Brandon Boyer

Why I'm going to Indiecade (and you probably should, too): Pt. 2

Continuing on from my last post on why I've decided to spend October 1st through 4th at Indiecade, and expect you should as well, conference organizers have revealed more of what to expect from the four days, including highlights of its keynote from none less than former Maxis head Will Wright.

Wright, you'll remember, recently departed the company to head his long-time incubator side-project the Stupid Fun Club, and -- given Day 2's theme of "art and innovation" -- Wright will be focusing on what he's cooking up in the Fun Club.

Apart from Wright, day two will also see talks from Avaloop, the indie virtual world company behind their "self-expression, communication, environmental awareness" focused Papermint, Arts Game Innovation Lab director Tracy Fullerton on working with video artist Bill Viola on The Night Journey, an iPhone panel by the RadioFlare, Ruben and Lullaby, and Eliss teams, and Uncharted designer Richard Lemarchand talking with Giant Sparrow designer Ian Dallas, creator of void-painting game The Unfinished Swan.

Indiecade has also sent Offworld more information on the Day One conversation between Katamari Damacy's Keita Takahashi, Flower's Jenova Chen and thatgamecompany's Robin Hunicke, who have clarified that their talk will be a brainstorming session on "Fresh Ideas for First and Third-Person Shooters". Takahashi will discuss his theoretical FPS/TPS "where characters grow as they succeed," Chen will "brainstorm ways to make an FPS/TPS where the players have to be nice to each other," and Hunicke will talk about her own game where "shooting created things instead of destroying them."

The full conference schedule has been posted to the Indiecade site, which will also see Sunday sessions themed around "opportunities for aspiring young gamers, including a special workshop on colleges and universities that offer degrees in gaming, and a special pitch session where young designers can get feedback on their game ideas, as well as a series of sessions dedicated to adults interested in entering the game industry. Sunday's program will include a premiere of a soon-to-be-published indie game."

I'll do a final post wrapping up all the games to be exhibited at Indiecade in the very near future, and might have more surprises in store, as well.

Brandon Boyer

Hey San Francisco: I'm coming to your town

A quick housekeeping note: in just an hour or so here I'll be on vacation through the end of the month, leaving Austin for the night-time wiles of San Francisco*. Steven, Lisa and Rob from over Gadgets' way will be keeping the site buoyed with the occasional post, as you will have already noticed, and I'll inevitably be popping in and out throughout next week if I stumble on something too amazing to not share.

For any Bay Area readers (games industry or no), I'm always happy to hear any suggestions for things to see and/or do throughout the week: send me a note at brandon@offworld.com or @brandonnn on twitter, should the need arise!

I know for sure a few of us will be seeing Anamanaguchi et al. at the upcoming 8bitSF show on the 30th -- I'll do a proper post later in the week as a reminder for anyone interested (as you should be).

Otherwise, play nice while I'm gone.

[* night-time wiles here represented by Chiho Aoshima's City Glow]

Steven Leckart

"Average gamer is 35, fat and bummed" [Really?]

MSNBC reports on a new study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine that claims the average gamer has a higher BMI than non-gamers — oh p.s., this also translates to "lower extroversion... and mental-health concerns."

While this doesn't sound all that fishy, I feel like it's also just reinforcing a pretty ridiculous stereotype. The study isn't just about guy dudes either. Lady dudes are also facing the same issues.

MSNBC explains:

Female video-game players reported greater incidents of depression and "lower health status" than women who do not play video games, researchers said, while male players reported a higher BMI and more Internet use time than nonplayers.

Here's the kicker, imho. Participants ranged from age 19 to 90 (ok, cool). The study was conducted only in Seattle-Tacoma, because of the high Internet usage and because it's the 13th largest media market (hmmm). Oh, and did I mention there were only 552 subjects, all-totaled?

OK, everyone. Please reply anonymously (or not) in the comments with your age, height, weight, and whether you'd consider yourself depressed. I'd be willing to bet our findings differ from theirs... Or maybe not?

Regardless, take a look at Brandon. I don't know if he's depressed, but otherwise, he's not an "average" gamer by any means.

I do realize a comment thread isn't all that scientific. But now I'm just really curious.

