“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.

“In this latest interview on GamesOnDeck, we talk to Midori Yuasa, President of Capcom Mobile, about the company’s history, future plans, and its choice to develop all titles for the US market in-house in North America.”

This probably isn’t the most exciting interview, but Capcom Mobile are, like many of the other mobile game companies that are borne of established Japanese (console) game publishers, interesting because they have a Japanese equivalent producing far more advanced games for Japanese consumers. A perfect example would be their recently released title Lost Planet: Trag Zero, which is a very limited sort of top-down shooter here, but a fully 3D third-person action adventure in Japan!

I would imagine there just aren’t enough consumers here with the hardware required to run such titles, and I’m guessing that Capcom learned that when they released Resident Evil: The Missions (Biohazard: The Missions in Japan.)

However, I rather hope that there comes a point where it does make sense to translate and port tiles across, because Resident Evil: The Missions is really great, and there are more exciting titles than that which gamers outside of Japan will never see.

“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!

“Noël Mitrani is the director of Sur La Trace D’Igor Rizzi, which premiered in Canada at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2006, winning the CityTV Award for Best Canadian First Feature. The film, in which Jean-Marc Thomas (Laurent Lucas), a former European soccer player, wanders the streets Montreal before falling into petty crime while grieving his dead lover, was reviewed positively by Torontoist before the festival, and now plays as part of Canada’s Top Ten tomorrow night, Wednesday, January 31, at 8:45pm, and Mitrani will be taking part in the panel, New Quebec Cinema, on Thursday, February 1, 2007 at 6:30pm.”

A nice little interview with a rather lovely fellow. Worth reading, and as I’ve said before, Sur La Trace D’Igor Rizzi is well worth seeing.

“Michel Kripalani is the senior games industry manager for Autodesk, overseeing aspects of Autodesk 3ds Max, Autodesk Maya and Autodesk MotionBuilder from the perspective of a game developer.

Gamasutra caught up with Michel (and PR Specialist Shannon McPhee) at the recent Autodesk Backstage Pass press summit held in Montreal to discuss Autodesk’s acquisition of Alias (Toronto-based developer of Maya), the future of the games industry, and the future of Autodesk itself.”

Um, no disrespect to Michel but it’s rather hard to think of anything to say about this interview other than what I’ve already put on the page; it’s interesting if you are interested in Autodesk? Which you could be! And Michel was an excellent interviewee, so there’s that, too!

As tonight was the launch party for this issue (that I, um, didn’t attend, because I’m a shut-in) I suppose it’s fair game to post about the issue now. Yes, for this fine issue of Broken Pencil (which I haven’t actually seen in the flesh yet) I’m fairly prominent, contributing a lovely interview with Canadian filmmaker and all round excellent chap Jamie Travis (director of The Saddest Boy in the World) and a list article that features the top 20 indie games you should play. They are, in no particular order:

Dokutsu Monogatari (Cave Story), Gunroar, 9.05 (playable online in Java), Nethack, Defcon, Alien Hominid, Every Extend, Armjoe, Façade, Orisinal (the games are playable online in Flash), Samorost (playable online in Flash), Zookeeper (playable online in Flash, and it’s a new updated version!), Naked War, Porrasturvat, Ray Hound, Fate, Klass of ’99, Narbacular Drop, Weird Worlds: Return to Infinite Space, and Cloud.

Not so much a definitive list as the first 20 games that came to mind that I like that are sufficiently varied in style and genre. You can read my explanations on why I picked them if you pick up the issue! (Available for purchase at the Broken Pencil website.)

Edit 25th January 2007: I’ve added some information to let you know which of the games are playable online in Java or flash and therefore definitely won’t contravene a “Don’t play games on our PC because it messes it up” rule. Hopefully. Oh, and I’m suddenly annoyed that I forgot all about the wonderful games from Eyemaze, such as Tontie. Oh well! There’s always next time.

What a horribly lengthy headline, readers. But it does explain my contribution to this issue as succinctly as possible!

Yes, in this issue I did a funky skillo interview with Bryan Lee O’Malley (creator of Scott Pilgrim) which is accompanied by an absolutely ace sketch of Scott Pilgrim character Ramona Flowers (this one, to my memory.) Oh, I also do a sort of combination review of New Super Mario Bros and Street Fighter Anthology, the both of which are pretty great, though arguably not great enough.

Speaking of Street Fighter, actually, I just got Street Fighter II Hyper Fighting for Xbox Live Arcade, and is it just me or is the AI, even on the easiest difficulty absolutely ridiculously hard to the point of being broken?

Still, the online is pretty good, and it’s nice to have it lying around.

“Alain Tascan is almost certainly not the image of an EA employee that most people would have in mind; he’s emphatically French, and resolutely not afraid to speak his mind. It was speaking his mind at the recent Montreal International Game Summit that led to headlines across the specialist press for the charismatic General Manager of EA Montreal. Speaking during the roundtable discussion that ended the summit, Tascan said he felt the recent Xbox 360 title Gears of War brought ‘nothing in terms of innovation to the shooter… Like, zero,’ adding, ‘myself, I prefer something more creative.’”

It didn’t take long before people brought up the irony of an executive at EA, most famous for their annual sports franchise titles, making a comment about innovation. The day after his infamous comments, Gamasutra had a chance to talk with Tascan and tour the EA Montreal Studios.”

The last of my reports from the Montreal International Game Summit, I rather like Alain Tascan, even if I’m not sure he’d remember me. He’s got surprisingly strong opinions and is passionate as hell. I think Army of Two is definitely going to be one to watch out for.