Great Games Youve Never Played

Do you know what you're missing?

Some of the best computer games ever made are likely games you've never heard of. Created by individuals and small companies working in relative obscurity. They don't have million dollar budgets, some don't even have hundred dollar budgets. They don't have dedicated marketing departments, research analysts, sales teams, fancy offices, and cutting edge tools. They scrape together whatever tools they can, often discarded by the ultra rich game designers of big shiny game studios.

Making Miracles.

In spite of these deplorable working conditions, they create some of the most amazing games around. How do these game gems get created, and who are the miracle workers creating them. They're independent game designers. Sometimes called Indies for short. Working out of their bedrooms, garages, spare offices, and basements. They have a passion for what they do. They love games, they love the act of creation, and are relentlessly committed to their vision of what a game should be. They often build games they themselves would love to play. Simply because no one else will. These kind of games you won't find at the big box electronics store casting it's shadow over your end of town. These passionate Indies could care less what the marketing boys up on the 26th floor have to say about the latest game trends. Probably because their garages don't have 26 floors. They just know their love of games, and how much they enjoy playing.

Where do Indies come from?

Indie game developers come from all different areas. They're often former artists, programmers, or designers of some big name software companies. Maybe that quiet little programmer in that tiny corner cubicle dreams of being an Indie one day. Tired of the corporate rat race, and looking to express themselves creatively they become Indies. Some of been lucky enough to avoid the corporate avenue altogether and make a living doing what they love from the beginning. Regardless of their origins, they all have the passion and desire to create. To be able to put their name on something really great. They want to be recognized for their abilities and worth. But more than that, they want you to play their games, and have fun doing so.

Why are Indie games so good?

Indie games are good first and foremost, because they're fun. It's a game after all, and if it's not fun from the get go, then what's the point. They're also highly original, sometimes mainstream funny, sometimes just weird funny, sometimes morbid, sometimes creepy, and sometimes just downright gross. But, thats OK. Games should be a departure from the everyday. They should make you think in different, fantastic ways. So many big name games are just rehashed ideas done a thousand times before. Another sequel of the same old games from last year. Indie games are adventurous and risky. Indies take chances and devote their time to making something unique. So, take a look around, and try a few, till you discover the one that matches your own bizarre and fantastic interests.

Malicious Advertising

Advertising is a necessary irritant in the world today. You can't drive down the street without coming across an ad, either a billboard suspended over a road or a large poster plastered down the side of a bus. If you walk into a shopping centre it doesn't matter where you look, you see an advertisement of some kind. Even the tables in the food court now have ads embedded in them, and on my last trip to Melbourne I noticed that they were starting to embed flat screen TVs into the tables to deliver the full commercial experience to your meal. If you jump on the Internet you have to contend with pop-ups and banner ads, with some advertising agents being ruthless enough to write malicious code that embeds the ad into your computer so that you still receive the pop-ups even when you're not at the original site.

In the past, pop-ups and banner ads have been easy enough to avoid with the right software installed (incidentally, am I the only one who finds pop-up ads that advertise pop-up blockers tremendously amusing?) but now the software developers have worked their way around that little problem. The solution was simple; sell advertising space in your software, not just on your web page.

As much as I like to complain about this new idea, it does come with a significant upside. These days, not all Shareware applications drop out after a limited period of use, nor do they constantly remind you to register. Having ads in the software provides the application developers with the necessary funding to live but leaves the user free from having to pay to use the software. It ends up being in the developer's best interest to ensure that the user continues to use the software for as long as possible, because that means an increased income. In my opinion this was a brilliant idea, and I wholeheartedly supported it until they started building unblockable pop-ups into the software.

The gaming world is getting in on the act as well, which could be both positive and negative. The Internet provides the functionality for games to constantly update the virtual world with new billboards, TV ads, clothing and so on, keeping the content fresh and the ads current. From an advertising standpoint it's an amazing idea, people are spending less and less time watching TV and more and more time immersed in virtual worlds. The interactive nature of the ads means that they will remain in a player's mind for a lot longer than the TV ad break that can be walked away from, flicked over or simply ignored. The game developers on the other hand now have an added source of income, meaning that they can take more risks without the fear of losing money.

