• Cracked have posted a list of 5 Creepy Ways Video Games Are Trying to Get You Addicted. I don’t particularly think these are creepy or rocket-science but the article makes a few good points about virtual game items and rewarding your players to keep their interest in your game.

• Kotaku have presented a ridiculously not-to-scale graph of the different ways gamers use to decide whether to purchase a particular title.  This sentence sums it up nicely:  ”You don’t have to influence everyone – just the ones who influence everyone else”.

• 11 months after their last post GMNews have inexplicably returned with a post about the GMPhysics DLL which, like the site, has not been maintained for a long time.

“Noted independent developer Cactus [Jonatan Söderström] received the inaugural Nuovo Award for his abstract visual puzzle game, Tuning. The Nuovo Award honors “abstract, shortform, and unconventional game development which advances the medium and the way we think about games.”

The Nuovo Award was judged by a separate, smaller juried panel of notable game and art world figures, including previous IGF Innovation/Nuovo Award winner Jason Rohrer (Passage), Area/Code’s Frank Lantz, N+ co-creator Mare Sheppard, EA division head and art-game creator Rod Humble, and more.”

via IGF.com

“I’m not gonna take up time with ranting,” Cactus said. “I’m just gonna start the party tonight.” Soderstrom played a somewhat surreal music video, and left the stage without another word.

Once a healthy section of the audience started clapping to the beat, session organizer Phil Fish stepped up to the mic and said, “Hey, to everyone sleeping out there — dance party.”

Nobody started dancing, sadly.

via Destructoid

• Ted Lauterbach has redesigned his RottenTater.com website and it is looking very pretty. Ted has designed games such as Fetus, Vatn Squid and Super Space Rogues.

• I came across a rather nice video introducing the concept of views in Game Maker.  I do question the need for them in the example application nevertheless I thought the demonstration using printouts of a Game Maker room was a clever idea.

By sheer coincidence I was reading about the history of Lemmings just a few days ago (is a good read). Russell was responsible for the game concept and name of the iconic game which was ported to many platforms and is estimated to have sold over 15 million copies.

DMA (which since a takeover is now known as as Rockstar North) will perhaps be better known to younger readers as the creators of the Grand Theft Auto franchise. Russell went on to found Visual Science Ltd who were responsible for the PlayStation version of the game.

If you are interested here is an interview with Russell Kay albeit a few years old.  I think this development is the most exciting to happen at YoYo Games for a long time – possibly ever – as it demonstrates that they are serious about substantially developing the Game Maker brand.

There game is in a playable state but there are some problems with speed, a few graphical glitches and background music has not yet been implemented.

YoYo Games have hired a Chief Technical Officer in Dundee and will be making an announcement “indirectly” related to Game Maker for PSP tomorrow.

Yesterday’s downtime which affected all YoYo Games services including the Game Maker Community was caused by “simple maintenance” which went wrong following a firewall conflict. Around 30 minutes of downtime was followed by a period where games on the main YoYo Games were without screenshots.

Photo credit: Dundee by Flickr user macieklew, released under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.

Linked which is part of the UpUrLoad file hosting website utilises 39dll to make it easy to maintain a global highscores table.

Created tables can be viewed directly within your game (there is no need to launch a browser window when sending or retrieving scores). Scores are sent as encrypted md5 strings which include a secret key visible only in the creator’s Linked account.  There are versions available for Game Maker 6-8.

This is probably the easiest to use online highscore solution for Game Maker games that I have seen.

Although the idea is plausible and there are always lots of volunteers in the beginning the initial thrill wears off in just a few short weeks.  If a strong group is not built up by then the projects slowly deteriorate until it is just a small group of elite leaders that are talking to the wall. Here is a look at just a few of the many problems that plague these so called “Community Games”.

