Mitu Khandaker

A few links I stumbled across today and thought were worth sharing:

Effective Networking in the Games Industry - A few years old now, but this series of articles still seems like very good advice; I’m glad to have discovered this particular blog in general!

New Years Resolutions for Game Industry Newbies 2008 - Fairly self-explanatory what this is! Very nicely written guide by Chris Hecker (Spore) and Jon Blow (Braid)

And, just because I rather like the look of this:

WeGame.com – Okay, so at first glance this may seem like just yet another place to watch game videos, but I do like this as it seems slightly different from all the rest, as it is focused purely around users uploading their own interesting gameplay footage or machinima. A bit of a “YouTube for gamers”, if you will. The site is still in beta at the moment, but it also comes with a simple, free tool for easily recording your gameplay video from 22 popular PC games and uploading it to the site. Apparently it has $500,000 of VC funding behind it, too, so I do predict big things for it!

But first, a completely unrelated note: A few weeks ago I finally signed myself up for an account at 1up.com – because, although it’s not part of my usual daily reading list in Feedreader, there are still some interesting features on there sometimes. Also, quite simply, I’m just often a slave to social networking sites. Just ask Facebook! ;) So, I created myself a profile over there, and I’ve started syndicating some of my blog posts over there too, which had one or two comments. So imagine my surprise when I suddenly turn up on the front page of 1UP as one of their ‘Popular Bloggers’. Okay, so since then I’ve found out that the community doesn’t seem to think much of that list as it seems that gender plays a big role on who is selected, rather than actual content, but thank you anyway to whichever member of 1up staff deemed me worthy enough to go on there!

But anyway, that little anecdote does vaguely fit in with what I was going to say here, as it’s made the audience for my blog posts slightly larger than before, which is always appreciated! I’ve had a few comments on my previous entry regarding the N-Gage service and mobile gaming, and given a few comments both here and on the same entry at 1up, I thought I would clarify a few things. :)

Funnily enough, since I wrote that last entry, not only have I acquired a Nokia N95 handset, but also, rather unexpectedly, a PSP! :D

I actually make a differentiation between “mobile gaming” (which, I consider to be gaming on a device meant primarily as a mobile phone), and “handheld gaming” (which is gaming on a handheld console, i.e. PSP, DS etc)

So now, owning both a DS (albeit currently broken!) and, (as of two days ago!) a PSP, and I do not doubt the success and validity of handheld gaming one bit. In fact, what with the seeping (read: explosion!) of the Nintendo DS into the casual market, that’s something that’s only going to grow.

In terms of mobile gaming: The original N-gage did just as badly here in the UK as everywhere else, I believe. I liked the concept but not the execution! I am excited to see this new “N-gage platform” that will operate a mobile gaming service on new smartphones (because, the N95 is a very nice looking phone indeed, at least in my opinion!)

However, with moves such as the PSP gaining Skype functionality, and the N95 being more of a “full multimedia experience” on a phone, I do think that the lines between “mobile gaming” and “handheld gaming” will begin to blur until there is little to no differentiation – so maybe this whole issue is going to be null and void in future anyway. ;)

Just a really quick aside to mention that I’ve tweaked my ‘about me’ section a tiny bit, and linked to my new LinkedIn profile. Also, I’ve added a few new links to my Blogroll (and indeed, to my Feedreader list!)

Thu 03/01/2008 22:54 to Twitter (SMS):

Now the owner of a beautiful N95 phone! However its also worrying me because its the first piece of technology i haven’t been able to figure out straight away!

I’m just testing out this Lifeblog business from my lovely new N95. I could probably guess what would happen if I tried to blog a photo but I wanted to see what happens when I try to blog a text I sent. So here’s me selecting the text I sent to Twitter last night!

Edit (from web): Ah ha! I see, it just quotes the text. Interesting stuff! :)

Aw, it seems that Nokia’s anticipated launch of their N-Gage service has been delayed, again. Apparently, due to ‘delays in software testing’, the gaming platform will not be launched till ‘early 2008′. Given that it was originally expected back in September this year, I wonder just how early in 2008 they’ll be able to deliver.

For those of you who have not been following the story, you may remember that the brand ‘N-Gage’ originally used to refer to this particular gaming handset. However, given the lack of success experienced by the somewhat awkwardly designed phone, Nokia announced back in 2005 that they would be rebranding ‘N-Gage’ to refer to a whole gaming platform which would be available across a series of their smartphones in 2007. Thus, N-Gage now refers to this gaming service platform instead.

I’ve had a bit of an interest in mobile gaming since 2005/2006, when I (along with two friends) started a student mobile games development company, and looked to start developing a particular mobile phone game concept (which will remain hush-hush for now, because I may pick up development of it in future). We went along to Develop Conference 2006 in Brighton, and particularly along to the Mobile section of the conference, where we gained quite a valuable insight into the state of the mobile gaming market, and I think a lot of what we learnt remains much the same today, although I think consumer attitudes are slowly changing; I really do hope that the N-Gage service goes a long way towards furthering that.

(Actually, funnily enough it was also at the Develop Conference last year that we had a sneak peak at the N95, and all marvelled at it. With any luck, I should finally be getting my own N95 in just a few days… fingers crossed!)

Yay for season’s greetings from Aperture Science! http://www.aperturescience.com/

I saw this linked somewhere a couple of days ago, and again today on Joystiq, and I simply have to repost it, as it’s simply amazing!

Using the Wiimote and a head-mounted sensor bar (here he uses two infra-red LEDs) he demonstrates how head-tracking can be used to create a VR environment in which the user sees view-dependent images, with realistic illusions of depth and space. This just has to be watched:

The guy in the video is Johnny Chung Lee of Carnegie Mellon University, and this isn’t his first innovative application of Wii technology (specifically just the Wiimote): this site lists his other projects. Amazing!

I’ve just updated to WordPress 2.3.1 – there were only a few minor glitches! If you notice anything else, please let me know. I think I’ve lost my tagging support for now though, oops.

Also you may notice I’ve added various gamercards/profile thingies to my sidebar – including Xbox 360, Steam, and Xfire (the latter of which I haven’t been using at all recently, so my stats are all out of date!) Of course, I’m rather sad that my recent obsession with my very own 360 has to stop in a month and a half when I go away to the States… Boo!

I’ve once again managed to somehow build up a huge backlog of things I’ve been meaning to write here about, and without realising, have gone without updating for far too long! I will still be writing about most of the items in my little list, but first, I thought I’d break the silence by updating my ‘Press and Media’ section with news of my meeting with Prime Minister Gordon Brown last week at the launch of Global Entrepreneurship Week in London.

The press release is here:

Risk-taking spirit recognised by Gordon Brown