I know there’s a been a lot of anti-video ranting about this, but I think it’s brilliant. My camera takes both photos and videos. When I first started using a digital camera (in 1999), I took many photos and not too many videos. But as memory increased and video got easier to share, I’ve been taking more and more video. So for any event in my life, I have a mixture of photos and video. But there’s never been a single workflow for getting the memories of the event into the hands of my friends (and thus, I never really shared videos). Flickr is solving that, and I think it’s great. Good work Flickr.

Wired had exclusive screenshots of Spore for the Nintendo DS and ….

Well, um. It’s ah … unimpressive.

Don’t get me wrong … it looks real cute and all. But, it’s just … clearly not Spore. Now I know the trend to make lame mobile “name branded” franchise tie-ins to popular real games has been going on for a while, but I thought the DS was above taking a game that is all about 3d character creation and reducing it to what appears to be Colorforms.

I read on Level Up that EA is claiming that they took the art direction from Japanese 2d rod puppets, but really it’s pretty clear that their real inspiration came from “The DS is not powerful enough to run this game, but we gotta cash in somehow on the brand!”. Nice spin attempt, EA, but these screenshots just aren’t doing it for me. I hope the game in motion convinces me (as, admittedly, is often the case!)

You know, the full mia culpa here is I’ll probably buy it … if it comes out.

[image blantently stolen from Wired News]

Will it be fun? I have no clue. But I am sure to play it for months anyway. At GDC last year they hinted they may be releasing the editors early (for free?) ... I wonder what happened to that plan ..

CNet: Spore shipping September 7th

I got an email from a customer who purchased my first indie game Rocknor’s Bad Day from the now-defunct games site Dexterity.com, whom which I had a distribution agreement. She wanted to re-download the full version of the game, because she had lost it. The agreement I had with Dexterity stipulated, as usual, that they got to keep all the sales records, meaning I had no way to tell if she was a legit customer. But I decided to give her a free copy anyway.

Here’s a snippet of what she had to say the next day:

Thank you so much for your prompt response. I can’t thank you enough for your generosity. My son will be delighted! He has Autism and gets obsessed with things for months at a time. He will play the one game for months and then move on to another. Then he will often return to a game he was obsessed with previously. Its so long since we played Rocknor I honestly couldn’t remember when we bought it. Thus far i have managed to keep him away from most of the awful games that consist of killing things.He will be so excited! Actually the whole family enjoys Rocknor and its so nice to have the kids playing something that makes them think instead of just pushing a button.

Once again my many many thanks. You have made one little boy very very happy.

When I hear firsthand how someone is enjoying something I made, it makes it very hard to think of doing anything else as a career or hobby.

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If you’re ever near Alameda, California, stop in at Forbidden Island Tiki Lounge and check out the touch screen jukebox that some bar buddies and I made:

Tell them Hanford sent you.

Scott Lund did the hardware, Matty & Jessica did the case, and Martin Cate organized the content and was executive producer. I did the software and most of the UI design along with the rest of the team.

It randomly plays music from the least-recently played selections on the juke. This was a major beef the owners and staff had about the old off-the-shelf jukebox, which played the same 20 songs over and over.

Here’s a shot of the jukebox’s custom “shipwreck” case:

At the Independent Games Summit at GDC 2007, Gametunnel’s Russell Carol gave an amazing talk on how indie game makers can get off their asses and market their games. I’m no stranger to indie game marketing, but Russell really did an amazing job on showing exactly how to go about doing it. I really think that this is the area that indie game makers (including myself) need the most help in, so it was a real pleasure to see Russell cover it in such depth. It’s a must watch for anyone who wants to make money with their games:

If you’re a close friend of mine, or if you were anywhere close to me at GDC, then you heard my latest game was going to be hitting beta in June 2006 and ya’ll were invited.

Well, please don’t take the fact that you never got an invite as a sign that I uninvited you. The fact of the matter is I’ve slipped my deadline. No one’s playing the beta because the beta has not happened yet. But I am still rolling forward, so hang in there.

UPDATE: I’ve given them all away. Sorry!

I have six Pownce invites (thanks Chad!). If you’re a regular reader of my blog and want an invite, hit me up for one. It is not quite first-come first-serve, but almost. So let me know.

... what PC developers have been doing to them for years.

Safari for Windows is out. And so far, I’m not liking it. I am a PC user, but I own a Mac machine as well and I’ve used Safari on it a fair amount.

So what am I hating about it? First and foremost, Apple broke the golden rule that every PC software developer that ported to the Mac was shamed for doing: Apple has forced their OS’s s look/feel and UI conventions onto another OS. Take this screen shot of the Safari for Windows Preferences panel:

Game designer Justin Chin is posting art from his work-in-progress story Fuel and Fire -- at least one pic a day for the entire month of April. The stuff is very cool, modeled in SketchUp and tweaked in Maya. He often sites how the art came together, what tools he used, and behind the scenes bits. I’m anxiously looking forward to the days ahead, as he’s got a really great vision for the look of his comic. Check it out!