The Smidgen

Image Credit: Edge Online

Martin De Ronde, not a name that you might be immediately familiar with, was co-founder of the games studio Guerrilla Games before it was acquired by Sony Computer Entertainment in 2005 and now best known for their Killzone titles.  He’s also the man behind the OneBigGame mini-publishing platform that aims to be the Band Aid of the games industry.

What the hell does that all mean?  It’s a charity, or rather, a non-profit organization with the goal of getting well-known game developers to create titles to be sold under the OneBigGame label having the proceeds go to charity, much like Band Aid.  And it’s working.  The first title Chime has already been released on Xbox Live Arcade.

Edge Online has a very nice, three-page article detailing the history of the OneBigGame project that you can check out in the source link but I’ll just summarize the whole deal here.  OBG (as I’m going to call it because I’m lazy) gets developers to donate their time and creativity to making games to sell with the proceeds going to charity, rather than asking companies to just fork over cash directly.

Why would developers want to spend their precious time creating a game instead?  Well first of all, the license with OGB only ranges from 4 to 12 months (flash games near the latter, XBLA games the former) after which the developer will receive the revenue.  Additionally, the developer retains the IP, it’s fully theirs and after the OBG exclusive period they are free to create a new title or an enhanced version of the first.  They can use OBG as a proving ground of sorts for new and radical ideas.

The way De Ronde has it worked out right now some larger and well known game studios are working with indie studios on projects.  In this way the big name guys act as creative consultant taking less of their time while the indie studio builds relationships, experience and a portfolio based off what the larger studio’s creative team came up with.  This concept actually allows big name houses to come up with some more creative and risky titles and in the end, the charities win with a quarterly check from the revenue.  Other games are coming from academia where students can use the game as a class project and then in the end, actually have something to release into the world.  Lot’s of wins all around.

At the moment OBG’s charity partners are Save the Children and the Starlight Children’s Foundation.  De Ronde hopes the one day give them more than just money too such as a game that’s tailored to give Starlight help to their children with problems.  While that will have to wait for later, here’s wishing De Ronde and OBG lots of success.  Now that the games industry is on par with movies, music and television, it’s nice to see a desire to give back in some way.

Source: Edge Online

A European patent reveals a new Wii peripheral tentatively called the Nintendo Wii-tarded (not really).  The inflatable seat … thing, to the left there is supposed to house a Wiimote to sense balance shifts and use the nun-chuck or second Wiimote to simulate riding a horse or other animal or perhaps a vehicle (like a motorcycle for shark jumping I would presume).

I’m speechless and/or choking on my own laughter here so I’ll just give you some links.  Joystiq, European patent.

PSP2 Concept. Credit: Joe Thomas and Rocco Devenanzio

The computer gaming industry is certainly no stranger to rumor and one of the most recent, and juicy, involves speculation on the PSP2.  Keep in mind, none of this information has been mentioned or confirmed by Sony.  It’s a rumor, remember?

Anyway, Acclaim developer, David Perry, started this whole thing off with a message he made on his Facebook and Twitter accounts that Kotaku picked up and repeated, and now I will do the same.  His quote,

“I hear Sony FINALLY has the PSP 2. And thank goodness, they’ve removed the stupid battery-sucking UMD disc drive. I’m excited!,”

has people running ragged questioning what Sony will do.  Will they go with an all flash based system, presumably Memory-Stick Pro Duo (Quad Singulo Disco Ipso Facto …), and direct download and if so, how will they support backward compatibility?  Or will this “new” PSP be another revision giving us the PSP-4000 (since we’re on the PSP-3000 now)?

Well you know what, when I see a rumor saying that Sony will can the UMD all I can say is, “no sh*t, it’s way over due.”  Other speculation is that Sony will announce the PSP2 officially at this years E3 in June and if they are planning to release one any time soon, that would be the time to mention it.  Hopefully in June we can lay to rest yet another failed proprietary Sony format (no one is weeping for you MiniDisc).