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Indie Game Design Do-s and Don’t-s: A Manifesto

I just saw a little tweet on Twitter about this very good blog post. Here’s a quote from it, see the link at the end if you want to read the whole post, it’s really good reading.

“[Veteran indie game creator Edmund McMillen, known for his work on 2005 IGF Grand Prize winner Gish, Time Fcuk, and Super Meat Boy for WiiWare, shares his opinions and manifesto on making indie games, with 24 clear do-s and don’t-s to make your art thrive.]

One of the most common questions I’m asked in interviews is, “Do you have any advice for independent game developers who are new to the scene, or tips for developers in general?” Well, I actually answered it this time: I came up with this list of indie do-s and don’t-s.
Now, I’m going to make clear that I’m not perfect and I’m sure as the years go by this list will change. But from where I stand right now, having made independent art/games for a living for the past 10 years, the advice below is crucial to all indie game designers, and all artists for that matter.
Also note that when I refer to a “designer” or “artist,” I include programmers. All aspects of art have a fine balance of the technical and creative; just because programming is viewed as a technical field does not mean it is void of creativity. The creative is visible in the work as a whole rather than in the specifics. Light and shadow are vital technical aspects of illustration, but without creativity the piece is nothing more then a photocopy of the subject, void of any personal touch or presence.
This is a list for the creative designer who strives to be independent. This isn’t advice on how to monetize your Flash game or survive financially by copying existing trends and juicing the public for their cash. This is a list for artists who are driven by the desire for creative freedom and/or to “just make some cool shit people will love.””

Read more here: Opinion: Indie Game Design Do-s and Don’t-s: A Manifesto

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Game development in Silverlight 3 – slides and demos

The 16. Dec. 2009 I did a talk about game development in Silverlight 3 in Copenhagen, Denmark. Thanks to all the people showing up, hope you had some good hours too :)

One thing that I found especially cool were that one of the attendees was a 10-12 year old boy (he brought his dad of course :) ). He already did a game in Game Maker he told me, very cool!
To the dad of this boy: I told you about some “kids programming language” that I couldn’t remember the name of. I goggled it this morning and found it: http://phrogram.com/kpl.aspx it might be a good start into the world of programming.
The other thing I told you about were GarageGames, take a look at this it comes with a WYSIWYG-like IDE, but it also have it’s own scripting language (similar to javascript) that you can code in. For more info take a look at it here: http://www.torquepowered.com/products/torque-2d

Slides and demos
I have put up the 4 demos, 1 Physics Helper demo for Blend and the powerpoint file, all in a zip file which can be downloaded from here: http://laumania.net/downloads/GameDevelopmentInSilverlight.zip

For the ones who are interested here is the list of, more or less game related, blogs/persons I read/follow.

Again I would like to thank people who came and hope you found my talk interesting and learned something.

– Enjoy and marry xmas :)