This post-mortem an account of learnings and struggles during and after the development of Guns of Icarus. Hope it’s useful for others developers and indie studios. The We first released Guns of Icarus in late 2009 to early 2010. Later, the game was featured on Steam, Mac App Store, and other distribution platforms. It was not a wildly successful game but enough for us to now make Guns of Icarus Online. The entire story can be viewed here.
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General (101)
Game Development (30)
CreaVures (27)
Guns of Icarus (20)
Events (14)
Industry Update (9)
Games We Loved (8)
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Elementia (4)
Extreme Sledding (3)
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Make Bouncy Bouncy (2)
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Bob Came in Pieces (2)
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Muse Games News and 3D Games Blog // Industry Update
Unity Meetup – August 27th, 2011
by Howard Aug 29, 12:39 am 0
Unity Meetup Taipei
由 Musegames 主辦的第一次 Unity 與遊戲開發交流會，8/27 在蛙咖啡舉辦。感謝大家的熱烈參與，人數比我們預期的還要多很多！我們除了跟大家分享了一些獨立製作遊戲，以及利用 Unity 引擎開發的基礎概念外，透過與大家的交流，我們也得到了很多寶貴的經驗！
下面是這次的簡報檔，我們預計在年底前還會再舉辦下一場。各位如果有感興趣的話題，或是想要交流的意見、任何建議，也歡迎跟我們反應！
Creavures at Develop conference’s Indie Showcase!
by Howard Jul 8, 2:20 pm 0
The Develop Conference in Brighton, UK, picked Creavures as a finalist in the Indie Showcase!
If you want to find out what awesome company of games Creavures is in, check it out on DIYGamer.
We are really excited to be a part of the showcase. Conrad and I bummed enough airline miles from family to make the trip, so we’ll be there from the 19th on. If you happen to be at the conference, come by our booth and talk to us! We’ll love to hear what you have to say and to chat about anything game related.
NYC Unity Meetup – Special Session – Recap
by Howard Jun 14, 12:48 pm 1
Carl getting animated demoing Unity with Kinect
Last night we had the pleasure of inviting Carl Callewaert from Unity and Brad Porter from Great Eastern Technology to present here at Muse. The turnout was tremendous. We had close to 50 RSVPs, and over 50 people came.
The original agenda was Unity working with Kinect for mocap and Maya, Max workflow with Unity, but it turned out to be so much more! The Kinect demo was excellent. With Brad presenting, Carl served as the model. Carl brought his charisma and beer, and hilarity ensued. Not lost was the power, versatility, and ease of use of Unity for this new application of course.
After a brief Q&A, the session segued to Carl’s presentation. It was action packed, as Carl took the audience through not just Maya and Max workflow, but also an overview of Unity. Wait but there was more! Carl also gave the audience a sneak peak at the 3.4 release features and future feature roadmap for 3.5 and beyond. That was followed by the business side of game making with valuable tips for indie developers. Since Carl runs his own studio and has a ton of experience in game development and marketing, he had strong opinions and great insights that were right on the mark. The icing on the cake was Carl’s in depth walkthrough, taking a developer through how to create a game from the ground up.
The presentation from the meetup will be distributed as soon as it is ready, so look for it in a later post or on Muse’s facebook page.
More photos from the event is also up on Muse facebook.
See everyone at the next meetup!
EA acquires Playfish: Can a Fat Man Dance?
by Alexander Nov 19, 7:13 pm 0
Industry Update is contributed by our friend and gaming junkie Alexander Liss
Big news last week as publishing giant Electronic Arts snapped up casual game start-up Playfish for a $300 million fee. Social games are hot these days so it’s a plus for EA’s bottom line, right? Don’t be so sure.
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Trouble in Paradise: Piracy hits the App Store
by Alexander Nov 6, 1:28 pm 0
Industry Update is contributed by our friend and gaming junkie Alexander Liss
This week the gaming blogosphere was rocked with multiple reports of skyrocketing piracy on the iPhone. Given Apple’s long and successful history with digital distribution, the last thing you expect to hear is that their system is apparently hackable.
Think Small
by Alexander Sep 22, 5:07 pm 1
Industry Update is contributed by our friend and gaming junkie Alexander Liss
The old saying goes that “Bigger is Better,” but lately we are seeing the opposite happen in casual gaming. Mobile is HOT right now — and getting a piece of the mobile space is how companies will be able to grow in this increasingly crowded and fragmented market. A couple of key things have really jumped out at me lately:
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Streaming Game Services
by Alexander Jul 30, 5:39 pm 0
Hi folks, welcome back to the Muse Games Industry Update. In our last issue we talked about the Big Three console makers’ hardware announcements coming out of E3. This time we’re gonna scope out a different kind of hardware announcement, by taking a closer look at the three new streaming game services announced recently. Here are the key players:
1) OnLive — console-killer?
o What is it: MAGIC! No seriously, it’s a box that looks like a cable modem, with a connection to the internet, as well as your TV, and has a gamepad controller. It is supposed to provide a seamless gameplay experience in your living room by streaming from the OnLive game servers, through the internet, to your TV.
o Why it’s too good to be true: If OnLive could deliver on its promises it would blow my mind, but I think in the real world it’s going to hit a brick wall. There are three huge obstacles in my opinion:
o Reliability. The best online game services still face huge server problems from time to time (Xbox Live). For OnLive, they are proposing to build a massive gaming infrastructure entirely from scratch. I can’t see how they could avoid the first two weeks of the launch being incredibly problematic, borderline broken. And then even after that I can’t imagine it functioning without a major LAG problem.
o Bandwidth. We are already on the brink of ISP’s going mental on the consumer — net neutrality is hanging by a thread. I think OnLive would push things over the edge, and ISP’s would start charging extra bandwidth fees for heavy users. Considering you are streaming 720p HD video that is going to be a lot of bandwidth.
o You don’t own the games. The only thing you have at your house is the gamepad and the magic streaming box. What if the connection goes down? And will you have permanent access to all games on the service? What if they take down a game that you really liked? It’s just not as good as having the physical media or at least a copy on your local hard drive.
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Industry Update
by Alexander Jul 8, 3:44 pm 0
We’ve finally taken a look back at the many events of the recent months in the game industry. A recap:
MICROSOFT “Pre-Natal”
Project Natal got plenty of hype. It looked cool in the demo too — playing Burnout Paradise just by mimicking the motion of driving with your body. There’s always an excitement associated with new control paradigms – the presentations inevitably wow. But big companies often find themselves victim to “wouldn’t it be cool if…” thinking, without considering the real-life implications. Are you going to take on M. Bison in real-time in Street Fighter? How do you perform a summons in Final Fantasy? Many games require a greater level of control that can what be performed just by pantomiming actions with your body. Then there’s the issue of space in the living room to play games in that manner. Most people I know have their TV wedged onto their dresser just a few feet from the bed (nothing like Late Night studio). Really I suppose in the end it will be up to the developers to build games that utilize Natal correctly.
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