Recently, around the same time as the St. Patrick's Day promotions went up, the bottom of the PopCap.com homepage was adorned with a new teaser footer for the next game coming out of the PopCap studios!
The footer depicts a confused Lex standing next to a freshly covered grave (sans tombstone) and a dancing Sun Flower that conjures a mini sun.
Long time subscribers to 'The Fizz', PopCap's newsletter, will remember the hunt for George Romero back in April of 2007. Also, recent news from the PopCap studios about the upcoming Zombies Vs. Plants game has leaked minor details: a defense/strategy game based around zombies and plants featuring a card mechanic. Insider details >here<.
So that's it? A new image and news of a teaser? Wait: there's more!
According to the name of the footer image, we should tune_in_next_week for another surprise! The game has been in development for two years. Are we in for a new game to-be-release next week? Or are we looking for a new footer animation spilling more details for this highly anticipated game?
Tune in next week: Same Bat Time, Same Bat Channel!
UPDATE! The animation is now more complex! A Sun is hidden behind Lex's head and when you click on it, a rain cloud sprouts up a BloomNDoom!
Also, someone forwarded this >screen shot< to me! It's a couple months old, and I expect some changes to have been made, but no there are some ideas on how the mechanics work!
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Tomorrow, my latest game gets release over at Big Fish Games.
For the people who know about BFG, they know that they can download our game a whole day early. While I was fielding questions about our latest release in the BFG Forums, one of the biggest complaints (slow downloads) was addressed by a BFG employee:
Our servers were a bit slow today.
This was a big traffic day (the biggest ever) and during the period of peak traffic from 10am to 1pm PST we downloaded over 300,000 games (in just 3 hours, that is over 100 Terabits per hour for those techies out there!) and we did get some reports of slowdowns, but things should be better now. We have huge data centers in the east coast and the west coast, but you crazy gamers just keep downloading more and more games, so we need to add more servers to the several thousand we already have It is a good problem to have.
Because of my vanity, I can't help but wonder if this is because of the Pre-Release of my game. What will tomorrow bring when it is released to the general public?
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There are just too many fish to fry right now to be blogging regularly, so, I'm gonna be gone for a while..
On the bright side, when I return I will finally be able to blog about projects we've been working on here rather than blogging about external influences.
Cya soon,
Papamook!
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The Australian government has staged a surprise turnaround by allowing a discussion paper on the matter of an 18+ game classification to go public. An 18+ rating has been much sought after in Australia where many games (including GTA & Fallout3) that aren't made for children are censored and dumbed down to fit into the 15+ category. This process flies in the face of the fact that the average gamers age in Australia is 30.
via EDGE-Online:
Australia's content classification system can only be amended if unanimously accepted from all state and territory attorney-generals, and Mr. Atkinson has consistently vetoed such a bill for fear of tech-savvy children accessing adult content.
"We're one of the only developed countries yet to adopt an R18+ classification," says IEAA’s CEO Ron Curry. “With the average age of gamers being 30, it makes no sense to censor games to a point where they are only appropriate for a 15 year old. Such censorship would not be acceptable in television, at the cinema or in print, so why apply it unfairly to another entertainment medium?"
Dr Jeffrey Brand, the report’s author, was far less diplomatic with his feelings during a press conference earlier today. "It is offensive to me, as a parent, to say that I can't make choices for my children," he said.
Censorship is a hot topic in Australia at the moment with a proposed compulsory
internet filter by the government causing a lot of the controversy. The filter has been called 'costly & ineffective' by many pundits and yet it has a lot of momentum.
via Arstechnica: Family First isn't a major party—it has only one federal member of Parliament—but it does command more regional support. While massive federal government intervention in the Internet might not seem to be an especially conservative principle, Family First argues that the porn problem has reached epidemic levels, that parental responsibility simply isn't workable, and that kids are stumbling over damaging material both purposefully and by accident. Government needs to act.
I can think of a few more "F"s Family First could use in their cunningly named joke of a political party. Separation of
Church and
State anyone?
via EDGE-Online: It was South Australian Attorney-General Michael Atkinson who had ended the discussion process last week. However, yesterday's Standing Committee of Attorneys-General meeting in Brisbane saw Victorian Attorney-General Rob Hulls lobby other ministers to motion the discussion paper. And, with approval from Australia’s censorship ministers, that discussion paper is set for distribution by the end of this year.
That discussion paper is, for all intents and purposes, a referendum without final power. It means that members of the Australian public are given the chance to record their thoughts on the matter, and considering that a recent survey showed that 91 percent of the Australian public was for an 18+ classification, it gives the electorate a chance to mount pressure on the upper echelons of the Australian government.
The discussion paper is scheduled to be available on the internet. It will also be given to associated parties such as games industry groups and family associations to seek their views.
The need for unanimous Attorney-General support means that the surprise turnaround was due to Mr. Atkinson changing his position on the matter. As yet, the Attorney General has not publicly discussed why he initially rejected the proposals, and why he is favoring them now.
I had no idea Australia was trailing behind America in terms of the '
Baby Boomers' setting the rules, it seems that '
Generation X' has to wait a little longer down under.
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Following on from this months biggest casual/indie game news James C Smith has laid to rest a lot of peoples concerns over the Amazon deal.
Here is an interesting post I made back in January of 2005. 'Hard core' and 'casual' games on the same site? In there I talk about how game portals need to include a great variety of games and point to Amazon as the example we should all be following.
Which, freakishly, predicts this weeks news to a tee! After this deal
Reflexive must surely be at the top of every developers send-to-portal list, not only do they have the most respect for game developers and the best royalty rate out there, but their (already large)audience size in the coming future is now potentially much larger than with other less developer-friendly portals.
He then finished off by saying:
As a game developer (also), I am personally excited about getting all kinds of downloadable games in front of the real masses, not just the few people who go to game portals. This could be a real chance to grow the industry.
As a game developer also, I find the news extremely exciting too!
:)
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I didn't even know 
This is fairly big news and I hope that this doesn't affect 
