Get Your Game On...

Summertime is here, and this week is the official opening of the 2010 SXSW Panel Picker. Now's the time to submit your video game-related panel ideas for March 2010 to SXSW Interactive for ScreenBurn at SXSW. All panel submissions will be due no later than Friday, July 10, 2009.

While you're enjoying your summer schedule, don't forget to check out some of the coolest new casual games from developer's here in Austin, Texas: Red Fly's Ghostbusters on the Wii and Blazing Lizard's Pirates vs. Ninja Dodgeball on the Wii. Also keep your eyes out for the upcoming releases of Tiger Style's Spider on the iPhone and Semi Secret Software's Fathom in Flash.

Hope you're having a great summer so far. Stay tuned for more news on panel content and how to participate in the 2010 ScreenBurn at SXSW Game Design Competition.

When the panel includes Ben Templesmith, the illustrator of 30 Days of Night, and Frank Rose of Wired, you expect some tough defense on the importance of story in digital media. However, in this panel the marketing guys led the charge in promoting the importance of passion and creative vitality to the Dead Space world-building process.

• EA senior producer Chuck Beaver explained the power of storytelling to creating a mood that customers could buy into. If Dead Space intended to offer the type of experience as Aliens, then it had to sell that mood of horror from a point where the players and potential players were willing to invest enough to feel fear and dread.
• Andrew Green, EA’s online marketing manager, stated that well before product launch, the Dead Space team provided him a 500-year bible of the world’s history and development. He also explained how the animated cartoon and comics began telling the story in an authentic manner that the company had to invest in without a single game sold.
• Deep Focus CEO Ian Schafer covered how the promotional website, www.noknownsurvivors.com, has received 500,000 and about 100,000 have come in a relatively steady stream after product launch.
• Templesmith noted how liberating it was for him to be brought in early on the project. In his experience, it was likely the most freedom he’s had in producing work for a story he did not create himself.

The group also discussed the importance of supporting a non-licensed IP with downloadable content in today’s market. The consensus seemed to be that what a narrative game has to sell is its story, and DLC keeps the story growing. At the end, Green announced Dead Space: Extraction for the Wii due in Fall 2009.

Hundreds crowded into Brush Square Park to watch the beauty of synthesized robotic music, catch up on the best of garage-core electronic art, and get their drink on. We also caught social tech guru Jon Lebkowsky standing beside a member of the Robot Group. The digital fun and mayhem was brought to SXSW participants and the public by the International Game Developer's Association of Austin and the Digital Media Council.

A little bit North at Aces Lounge, Critical Mass Interactive invited all attendees to try and take on one-time Frag Doll, Allison, at Halo 3. Reports are still coming in, but the losses appear to have been staggering. Latest word from the front reports that no one came close to claiming the Epiphone Guitar offered to the first opponent to beat Allison to 5 kills. Yes, we now have confirmation that the closest any competitor came was 2 kills to her 5. She’s now continuing the brutality in the ScreenBurn Arcade.

Amber Ettinger, known to most as Obama Girl, corrected one of the more negative misconceptions of her new public persona on the Politics, Technology, and Pop Culture panel: yes, she did in fact vote in the Presidential and Congressional elections last November. Ms. Ettinger’s oft discussed lack of a voting record is a bit confused because she has resident status in two states, and voted in Pennsylvania.

Beyond clearing Ettinger’s name, the audience was exposed to a number of spirited exchanges, particularly between self-proclaimed friends Lawrence “Don’t Call Me Doctor” Lessig and Mark “I Quit McCain Because of Obama” McKinnon. Dan Patterson of ABC News, Tom Serres of Piryx, and Alex Wellen of CNNPolitics.com also got involved in discussions of copyright and whether Twitter can be saved from the inanity of Congress. Some of the points of discussed included:

• Who deserves the credit on altered photos? Is the photographer the sole artist or is the touch-up artist the new artist. Lessig’s support of the touch-up artists drew enormous applause from the SXSW crowd.
• Why didn’t Lessig run for Congress? He didn’t believe the system could be reformed from within, but requires citizen activism to inspire real change. McKinnon backed this sentiment that reformation
  from within elective office is an enormous burden.
• Everyone seemed to question whether it’s possible for the Obama administration to live up to the promise of its social media campaign. The panel acknowledged that the reality of governance may well not match the commitment to individual empowerment that underlies the
  social web.

Are you enjoying the weekend-long Go Game Running with SXSWissors? Well, get ready for even more ARG-tastic fun. The Go Game will be staging a 'Classic Go Game' during the Block Party on Sunday at 4PM. It's a wireless adventure game that features interesting conference content, planted actors who are 'in' on the game, and creative challenges that are solved via interpretive videos. The Go Game crew swears, "It's the best time you can have with your cell phone without putting it on vibrate!" Make a team, or just show up alone. Top 10 teams get free passes to the SXSW Homecoming Dance on Monday night! Meet at 3:30PM at the Go Game booth in the ScreenBurn Arcade.

Zachary Raven led a panel on the future of iPhone gaming applications. The speakers included Aurora Feints’ Danielle Cassley, Pangea Software’s Brian Greenstone, and Stephanie Morgan of ngmoco—each discussing the rather remarkable early success of gaming applications on the iPhone. Greenstone shared some amazing statistics for two games he ported to the iPhone in about two weeks of programming per game. The average performer of the two, Nanosaur II: Hatchling, has sold 133,000 applications from October through January with a company profit of $77,000 over that period. The breakout game, Enigmo, made an astonishing $1.5 million since its release. Morgan offered the strongest challenge to other handheld systems, stating that the necessity of having a phone with you at all times grants the iPhone an inherent importance that a PSP or DS cannot challenge. She also believes the smooth interface of the app store grants the iPhone a firm edge over any other mobile platform. Cassley shared her story of coming straight out of school to introduce Aurora Feint. She promoted the importance and power of original content on the iPhone while highlighting the possibilities for the format, especially regarding community gaming.

Caryl Shaw of Maxis provided a tour of customer generated content for Spore. The base Spore game has spawned a class of users who do not play, Shaw informed the crowd, but exclusively designs elements for other users. Even beyond an evolving designer class, Shaw pointed toward signs that customers were organizing into groups to create amateur projects that maximize the skills of each participant.

A big boost to such users will arrive in the Galactic Adventures expansion pack that Shaw previewed. The pack allows users to construct modules on designed planets to implement games within the game—from first person shooters to tactic battles to maze quests. The expansion appears set to leverage the creative Spore community to turn Spore from game to gaming platform. Pictured here, we see one of Shaw's creations looking for trouble in a module she assembled during the panel!