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The Story Of Doodle Jump: Brotherly Love And Digital Snacks Infinite Interactive plans to launch an online web-based game as a companion to its popular Puzzle Quest title, CEO and lead designer Steve Fawkner revealed today.
During his talk “Widening your Audience: Casual Games, Hardcore Appeal” at Melbourne’s Game Connect event, Fawkner let slip that the developer was working on a new project. But it wasn’t Galactrix as I had first guessed.
Launching in around a month’s time, the game will function in a similar way to that of Neopets. Although Fawkner was light on the details, he did mention that players will be able to buy armies and conquer a “world map” using gold pieces, gained by submitting your scores from – I’m guessing – Puzzle Quest.
Fawkner also mentioned that the game would be free of change, would link in with Infinite’s future releases and will be for the PC version of Puzzle Quest, at least for the time being.
The upcoming Wii version of Okami is proof that asking nicely, repeatedly, for something can actually work. But there were more factors than just manners in the decision to port the PS2 classic on over. Stuff like controls, money, the media’s undying love for the game…look, we’ll just let Capcom’s Christian Svensson expain: What if we took a second shot with Okami’s content on another console? A platform people were repeatedly asking for it on? A platform that could help with some of the core mechanics of the game? And now that it was already semi-known and loved for sure by the media, it’s no longer technically a new IP. It really deserved a second chance. Thankfully, others in our organisation felt the same way.
Slight warning: OK, so most of you have probably found out what the game’s “twist” is, but if you haven’t, the start of this is a little spoiler-ish. Don’t care? Let’s proceed, then! Both versions look great, both seem to chug along just fine, and as always, we’re not just squinting, we’re squinting hard.
Develop Mag have just published the results of UKTi’s Playing for Keeps report. Of interest is that the study looked at the total revenue generated in 2006 by software sales globally, then broke that down into how much of it was generated by various retail and distribution methods. Bricks and mortar retail was obviously still the predominant force, but it’s interesting to note the inroads being made by other sources, such as DLC, MMOs and digital downloads.
In case you’re not up to speed on your Terminatorverse, there’s more Terminator movies coming. First one’s called Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins. These aren’t your average Arnie v Michael Biehn tussles, either. They’re set in the future, where John Connor fights robots, watches other humans get killed by robots and does it all in perpetual darkness. The Halcyon Co., who own the rights to the Terminator IP, have announced that they’ve formed their own internal development studio to handle the film’s game adaptations. Peter Levin, acting CEO of Halcyon Games: When you own the intellectual property and have the creative control, you can make sure you’re publishing a top-tier video game that will satisfy the needs of the marketplace.
Game’s due on “all next-generation consoles” (guess they mean 360, PS3 and Wii), PC and Mobile in late two-thousand-and…nine. Guess it’s a bit early for screenshots, then. Halcyon game for ‘Terminator’ adaptation [Hollywood Reporter, via Shacknews]
So a little rumour broke yesterday about a “new” DS. Analyst Evan Wilson reckons he knows, in his heart, that the next DS is already done, and Nintendo are just waiting for sales of the DS Lite to slow down before they release it. As they should, Nintendo have responded to these rumours. Thing is, NoA’s George Harrison went and responded like this: We don’t have any imminent plans for an upgrade for the Nintendo DS. The product is still selling extremely well around the world.
Then he went and said this: I’m not sure what his source was for it, but it’s not something you’re going to hear about anytime soon.
“Imminent”? “Anytime soon”? That’s a real funny way of saying “no comment”, George. Way to get the speculating fanboys off the scent. Harrison: No “Imminent” Plans for New DS [Next-Gen][Image]
To: Ash From: Ian Re: Dispensing Medicine Like Candy
Actual email sent to a student today: To make a tablespoon/teaspoon dry, use “heaped” or “level.” Otherwise it will be wet.
Why? This is the week in my class when we program Chef, an esoteric programming language in which the source code reads like a recipe. The goal is to pursue “multicoding”: programs that have aesthetics at the level of source code, of programmatic execution, of cookery, and of gastronomy. Tomorrow in class we’ll eat everyone’s programs. There will probably be some cakes, even.
What you missed today What Do You Want To Know About Mass Effect? Lionhead Wants Help Writing Fake Curse Words Is Halo 3 Hurting Online PC Gaming? How Complex Controllers Ruined Everything
Florida-based toy manufacturer Jazwares announced today the availability of America’s Army Real Heroes, a line of action figures semi-based on the America’s Army series of video games and modeled after real-life military personnel. Yes, it’s a little weird. Four America’s Army soldiers comprise the first line, including Sergeant Tommy Riemen, Sergeant First Class Gerald Wolford, Staff Sergeant Matthew Zedwick, and Major Jason Amerine. Three of the four have been awarded the Silver Star for Gallantry in Action for their service in the Iraq War, with the fourth given the Bronze Star with V Device for Bravery while in Afghanistan.
The company also makes action figures based on characters from Mega Man, Viewtiful Joe, Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter. America’s Army Real Heroes action figures are now available at Toys ‘R’ Us and Jazwares official site.
Press release after the jump.
Let’s get this factoid out of the way quickly: for the week of November 5th to the 11th, the PlayStation 3 outsold the Wii in Japan. Bolstered by very strong sales of Shin Sangoku Musou 5 and a cheaper 40 GB model, the PS3 jumped from regular weekly sales in the ten to twenty-thousands to an admirable 55,924, outselling the Wii by some 20,000 units. That’s in sharp contrast to the recently released NPD Group sales data for October, which doesn’t take into account the recent price drop in North America. The Nintendo DS still sits uncontested at the top of the charts, in little danger of being outsold by its competitors any time soon.
We’re sure that the folks at Sony have already cracked open the good bottle of sake, as this hardware victory may be short lived.
Nintendo DS Lite – 78,854 PSP – 58,964 PlayStation 3 – 55,924 Wii – 34,546 PlayStation 2 – 9,043 Xbox 360 – 5,817Henry Jenkins runs the Comparative Media Studies (CMS) program at MIT. He also blogs more words per day than Kotaku. Over at his eponymous website, Jenkins has been posting articles about the various serious games projects MIT CMS students have undertaken over the years.
Titles covered include Revolution, a game about life in colonial Williamsburg; a series of handheld augmented reality games; Backflow, about the environmental issues of sewage; and Labyrinth, a game about math literacy.
Each post about the games includes a comprehensive article detailing its design and learning goals.
From Serious Games to Serious Gaming [Henry Jenkins]
