So last night, we did a thing, and an awful lot of people came to it, and helped to prove our theory that they would enjoy getting together to play a selection of awesome multiplayer indie games.

EDIT: Photos from the night are >here<.

There are a lot of people to me to thank, and potentially for you to follow on Twitter: I figured I'd combine the two.

Firstly, the people who made the games! They are:

Doug, who made Johann Sebastian Joust (and phoned from Utrect to offer advice on taping bottlecaps to controllers to solve a tricksy technical problem in the nick of time)

Vlambeer - JW and Rami - who made Super Crate Box.

Mike and Greg - collectively known as Mikengreg - who made 4Fourths.

Martin and Petri - who made Jesus vs Dinosaurs

The Copenhagen Game Collective - who made B.U.T.T.O.N.

Secondly, our sponsors - IndieCity, and their representative on the night, Deejay.

London now has it's first (but not last) indie-games arcade cabinet - The Beast! This is largely thanks to George and Joe who renovated it and filled its belly with computer parts, and Jerry - who did the beautiful art. Thanks also to David, who babysat it while it had its stickers applied, then helped us to host the games..

Ali did an amazing job hosting Joust all night - keeping the level of shoving and roughhousing at just the right level, and Nat managed to coerce many unsuspecting members of the public into doing stupid BUTTON nonsense.

Minkette and Mark on Team Rumpus, who helped out with a load of the preparation, and looked after various games throughout the evening.

Our marvellous photographer, Natalie Seery (who sadly isn't on Twitter, so you can't follow her).

Kokoromi, for providing part of the inspiration for doing it in the first place, and helping to demonstrate the way these things should be done. (There is gonna be a Gamma V, right guys?)

Almost-finally, my co-conspirators: Dick and Marie, who did the graphic design, printing, spreadsheets and all the complicated logistics!

And finally everyone who came, retweeted, facebooked - It was a blast! Thanks for making it work! See you next time x

Putting an unfinished game in front of playtesters and watching the results can be a bittersweet experience.

Hopefully, you've done some stuff right, and will get to see people enjoying your game - which is a huge morale boost.

Chances are you've probably also done a bunch of stuff wrong, and will end up with a big list of things to tweak, or even change completely.

The process that follows is akin to mixing a record, where you adjust the levels and sounds of all the instruments, in order to create the effect you were going for.. then invite fresh ears in to listen again, and repeat.

It's at this point that you get big rewards from having invested time in good software engineering earlier in the project, so that your game can be 'mixed' like this:

(thanks worldofstock.com!)

.. instead of like this:

(I love Heath Robinson by the way)

Yesterday evening I returned from Gamescom, Europe's Largest Consumer Games show, where publishers, platform holders developers gather together in a series of giant conference rooms in Cologne to unveil their new games.

We were there with Sony, where our forthcoming Playstation Vita game 'Frobisher Says' was announced (another one we're making with Dick Hogg). That side of things went really well - people enjoyed playing the game, and our trailer looked fab on the giganto screens above the Sony stand.

But overall, the experience of being at Gamescom made me feel sad. There are a number of reasons why gathering everyone together for one massive games show makes for a bad experience:

- The atmosphere is terrible. The rooms are necessarily dark, hot, cavernous, pooly-lit spaces, The sound systems thump over each another, creating an echoing bass drone everywhere you go. The resulting effect is a cross between being in the Grand Hall of the Mines of Moria, and a games arcade. This is fine for some games, really bad for others. 

- There are huge queues for anything really exciting. Want to try Diablo 3? Skyrim? Vita? Then stand in this queue for over an hour listening to shit music and people barking excitedly about some kind of promotional dancing event.

- When you are playing a game, there is a constant sense of distraction: there's not enough time to play everything, and there are always things luring you away in peripheral vision. Again, this works okay for some games, not at all for others.

It's like having a music festival where every band plays on the same day, and all the stages are right next to one another, making the experience of watching any of them rubbish. I can see how the industry has got itself into this model of announcing things - it makes sense to have events which all the journalists and public attend - but it's a bad model for all but the biggest games; everything else feels like a sideshow vying for a limited amount of press attention, and the experience of playing, say, Journey or the new Settlers game is so bad that it's actually better to simply not to bother at all, because you lose so much of what makes those experiences work. 

