Tim & Holly Get a Channel

OK, so it's not a major network, but just something we've thrown up on our Youtube channel. Basically Holly and I always want to write/talk games but never have time. Enter our flip camera. This is us discovering that there are "games" on Direct TV. We'll try to shoot more as a regular thing. Maybe I'll even grab footage directly from the TV so Holly doesn't have to keep her hand steady...

Game Jamin'

I'm honored to have been invited to judge at Wild Pocket's Bay Area Game Jam. I've never actually been to a "game jam" but I've heard a lot about them so I'm excited to check it out. If you're in the Bay Area and want to try your hand at rocking a game out in a weekend, sign up! Also if you wanna see my beautiful mug, check out the Judges page. The bio I wrote is so short compared to everyone else's, so I either seem like a genius or an idiot... to the millions who are intently reading the game jam judges bio's.

Frictionless Entry

It's not what you think.

Or at least, it's not what you first think about.

Say someone wants you to try something cool.

It's really really cool. Guaranteed. You just need to go through 20 or so pages worth of EULAs, create another account and provide some random but most of the time identical series of letters which represent the only password that you can remember for your email accounts and your social profile.

Before you even get to try this really really cool something, it's all of a sudden not as really really cool, and maybe not even really really cool enough to worth pursuing, because there's a ton of other really really cool things that you could be wasting your time on instead.

Frictionless entry is the new buzzword. But I like the concept.

It means I can get around to playing the game in one click. One button press. Because our attention spans nowadays don't last much longer than that.

It means having a good game, without the huge learning curve.

It means the concept is clear. We get the point right away.

It means to get to the fun, without the hassle.

We want there to be frictionless entry. Guys love frictionless entry. Girls love frictionless entry.

The above pic? First thing that popped up when I google image searched. Sure frictionless is good, but it's always smart to keep things safe.

More talk, less do!

OK, so at some point I'll get back to talking game development, but until then I thought I'd post another link! Chatterbox is a game industry talk show that covers the gambit: from boobs to how distributed "cloud" networks could affect gaming. I ran into Ara (one of the hosts who works at a game company I used to work at) at GDC, and I gave it a listen, pretty cool stuff.

It’s an Indie world

So as I make an independent game, and target Xbox Live Arcade and/or Community Games, I find myself getting more into the “Indie” vibe. I’m hoping this will kind of be like turning into a dirty, dirty hippie, but if not at least I’ve saved money on soap for the last week. Anyway, here are some sites I’ve found that get the Misfits coolness award because they review Xbox Community Games, which so far all the major game sites don’t seem to have the time for.

XNA Roundup: Video! This is a video blog that covers a game or two in depth each week.

XNPlay: This site reviews EVERY game on community games as far as I can tell. That's some dedication!