The latest blog post from Introversion is up, and it describes how they fared after Uplink sales took off following a review in PC Gamer:

Chris and I signed up on benefits and I started to sell everything I’ve ever owned (bar my laptop) on eBay, right down to the 5 mains plugs I rescued from the skip outside my parents house (which I’d now been forced to move back into).

Man.  I’d better get my game done soon, so I can buy this new hat!

Ilovebees was a phenomenal, highly compelling story in a totally new medium.  This archive is back online, in anticipation of Halo 3.  The best part of ilovebees was the drama doled out in a series of mp3s, acted out like an old-fashioned radio play.  Click Mission Log and give them a listen: they’ll make you wonder why such a fantastically crafted story wasn’t the basis for Halo 2.  Here’s hoping for Halo 3?

After my first game mockup failed to be compelling as I’d hoped, I went back to design.  I went in the direction of some more exciting visuals.  3D views of cities as brightly lit networks, beautiful in their procedurally generated intricacy.  A hacker’s-eye view of the inside of a complex or office, digitally radiant with layer upon layer of data extracted from blueprints and satellite imagery.  If one were to spend a little bit of time implementing these ideas, they’d probably look a lot like this and this.

“Wow, Matt, those look pretty good!  But why are you storing your prototypes on Introversion’s server?”  Well, funny you should ask: when their development blog went up recently, I realized we’d been thinking along the same lines.  I’m not attempting to diminish Introversion here (why, I regard them as highly as I regard myself!).  However, the evidence seems to clearly indicate that they’re unprincipled thieves.

Given that we’ve never even met, however, there’s another possible explanation.  It’s possible that the lines I was thinking along were simply a logical progression from the source material.

Say you want to make a cyberpunk game.  Or, perhaps, a hacking game– it’s all the same along some spectrum of realistic to fantastic.  You might start at Neuromancer, or you might start at Uplink.  But you’ll hit some problems.  Hacking is abstract and highly technical.  Cyberpunk is losing its relevance (link).  Uplink may be a one-off: as you dig into it, you realize it’s basically a game about upgrades and progress bars.

So where do you go?  Go to the source.  Neuromancer made all this technical mucking about palatable by turning it into a real world analog.  The data is laid out geographically: you can recognize Tokyo by the shape of its network traffic.  Hostile security programs take on visceral, recognizable shapes.

Now you can already see the progenitor of that city imagery: it’s a direct visual from Neuromancer, whether or not the gameplay has anything to do with hacking.  Blueprints are a short step towards the current mainstream, with the modern role of a Hollywood hacker as an agent’s assistant.  They manipulate and monitor real-world settings while a physical counterpart kicks some ass: think Chloe and Jack from 24; think Marshal and Sydney from Alias; think Mission Impossible.  If you really want to go back to the original hacker/ass-kicker duo, think Molly and Case.

It’s a good reality check.  I’ve been designing extensively, scribbling ideas and diagrams through several notebooks.  Introversion has also been prototyping away, combining their experience from multiple cyberpunk-friendly games into exciting, can’t-wait-until-they-release-their-next-one visualizations of technological beauty.  If you stop to think about it for a minute, though, it’s not surprising we’re designing in the same space: one step away from from Neuromancer.

First: if you haven’t yet done so, please visit the Super Columbine Massacre RPG site (SCMRPG) and watch the video before making up your mind about the game.

SCMRPG made it to the finals of the Slamdance competition, based on selection by jury.  Before final audience voting, however, the festival’s founder personally removed SCMRPG from the running.  According to the statement from the USC Interactive Media Division– who is withdrawing as a sponsor– “Slamdance celebrates independent games only so far as they do not make us uncomfortable”.

The center’s withdrawal is only the latest action of what is quickly becoming an exodus.  First to go was Braid– not an easy decision in the early uncertain days after SCMRPG’s ejection.  Soon after, however, Everyday Shooter, Toblo, Once Upon a Time, and fl0w all voluntarily withdrew.  Now the sponsors are leaving.  Will there be anything left of Slamdance by competition time?

