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Stuck on video/mobile game material

// January 23rd, 2010 // No Comments » // General musings

I’ve been kind of a beat writer on the gaming industry for Digital Media Buzz for the past few months. My latest entry was posted last week, which touched on the constraints developers face when creating mobile games across various platforms.

My ride through the gaming industry started when I covered the Geekend conference in Savannah. Microsoft’s famous “Major Nelson” was there as a keynote speaker on Saturday night and his discussion sparked a few ideas. Maya then focused me on the consoles at first before switching to mobile games. Learned a lot just from writing those pieces and mentioning it here also nabbed me a copy of foursquare’s BlackBerry beta app a good two weeks before it was publicly released. That was cool.

Keep an eye out for some more stuff.

Mobile gaming’s future

// January 4th, 2010 // No Comments » // General musings, Social media

My first piece on mobile gaming was just posted over at Digital Media Buzz. This first installment focuses a little more on the profitability and the problems developers face when creating social games on different platforms, such as migrating popular Facebook games to the iPhone.

I was approached by my editor to begin work on a follow up to this story, so I’ll post more on that when it’s completed.

Personally, I’m a PS3 kind of guy and rarely play any games while on the move. I do follow the industry, though, and like what I see out of iPhone/iPod touch developments. Cheaper/downloadable games are what’s going to get it moving — most people can’t afford to dish out extra money on a PSP and then another $30 or so each time they want a game. That’s not a new thought, though, obviously.

I’m more interested in seeing the real-time games like Foursquare move forward. The socially-active games will take our online networks to another level. Speaking of which, Foursquare needs to release the BlackBerry app already.