That’s right.  Just posted a brand spankin’ new blog on Gamasutra:

Give No Quarter: The New-School Arcade Experience

21st century arcades live in the phones in our pockets and are downloaded onto our HD consoles. Come along in-depth on the design of iBailout!! and analyses of other recent arcade titles as we discover the new-school arcade experience.

No jokin’ in that there description and much thanks to Aaron Biggs of the D’s premier underground hip-hop crew, United States of Mind, for hooking up such nice photos and a quality graphical treatment.  You already learned of the satire and meaning of iBailout!!, now please take a look at its gameplay design.

Also, we had another nice, quick iBailout!! review a few weeks back.   Scroll down to the July 21, 2010 entry and you’ll find these great words: “A simple, well-designed homage to a true classic.”

Finally, hit that jump for an extra, vintage photo left over from the Give No Quarter blog.

Kotaku’s Stephen Totilo was cool enough to talk with me last week about iBailout!!, what we’re doing at MEE and my personal game design thoughts and ideas and wrote up a profile that went live and has been featured on their site since a couple days ago.

Please take a gander and get a better idea of what’s going on ’round these parts.

SPOILERS:

There’s been more than a few (by a few, I mean several dozen) highly critical commenters and it’s pretty brutal and ruthless over there for me, but I’m doing my best to keep it real and (mostly) engage civilly and on a high level.  Please feel free to join the party if you feel up to it, but know what the deal be.

From the 244-character limit description:

In-depth on the construction of meaning in the world’s greatest game about the Federal Reserve and most loving and innovative Ms. Pac-Man homage, iBailout!!. You’ve been warned.

And, one more thing. (I haven’t yet made it through the whole epic 90 minutes, so if I’ve said something foolish or otherwise offensive, it’s all a pack of damn lies. Otherwise, it’s awesome and please enjoy.)

It’s all you ever wanted to know and were afraid to ask about the shenanigans that go on at MEE.  Danishes?  Daiquiris?  Half-nakedness?  All this and more awaits, ladies and gentlemen.

Get to clickin’.

UPDATE: Hit the jump for the question that was TOO HOT FOR JOYSTIQ!!11

What one thing would you tell someone to convince them to get your game?

Either iBailout!! or your brains are going to be on that iPhone!! We humbly and sincerely request you purchase iBailout!! and share your honest thoughts in a review on the App Store.

MEE is live and local at E3 2010 and, not only that, but we’ve got the single coolest piece of swag at the show (believe it–please): MEE E3 2010 Limited Edition iBailout!! Promo Codes!!11

If you’re lucky enough to track us down (or are just a cool journalist who appreciates a good game about the Federal Reserve and can get down with a most loving and innovative Ms. Pac-Man homage) you may just earn one of only 50 of these awesome little cards.

And, you can definitely follow on twitter, as there’ll be E3 tweetin’ a plenty goin’ down–don’t be afraid to give us a shout and join in.

Peace and iBailout!!, all.

That’s right, folks.  iBailout!!, the world’s greatest game about the Federal Reserve and most loving and innovative Ms. Pac-Man homage is asking for your support in the 28th Annual Golden Joystick Awards.

In the Downloadable, Portable, and Ultimate Game of the Year Categories, iBailout!! is counting on your votes to propel it onto the Golden Joystick Awards Shortlists and beyond.

I’ve already written previously in great depth on why iBailout!! is awesome, but, the executive summary is thus:

• iBailout!! is a fun new twist on the classic Ms. Pac-Man formula: Enemy mobs work like snakes that grow depending upon how much money you eat and, if you cut them in half while on a martial law/power-up run, they’ll form two completely separate enemy mobs, adding an entirely new tactical layer of depth and strategy to the classic arcade experience.

• iBailout!! represents a brand new school of thought on the traditional arcade experience and, through a liberal 1-UP bonus system and bailout bonus rounds (’cause you’re too awesome to fail), we’ve delivered a game that’s accessible to everyone, yet still rewards those old-school, practiced arcade skills.

