The 2012 IGF Pirate Kart

I've submitted my Ludum Dare games, CondomCorps and FuhFuhFire, to the 2012 IGF Pirate Kart. Also, me and Eddie threw Super Cult Tycoon 2: Deluxe Edition into the mix too. That's 300+ incredibly creative games, all in one package, all full of love. So go play it.

It's Altercation Time.

www.itsaltercationtime.com

Me and Eddie Cameron are now formally releasing our Unity3D stuff as a dynamic duo: "Altercation." The plan, I think, is to go back through our other stuff and polish those up to spec too? Maybe?

Our first official game is a more polished build of our most recent game, "Super Cult Tycoon 2: Deluxe Edition," now updated to version 1.0 -- with better difficulty ramping, some more graphical fanciness, and exponentially more playability.

+1 branding.

Frontiers, and why I'm afraid of working with multiplayer.

Frontiers is a multiplayer Half-Life 2 mod where one team is border guards and the other team is refugees, with environments and visuals based on real-life diaspora. The concept is very compelling... but I'll never get to play it, since it's real-time multiplayer and relies on a live, sustained player base that it'll never have.

This is why "serious games" and messaged-based games, in my mind, should never require more than a handful of players (or ideally, 1 or 2) to deliver its rhetoric -- or they should use asynchronous multiplayer -- because this is how a game dies. In contrast, single player games live forever.

I don't want to say, "don't make real-time multiplayer games," because that sounds awful. But I guess I'm saying it. I don't see any way around it.

Attention! Oct 21-23 = upcoming epic weekend of game jams!

For some reason, Sagittarius is aligning with Capricorn in the zenith of Jupiter and three (3) different game jams are happening on the weekend of October 21 - 23. If you live in or near a major economic center in the United States, you're in for a treat. Hopefully we can get some kind of simultaneous live camera feed going on between the sites.

NEW YORK CITY:

"Castle Lab" 

hosted by Babycastles / Parsons, the New School for Design / New School Game Club

Friday, Oct 21 @ 7 PM - Sunday, Oct 23 @ 7 PM. (NOTE: building is NOT open 24/7.)
6 East 16th Street, (12th flr lab), New York, NY. (Take the L / N Q R / 4 5 6 to Union Square.)

> Free. Sign-up on the Facebook page, or just show-up. (+ Free pizza on mystery night!)

CHICAGO:

"Chicago Game Jam"

hosted by IGDA Chicago and Friends / Toy Studio

Friday, Oct 21 @ 6 PM - Sunday, Oct 23 @ 10 AM.

1550 N Damen, Suite 201. Chicago, IL.

> Free (?) Sign-up here.

SAN FRANCISCO / BAY AREA:

"TIGJam 4"

hosted by TIGSource / Hacker Dojo

Thursday, Oct 20 @ 10 AM - Sunday, Oct 23 @ 8 PM.

140A South Whisman Rd., Mountain View, CA.

> Registration required ($50) for t-shirt, snacks, dinner and more.

If you've never been to a game jam before, don't be scared. Anyone can start making games. These days, you don't even have to learn much computer programming if you don't want to. For info and advice on starting out, see this thread at Super Friendship Club or visit youcanmakevideogames.com!

And if you're unfamiliar with the game jam format, it roughly resembles this:

1. First, you show-up and sign-in and stuff.
2. The secret theme is announced. You listen to a silly but inspiring keynote.
3. People form teams and talk about ideas.
4. People start making games. People eat. Good times are had.
5. People go home and sleep, or the building closes.
6. People start panicking that they won't finish. Cut some features. Go home and sleep.
7. Cut more features. The timer starts ticking down.
8. Pencils up! Everyone presents their broken games and everyone is loved.

See? Nothing to be scared of. So see you at one of the jams! Come make games!

A level to look out for: l4d_yama

 

An epic Left 4 Dead project, made of so much custom content, deserves all the hype it can get. Unlike so many Japanese-themed FPS maps, this actually kinda looks authentically like Japan -- the author, Mark Edwards, clearly did his research -- and it's all pretty haunting if you think about the freakish chain of cataclysmic disaster that has swept Japan this year. Every empire is paranoid of its sunset, but the familiar real-life narrative of a shrinking population grants the setting some additional power. It's a rare digital survey of Japanese civilization: from city to countryside to castle.

Watch out for l4d_yama, people. The beta's hitting soon.