I’ve been working on and writing on an interesting story and world for a client the last couple of months, I have a wide range of creative freedom on this which is always nice. But with any new story and world there is something that is always required to really paint the scenes and events that take place. Without characters the writing becomes little more than a travel brochure. Creating characters for any story is a process of several levels; it’s not just a matter of giving a name or coming up with a witty description of some voluptuous creature. Major and minor roles need thought, preparation and above all some kind of passion investing.

You don’t have to like all your characters but I find you do have to have some kind of emotional response to them. Some of the best writing I’ve ever done was for a character I absolutely loathed. He was sadistic, evil, and generally a complete jack ass and I thrilled at writing for someone completely unlike myself. Exploration of personality is one of the more fascinating aspects of character creation.

These ties in to writing but also video game development, your characters that carry the narrative should be thought out, not card board cut outs that present little more than vehicles for imparting information. This is something of course that fails more often than not in many games. Even the most well constructed game can have some of the most boring and dull characters ever thought of. I suspect this is due to the general ambivalence that seems to go with story development in games. I could continue to rant on this for a long, long, long time but I won’t, at least for today.

If your characters aren’t interesting to you, if you just don’t have any emotional investment in them, then how can you expect other people to? I have had troubles many times in the past where a particular character just wasn’t doing it for me, and I’ve halted in writing of the overall project just to fix that kind of problem. Dead end, boring characters irritate the hell out of me and if I can’t find that spark it can kill the flow. Yes of course I could continue on with another scene, but always in the back of my mind I’ll have that part I’m skipping nagging at me. Character development is one part planning and one part spontaneous genesis. I could be trucking along writing with gusto and suddenly when it’s time to introduce someone new I could inject a character I planned for, or the muses will suddenly jump on me with both feet and give life to a new incarnation of unexpected import.

This current project is no exception, I was given some basic character data to play with, but in the course of writing I created a whole new vector of story arc, characters I’ve absolutely fell in love with and the dimensions of the story have grown exponentially with their conception. The balance of power in any story comes from plot, environment, and characters. You can have a fantastic plot and terrible characters, or vice versa. It’s finding that balance, and when you’re stuck look to your characters to tell you where you should be going.

Like many of my scribing brethren, our characters are drawn from people we know, or in many cases are pieces of ourselves, drawn from those aspects of our personality that are a parts of the pattern, emotions and thoughts we might not explore in day to day life can come out in our characters and we feel more emotional attachment to them than we anticipated.

The bottom line of course is that every good story has equally good and captivating characters, find those pieces of yourself that you might want to hide and explore them, look to the world around and find interesting personalities that might inspire you to further create your cast. With rich characters the story will build beyond your expectations, never skimp, even if you have to break off the pieces of your soul and roll them out on the cookie sheet. You might just blow your own mind with what you can bake up with the right ingredients!

So a month or two ago, I got involved with writing articles for a new digital gaming magazine, which as anyone who has been following me on twitter knows, it would be Game Theory Magazine. It’s Free to subscribe and read, and looking at our now launched first issue, it’s looking pretty damn sharp and I’m proud to be a part of it.

It will be Bi-monthly, which is a nice cycle for me as it gives me plenty of time to review the games I’ll be covering properly, and the other articles I’ll be writing for it covering hardware, and my favourite subject gaming culture or positive impact gaming.

There is and will be contests run with various partners, and we have some good quality writers and staff working on this. So please take time to give it a read when you have time if you haven’t already, and I appreciate the feedback I’ve received for both my STO review and the magazine itself, you can also leave a comment on here.

The direct link to the magazine PDF

It’s an exciting opportunity and I hope you all enjoy reading it.

Thanks Much

~Anj

When the Lamb opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature say, “Come!” I looked, and there before me was a black horse! Its rider was holding a pair of scales in his hand. Then I heard what sounded like a voice among the four living creatures, saying, “A quart of wheat for a day’s wages, and three quarts of barley for a day’s wages, and do not damage the oil and the wine!”

— Revelation 6:5-6 NIV

After an interesting conversation during a call tonight, and some deep thought of my own, it does make me wonder where the industry is headed these days. With Social Media sites on the rise as gaming platforms, primarily for the sake of this article, Facebook. As well as a lot of companies now gearing their efforts towards development and publishing to make use of these platforms it has me thinking.

