More and more rumours emerge about the videogame console from Valve. Famous about their online game store Steam, Valve is a some time investing in emerging technologies and ideas. But is a new videogame console needed? There are already three players now with major investments in hardware and the dispute is famous for being very, very hard. Sega, Panasonic and even Apple tried and can tell you more about it.

Valve has being preparing it’s terrain for some time now. It recently launched (which means that they were already working internally long before) the Bigpicture feature. It transforms the classical Steam interface in a more Television fashion. It is also designed to be controlled via a remote control. But they have never satisfactorily answered the question: who would put a giant PC case in the living room, right next to the TV, just to be able to play?

According to these news, the machine will feature a Linux. It is aligned with recent declarations of the Valve president, Gabe Newell, saying bad things about the new Microsoft Windows. Linux is free and flexible and recently is gaining an unprecedented track with Android phones. Also, Gabe knows that Microsoft plans to launch a service very similar to his Steam, selling software in a centralized way. Survival measures.

Valve has also working with Linux. They recently announced that Steam itself will work on Linux and accept Linux games. A beta is in progress. But except for indies, there are no relevant games for the system. Valve must itself to port some own games (Left 4 Dead, Team Fortress, Half Life and DOTA franchises) to show the path and prove the market viability. Once they do this, many other developers might be encouraged to follow. But it will take a while though. Unlike Windows and closed console systems, Linux on a broadly used machine is yet a niche.

Game engines and middlewares must be prepared also. Valve probably is working on porting it’s Source engine to Linux. Rumours say that a second version of their famous middleware is being cooked. Another demonstration of commitment of this strategy. Epic’s Unreal engine, Unity, Id and other middleware players are announcing compatibility with Linux. They noticed the movement, lead by Valve’s Steam but not exclusively attached to it.

But how a traditional software company will enter in the computer market? Well, Microsoft already followed this path creating a whole hardware division to actually manufacture Xbox. It is a very risky and difficult movement. Electronic manufacturers like Samsung or Nvidia have much more expertise and would have much more success doing this path. Rather, I predict that Valve would follow a similar strategy adopted by Google and its Nexus brand: designed done in house but the actual machine is done by third parties. Valve would just set partnerships with pc manufacturers to create stylish mini PCs with top notch pieces like graphic card and processor. We would see several versions of Steambox shipped in waves, like smartphones and tablets, experimenting new features on each iteration.

PC should finally be considered a first class console.

Starting today, the blog will be now maintained using Google Blogger service.

It was 4 years using Drupal for my personal site. I still like it very much, but for a such small and simple mission, there is absolutely no reason to maintain the whole infrastructure for this site. Installing updates, maintaining versions and fighting for the correct configuration is no easy task.

I already struggle to write new posts. while I write a personal (really personal, only for myself) log quite regularly, writing for other people is a totally different endeavor The text requires a much more logical and careful writing

The final and decisive blow was the problems I was having with Bluehost that was not possible to use the Clean URL feature in Drupal. All the pages needed a weird “?q=” in order to function. I was not able to correct it properly. So I decided to change.

For the next few weeks I hope to be able to move everything to this new place. The theme will be changed as well. A lot of experimentation will be done.

In less than an year, I’ve bought my 3rd, 3rd!, smart phone.

This time was a personal mistake: I lost my last phone inside the public bike’s baggage compartment. I was sooo pissed. The son of a bi*** that took the bike later removed the GSM chip and then I was unable to track it back. Even an application installed remotely was not able to reveal the position of the phone in order to let me to retrieve it.

It took me so much effort to get it back that I finally decided: I’m going to buy another phone. I had to decide if it would be a smart phone or a simple one. But frankly, this is the kind of thing that you do not see any use if you never used, but after having one you know the use. You get addicted to this phones.

So next stop was choosing one. After some thought, I decided to buy the very hipped Samsung Galaxy S3.

Samsung Galaxy S3

The white version is simply gorgeous. Very good looking phone. The ICS (Ice Cream Sandwich) was already installed with a very nice selection of preinstalled apps.

Nothing like the old Motorola from T-Mobile and those crap German stuff. Samsung gave it a real love and personality. While the S Voice, the voice command app, is not very good, the calendar one is very beautiful and handy. I like it a lot. The Samsung app store does not add any value from the Google Play, but it does not hurt either.

