Just for the late-nighters who are the non believers. It's been made official now that Dynamix is closing their doors as was reported here earlier. The corporate quote via GameSpot? "the decision was made in order to consolidate product development and marketing functions" Oooh.. nice one!

Sierra On-Line announced today the closing of its Dynamix studio in Eugene, Oregon. 97 employees will receive competitive severance packages and outplacement services.

You can read more if you want over at PlanetTribes or TribalWar

An article on the register today looks at the state of zdnet, and reports the usual difficulties and possible layoffs. Most of those layoffs are believed to come from Gamespot.

GameSpot has posted an interview with Mike Wilson (Thanks Blues) talking about Gathering of Developers and the consolidation... er.. downsizing... er.. streamlining... er.. efficiency solution management er... yeah. of the company. Here's a good one:

In reality, the concept behind the Gathering of Developers was a pie-in-the-sky ideal that never got the funding it needed. GodGames initially wanted $25 million in venture capital, but it ended up settling for what eventually amounted to an estimated $22.5 million in advances from Take-Two as part of a 20-product deal in exchange for 19.9 percent equity in GodGames. That might have been enough money if all the games arrived on time and were hits, but when the titles started falling behind schedule, the money quickly dried up. "We ran out of money three times," Wilson said, explaining that the sale of GodGames to Take-Two in June 2000 was the only way to stay afloat. "GOD was always hanging by a thread, but when it had to sell to Take-Two, that's when the whole downward spiral really began," said 3D Realms' Scott Miller, one of the founding developers

Here's the story from earlier today.

This isn't the first time we've heard this, but FuckedCompany is reporting that Sierra is going to lay off some 300 employees on Monday. Also, this post by former Dynamix employee Scott "CornBoy" Youngblood at Tribal War seems to back this up, going so far as to say that, "Dynamix is going to be shut down and every one laid off." When contacted, Sierra would neither confirm nor deny this.

Looks like some of those rumors about GodGames are true after all. Blue's has learned that Take Two will be folding GodGames into an internal label (like Rockstar Games) and that most of the former Gathering employees are leaving to start Substance TV, a subscription based DVD magazine. Here's a clip which mentions that DNF will still be published and says that the magazine will have almost no gaming content:

The person we spoke with assured us that all of GoD's planned titles will still be published, including, of course, Duke Nukem Forever. As for future titles under the label, he didn't know what Take Two's plans will be. Substance TV was an idea created by the late Doug Myres, and this new, privately-held company will focus on creating a magazine that lives up to Doug's original vision. Each "issue" of the magazine will contain roughly four to six hours of original content, including independent films, shorts, animation and music videos. As far as gaming content, there will be game trailers, but don't expect too much. The person we spoke with estimated that approximately 1% of the magazine would be related to video games.

So I was talking with the woman a few days back about how much different our society might be if war and conflict wasnt so glorified in our society. From kids being inspired to play Cops&Robbers to the rest of us blowing up people with virtual grenades and rocket launchers. Obviously there isnt really much turning back at this point but it was interesting to consider. Ok.. rant aside here's a story on ZD saying that 60% of videogames rated for kids 6 and under actually fall in to the category of rewarding kids for injuring or killing other players.

"With all of the questions about the impact of violence in video games on children, this is the first study to our knowledge to quantify the amount of violence in E-rated video games and to show that many E-rated video games do involve violence, killing and the use of weapons in the normal course of play,''

Well we're finally squeezing by that little market slump it appears. A little while back Activision announced that they had their best 1st quarter in history and actually managed a profit. Wonders never cease!

We've been seeing hints of this for years now... corporations are slowly moving in to the gaming market to do advertising of their products. There is a market of 145 million people who play video games. There are a couple of examples of companies having games created specifically to promote their products.

Companies are struggling to find online marketing tools that are more effective than banner ads. Ford Motor's Ford Motor Canada unit, for example, developed an online game to promote its Escape small sport-utility vehicle. Torrey Galida, vice president of marketing at Ford, says the car maker invested in the game because banner ads are no longer "a great investment of our advertising resources."

Any developers out there feel like coming forward about discussions with advertisers? I would think it's almost a certainty that advertisers would approach developers hoping for some product placement. Max Payne killing thugs at McDonalds, or Gordon Freeman wearing his trusty Nike shoes... Would anyone object to this? I wonder if we could get pop-ups in videogames! heh

I cant recall the specific movie, but the earliest significant instance I can remember is a Quake level contracted to promote a movie back in the late 90s.

As you would expect, video game makers have asked that the Columbine lawsuit be dropped in court recently. They are taking the free speech route. SquareSoft has been dropped from the list of defendants btw. Thanks VE

Well it's become official, Ion Storm Dallas is pretty much dissolving. Eidos Interactive sent out a PR (Thanks GSD) making nice nice over the implosion of the company. Here's the bit:

John Romero and Tom Hall have decided to depart ION Storm to pursue other interests. We wish them luck in their future endeavors and thank them for their contribution to Ion Storm over the years, without which we would never have put together such talented teams in both our Austin and Dallas offices. Ion Storm will continue as a wholly owned subsidiary of Eidos and work on the sequels to the awarding winning Thief and Deus Ex titles as well as Deus Ex for the PS2

Here's one to ponder this morning. A UK LAN tour has decided that one of the prizes they are giving away for winners in their tournament will be a disabled authentic AK-47. Obviously to symbolize the weapon involved in the combat taking place on the computers. A large number of panties have gotten in a bunch over this. This isnt just any old LAN event either as Virgin Interactive is a major sponsor (although not for the game in particular involved).