I’ve had a lot of people comment to me that they’re finding more and more games that just aren’t catching their interest anymore, or are down right boring. I’ve noticed this myself that a lot of times games aren’t really innovating anything new, just putting on shiny new clothes.

Of course there are plenty of exceptions to this, but not as many as there once were. And to be candid, a lot of the games found on Facebook are without a doubt, boring as crap, yet they get millions of players daily and the market is growing constantly with more and more companies and indie teams getting into the act.

Is the industry headed for another crash before we see a renaissance of creativity and an explosion of innovative creation across the board of games? Honestly, I don’t know, but at the same time as more companies pull away from making console games and of course the continuing stigma of PC gaming aside from the MMO market. (Which is constantly being accused of being clones upon clones upon clones of this game or that game?)

Where is the industry headed?

Where will our new gaming experiences going to coming from?

Has the bubble burst again?

Tough questions; and maybe a bit of an alarmist bent to my thinking as I look over the scope of the gaming space these days. A lot of companies have been cutting stuff, shutting down, restructuring, and changing direction, so on, so forth, etcetera, and etcetera.

So I but it to all of you dear friends and readers, is this new explosion of gaming on social platforms a sign of great change that will push the industry into a new era of creativity or is Facebook the rider of the black horse, preparing to spread a famine amongst hardcore games and gamers while it sows the seeds of meaningless fluff?

Comment below.

Gamepot USA officially released Bright Shadow today, it’s a lovely anime-esque mmorpg that I’ve been enjoying lately, and we hope to have our review for it posted soon. Included in the release was of course a patch with their initial item mall content. Patch Notes below.

Greetings Lucienians!

Firstly, we would like to thank everyone who took part in our Closed Beta and Open Beta testing phases. We truly appreciate the effort you all put to helping us test Bright Shadow, to bring it to its Official Launch today.

Rarely does a game see such a smooth launch, as Bright Shadow has seen these past weeks. However, there were still a few things we felt needed changing before our Official Launch. We will detail these now:

Item Mall Release
We’re pleased to present the item mall, now available for users. Users can purchase PotCash to spend on rather spiffy items such as costumes, wings, and weapon covers.

The following items will be included in our Item Mall premiere:

Function

-SP Potion
-Thunder Hill Scroll

-Meteor Pit Scroll

-STR Reset Book 1

-CON Reset Book 1

-AGI Reset Book 1

-DEX Reset Book 1

-WIS Reset Book 1

-INT Reset Book 1

-Phoenix Feather x5

Equipment

-Ninja Costume

-Racing Costume

-Cowboy Costume

-Devil Costume

-Giant Panda*

-Broom*

-Calligraphy Brush*

-Big Banana*

-Antenna*

-Lyre*

Use

-Red Firework x3

-Red/Yellow Spiral Fireworks x3

-Giant Angel Wings x5

-Giant Golden Wings x5

-Rain x5

Others

-Hairstyle Well-Traveled

-Hairstyle Solo Strand

-Hairstyle Angel Strands

-Hairstyle Schoolgirl Sally

-Face: Enthusiasm

-Face: Friendly Fred

-Face: Innocence

-Face: Doe Eyes

-Lens: Ocean Blue

-Lens: Brown

-Hairdye: Crimson Red
-Hairdye: Orange

-Shop Sign: Wooden x3

-Shop Sign: Neon x3

-My Shop: Golden Tent x3

-Tumble

-Dance

Full Screen Mode
We’ve changed the default for game launch to full screen when you first play. Don’t worry though; you can still change back to window mode from the launcher.

New Hotkey Defaults

We’ve changed the default hotkeys to reflect a more user friendly experience.
Detailed information about exact changes in this will be posted soon.

Thanksgiving Event

What’s November without turkey?
We’ve got a buffet of an event ready to serve up for the season!

From 11-16-2009 to 11-30-09 we will be hosting:

A Thanksgiving Nightmare

The Thanksgiving Goddess has been having a terrible nightmare. Enter her dream and slay the terrible beasts, to help her get much needed sleep. If you do well, she may just give you a reward!

Once again, we would like to thank everyone for taking part in our testing phases, and wish you all happy gaming into the future of Bright Shadow.  We are constantly working to improve our games, and look forward to growing with both you, and Bright Shadow.

