• "This week’s 1UP FM is a fascinating round table/interview with Jonathan Blow, David Hellman, Rod Humble, and Sean Elliott and Nick Suttner from 1UP… If you’re at all interested in Braid, experimental game design, or the ethics of games you should go listen now." In the meantime, Ben Zeigler has provided some excellent annotation for us all.
  • "Over the last few years, there has been a big shift in power and success away from independent studios, and towards in-house, publisher-owned studios. This has been driven by several things, sound economic reasons, competitive reasons, and because the strong independent studios had done a good job at creating a slew of new IPs (which publishers were eager to snap up, as always). In my experience relatively few people in the games industry realise this… So, what’s next? What’s going to happen over the next 3-5 years?" Adam on the business of the games industry, and what's facing it next.

Costikyan at Free Play

02 August 2005

God, I’d forgotten just how well Greg Costikyan writes some times. In particular, his presentation to Free Play in Melbourne, downloadable from this post, makes its (very worthwhile) points well. If the games industry doesn’t collectively wake the hell up, and snap out of being marketing-and-publisher-driven, it could find itself in deep trouble. Greg explains this point in his slides in, well, a little more detail than me.