Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Work, work, work.

So, when I was laid off, I started really looking at the games industry, and noticed an alarming trend. The shift from hiring people as permanent members of a company, to treating them (outwardly or otherwise) as hired guns brought in for a specific project.

Many of the game industry layoffs this year only serve to reinforce this idea. What is really important to the industry? Short term profitability, or developing a strong workforce for the long haul?

How will this trend affect the games being made? Is this the beginning of the "Era of the Indie?" Since networking in Boston, I'm finding more people working as indies then I'm finding working at developers, they are also seemingly happier and more relaxed on the whole. This echoes what I had seen in SF as well.

Makes me think that the industry is at the start of a major shift. A change from large centralized teams working on the bulk of the projects to smaller, more adaptable and agile teams working on more culturally relevant games. The next year or so should shake this all out, the indies that are developing products now have the ability to position themselves well should this shift occur.

The development of a game, from concept to completion.

I've decided that it would be neat to document the road taken in the development of the Zombie game project I'm designing. I won't be giving out any secrets here, but I think it would be good to cover what is being done.

Right now, we're in pre-production. Basically, this is where the idea goes from just that, something that would be "neat" and turns into something that would be fun, plausible, and marketable.

During this phase, the primary design is being done, the programmers are doing some R&D, we're defining our platforms (PC, XBox 360 and maybe ZuneHD...), and getting concept work done.

We're looking to kickoff the project officially next week.

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

ZOMBIES!

Since I'm no longer with Blue Fang, I decided that it was important to keep my skills up, and to indulge my own creativity a bit.

Since so many of us were laid off at once, I was able to organize a few of the guys into a group, and collectively we're going to be working on a PC/Xbox game. Not a lot I'm going to announce right now other than, it's a Zombie game.

That's right, Zombies. With luck, we'll be able to make enough of a splash with it that we'll be able to port it to the iPhone, but as of right now, we're officially in preproduction.

More later, until then...

BRRRAAAAAAIIINNNNSSSSSS!