Rocket Pack browser game engine yet another sign of firm’s move into social and mobile space.
Disney has acquired Rocket Pack, a Finnish startup which has developed an HTML5 engine for the development of browser games.
Hopes plugin-free OpenGL technology will become the browser game development standard.
Open standard consortium Khronos has announced the final, 1.0 version of WebGL. The likes of Apple, Google and Mozilla have thrown their support behind WebGL, which allows for hardware-accelerated 3D graphics in HTML5 web browsers without the need for plugins.
White and Black versions of DS RPG take top two positions in first week on sale.
The latest versions of Pokémon, White and Black, occupy the top two slots in the UK all-formats chart.
Nintendo’s tradition of releasing two versions of each entry in the series once again reaps dividends, with Pokémon White at number one, and Black just behind in second spot.
SCEA also given data from YouTube, Blogspot and Twitter to prove case should be heard in California.
A California court has granted Sony access to logs containing the IP addresses of every visitor to PS3 hacker George “Geohot” Hotz’s website.
Network engineer’s GDC slide was a play for laughs that no-one got, says Halo developer.
Bungie has said that last week’s GDC revelation that the Halo studio was at work on an MMOG shooter was a joke.
During his presentation at the San Francisco conference last week the studio’s lead network engineer David Aldridge showed a slide claiming the studio was hiring for a “massively multiplayer action game.”
In March 2010 representatives of LTS’ Consolarium team attended and participated in the Game Based Learning Conference in London. One of the conference presentations that we saw was from a company called Made in Me who were showcasing their as yet unreleased resource, Land of Me. The team found this resource to be instantly intriguing and it’s design, both aesthetic and pedagogic, was such that we approached the company to express and interest in trying the software out in Early Years settings in Scottish schools. Have a look at one of the chapters here:
One of the aspects of this resource that proved most appealing to us was that the designers had worked with Prof. John Siraj-Blatchford who has a long and illustrious record in academic publication and is seen, along with his wife Professor Iram Siraj-Batchford, as expert in the pedagogy of teaching and learning in the Early Years. The partnership between Dr. Blatchford and Land of Me led to a the design of a resource that aimed to immerse young learners in a beautiful and engaging world but in such a way that opportunities for deep learning and active participation could occur within the game but just as importantly, away from the game. This concept is what most interested us about this particular resource as we felt that it most certainly would help address the underlying principles of CfE and offer exciting and purposeful avenues for learning at Early Level and possibly beyond that.
The LTS/Land of Me Pilot
Once the Land of Me was fully completed and ready to be launched to schools LTS negotiated a pilot programme to take place in Dundee City, Argyll & Bute and West Lothian Councils. This pilot is currently in its early stages with schools in Dundee and West Lothian already making great use of the resource with the Argyll & Bute schools due to come on board at the end of March.
As yet we have no firm data in terms of qualitative feedback from out partner schools other than a general feeling of delight and positivity in relation to how young learners are responding to this resource and the learning activities that can arise as a result of playing in and outwith the game.
This was evident in a recent feedback session in Dundee City from the teachers and Early Years Practitioners who working with us on the pilot. Their early feedback was very positive with some insightful observations about its use being fed back. Most of the feedback that was of the ‘wish’ variety focused on the activities that could be downloaded from the resource itself. Even so, the general feeling was that this resource has great potential with Chapter 4: Rythmn & Dance, where the learners/players have the opportunity to dance along with a family of Otters, appearing to be a particular favourite for the children in the Dundee schools! Can you do the crab, flamingo, tiger dance?
I took the opportunity at the event to speak to Maggie Llanwarne who is the Headteacher at Longhaugh Nursery School about her thoughts on the resource. Maggie was very impressed with the resource however her experienced eye also offered some formative fedback in terms of its design and how it can be used. Here is what Maggie had to say:
I also spoke with Bernadette Donald from Wallacetown Nursery School. Again her feedback was very positive but some formative ‘wishes’ were also suggested by this experienced practitioner in terms of the tasks/activities that can be downloaded as a part of the overall Land of Me experience: Here is what Bernadette had to say:
Some of the schools talked of how they were still exploring the resource whereas others talked of how having explored the resource, they were now beginning to embed Land of Me in to the daily life and learning of their children. We look forward to sharing the further experiences and thoughts of teachers and EYPs in Dundee and those of the teachers and EYPs in West Lothian and Argyll & Bute. If you are using this resource in your school please do tell us what your experience has been.
*There is a Land of Me Glow Group to support this initiative and any other teachers who might be using this resource in their particular setting. Please do feel free to contribute to this group.
Most - but not all - MMOG mechanics ill-suited to firstperson shooters, argues Battlefield 3 developer.
Karl-Magnus Troedsson, general manager of Battlefield 3 developer DICE, says the company is unlikely to follow Bungie in turning the firstperson shooter into an MMOG.
Trials system for pre-ordering second-hand games, from one week after release, for £33.99.
UK retailer Game has combined two cornerstones of its business strategy by enabling customers to pre-order pre-owned games.
