The State of Play

'The state of play' was a New England Game SiG event held at the Microfsoft NERD Center on Oct 2nd 2012.  It was well attended by all kinds of developers, designers, and even the CEO of Kickin Kitchen, an educational website looking to open up a game platform to their existing audience.  The presentation and talks evolved from a panel discussion into more of a 'town hall meeting'.  There was some good back and forth between the panel and the audience, and even some great interaction between audience members.

The big issue, raised by the brilliant Caroline Murphy, is the lack of funding to game development companies in the Boston Area.  Boston has incubators, game developers, great students, and great start-ups.  It's almost a perfect atmosphere to build game companies.  Except Boston Angel and VC execs rarely come from a game design background, therefore are hesitant to fund game companies.  The Boston Indies scene was created by and supports tons of great bootstrap start-ups that develop games.  But save a very few examples, there has not been much VC support.

There was one problem with the night, microphones always seem to be in short supply in the NERD Center. But ultimately not a big deal.  Mike, look into that for next time.

Google+

I just found and pushed the Google+ button on my blog.  Let's see what happens!

Also I have accepted a contract position with Sallie Mae's Upromise group.  So starting in November I'll be helping companies administer their 529 plans!  It also happens to be for the highest hourly rate I've ever been paid in my life.  Which is a nice way to close out this time of doing the best I can during bad economic times.  Very exciting!

I have a great blog post coming up on Monday: "6 reasons I hate Mojang's new office".  I think you'll get a kick out of it.  Stay tuned.

Scrumbleship; more then Minecraft in space. Hopefully.

Minecraft is an inspiration for just about everyone who wants to design games. Everything from straight up copies to 'inspired by' titles are popping up all the time. There are plenty of not so interesting clones... cough Yogventures, cough. (Which feels more like a retaliation then a game).  But there are some equally fantastic projects such as Towns and now Scrumbleship. Check below the jump for an introduction to the Scrumbleship kickstarter and game.

Great Gaming podcasts

The new job is eating up all my spare time!  But I'm in Kendall square, which is nice.  It's taking me an hour and a half to go 5.5 miles on public transportation.  Parking a car in Kendall is simply out of the question due to the expense.  On the other hand I have plenty of time to listen to fantastic podcasts on the commute.  Here are few great gaming podcasts which you may or many not be paying attention to.

Another look at Towns

This past year has been pretty busy for me; unemployment, employment that has caused me to close the blog, the job search.  It means that I haven't been following games over this past year.  It is nice to see that Towns is still being worked on, and that it's still improving.  If you like Minecraft and or Dwarf Fortress this is a game to keep your eyes on!

Status update

My experience of job hunting has been true to the old adage "Finding work is a full time job."  My dream of game design does not seem to be turning into a career in game design.  But you know what, that's not a terrible thing.  Perhaps 'hobby game design' would be better for me.  Or maybe even just 'gamer with inside knowledge'.  Besides Financial Services pays way better and helping people with their financial troubles is really rewarding.

So if you know anyone looking for a Fund Accountant, Credit Analyst, Underwriter, of Customer Service Representative let me know.  Actually I'll take just about anything entry level in financial services at this point. Probably not sales (unless it has salary plus commission).  Got to update my worker bee resume on the Zorts page.

At some point I do want to have enough time to be able to blog more.  Thank you all for hanging with me (all 30 of you).  And my G+ followers (of which there seem to be many more).

Diablo III vs Torchlight

I have to admit, I have not played Diablo III 1.04  It just hasn't interested me since realizing there are some fundamental breaches of verisimilitude.  Torchlight 2 is available for pre-order on Steam and to my surprise it came with a free copy of Torchlight.  Oh, good!  I had lost my copy a while ago, and needed to buy it again.