Realism is not the Wii's domain. We've come to terms with this, so much so that our psychiatrist has begun to offer us half-rates for her trouble. Even so, any efforts to help the little console along the path of next-gen righteousness are welcomed. An update today from the AI middleware sleuths at Kynogon is certainly that, as the company has announced support for the Wii, offering their popular AI tech Kynapse to Wii game developers in order to help keep their NPCs from running around all willy-nilly.

Kynapse is already used in a number of other titles, both currently available and in production for a variety of platforms, including Crackdown, Alone in the Dark, and the upcoming sequel to Fable, and while no Wii developers have come forward and announced titles they expect to take advantage of the AI solution, Kynogon notes that Kynapse has already been tapped by two different studios for use in upcoming Wii projects. Who knows, maybe someday soon we can quit visiting the shrink altogether.

Despite being a country with "different business dynamics," the Australian game industry wants equal treatment to the film industry. The Games Developers' Association of Australia (GDAA) said in a statement, "The videogames industry in Australia is experiencing a serious fiscal inequity and imbalance compared to the film and special effects industry sector ... The Government is guilty of serious neglect of one of the fastest growing industries in the creative and entertainment sector."

Apparently the government gave a 40% rebate to film companies and the GDAA wants in on the action. Essentially the GDAA is fighting for the future as they envision around 20,000 people being employed by the game industry by 2010. We're all for a different country's sensibilities being mixed in with the glut of Japanese, American and the few British developed titles. Yes, we know there are American game development divisions in Australia, but that's not the same and we doubt that's what the GDAA is hoping for. We could use some original games brought to us by the country which blessed us with Priscilla: Queen of the Desert, Muriel's Wedding, Strictly Ballroom and (must think of something butch) Mad Max.

Unlike the mysterious PS3 demo Afrika, the continent of Africa doesn't exactly come up much in discussions of modern game development. This could change, though, if any of the African game projects detailed on the White African blog manage to catch on with a worldwide audience.

Sure, the provided list of African games is pretty short, and is rendered even shorter when you take out American-made but Africa-themed games like Cabela's African Safari. Still, the fact that these games exist at all is news to us. We're particularly intrigued by Africa an ambitious, stalled MMO project set to take place in a 13th century version of the continent. Here's hoping we'll actually get to play it one of these days.

Edge has an interview up with Free Radical co-founder Karl Hilton (no relation, we hope) where he discusses enemy AI, game design, and what it's like developing games in the marketplace right now. Particularly eye-opening is the fact that when they developed GoldenEye, their team was about as dozen people. These days, they consist of about 100 people, which is quite a step up in manpower.

The most interesting quote comes when he's asked about the full time scriptwriter they have working there. Hilton says, "The success of the Wii has showed how unimportant writing is to a huge chunk of the games market – and that market sector is growing." We'd have to disagree with that. Sure, you don't need a huge screenplay to make Wario Ware: Smooth Moves fun ... but those explanation screens that show you how to do each new move with the controller are extremely well written and funny. Now, if they could just hire Tom Stoppard to rewrite Cooking Mama.

They don't drop any new info about Star Wars Battlefront III, but he does talk about HAZE a bit, and it's worth checking out. They also just celebrated their 8th birthday on Friday, which practically makes them wise adults in the game development world.

Boyfriends aren't the only ones facing dilemmas. Publishers and developers have been struggling to develop games that appeal to women, because they represent a huge demographic who haven't traditionally been associated with the video game market, and that translates to lost dollars. But how do you begin to approach making a game for girls, or is it even a mistake to set out to do that from the beginning, rather than just making a game that's fun?

The panel first asked the question, "What constitutes a female gamer?" Jame Pinckard said, "Women aren't just this monolithic block of 'gamers', they all want different types of games. Just because a Barbie video is made for a 12 year old girl, doesn't mean a 26 year woman has to play it." Sheri Graner Ray took it a step further, adding "There is no definition of a female gamer, and trying to tack a label to them does a disservice. The female gamer is simply a female who plays games. She's just a diverse as any other market out there."

When you combine the words "serious" "learning" and "hard" in the same sentence, chances are you're going to end up with something that gamers won't like. But that's what the Serious Games Initiative is all about, developing games for "non-entertainment" purposes. Of course, the problem is games for non-entertainment tend to scare people away faster than the phrase "edutainment."

