For Christmas this year, I was given a copy of a board game based on the classic collection of fantasy short stories; The Arabian Nights: Tales of 1001 Nights. Which is timely, because I am in the process of re-reading that book, having read it last when I was a…
Read MoreIt might be a contentious statement to make, but 2015 has proven to be the best year on record for independent video games from Australia. With a major government push for funding a couple of years ago bearing fruit, we’ve seen the product of the last couple of years start…
Read MoreThere are few women more prominent in the games industry than Media Molecule’s Siobhan Reddy. There are even fewer people in the industry who advocate for a more pure sense of creativity. Based in the UK, she was Australian raised, and her prominence has been recognised by both nations –…
Read MoreBowral is a town that’s a two hour drive from the CBD of Sydney, Australia, and about forty minutes away from the city’s furthest suburbs. Between the edge of the city and this little country town of around 15,000 people you’ll drive past farms, even smaller villages, and then some…
Read MoreArticle by Matt S. When people talk about innovative game industries, they’re almost certainly going to think of Japan and America (the US and Canada, specifically). Between the likes of Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft, Square Enix, Atari and others a lot of the history of game development owes itself to those…
Read MoreFeature by Matt S. There are many people that scoff at anyone suggesting that the Warriors games are historically accurate. After all, whether it’s Samurai Warriors, Dynasty Warriors, or one of the smaller Koei Tecmo franchises (Warriors: Legends of Troy or pseudo-Warriors title, Bladestorm, for instance), we’re talking about games…
Read MoreFeature by Matt S. Last week the local Australian games industry was hit by the unfortunate news that the government would be pulling all federal funding out of the industry. The total value of the lost support was $10 million, which isn’t much for the Government, but it was a…
Read MoreArticle by Matt S. The major studios will almost certainly never adopt a “mobile first” strategy for RPG development. The genre is notoriously expensive to work with as it requires lengthy development cycles, high production values, and lengthy narratives that require an order of magnitude more work around level design,…
Read MoreFeature by Matt S. Newtown, Sydney; there couldn’t be a more appropriate place to talk about an art game and a broader games industry that has just recently opened up in a meaningful fashion to innovative game developers. Newtown is in many ways the centre of alternative arts and cultures…
Read MoreArticle by Matt S. For someone so often referred to as ‘outspoken,’ French-born game designer and the mind behind Heavy Rain and the upcoming Beyond: Two Souls, David Cage, is remarkably softly spoken. Sitting in a small conference room with nothing but the air conditioning humming in the background his…
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