Entries tagged with “games” from O'Reilly Digital Media Blog

I'm not saying that I'm an elitist Applecentric snob, no wait, yes, i am. And a lot of the UI decisions made me roll my eyes. The five screens before you can play any game, the mismatched dialog boxes without consistent font usage, the fact that you must pay 5 bucks for a Web browser, the fact that there doesn't seem to be easy third party development for an Internet-savvy device.

I'm just back from my 14^th trip to Texas to participate in one of the Fat Man's amazing digital media conferences. This one was called Project Horseshoe, and dedicated to "solving game design's toughest problems." If history holds, this improbable but beloved conference will have far-reaching results.

There are two things that are really exciting me today. One: Game Development as an academic pursuit is finally being taken seriously. That means Game Audio is going to get a big boost in the halls of music departments and post-production programs across the campuses of the world. The vast amounts of dialogue recording sessions, multiple versions of music cues,...

In several discussions and talks with multimedia audio specialists, game composers, music technologists and the like… one of the startling conclusions that many have come to is that “game audio” is over. (!) Not to say that it no longer exists, or that all there is to listen to has been written; the general consensus was that we cannot...

I just posted about our Vancouver stop which was a lot of fun. It's been almost non stop since we left Seattle. We've been playing some Guitar Hero and people are spending a lot of time coding. Lee Brimelow and Mike Chambers have been updating the on AIR Blog and Ted Patrick is building a chat application for our live...

O'Reilly recently snuck a wacky speech synthesizer into our blogs: Clicking the "listen" link above will play back these words with a robotic voice. As a speech synth enthusiast, I immediately started looking for phrases that would produce funny rhythms. I found the first in Peter Drescher's recent blog about the Game Developers Conference: I love the Game Developer's Conference!...

Over on O'Reilly's Emerging Telephony blog, 3D audio developer Keith Weiner describes what happened when select Second Life players got hold of his positional audio technology: They used it to perform live music for each other. I've been involved in developing this technology for almost 10 years. I know intimately its architecture and components. I worked through the process of...

I play far more music than games, but I always get great musical insights at GDC, the annual Game Developers Conference. I'm particularly intrigued by what game composers call adaptive music, soundtracks that change based on what the player is doing. The Fat Man likens composing this type of music to creating sculpture—your audience will be able to walk around...

As many of you are no doubt aware, Second Life is a successful online 3D virtual world (developed by Linden Labs) which is built and owned by its 'residents'. Fellow 'residents' retain the rights to their works which they can then buy, sell, and trade with other 'residents' in a thriving e-commerce marketplace. Several notable musical acts (including Suzanne Vega,...

The report from Project Bar-B-Q 2006 is now online, and its annual predictions are as provocative as ever. Bar-B-Q (I'm on the advisory board) is a four-day conference designed to shape the future of music on computers. Hosted by the Fat Man on a Texas ranch each October, it brings together 50 experts in chip design, music software, game music,...

According to Yahoo News, starting 22 November, Microsoft will offer new TV and video XBox Live content. TV Shows are expected to retail at $1.99. Movies will probably rent for $3.99 for 24 hours. Media reports are spinning this product as the "iTV killer", but I have my doubts. I'd like to see how easy it is to connect to...

It is my honor and privilege to announce a breakthrough in audio technology, a miracle of modern science, and the most important thing to happen to game music since MIDI got promoted to General -- introducing the Homunculonic Aestheticator, an interactive audio mixing engine with real-time Haptic Applicators, capable of producing multiple adaptive soundtracks encoded with True Human Emotions™, using...

i recently spoke at the Game Audio Conference in Austin, Texas, and i gotta say, Austin's a pretty nice town if you're a musician doing game audio. Not only do they have an amazingly vibrant game developer community (everything from big names with big games to creative startups with wild but intriguing ideas), but there's this sign: Now, ya gotta...

http://www.projecthorseshoe.com This is a bright group--I thought you might be interested in knowing about the 50-person Game Design Think-Tank that my partners and I are putting on. This will be the first one on the topic of Game Design, but we've had 10 very successful conferences on Music on Comptuers (Project BarBQ). The high concept, basically, is to "Solve...

Get your rock tune featured in the next version of the Guitar Hero game! http://www.pro-g.co.uk/news/27-04-2006-2662.html...

My Coder friend Thom sent me this link to a heart-warming feel-good pop tune about The Code Monkey Within. Says it's by Jonathan Coulton, released under the Creative Commons license. http://www.exegame.com/CodeMonkey.mp3 Sometimes it feels good to see little monuments built to the culture we help create. Thanks, Thom! Here's a little link to Thom's website of equally heartwarming feel-good games....

GDC, formerly known as the Computer Game Developers Conference, starts in earnest today, and there are scads of audio presentations. Although I’m not a gamer, I always come away from the conference with fascinating insights on the differences between “linear” and interactive music. For instance, in a game, the composer is often more akin to a sculptor than a painter,...

With EA's decision to sell music from their games as a productin it's own right - the question has to be asked, what does this mean for the future of game audio within the context of the game?

Risk averse game design is the enemy of fun. In other words, it's the enemy of, um, game design. Yet we keep hearing that games can only be made with high budgets, and the game company's responsibility to the high-dollar investors necessetates risk averse policies. But that will not stand, says I.

The arcade has drifted off into history. In its slumber, much of the face-to-face socializing has faded as well. Is this important to today's video games? Atari founder Nolan Bushnell thinks so... what I learned at Atari U.