That's the main problem facing Serious Games, how do they make it seem like they aren't hiding the broccoli under the meatloaf? All of the games shown off were educational in one form or another, having to do with zapping cancer cells inside the human body, or how to interact with people in the workplace. Seriously, there is a game about the proper way to run a meeting, collaborate with coworkers, and generally function in an office. Too bad it's not running on the Unreal Engine. Zing!

When games suck, we tend to blame the developer. This piece by David A. Rodriguez over at Buzzscope tries to shed some light on the development process behind bad games -- helping us figure out why they suck.

As with many things in life, it's all about the money -- those who wield it have ultimate control, regardless of how unreasonable or impractical their desires. Rodriguez has a neat explanation: developers aren't artists, but they're in customer service. Whatever the customer wants, the customer gets. In this case, the customer is often the publisher, who wants to make more money by releasing a game that will sell. So, next time you think about picking up that copy of Crazy Frog Racer, remember this article -- and don't.

[Via Eurogamer]

Over at the IGDA, there's some advice for a hobbyist game developer looking to pitch (and protect) a game design. Pitching a random idea for a game to a developer or publisher isn't easy, but there are some solid hints on how to get an idea towards reality:

• Come up with a demo
  
• Attend game industry events to make contacts
• Read up on the pitching process
• Pay attention to NDAs

Indie game development competitions and pitching opportunities offer a lot of scope for an idea to become an actual game; accessible platforms like Flash and the Xbox Live Arcade add further ways it can happen. One thing's for sure, though -- you have to be serious and committed to make this process work.

See also:
Advice for wannabe game developers
The life of a lapsed game developer

The days of the bedroom coder are mostly behind us, though casual games and mini-games still provide the opportunity for a single coder to make it big -- not to mention one-man projects like Rag Doll Kung Fu which don't quite fit into the above categories.

If you're interested in running your own game development project, Download Squad has some business advice for you. Covering engines, team-building, documentation, project management, testing, marketing and the all-important "making money", this article is a useful starting point and gives a good idea of what's actually involved in a small-scale game development project. Of course, you'll want to do further research before embarking on such a project yourself.

Lost Garden has an interesting post up which is useful reading for anyone thinking about a career in game development. As an ex-game developer, driven out by a cancelled project, bad project management and pay cuts, Danc has a list of reasons why lapsed game developers won't be going back to their jobs once they taste the forbidden fruit of a mainstream development job.

With an estimated 50,000 lapsed game developers out there -- people who've seen what real working conditions are like and prefer to stay away from the games industry -- it's an almost frightening outpouring of talent. On the other hand, many gamers and programmers are climbing over one another to get that vital entry-level job in the industry, to break in with fancy demos and showy code. Whether some developers care that they're losing people, when there are so many ready to replace them, is debatable -- but a high turnover and an unstable team can have their effects on products, which affects us as consumers too

Mac gaming website Inside Mac Games has posted a selection of Mac game developers reaction's to Apple's Boot Camp software. The overall feeling from the developers is one of cautious optimism: any loss in interest for OS X specific games could be offset by an increase in overall Mac market share from casual Windows gamers flooding to the platform. Andrew Welch, the founder of Ambrosia Software (creators of classics like the Escape Velocity series of games), doesn't "view it as a threat at all... but then again, we're not in the porting business".

Aspyr's Glenda Adams and Brad Oliver are in the porting business. Fortunately they also publish and port games for other platforms. According to Brad "if Mac sales tank, we've got enough revenue coming in from PC and console ports that it probably won't hurt the company too much and we'd just focus on the other platforms." Mac game sales will only tank if people stop buying Mac games and instead play their games in Windows but as Andrew says, "people will get sick of dual-booting, and would prefer to run native games, just like Linux users prefer native games".

Ian Lynch Smith of Freeverse points out that this may be only the first step: "Apple is pushing the intel roll out very aggressively, and now aggressively pushing dual boot (and virtualization eventually from someone)". Hopefully in the next 6 months we'll see effective virtualization of Windows games from within OS X. That's the most desirable outcome for both Mac users and developers.

[Via TUAW]

A new report published by Screen Digest exposes the growing trend of outsourcing game development to low-cost specialists in Eastern Europe and South Asia. The report estimates that 60% of game developers currently outsource their projects and predicts that these companies will spend $1.1 billion on outsourcing this year, with that figure rising to $2.5 billion by 2010.

Outsourcing is typically used for art and animation, but the supply of capable providers is growing thin. According to the study, within the next few years, demand will exceed quality resources, forcing higher costs and fewer games. However, as new media companies gradually enter the market, the games industry will ultimately benefit.