Articles Of Interest

A lot of gaming related news tidbits have caught my attention in the last couple of days so I figured it was time for another link dump.

• N'gai rented out his 'soap box' to Midway's Chief Marketing Officer Steve Allison. Steve uses the opprotunity to discuss, amongst other things, the art and importance of the 'Vertical Slice' in game development and makes the arguement that a truly well developed represenative sample of final gameplay (what we here at Ubisoft generally called a First Playable Prototype) would help solve some of the complaints of the Dyack Debate. My personal opinion is that this is a lot of text about what I feel has become a common-sense practise. I don't know of any developers who tackle projects of significant size without focusing on an FPP/Vertical Slice.
• An 'MMO' based off of one of my favorite movies in recent memory (Kung-Fu Hustle)? Where do I sign up? Gamasutra has an interview with John Smedly talking about some of SOE's upcoming initiatives and the discussion about this MMO has me giving serious thought about getting back into the habit.
• Finally some of you might remember from a previous post of mine that I have a thing for the convergence of location based services, wireless devices and gaming. This new LBS solution from HP, then, is understandably exciting to me. One quote I like:

  "So, depending on where you are, you can play games, listen to music or watch videos, all of which are relevant to where you are. It’s already been tested at the Tower of London, where people could play games relating to the site (presumably involving beheading royalty)".