As local game developers busily prepare builds to shop around at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco next week, Screenplay has sat down with Tantalus CEO and Games Developers' Association of Australia president, Tom Crago, to talk about the current state of play in the Australian games industry. How well are local studios weathering the current climate? Amidst the news of studio closures and downsizings, Tom is still very optimistic. From Screenplay...
(the) impact is being felt in…
If you need any further clue that we're entering a golden era for casual games, take a look in Nintendo's direction. It looks like Nintendo have been prepping developers for their upcoming appstore for downloadable game and application content. Platforms as the iPhone (30 million units), Xbox 360 (28 million), PS3 (22 million), Nintendo WIi (nearly 50 million), and the PC all provide some healthy choices for casual game offerings, but with a concentrated user base of a whopping 100 million…
I know news has been a bit quiet lately, but this is one many have been waiting for. Unity 2.5 is here! Judging by the extreme slowness of their website, it looks like the Unity website is getting hammered by many, many visitors curious to check out the latest version of the cross platform game development engine and tools.
So why were so many eager to try out Unity 2.5? Because it's now finally available for the Windows platform. There's a 30 day trial available to check out, and the licenses…
Sometime two years ago, I stumbled on a nugget of information which I thought was just awesome. Tucked in a feature on Australia's most iconic game studio, Beam Software, was an explanation of where the name Beam originated from. Who knew that it had nothing to do with radiating light or something obvious like that but was a name made up from the initials of Beam founders, Alfred Milgrom and Naomi Besen? It made me wonder how many people that worked there perhaps never knew that!
So what were…
Sometime two years ago, I stumbled on a nugget of information which I thought was just awesome. Tucked in a feature on Australia's most iconic game studio, Beam Software, was an explanation of where the name Beam originated from. Who knew that it had nothing to do with radiating light or something obvious like that but was a name made up from the initials of Beam founders, Alfred Milgrom and Naomi Besen? It made me wonder how many people that worked there perhaps never knew that!
So what were…
CEO of the Interactive Entertainment Association of Australia, Ron Curry, has written an opinion piece for ABCNews online on the rapidly maturing video games sector and how it's been bogged down by an insufficient classification system. He provides some impressive game sale results of 2008 and outlines some interesting research results conducted by Bond University to show how widespread games entertainment is today. It would seem that games entertainment has become a far reaching and culturally…
Move over Qantm and QUT, it looks like the University of the Sunshine Coast is making headway on getting their students into game development jobs too. It also helps that nearby the campus is the new Queensland studio of Big Ant Studios.
The Courier Mail reports that the new studio is currently running with 30 staff and hopes to expand to 84 in the next four years, with a good number of students from the USC Innovation Centre expected to be recruited on a part time basis.
From the Courier Mail…
