Yearly Archives: 2009

The One Thing He Forgot To Mention

By Rubes | Published: May 21, 2009

It’s blog post number 100, so time to catch my breath. Crazy string of weeks there from April through mid-May, trying to make deadlines, having those deadlines pushed back, trying to make the deadlines again, and so forth. Some successes, some failures, but you can’t argue with the fact that deadlines are great for getting shit done, even if you don’t get it all done.

It’s a little weird because my day job is filled with deadlines. Basically, it’s like a slow march from one deadline to the next, and every so often I get caught up in it and spend massive amounts of time working like crazy to finish under the wire. But that’s work. This was a deadline for a hobby. None [More...] Read the rest

Posted in game design, indie games, Vespers | 3 Responses

Deadlines Are Just Rough Guesses, Anyway

By Rubes | Published: May 8, 2009

So a couple of deadlines have been extended, much to my relief. Perhaps.

The deadline for IndieCade, the annual independent games festival/competition, was extended from April 30th to May 15th. This is good because I really had no chance of having something close to submission-worthy by the end of April. It’s still up in the air if I can have the demo ready by the 15th, but at least I’ll have another shot.

Additionally, the submission deadline for the Austin GDC conference (for presentations) was just extended from today to Wednesday, May 13th. I’ve spoken with a couple of people about a presentation already, and I’ve prepared a draft of my abstract, so the extension will allow me/us to edit and refine it a [More...] Read the rest

Posted in interactive fiction, miscellaneous | 2 Responses

Austin GDC Submission Deadline Soon

By Rubes | Published: April 29, 2009

As I cram for tomorrow’s combined Indiecade/Utah Indie Gamers Night deadlines, another looms close on the horizon. The deadline for submissions to the Austin Game Developers Conference, or AGDC, is coming up in a little over a week. This is not a deadline for game submissions, but rather submissions for lectures, classes, or panel discussions.

I went to last year’s conference and had a great time. It’s much smaller than the main GDC in San Francisco, but there’s a lot of great activity and opportunities to meet and talk with people. While GDC is probably overwhelming, AGDC is considerably more welcoming and relaxed (and less expensive). I’m planning on going again this year, and depending on when the IGF Showcase deadline is, perhaps [More...] Read the rest

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Responses

Indie Gaming on NPR

By Rubes | Published: April 17, 2009

NPR’s On The Media is running a story this weekend on the independent computer gaming scene called, “DIY Gaming”. It’s free to listen to or download on NPR’s site, if you’re interested.

Pretty standard stuff, although it concentrates mostly on the console scene, with a particular discussion of Microsoft and XNA. There was a nice portion at the end on Chen’s “Flow” and “Flower”, but in general it was not a very deep discussion, and it really didn’t go into the PC indie scene at all — except for a mention of how designing games just for computers, rather than consoles, is too limiting and not “the big leagues”, based on the size of the user base. There was some mention of the creativity [More...] Read the rest

Posted in indie games | Leave a comment

The Early April Vespers Thing

By Rubes | Published: April 5, 2009

Turns out February kind of kicked me right in the family jewels, which is why there was no end of February update — or much of anything, for that matter. We ended up getting very little done in general, to be honest, but it was for a whole variety of justifiable reasons and so as a group we just tried to put that month behind us. I also officially aged yet again during that time, but I’ve already passed the point where I should really be going public with that.

Then there was March, which ended up looking a lot like February, at least on the outside. But March actually did not suck, and we did make considerable progress on a number of fronts. But [More...] Read the rest

Posted in Vespers | 1 Response