MCV reports that the UK’s largest specialist retailer is trialling the service, whereby consumers can order in advance a second-hand copy of the game one week after release, for £33.99, a £16 saving on SRP and a £6 saving on Game’s typical retail price for new games.
How catering for spectators as well as players was “like inventing Basketball 2.”
Social reinvention promises “more prominent role” to pigs; cross-media strategy outlined as Rovio looks to Disney.
Angry Birds, Finnish developer Rovio’s game which has been downloaded more than 75 million times since release in 2009, is to see a release on Facebook.
There are millions of potential players on the social networking site, and Rovio sees a social reinvention of the game as an exciting prospect, allowing is to experiment with its hugely successful formula.
Populous creator tells how beans, Commodore and someone in his local fired the creation of a classic.
Co-founder enthuses about “super-high engagement” which drove 1.1 million hours of work last month.
More than 400,000 developers are using the Unity development platform, according to Unity Technologies.
The Schell Games CEO compares gaming to Valhalla and says men are "faking it" when it comes to social games.
Giving a typically amusing speech at the Women In Games Awards during this year's Game Developers Conference, Schell Games CEO and creative director Jesse Schell, highlighted the differences in approach between all male, and mixed-sex teams, pointing out the benefits of female input in any project.
Double Fine picks up three awards in the third annual ceremony.
The third annual Women in Gaming Awards was held yesterday at GDC 2011, hosted by Microsoft and the IGDA Women In Games special interest group. The awards recognise the key women working in the industry today and featured the following categories: Art, Audio, Business, Design, Engineering, Production, Rising Stars. The full list of nominees and winners is below:
Art
Lydia Choy, Senior Tech Artist at Double Fine
“We want good play, we want compelling experiences. We are not the ones making ‘evil’ games.”
Brenda Brathwaite, co-founder of social game developer Loot Drop, pleaded with her audience at GDC yesterday to not tar all social game firms with the same brush.
Senior engineer John McCutchan on how Move’s homebrew development platform works.
Earlier this week, Sony announced Move.Me, a server application enabling hobbyist development of software using PS3’s Move motion controller. At GDC yesterday we caught up with John McCutchan, a senior engineer at SCEA, who explained how it works.
Developer: Farbs
Format: Flash
One game at a time, we’re gradually getting our heads around franchises that use a well-placed off-shoot to mess with the mechanics and change the main series’ temperament. Square-Enix and AlphaDream have spent much of the last decade proving that Super Mario works surprisingly well as an RPG hero, for example, while more recently Rebellion has helped Evil Genius bring a touch of style and humour to social games on Facebook – even if a little of the empty grind remains intact.
TT Games producer says 3DS has roughly equivalent power to Wii, "but with superior lighting".
The former Apple gaming evangelist points out the industry's relative youth, says smartphones offer very real competition.
Former Apple gaming evangelist Graeme Devine gave a talk on how to create a good iPad interface at GDC 2011 yesterday. We caught up with Devine, whose CV boasts lead designer roles on games such as 7th Guest, 11th Hour, Quake III Arena and Halo Wars, following his session.
Latest iteration of Sony's free development environment adds support for PSP and NGP.
The third iteration of Sony's free cross-platform development environment, PhyreEngine, has been revealed at GDC 2011, and adds support for PSP and NGP development. Previous iterations of PhyreEngine have powered games such as Critter Crunch, Shatter, Demon's Souls and thatgamecompany's Flower and flOw.
Though confusion over total units sold results in contradictory figures.
Speaking during the PlayStation Network Analysis panel at GDC 2011, SCEA digital distribution manager, Pierre Gravereau, claimed that Sony's revenue was up 70 per cent in 2010.
New franchise to be published by Activision in ten-year deal.
Speaking at a seminar on gameplay networking at GDC 2011, Bungie lead network engineer, David Aldridge, revealed that the studio’s next game will be a “massively multiplayer action game”.
Aldridge directly addressed rumours that the game would be “WOW in space”, emphatically denying that this would be the case. Moreover, the game won’t be set in the Halo universe and will instead form part of an all-new franchise.
The Quantic Dream head wants to bring emotion and greater realism to games' portrayal of war.
Quantic Dream founder and CEO, David Cage, has told CVG that the studio behind Heavy Rain is currently working on two “very different” projects, and intends to turn its sights on the war genre once they’re finished.
PC eco-sim Fate Of The World will see a UK retail release after being picked up by publisher Lace Mamba Global.
Developed by Oxford-based Red Redemption, the indie title hands players a complex simulation of the world's climate and lets them choose whether to rescue humans from global warming or seal their fate.
PopCap’s Jason Kaplan on unsexy sexy poker, and by which match-three puzzler Bejeweled was inspired.
At a few months short of ten years old, Bejeweled is by some way the youngest game to be the subject of one of GDC’s Classic Game Postmortems. Yet with the conference dominated by the recent rise of quick-fix, mainstream mobile and social games it seems an appropriate subject.