This post on the Torque Powered site says it all…
Today, InstantAction informed employees that it will be winding down operations. While we are shutting down the InstantAction.com website and Instant Jam game, Torquepowered.com will continue to operate while InstantAction explores opportunities with potential buyers for Torque. We thank all of our past and current customers for their support.
- Torque Management
I am mostly posting it here for sentimental reasons.
It was fun to see Google doing an Incredible Machine-like animated logo for the recent July 4th celebration.
Dear Google,
This week’s announcement of Open Graph by Facebook, and the privacy concerns it raises, is too much. Even though I am making my living by making Facebook games right now, Google needs to respond to what is happening in FB land, and start your own “real” social network. It is obvious that the world needs a social network, yet there is no real alternative to Facebook. You have been farting around with social network ideas for years, with Orkut, Buzz, and Profiles, but your implementations to date have pretty much sucked. Just bite the bullet, and make a network as easy to use and obvious as Facebook. Please, no more back door attempts like Buzz or Profiles or the gawd awful sharing that is on Reader (it is getting better, but still sucks). My team uses and loves Buzz for one small use case, but it is not something I can ask my non-techie friends or family to use.
I admit, I am a huge Google fan boy, using all of your services such as GMail, Docs, Search, and, recently a Nexus One (because I am tired of Apple’s evil, but that is a different story). I love the way Google thinks big, and solves huge problems that I didn’t even know could be solved. But, if you don’t solve this social networking problem, I am afraid that Facebook is going to become the “white listed” Internet, and Google is going to become much less relevant. I want Google to remain the default benevolent dictator of the Web.
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Traditional game developers are scared to death of what is happening with “social games“, but that is fodder for another post. This post is about the big gasp that went up throughout the game industry when the site Second Shares posted a well through out article that that came up with the $5B valuation.
NOTE: As a corollary to this article about why I think Zynga is worth so much, you should check out why I won’t invest in traditional game publishers.
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OK, I get to be all sentimental again. A month or so ago, GarageGames pulled the original Torque Game Engine off the market. Now, they are pulling the name GarageGames itself off the market, and replacing it with Torque Technologies. I can’t disagree with the decision Brett Seylor, TT VP of Tech and Tools, made to change the name. Torque is a shiny new modern 3D game engine, and they have decided that the idea of programming in a garage is not quite the image they want to project. Even though I understand, it still tugs at my heart strings.
GarageGames Logo and Motto
As announced today at PushButton Labs, we have acquired the full rights to The Incredible Machine! Although this happened several months ago, we waited on announcing it until the guys at Good Old Games could get it ready for sale, where they have a bundle Mega pack that includes four versions of TIM for $9.99.
Original Incredible Machine in Pixelated Glory
Yesterday Brett Seyler of GarageGames posted a blog announcing the release of version 1.0 of Torque 3D, which is a $1000 updated version of Torque, with new rendering, tools, art pipeline, COLLADA support, etc. It looks awesome, and I know their world-wide team worked incredibly hard on the product. I congratulate them on this release, and wish them great commercial success.
However, buried in a single sentence of the blog was the following statement:
“No matter what the results, there will be other changes to the Torque product line up as well. Biggest of all, as of November 1st, 2009, past versions of Torque (TGEA, TGE) will no longer be available for purchase.”
TGE and TimAste Art
The world is changing faster than we can comprehend. This YouTube video is an inspiring (or maybe scary) presentation that shows how fast things are changing in the world. It is inspiring because it makes your needs of creating a small niche that can sustain your life seem infinitely doable, but scary in the fact that global competition means that your idea has probably already been thought of.
Here is a direct link to the YouTube video.
YouTube – 2008 Latest Edition – Did You Know 3.0 – From Meeting in Rome this Year.
Personally, I am inspired by this type of presentation. Let me know what you think.
-Jeff Tunnell, Game Maker
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Flashbang Studios, creators of the portal Blurst, which is filled with their own games such as Off Road Velociraptor, Blush, and Minotaur in a China Shop are really doing things right. They have now self funded five titles and try to come out with a new game every eight weeks (six per year total). All of their games use the Unity web plug in for a nice, high fidelity game experience in the browser on both Macs and Windows machines.
Flashbang's Blurst Game Portal
Two days before Game Developers Conference we opened the PushButton Engine site in Beta form to the general public. The PushButton Engine is a Flash game engine released under the extremely liberal MIT Open Source license. If you are interested in Open Source Flash game development, you should check it out!
PushButton Engine Logo