As I wrote earlier, Dawn of Daria and, in essence, Oxeye Game Studio have a past in an online role-playing game called Whispers in Akarra. The game was never completed – it barely reached alpha stage – but the editors and server were released to the public and a number of shards were started. Several years have passed since then, and I think it’s time to add the server’s source code to the list of available tools…

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In my humble opinion, the best part about working with game development is that it potentially involves many different skills, like programming, sound editing, composing and graphic design.
The downside of this of course being that each branch comes with an expensive license for the application involved.

Or does it?
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All of us have different ways of maintaining the glamourous life of independent game development, such as part-time jobs or standing at the corner friday nights. thewreck’s method is to study “Interaction Design” in Malmö. Every now and then, they make installments that are intended to make people interact with other people, as well as with the installments themselves.

The most recent mischief they’ve made is a “LED door sign,” which could be changed by various switches, placed on the toilet doors at a night club in Malmö. They recorded the event with a camera, and it’s quite fun to see people reactions when the “lady’s room” and “men’s room” signs switch places.

You can read more about the project on this link, or follow the jump to see one of the clips. Noteable highlight: the guy in the beginning (testing the signs) is thewreck!

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I was given the heads-up about an interesting article over at the indie game developer Grey Alien Games. Jake Birkett, who runs Grey Alien, had attended Casuality 2008 in Amsterdam and seen a lecture by Reflexive and Enkord on the topic of making games for passion or for profit.

During the presentation, Reflexive and Enkord explained which of their games were made for passion and which were made for financial reasons (also some were made for both reasons). They showed this on a simple diagram where passion was on the left and financial was on the right. Then, very interestingly, they revealed whether those games were a financial success or not based on if they had made a profit or loss.

Their conclusion was that games made for passion had a better result on average. That feels good, there’s hope in this world after all.

Read the whole article here.

/jeb

Harvest: Massive Encounter has been added to TowerDefence.net’s game list. The game seems to be quite popular there, getting a lot of downloads and a good rating! The game is listed as “Harvest Tower Defence”. A typo or a clever marketing trick? Who knows?

We’re looking forward to see how the full version is received, only a few more weeks now!

/jeb 

One of the most long-lived Akarra shards is Emperium Xenos. It was started by a group of players back when the server files were made available. I sent a few questions to tbbw, who is in charge of the project now and also is running Akarra.net. Follow the jump to see his answers. And tbbw, your meatloaf is here, come and get it before it ruts.
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I was pointed to an interesting, if somewhat gloomy, interview with Russell Carroll over at IndieGames.com the other day. Russell Carroll is the founder of Game Tunnel, an indie game site, and he talks about how difficult it has been to get mainstream attention for indie games:

Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, the 2007 awards came off to the sound of crickets. Major websites, such as Slashdot, which in the past have given us front page coverage, didn’t cover us at all, not even in their games section. Watching stories about rumors and cakes in the shape of a DS showing up on all the major game blog sites while the awards were not covered was initially devastating.

I think Game Tunnel still is the link between mainstream and indie, because most indie sites simply are too indie. However, for me personally, Game Tunnel has became slightly stale over the years. They’ve made some minor updates on the layout, but the images for the game genre links still show the same games as they did two years ago (probably longer). It’s like a bulletin board where the posts never are changed… which also amplifies the disappointment that the game of the year awards didn’t get more recognition.

/ jeb

Harvest: Massive Encounter has been announced the game of the week at the German gaming site Games4Mac! We got 5 out of 5 hearts! Woho!

The community discussion at their site is over 300 posts long. We’re not so skilled at German, but if you are, you can take a look. If you know of other interesting Harvest discussions that we’ve overlooked, give us a note in the comments!

/jeb

During the last year I have tried to write a small update on the development of Dawn of Daria every week. This update was posted as the “Monday Dev Update” in the development forum of www.DawnOfDaria.com. The most recent version of the game was released in December 2006, so it has been a while since this update contained any real Dawn of Daria news. Over the year, the readers of the update have become more and more irritated by this, which is sometimes reflected by their replies. I have thus decided to cease with the monday dev updates for a while and only post there when we have relevant Dawn of Daria news to tell.

Dawn of Daria is a dear project to us, and it’s interesting to see how it has affected Oxeye Game Studio and the development of our games. This story goes back to 2001, when I was living in Stockholm and working for Oblivion Entertainment…

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It is now possible to pre-order our game, Harvest: Massive Encounter, from the official website. The pre-order is at only $18.69 instead of the full price of $24.99. This discount will be available throughout february. Read more about the offer here:

http://www.oxeyegames.com/harvest/buy-now/

/ jeb