We’ve put up a new game for y’all – the follow-up to Froggish Swimmer, Frozen Swimmer!
Again made by Daniel Remar (long before we even released the first one), this one steps up the challenge significantly, and adds a lot more game mechanics.
And hats!
I just read an article over at Gamasutra about the appalling work conditions during the development of LA Noir, and about ego-tripping upper management not even bothering giving credits to the developers, if they are no longer with the company at project completion. Even though some have been working on it for years.
This is just the last report in a long string of reports on how big-budget projects are draining the life out of the developers, and then not giving proper dues.
In the above mentioned article, the comments section blew up over the need of a union in this industry. I couldn’t agree more, and frankly I don’t understand how this has not already happened. For pete’s sake, we’ve been collectively at it for 3-4 decades now. Isn’t that even longer than it took the movie industry to unionize?
I have a vision of creating the most attractive work-place in Sweden. I don’t know how to get there exactly, except to care immensely about my team, and listen to their needs (and of course try and give them that). But I know I’m not gonna get there by making them crunch indefinitely, not giving them appraisal or credit, and generally fucking them over.
I recently found out that there was an old saying – “the most important thing for a company is the customer”, ie. get the money first. It was mentioned because now it’s apparently been replaced with “the most important thing for a company is the team”. My reaction to that was “yes, duh?” The team is everything – and has always been everything, for me.
I have contacted some of the commenters about actually doing something now. There’s been talk about this for a time now, but it seems to fizzle out between scandals. But seeing as the scandals now seem to continue back-to-back, hopefully these discussions will result in some action this time.
I’ll be sure to revisit this subject again. The first thing I’m gonna do now is to research this, see what’s out there. Maybe there’s something I’ve missed?
We have updated the Play section with another entry! It’s a game that’s been around for awhile, and posted about before, but definitely deserve a spot among our other prototypes.
Shoot Stop Lollipop is a game about time, and explosions. And Lollipops of course. If you’re curious about how/why it was made, don’t miss the Developers Statement!
Next up is a sequel to Froggish Swimmer, but we’ll sit on that for a couple of days or so. Stay tuned.
Remar here, ready to tell you about the joys of Nintendo 3DS development! Today Gustav found that the largest factor in our loading times was the loading screen itself, and our new QA guy has recovered from motion sickness after playing our game. Apparently a medical history of motion sickness and stereoscopic 3D don’t mix…
In the graphical department, Anton and I discussed the best way to set a rotating chainsaw on fire. We can’t have clusters of them flying through the air with the fire coming out the wrong end – that would just be embarrasing. For some reason there’s also been an increase of frogs in our concept art and games lately.
During lunchtime and after work, Anton, Mattias and I play assorted fighting games and argue over the superiority of MK9, SSBM, GG:AC, and MvC3, not to mention arcade sticks vs gamepads. It’s the nerdiest time of day, and I think the more “serious” companies in the corridor wonder if we ever work at all. Every time they walk by our room, I happen to be staring at the screen or stretching my arms (such as right now), which probably doesn’t help.
Anyway, developing for the 3DS means a fine balance between interesting use of graphics and plain gimmicks, and in some cases opinions differ. We don’t really “think in 3D” considering that both of our games are 2D, gameplay-wise, so we rather use it as an extra feature. Same with the stylus, it’s just another way to navigate the menues. I may be oldschool, but I think buttons often work best.
Why did we include an Xperia Play in a 3DS post?
That’s it for my introduction – next time I’d like to go more in-depth with one of our games. “Designer” is a fuzzy job title, so I might also just talk about what I do here at Ludosity, and what you can expect if you want to work at a small game studio.
We had a very successful launch of our new Play section last week, with our first game Froggish Swimmer drawing fair amounts of attention to itself. We have more titles lined up, expect them to start trickle this week!
Also, each game will be accompanied with a “developers statement” that will give some background to how/why the game was made. I think that will be a nice touch – I know I’m interested in other devs reasoning behind their games, so I hope others will be in ours as well. Daniel Remar has the first one up already.
We will also start to seriously blog about our main development. We’re currently working with a publisher to bring out two Nintendo 3DS titles this year, but haven’t been able to talk much about it yet (..publishers… =). But now the lid has been lifted, and Daniel Remar will be first out with some ramblings about flaming chainsaws or something.
Good news everyone!
All of you who have bought IndieGamesPack can now have all 6 games redeemed on Desura! There’s a special page for it over at Desura, right here.
Two of the games are also redeemable on Steam, our own Bob Came In Pieces, and Azteka! Stay tuned for instructions on how to unlock those.
Check out our newly launched Webgames portal and our first game Froggish Swimmer! It’s the first in a string of smaller games that we’ll make available for free.
Please let us know what you think of it!
After a bit of live tweaking (sorry about that), we have now taken the first step towards our relaunch of our webpage (and indeed our company)! You’ll notice the new logo, which is slightly tweaked and have dropped the “interactive” part. Also a new section, “Play”, which will soon contain a bunch of free browser games.
These games are basically our prototypes for our coming titles. We’ll test the waters by simply putting the prototypes (plus some degree of polish of course) on the webpage for anyone to play. We’re putting a fair deal of resources on our “Prototyping Factory”, so expect many games to come!
We are also re-forming our company to a proper stockholding/LLC (the Swedish equivalent), hence the new logo and name (dropping ‘interactive’), and we are taking in some investments which will fund the Prototyping Factory.
Exciting times!
Bob is included in a summer promotion over at www.indiegamespack.com ! It’s 6 great games for $10, so it’s an awesome value =)
Here are the games:
They add up to a value of $59, so to get them all for $10 is a steal. Check it out now!
It sure has been quiet here on the blog lately, but not so internally. We have two un-announced Nintendo 3DS projects under development, and we are working hard on finding the best platform/s for Ittle Dew.
The two Nintendo 3DS titles will be revealed during E3, but they are already well underway and a lot of fun to play. Why two titles? Mostly just because we can – we share alot of tech between them so it’s actually quite effective to work this way. And besides, we’re bursting with ideas, so there’s no shortage of gameplay ideas to implement.
Ittle Dew, which was announced a while back, is on pause as far as active development goes, but we are laying the groundwork in terms of publishing / funding and what platforms will suit it and us best. The plan is actually to have epicsode 1 out in time for Christmas this year. But don’t quote me on that.
It will be a very busy 2011, but that’s how we like it!