Publications I have written for.
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Articles published in 2007:
The Escapist Dan Ferguson: The Escapist Interview 12/18/07 Office
managers can thank Dan Ferguson for helping reduce their workers'
productivity. He pioneered the concept of the "advergame":
easy-to-play, casual videogames that pitch a product, service or
company's brand. Often played within a web browser and running in
Flash, these innocuous looking games can suck up a lot of hours during
one's workday - and that's how they are intentionally devised. [Read the rest]
Gamasutra
Q&A: Aspyr's Adams On Mac's Gaming Challenges
12/12/07 Aspyr
Media started its business porting AAA Windows PC games to the Mac, and
the company did so back in the days when the Mac was not as popular
(and as well-sold in numbers) as it is now. Thanks to Aspyr, Mac users
have enjoyed quality ported versions of The Sims and Quake franchises,
and other popular Windows PC titles, for their computers.
[Read
the rest]
LinuxWorld
Bringing one SimCity per child to the OLPC
12/11/07 Don
Hopkins ported SimCity to Unix in 1991. Today, he is putting the
finishing touches on a GPL version of this classic computer game for
the One Laptop Per Child project's XO laptop.
[Read
the rest]
Gamasutra
"Analyze This": Divining The Next Guitar Hero-Style Phenomenon
12/11/07 Music
games have grown from a niche to one of the most dominant genres in
2007. Rock Band and Guitar Hero III are fighting the most publicized
battle of this holiday season. The third installment in the Guitar Hero
franchise launch netted Activision's biggest sales week ever for the
company.
[Read
the rest]
Gamasutra
"Analyze This": Will There Ever Be One Console To Rule Them All?
11/16/07 Recently,
there has been talk about the idea of a standardized game console
platform -- whether this would be unified hardware specifications or
development tools.
[Read
the rest]
GamesIndustry.biz
In-game advertising a billion dollar industry by 2010, says Stolar
11/14/07 AdSense
for Games' Bernie Stolar anticipates that videogame advertising it will
become a billion dollar industry by the year 2010. After working for
the likes of Atari, Sony, and Sega, Stolar became an advisor to Adscape
Media in 2005. In 2007, he helped convince Google to purchase the
company, which it renamed AdSense for Games.
[Read
the rest]
LinuxWorld
A second life for 'Second Life' with open source?
10/31/07 Until
recently, the business news media fawned over the Second Life online
virtual world. Stories fixated on Second Life "residents" who got rich
brokering virtual real estate, or on the numerous corporations and
consumer brands rushing to claim their presence within it (by building
virtual kiosk centers or "islands"). Virtual world hype trumps open
source hype, so little virtual ink has gone into discussing the open
source initiative that Linden Lab, the company behind the virtual
world, established to further its development.
[Read
the rest]
JavaWorld's Java Technology Insider (audio podcast)
Michael Stonebraker on why row storage is obsolete
10/18/07 Vertica
co-founder Michael Stonebraker Dr. Michael Stonebraker recently made
waves with his claim that the traditional RDBMS is a legacy system, and
that row-based data storage is insufficient to the needs of the
enterprise today. In this episode of JavaWorld's Java Technology
Insider, Howard Wen speaks with Dr. Stonebraker about the advantages of
switching to column-oriented data storage, and also gets his candid
thoughts about the future of data management in the era of Web 2.0.
[Listen to
the podcast]
Computerworld
Five tips for making a popular (and maybe profitable) Facebook app
10/16/07 Since
Facebook Platform launched in May, more than 5,000 applications that
run on Facebook have been developed. And the number is steadily growing
by the day. A big reason why this has been happening? Money -- or the
hope of it, to be exact.
[Read
the rest]
Gamasutra
"Analyze This": A Progress Report on the Console War
10/02/07 We
are approaching a year since all three of the current generation
consoles have been battling it out in the market. We wanted to hear how
the analysts generally feel about what has been going on with the Wii,
Xbox 360 and PS3... summing up a "progress report" for each console,
thus far, as the industry heads into the holiday season.
[Read
the rest]
Gamasutra
"Analyze This": Are Game Publishers Late To The (Wii and DS) Game?