So instead of (or perhaps as well as) this feast-or-famine approach, how about something which works more like the way bands tour?

There could be a number of 'venues' in major cities which can host games-show-events, perhaps just for a group of developers, or a single large publisher. These would then tour around, visiting a cities and showing games for a couple of days in each, before moving on. It could be arranged so that over the course of several months (during the summer holiday season), you'd have all the games that would be shown at something like Gamescom, but spread out. There'd be a number of advantages:

- it would be more targetted. Not interested in what Bethesda are up to? Then don't go to Bethesda Day!

- it would be more local: you'd be targeting a number of cities (across Europe), so there'd be less travelling required, and you'd get a much larger number of people attending overall.

- it would be much nicer to be at. The venues would be small enough that they could have, like, windows! And carefully coordinated moods to the different areas, instead of a booming, one-size-fits-all dark-droneathon. Maybe you'd even have food that wasn't overpriced and shit! Imagine!

Probably Blizzard-Activision, EA and the platform holders would still want to show things exclusively at something like Gamescom, where they could guarantee the largest possible amount of press attention, but I think this approach could work really well for a number of other games. As the industry moves away (albeit slowly) from focussing soley on the interests of teenage boys, I really hope we can find an approach to announcing new games that feels more appropriate.

Over the past year, we've been receiving a number of requests for Internships at Honeyslug. One of these resulted in us now having an intern, which is going great (waves at Olivier) and we're certainly interested in continuing to run a (paid) intern programme.

But in the past three months, the volume of requests has gone through the roof. I aim to reply to every single one, and look at all the porfolio work people send, but I'm starting to get behind, partly being really busy with other projects.

It's hard to know whether to feel flattered at the level of interest, or depressed at what this might mean for the state of the economy in general and the UK games industry specifically.

Anyway. I can't help thinking that it would be good if there were some kind of internet place where people looking for videogames internships could go to meet up, and start working on games together: this would be a great experience for them - likely to be at least as useful as a proper placement, would help them to build a porfolio, and could possibly turn into something 'real'. 

I'm aware that there are a number of sites and forums focused on making videogames, but there are a number of things which recent graduates and current students seeking internships share - in terms of what they are looking to achieve, the time they have to spend, and their level of experience - which makes me think that a place specifically for them could work.

I mentioned this briefly on Twitter, and a number of people seemed interested in the idea, and made some suggestions. Maybe the comments on this page is a good place for an initial discussion: cos it's open and everyone can read it. 

I don't have any strong opinions about a sensible format (though I'd rather it wasn't a Facebook thing), nor do I have any development time to offer (and hopefully not much should be required in 2011), but any suggestions would be most welcome!

What I do have to offer is encouragement, advice, and most importantly, a constant stream of people seeking internships who can be directed to look at a thing.

Hello!

I'm scratching my head at a problem which I thought would be easy, and now I need the help of someone cleverer than me, because it's proving to be trickier than I thought.

I have a 1-dimensional array of integers, of length n from 1 to x, where n > 2 and x > 1. e.g:

[2, 1, 4, 3, 1, 4, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 2, 4].

The catch is that no number appears consecutively - each element must be different from its neighbours.

I want to shuffle this array to produce a new array of the same length and contents, but preserving the rule above - no two adjacent elements in the shuffled array must be the same number.

(of course, this may not be possible. There is no way to shuffle [1,2,1,2,1] into anything different. In this case, output should == input).

It's harder than it looks to come up with anything like an elegant solution. Am I missing something? Can you help?

EDIT: I want to be able to generate an arbitrary number of different shuffles. I don't want to get a predictable output for same input. So for example, just reversing the array to get ONE guaranteed valid solution is out.

(if you don't have an iThingie and haven't played it, check out the Flash version here).

It is a game which is simple to explain, but hard to master. You have to control two characters, in two dimensions with one button! When you get into the rhythm of it, it will hopefully make you smile! (here is a hint: try to keep both of them roughly around the centre of the screen).

The iPhone version has a new way to play - different every time Endless Mode!  (whereas the original has a very definite end ;)

Here is the trailer:

Poto and Cabenga iPhone from Slug Vids on Vimeo.

PS: Sorry it took so long! We've been a bit busy with other things.

Nothing to do with games this, but too cool not to blog..