Kind regards,
Gamepot Staff/Bright Shadow Team

The recent news about the job cuts at EA prompted some thoughts as well as thinking about the spurt of indie films that have achieved a lot with a very small budget. One of the things that discussed all the time about game development is the cost of development. The cost of tools, team, and all the other associated costs, and yet we see some indie games make it bigger it leads one to wonder.

Does it really cost or does it really need to cost that much to make a game. Certainly big budget Triple A titles spend amazing amounts of money for the building of their products, and yet even these have a tendency to fall short when they roll out. Yet we see low cost indie games or smaller budget games go on to success and prosperity. Is it the lack of funds that prompts that extra something in the creative process that leads these titles to shine?

With studios cutting their work forces, what is the soon to be unemployed to do? Why don’t they go rogue and build their own titles while they job hunt? I suspect a major influx of these previous employed designers, programmers, artists and so forth could make a serious impact on the indie scene, bringing their experience and their own creative vision to the table. We all want to get paid for the work we do, that goes without saying, but the more I watch and think, the more I see a sort of stagnancy in the gaming corporate world.

Like any industry it’s grown and growing bigger and bigger, and with any large system, there’s a vacuum that slowly sucks the life out of it. More and more we hear about user generated content, we hear about the free to play model, we hear about how the industry is growing in demographic and the casual market is making crazy amounts of money when they get it right.

So what’s the magic ingredient? Looking at Farmville and the numbers it generates in terms of users, the believed amount of money it generates and the cost it was for development. Does the industry need to shift from these overkill budgets and focus on the product in terms of creativity and experience and cut costs not on the staff but on the prices paid for the rest. I’d rather pay for quality staff to create an awesome game, and then spend a fortune on the newest shiniest engine.

If Facebook, MySpace, and if the overall casual game market teaches us anything, you don’t need to have the amazing stunning, photo realistic graphics with 3D depth whenever your characters sneeze to capture the players.  Sure it is nice, but required to be successful? Doesn’t appear that way to me, and hasn’t for a while, not anymore anyways, there’s always some example that changes the way we look at things.

It sucks to loose your job, no question, but it doesn’t mean it’s the end, if you want to make games, and then make games; sure it might not be the amazing budgeted game you’re used to, but it doesn’t mean it will suck, just means you need to be more inventive. These days getting into the industry usually requires all kinds of experience, education, previous products delivered and so on. That amuses me considering the origins of the industry was certainly not built by experienced , titles delivered hands, but by people who wanted to create fun, entertaining games.

When did we get away from that?

So many people want to make games, so make games.  You don’t need the company to tell you what to work on unless you’re working for them. You’re cut loose so finally pursue that game idea you’ve had stashed in your old campfire note book since you first killed slimes in Dragon Warrior. The only limit to your creativity is yourself. Sure it costs money to do it the way you exactly pictured it, but if you deliver something that starts building your own momentum, you build upon it and make your own destiny using your own creativity and your own hands.

A renaissance of creativity in the indie space would be delightful, and watching more and more indie titles make it big would certainly be a healthy thing for the industry, I’m tired of seeing 15 sequels of the same tired old game; I personally thrive on the new when it comes to my game playing habits. I don’t mind the usual settings, but I want to see them delivered in a new way, with a new spin.

I want to see something magical come out of no where in our industry all the time and it’s entirely possible. Considering many of the players of games might be rocking the latest amazing title from “Insert studio here” when that experience is over, they loop back to the old games, their favourites from the previous generations. Just because the technology has changed it doesn’t mean that style of game isn’t viable, it just means people aren’t looking back and thinking “hey I loved this; why not make something to recapture the nostalgia?”

It’s never the end, it’s good to have accomplished something before, but it’s what you do next that has real meaning.

Alright now that I’ve set the tone with the above video, as everyone knows (unless they’ve been living under a rock for the last couple of weeks) Closed Beta has started for Star Trek Online, and beta sign ups have begun for Star Wars: The Old Republic. Now I’m a pretty ‘core fan of both franchises and I’m eagerly waiting to play both of these games, as I imagine every other fan boi and fan gerl is also. But there begs the question…

Which am I anticipating more?

The answer to that isn’t simple as I have no idea! I want to be a rock’em sock’em Jedi, but at the same time I want to beam around the galaxy in a star ship tackling those Federation yahoos. This is a conundrum facing many sci-fi geeks the world over; which franchise and which game do we really want to support. I’m certain many will opt to play both, but for us time constricted folks it’s likely to come down to one or the other. Certainly some will gravitate based on their experience with the aforementioned games, some will like one more than the other based on game play, graphics, or some obscure geeky thing or another.