08/30/07 The
Nintendo DS is approaching 50 million units sold worldwide, and the Wii
is about to soon match the sales number of the Xbox 360 (approximately
10 million worldwide). The early hype for the current generation of
consoles originally focused on the Xbox 360 and PS3, and, thus, most
publishers banked their game development futures on these two
platforms. But now business plans of the major third-parties are
shifting towards the Nintendo consoles.
[Read
the rest]
GamesIndustry.biz
EA's Casual Attitude
08/29/07 As
the video game industry shifts significantly towards producing more
casual gaming titles, Electronic Arts has followed suit. In June 2007
Kathy Vrabeck was hired by EA Games to lead their Casual Entertainment
division. As the president for this newly- formed label, she oversees
not only packaged retail games, such as those utilizing the Harry
Potter license, but also the company's popular online games site, Pogo,
and its mobile games service (EA Mobile).
[Read
the rest]
Gamasutra
QuakeCon 2007: An Audience With John Carmack
08/06/07 During
the QuakeCon keynote which revealed a lot else besides, id legend John
Carmack sauntered out on stage for a fascinating set of comments about
id's next project Rage, software patents, tech, and the DS, and
Gamasutra was there to capture his in-depth remarks.
[Read
the rest]
Gamasutra
"Analyze This": Will Hardcore Gamers Be Pushed Aside In This Console Generation?
07/09/07 Microsoft
recently announced that it would broaden the customer base of the Xbox
360 by trying to appeal to the family demographic. Sony has also
indicated that it would market the PS3 to a wider audience beyond
hardcore gamers, by publishing more casual games and introducing
Wii-like peripherals. Obviously, Nintendo's success with its DS and Wii
appear to be looming heavily over its competitors.
[Read
the rest]
The Escapist
Curt Vendel: The Escapist Interview
06/05/07 The
Flashback 2 was indirectly born from the active community of homebrew
Atari 2600 game programmers and fans who pine for the classic era of
Atari gaming. (A few of the games on the Flashback 2 are originals
created by homebrew programmers.) Among them, Curt Vendel is one name
to remember: He designed both the Flashback and Flashback 2. For all
intents and purposes, Vendel is the current caretaker of the classic
Atari gaming hardware. He runs the Atari History Museum, which is
dedicated to archiving the legacy of Atari's classic gaming era.
[Read
the rest]
GamesIndustry.biz
Turtle Power
05/31/07 Turtle
Rock was founded by Michael Booth, whose prior credits include having
created Nox and doing technical direction on the Command & Conquer
series. Because of all the acclaimed work that his company has done for
Valve, the 13-member Turtle Rock team got to create its own original
title, Left 4 Dead. This zombie shooter, featuring online team-play
mechanics, is planned for release later this year.
[Read
the rest]
GamesIndustry.biz
Massive Opportunities
05/01/07 For
the past five years Garriott and his team at NCsoft Austin have been
working on Tabula Rasa, an MMORPG with a science fiction theme which is
due to launch later this year. It marks a departure for the man who's
most often associated with Ultima's epic medieval fantasy setting and
is Garriott's most ambitious project to date. But will the pioneer of
the MMORPG be able to score a second hit?
[Read
the rest]
Gamasutra
"Analyze This": Is There Anything Wrong with the Sony PSP?
04/06/07
The Sony PSP has been out for over two years, and has sold over 24
million units. Yet sentiment for it remains mixed: Gamers and
developers appear to put up with it, but not clamor for it. And a
recent rumor has it that one major retailer even threatened to stop
selling it (if Sony didn't initiate a price cut, which is did this
month). At best, it's been characterized as a mediocre success.
[Read
the rest]
Gamasutra
"Analyze This": How Exclusive Will Exclusive Games Be in This Generation?
03/12/07
In the last game console generation, emphasis was placed heavily on
establishing platform exclusivity for a number of high-profile third
party titles (e.g., Grand Theft Auto).
