Popcap Games on OReilly Radar

Very good interview (both audio and text format) with the Jason Kapalka, founder of Popcap Games, on the OReilly Media's Radar column. If you're interested in the production and distribution of (highly addictive) casual games, and how the companies that make them grow... this is very useful stuff.

If you're interested in game development close to home... our next local IGDA chapter meeting (that's the International Game Developers Association) is this coming Wednesday at 6PM. All are welcome -- more info at http://www.igda.org/albuquerque

Meanwhile, the article is here:

The Minds Behind Some of the Most Addictive Games Around
If you've wasted half your life playing Peggle, Bejeweled, Zuma or Plants vs. Zombies, blame these guys!
by James Turner

The gaming industry tends to focus on the high end products, first person shooters that crank out a bazillion polygons a seconds and RPGs which spend more time developing the plot in cut scenes than in actual gameplay. But for every person playing Borderlands, there are scores playing casual games like Bejeweled and Zuma. PopCap Games has been at the forefront of casual game development, with a catalog that includes bestselling titles like Peggle and Plants vs Zombies, in addition to the two previously mentioned. I recently had a chance to talk to Jason Kapalka, one of the founders and the creative director of PopCap. We discussed the evolution of PopCap, how the casual gaming industry differs from mainstream gaming, and the challenges of creating games that can be engaging, without being frustrating...

Full article and audio at: The Minds Behind Some of the Most Addictive Games Around

Cultural Media, Lasers & More

For the Maya Skies fulldome project, the production team here at ARTS Lab had the privilege of working with INSIGHT Digital in capturing Mayan temples in the process described below. That project, INSIGHT's work and a few other things have re-emphasized the idea that this is an area where New Mexico really excels: using some of our high tech & media skills to preserve and translate culture using various media.

From the New York Times:
Scots Aim Lasers at Landmarks

...cultural expertise transcends national borders. The Scottish team of four or five will spend a few days setting up and moving around their various scanners to capture all of Mount Rushmore’s nooks and crannies, collecting billions of bits of digital information, which will then be brought back here, to be crunched and sorted out by computer.

What results should be the most complete and precise three-dimensional models ever of the site, millions of times more detailed and accurate than the best photographs or films, precise down to the tiniest fraction of a millimeter.

In an era of computer animation, with gamers navigating virtual universes at the click of a mouse, making laser scans of old monuments may not sound special, but the Scottish team has achieved some unprecedented levels of sophistication with their models. Through scanning, the experts can conjure up what objects looked like ages ago, in effect turning the clock back on ancient sites. They can simulate the effects of climate change, urban encroachment or other natural or man-made disasters on those same sites, peering into the future.

Given a proposal for a new building in a city like Edinburgh, they can also create virtual realities, almost microscopically accurate, so viewers might see what the building looks like from all angles in the place where it’s intended to go, including the shadows it might cast at different times of day.

The technology isn’t brand new or unique to Scotland, but the Glasgow team is on its cultural front line. Douglas Pritchard, a Canadian-born architect by training, is the wizard behind the Digital Design Studio at the art school. He heads the Scottish laser expedition with David Mitchell, director of Historic Scotland’s Technical Conservation Group. Describing how fast laser modeling has progressed and how far it might soon go, Mr. Pritchard said, “We’re no longer a million miles from the ‘Star Trek’ holodeck.”

More at Scots Aim Lasers at Landmarks

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