So earlier this week, my friend Polly asked me if I'd like to help her out by playing guitar on one of her songs in a recording session, where we'd record straight onto vinyl. And today it happened!

It took place in the Riflemaker art gallery in Soho, where they're running an Analog event, which includes these recording sessions, run by a marvellous chap called Lewis Durham (from Roots revival band Kitty Daisy & Lewis). Lewis has built an recording studio entirely from analogue equipment from the 40s and 50s (down to the huge BBC Radiophonic microphones), which usually lives in his house. While we were playing, he was hunched over the stylus, carefully blowing away the little chips of vinyl to prevent blockages and skips.

And the recording sounds great - when Polly digitises it for me, I will be sure to link it from here. Thanks Lewis!

(download)

Click here to download:

we-cut-a-record-uAFAvogtItzGowvwAFqf.zip (6.45 MB)

During a lunchtime chat about gaming interfaces this weekend, I found myself in a heated debate about touchscreen technology with a group of indie developers (including @Slaktus, @v21, @oh_cripes and @increpare).

Initially I was just reacting against the suggestion that touchscreen devices were going to be 'the future of home computing', but as the discussion developed, I found myself arguing against them on a number of fronts, and it soon became clear that I was going to need to lay out my thoughts in a blog post.

I want to make it clear that I am not saying that touchscreens are entirely bad. For particular types of application, they work fine. Angry Birds doesn't seem to be suffering too much from its touchscreen interface - I'll come back to that later. And whenever I use Google maps on my phone, I am perfectly delighted with its touchscreen interface.

I'm also only talking about me. I'm perfectly aware that there are octogenarians who are unable to manage a mouse but perfectly comfortable with an iPad. I'm not denying that touch-screens are more accessible to the uninitiated - because they are simpler. For me though, simpler is not necessarily better when it comes to physically interfacing with things.

Touch-screens have been a key driver of the smartphone market - but this is more because they facilitate maximum screen size in smallest form factor, rather than any particular benefits of the touch-screen itself. I fondly remember the ability to stumble along the pavement drunk, writing perfectly accurate text messages with one hand and rolling a cigarette with the other, whereas on a smartphone I seem unable to walk and text while sober and using both hands without flying into an angry rage at the sheer bastard difficulty of it all.

But I digress. The argument was specifically about touch tablets as a replacement for a more traditional computing model - either desktop or laptop with a mouse and keyboard, so I'm focussing on that from here..

Ergonomics
I don't find touch tablet devices comfortable for consuming media in the lounge. They're heavy enough to not be comfortable to support with the hands, and looking down at them gives me a crick in the neck. If I'm watching tv, movies or YouTube, I'll use my telly; if it's Twitter, or looking something up on Wikipedia or IMDB quickly, I'll use my phone. Both are more comfortable for me than a touch tablet.

Occlusion
As of 2011, we don't have transparent hands. The majority of games suffer on a touchscreen device, because the act of interacting with the game simultaneously obscures them with the hand and forearm. Clearly this isn't the case with games where the input phase is separated from the action, as with Angry Birds, Chess or Headspin. And games where the player makes occasional gestures into the game, like Flight Control, Kahoots or Plants vs Zombies tend to work ok too.

But for applications where the player needs to interact with things in arbitrary positions on the screen, a touchscreen isn't as good as the other alternatives available. The examples I used in my original argument were Starcraft and Bejewelled, and I'm going to stick with those.

Effort
Compared to the economy of the mouse, many actions on a touchscreen feel like hard work. Consider the position of the arm when resting on a mouse correctly: it's well supported all the way along. You have all the muscles from the shoulder down to the fingers to co-ordinate movement, without having to move from the resting position. With the tiniest movement you can flick the cursor from one side of the screen to the other, or scroll up and down with the mouse wheel. To me that is entirely preferable to moving the arm around in the air unsupported which is required to interact with a touch-screen (or to put it another way, I want my arm to rest at right angles to the screen).

Expressiveness
Fingertips aren't pinpoints - it's much easier to be accurate with a mouse or a stylus than a finger, and this increased accuracy is of benefit. In the simplest terms it makes it possible to fit more interactive stuff into less space without exposing the user to the risk of error.

