Pacman Dungeons is a browser-ready textadventure, where you play PacMan, in order to collect pills and avoid ghosts. It’s a homage to the two most popular forms of computer games in the late 1970s and early 80s: Pac-Man and text adventures or interactive fiction. Quite a neat interpretation of a classic game. Playing pacman was never so… slow!

MoMinis looks like a promising development suite for game developers, who want to enter the domain of mobile phones. Unfortunately I haven’t had the time yet to take a deeper look on that. MoMinis Studio should be similar to GameMaker, with the difference, that you will get results, ready to distribute and use on mobile phones. Right at the moment they are doing a development competition, where developers can win up to 2000 Dollar and an advanced handset.

The intelligent toys series is a netaudio-compilation, that pushes the border of quality up, up, up. The 5th compilation of “Intelligent Toys” got massive music and extraordinary high quality artworks as well. Let’s start to dream with IDM, Ambient and Electronica. Just take a look at this videoclip here from Sleepy Town Manufacure, with a song called “O Nei”. (This is Russian and means “about her”, someone has told, not “Oh no”.)

The whole motion is based upon handdrawn characters, but are boosted up with some special computer-generated effects. I am sure you will notice them. Look and vibe are just a little bit like the classic Czech cartoons, that are really missing this days. Man, I’ve grown up on such stuff!

Compilations like this don’t happen overnight. Read an interview with Sutemos about Intelligent Toys, the label and the work behind the curtain.

via Phlow-Magazine

Ok, I am not the type of guy, who worship packaging design and things like that. For sure, sometimes packaging does make a difference. For exmple this here: it seems that it is mostly meant as a joke. The lunchboxes by Emma Smart replace necessity by fun. Simply by coloring the inside of lunch-to-go-boxes with printed dinnerware.

Wouldn’t it be great to take this concept further? There should be much more products with fun inside. We could definine a new relationship between packaging, product and the space between them. Most packaging makes the product be, leaving the newness intact and protecting it from harm. But what if the packaging would get a whole new meaning in the process. Adding fun and added value by setting the customer into action. For example by play or experiment. You can build a WiFi-antenna out of a pizza-box. I am sure, many readers will remember the Yps-Magazine.

via Yanko

A very good contribution by Jeff Atwood on weblog Coding Horror: He quotes and analyzes Paul Buchheit, the original lead developer of GMail, telling that “overnight success” is misleading and pointing you in the wrong direction. From our current point of view and experience it is quite funny, if we look at the things, that Paul Buchheit says about the development of Gmail. The service is not only quite popular this days, but meanwhile got the best growing numbers of all e-mail services on the web:

“Quite a few people thought that we should kill the project, or perhaps “reboot” it as an enterprise product with native client software, not this crazy Javascript stuff. Even when we got to the point of launching it on April 1, 2004 — two and a half years after starting work on it — many people inside of Google were predicting doom. The product was too weird, and nobody wants to change email services. I was told that we would never get a million users. Once we launched, the response was surprisingly positive, except from the people who hated it for a variety of reasons. Nevertheless, it was frequently described as ‘niche’, and ‘not used by real people outside of silicon valley’.”

Every success is taking years and years in preparation and break through. Sure, when success is there, it’s there. And everbody is thinking of “overnight”, especially when there are new people on the radar, that nobody knew before. I am totally not an opponent of the “think smarter, not harder” principle. But, it is somehow clear to me, that betting on the “next big thing” overnight is not a wise strategy in some very special ways – it can be very frustrating as well. Overnight success is something, that do not come overnight, but is something that is perceived overnight by others.

Continue quoting Codinghorror. I totally agree at this point, where he Jeff quotes Peter Norvics “Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years“

“Researchers have shown it takes about ten years to develop expertise in any of a wide variety of areas, including chess playing, music composition, telegraph operation, painting, piano playing, swimming, tennis, and research in neuropsychology and topology. The key is deliberative practice: not just doing it again and again, but challenging yourself with a task that is just beyond your current ability, trying it, analyzing your performance while and after doing it, and correcting any mistakes. Then repeat. And repeat again.”

Thinking smart is part of the practise and experience you made yourself. Search for passion instead of fast success and everything will go its way. If you do that, success will come, and if you don’t expect it, eventually overnight. Passion and practice. Totally agreed. It’s more about having patience and a long breath. Be pragmatic.

Indiecade had a very good and clean interview with Keita Takahashi on their site. You may know Keita Takahashi from games like Katamari Damacy and the latest “next big thing” Noby Noby Boy. Some good quotes:

“Since tests projects are by definition comprised of very few members, it was a very good experience because even the rookies had to carry their weight. This, combined with the ability to talk to the planners and programmers directly, made it a very good and rewarding environment.”

“Overall though, I feel a certain jealously in that the atmosphere of freedom that older games had has been lost in modern games. Even if they were crappy games, there were plenty of hidden moves and tricks. It was possible to enjoy and laugh at things like that. That kind of atmosphere of freedom is much more difficult to create now.”

The Monome controller is a good example and shows a little, how the electronic music has become today: unlabeled, ephemeral, multi-functional and everything you want to make and do, you have to have in your head. At least, the impression of this controller is magic, a little bit like the music itself, that spills out of the boxes.

(via Create Digital Music, thanks!)