1. Lack of proper leadership
Although from the outside it just looks like the position with all the glory and the honor (and the mod powers!), the leadership position plays a very critical role in the overall out come of the game. Too often the leaders of these projects are relatively inexperienced in creating games, much less leading a group of lots of people. More experienced members who would have the knowledge and technical know-how to run such a project realize all the responsibility involved and generally tend to run in the opposite direction.

2. If you want it that way then why not you do it?
A problem I have encountered in many of the games out there is large groups making decisions, that are generally not their business. For example, why should the sprite makers and artists choose what program the sound and music crew must use to make music? It doesn’t really affect them. The musicians, who are hopefully experienced in their field should be able to make a decision themselves, independently from the rest of the community. Why should the people outside the music department get a say in something that does not affect them, but it will affect the musicians, and possibly make them leave.

3. Activity Levels
The activity and devotion of members in the project is easily one of the top deciding factors in the overall speed of the game. As with most projects (including community games) activity and enthusiasm is always exuberant in the beginning of the game.  Unfortunately after the initial rush activity levels start to diminish. This is partially because people get bored with the game or perhaps just wanted to see how it is progressing without contributing. It could also be because at the beginning of the project, there is not a lot which can be done. Leadership roles are still being established and story lines are being written. The challenge is having something for everyone at all times that people can work on.

Another interesting angle that the GMCG is taking is to name a weekly “Top Contributer”. They are also thinking of awarding actual prizes to members as a way of saying thanks as well as an incentive to other members. However, we have yet to see a prize given out. I find this also very true with media groups that try to produce weekly or monthly projects. Viewers like the idea initially, but since they only want to tune in (or read it as the case may be) now and then, the people that run it get discouraged after and give up.

4. Group Decisions
Although some game projects just set up a monarchy and have one person call all the shots, that doesn’t really hold with the spirit of a community game. Alternatives include having a small group of “leaders” that make decisions for members, or having all-out community votes. Unfortunately community votes take lots of time and that can bore members that just want to work on the game. One of the alternatives to having votes or monarchs is to have community discussions or “meetings” if you will. The people that are working on the game will all go on a set chat room at a predetermined time and discuss the aspects of the game, as well as the pros and cons of new ideas. One of the downfalls though is that people are spread out over many timezones and have different schedules which makes it hard for everyone to get their fair say.

5. On-Lookers
As with many group events, there are always people that sit on the sideline and watch before they jump in and do it. While having “contributor of the week” and giving out cash (or other forms of) prizes are good, that is not always enough to get people to join in. Group leaders need to think of creative ways to get these people “off the bleachers” (or computer chairs in this case) and into the project.

There have been very few changes to the YoYo Games homepage since the launch of the site back in 2007 (see screenshots at the end of post). First things first – I am glad to see the cheesy 1990s marquee has gone, but there are still several features that make me ask ‘why?’.

1. Why isn’t the Game Maker logo on the homepage?  Does the casual site user know what “GM 8.0″ is and why they should download it?  Sales of Game Maker account for 90% of YoYo Games’ revenue and more users will result in more quality games which can be uploaded to the site.
2. Why is so much space given over to news that is often more than a month old?
3. Who decided that puzzle and shooter games deserve more attention than platform and arcade games?  Arcade games are both more child-friendly and outnumber the ’shooters’ category both in the number of games on the site and the number of featured games.
4. Why do the most popular games continue to get so much exposure?  Sure they can be listed somewhere but this space could be better used to highlight more recent creations.  I think this makes the site look stale.
5. Why do the spotlight games have numbers?  (Just visual).  Also why only 2 lines of descriptive text?  Far more words are given to the blog posts (see 2).
6. Why is space given to listing a games author rather than a  description or larger screenshot?  Who made a game really won’t be of interest to the casual browser.

YoYoGames.com homepage over time:

• Something which will no doubt be reported in many places:  The deadline for people wishing to upgrade a version of Game Maker 7 purchased in 2009 to version 8 for free is at the end the month.  Surely anyone who cared about Game Maker would have done this already…

• A quick blog post about someone creating their first iPhone game using the Unity 3D game development engine.