A hard core gamer is blogging his way through every Ultima game, in order.  So far, it looks like he’s going through each game in around 25 hours, give or take, which is only possible since he’s done them all before.

It’s pretty fun reading– probably more fun than actually going back and playing them.  His descriptions of painstakingly drawing dungeon maps just make me glad we don’t have to do that any more.  There’s still some great content in those old Ultima games, but it’s amazing how punishing games were back then.  Even the most sadistic RPGs nowadays have nothing on these old dungeon crawls.

Here’s some surprisingly unguarded talk from the Introversion blog. Chris talks about losing that indie drive, but I don’t think that anyone who can write this openly has lost their edge just yet.

Apparently, those are where all those wet sounds in violent video games come from.

(Note: the above blog and video are entirely unrelated to the premier show on produce-centric digital insertion, Fingers in Food.)

Antiques Roadshow Online? That’s only for starters. Visionaries like this truly put the rest of us to shame.

However you’re making your game, you’re doing it wrong.

In our young industry, that’s one simple fact: nobody’s figured out how to efficiently make successful games. Competition means that no one will ever have a perfect formula, either, but right now we’re just really, really inefficient when it comes to development. Huge architectures are built for features that never make it, while important features are hacked in at the last minute and at high cost. We spend tons of time polishing minor features, while our products ship with major flaws. Frequently we labor for weeks over something that actually makes the game less enjoyable. This is all just the tip of the iceberg.

Of course, if this were easy to solve, it’d be solved: these problems don’t exist because we’re stupid, but rather because the problems themselves are complicated, and resistant to quick fixes.

One solution people are trying to bring over from other parts of the software industry is agile development (often in the form of Scrum). Remember what I just said last paragraph, though: these problems are resistant to quick fixes. (Or remember what I said at the start: you’re doing it wrong.) I’ve talked with a lot of people trying out agile methodologies for their next game, and every single one of them has hit a lot of problems. Sometimes it just doesn’t seem suited to game development: we have too many teams, and they’re too interconnected, to use a method based around fluid, small-group, non-dependent work.

One of the best resources I’ve seen for working through these issues is the Agile Game Development Blog, run by Clinton Keith, the CTO at High Moon Studios. One thing you’ll notice if you spend any time reading the blog is that there are a lot of unsolved problems. Why don’t their metrics of development (”story points“) correlate to fun? Why are they still crunching near milestones? How do you even know how much work is remaining, when “done” isn’t even a known quantity?

All of those unsolved problems are a good sign: they’re the sign of an honest blog.  Everyone trying agile in game development is going through some or all of the issues Clinton Keith discusses.  As I read through the archives, I kept having realizations: “oh, that’s what you’re supposed to do there!”  “Hey, I didn’t realize that’s what was going wrong.”  “Yup, we had that problem too– comforting to know you haven’t solved it, either.”  I highly recommend it.

Charlie Cleveland (of Natural Selection fame) gave a talk at GDC about his efforts to bootstrap Natural Selection 2 with the profits from his casual game, Zen of Sudoku. He’s put up his slides (in Powerpoint, unfortunately, though OpenOffice views them just fine).

The upshot: Zen got a bit of cash flow, though not tons. (My take is that the casual market is quite crowded with full-timers already, so it’s never going to be an easy way to just jump in and make some easy cash.) He gives some tips about selling a casual game and dealing with portals, and mentions that he’s not sure whether or not he’d do this again (or if it was a success). He concludes by mentioning both Popcap and Flash– and concurring with the increasing consensus I’ve noticed that Flash is really the way to go.

If you want more detail, hit up those slides. He’s got a trailer for Zen at the same link.

Thanks to Joystiq for more fantastic coverage of the independent shooter scene.  These ones are a bit rougher around the edges than the last ones I linked to, but also a little stranger gameplay-wise.

Wow, this is awesome: it’s a primer on game design, in game form.  Check out Understanding Games: Episode 1.  Episodes 2 and 3 are also up.

It’s an awesome concept, and won’t take much of your time.  I strongly encourage you to check it out.

Aside from a few notable exceptions, independent games are mostly covered on dedicated sites. I’m not entirely sure why this is: is the group of gamers who want a classic RPG entirely separate from the audience that spends its time tracking the state of the mainstream industry? Are most indie (non-casual) games not up to production level par? Is there no crossover between people who want to see the latest graphics porn and people looking for a SCUMM-style adventure game about a mystery-solving, faith-questioning Rabbi?

I’m not going to tackle that issue in this post. I am going to mention Evil Avatar’s new monthly indie feature, a small step towards bridging the gap. Judging from the comments thread, it’s already gone and got people good and riled up!

The makers of The Longest Journey and Dreamfall have thrown in the towel on conventional adventure games:

Funcom, the developer behind the adventure game classics The Longest Journey and Dreamfall: The Longest Journey, have announced their decision to stop producing traditional, offline PC games.

It’s in keeping with the trend Raph Koster mentioned, and I think it’s kind of a no-brainer at this point.  The more you can integrate online, the more you cut down on piracy, and you can improve your game at the same time.  Heck, PC games have been moving this way for a while, with frequent patches, bonus content, user-created mods and guides– there’s tons of stuff online to improve your gaming experience.  You don’t have to make a multiplayer game to take advantage of the fact that most of your audience is online most of the time.

Console gaming is clearly moving in this direction as well, with XBox Live as the best next-gen model.  Nintendo missed the boat this generation, but always-online, social gaming is going to be the norm quite soon.