Networking for Game Developers and Players

the Great Games Experiment is the name of the social networking community website made by people at GarageGames for game players, developers and publishers. Looks like a good place to promote indie content, discussions and team building. Check it out.

Another interesting virtual garden application

It´s Packet Garden!

"Packet Garden captures information about how you use the internet and uses this stored information to grow a private world you can later explore.


To do this, Packet Garden takes note of all the servers you visit, their geographical location and the kinds of data you access. Uploads make hills and downloads valleys, their location determined by numbers taken from internet address itself. The size of each hill or valley is based on how much data is sent or received. Plants are also grown for each protocol detected by the software; if you visit a website, an 'HTTP plant' is grown. If you share some files via eMule, a 'Peer to Peer plant' is grown, and so on."

(from their website)

Looks like Flora meets Darwinia :), and it´s available for Mac, PC and Linux.
(via Ludologia)

flora website preview

Still apprehensive from the lack of communication from sponsors, I´ve uploaded a website preview for the demo. No install downloads or press release material are available, but you can check promotional videos, screenshots and some info on the project. Here is the link. Comments are welcome.

Experimental / Free gameplay stories: LEGO and Jeff Minter

The World of Lego? Independent studio NetDevil has confirmed the development of a MMO based in the LEGO franchise. I must say I´m curious to see how it will turn out, and if they will privilege the freeform creatiity over the puzzle-solving. If they get the balance right, this could be a very interesting game. I also wonder, given traditional LEGO demographics, what kind of business model will they adopt. Can you imagine a 10 year-old paying monthly fees?
(Gamasutra original story here)

Jeff Minter keynoted GDC(!) I think this illustrates how independent, alternative gaming is trendy right now. A favourite quote:

“I can’t do this stuff where you write your design spec first,” (...) “It’s the feeling I’m going for when I’m making a game these days... there don’t even have to be any animals in it anymore!”

That´s the organic approach to game design I would love to adopt myself - only if I had Minter´s skills. Another interesting quote:

“[American publishers´] were going to follow the herd, and the herd didn’t include any of my beasties.”

I´m not sure about that. I think Minter´s creations could be hitting mainstream very, very soon. Just for the record (and personal sense of pride), I would like to point out that I was already celebrating his creations in this blog two years ago.
(Gamasutra original story here)

Flash API for Wiimote

Wiicade, a Flash/Wii games portal, has announced the Wiicade API, which allows flash game developers to access Wiimote functionalities.

For flash designers/developers, this could be huge. I still haven´t tried it, though (all I get are broken links).

Does anyone know if the DS browser also has Flash capabilities?

(via Man Bytes Blog)