Joystiq

Another indie game bundle with Sideway NY, Wasteland Angel, mysteries

Jessica Conditt — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 15:30:00 EST

Let's get ready to Bundle! The latest installment in the pay-what-you-want bundle franchise is the Be Mine Indie Game Bundle, offering five games, a soundtrack and extra incentives when the total payment reaches $3,000, $50,000 and $75,000, with 20 percent of all donations going to Child's Play Charity. The current total is just over $46,000 and the bundle is available until March 3.

The Be Mine Bundle includes Xotic, Sideway New York, Wasteland Angel, Beep and The Ball, and for hitting the $3,000 mark it now includes Nikopol: Secrets of the Immortals and all DLC packs for Xotic when they're released. The $50,000 includes a bunch of soundtracks and $75,000 hits a mystery bonus.

Another indie game bundle with Sideway NY, Wasteland Angel, mysteries originally appeared on Joystiq on Sun, 26 Feb 2012 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Indievania makes a comfy home for indie developers and their games

Jessica Conditt — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 20:00:00 EST

Independent development can be a long and laborious road, but Capsized creator Lee Vermeulen is hoping to make it a little smoother with Indievania, a new open platform where developers can sell and promote their indie darlings. Indievania is a direct-to-fan, DRM-free platform, where developers will interact directly with potential players, eliminating any middle-men and their exorbitant fees. In beta, Indievania is currently offering four games, BEEP, Steel Storm, and two of Vermeulen's Alientrap creations, Capsized and Nexuiz Classic.

Indievania will host alpha, beta and prototype game versions for developers to raise title awareness, and asks only 9 percent for hosting a game, much lower than the industry-standard 30 percent. Payments are only accepted through PayPal now, but Vermeulen plans to add Google Checkout and Amazon Payments later. Developers can submit a game and have it selling within one day, with complete control over their store page and price. Games will be featured, front-page style, according to popularity or overall quality.

Indievania sounds like a wonderful opportunity for independent developers -- at least, unlike Dracula's -vania, we don't think it will completely suck.

Indievania makes a comfy home for indie developers and their games originally appeared on Joystiq on Sat, 06 Aug 2011 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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How Xbox Live Achievements work

Mike Schramm — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 04:00:00 EST

Filed under: Weird But True, Opinions, New In Pop Culture

This post is for eggheads only -- we won't be talking about how to get Xbox Live achievements, or how the system of earning Gamerscore actually works. Nope, the latest Xbox Engineering blog post gets down and dirty with the actual software and hardware behind the Xbox Live Achievements system, and not only how your Xbox actually learns from whatever game you're playing that you just earned some points, but how you friends get to know it as well.

Turns out the sound we most connect with the whole system (that "Achievement Unlocked" beep) was an afterthought -- originally, Microsoft's team wasn't planning on having any notification of point scoring at all. The idea of achievements has evolved over time as well -- they did start out with the 5-50 and 1000 Gamerscore requirements, but since launch, devs have better learned how to use Achievements and how to customize them. Apparently there's a whole bunch of code and science behind the whole thing. Go figure! We always thought it was unicorn magic of some kind.

How Xbox Live Achievements work originally appeared on Joystiq on Sat, 17 Jul 2010 04:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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