But given who’s behind each game, Cryptic Studios doing ST:O and BioWare doing SW:TOR, I suspect it’s going to be a hard fight with ourselves one way or another. A duel of the fan-bases is going to ensure and I’m not sure which is going to win if either. Lots of us are more staunchly embed in one camp or another, or split evenly down the middle. The flame wars that will come and spread across the internets is going to be astounding as fans will rally behind their choice and evangelize whichever game that might be.

When caught up in so much chaos, where will that leave the fence sitting fans, who can’t decide either way? Worst case they will decide which community is less annoyingly vocal and mature than the other, or they’ll get fed up with both sides and run off to play Farmville. I hope, I desperately hope that both communities can learn to co-exist and we don’t see to much tomfoolery go on.

But when it comes to fan bois and fan gerls that seems about as likely as my winning the lottery. So I leave it to you dear readers, how will you decide when the time comes, will you be Dances with Siths or Gone with the Vulcans?

For me, I can tell you one thing…

I have no idea! They both look awesome XD

For the majority of time we’ve had video games there’s been music attached to them. It a fact music can trigger memories and sometimes music can just spontaneously pop into our head at the strangest time. Like any good gamer, most of the music that pops into my mind and the strangest times is game music. There’s a lot of music that instantly plays and recall that particular game, or that period in our life when we were playing that game.

There’s been good music, and bad music in games and the use of music in games can either be a good counter point to the game experience or it’s just thrown in there because either the developers liked the song or they just couldn’t find anything better and took whatever they happened to hear in the elevator on their way to the office.

As far as recalling music, whenever I hear the Legend of Zelda theme, regardless of which version for which iteration, my thoughts always go back to the gold cartridge for the NES.

Music can be very effective in games to set a scene, add ambiance, make for kick ass battle scenes and cinematics, or  just be part of the experience that comes with a game. For the sake of not pissing anyone off I’m not going to list the misses that fall into the game music category, and I can think of a wealth of music that stands out in my mind as game music I could listen to for hours. I’ll post one of those examples later.

My point however is that when making games we should and personally have to think about the music we associate with our game. Music that adds to the experience is a benefit, both to the game but also to longevity. If people can hear a tune and instantly think back to the fun and joy they had playing your game not only did you get the game right but you have a certain kind of stickiness that you might not otherwise find. Music as a memory cue can add a wealth of recognition to your game(s), but also your brand.

Squaresoft has been remarkably good at this, not that it comes as a surprise of course, considering they have Nobuo Uematsu-Sama, and others making music for their games. Even after all these years of Final Fantasy games, I still get that chill run through me when I hear the tell tale theme, Legend of Zelda manages that of course as I stated above, but I can think of many more examples.

But then there’s the other side of this conversation, when game music isn’t used effectively, isn’t adding to the experience but instead, just sits in the game and ends up either annoying the crap out of the players or gets blatantly ignored. MMO’s are notorious for crappy music selections in the games, often recycling the same music for area after area. Which let me tell you, gets old really quickly, especially when you’re transitioning from a swamp land, through a town, into an ice area and the same ghastly, worse than elevator music persists throughout the game world.

I know music can be expensive if you’re shelling out money for a Big Name composer to do your game, but to be honest you don’t need to go that far to get good music. Looking through the indie music scene is it rock, electronic, or folk music depending on the genre of your game you can find quality music to bring into your game world and add to the experience.

It’s not rocket science and maybe it does require your designers/developers/ and especially your producers to have some level of decent taste, but at the same time, it is worth the effort. Of course you want to focus on game play, art style, game experience, game world and all the components that make up a successful title, but at the same time, you don’t want to cause your players ears to bleed and do a half assed job picking music.

Music can and is effective both for game experience, brand recognition, but also the all important stickiness. You want your players to remember your game fondly, and use music for its memory cue ability so the next time you launch a title, your players can remember the kick ass time they had on the previous one and look forward to your next offering.

Music might not seem important, but I can recall the countless times I’ve seen players ask; “Is the music any good?”

Something to think about; that and remember to be consistent for god sake. For now, here are a few more samples of games that got music right, even if it’s only in one certain part of the game.

Yeah I know, most of it’s Squaresoft, what can I say, they get it right most of the time.

