James Rutherford

Super Mario:

Ping Pong:

Anyone know what this amazing gameshow is called?

I’ve long had close connections with the games industry, though it’s around eight years since I was full-time employed within it- and it’s always been very volatile.

Historically, this has been for a few major reasons:

• Developers are always chasing technology, pitching their code ahead for an upcoming platform, or to sit happily alongside an as-yet-unseen generation of software.
• The games industry has grown big very rapidly- large budgets mean risk, and (certainly from ~1990-2005) those in charge have had to adjust from their beginnings as a lonely coder in a back bedroom to large studio boss.
• The output isn’t particularly stable. Most games don’t make money and publishers spread this gamble across titles, hoping to have picked one that goes supernova.
• Publishers and developers have a complicated, usually antagonistic relationship with each other.

Alongside this, there have been shifts in distribution. From self-duplication to industrial scale- and now to digital. This latest shift also brings questions about how to market, since retail is declining and word-of-mouth via internet channels is a large and complicated animal to harness.

It’s genuinely depressing to see large cutbacks at good studios, particularly ones who are creating games for games players rather than pandering to risk expectations. It’s also deflating to see a studio in trouble because of unlucky planning decisions.

Good luck to those who will be ‘formerly Denki’, and to the studio itself. I hope you can rebuild.

To announce the news clearly and openly on a corporate blog is admirable- I’ve heard too many times of staff being led blindfolded to the guillotine. More info from Denki’s blog post.

Here are some examples of neat interactive visualisers people have been creating with HTML Canvas, Flash and Processing (Java):

Harmony, and other portfolio / interactive bits by the amazing MrDoob.

Flame artwork generator and other experiments by Peter Blaskovic.

Experiments by Karsten Schmidt using Processing.

April Fool only works if you don’t know it’s coming.

This morning, every fourth message on Twitter was #AprilFool – on not being caught out, or waiting to see what the big media and social media companies come up with (Google have a glittering history here- perhaps they have a wing of the Googleplex devoted to it?!).

Reference to the occasion was also plastered all over people’s Facebook statuses, and telegraphed via a couple of ‘Don’t be an April Fool’ sale emails.

I knew it was going to be April 1st last night, but somewhere deep within myself I hoped I wouldn’t remember when I woke up- I’d be caught off-guard and might enjoy the playful, blushing charm of being fooled.

The Internet killed the fun.

It doesn’t work any more- we’re all too plugged into our networks, hyper-alert, and waiting to be fed an amusing, all-too-knowing fabrication from a megacorp.

I vote for change. Mass foolings are an amazing thing, but we need to pull this back to the personal, and here is my proposal:

Everyone has their own individual ‘mirthday’ on which they can be tricked. It’s like your birthday. In fact, it’s exactly a week before it. Anyone close enough to know your birthday can organise a jape, and those in the same friendship circle can coordinate. Those who know your birthday should know you well enough to decide if you’d appreciate a mirthday… simple.

Let’s put the fun back!… Who’s in?

(My mirthday is 16th June – so bring it on!)