Bungie to internal studio 343 Industries, he has the unenviable task of following up the iconic work of previous composer Marty O'Donnell.
Nicholas Lovell, founder of videogame business consultancy Gamesbrief, believes that ZeniMax will launch the recently announced Elder Scrolls Online MMOG under the monthly subscription model, but will eventually switch to free-to-play.
Nicholas Lovell, founder of videogame business consultancy Gamesbrief, believes that ZeniMax will launch the recently announced Elder Scrolls Online MMOG under the monthly subscription model, but will eventually switch to free-to-play.