LostGarden - Game Genre Lifecycle Part 1

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The life cycles of game genres and the lessons that they teach us. 

Over the years people have bemoaned the rise and fall of various gaming genres, but there has been little analysis behind the functional processes that drive this critical market systems. 

Genres are a major defining factor in the creation of rich markets of avid gamers and designers ignore them at our own risk. We cannot assume that a genre will always exist, or that a genre will have competitive room for our latest title. A genre in the wane is a dangerous market where past success is no indication of future success. 

Equally important is the opportunity that genres present. If we can understand how genres arise and change over time, we can tilt fate in our favor by releasing and developing new titles that hit emerging genres with the correct timing and release strategies.

http://www.lostgarden.com/2005/05/game-genre-lifecycle-part-i.html

Raph Koster - Making Games More Cheaply

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There are basically two big things that drive a lack of innovation in games. The first of them is risk minimization. The second of them is risk minimization.
The reason I say “two” is because some forms of mitigating risk are undertaken with intentionality: purposely making a game that is a clone, for example. This isn’t always a bad thing — sure, sometimes it is done in order to capitalize on a market trend, but other times it’s done to learn how a given genre works, and in that scenario it’s a common and vital tool in a designer’s toolbox.
But this post is about the second sort of risk mitigation, which primarily centers around the fact that as games get more ornate, they get more expensive to make. High upfront costs push you naturally and inevitably towards incremental changes, with the biggest risks being taken on content rather than game systems. This is a pattern that leads inevitably towards “genre kings” — and the stage after genre kings tends to be stagnation and loss of audience reach.

http://www.raphkoster.com/2012/01/04/making-games-more-cheaply/

Learning From the Masters: Level Design in The Legend of Zelda

Activision designer Mike Stout breaks down Nintendo's 1986 classic.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/6582/learning_from_the_masters_level_.php

Multitouch with AS3 and AIR

http://lucamezzalira.com/2009/12/02/multitouch-with-actionscript-3-and-air-2-0/

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In this post, I’d like to share with you a little sample on how you can create an AIR 2.0 application with Flash Builder and test it with a macbook trackpad. In fact, you can use macbook trackpad gesture because they are supported on AIR and it’s so interesting, for example, if you want to test an application for new Wacom Bamboo pen & touch and you haven’it. Wacom Bamboo has a new AS3 SDK for Flex and Flash that allow you to work with multitouch and gesture too, it could be so interesting if you don’t have a multitouch for an expo and you want to buy a cheap solution to give a cool interaction for your possible new clients.

Community Core Vision

Community Core Vision, CCV for short (aka tbeta), is a open source/cross-platform solution for computer vision and machine sensing. It takes an video input stream and outputs tracking data (e.g. coordinates and blob size) and events (e.g. finger down, moved and released) that are used in building multi-touch applications. CCV can interface with various web cameras and video devices as well as connect to various TUIO/OSC/XML enabled applications and supports many multi-touch lighting techniques including: FTIR, DI, DSI, and LLP with expansion planned for the future vision applications (custom modules/filters).

 This project is developed and maintained by the NUI Group Community, We encourage you to get involved.

http://ccv.nuigroup.com/#

AIR for Android - Accesing the Camera

A video tutorial on using the camera of an Android device while developing on Adobe Flash/AIR.

http://www.gotoandlearn.com/play.php?id=124