Ever since Flappy Bird became the #1 free game on the App Store and Google Play, developers have been wrestling with one question: How in the world did this happen?The answer should be both encouraging and discouraging for the games industry. The good news is that the dream is still alive for the indie developer. The bad news is that the entire foundation on which the multi-billion mobile games industry has been built on just maybe complete nonsense.I just got back from two mobile game conferences in the UK where experts from all over the world talked about the keys to success to creating a hit mobile game. The experts and topics were the exact same that I have seen at the mobile game conferences that occur just about every other week here in San Francisco.
Episodic games are all the rage this season, and the odds are good that you're probably somewhere in the middle of playing one right now. Almost all of the big story-driven mobile games are adopting the episodic formula these days, with most recent examples like In Fear I Trust and République just getting started with their own respective journeys. On the surface, making an episodic game is a great idea. You get to put the first installment out into the world up front and gauge your players' feedback before fine-tuning the episodes that follow. But there's one potential risk that could actually end up harming these pre-planned episodic games: the lengthy and sometimes unavoidable delays or wait times between each individual episode.Take Telltale Games for example, the studio that effectively brought the idea of episodic games into the mainstream of our industry. "Faith," the first episode of Telltale's The Wolf Among Us, was originally released for PC on October 11, 2013, and with the second episode "Smoke and Mirrors" finally debuting this week, this puts the amount of wait time between these two episodes at just under four months. At this rate, we may very well have to wait until early 2015 to see how Bigby Wolf's adventure ends: especially considering the crazy amount of new projects that Telltale has decided to juggle all at once."There are a number of reasons for varying delays in releasing the subsequent installments of an episodic game, and none of them are exactly ideal for the studio, or for the player, at that. Over the last few weeks, you could almost feel the growing frustration of gamers towards The Wolf Among Us everywhere online, with some early Season Pass adopters even afraid they might never get the next portion of the game they already paid for. And for those that do start playing Episode 2 this week, will you have a hard time picking up where you left off after such an extensive break?
Do you like video games? What about… parties? What about the unbearably bitter cold of a Canadian winter? If you said yes to all three of these, you're going to want to clear your schedule on February 21st. The Fancy Videogame Party is coming.Thanks to its thriving indie scene, Toronto has tons of great events for gamers - and yet Fancy Videogame Party is like the perfect storm of gaming events in Toronto. It's not one, not two, but three celebrations in one.First, it's a celebration of The Hand Eye Society's fifth birthday. The Hand Eye Society, for those not in the know, is a Toronto-based indie gaming collective that holds a variety of events all year long to help spread the word about great Toronto games.
Late last week, EA launched the long-anticipated free-to-play mobile game Dungeon Keeper to both the App Store and Google Play. And the reaction has been nothing short of vitriolic.But here's the problem: I don't really understand why.For a quick primer, it's probably worth taking you through some of the articles that have been lighting up my Twitter feed this week. It all started on Thursday - less than 24 hours after the game's launch - in Play4Real's wonderfully satirical article Our Dungeon Keeper Review for iOS Will Be Done in 8 Hours or Give Us a Dollar to Finish It Now. I don't want to spoil it for you, but THEY DIDN'T REALLY CARE FOR THE GAME'S FREE-TO-PLAY NATURE.The Escapist's Jim Sterling called it "one of the worst examples of a cancer that is eroding the market and has already destroyed the credibility of the once promising mobile game sector." Kotaku later borrowed part of Sterling's quote for a headline to a piece about the backlash Dungeon Keeper has seen - an article whose author admits, by the way, hasn't actually played the game he's writing about: "I can't even bring myself to download EA's newest mobile disaster for fear of tainting my memories of hours and hours digging and crafting on the old Bullfrog classic."
There's no doubt about it - Flappy Bird is our great national obsession of the week. It's the catch of the day; the soup du jour. But like all chart-topping games, its moment in the sun can only last for so long. So what can we expect from developer .GEARS (pronounced dotGEARS) next?Flappy Bird isn't a new game - it's just new to success. And like Flappy Bird, .GEARS has a number of other games already available for play that nobody is paying attention to quite yet. Get in on the ground floor - here are five other games from Flappy Bird creator .GEARS that you can be playing RIGHT NOW.
While I'm not usually one for sports, I've always been a bit of a sucker for football. I don't follow a team or watch every Sunday, mind you, but if there's a game on and I'm in the room, my eyes will probably be glued to the screen. And when there's a big game like the Superbowl or Grey Cup (Canadians know what I'm talking about), I'm happy to carve an evening out of my schedule to watch.Last night's blowout was no exception.The big story from last night, it would seem, is of the Broncos complete and utter meltdown that started with the first play of the game, and the absolute trouncing delivered to Payton and his boys by Seattle's Legion of Boom (which includes former Grey Cup winner Brandon Browner, in case you Canadians are keeping score at home) that followed. Also, Percy Harvin.But if you ask me, there's a much bigger story from last night than utter annihilation of the Denver Broncos. It's the story of technology's growing relationship with events, how our love affair with gadgets perfectly blends with football, and, well… Flappy Bird.But we'll get to that in a moment.
After last week's debacle involving game developer King trademarking the word CANDY, game developers around the world vented their frustrations by participating in the Candy Jam, a game jam event designed solely to passive-aggressively taunt the trademark system as well as King's other embarrassment from last week, being accused of ripping off another developer's game. The Candy Jam website sets its mantra as: "Because trademarking common words is ridiculous, because ethics matter and because it gives us an occasion to make another game jam."Developers have since been working on creating their games, and uploading them to the Candy Jam website for others to check out. While the Candy Jam lasts through February 3rd, there are a good number of games already posted.One of the more polished games posted is Discord Games' Candy Chasm Saga, an endless-faller that involves falling down an chasm filled with candy, attempting to collect as much candy as possible while avoiding crashing into the scary-looking tokens floating about. Magnets are available to scoop up and make your candy-grabbing life easier, and golden apples provide limited invincibility. Candy Chasm Saga borrows art assets from Discord Games' full-time project, Chasm.
Every now and then I love to take a break from playing all of the hot new releases in gaming and spend some time playing through some of the old faithful titles from years ago. Whether I never got a chance to play them way back when, or whether I just wanted to revisit their magic for pure nostalgia's sake, there's no denying that the lovely world of free games and sales has been making this feat all the more obtainable each and every day.This week we've got quite a few older games making the sales roundup, but just because they're old that doesn't make them any less fan-flipping-tastic! In addition to those, we've also got a catalogue-wide sale of 2K Games titles going on over at the App Store, and another Android game bundle that's truly out of this world."Decisions, decisions. Do you have any idea which games your money is going to flock to this weekend? Know about any other great deals in gaming that we may have missed? As always, don't forget to let us know by leaving a comment down below!