Handcrafted Games

Let's cut it short, this blog is discontinued ;-).

The fact is that I hardly find free times in my professional/personal life to get seriously involved in a project. Well, I fortunately still have free times, but not enough to do what I would like to do, and do it seriously. Writing lengthy and well documented tutorials is incredibly time consuming and I don't find any interest in writing small ones. I would like to write some very didactic stuff, so more people could get in the XNA/WP7 communty, and also because I really like to teach things and share knowledge, encourage vocations and so on. But I am glad that my tutorials are still quite visible and enjoyed, notably the one on Sgt. Conker's website.

Other reasons could be that blogs are dead now (long live micro-blogging?) and I fear that knowledges sharing will suffer of this. I am also a lot less visible than before. I took a little break from the community and it had the consequence for me to be mostly anonymous by now. I lost my reputation points on the AppHub (not to mention than my nickname has changed with my appliance to the WP7 dev program) and I haven't been in touch with the people I usually speak to for so months now. I am also twitting a lot less dev related stuff, as I switched to researcher mode over developer.

So, what now? My other website, Daily XNA, is still alive and kicking. Well, not sure if kicking is the appropriate word here, the XNA community is living many mutations right now, there's less great people, no more blogs' update from the best MVPs and the current state of the indie landscape are making Steam and mobile platforms the ways to go. I really wonder what will be the future of indie distribution.

I am also still teaching Game Design and Development to master degree students this year, with some Kinect goodness to promote Natural User Interfaces. I'm really happy with this, as it quenches my thirst of knowledge sharing.

I still have some long term dev projects, but I have lost my appetite to commercially publishing them, making them to progress really really slowly. It's really a hobby more than everything, but it allowed me to get in touch with some nice people. Especially an alcoholic one from UK ^^. Still trying to create a French XNA/WP7 User Group, but the whole French community seems to be composed of 5 people... Not to mention students that can't participate to such groups because of geographical restrictions.

Oh and, I'm quite surprised that I am proposed jobs through this blog. Surprisingly, I received offers for game related positions but also for teaching activities. And I'm also glad that the ones who interviewed me are still in touch with me despite the fact I am not looking for a job right now.

One last word, I'm trying to organize a Global Game Jam site in the east of France this year. Still working out details but nothing is confirmed yet. I hope to clarify things up by the end of the month.

Thanks for visiting this blog! And don't forget that you can still get in touch with me via twitter or linkedin.

Yesterday, I wanted to test the new Alan Wake DLC, 'The Signal', but to my surprise, my console told me that the game disk is unreadable... By unreadable, I mean that the dashboard doesn't even load the preview image nor the name of the disk, but still recognize it as a game. But when I want to launch the game, an error pops up with the 'unreadable disk' message. Sometimes, it even recognizes the disk as a DVD and plays the 'put this disk into a 360 console in order to play' (similar message when you try to put a 360 game in a PC).

So I tried everything the xbox support website is suggesting. Clearing the cache, testing without the hard drive plugged, etc.

So I tried other games. Some are working, some aren't... Thankfully, I have a second 360 (a day-one console I replaced by a Super Elite last year) and used it to test my games. Guess what? Same problem... Some of my games are definitely unreadable. Don't tell me that the disks may be damaged, since they are all new and unscratched (I double-checked this, since I'm kinda a maniac in regards of my collectibles).

Here's the list of the affected games: Alan Wake, Mass Effect 2 (disk 1 & 2), Resonance of Fate (End of Eternity), Darksiders and Skate 3 (I didn't even played to this one).

The point is that this list represents exactly all the games I bought in 2010. The only one which is not in the list is Red Dead Redemption. All of my other games are working (and will hopefully continue to work).

Well, so, what now? Are both of my consoles having the exact same problem? Are my games really rotten? Is there any reason why only the games I bought in 2010 are affected?

I'm actually completely puzzled and quite nervous about this.

Do you know what “crowd funding” is? It is a way to produce entertainments. Basically, you allow people to participate to the base funding of a project and they will get a part of the benefits (depending on how much they funded, and if there’s any benefits) and/or have special opportunities to participate to the production. Crowd funding originally started with indie film makers unable to raise enough funds and asked people on the internet to donate while promising a return on investment (ROI). They successfully raised $50,000 and shot their film. The model is now adapted to many types of art, mainly music. Websites like mymajorcompany allow artists to present their works and people freely pick their favorite and donate. Then, if the artist is successfully produced and release an EP, they will receive a part of the benefits. Crowd funding recently reached the adult industry with a twist: in addition to the ROI and depending on the amount you gave, you are able to meet the actors or to shot your own scene… (I said shooting, not acting).

