It’s been more than a year since I worked on my very first videogame during the Global Game Jam 2009. I’m proud to announce that Pulse: The Game has finally made it to the Apple Appstore thanks to our publishing deal with Virtual Fairground. The game even includes a soundtrack by DJ Ferry Korsten. Check out this new trailer!

Feel free to try out the free trial version featuring 1 track from the game.

Our Global Game Jam music game ‘Pulse‘ just got a development deal with Virtual Fairground! We’ll be showcasing a revamped demo during the Game Developer’s Conference in San Francisco!

Download and share the prototype at PulseTheGame.com

The press release is over here

As much as I love posting stuff in trio’s, here’s the two posts I found about our game:
Control Magazine chose our art was the best for their post

IndependentlySpeaking.com thought we trained their senses

Update: Gamer.nl quotes Pulse as a ‘favorite’

So here’s the game if you want to try it out. Please don’t forget to vote 5 on the Global Gamejam Website ! Thx!

The circle is complete. My dream has come true. After organizing game events, doing research on the game industry and writing for game magazines, I’ve finally got to work on a game! My team was an awesome bunch of creative folk to work with, so I guess that worked out quite well. Ladies and gentlemen, this is ‘Pulse‘:

And guess what, we won! Our rhythmic co-op music game won the popular vote. Stay tuned for a playable version!

Next personal goal: voice-acting!

I’m late with this, but it’s the thought that counts. Imagine looking back at this website in the near future when we’re all rich and famous. These holiday wishes shouldn’t be missing from the 2008 archive.

Thank you for still passing by VGV.  2009 should fill up with fun stuff fast. Either that, or I do end up chasing a career in acting. Who knows?

Have a prosperous 2009!

Ps. Found the Saturn in Tokyo for 1900 yen (12 euro’s). It arrived by boat 2 weeks before Christmas. Reference.

Did we mention the upcoming  brand new website design with our Leipzig GC coverage?

All these pretty logos make us smile

One of my dreams as an aspiring academic just came true. Oh boy, that was fracking awesome! I was invited to give a presentation on ‘social play through participatory culture‘ for a class called “The Gaming Mind” at the Communication Studies department of UCLA. Since I heard the class has been deeply involved in the hardcore essence of game studies, I decided to introduce the students to some jewels of game culture research: modding, e-sports and machinima.

I spoke.

They learned.

We lol’d at some machima.

To quote Peter Moore during the conference, “they’re the backbone of the industry.” This year’s edition of the MI6 conference brought a great collection of speakers and insights together. Each and every person that I met had something new and interesting to tell me. The atmosphere was filled with creativity and optimism for the future of the industry, which just made it a great event to attend. Now if only I had a collection of spacemonkeys to transcribe the hours and hours of interview dialogue…

A select collection of photo’s can be found on the VGV Flickr.

Buffed up Lada’s? Pimped out Dacia’s? Obviously this is one of the most brilliant virals I have ever set my eyes upon. ‘Nevoie de viteza’ basically stands for Need for Speed in Romanian you know (we see what you did there EA!). With this my motherland finally gets some other form of online representation than ‘Numa Numa‘ or the Cheeky girls. Once again the rest of the world can feast their eyes on our incredible creativity and hot women!

“Deş teaptă-te, române, din somnul cel de moarte, În care te-adânciră barbarii de tirani….”

Those poor Combine soldiers from City 17. Jobless, hated and no place to go after Gordon Freeman came around. Luckily, the Georgian army and police could use a hand at dealing with riots and those annoying demonstrators of theirs! Now the Combine soldier can once again do what he likes best.

Beating up and shooting innocent people.

You might have seen the interview I had with Mats Lordin from ReachIn technologies about their Haptx engine and the Falcon controller. Mats mentioned that the controller would support several different manual periphals. And here it is, the pistol grip attachment!

The guys from Popsci.com got a chance at seeing the pistol grip in action in Half-Life 2.

Demi has some footage of how that felt on maximum capacity.

Source: Popsci.com

Read the rest of this entry »

So Henry Jenkins actually interviews others on game related subjects? Talk about a dedicated scholar gone journalist! Or maybe he’s been doing this for quite a while. I should read Jenkins his blog more often. According to his academic profile, Hutchinson has been quite the busy bee on this subject.

Here’s an excerpt:

“Today, I want to introduce you to David Hutchinson, the author of a recently released book, Playing to Learn: Video Games in the Classroom. Hutchinson’s book promises over 100 game activities appropriate for classroom use, a selection that spans across academic subjects. [...] Hutchinson’s focus is on what we can do in our schools right now, using projects already on the market, to tap student and teacher interests in games. In the course of the collection, the models many different conceptual approaches for thinking about games — including many designed to foster core media literacy skills. The result is a book which will be valuable to classroom teachers or for that matter, parents who want to engage their children in meaningful conversations about the place of games in their lives and about how games structure the way we see the world.”

This sure beats the hell out of reading interviews done by a random game illiterate journalist.

Picture courtesy of playingtolearn.org

Isn’t this the cutest thing you’ve ever seen? It reminds me of my first time in Disney World, almost squeezing Mickey to death out of joy. The BBC seems to have officially joined our quest for a better understanding of video games. Here’s an excerpt of this thought over and clear sighted article on games and popular culture:

“It’s a common misconception that gaming is a solitary activity, as today an increasing number of titles are for gamers to get together and play in turn. In this respect, it’s no different to golf – a game which can be a source of marital friction but is rarely accused of incitement to murder. [...] But school or work friendships often revolve around shared interests and experiences, and talking about Master Chief’s latest discovery or tactic is no different to discussing the weekend’s football results or the comings and goings on The Archers.”

Great to hear this is also happening overseas! Read the entire article over here!

Source (and picture courtesy of): BBC news (via Kotaku)