Friday March 9th – Camaraderie with a Convict, a Conductor and a Flight Controller

What, the last day of the conference already? But it felt like we’d only just arrived in San Francisco! We had no time to waste. There were more cool presentations to go to.

Today’s talks covered how games get reviewed, marketing for indies, and for us the most interesting presentation of the day, “Awesome Video Game Data”.

The Awesome Video Game Data talk was given by Geoffrey Zatkin of video game research firm EEDAR. We were already familiar with this company as we’d seen presentations from them at the Game Connect Asia Pacific conferences in Australia over the last couple of years. These guys have teams of analysts constantly reviewing video game data from which they extrapolate key industry statistics. These aren’t just interesting facts and figures though. This stuff can help you plan your business strategy. They never fail to impress us with their in-depth knowledge of this huge industry. Here’s some of the awesome data we were presented with: (more…)

Thursday March 8th – the Joy of Jetpacks and Videoing Vektor

The second day started with one of those meetings we can’t talk about at the moment, but which could lead to an interesting future development. This is one of the things we love about GDC – there are so many industry people there to meet and talk with about potential opportunities. Of course, if anything does happen, we’ll let you know right here on our blog. (more…)

Well, how did that happen? It seemed like it was only yesterday we’d finished writing last year’s GDC Diaries. But when you’re constantly working against the clock to make games, months pass in the blink of an eye. A cough could be all that separates GDC in March from E3 in June. One major sneeze and suddenly it’s Thanksgiving. Fart and it’s Christmas…..OK, OK, you get the point, right? No wonder studios find it so hard to estimate when games will be finished. Game development years are way shorter than normal years. That’s a fact. Now the year had turned full circle and it was time to head off to San Francisco yet again for that electronic love-fest they call the Game Developers Conference. (more…)

Jessica Citizen from games website Player Attack interviewed Nic & Bruce at last year’s Game Connect Asia Pacific conference in Melbourne.

She wanted to know about escapeVektor, Pop and of course Spirit Hunters Inc. We also discussed interacting with our fans and why Spirit Hunters Inc has taken so long to develop. Then we talked about development of escapeVektor for the 3DS and mentioned that we were also talking to Sony – remember, this interview was done in November 2011.

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Gizmodo Australia run a regular feature called Developer Cubed in which they focus on Australia’s up and coming dev scene. They grabbed Nic for a quick interview recently.

Nic & Bruce - the owners of Nnooo

Developers Cubed: Nnooo

by Alex Kidman

Gizmodo’s Developers Cubed series offers a behind the scenes look into Australia’s up and coming dev scene. This week: We chat with Nic from Sydney-based games developer Nnooo about why all development isn’t just iOS development and why it’s important to carve your own niche.

Developers! Developers! Developers!
It’s not just Steve Ballmer’s favourite sweat-laden catchcry! If you’d like to be featured in Developers Cubed, shoot a note to alex.kidman at alluremedia.com.au. I’d love to hear from you.

Who are you and where do you work?
My name is Nic Watt and I’m the Creative Director (and technically CEO) of Nnooo an indie games company based in Sydney, Australia

Why do we know you? What have you created?
We have created several successful franchises for WiiWare and DSiWare and are now turning our hand to the next generation of consoles with games for Nintendo 3DS and other unannounced consoles. Our most successful projects have been Pop, a launch title for the WiiWare service; Pop + Solo a sequel to Pop for DSiWare and our myLifeCollected series of applications for DSiWare which includes myNotebook, myPostcards and myDiary; finally escapeVektor our latest game was released to critical acclaim at the end of last year on WiiWare.

Our current projects include escapeVektor for Nintendo 3DS (and other platforms – to be announced) and Spirit Hunters Inc an augmented reality RPG for DSiWare and Nintendo 3DS.

Click here to read the rest of this feature

Nic was recently interviewed by UK games site Cane and Rinse. They wanted to chat about how a Scotsman ended up starting a video games business in Sydney and what WiiWare development is like. They also wanted to know about the design and music of escapeVektor: Chapter 1 and of course Spirit Hunters Inc. Have a listen to this illuminating chat.

Click here to be taken to the podcast

Kotaku Australia have recently introduced a new feature for Australian developers called Show & Tell. When they asked for developers to submit answers to five questions describing their studio and current projects we couldn’t resist. It gave us a great chance to tell some more people about escapeVektor: Chapter 1 and Spirit Hunters Inc.

Show And Tell: Nnooo

by Tracey Lien

Welcome to Show and Tell, a (relatively) new regular that gives local Australian indie developers the chance to show their latest work, whether its a finished game or a work in progress. Today we’re speaking to an indie studio that is no stranger to the WiiWare, DSi and iOS market. Bruce Thomson from Nnooo gave us a preview of what they’re working on now.

Can you introduce yourself and tell me a little bit about your studio?

We are an independent game development studio based in Sydney, developing downloadable games primarily for Nintendo consoles. Our first game was called Pop, a bubble popping game for up to four players for the Wii. It was one of only six titles picked for Nintendo’s US WiiWare launch in 2008. We subsequently made a single player version of the game, Pop+ Solo, for the Nintendo DSi and iPhone. We’ve also released a series of personal organiser applications for the Nintendo DSi called the myLifeCollected series. The most successful of the applications, the myNotebook series, has sold almost a quarter of a million units.

Click here to read the rest of the article

We recently had a visit from Nintendo World Report who were looking to do a feature piece on Nnooo, including an interview with Nic. We were delighted with this resulting article which gives a great feel for the office and really gets to the heart of what we are up to. Plus there’s a great interview with Nic which includes Nic’s game design influences, why we made the myLifeCollected series, a little more insight into escapeVektor and what we think of Nintendo. (more…)

Wednesday June 8th – Sony Talks, Redheads, & some Press Love

The first meeting of the day was with Sony to discuss the potential for working together. We are very excited by the Playstation Vita and we think it would fit well with some of our existing software and with our ideas for the future. Being able to make initial contact with both Microsoft & Sony at the same event was a real bonus for us this year. We’re very excited about all the different directions we might be able to go in future. (more…)

After the positive reception we received from our GDC Diary blogs earlier in the year, we decided to write another covering our experiences at E3 in June.

The Kings of Geeks

In the weeks before the conference our focus was to get our games into a state where we could showcase our latest builds. We had to ensure that all the new features we had in Spirit Hunters Inc were coded into a playable state. As escapeVektor: Chapter 1 was being bug tested, we were keen to have all bugs fixed so that we could show the final version in LA.

Unlike GDC, there were no formal press interviews being set up but we were still keen to show the press the latest builds of our games. Renting a booth at the show is way too expensive for a small developer like Nnooo, and if we were to do this we would need to have someone staffing it at all times which is just not practical for us. We needed another way to reach out to our press contacts which would not cost an arm and a leg. We also wanted to meet up again with the other Nintendo indie devs who we met at GDC. We thought it would be cool if we brought everybody together in one place. Then we could show everyone what we were working on and introduce our indie mates to some press contacts. (more…)