2013-05-08 13:12:01 // Sim Ahmed
// The Idealog Blog
| 3 comments
The end is nigh for New Zealand online multiplayer game MiniMonos, the primate themed game's maker says there's no money in monkey business (at least not in the Flash-based variants).
2013-03-13 07:03:08 // Sim Ahmed
// The Idealog Blog
Not wanting his daughter to hit the glass ceiling in gaming so early in life, Mike Mika edited the classic Nintendo game Donkey Kong so it's the princess that rescues Mario from the game's namesake villain.
2013-03-06 06:53:58 // Sim Ahmed
// The Idealog Blog
Chris Bulman, studio director of Auckland-based game development shop Custard Square, talks to Idealog about the New Zealand game industry, the development of niche gaming titles, and how soccer moms keep his business afloat.
2013-02-13 11:55:19 // Sim Ahmed
// The Idealog Blog
Wellington-based game studio PikPok, the mobile division of Sidhe, is nominated for a British Academy Game Award, for its iOS and Android game Super Monsters Ate My Condo (SMAMC).
2013-01-25 15:48:56 // Sim Ahmed
// The Idealog Blog
Surviving the zombie apocalypse is Media Design School's (MDS) latest plan to entice young students into the world of game development, and in turn, enrol at its school.
2013-01-24 08:49:21 // Idealog
// The Idealog Blog
Two international game designers from giants of the industry, Blizzard and Valve, are coming to Auckland to headline Media Design School's Game Summit in February.
2012-12-03 15:36:46 // Idealog
// The Idealog Blog
Forget boxed products – free to play is the new way. Steve Gray – executive in charge of production at Tencent, an online entertainment and gaming company in China – explains why free to play is a better approach to developing a gaming business than the traditional methods, discusses cultural differences in China, and the value of incremental improvements and innovation.
2012-11-02 10:42:05 // Idealog
Local game developer Ninja Kiwi (which we reckon just might have one of the best business names in the country) has bought a Scottish company with an almost equally awesome name – Digital Goldfish.
2012-09-11 12:58:32 // Idealog
// The Idealog Blog
Almost all of the New Zealand gaming industry's revenue in the past year came from exports, with success stories like SmallWorlds gaining a million new users in less than three months after launching in Brazil in May and role-playing game Path of Exile raising more than US$1 million of crowdfunding in pre-purchases during its closed beta development.
2012-08-20 09:16:48 // Josh Martin
// The Idealog Blog
| 1 comment
iKEMU, an Auckland-based online gaming platform, is merging the virtual and real, rewarding online players with real-life rewards for their efforts.
2012-06-19 12:05:36 // Esther Goh
// The Idealog Blog
Nostalgia has fulled a resurgence of retro gaming (see our story on Pippin Barr, the Kiwi whose 8-bit games are garnering a following), but does it have a future as something more than a gimmick?
2012-05-24 12:03:22 // Stephen Knightly
// The Idealog Blog
| 4 comments
FourSquare has a lot to answer for! Mitch Olson explains how to go beyond buzzwords and hype to create a business case for gamification for your brand.
2012-05-22 10:14:00 // Esther Goh
// The Idealog Blog
| 1 comment
Media Design School is introducing New Zealand's first game development degrees to its lineup of courses and is now taking enrolments for August, as industry insiders say there has never been a better time to consider a career in games.
2012-05-09 10:56:46 // Hilary Jackson
// The Idealog Blog
There's ever increasing evidence of the positive impact ‘serious’ games can have on health outcomes. And a pioneer in this field is the Sparx video game, created by Kiwi researchers to tackle teenage depression using cognitive behavioural therapy, packaged in a fun and appealing way.
2012-05-01 11:22:34 // Idealog
// The Idealog Blog
A custom Xbox Kinect game collaboration for Smith&Smith has snagged local creative agency Method Studios gold at the 2012 Communicator Awards.
2012-04-30 12:05:30 // Esther Goh
// Idealog #39: workshop
Pippin Barr is spanning the divide between academics and gaming and bringing back the charm of 8-bit.
2012-04-24 09:58:48 // Idealog
// The Idealog Blog
Entrepreneur and developer Dan Milward is launching what he calls the world's first cloud-based open source game creator today – Gamefroot.
2012-04-05 14:22:51 // Idealog
// The Idealog Blog
SmallWorlds, Gameloft, Grinding Gear Games, NinjaKiwi, Runaway Play, Sidhe/PikPok, Cerebral Fix.
All these and more will be at this year's New Zealand Game Developers Association Conference on May 19 with leading game makers from New Zealand and Australia.
2012-03-29 13:39:34 // Hilary Jackson
// The Idealog Blog
Rush Digital Interactive is doing big things. What can we expect next from them – and what advice have they got for fellow game developers?
2012-03-28 15:22:00 // Alan Hucks
// Idealog #38: workshop
Console games, known as AAA in the industry, are dying, consigned to nostalgic nooks alongside Donkey Kong, C64 tape games and Super Mario.
2012-02-28 12:16:32 // Esther Goh
// Idealog #38: now
Incubator Creative HQ has pushed the go button on its inaugural gaming bootcamp. Thumbs at the ready...
2012-02-22 12:59:05 // Idealog
// The Idealog Blog
The new app economy is all about freemium – the majority of App Store revenue is derived from freemium social and mobile games, with in-game purchases driving sales.
2011-12-20 12:01:57 // Idealog
// The Idealog Blog
Not just the first country to see the sun, New Zealand will be the first to kick off the Global Game Jam too come January.
2011-11-16 10:26:42 // Idealog
The global gaming industry shows no signs of slowing down and Kiwi developers are getting their share of the pie – the local game development industry grew by a whopping 46 percent this year.
2011-07-05 11:20:00 // Idealog
Gaming for a good cause: New Zealand’s largest online social gaming company SmallWorlds has raised $38,000 by selling limited-edition virtual goods to thousands of players.
2010-06-22 21:14:21 // Sam Eichblatt
// Idealog #28: interact
Pixar senior animator Andrew Gordon is making his way down under for SP10 in August. We caught him in June to ask about the future of Andy, Buzz and Mr Incredible.
2010-01-14 10:44:00 // Amanda Cropp
// Idealog #25: features
| 1 comment
While the gaming industry works out how to draw yet more pixels faster, a Dunedin company is using its backyard invention to bring the real world to screen in picture-perfect quality. Amanda Cropp meets the snap-happy team behind Areograph
2009-05-26 15:11:10 // Simon Young
// Idealog TV
Vishal Gondal's business card says he is God-in-Chief at IndiaGames. A business owner since the age of 16, he’s got a lot to say about the Indian business philosophy of Jugaad. Kiwi businesses are more creative than Vishal expected, but do we need a healthy dose of Jugaad?
2009-02-19 09:57:34 // Ben Kepes
// The Idealog Blog
| 1 comment
McGonigal is a game researcher at the institute for the future. Her ethos is that in game-design the human experience is perfectly optimized—we feel we have purpose, we feel we are collaborating and we feel we have a meaning. Why then are other aspects of our online (and for that mater offline) experience not fulfilling all these needs?