Here’s a strange thought, that occurred to me the more I thought about Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize, the different reactions to it, and just the state of the world. Now following along with me while I delve into this thought train for a moment, even though it might not make any sense.

We have various depictions in books, movies, and especially games about different worlds where various realities occur. Such as; people with super powers, psionics, great wars, aliens, apocalypses, and all manner of other alternate-earths/alternate histories. Now of course take into account we have people out their whom really believe in the conspiracies they profess and how the world just seems so wrapped up in a manner of what do we really believe, what is really real and what isn’t.

Now then if it ever came to pass that one of these conspiracies, alternate worlds and so on actually turned out to exist, what would that do to society and really if we were actually living in them the whole time, how does this affect our creative works. It really would turn the whole thing upside down. Would we then stat making games that are based around the world we know it to be now?

Kind of a twisted thought I know, but it reminds me of the Matrix, the real world isn’t real but a creation by the system, which really is just a big life sim to keep humans occupied and then I wonder if our popular fiction and science fiction is left over programming of what our life sim in the matrix could be. Just thinking about this makes one’s head spin.

Of course I don’t believe any of it, but it does lead to some interesting creative thoughts. If our world suddenly changed into one where our fiction was truth, what would we do to make games in that world? What kind of games would those be? It’s like shifting your thinking to decide how to create games that fit as an escape for a game world?

I wonder now if there’s a potential wealth of new games to be created from thinking not outside the box but inside the box and creating to suit the world inside the box for the world playing outside the box.

It’s like this, we live in World X (Real world) but if I lived in world Y and I was a game designer in world Y, what game worlds would I make to fascinate and thrill the people of world Y? So you design your game based on the possible audience of world Y but deliver it to the people of World X, thus you have alt world Z where it’s so far flung no one thought of it before because everyone’s designing games world X.

Did I lose you yet? Probably but that’s okay as the idea will grow on you. I think I’m going to invest sometime thinking about this and maybe I’ll come up with something that would both trill and excite World X and Y. it’s a stretch and my logic is a little off today, but consider what we know.

-          Players like amazing fantastical worlds, Alternate reality worlds, and exciting new worlds to explore and play in.

-          Players want to experience something different, somewhere different.

Both those said, building something different within the framework of something different to begin with could have some pretty amazing results. I’m going to sum up with an example and leave it go as that.

If we lived in an alternate reality where aliens were an every day occurrence and psionic abilities were just a normal part of humanity, and we already fought and prevailed against a zombie outbreak, what kind of video games would be made for the players of that world?

How does that tickle your muse?

Now we all know the argument between what makes a casual game player and a hardcore game player and that particular debate is going to continue raging back and forth probably for the rest of the foreseeable future. And far be it for me to interject my opinion on that one. However, I have noticed something as of late which fairly amusing to me and as you know dear readers, my amusement is paramount to the inner workings of the universe.

Now what is it that amuses me? You ask, well my lovelies, let me enlighten you on this new source of merryment.

There’s this strange creature prowling around the internetz, especially on the social networks which is a curious being indeed. I really don’t think scientists have classified this one yet, but in mind, I’ll refer to this entity as the “Hardcore Casual Player”.

Yes, yes of course it sounds like a very good oxymoron, which I suppose it is, and yet I can find no better terminology having encountered this species in the wild.

Now we all know casual game s, especially on social networks like Facebook and Myspace are essentially short playtime games, you know x amounts of minutes or less. So taking Farmville for an example, you prepare your farmland, plant your crops wait hours to days to harvest, rinse, and repeat. Fairly simple formula for a game and yet can be oddly addictive, mainly due to it’s low requirement of brain use. You drop in, do your business like in many of the similar games and then off you go. Wham, bam, thank you Zynga-Ma’am.

Here’s the punch-line though, there are people, however strange as this is, who sit on Facebook for hours on end engaged in these games, either several over a period of time, or they just spend hours and hours playing the same quick game. I suspect this is an example of the Tetris effect we saw back in the day, but it still boggles the mind.

Many of these games, no matter how fun they may be, have the depth of a drying mud puddle yet they captivate people for unnatural amounts of time and have millions of players.

We talk all the time about replay-ability of games and some games try to highlight this aspect.  Yet these casual, low brain activity games seem to suck the time out of people in copious quantities without the major budgets, massive game worlds and deep stories.