Feedback
Perversely, touchscreens are crap to touch. Those shiny, greasy screens aren't even as nice to touch as the oldest, lamest, laminatedest electronic gadget. That's why no matter how clever the software, typing on a touchscreen will always be inferior, because your fingers get none of that lovely feedback they enjoy so much.

Typing / Multi-tasking
Ahhh but wait, I hear you exclaim - touchscreen devices aren't for typing on. You're only supposed to be consuming media on them, not creating it! Yeah, well sorry, but for me consuming and creating and sharing are all bound up together. I am continually multi-tasking between reading and watching things on the internet, chatting on twitter, instant messaging, writing emails or posts or code, all at once. I want something I can do all that stuff as easily as possible, and I have one - a PC on a desk with a properly positioned monitor and chair, which I can buzz away on happily for hours without suffering the terrible stabbing pains of old age and repetitive strain.

I'm conscious that people are going to retort with things like, 'touchscreen devices aren't for playing Starcraft on, or writing blog posts'. They're just for 'media consumption' and 'having fun. Casual computing man!' To which I can only reply, 'I have a lovely big TV in my lounge, I have a smartphone, and I have big, stupid, lumpy sausage fingers. What do I need a touch tablet for?'

 
(Thanks to Local Girl for finding the pic and providing the title)

Just back from an event at the ICA, where a panel consisting of Tom Chatfield, Nicholas Lovell, Michael Acton Smith and Margaret Robertson were discussing the Future of the Gaming Industry.

There was a sensible amount of lucid and insightful discussion about 'the usual subjects' - the panel futurologised their way successfully through gamification, transmedia and mobile gaming in quick succession, as we knew they would, mostly agreeing on everything.. but I was pleased that the evening ended with a debate about single-player, narrative-driven games.

We were reminded of Michael's assertion, via Nicholas' blog that single player games are merely a modern aberration, a passing fad. And this was good, because I'd written a retort to that in my head, but never got around to posting it up.

What Michael said was:

All games are social games – they have been since man first started rolling knucklebones in caves thousands of years ago. The only exception is the recent phenomena of one-player video games that have dominated the games scene for the past few decades, but that era is fast coming to an end.

So my retort is in the form of an imagined scenario. I am imagining a person standing alone in a field. Nearby on the ground is a rock, and further away is a tree. The person sees the rock, which is nicely rounded on one side, as if designed for a hand, and with a good heft - just the sort of rock that would be satisfying to throw. So the rock is picked up, and the tree is identified as a likely target. The rock is thrown, but - oh dear - it narrowly misses the tree. The person tuts, and starts looking around for another rock..

It seems obvious to me that this definitely happened at some point in human history. And probably a lot further back in the past than a few decades. Perhaps even before knucklebone technology was in its infancy!

It was good to hear Margaret defending the good old, honest, single player experience, with its lack of any new-thinkin' buzzwords to bring business people flocking to its banner. She raised a really good point, which I can only paraphrase from memory: just because games aren't multi-player, doesn't mean they can't be social. There are loads of things which facilitate this - from gamefaqs or sharing hints on forums, right through to playing a single player game in a room with other people watching and suggesting stuff: all the stories I've heard about Limbo recently have been about people playing with their partners - one controlling the little chap, the other making suggestions.

As someone who is making a single player game, I do feel (more than) a little defensive about them. Partly its because Facebook leaves me entirely cold, never mind the games, but when I think of my all-time favourite gaming experiences, a great deal of them were solitary affairs (Portal, Ico and Captive on the Amiga to name three off the top of my head). I'm not dead against social gaming, but the experiences tend to be more 'noisy' and less 'immersive' or 'meditative', and I feel like we're in real need of more experiences which allow us to relax and focus on doing one thing - especially in this new world of multi-tasking information overload.

I recently turned off the 'notifications' on my Xbox 360, because I was bored of being told when strangers I played L4D with 2 years ago had come online, and found that in doing so, I'd also turned off Achievement notifications. I then played through most of the latest Assassin's Creed game without noticing this, and finding that I hadn't missed Achievements one bit, shan't be turning it back on again.

Also worthy of mention was Nicholas' division of the future games industry into 3 areas, which is probably as close to being accurate as anyone.

So, a good night, and good value at a tenner with complimentary drinks. Definitely worth keeping an eye on other events from Venture Lectures.