Note: this was actually written back in March. I just scheduled it for release on March 2113, which might have taken a while given its natural course. You have the recent series of NBI posts to blame for this “I am alive” post :) Hot on the heals of Anita Sarkeesian’s somewhat disappointing first […]
Jump here to the Gamasutra article: How to license music the indie way A nice writeup by indie developer Catherine Levesque on how to find music for her game Bollywood Wannabe. Includes tips about finding the contact information, negotiating, and writing up contracts.
We’ve all heard of Humble Bundle and how they manage to raise over $10.7 million towards various charities. I like to put that into the column of how gaming can actually improve the world. Gaming is no longer a solitary hobby where people shut themselves off from the rest of the world. It’s a form […]
Back in the previous post about what I think happened to SimCity, I suggested moving towards a service oriented architecture (SOA) to avoid having a single hot database cluster melt under load. Of course, SOA doesn’t prevent that eventual scenario, it merely moves that point in time further downstream. But really, picking a MMO architecture […]
Just a quick follow-up post to the SimCity meltdown. In case someone gets the wrong idea and thinks that the database issues could be foreseen, it should be said that the database is typically lowest on the hierarchy of constraints when trying to size up the server hardware. Their long history of development and general good performance makes it […]
By now you’ve probably already heard about SimCity’s epic smooth launch. By all accounts, it’s quite tragic. Obviously from a consumer standpoint, but also from a developer point of view. Here’s what most customers are greeted with upon start. The wonderful thing is, after that 18:55 minutes passes, your “login” will likely fail and you’d be re-queued for 20 […]
I’m a bit distracted lately, working on several different prototypes to hash out a bunch of unknowns. Part of my degaussing regimen is to watch interesting lecture videos. I’ll concentrate this post on Disney’s MMO system. It’s used as the backend for Club Penguin, ToonTown, Cars Online, PixieHollow,and Pirates of the Caribbean Online. So I […]
I was eating lunch the other day, and suddenly an eureka moment struck me. OMG, MMOs are like carrots! Yum! Yes. These. No, I’m not talking about the grind or how achievements are leading users by the carrot and stick. Instead, our little root vegetable here in many ways can give insight into how users perceive MMOs […]
Thanks to Melmoth (who learned of it from Thade) at Killed in a Smiling Accident, I got wind about Ms. Sarkeesian’s Kickstarter campaign Tropes vs Women in Video Games. Personally, I think the TV Tropes site does a better job highlighting gender based silliness. Actually, it highlights all trope silliness regardless of gender – but it’s all there, and in […]
As an indie developer, keeping costs low is key. People more eloquent than I (Hi Dan!) have blogged about extending your runway through frugal living. It’s all well and good, and I agree with most of it anyway. But do we extend that to development? Where should I get the art and music assets for my game? […]