I realize that I believe much of this is due in part to the social aspect of these games, they share with their friends, give them gifts, become neighbours and all the other cute little social bells and whistles that seems to be standard MO for these games. But in the final analysis, there seems to be comfort in repeating simple actions that makes these games so addictive. Sure they might have cute graphics and nice lulling music that doesn’t annoy sometimes, but just sort of fades into the background of doing the same basic chores again, even with your friends.

It’s no small wonder the market for social games is exploding more and more. People eat this shit up with their morning coffee and night time beer. It’s like reality TV shows, sure we know that eventually someone is going to be the only survivor or win the amazing race, yet people are captivated by the events that lead to the conclusion which is sometimes the real reward in user/watcher participation.

I sometimes wonder if we need to take a page from the casual game world and find some way to make our more expansive and yes grindy games just as addicting.

Which brings up another issue, people can spend hours on end doing quests and things on Mafia Wars, but they complain endlessly about the grind in MMOs. If you play an mmo in small does as you do a casual game, of course you’ll be less bored by the grind, but you won’t accomplish as much. So how then can we make the long term grind rewarding enough to entice players to do it as much as they can spend hours in casual games?

Quite a conundrum really, for which I don’t have an answer presently.

One thing I do know is that Hardcore Casual Players are a growing trend, a curious, amusing and bizarre trend but one we must be aware of and make allowances for as we continue to make games, be they epically massive games, or cute casual 4 minute fun blasts. There’s a change in the reciepe, and we need to find that secret ingredient again.

User generated content isn’t a new concept really. It’s been around for quite some time now, primarily in PC gaming space at first but as the consoles have opened their doors to homebrew creations it’s growing in significance. There’s always a debate on the quality of the content being created and the amount to which the tools are used. I recall a statement that while the tools are there only a small fraction of the user base will actually use them. Given the growth of uploads on Spore, Sims 2 and now Sims 3 exchanges and other titles that provide in-game tools for content or levels, I think that assessment is incorrect indeed.

The amount of use the tool-sets given to the players gets is directly related to the ease of use those tools have. Certainly the higher the complexity of the tool is to use, the less likely a wide selection of people are going to be using them.  Now don’t get me wrong, there are certainly some games that require a certain level of complexity in the tools to create levels and so on, which is where the mod and indie developer community comes in, but games that have more intuitive and easy to use tools, the more content gets generated by the user base.

All of this is a great thing to see, and yes, I know a lot of the content that comes out of the community can be complete and utter crap, but other times we see elements and ideas that are truly inspired, interesting or sheer creative genius. The thing I like most about this is that it gives aspiring designers and developers a place to get their wet feet wet, their hands dirty and catch a glimpse of what’s involved in the space they want to enter. I’ve seen some truly amazing content come out of the minds of kids as young as 9 and it gives a bright hope for the future of the industry.

So where am I going with all this?

It’s simple, and it goes beyond the content, to the community built around the games. When the developers and publishers of a game are accepting and open to user generate content, not only do they find a wealth of new ideas to build on with the community, but also form a sense of connection that not only leads to an interesting gaming experience but also a more loyal fan base. (Which never hurts the sales hmmm?)

With more and more people making homebrew games across the many platforms we now have available to us, the more new and interesting ideas are coming forth. It can be a pain to filter through the random garbage, no doubt about it, but like sifting gold, you might move a lot of dirt, but then you find the bright shinny nuggets that really seem to sparkle in the sunlight.

The gifted and inspired within the community not only add a new dimension to the game experience but also these people should be drafted and brought into the fold to build on and expand the horizons of the games in  a more formal way. The wealth of undiscovered talent out in the world would startle many in the industry if they really took the time to look, and I believe taking a good hard look is worth the effort.

Free to play games, flash games, social networking games, mobile phone games, console homebrew, mods, indie projects, this is where a lot of the future can be seen. Sure everyone loves the big, heavy hitting triple a games with the massive budgets, but watching the habits of people playing games these days from every walk of life, and age group reflects that people just want to play games, good games, amazing games, or just casual addicting games. You don’t need a massive budget to be successful, you just need ideas that are fresh and capture the imagination to really stand out. (Though a big budget helps lol).

If anything, collaborative efforts between developers, publishers, and the gaming community is where some of the future of the industry can be seen taking root. User generated content is one aspect of where the lines between customer and collaborator are starting to blur a bit as players are adding to the game experience and recognition for those inspired ideas should be given freely as it will help fertilize and grow the future of the industry.