But how important will exclusive titles be for this generation fought
among the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Wii? We asked Ed Barton of Screen
Digest, Ben Bajarin of Creative Strategies and Michael Pachter of
Wedbush Morgan Securities:
[Read
the rest]
The Escapist
Peter Molyneux: The Escapist Interview
03/06/07 To
say Peter Molyneux is a moral game developer is to be interpreted
literally. The idea of incorporating morality - the choices one makes
between "good" and "bad" behavior and the results of such personal
actions - into gameplay has fascinated him throughout his career. While
his work spans various genres (either as designer, programmer or
producer), he is most known for his "god games," of which Populous and
Black & White are best associated with his style and creative
passions.
[Read
the rest]
GamesIndustry.biz
Ritual Revisited
02/08/07
In December, GamesIndustry.biz conducted an interview with Ken Harward,
who at the time had been recently announced as CEO of Ritual
Entertainment. Since then, the studio has been acquired by casual games
company MumboJumbo, also based in Dallas, Texas. The situation with
regard to both of these matters has since drastically changed, so
GamesIndustry.biz asked Harward to clarify what's next for Ritual and
MumboJumbo.
[Read
the rest]
GamesIndustry.biz
Leagues Ahead
01/30/07
Nearly 10 years ago Angel Munoz founded the Cyberathlete Professional
League with the idea that could get gamers to pay money so that they
could play against one another. At the time, most gaming meets were
informal affairs among friends and held at somebody's house, where
everybody would LAN up their computers and deathmatch to Quake.
[Read
the rest]
The Escapist Daily
Welcome to The Escapist First Annual Slammy Awards...
01/30/07
All this week, the Slamdance Film Festival has been going on in Park
City, Utah. Curiously lacking in the gaming press has been coverage of
the festival's Guerrilla Gamemaker Competition. That's probably because
all the big news about the event already unfolded over the months
leading up to it: Slamdance's initial invite to the creator of Super Columbine Massacre RPG!
to submit his controversial game, the game's nomination as a finalist
in the Guerrilla Gamemaker Competition, and then, well, let's be blunt:
Slamdance chickening out and dropping SCMRPG from consideration due to what they claimed were concerns over legal threats.
[Read
the rest]
Gamasutra
"Analyze This": Which Console Will Win 2007? (...And Other Humble Guesses for the Year)
01/26/07
As
we enter 2007, we at Gamasutra wondered what overall predictions the
analysts have for the industry. Obviously, this is a very significant
year for each of the three console manufacturers. So we asked Mike Wolf
of ABI Research, David Cole of DFC Intelligence and Michael Pachter of
Wedbush Morgan Securities the following:
[Read
the rest]
GamesIndustry.biz
The Next Episode
01/25/07
Soon after his appointment, GamesIndustry.biz sat down with Harward to
ask him about the rumours. Things have changed since this interview was
conducted, but we also talked about the experience of developing a game
in the episodic format, the issues surrounding distribution via Steam
and the challenges of running an independent studio in today's
environment - read on to find out more.
[Read
the rest]
Gamasutra
Go With the fl0w: Jenova Chen on Console Independence
01/22/07
To describe the experience you get from playing Jenova Chen's games as
"serene" would be an understatement. Serenity is implied even from
their titles: Cloud and flOw. Both games were created by Chen (AKA
"Xinghan Chen") as part of his studies while he was a student of the
USC School of Cinematic Arts. His aim was to elicit emotions beyond the
medium's typical kill-or-be-killed and win-or-lose game play mentality.
[Read
the rest]
GamesIndustry.biz
Machinima to Mobile
01/15/07
Fountainhead's
founder and CEO, Katherine Anna Kang, also co-founded The Academy of
Machinima Arts & Sciences and, prior to Fountainhead, worked as
director of business development for id Software, creators of the Doom series. She has another connection to id: her husband is John Carmack.
[Read
the rest]
Gamasutra
Raising the Dead, Again: Can Howard Marks Revive Acclaim?
01/11/07
With a storied history including relatively fondly received titles such
as the early Turok games for N64 and the Extreme G series, alongside
less well-reviewed licensed properties and numerous movie tie-ins,
Acclaim Entertainment finally shuttered its business in 2005. The game
properties it still owned were sold in a bankruptcy sale, and
relatively few in the gaming community mourned its loss.
[Read
the rest]
Articles published in 2006...
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