A Mirrors Edge demo is available on PSN today and on XBLA tomorrow. Has anyone played it yet?
Mirrors Edge is interesting from many game mechanical aspects as well as the different playstyle of running away from firefights instead of engadging in them.
I’ll post my thoughts on this very different game tomorrow.
The Playstation 3 is far behind in this console generations sales figures. In the next two months we’ll see if the PS3 will start to catch up or if it’s doomed to end up third.
Why this year? Because if the release of games such as LBP and resistance 2, motorstorm 2 can’t shift the PS3 nothing ever will. It’s up against hard competition with the Xbox360’s new interface experience and video streaming functionality.
Personally I think this holiday season will see the climax of the playstation 3’s sales, I don’t think Sony will be able to beat Microsoft this generation but they might pull even.
How can I be so sure Little Big Planet will sell consoles? Well, besides analysts predictions and the millions of people who’ve still not upgraded from PS2 I just bought my own PS3, because no games until LBP were incentive enough for me to buy such an expensive machine.
How about you?
I’m a game designer and that means all other media are secondary interest at best. But music is ever present and a great help during the workday and daily commute. Now I’ve never been an iPod owner but I have owned a few mp3 players and a truck load of Sony Ericsson walkman phones, but none of them have ever been good enough to continue using.
So with my new paycheck in hand I thought I’d hit two birds with one stone and buy an iPod touch, hopefully it will solve my music issues and allow me to play iPhone games as well!
Of I went to the local store and purchased the 8GB version (I’m cheap, let’s say no more about it). Immediatly I was blown away by the packaging and ease of use. The interface is brilliant and the interaction with my PC at work was simples then most USB drives. Itunes is a terrible program to work with but the iTunes store worked well and I has my first music, video podcasts and games up and running in a few minutes.
The sound was excellent and the video fantastic, wifi surfing was awesome and applications were plentiful even though I find myself lacking offline support for things like rememberthemilk and google calendar… Why should I need to use apples software when there are better products available? From partners in other software genres nonetheless.
I was enjoying myself on the way home, interaction with my iPod was fun and simple and the video and music kept me going strong. The simple 3d racer I’d downloaded worked great and was actually kinda fun. Probably mostly from control novalty but hey, Wii right?
It’s when I got I was annoyed. I could sync with iTunes at home because I already had synced at work… That means all my music that I’ve collected over the past 10 years is forfeit… Or I could delete everything on my iPod and start again… Why apple, would you build such stupid limitation into your device? I’m using the same damn iTunes account on both machines so security or licensing issues don’t come into it at all. This is just plain dumb.
Well, I’ve no deleted my iPod and started over.
The experiment continues…
I’ve just played World of Goo, the indie title by developer 2D boy that does everything right!
The mechanics of World of Goo have more in common with building sand castles then any other computer game and as such is more of a toy then a game. But this is not a bad thing. To be accurate I have to say that I’ve only just finished the first chapter of the “story campaign” but so far this game does everything right as far as game design is concerned.
It’s accessible, simply and easy yet engaging and engrossing. You can jump in to play for a few minutes or play levels of increasing complexity for hours. It’s also a feast for the eyes and ears and has a lot of humor.
My only issue with the game is that it’s fullscreen, it wants to take up all of my attention while playing. And though this might be most effective and certainly the first choice of most players it’s quite odd to play such a light title without the ability to keep IMing on the side. I do that in WoW, why not in WoG?
Watch a video of the gameplay, if you find it even mildly interesting or seemingly fun you’ll really enjoy the title. And please, BUY this game. It’s cheap, it’s indie and it doesn’t use DRM. Support a just cause by getting your money’s worth.
I redid jesperbylund.com, finally hosting it myself.
It includes my portfolio and blog and was designed to be an interactive information sheet about me and my work.
Since all design is iterative I can't be sure this first version will work as intended. Only testing will tell. But since it's based on cognitive processes it should be an interesting website to most visitors.
Tele2.se was relaunched with a new design in Febuary of 09. The new design was created by Cordovan Digital and implemented into the CMS Reddot by myself, Jakob Neander and Tobias Lindman.
The black top was a redesign of the Business part of the site in the summer of 09. Designed once again by Cordovan Digital.
This was my third year project at the University of Skovde. Together with a team of 18 third and fourth year students we designed and implemented everything from the engine up. We had planned a 8 player cooperative shooter with online ranking.
The game was bought by the University and was intended to be used for PR purposes at LAN parties.
Sadly, the engine development was delayed due to changing demands from the University and in the end lighting and core gameplay progression was never fully implemented.
The game was however a great success as in it's final stages it did support online ranking and up to 8 players cooperating over LAN. The University even hosted a compitition in which new students downloaded the games and ranked for most kills during a week. A price was awarded and over 200 students did compete.
Dreamlords the Reawakening was the follow up on the critical success Dreamlords. Dreamlords never had monetary success and to reboot the brand and still retain the community Lockpick Entertainment created Dreamlords the Reawakening which was something of a cross between a sequel and an extension.
The lore was the same but the game play was not.
Dreamlords the Reawakening was picked up by several publishers and published in three territories. It was commercially successful for about a year before the economic crisis hit us and bankrupted the company.
Dreamlords the Reawakening is still being developed by active community members and former devs.
Dreamlords was the brain child of a group of student from the university of shoved. It was a unique mix of RTS gaming and web based long term strategy.
The game was released to critical success but we never broke even. Dreamlords also lost a number of developers as the profitability shrank at the same time as interest from other game developers grew.
Grim Breed was my second year project at the University of Skovde. It was a RTS game designed to be simplistic but offer a unique UI that let players issue complex orders to troops with ease.
The game was severely hampered by an external pathfinding library that we found out to late was not up to the challenge of guiding such a large number of units. The game was a great success for the members of the team and is to this date one of the most successful game projects to come out of UoS.
I'm just a really tall guy who happens to love to understand what people do and why.
I fell in love with what engages people early on and decided digital entertainment and products were the way of the future.
I work smart, not hard, to find the details that matter. And I love to see people feel my work without really percieving it.
IF you need this knowledge or the effects of it, I'd be happy to share it with you. Follow or contact me:
I design for interaction. No matter what the product or service.
And I make that interaction fun. Interaction and fun are closely connected, it's harder to create fun without interaction, most people just don't know why.
Ease of use and simplicity is a side effect of designing for interaction, and all my work echo this effect.
Download my CV