I’ve never had an Apple’s iPhone, but comparing to my friends that have one, I absolutely prefer the Samsung Android. First is the hardware: S3 have an amazing camera and camera memory (it can take several several several photos in sequence), it’s faster, with NFC (but here in Brazil is not used at all) and expandable storage through memory cards. On the software side, S3 uses the latest Android, ICS, and have the whole flexibility of Google environment. Also, as already said, the Samsung software is fairly good

I was really upset about losing my last phone. Who wouldn’t? But I’m definitively happier with the new one

Note 2012 11 19: Last night Jelly Bean update has been delivered! The butter initiative to make the UI more responsible seems to work (however it is not revolutionary faster, no). All the eyes go to Google Now: the new search app is now very, very voice driven. It gives nice answers several daily questions with a nice card concept.

My new game, Picubic, is now released under the Alpha flag.

Mechanics

Picubic is puzzle game inspired on the Japanese Picross, or Nonogram.

The objective of Picross is to discover what image is hidden, using the hints. That’s why the name is a mix of picture and crosswords. But there is a fundamental difference between Picross and Picubic: Picubic is a 3D puzzle! It uses the same general logic, but with a great twist. The final pictures are, in fact, 3D objects: TV, Sofa, sportsman, truck, trees…

There are hints for each of the axis (X, Y and Z), which might create interesting challenges.

Graphics

Because the game is essentially an abstract game, it was a challenge to decide a theme for the game. The first and obvious choice was a black/white theme. But I was not happy about it. I wanted to give it a personality, a distinctive face.

After some attempts, I decided for a general look and feel of wood. It is something not usual for games, so it would be somewhat unique. It’s beautiful.

The graphics were created using 3 sources: myself, free stuff from internet and outsourcing. I’m not an artist, so the current version have a lot of temporary material. Later I will replace it for the definitive versions.

Development and Road map

It’s an one-man game for now. I personally did the whole programming. Done entirely as C# code using Unity3D and Monodevelop. I’m really happy about the IDE.

There will be an editor for players create their own puzzles, send to friends (an Facebook and Google+ integration planned). The editor is the same used by myself. It’s not in the current alpha because of some bugs.

The final version is planned to be by October. Each 15 days I plan to release a new version. The lite version will have about 10 puzzles, besides the tutorial.

Where to Find it?

The game will be launched for Android and iOS phones/tablets, Windows/Linux/Mac as well web version, playable in any modern browser. The Alpha and beta versions will be probably only deployed as the web version.

See picubic.com for furthers news.

The gaming industry is a very risky business, just like any other entertainment industry. Generally, players have to bet on a very narrow set of products, which demand high volumes of investments. If we think it through from a project manager perspective, we have a very, very, very risky business to invest in. These companies invest mountains of money in very few products that narrow correlations between quality/sales.

Big investments

The latest graphics, motion capture, and Hollywood actors for voice-overs all cost money. Trucks of money. Like films, AAA titles consume millions of dollars to be built.

Small portfolios

Because the volume of money required to create a game is very bulk, the companies that want to create a portfolio (publishers) have to choose the projects with care and criteria. Even that, they can only concurrently create a very narrow range of games. Essentially they have to bet on very few horses to generate a very large amount of money to finance another cycle. The problem relies on the worst scenario: the current bet does not pay out. The whole company puts itself in a very dangerous financial position.

Game is Art

But the final analysis must consider games as art products. You cannot follow a formula to make people fall in love with your product.

Now always they pay off. The recent cases of THQ and 38 Studios illustrate this.

38 studios, the makers of the excelent Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, recently bankrupted. The company took around 100 million from the government to create an AAA title, but the game, while selling well, didn’t sell the amount needed to stay afloat.

THQ invested in a few AAA titles that demanded loads of money. When the failure rate rises a bit, the whole operation starts to be financially compromised.

Homefront, unfortunately, will be remembered as the milestone for THQ’s potential fall. Unfortunately, because it was a critically acclaimed game (at least it receive good greats), due to external reasons it didn’t sell well to the point that compromised the THQ cash flow. Homefront was being considered the cash cow internally, the new IP that would generate loads of money, and safety. But the forecasts were nothing but dust.

It answers the question several gamers make: why do game makers keep building sequels? Now you know…