“After twenty years in the business, with the decision of Atari to sell Shiny Entertainment in early 2006, founder and Earthworm Jim, MDK, Messiah and Enter The Matrix co-creator David Perry decided to take a year off.

Gamasutra recently talked to Perry after his session about his ‘holiday’, his many projects, and the concept of free-to-play MMOs.”

Happy New Year!

“Stéphane D’Astous, General Manager of the newly-formed Eidos Montreal, is bullish about his studio’s planned development cycle. ‘Trying to get nine women to give birth to a baby in one month doesn’t work. Everyone has tried that in this industry, but we decided to cut the bullshit,’ D’Astous declared on our in-depth tour of the new facility.”

Some more coverage from my time in Montreal! This time in feature form.

I eagerly await Deus Ex 3, even if, at this point, there’s really not much more than speculation floating about. I adored the original Deus Ex, but the sequel was just horrible. Not for the reason that so many people complain about (that it was “dumbed down”) but because the environments were absolutely nothing in comparison. In the original, areas such as Hong Kong were large and interesting to explore, while in the sequel, entire cities seemed to be about four rooms big. It was a complete disappointment.

“At the Montreal International Game Summit 2007, EA Mobile Montreal’s General Manager, Patrick Minotti, gave his insight into the mobile games industry from the standpoint of a developer who has been in the mobile games industry since 2001, taking a look at the changing face of the mobile game consumer and the changes in how they consume mobile games.”

More from MIGS, except this one is posted on Games On Deck!

It’s been ages since I last mentioned Games On Deck, but for those of you keeping score, here’s a list of every article I’ve written since then.

Interviews with:
Greg Ballard, Glu Mobile; Leighton Webb, I-play; Billy Pamier, Airborne Entertainment; David Gosen, I-play; Stan Liu, Walt Disney Internet Group; John Criswick and Nicholas Reichenbach, Magmic Games; John Lee, Hudson Entertainment; Tony Pearce, Player X; Christopher Payne-Taylor, AdME; Travis Boatman, EA; Ravi Shankar Bose, Fugumobile; Alex Goatcher, Mikoishi; Arthur Goikhman, Cellufun; Pascal Bestebroer, Orange Pixel; Q&A: Callie Johnson, Micazook; Steve Gleitsmann, Emdigo; Damir Slogar, Big Blue Bubble; Peter Ahnegård, Sony Ericsson Developer World; James Kaye, Hands-On Mobile and Julian Corbett, Vollee.

“Located in the temperate Niagara region best known internationally for wine production, St. Catharines is also home to game developer Silicon Knights, currently working on Too Human for release on Xbox 360 under the command of founder and president Denis Dyack.

Despite its significance, few even within the city are aware that St. Catharines features Ontario’s largest game developer. After all, the number of staff members of Silicon Knights — 160 — pales in comparison to nearby province Quebec’s largest, Ubisoft, which has over 10 times as many.”

I didn’t realise people made such a big deal about everything Denis Dyack says! What I thought were fairly inoffensive (and frankly, rather logical) comments on the subsidies for game developers in Quebec have been linked on Game|Life, GamesIndustry.biz/Eurogamer, and more.

“Mobile porting technology provider Tira Wireless recently announced Tira Jump 2007, the latest version of their flagship product suite, including a new feature, “Jumplets.”

Games On Deck talks to Tony de la Lama, SVP Product Management and Marketing and Simon Keogh, director of Product Management, about the company’s history and their future.”

I’m linking this because it’s a nice reminder to the beginning of my career as a journalist – my first paid article was in fact a review of the Tira Wireless Product Suite for Game Developer Magazine. Game Developer Magazine, of course, part of CMP, who are the umbrella group that own Games On Deck.

My other recent articles on the site include Q&As with Mike Nelson, CEO of Timelapse Mobile, and Eric Berger, the Vice President of Sony Mobile Entertainment.

“Casual games developer and publisher PopCap Games recently announced the hiring of Andrew Stein to the newly-created position of Director of Mobile Business Development.