• Finally, iBailout!! isn’t just another pretty face and is in fact a fun, mature game for fun, mature people (if you’re reading this, that’s you).  Its vicious satire of the Federal Reserve, in the seemingly innocent form of a Ms. Pac-Man homage, offers the sort of real and meaningful gaming experience that you just can’t get anywhere else–on your iPhone, or off.

For these reasons and more, please vote iBailout!! in the Downloadable, Portable and Ultimate Game of the Year Categories in this year’s 28th Annual Golden Joystick Awards–and please be snappy about it too, ’cause voting ends on the 22nd.

Much thanks and only the heartiest of iBailout!!’s, all.

It’s kinda foggy after a couple months and I don’t have all of the exact details at the tip of my fingers (and, besides, the iPhone 4G leaked; what’s a Haiti?), but iBailout!! moved 56 copies, at $1.99 a pop, from 1/25 – 1/31, the week for which we donated its sales towards Haiti disaster relief, and iLikeCereal!! moved around 30 or 40 copies during the longer period that we donated its sales, also at $1.99 a piece.  After Apple’s cut, that leaves us with $1.40 to donate per copy of iBailout!! and iLikeCereal!!, so we ended up raising a little over $100 to help out Haiti.

I added a little sugar on top to what iLikeCereal!! earned and donated 75 smackers to Cross International Catholic Outreach myself and I urged Hands-On to donate iBailout!!’s share there as well.  I chose Cross International because I wasn’t able to dig up any dirt on them in a half-hour of Googling and their BBB page looked nice too.

$100 bucks is $100 bucks and I’m glad that we raised what we did.  All in all, App Relief raised over 30 Gs towards Haiti disaster relief.  None too shabby and thanks Tap Me! Games, Mind Juice Media, Sleek Games, Realms Apart Studios and all the rest for organizing and participating in App Relief–I’m guessing Freeverse probably deserves a big shout out for their part in that too.

And, sadly, no, iBailout!! didn’t win Best Arcade Game in the 2009 Best App Ever Awards (honorable mention, ftw), but I think for us coming out of absolutely nowhere, having not sold any kind of serious numbers like the rest of the nominees, getting nominated at all is pretty sweet.

Thanks to everyone who voted for us to be nominated and to win and a special thank you to Blue’s News for linking to our ‘Why iBailout!! is the Best Arcade Game Ever’ post–I’m pretty sure their one link was what gave us enough votes to get nominated.

Again, much thanks to all who voted and all who donated (via their iBailout!! and iLikeCereal!! purchases; and just on their own too, of course) and we’ll try to be more up to date with our news in the future.  Speaking of news, though, we’ve got some real, real seriously awesome stuff to share with you all just as soon as the stars align, so be sure to stay tuned, folks.

We haven’t made a dime yet, but the force is strong with us and we’ve got indie spirit to burn and we’re about to go boldly where no man has gone before.  We hope you’ll join us.

Peace and iBailout!!, all.

]]> http://marronigames.com/2010/04/ibailout-ilikecereal-raised-a-hundo-for-haiti-we-didnt-win-any-best-app-ever-awards/feed/ 0 http://marronigames.com/2010/03/the-fashionably-late-mee-gdc-post-show-post/ http://marronigames.com/2010/03/the-fashionably-late-mee-gdc-post-show-post/#comments Sat, 20 Mar 2010 00:03:01 +0000 admin http://marronigames.com/?p=282

Hey, all.  The world’s greatest developers of the world’s greatest game about the Federal Reserve/innovative Ms. Pac-Man homage, iBailout!!, are back from GDC (about a week ago, actually, but who’s keeping track?) and it was most definitely solid and we are feeling very much inspired–nay, cocksure, even.  I was tweeting and blogging the entire conference @marronigames and posting the day’s impressions for Complex.  Here’s the whole spicy enchillada in one handy place, along with some nice exclusive business just for you fine visitors of this here MEE site.  Dig in and iBailout!!, people:

On the Way to the Show

‘Twas the Night Before GDC

So, first night of GDC festivities are down and Square Enix’s FF XIII launch event was pretty tight.