[via ZDnet]

photo by hobbs luton

Brandon Boyer

Offworld Weekend Giveaway: Windosill & Space Invaders Extreme

In celebration of the now online playable (as opposed to the original downloadable) version of Patrick Smith's fantastic surreal adventure Windosill, the ongoing greatness of Backbone and Taito's Xbox Live Arcade version of Space Invaders Extreme, and partially because I've simply got codes to spare, let's have a weekend giveaway.

I'll make it easy, this time: at any point from now until let's say noon CST Monday morning, simply send me the following message on twitter: "I wanna be invaded. @brandonnn http://is.gd/10fzR" or "I do wanna see it at my Windosill. @brandonnn http://is.gd/10fzR" to specify which game you'd like (click either message to auto-generate the tweet, all due sincere apologies to both The Ramones and Arcade Fire).

I'll pick two people at random for Space Invaders Extreme, and three people for Windosill and send the codes from there. Note that while the Windosill codes will work worldwide, the SIE codes are available for North America only. Good luck!

Brandon Boyer

Do you make chiptunes? Help us score these retro-videos.

Here's the deal: Boing Boing has come into possession of some wicked footage of an anonymous Atari Computer Camp excursion that has everything you could ever want from grainy stock video: namely, yellowed and over-saturated money shots of retro-tech, and a bevy of over-eager and still-innocent pre-teens banging out BASIC to make crossword crosses out of the words Van Halen (no joke!) and gawping at the awesome limitless power and future of computers.

Here's the catch: neither of the videos -- the first clocking in at about seven minutes, and the second coming in at seven and a half -- have any sound at all.

And so: given Offworld/Boing Boing's sizable audience of chiptune/junk-tech musicians, we thought we'd throw the score open to you. If you're interested in submitting some of your music for the videos, which will be broadcast on BBtv at a later date, send an email to brandon@offworld.com with the subject line "Atari Computer Camp" and we'll dig through and select our favorites from there. Bonus points awarded for (but certainly not limited to) composing on actual 8-bit Atari tech.

Hit the jump for more inspirational shots of the kids at work (and play).

READ THE REST

Brandon Boyer

Rolling zen: Anna John's winning Rolando haiku

The results are in and the winner's been chosen: thanks to everyone who entered our quickie Rolando haiku contest over the weekend, and with the results tallied, game creator Simon Oliver has chosen 'annakjohns' entry, which goes a little something like this:

Noble Rolandos!
With tiny accessories,
Navigate my heart!

Says Oliver, "It reminds me a little of Father Abraham and the Smurfs with a zen twist!"

Anna -- you'll have your code in short order, and keep watching for more Rolando news sooner than later.

Rolando home [ngmoco, Hand Circus]

Brandon Boyer

Offworld giveaway: haiku your way to a free copy of Rolando

After taking part in Best Buy's ongoing promotion to give away a copy of Rolando with every iPod Touch or iTunes gift card ordered (which -- I'm not ashamed to admit -- I finagled solely to own a small piece of physical Rolando art), I've officially ended up with an extra code for the game to give away.

After a brief discussion with guest blogger Tiff, we've decided to give away the game in the form of a contest, so here's the rules: at any point over the weekend (let's say until midnight PST), send a twitter reply to @offworld with a Rolando-based haiku. You'll have 130 characters to work with, which I think should be enough.

Then, on Monday, Rolando creator Simon Oliver (@handcircus) will pick his favorite from the batch of entries, and vi-ola, the code will be yours.

Need some inspiration? Head over to the official Rolando site for video and screenshots, or download the free Lite version of the game for a taste.

Good luck!

[Note that, unfortunately, the code will only work for the U.S. iTunes App Store accounts. And, yes, deepest apologies that the @offworld account has devolved to a simple RSS repeater, I'll be working up some more creative uses in the near future. Follow my standard @brandonnn account for more active Offworld-related activity.]

Rolando home [ngmoco, Hand Circus]

Brandon Boyer

Reminder: One week left to enter EA/Phenomic's BattleForge contest

Keeping up with more housecleaning news: there's one week left to enter EA/Phenomic's contest to write the legend for Offworld's exclusive in-game Mutating Frenzy card at right, after already receiving a good number of entries.

As a reminder, after the March 11th deadline, Offworld readers will pick their top three submissions, which will then be forwarded on to Phenomic to pick the grand prize. The third place winner will win an ATI Radeon HD 4850 graphics card, second place will win the same and a BattleForge T-shirt, and the grand prize winner will receive an ATI Radeon HD 4870, BattleForge T-shirt, and have their submitted legend used in the game on its release.