In this exclusive interview, Games On Deck talks to Stein about why he chose to join PopCap and his plans for the company’s mobile future.”

It’s been three months, roughly, since Games On Deck launched, so I think it’s about time to mention it again here. Things are going excellently at the website, with this interview just a small example of what’s been going on. I’m particularly proud of the articles I’ve commissioned, rather than wrote myself; such as this week’s postmortem of Pillowfight from Capybara Games (who are, funnily enough, based here in Toronto.)

But here’s a list of everything I’ve written for the site since my last update: SNAP Mobile: Nokia’s Antoine Doumenc; Q&A: Vipul Sawhney, President of Hovr; Q&A: Mahi De Silva, Co-Founder And CEO, Frengo; Q&A: Mobile Complete CEO Faraz Syed; Q&A: Christian K-L Yau Heilesen, CEO, Funmobile; Q&A: Bob Shireman, Chief Publishing Officer, SkyZone; Q&A: Paul Maglione, President of Vivendi Games Mobile; Q&A: Tom Sperry, CEO of Exit Games USA and Q&A: Jim Blackhurst, Producer, Tomb Raider Legend.

That’s a lot of Q&As!

“The competition to provide the complete mobile gaming experience is heating up with Nokia returning with the N-Gage brand, so Games On Deck has taken the opportunity to talk to Mike Yuen, head of Qualcomm’s Gaming Group, about their option, the Brew Gaming Signature Solution.”

Linked for the title, a sneaky reference to the greatest soft drink in the entire world: Barr’s Irn Bru.

“Following our earlier Nokia coverage, which included an interview with Nokia’s director of games publishing, Gregg Sauter, and an editorial from Dr Mark Ollila, Director of Technology and Strategy and Head of Games Publishing, in this second interview with a Nokia executive, Games On Deck talks to Tomi Huttula, Head of Arena Product Management for Nokia, about the new incarnation of N-Gage Arena.”

I’ve actually had a bit of a chance to fiddle about with a (very) early version of the N-Gage software. It’s in far too early a stage to post anything resembling proper impressions of, but it’s very similar to the Xbox 360′s interface. I’m not entirely sure how well that idea works with the concept of mobile gaming, which involves far shorter play periods, so it’ll have to be seen to what extent the games and system are going to allow players to easily drop in and drop out. I’m sincerely looking forward to finding out.

“When we last spoke to Michael Chang, in September 2006, the ad-supported model of game distribution was still in the process of being proven. However, with more than 1.4 million downloads on Gamejump.com within 4 months of launch and new distribution partnerships made with networks such as MobilePro’s ProGames Network and more and more publishers signing up for the service, including the likes of Orange Pixel and Kiloo, Chang is more than willing to argue that Greystripe’s solution is a revolution in mobile gaming. Games On Deck sat down with Chang pre-GDC Mobile to discuss.”

This is a fairly interesting article that I link here mostly because the ad-supported model has kind of led me, what with the recent announcements of things like PS3 Home and so on, to think about the future a bit. It’s easy to argue that within a short period of time (5-10 years) almost all of our information and entertainment will be streamed directly into our homes, either via the ad-supported model or by one-off payments for downloadable content. Yesterday I walked past my local Rogers Video (Canada’s Blockbuster, basically, though we’ve got Blockbuster too) and wondered – what on earth are going to happen to all these shops and workers when there’s no need for them any more? Mega City One levels of unemployment, or what?

I’m probably getting ahead of myself – even broadband penetration isn’t really that high here, and the mobile phone companies in North America lag a good 2/3 years behind even Europe in terms of forethought. But still. Interesting times await.

“As part of the launch of Games On Deck we investigate what may be the biggest story in the mobile games industry this year: the return of the N-Gage platform.

In the first of a series of interviews with Nokia executives (with two more to come later this month) we talked to Nokia’s director of games publishing, Gregg Sauter.”

And here’s the first feature by yours truly on Games On Deck!

I am rather looking forward to the new N-Gage platform. I never got an N-Gage QD, and, strange as it may sound, I really wanted one!