Now ok, maybe that doesn’t really show what I’m getting at. After all there is this massive spike in interest in July for Starcraft that really skews the graph. The bit I’m interested in is the tail. So here’s the last 3 months instead.

I’m not really suggesting that you can compare the two games. They are two very different beasts that service two quite different markets. One’s made by a faceless team of hundreds another buy one guy (well there are 4 in the credits, more on that later). However both games come together in the audience’s attention span. I’m not sure if that’s an actual concept but it does sound legit. After all if you’re a gamer, it’s a good bet that you’ve have been exposed to both titles by now.

To me there are really interesting questions tied to the productions and finances of both of those games. I wonder if you looked at the per worker day investment of both teams and the financial return of both games. Which one would come up on top?

Next interesting point is the google search terms. My favourite bit is how “crack” and “cheat” appear twice in the Starcraft top 10 and they don’t even crack the list for Minecraft.

I was working at Pandemic Brisbane for about 3 months before we merged with BioWare and Elevation Partners invested 300 million into the company. Two years later Pandemic and BioWare were sold to Electronic Arts for about 800 million. About 18 months later the Brisbane studio was shut down. Today the LA studio has also been shut down. Read about it here.
It’s interesting to note that John Riccitello left EA in 2004 to form Elevation to buy Pando/BioWare to then go back to EA in 2007 and buy Pando/BioWare from Elevation. According to this article he made 4.9 million from the deal (the second time)

And the image up the top? Well the high point on the left is when Pandemic was bought at $60 a share. And it’s been an impressive ski slope ever since.

Because I’m also teaching it I’ve been putting together a bit of reference material about it. The first one is a Processing vs. Unity document. It covers some of the syntax differences between UnityScript (a Mono run version of JavaScript) and Processing (well it’s Java under the hood). and here it is..

Processing_vs_Unity

Up to speed on the game? Ok now look at this video. And read this post, it’s long but it’s worth the effort. That’s the toolset for Love. He wrote that. It’s awesome. His ideas on development are inspired.

I’ve been following this for a while now, since I saw this article. But the reason for posting about it is that it looks like it’s getting close to release. And I can’t wait.

Swarm (working title) from matt ditton on Vimeo.

In the mad panic at the beginning of semester I totally forgot to post this video to the game I’m working on. Swarm is all made in openframeworks for the iPhone. There are also a bunch of support tools that I wrote in processing as well. More info soon.

Pandemic Brisbane closed it’s doors yesterday.

I joined at the start of DAH2 and in the four years I was there I experienced the best working environment that I’ve ever known. If there are better teams and better people out there then I pray I find them one day.

At the end of DAH2 when THQ took the license back, The Bravo Team picked their name first so we became known as the Alpha Team. We moved upstairs, Bravo started up their game and we just kept working. That first 9 months of pitching and experimenting and trying to nail the game idea was amazing. It changed the way I work, the way I look at the job. The respect we had for one another was impressive. That doesn’t just happen. It’s built, day by day.

I equate it to a band that just kept playing, every month we got better. You’d know how every person would play. You’d know how everyone could shine. We got tight and the product was amazing. One day people will see it. And it’ll be seen for what it is. The best game we’ll all never finish.

Your faithful tech.

MattD

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3 (this is the one with the pretty examples!!)

Part 4 (more pretty things here)

Part 5

The release of any game by Blizzard will cause a singularity that will destroy the non-Blizzard shelves of your local gaming store. If you’re making a PC game right now, you’d better hurry and get it to market. When Blizzard releases Starcraft or Diablo you aren’t going to sell anything for about six months.

Of course knowing the Blizzard release system (roll 5 D20, 100 means it’s ready) you’ve probably got a bit of time.

MattD

Matt Clark

I have a very weird job.