"We apologise unreservedly for any inconvenience or concern the offering of the AK47 as a prize may have brought or howsoever caused." He gave his assurance that "if there is a public condemnation of our actions we will withdraw the offer of the prize with immediate effect and substitute it with an appropriate prize of a similar worth".

Very interesting... Thanks Choolz & Blues

Because we all love to see those reports on violence and games. It's amazing how all these "experts" can come to such dramatically different conclusions. This time around videogames are evil again. Thanks TurdBlower

Looks like the general audience doesn't care for a "HyperReal CGI" production, as preliminary box office numbers show Final Fantasy at a 4th place this weekend, below Legally Blonde and The Score and even behind Cats & Dogs which opened July 4 already. With just $11.5 million in the first weekend (Tomb Raider had more than $40 million) it doesn't look like Square will see much of the $140+ million production returned from the US market.

For those of you who actually still read you may have heard of Michael Crichton. Well homeboy tried to get into the 3D gaming industry with a computer game company and released a single game that flopped. Now they are closing up shop. Doh.

A follow-up to the story yesterday about Ion Storm Austin changing their name to Manifesto games. Some more snooping around by Shackers (Thanks Cholo) here has revealed that late last month John Romero registered a domain for a company called "Mentallion Industries" at mentallion.com as well as "Monkey Stone Games" at monkeystone.com through register.com.  Dont have any more details on this one but it's enough to make you go "hmmm?" The address listed on the domain is to the Ion Storm offices, however a non-Ion email address was used to set up the domain.

Death Of The Celebrity Studio is an article on EuroGamer looking at the demise of several companies led by high profile developers. Such as Cavedog, Digital Anvil and ION Storm.

Word fro this PR is that the guys at Midway have decided to ditch the arcade business entirely. (Thanks Mike) It's stuff like this that really makes a guy nostalgic (a theme today!) about arcades of years gone by. Ever since the advent of the home console machines it seems that arcades at malls have been in a steady decline. I remember showing up with a $5 bill and playing Gauntlet for hours at a time. This stuff is depressing

The Company expects the elimination of its coin-operated games business to result in a reduction in work force of fewer than 60 employees, and a primarily non-cash pretax charge of less than $8 million in the quarter ending June 30, 2001.

Arcades have been trying out new angles for years with limited success. It seems to me that basically arcades can no longer anything impressive with game content itself but are relegated to just trying to offer equipment to interact with those games that people just cant afford or fit in their home. Bummer.

Well Rounded Entertainment has learned of the creation of a new company by American McGee. McGee, who worked at id Software and more recently worked on the Rogue/EA game Alice, is starting a company called Carbon Entertainment. He'll do this along with ex id employee Dave Taylor who was working at Transmeta. So what's supposed to be so special about this company?

The philosophy behind Carbon 6 will be to create works that are friendly to more than just one medium. In other words, games and movies will be developed simultaneously, with specific attention being paid to concept art, scripting, design, modeling, animation, motion capture, voice talent, acting, direction and full motion video. Film scripts and game design will be concurant, which McGee says he hopes will result in a cohesive product that creates better movies than, say, Mario Brothers and better games than South Park. ....

The report also mentions that McGee himself will be directing and producing movies himself soon thanks to a studio deal at Miramax. He also hopes to strike a deal that will have him direct TV commercials and music videos. Work also continues on the Alice movie.

An article on AVault this morning by Brad Wardell discusses the demographics of the industry as a whole and who exactly is buying games. This of course plays a huge part in the design and system requirement decisions that are made by developers for the games thay are producing. A lot of this seems pretty obvious but apparently there are some people out there who dont realize that the average system out there for gamers is not a 1GHz machine. He also draws the conclusion that it's currently impossible for a multiplayer only game to exceed sales of a million copies.

The bottom line is fairly straightforward: know your market. Are you making a game for yourself or as a product? The best combo is a title you really enjoy making that you hope lots of other people will enjoy playing (and pay you to do so). Decide on the game you want to do, research the demographics of the likely audience for it and plan accordingly.

Yeah that's great and all. Someone out there know where there is public information on user and hardware demographics of gamers? Of everyone out there playing the Quake/Unreal/Half-Life series games what do you think the average player is really running? Seems to me that most publishers and publications would closely guard that information as they collect it.

The guys over at Lithtech has released the New Lithtech Development System Version 3.0 for all you game makers. It lets you make your levels in Maya, your models in 3D Studio Max and some other stuff for uhm, making games. duh. Just a press release, no downloads unfortunately :( But if you want to make a game, look it up, looks like it gives you most of the stuff you need...