Crowd funding is not about giving all the production decisions to the people funding you. It is a catchy way to get money directly from your public. People will not have control over what you’re doing, you’re only giving them the feeling they’re producing your project. The typical model involves incremental “goodies” depending on the amount of money given. For example, if people give $1 to $10, they’ll get a ROI when the project is released; if they give $11 to $50, ROI + a free copy of the product; if they give $100+, they’ll meet the team, shake hands etc. up to giving people the opportunity to influence something (like choosing the name of a song, usually something not critical to your project). The advantages of crowd funding are that you barely have to invest yourself and you’re directly get in touch with your clients (which would buy your product anyway if they’re already ok to donate). Crowd funding may not end well: the project could be discontinued, or not sell well. That's why participating in such projects is usually called a “bet”.

So now, what about Indie games adopting crowd funding? You’ll maybe tell me that most indie developers allow people to donate, pre-order etc. But are they attracting people with something else? Most are not. We can mention Unknown Worlds, allowing pre-order on Natural Selection 2 while giving the SDK and special alpha demos to the people who pre-ordered. Puppygames are also usually offering beta testing to pre-orders. But none are adopting the “internet producers” model by giving back a ROI.

The big question is: will the benefits large enough to remunerate the producers AND to enable the indie studios to keep going?

I really wonder if this production model could fit to the Indie game industry. I think that people are now used to play some indie games and may be aware of how such games are produced. So, there should be enough people interested in producing indie games. It would be a little like a “pay what you want” model, except that people are getting involved at the earliest production stage of a project.

Like most computer freaks, I started playing and programming quite soon, at the age of 7 I presume. My taller sister received an Amstrad CPC, a quite ironical fact since she was spending her time gossiping and using it as an hype decoration to her desk. After having rolled myself on the floor crying a few times, I successfully got parental rights over the Amstrad. Till the age of 16, I was considered by my family as a strange introverted kid. I don’t remember myself to have been such a scary kid, I had just interests different than playing G.I. Joe and watching TV all the day long, I even was a talkative kid to my parents but the fact that I had different hobbies compared to “standard” kids made me strange.

Where things start puzzling me: recently, I was in my local multimedia store looking for the latest Jeff Lindsay (Dexter anyone?) when I stumbled upon something strange and very moody by the video games shelves. Two games were playable, namely Dante’s Inferno and New Super Mario Bros Wii. Three kids were roaming around, maybe 6 to 8 years old. I’d like to remind the audience that Dante’s is a 18+ rated game, fully playable just next to a Mario game. This sounded to me like a “spot the differences” game. Well, the two oldest of them were playing Dante’s Inferno, while the third, a freaky-6-years-old-pale-kid, was staring at Dante slashing anything to ham sacks, mouth and eyes full open, like if he saw a one mile tall free Lego pyramid. I just stopped myself and scratched my head. Not that this was not common, but this particular kid freaked me out. I had to pass behind him, so I excused myself so he would let me pass. He didn’t moved. He didn’t even noticed me. So I poked him on the shoulder. He didn’t moved… I’ve lifted him and dropped him a little bit off so I could pass. He didn’t even noticed I lifted him… I think that if I wasn’t carefully lifting him, I could have obstructed his vision and he may have patched a leather cross upon his chest and started attacking me.

It may looks like an isolated case, but a few days later, I had a very bad “déjà-vu” in the very same settings. Kids, same store, God of War 3 VS Sega All Star Racing, a scary-blond-kid and two other kids extravagantly happy to put to the light centaurs’ stomach. If this happens quite often, does it mean it is a common fact by today standards? I hope not. Was I such a kid? Obviously not. Most importantly, will my children be zombie gamers? Gotta prepare myself for the outbreak… I don’t feel like it is a normal situation and I’m a little bit afraid about it: I grew up with games and by actual culture evolution, I expect my kids to do so to. I don’t know what could make a kid so scary: being exposed to games with parent looking over them or not being exposed at all. For instance, the kid of a friend grew up playing Quake 3 with his father on LAN, fraging at the age of 6 and he’s a totally normal teenager now. I wonder if those strange kids grew up with games and which one.

Anyway, I don’t agree with the fact that big stores are demoing 18+ games next to a Mario game.

I would like to introduce my personal portal to you: The Daily XNA.

The story behind it: I'm a RSS/Atom feeds fan and my usage of the internet, my various interests and other things imply me to have my web browser crawling under bookmark entries, including cascading RSS. I'm also a mobile user and use about 2 to 4 different devices to access the internet during a single day... So I had to organize my bookmark.

The Daily XNA is my solution to XNA links organization. I tried to make it an “one-stop” page to have a quick look at the most relevant news feeds. Why not making myself an iGoogle page? Because I wanted something lightweight, quicker to access (remenber I often switch between devices) and more convenient to me. Since it is a public website, I thougth it may profit to people sharing an interest in XNA related news. Feel free to suggest me any change, feeds etc. and if you find it useful.

Welcome to handcrafted-games.com, my personal blog.

Who am I?

My nickname is Mister Helmut, I am researcher in computer science and addicted to video games and development.

You may find more about me on the about page.

What to expect from this website?

XNA development, game industry and gamer thoughts related articles.