game development

I received an interesting e-mail this afternoon from the OMDC, the crown corporation which manages tax incentives and other programs for the entertainment industry in Ontario. They released a report today, titled Ontario 2012: Stimulating Growth in Ontario's Game Industry. From the report's cover letter:

I just did something I was meaning to do for a while, but hadn't gotten around to doing (until now). That is, put some old game designs of mine up on the site for people to read and enjoy.

Thank you Techdirt, for pointing out a recent column on Gamasutra in which "industry commentator Matt Matthews suggests" using artificial scarcity to increase download sales of games.

This evening, I headed downtown for a planning meeting for the Independent Games Project, an organization forming to provide game development experience for people hoping to break into industry. The guy behind the group, Matt Di Iorio, discussed his plans for how the organization would run, and we all contributed ideas for what would be the first project (or projects) developed by the IGP.

Dave Weller announced yesterday that a preview of XNA Game Studio 3.0 is out and about for people to play with. This CTP has all you need to start making games for Microsoft's Zune media player.

I picked up off the wire this morning an interesting opinion piece by former Eidos president Keith Boesky. It's partially a rant, but one that I believe is right-on – risk mitigation by publishers is one of the biggest reasons (if not the biggest reason) for developer failure.

The best indie game development jam in the world, TOJam, is coming back for its third year. I participated in the first event in 2006 (which is where I created Alien Abduction!), but my computer died right at the beginning of the second one, last year.

Considering that the first Thursday of the month was only two days after New Years, it's not surprising that the IGDA Toronto chapter moved the January gathering to a different date. It's more than just a regular meeting this month, however – there's a quartet of presentations this month, including Jason Della Rocca (the IGDA's executive director) and a guy from the OLPC project.

It'll be a blast. Come on out!

Via GameSetWatch, comes news of Toronto's No Media Kings setting up what they call the Artsy Games Incubator.

GarageGames, the producers of the Torque game engine and publishers of a number of indie games, has recently been purchased by American media conglomerate IAC. The official word is that nothing's changing at GG as a result of the purchase, and that the IAC purchase may lead to more opportunities for developers to get published via the company. CEO Josh Williams says it all his blog.

Here's hoping this makes the indie scene even more vibrant!