Inside Lacrosse College Lacrosse 2010 hit the Indie Games channel. While it does not feature actual, licensed college lacrosse teams, it does have the title sponsorship of the sport’s top magazine in the United States. The game costs 400 Microsoft points, and lets you choose from 60 teams (or create your own side) in single-play action or in a simulated season of up to 14 games with a two-round championship. It features Xbox Live and LAN support, stats tracking and more.

“In the 12 years we’ve been publishing Inside Lacrosse, there is one topic that’s been addressed in letters to the editor, probably more than all the other individual topics combined: When is someone going to produce a lacrosse video game?” Bob Carpenter, the Inside Lacrosse founder, said in a statement announcing the game. “Producing a multi-million dollar game just isn’t going to happen for a sport our size, so this Indie format – particularly when it can be played online against others – is the way to go.”

The game is the product of a year’s worth of development begun by Dundee, Scotland studio Triple B Games and Carlo Sunseri, a Pittsburgh-area businessman and lacrosse coach. College Lacrosse 2010.

B&H Publishing Group has put together “Bible Navigator X” for the Xbox 360. Unlike the Gideons, they’re not giving it out for free. It’ll run you 400 points. Yeah? Well, the God I believe in isn’t short of Microsoft Points, mister …

According to Media Bistro, Aaron Linne, B&H’s executive director of digital marketing, said:

The Xbox isn’t just secular entertainment anymore. We can use technology that other people developed to study Scriptures through a new medium. Some people are just more comfortable with a controller in their hands than a book.

The version used is the Holman Christian Standard Bible. I’m not sure how that one differs, but then, I was raised in a part of the country where there literally are bumper stickers that say “If It’s Not King James, It’s Not Real Bible.” So if you drive that truck I saw on I-40 in Burke County, this probably won’t appeal to you.

Who’s reviewing this? Totilo talked about “XBLA Chasers” and this qualifies, so I volunteer him!

The Bible on Your Xbox [Media Bistro via Destructoid]

I took a look at the virtual pumpkin carving sim not too long before Halloween and liked what I saw. So I’m glad to see its done well enough for itself to make the top 10 purchased Indie Games on Xbox Live.

In total, three Halloween-themed games made top slots on the Indie list. Besides Pumpkin Chop, Halloween HD made the cut at number eight and I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES!!!1 held the number two spot. With a name like that, I can understand how it did so well — I don’t even need to play it.

Sadly, though, Halloween is over. So I won’t expect to see Pumpkin Chop on anyone’s top 10 ’til next year at least. But if you’ve got a copy, I guess you could practice your design skills for next year’s Kotaku Pumpkin Patch.

LIVE Activity for week of Oct. 26th [Major Nelson]

College LaCrosse 2010 is on the Xbox Live Indie Games channel and, yeah, yeah, my smirking lede aside, a team sports title on that service definitely deserves some recognition. It carries the sponsorship of Inside Lacrosse magazine, but it does not, however, feature actual universities – for obvious licensing reasons. But some team colours do look familiar. See the video below.

The game costs 800 Microsoft points. Unfortunately, the roster editor only allows you to change players’ names to “Seth,” “Trevor” or “Landon.”*

College LaCrosse 2010 [Site]

* – This is not a fact, it is a cheap-shot.

It won’t be long now before the Zune HD is swamped with indie game titles, thanks to these new extensions freely available for XNA Game Studio 3.1. The new extensions add the ability to target and develop for the Zune HD, support for the device’s touch screen controls, and accelerometer support. The post suggests that aside from adjusting controls, porting over games should be relatively easy.

So the developers have the tools to create the games, but there’s still no word on a distribution channel in which they can peddle their wares. It can’t be long in coming, however, making me wonder if I should add the shiny music player to my growing collection of shiny music players.

XNA Game Studio 3.1 Zune Extensions [XNA Creators Club Forums thanks Epsicode!]

It’s definitely a character-swap game for Easy Golf, as some guessed when the footage was released. The good news is that Easy Golf, by Barkers Crest Studio was a pretty damn fully featured game for an indie download, including six courses and a course editor.
Avatar Golf adds a multiplayer mode that accommodates eight players, and friends can join a round in progress. There are customisable weather effects and backgrounds. And, of course, you get to play as your avatar. It’s 400 Microsoft points.

Playing it myself, the terrain effects are not terribly sophisticated and putting is a little too much on the easy side. Then again, this is a much more casual version of golf, designed to be played among friends.

The trial version is timed, so you’ll be able to play a few holes before the game asks for an unlock.

