How would you like to pay for that, ma’am?

Conventional wisdom has it that when someone wants to buy goods, they go to a retailer, purchase a product at a predetermined price, and then become owner of that product. We don’t often think of different ways for this transaction to take place.

But what if there was another way?

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Caine’s Arcade

What an amazing kid! which games company is going to snap him up?

I love the calculator authentication bit…

The Fun Pass is an awesome deal!

 

Draw Something – Hits 20 Million Downloads & Generates 6-Figures a day

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Insane growth numbers surfacing on the latest and very addictive social game.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A bit of a “seize the day lesson” to us all in digital agency land. If I had a dollar for every app / social game that I have pitched or said I was going to make…..

 

Reference link:

http://www.businessinsider.com/omg-5-week-old-app-draw-something-hits-20-million-downloads-and-generates-6-figures-per-day-2012-3

Shake dat ass!

I’m here in San Francisco for GDC ’12. Yesterday was the Independent Games Summit – lots of really interesting and inspirational talks by some of the big figures and innovators in indie games.

The clear highlight so far has to be a game called ‘Dog The Wag’ – an ingenious invention by Douglas Wilson of Die Gute Fabrik, the creator of Johann Sebastian Joust. It pretty much involves tying a PlayStation Move controller to your butt, getting down on all fours and shaking it around as much as possible, while other ‘dogs’ try to beat you up (or at least wrestle you to the ground and press a button on your controller). Hilarious, slightly awkward and nothing short of amazing. The game certainly goes a long way towards his rhetoric of embracing the flaws in new technology rather than fighting against them.

(Image courtesy of Joystiq.com)

Watch the video here.

Today is the Social and Online Games Summit – so I’ll try to post something vaguely more sensible. It will probably have something to do with leveraging the synergies of low-hanging fruit on Facebook and very little in the way of booty shaking. Which is sad.

Nokia Launches New NFC-Enabled Games

It’s great to see some fun uses for NFC trickling through. It’s taken a while though, with Nokias’ first NFC enabled hand set having hit the market in 2006

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near_field_communication#NFC-enabled_handsets

Nokia have also launched an NFC microsite recently which does a good job at explaining what’s possible:

http://europe.nokia.com/nfc

Other NFC references:

NFC trials in the world

http://www.nfcworld.com/list-of-nfc-trials-pilots-tests-and-commercial-services-around-the-world/

cute little story about a small town in Finland

http://www.nfcworld.com/2008/10/28/397/oulu-the-little-city-with-big-ideas/

Visa mobile payment trials in Finland in 2009

http://www.mobile-ent.biz/news/read/visa-trials-mobile-payments-in-finland/07589

New York Times recognises the crazy genius of Dwarf Fortress

As a fan of indie video games, I always enjoy seeing obscure titles getting mainstream attention. Earlier this week, The New York Times ran a lengthy story about Tarn and Zach Adams, developers of Dwarf Fortress – a non-graphical (if you don’t count text as graphics) dwarven civilisation simulator – not exactly the most saturated of gaming sub-genres, to be sure.

In development since 2002 and available for free since 2006, Dwarf Fortress tasks the player with managing a group of dwarves as they set up and maintain a settlement, digging out caves, building fortifications, developing farming and industry. This is just the early-game, mind you. Later you’ll be building an army, developing an economy and dealing with the demands of nobles and possible a king – if you last that long.

The Heist: An awesome puzzle game with a tangible reward

Two things I love: slick puzzle games and discounted software. MacHeist, providers of the biggest and best of the charity-contributing Mac software bundles is giving you both with their new iOS game, The Heist.

The Heist is a fantastic collection of increasingly difficult challenges, spread amongst four different puzzle types. The twist with this game is the promise of a real reward at the end. What is it? In their words: “You’ll have to beat The Heist to find out… but it’s fun, and it’s worth much more than the price of entry.”

OK, you’ve got me. Back to it, then.

The Heist is on the AppStore for 99c in the US and $1.19 in Australia.

You might want to check this out.

Angry Birds – for Chrome.

Don’t have a smartphone, iPad or Android tablet? But you do want to play this “Angry Birds” thing that people keep talking about?

Chrome to the rescue!

The folk over at Rovio have ported their smashingly popular game to the Chrome browser, and it’s 100% built in HTML5. Very, very neat.

If you haven’t given this simple physics based bird-hurler a whirl, why not see what all the fuss is about? Won’t cost you a dime, and is playable in both standard and high definition.

Either click the picture above, or this link, and you’ll go straight there. Enjoy!

~@tali3sin

SpaceChem: Better Living Through Chemistry

Rock Paper Shotgun already took the headline “My Chemical Romance” so that one will have to do.

If I look a little tired today, it’s because I was extremely late last night. It wasn’t my fault, however. It was already pretty late when I decided to retire for the evening, but before I could hang up my smoking jacket and pipe, SpaceChem kicked my door down and forced me to party til 2:30am. Indie games, man. Those guys can be @#$%s.

But I did have a hell of a time. SpaceChem from Zachtronics Industries is design-based puzzle game that has you combining elements into complex molecules and loading them onto awaiting spaceships. It’s pretty hard to explain so maybe you should just check out the trailer.

Pretty crazy looking, sure. The trailer can make it look pretty daunting, but be assured that the game takes you gently by the hand for the first half a dozen levels and explains the mechanics clearly before leaving you to it. I found that in no time I was making stupidly complex machines in multiple factories in order to fill waiting spaceships with sulphuric acid. Hang on. That doesn’t sound like a great idea to me now.

There’s an extremely lengthy demo to get you hooked and then it’s $20 for the full game.

It’s also worth checking out a great interview with the game’s creator, Zach Barth, over at Rock Paper Shotgun.

L.A. Noire: “The Technology Behind Performance”

Check out this fascinating look at how Aussie game-devs Team Bondi (motion) captured the emotion behind the actors’ performance for their upcoming PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 game L.A. Noire.

What they’ve done is years ahead of the competition as far as capturing the nuances of an actor’s performance goes.

L.A. Noire is set to be out mid-2011 from Rockstar Games.