USC, Braid, fl0w, and others have all issued eloquent statements in support of SCMRPG’s inclusion, and I won’t attempt to surpass them.  I’ll only say this: SCMRPG is genuinely controversial.  A lot of us aren’t used to that: a lot of supposedly controversial issues nowadays don’t force us to think too hard to reach a decision (how do you feel about intelligent design?).  Very little makes us uncomfortable, or challenges our preconceptions.  SCMRPG enters territory that most people haven’t explored– and would perhaps never like to.

Big trends were at work in 2006. Console hardware followed console software into the realm of gamer niches. Steam continued to push digital distribution for the hard core gamer, with games like Defcon and Half Life: Episode 1. Meanwhile, digital distribution was the primary (and often only) way to get into the fast-growing casual games market, whose leaders dominated with a mix of incremental puzzle game evolution and innovative titles that pushed the definition of casual. Every single person on the planet decided to launch a YouTube for games.

The trend I’m most excited about, however, is the programmer-free game. Small communities of adventure gamers have been creating amateur adventure games for years, using a variety of tools designed to minimize the learning curve and effort required to make a game. These tools have seen active use, and I’ve considered them a fun training ground for aspiring or hobbyist developers.

2006 saw a striking change, in the form of Aveyond. Aveyond breaks the casual game mold: it’s an RPG, reminiscent of old-school Final Fantasy titles. Aveyond is commercially successful, demonstrating a depth to the casual market previously unrealized by many of the larger shops. Finally– here’s the kicker– Aveyond was created entirely by artist-designer Amanda Fitch, using RPG Maker XP.

If you’d asked me, before Aveyond, if someone could make a commercially successful game without a strong programming background, I’d have said probably not. If you’d then asked hey, maybe if they used RPG Maker– then certainly not. I doubt I’m the only programmer who’s turned his nose up at “Game Creation Systems”, not realizing how far they’ve progressed over the years. Beyond specialized tools such as RPG Maker, there are more flexible options like GameMaker, Blitz, and Torque Game Builder. An intelligent and dedicated game developer– regardless of programming background– could create a game using even the more scripting-intensive of these offerings.

What we’re seeing is a dramatically expanding pool of potential game developers. Making and publishing your own game is now easier than getting a band together and recording an album. The outcome for games may bring them closer to music, with its massive, diverse group of creators from every viewpoint, and an audience to match. We’ll not only see better and more diverse games, we’ll also see an acceleration of games as art, and the public struggle with the appropriate role for games among our many mediums. Super Columbine Massacre RPG continues to stir up controversy since its ejection from an early attempt at a Sundance for indie games.

So, what does Aveyond represent? The rise of the artist-designer? The democratization of game development? A new and much larger role for Game Creation Systems? In a year full of questions for gaming (What is next-gen? Will retail disappear? Who’s a gamer, anyway?), Aveyond remains a puzzle as well. Is Amanda Fitch a pioneer for others like her? Or is she a solo star, in a game development arena that will remain cordoned off from its gamer audience? Read these interviews with Aveyond’s creator, and see if you can glimpse the shape of things to come.

I promise I’ll write a real post soon! However, I’m still getting used to regularly switching between computers, so I’m still trying to wrangle my software to work for me.

A chief offender is iTunes: I am not working the way it wants me to. I don’t just have one computer, which serves as the master mirror of all my music. I buy some songs on one computer, rip some songs on another, and may not be able to sync up to those computers next week at all. I want to be able to pop my tunes from any computer onto my iPod, so I can listen to them on some other device into which I’ve plugged in the iPod. iTunes hates my way of life: it is not condoned by the RIAA. Even when I’m not violating any copyright laws, I’m behaving in a manner that might make it possible for someone to do so.

Do you have a total iTunes replacement? Do you simply use a utility or collection of utilities to move unauthorized music to and from your iPod? Or have you transcended restrictive consumer electronics, opting instead for some online service that sends the music to whatever device you happen to be using at the time– as though driven to you on a truck, or sent through a series of tubes?

I haven’t seen good, up-to-date reviews. Is Bloglines the way to go? Google? NewsGator? (I’m a bit wary of anything that has the word “gator” in its name.)

Now that I seem to be working from a different computer every week, SharpReader isn’t cutting it. What do you use, and are you happy with it?