Gadgets and Video Games

Being a giant, beloved video game blog has its downsides. For example, we sometimes neglect to give independent developers our coverage love (or loverage, if you will) as we get caught up in AAA, AAAA or the rare quintuple-A titles. To remedy that, we’re giving indies the chance to create their own loverage and sell you, the fans, on their studios and products.

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The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Gamedoctors

Tarrnie Williams, formerly of Relic Entertainment, now spends his days working at EA Burnaby on EA Sports Active , which now has him wearing plastic peripherals and extolling the virtues of exercise in his role as executive producer on EA Sports Active 2.0 . He’s definitely very eager about working out, and he’s eager to shake the image of chubby dudes playing games in their parent’s basement. He wants them to be fit while they’re down there. We talked to Williams at the EA Sports Opener at GDC where he deftly dodged questions about the Xbox 360 version, and didn’t give up much information on the iPhone and iPod Touch versions, other than the fact that “they’re online enabled.” We’d sure hope so.

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Interview: EA Sports Active 2.0 executive producer Tarrnie Williams

In early 2009, Centerscore co-founder Oliver Miao was assigned an extremely daunting task. His studio had recently been acquired by EA Mobile, and his higher-ups had requested an iPhone version of the studio’s successful teen-dating sim series, Surviving High School . The difficulty didn’t come in developing the title, but rather, in monetizing it.

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GDC: Surviving High School creator talks clever, profitable microtransactions

We have no doubt you’ve been counting the days (likely via tick marks on the wall), waiting for more information on Zootfly/SouthPeak Games’ Prison Break , so you’ll be glad to hear that the game finally got a solid release date (March 30) and a price ($49.99 on 360/PS3, $39.99 on PC) today from its publisher. Along with the mess of new screens we’ve dropped below into a gallery, this is just about the most flush we’ve been with Prison Break info in the entire history of the game’s development cycle — and it’s coming out in just under three weeks! As the game’s coming from the developer of Mr. T: The Game , we’re willing to give this one a shot just so we can support the company’s upcoming adventure into madness .

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Prison Break escaping March 30; new screens released

At a pirate-themed party in San Francisco tonight (with special guests Ron Gilbert and Tim Schafer!) LucasArts announced The Secret of Monkey Island 2: Special Edition , coming “this summer” on Xbox Live Arcade, PSN, PC, iPhone and iPod Touch. This isn’t simply the same “special edition” treatment applied to last year’s edition; instead, fans can expect a new control mechanism.

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The Secret of Monkey Island 2: Special Edition announced for XBLA, PSN, PC, iPhone

Unreal Engine 3 on the iPhone … it looked better in person! While we’ve yet to see Unreal Engine 3 ported to Nintendo’s Wii or Sony’s PSP, Epic did undertake the considerable task of squeezing its seemingly ubiquitous middleware platform onto Apple’s similarly ubiquitous iPhone. According to Epic’s Josh Adams – Epic Games’ senior console programmer – that could be due to fundamental hardware limitations in the other platforms. You see, the iPhone 3GS has a PowerVR SGX graphics processor which supports programmable shaders. According to Adams, “Programmable shaders are something UE3 is pretty much dependent on.” Though you’re probably most familiar with Unreal Engine on Windows, Xbox 360, and PS3, Adams says the engine also runs on Nvidia’s Tegra 2 platform, on Linux, and on Mac, though (Adams notes) “we haven’t shipped any games on those platforms yet.” Adams says the iPhone port was “a fun ‘Can we get UE3 onto the iPhone?’ kind of project.” Though Adams’ presentation was exceptionally technical – this is the Game Developers Conference, after all! – it’s fascinating to hear about the technical underpinnings and workflows that result in this type of outcome.

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GDC: This is what Unreal Engine 3 on iPhone looks like

Although they sound like they came from the same mechanical naming bin, Cogs and Gear (two totally different games) have won the first annual Indie Game Challenge at the conclusion of DICE . Sponsored by the AIAS , GameStop and The Guildhall at SMU, the winners will receive $100,000 to build more games … or to go on the most epic Blueberry Muffin Tops consumption bender in history.

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Cogs, Gear win first annual Indie Game Challenge at DICE

Lots of the celebrities at last night’s Battlefield: Bad Company 2 celebrity benefit tournament didn’t know much about gaming, but Greg Grunberg is the exception. Even if he can’t dive deep into the differences between next-gen shooters, he at least knows the audience, having appeared on Lost and Alias and controlled minds as Matt Parkman on Heroes . He was at the benefit in West Hollywood promoting the Epilepsy Foundation (his son deals with epileptic seizures, and Grunberg has done some advocacy work on his own as well), and right before he sat down to play BFBC2 alongside Chad Ochocinco and Marshall Faulk, he sat down to chat with us.

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Interview: Greg Grunberg at the Battlefield: Bad Company 2 celebrity challenge

After the not-exactly-phenomenal commercial reception of Rolando 2 , iPhone developer ngmoco decided to swap to a free-to-play model for all its future titles. It’s a model which led to the development of the extremely competent iPhone shooter Eliminate , but the new business model also led to the unfortunate death of the third installment in the Rolando franchise . The developer’s co-founder, Neil Young, explained to IGN , “we said to ourselves, ‘Look. If we can’t make the game free-to-play, we’re not going to release it.’ And Rolando 3 as it was envisioned at that time was not a free-to-play product.” However, don’t think you’ve seen the end of the Loco Roco -esque platformer.

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Rolando 3 canceled, but the franchise lives on

We want to be up front with you: We’re not entirely sure Noby Noby Boy is a “game” in the usual way we understand it. No, we’re not talking about last year’s PS3 release (though one could argue …); instead, we’re talking about today’s iPhone release. Let’s examine the evidence: The trailer, included after the break, eschews traditional marketing tactics in favor of puppets and nonsensical dialogue. The screenshots depict a series of seemingly unrelated “functions” (minigames?) including a camera app, a map app, a stretchable Boy app, and others. And our final piece of evidence, Noby Noby Boy is filed under “Productivity” in the App Store and, regardless of its status as a “game” we’re almost certain it’s not going to make us more productive at anything, short of unlocking its mysteries

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Noby Noby Boy available now for ‘iPhone, iPhone, iPod Touch!’