If you want to better understand how the cards are used, Phenomic has opened the game for a public beta through March 26th. To download the client and try the game for yourself, visit this page with full instructions.

Submit your card legend as a comment on the original post, and refer to that post for the full writeup on the details of the game and the contest.

BattleForge home [EA/Phenomic]

Brandon Boyer

BBIAS, can we still spruce up indie iPhone space game Aragom?

In early February, Joel suggested the Boing Boing Internet Action Squad help out an indie dev in need, with new spaceship graphics for Peter Lewis's iPhone space game Aragom. Fully aware that the Boing Boing Gadgets crosspost quickly collapsed into gnashed-teeth chaos, I'm just wondering aloud here if anyone ever officially got in touch with each other?

I ask this mostly because hiding quietly amongst the din were actually some quite nice suggestions: Felix Mitchell stayed true to Aragom's current form but provided some razor sharp and nicely luminescent detail, Tao_Art whipped up a few first 3D attempts, and, my favorite, FunnelBC (as above) took the look and feel in an entirely new direction, with a set of retro illustrated images that would truly set the game apart.

Funnel, Lewis -- you guys should totally talk!

Aragom home [Stairways Software, FunnelBC's wicked Mountain Goats poster]

Previously:
BBIAS: Let's give this indie iPhone game a better set of spaceship ...

Joel Johnson

Tweet Week: Win Dirty Dolls Lingerie, LeapFrog Didj, iVoice headsets today

We're starting off today's Tweet Week giveaways with a bang: I'm going to pick one of you to win some panties from Dirty Dolls, a just-launched lingerie company that "specializes in catering to the needs of voluptuous women." (Bless them.) Founder Courtney Leigh Newman is giving us two items, the Organic Cha Cha Cheeky Short and the Organic Thrilling Thong. (Which, despite first glance, is a technically SFW image. Subtle!)

On deck for later today: Five Didj handheld gaming systems for kids from LeapFrog, plus three games for each. (Unintentional awesome: We give away videocameras, then lingerie, then kids' toys. Narrative is a powerful form.) We've also got a couple of Bluetooth headsets from iVoice, the Diamond-X and GX7.

How do you get a chance to win this stuff? I've explained the details already, but in short: if you follow the Boing Boing editors on Twitter this week, you have a chance to win fabolas prizes. Here are our accounts again; Each follow is an entry: • @joeljohnson; @xenijardin; @beschizza; @brandonnn; @doctorow; @johnbattelle; @frauenfelder

Joel Johnson

Tweet Week: Follow us on Twitter, win prizes

Hey, sailors! Do you like stuff? We like to give you the stuffs. So here's how we're going to do it: Every time you follow one of the Boing Boing editors' Twitter feed, we get an email. We'll select from those emails at random and award a prize. If you've won, I'll let you know by direct message on Twitter. We'll do this all week or until we're out of prizes. (That's how I getcha! So at the least, you should follow us this week before you leave en masse next Monday.)

For each editor you follow you'll gain another entry, so if you're already following some of us you can still get a crack at winning by following another editor. (We started collecting entry emails since yesterday and will put all of those in the hat.)

That's it. Easy. We get followers to squawk at about our bunions, you get stuff. I'll be putting up a post a day until we have all the prizes distributed. As befits a Boing Boing contest, we've got a bunch of different stuff: a guitar; a videophone; some random iPod and iPhone cases; lingerie (!); and what I'll be starting with today, three of these custom-printed Flip Mino HD camcorders from CafePress. (One per winner, of course.) More on the prizes as we go along.

Here are our accounts. Collect them all!:
• @joeljohnson (Boing Boing Gadgets)
• @xenijardin (Boing Boing/Video)
• @beschizza (Boing Boing Gadgets)
• @brandonnn (Boing Boing Offworld)
• @doctorow (Boing Boing)
• @johnbattelle (Boing Boing)
• @frauenfelder (Boing Boing)

(We always have questions about if these contests are okay for readers outside the U.S. or not. Because most of these prizes are being shipped direct from the companies, I can't always promise that they'll be able to be shipped to everyone, but I'll do my best to work it out if it comes up. Let me know in the comments if you have any other questions.)