The panel event on the impact on gaming of the FF series, featuring game industry legends Graeme Devine (7^th Guest), Chris Taylor (Total Annhilation, Gas Powered Games), Mark Cerny (Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, Ratchet and Clank), Feargus Urquhart (Fallout 2, Obsidian), Corrine Yu (Halo), and FF XIII Director,

Motomu Toriyama - FF XIII Director

Motomu Toriyama, was cool to see too.  And, the appearances by Square Enix head Yoichi Wada and FF XIII voices Troy Baker and Ali Hillis (a.k.a. Mass Effect’s Liara Tsoni) sealed the deal—the XIII crystal champagne glass in the pink frilly giftbag was none too shabby neither.

Now, it’s off to GDC proper to see what 2D Boy’s Ron Carmel (World of Goo), has to say about breaking indie game devs free from the evils of not havin’ any cash, and his and a host of other key indies’ new and most tantalizing venture: Indie Fund.  You know you love your iBailout!!, right, Ron?

That’s all for now, folks, and please follow @marronigames to get in on the action and hit me up with those always stimulating questions and comments.

Peace.

GDC Day #1

GDC Day #2

GDC Day #3

UPDATE: I made a little bit of an error in this post.  It should read:

“Wrapping up at the Independent Games Festival and the Game Developers Choice Awards, Tiger Style’s iPhone masterpiece, Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor, took the top iPhone honors with Monaco, the four player espionage game, getting the best indie nod and Uncharted 2 taking pretty much everything else in the main awards categories. John Carmack of id Software…”

GDC Day #4

iBailout!! team Sound Designer & Musician, Anthony 'Fuzion' Drummond, conserving energy after the 2K party.

The days are starting to run together and supplies are going fast. They’ve been attacking regularly and they seem to be intelligent, almost learning somehow.  The iBailout!! team is keepin’ it real in SF, though, and doing our best to conserve energy—we’re holed up, locked and loaded and ready to roll for whatever comes the way of the world’s best developers of the world’s bestest game about the Federal Reserve.   Bring it on. It’s already been brought.

Sid's GDC Keynote

In other news, Sid Meier (Sid Meier’s Civilization, Sid Meier’s Pirates! and Sid Meier’s Everything I Do is Fucking Amazing and Will Swallow Your Life Away Into a Vast Pit of Absolute Awesomeness) delivered the keynote speech of the Game Developers Conference on ‘The Psychology of Game Design: Everything You Know is Wrong’ and proceeded to inspire the shit out of the entire games industry with his observations on, among many other very interesting things, why it’s wise to make your players feel like the shit (because it’s more fun when you win, of course) and why a perception of fairness is more important than actually being fair (again, because the player is king and what they think goes).

The indie games Nuovo (that’s indie for new) Sessions continued to keep it real with real nice presentations on black-and-white puzzler Closure, new-school Atari game A Slow Year, the, according to designer Cactus, “really simple game that looks weird,” Tuning, and the paint-the-walls-to-find-the-walls FPS, The Unfinished Swan, among others.

The day finished on a high note with some most delicious inside-out BLTs (as tasty and bacony as they sound) courtesy of 2K Games at their Civ V/Mafia II party (I hope you enjoyed your personal iBailout!! demo, Sid—we sure did).

Tomorrow holds the promise of a bright and early Shadow Complex talk and, as always, people, get down or lay down: @marronigames

Peace.

GDC Day #5

All’s well that ends well and this year’s GDC went pretty damn well.