Indie Games Featuring Avatars [360 Avatar, thanks Jim M.]

In its “All New” issue, discussing the cutting edge of trends in American culture, New York Magazine lauds four indie titles for “ushering in a golden age of smart, beautiful, and really weird games.”

Singled out for praise in a feature titled “If Jackson Pollock Were a Gamer” are De Blob, World of Goo, Echochrome and Flower, coming out soon on PSN.

“Independent, low-budget movies changed Hollywood. Niche cable shows revolutionized television. Digital music toppled record labels. But for decades, console video games have remained overwhelmingly corporate,” New York mag writes. The drop in development costs and the opportunities presented by digital distribution have given rise to art houses “unshackled from the blockbuster-or-bust mentality of the big corporations,” and free to deliver “a new golden age of smart, beautiful, and really weird games.”

High praise indeed. Chalk down another one for the serious discussion of video games as an art form.

The New Art Form: If Jackson Pollock Were a Gamer [New York Magazine]

MacOS and Linux’s install base is dwarfed by Windows, so in terms of which platform to develop for, that ends the argument right there. Right? Wrong, says Wolfire Games‘ Jeff Rosen.

His case is largely for the indie community, and anyone seeking growth — so it’s not a challenge to the top publishers to take us all back to the Gil Amelio days when they actually wrote more than one AAA title for the Mac in a year. Or five. But at first blush, one can see shared values in the indie and Linux communities (and to some extent in MacOS), so the idea that they represent an extremely profitable five percent, given the right game, is not a real stretch.

Rosen, in his company’s official blog (picked up by Ars Technica) uses Wolfire’s game Lugaru as the lesson. According to their sales stats, the game’s Linux and MacOS versions account for 50 percent of its overall sales. “Not all five percents are created equal,” he says. For the right game, hee has a point.

Developing for MacOS and Linux has a word-of-mouth effect disproportionate to what you get with a game written for Windows, Rosen says. Maybe the spread isn’t as large, because of the numbers involved, but within those communities, that kind of endorsement can really drive sales. Lugaru’s went up 122 percent thanks to his decision to develop for those languages, he says.

“Having a Linux build meant coverage on Slashdot,” he says. “A lot of people heard about and supported Lugaru simply because we had a Linux build. … A small minority of your users will go crazy with your game and spread it all over the place. On the Internet, all it takes is one thread on a popular forum, and you’ve literally got hundreds or thousands of new visitors. Basically, a small amount of your users can make a huge difference for you.”

Two barriers stop the Linux/MacOS conversation before it gets started — the perception that it’s harder to develop on those two platforms, and the idea that they’re so unprofitable that only unusual up-front guarantees make it worthwhile.

“There is the famous case of Half-Life 2. Valve wanted a $1 million dollar advance on the Mac OS X version. No Mac developer has this kind of cash to front, and Apple decided not to foot the bill either, perhaps on principle of the unusual request. There is no technical reason that Mac users can’t have Half-Life 2–it’s simply messed up business development.”

It’s a reasonable argument if you keep it in its proper context — indie gaming, where developers with a good idea, their own agenda, and where Steam distribution serves their purposes just fine, can see some growth and throw Mac and Linux gamers a bone. No one’s suggesting this overrides the financial prerogatives of a mammoth like Electronic Arts or Activision. But it is something to consider.

Indie Dev Suggests Peers Should Support OS X, Linux Gaming [Ars Technica]
Why You Should Support MacOS and Linux [Wolfire Blog]

I know how it feels. It’s late on a Friday afternoon, you’re sitting in the office, you’re bored, and you wanna go to the pub home. But you can’t… not just yet.
This is where Flash Fridays comes in. I’ll be recommending a neat time-killing Flash or other browser-based game that makes that painful wait for pub time home time just a little bit less painful. So, who’s up for some Robokill?Robokill’s a top-down shooter that borrows its core gameplay from Robotron, but layers some extra RPG elements on top. You control your dude with WASD and are able to fire in any direction you can point the mouse. So, like Robotron and its more modern Geometry Wars style ilk, you’re moving constantly to avoid enemies and spraying bullets in all directions.
There’s money to collect, as well as other pick-ups that provide weapon upgrades. It’s got an inventory screen, shops and everything! But at heart, it’s all about moving and shooting, moving and shooting. Which is probably all my brain can handle on a Friday afternoon.

[Robokill]

Video, of course, takes its root from the Latin word for “see.” So a “video game” for those who have lost their sight might look like a paradox, but it doesn’t sound like one.