History of Videogames

So, I've been recently working on some stuff for some classes I'll be giving soon at a local university. Since I've had to do all this early work on my spare time I've decided to post the slides here. They are free for anyone to check and use as they please. I'll adapt them later to use on my classes at that university.

http://www.eclipse-games.net/teaching/GameHistory/Brief%20History%20of%20Videogames.pptx

or the zip one:

http://www.eclipse-games.net/teaching/GameHistory/Brief%20History%20of%20Videogames.zip

In any case I'll be more than happy to hear what you think of these selection of 2D games. There are quite a few, but I think most of them are there for a good reason.

Crunch! (part 2)

This the second part of an article talking about crunch, where I give my opinions and share my experiences with regards to that subject, and try to explain the origins of my very cynical point of view. It was all sparked with a very unfortunate twit from the Ryse guys and in the first part I share some of my early experiences which hopefully explain my currently cynical way of looking at this subject. During this second part, in order to avoid problems with NDAs and so on, I'll try to stick to talking about generic stuff rather than focusing on a concrete experience. I'll try to compile a set of things I'd like to see and I think should be avoided by managers and game directors when dealing with this sort of issues. All of this is based on my personal experience throughout my whole career, not on a single project.

There was some controversy with Rayman Legends' team working overtime only to get the game delayed

Crunch! (part 1)

It's been quite a while since my last post. The title of this post explains why. I had to crunch for most of the first 7 months of the year. And then I took some holidays a little and intense work-for-hire time, and finally went back to work on my own project, on Super Toy Cars. I suppose I could've come back earlier, but I was too tired and probably didn't have something I itched to talk about. I'll try to come back to the habit of writing an article every 1-2 weeks. I'll try to discuss some of the design decissions on Super Toy Cars, some technical challenges and solutions, maybe sometimes just post images of the game for the sake of it and, of course, will visit topics I believe are controversial and I have a strong opinion of.

Ryse: Son of Rome

PS4

So, I'm a little late here almost 2 weeks after the console was announced in New York. Everyone in the industry has already gone through what they think about it, how they feel, how important/irrelevant PS4/the next generation of consoles is going to be, etc. So I'm gonna write something quickly explaining my point of view about the whole thing.

PS4 was announced in New York a couple of weeks ago

Racing games are dying? (Part 2)

In this second post we will go on analyzing the current situation of the racing genre and what possibilities there are. In the first part we did an overview of the genre and talked mostly on simulators. You can find it here.

Arcade Racing Games

As Wikipedia describes it here, "Arcade style racing games put fun and fast-paced experience above all else, as cars usually compete in unique ways. A key feature of arcade racers that specifically distiguishes them from simulation racers is their far more liberal physics. [...] For the most part, arcade racers simply remove the precision and rigor required from the simulation experience and focus strictly on the racing element itself".

OutRun. I wasted so much money on this game...

Racing games are dying? (part 1)

For my first 'proper' entry I decided to select a subject that's a bit open to debate and in which I'm particularly interested in. I like playing racing games and love working on them. They have a mix of technical and design challenges I find particularly interesting. Well, that and I love cars, particularly fast sport supercars, not that I've ever even driven one of those. That's one of the reasons why our first game as Eclipse Games was a racing game (Toy Cars) and why we're currently working on a sequel (Super Toy Cars).

Split/Second, the last game from Black Rock Studios