I missed that Shadow Complex talk that I teased yesterday, but the ‘Comedy in Games’ panel with Lucasarts vet and current Double Fine grand poobah, Tim Schafer (The Secret of Monkey Island, Psychonauts, Brutal Legend), among others, helped make up for it a little bit.   Schafer went into his influences a bit on how he and his team are constantly working on trying not to censor themselves and just let it flow (e.g., the more absurd, the more absurd (no worries about any three-headed monkeys)).

At the Independent Games Festival pavilion, Closure (IGF ‘10 Excellence in Audio Award winner) is only looking nicer and nicer with time and should be very cool when it finally hits the consoles.   I actually checked these two out yesterday, but Enviro-Bear 2000 (just click the link and play it) was certainly entertaining and student showcase, old-school point-n-click, sci-fi noir adventure Boryokudan Rue is really looking and playing super sharp as well.

Wrapping up the conference, Will Wright (SimCity, The Sims, Spore) made a mostly surprise appearance (his session was scheduled pseudonymously as Phaedrus), delivering his thoughts on the ‘Metaphysics of Game Design’.   It was a very broad talk that touched on many disciplines, but the main points that he was driving home were on how our rapidly developing technologies are shaping not only the future, but us ourselves, socially and physically and that there’s never been a more exciting than now for video games.   He didn’t use the word transhumanism (see: Deus Ex 3: Human Revolution), but that’s exactly what he was getting at and, as far as I’m concerned, microchip, or otherwise, implants aren’t so cool and I won’t be lining up for one like I did the Wii—I’m with him on the state of gaming (it being supremely awesome and exciting right now unlike any time before, and all), though.

In flight, back to the D.

But, that is it, people.  I hope you enjoyed the Complex/MEE GDC 2010 coverage as much as I did bringing it to you all.  Please don’t forget to get your daily dose of the world’s greatest game about the Federal Reserve/innovative Ms. Pac-Man homage, iBailout!!, in and, of course, stay in touch: @marronigames

Hey, all.

I’ll be at GDC all week relating the glories of the one and only viciously satirical, Federal Reservin’, new-school action arcade bonanza, iBailout!!.

I’m tweeting the whole show live for Complex and to get in on the ground floor of this great gaming industry opportunity, just follow @marronigames

Peace and hearty iBailout!!’s, all, and anybody that mentions this post to me at the show gets a drink on the house–how’s that for a deal?

That’s right folks, your friendly neighborhood iBailout!! (Trailer), everyone’s favorite viciously satirical, Federal Reservin’, new-school, action arcade bonanza (or delight, depending on the mood) is now officially joining iLikeCereal!! (Trailer) (the hottest milk and cereal physics sim on the planet–no joke) in the fun of App Relief.

From now through January 31st, 100% of the proceeds from all sales of iBailout!! and iLikeCereal!! (yes, iLikeCereal!! decided to stick around a little bit longer than the 26th, as originally it planned) will be donated towards Haiti disaster relief.  Again, please visit AppRelief.com for details and to check out all the other great titles participating in this very fine effort.

And, we really weren’t kidding about CNN and the Wall Street Journal giving iBailout!! a couple big shouts out.  Check it out:

http://bit.ly/CNNiBailout

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/tag/app-watch/

Also, I had a nice quote in an Ars Technica piece and MTV Multiplayer covered App Relief and gave iLikeCereal!! a mention too:

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2010/01/a-year-in-gaming-quotes-kotick-beatles-tony-hawk.ars

http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2010/01/19/haiti-earthquake-relief-efforts-launched-by-bungie-and-iphone-developers/

Vote for
iBailout!!
in
Best Arcade Game

That’s all he (me) wrote, folks, and remember: Don’t forget to drink your Ovaltine, vote for iBailout!! for Best Arcade Game in the 2009 Best App Ever Awards (voting ends 1/31, people!!), and keep up to date with all the latest MEE, iBailout!!, and iLikeCereal!! happenin’s by getting down with us on Facebook and Twitter.

Peace and iBailout!!, all.

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