There’s a nice article in today’s Baltimore Sun business section on Zynga East and the Baltimore area’s inroads in social game development. Plus, I’m quoted about social games vs. PC and console games.
Category: Uncategorized (Page 4 of 8)
Throwing elections with an electronic voting machine is too easy these days. Does your voting machine run Pac Man? This one does, without even breaking the “tamper-proof” seals!
My game, Starry Eye, is on the App Store. It’s an arcade shooter, straight out of 1979. You play as the little blue guy with the tongue. Reviews wanted badly!
I’ve posted the entire project online at www.workly.com/starryeye/se10.zip
Thanks very much to Johnathan Moriarty, Eve Addison, Charles Lohr, Greg Aring, Fernando Lynch, Mary Lewis, Jenn Dahlke, and Bryan Eastlack for putting on a great show at the UMBC BetaScape table(s!) at ArtScape this weekend. I’m sure I forgot someone, please email me to let me know…
Brian Eastlack and Jenn Dahlke (both UMBC '10) demonstrating their game to Governor Martin O'Malley.
Congratulations to all on a show well-done!
Way to go, TeamSuperCool! Another UMBC student game, and they’ve got 60 reviews!
I’ve got it– of course. Akisakio is usually the first thing my kids run when I leave my phone within reach.
Congratulations to Jen and Brian! I don’t know whether I’m the first sale or not, but they got my dollar!
The IRC fellows class that I am teaching has been collaborating with me on “GeoMelee,” a real-time strategy game that uses iPhone GPS to let you play in the real world.
COaP has accepted our game; we’ll be running a few sessions June 4th or 5th up in Brooklyn.
All game pieces have a latitude and longitude; you see them by running the game on your iPhone and looking at a map of your location.
credits page
Ericson Crystal Field
game screenshot
Other than that, it’s a simplified version of StarCraft: there are “crystals” on the map. You build “extractors” to harvest them, which allows you to build more things. To build in a location, you have to stand there with your phone. There is fighting.
The map editor is online at http://userpages.umbc.edu/~brt1/app/map/.
The rest will be on the app store as soon as humanly possible.
UMBC’s Game Developers’ Club had their annual Digital Entertainment Conference last weekend. The highlight for me was watching UMBC students demoing their games for Tom Fulp, the founder of Newgrounds.com. How I wish I’d taken a picture! Dang.
Katie Hirsch (UMBC ’04) started at 9 –sharp– with her excellent “So You Wanna Get Into Games” presentation. Other presenters included Tom Fulp, Eric Jorden (UMBC ’08, and GDC’s founder), Helen Zhang (UMBC ’09, now at Zynga!), Young Vo, Matt Berner, and Ian Frazier. Tom Truong (’09) was there, he’s at Firaxis Big Huge now– maybe next year, we’ll get him to talk.
Congratulations to Gini Bailey, Jonathan Moriarty, Matt Song, Jon Schubbe, and the other GDC members who helped make the day a success.
“Slug” is a game being developed in our team-based game class. It just won 2nd place at the 2010 West Virginia Animation Festival.
Link to the announcement: link.
Link to the game: link
Way to go, Team SLUG!
There’s a long interview on Gamasutra with local game designer Brian Reynolds (co-founder of Big Huge Games, now with Zynga) about what it’s like to transition from big strategy games to facebook and social games. Worth the read.