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Xeno Overpass: Frunch Jam

This past Friday, the Collective came together for a 13 person, 1-hour game jam. Ziba’s concept: randomly assign production roles to members of the Collective, and randomly select three words for a theme. The result was Xeno Overpass, a game about xenogamy and two other concepts I can’t quite remember. The rules:

  1. Use the Z and / (slash) keys to make your aliens jump.
  2. Alien 1 wins by marrying Alien 2 (which happens if they touch on their sides).
  3. Alien 2 wins by avoiding Alien 1 until it dies.
  4. Either alien dies/loses by being hit by a car.

You can watch the gripping documentary above or play Xeno Overpass here or check out the press kit.

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Planned in Boston: Games are Better When We Do Them Together

IMG_3224It’s not unusual to hear stories of big successes on the part of small development teams. Two-person teams will sell millions of units of a quirky title, as was the case for Super Meat Boy and World of Goo. But those are the success stories; other independent developers struggle with the challenges of being small. Those who set up shop in the Boston area, though, can become part of a supportive community that will help get them over the hurdles and into success stories of their own.

Read more at Boston.com/State of Play.

Ichiro Speaks at GDC China: First steps and avoiding pitfalls

Dejobaan’s Ichiro Lambe spoke at GDC China in Shanghai this past month. The focus was on starting an independent studio, and the talk touched on 9 common pitfalls that plague all new small game dev businesses. Gamasutra posted a writeup of the talk:

Ichiro Lambe has learned a lot of hard lessons since he founded independent studio Dejobaan (AaaAAAAAaaaaA: A Reckless Disregard For Gravity) over twelve years ago. At a talk at the Indie Game Summit this week at GDC China, Lambe whittled these down to the nine common pitfalls that most indie studios are in danger of facing.

Spoiler: Don’t do a 3-person MMORPG as your first title.

Dejobaan to speak on procedural content generation at MIGS 2012

Ichiro Lambe of Boston studio Dejobaan will speak about Procedural Content Generation (PCG) on November 14th at the 2012 Montreal International Game Summit. The Procedural Content Generation wiki defines “PGC” thusly:

Procedural content generation (PCG) is the programmatic generation of game content using a random or pseudo-random process that results in an unpredictable range of possible game play spaces.

It’s both the Holy Grail and flying car of video games — a panacea always 5 years off. What’s the hold-up, why will PCG be vital to us over the next 10 years, and why should you be thinking more seriously about it in your game design? Dejobaan has used PCG within its award-winning 2009 indie title, AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! — A Reckless Disregard for Gravity, and has been developing techniques for its upcoming, entirely procedurally-generated Drop That Beat Like an Ugly Baby.

Read more here.