With such stellar graphics for a handheld available on PSP, the latest Crash game Mind Over Mutant maintained a wide range of cinematic styles and free roaming environments seen in versions for Xbox360 and other platforms. In response to the interest in highlighting developers, Notes on Game Dev nabbed up an in-depth interview with Radical’s Mind Over Mutant team including Game Designers Bob Churchill and Kasan Wright, Art Director Yousuf Mapara, Lead Programmer Ian Gipson, and Producer Glenn Dphrepaulezz.
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Just when I believed my attention span was shot and I didn’t have it in me to commit to a role-playing game…. I picked up Tales of Vesperia on the Xbox 360. The core of the game maintains familiar Japanese role-playing game (JRPG) mechanics that are so well executed that is the soul cause of Xbox 360 sales skyrocketing in Japan. Given the relative difficulty the 360 has had selling next to its native competition in the Japanese market—this is an impressive feat.

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Jenova Chen, creator behind the multi award-winning student game Cloud and flOw, co-founder of thatgamecompany,  is dedicated to expanding the emotional spectrum of video games and making them available for a much wider audience. And how did Jenova “make it” as an independent developer? With a lot of support and a drive for innovation.

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Tamir Nadav, formerly a programmer who has marked his path out as a game designer at KingsIsle, has been involved in the industry for over 5 years with his enthusiastic networking abilities. He’s always up for an interesting conversation and pitches in with events like Women In Games International, which promotes the inclusion and advancement of women in the games industry, worldwide.

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On my personal scale video game art and the impressiveness of its implementation are easily rated. I’ll tell you now that it is a personal scale—not anything based in numbers or calculations and yet I believe it is relevant. The scale is not based on intrinsic artistic value because I do not believe my own evaluation to be the ultimate assessment of artistic worth. I’m pretty simple: the artistic value of a game is better judged by how many people I show the game to because I think that they will be impressed by it. This goes for double points when I start to share games with people who don’t care about video games one iota.
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Ready for a Retro-Future with customizable characters and a wide range of new creative “homemade weapons” to blast away your nuclear waste enemies? The time is almost here! But until then, there’s a range of concept art and sneak peek screenshots. In this interview we feature character artist Dane Olds, who is responsible for weapons as a character artist for Bethesda’s much anticipated Fallout 3.
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Independent game development is, by and large, a solitary activity. Collaborations take place across countries, and even if your team is in the same city, chances are you communicate mostly by email. Consequently, I know other developers mostly by their games.

All that changes once a year at an event simply known as “Mittens.” It was founded eight years ago by a group of indie game developers who knew each other from the internet. Every year they pick a different location to meet and hang out for a week. This year we rented a chateau in France. For 26.

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Although we specialize in game art and design, we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to talk with Blaine Christine, Producer at BioWare Austin. Sadly we didn’t get any good juicy bits about the mysterious unannounced forthcoming MMO (are you thinking what I’m thinking?) but we did get ourselves a case of BioWare job envy. Blaine’s is a classic story from QA to Producer.

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In 1977, kids were listening to Rush, smoking cigarettes and a few of the lucky ones had even gotten to second base with the girls, all of which left Bioshock creator Ken Levine wondering “where am I at this point?” Well last week thousands knew exactly where he was as we gathered for his opening keynote speech at PAX 08 offering us a peek at his inner-nerd and a few lessons on coming to terms with our own.
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In a departure from anything art and class specific comes a story of horror. Well, really it’s horror borne out of a mistake that oddly enough encouraged me to write a small bit. Inspiration comes from odd places and I promise if you stick with me then we’ll make it to a point that involves art, video game and film.

I usually keep my promises. Okay, I try to keep my promises.

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