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What Every Good Game Developer Should Know
Although specifically for the iPhone, Slide To Play have put together a Top Ten Things Developers For Mobile Games Need To Do and it's an article I want to send to everyone who makes a game on Symbian OS, including a number of N-Gage partners. On reflection, these are all pretty obvious, but the number of games that miss out these for no discernible reason could easily fill an online app store.
Ovi Store launching soon?
Many people have noted that the Download! client now gives a message saying that it will be "temporarily unavailable" today, while at the same time the Ovi Store site currently asks for a name and password to access it. Could something be stirring behind the scenes at Ovi Store?
Five new games announced for N-Gage in deal with Fishlabs
The German mobile game company Fishlabs has announced it is to release five games on the N-Gage platform. Powerboat Challenge, Rally Master Pro and Snowboard Hero will appear in 2009, while Galaxy On Fire and Blades & Magic are coming in 2010. The full press release is below.
Win an N81 8GB (and bathrobe) every week for twelve weeks courtesy of Sauna Talk
One of the easiest contests ever: every week for the next twelve weeks a Nokia N81 8GB and limited edition N-Gage bathrobe will be given away on Gamasutra.com in association with Sauna Talk. All you have to do is answer one multiple choice question, which has a hint link next to it where you can find the answer. You can enter once a week, so you effectively have up to twelve chances to win the prizes. (In case you're unaware, Sauna Talk is a series of videos designed to advertise the N-Gage platform to developers. Apparently the contest is only open to those "related" to the games industry, but don't ask us what that means.) (via the Official N-Gage Blog)
Game Concept Contest: Vote for your favourite idea
More news from Nokia's Mobile Games Innovation Challenge: the official N-Gage blog has invited people to vote on which is their favourite mobile games concept from the ten finalists. Nip over to the link to vote, you don't need to register. We're not sure if this has any effect on the outcome of the actual contest, but it should be interesting to see what people think about the ideas.
Sauna Talk returns!
There's a new episode of Sauna Talk on the N-Gage developer site, where once again host Arnold Faber discusses mobile gaming with Nokia's Miikka Skaffari while not wearing any clothes.
"It's hot, it's steamy, and we're talking about mobile gaming."
This may sound like a spoof listing from TV Go Home, but it's absolutely true: Nokia presents a series of short videos aimed at mobile game developers, this week featuring Miikka Skaffari, Head of Developer Product Management. Episode 1 sees host Arnold Faber quizzing Miikka about the N-Gage platform's new development tools, APIs and SDK. In a sauna.
Nokia's game concept contest ends soon...
Over the past few months Nokia has been accepting entries for their Mobile Games Innovation Challenge, with the winner receiving 40,000 euros to develop their game. If you're thinking of entering you'd better get your skates on as the closing date is the 20th of August. Just to emphasise, they don't want actual games or code, what they're after are detailed game concepts including a text description and optionally mockup screenshots and video too. This compo is only open to game development professionals however.
N-Gage developers (and potential developers) get a new site
If you work in the game industry, you may be interested to know that there's a new official N-Gage development site called N-Gage Insider. The site contains a developers' forum, technical information about the new N-Gage platform, how to publish games on N-Gage, how to become a first party developer for Nokia and much more. (via Taskussa.fi)
The power of downloads...
Those who tried the original version of Hooked On: Creatures Of The Deep during N-Gage's beta testing may have noticed that the latest version looks smoother and less pixellated (particularly the surface of the sea). According to the developers, it's because they upgraded the HO:COTD graphics engine for the official launch of N-Gage earlier this month. This may not be the biggest news in the world, but it's an interesting example of how distributing games as downloads carries advantages over the old physical boxed model.