Advertising in games is not a new idea, the soft drink '7-Up' created a game many years ago called 'Cool Spot', which had the player controlling a red dot with sunglasses in his quest to collect 7-Up logos. The game was remarkably solid, leaving the players to enjoy the game while still getting its message across. I played it a long time ago as a child, but I still remember how much fun it was and exactly what product it was pushing. Pepsi released a Playstation game called 'Pepsi Man' that involved a blue and white striped super-hero running around collecting cans of Pepsi. Red Bull got in on the game with 'Wipeout' featuring 'Red Bull' banners and a loading screen bearing the phrase "Increase your reaction time with Red Bull". 'Worms 3D' featured Red Bull as a power up. 'Crazy Taxi' had customers jump in the player's taxi and holler "Take me to KFC!" or any of the numerous other licensed locations in the game. 'True Crime' had the characters dressed in 'Puma' attire, with the main character changing his outfits several times throughout the game. Until now I've always thought that the ads in games were amusing and, so long as they didn't interfere with the playing of the game, I was all for them. However, there are new ideas afoot that seem set to change my mind.

The main problem I have with ads in games now is the same as my issue with Pay TV. You're shelling out a lot of money for a product (new games being sold for upwards of $50.00 U.S.) and you're still getting ads. If developers are going to start flooding my entertainment with advertising, I'd like to see a significant drop in the price of games.

The other big issue is that of spyware. Until now, spyware has been a hated part of existence. This malicious software digs its way into your system and collects information about you: your Internet surfing habits, the contents of your hard drive(s) and even the unblocked ports available on your computer. This has lead to the necessity of loading a system with anti-spyware utilities to run alongside the pop-up killers, anti-virus programs, firewalls, registry guards and whatever other protective measures a paranoid PC user has to implement. Now paradoxically, someone has had the 'fantastic' idea of building spyware into software, and games in particular.

In the future the games that you've just paid such a high price for will sit there monitoring you in the background, watching your every virtual move. Then they can target ads that are more likely to have an impact on you based on the contents of your hard drive or your Internet surfing habits. The best part about it is that as soon as you click 'I Agree' and install the software, it becomes legitimate and you've agreed for them to access information about you. Many software products already feature clauses in their license agreements that have the user permitting the developers to collect 'anonymous information in order to provide the customer with a better experience'. The other part of this that irks me is the fact that I'm going to have to have my computer connected to the Internet and chew through my download limit just to play a single-player game.

In the end, I suppose that there's no way to avoid advertising in our current world. Having it implemented into software and games was simply the next logical step. I suspect that I will be looking to download the inevitable 'Ad Blocker' cracks that I imagine will appear shortly after the wholesale introduction of advertising into the gaming industry, but I do believe that with appropriate tact and respect for privacy, advertising could turn out to be a positive addition to the interactive experience.

How to Write a Business Plan While Playing

BizTech 2.0 is an entrepreneur education program offering business assistance to students over 13. The program teaches business, information technology and life skills to young people via the Internet. It reinforces math learning, reading and critical thinking skills.

The program was launched by The National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship, an organization located in New York City that was set up from the need for a program for preventing failure and dropout of disadvantaged students from low-income communities. It does this by helping them develop entrepreneurial skills and eventually enhance their economic productivity and improve the quality of their lives and their academic and business skills.

BizTech 2.0 is flexible, user friendly, utilizing the latest technology. It is built of 25 units divided into three levels: basic, intermediate and advanced. It allows on-line learning of how to develop your own business connecting students and teachers.

Students have the advantage of the interactive graphics that reflect the progress through each level.

The program is teacher-led and teachers are permitted to choose the most appropriate work mode for the class or student from: Full Curriculum Mode or BizPlan Only Mode. Both modes result in teaching kids how to write a business plan in a complex, well drawn manner.

What is really helpful and confers the program maximum productivity is the fact that it is designed in such a pleasurable manner that students learn valuable, complex business and entrepreneurship information and enjoy it, as it is known that kids learn most by playing and that's exactly what they do when working with BizTech 2.0.

The program partially answers the social problems of potential problem-children from low-income urban backgrounds who are usually prone to quitting school and finding ways that are not always "righteous" to make money. But not only this category of kids can benefit from such a program, as it was proven by a study that NFTE graduates possess 20 times more knowledge on basic business concepts and are 30 times more likely to start up their own business.

Create Computer Games Get Started on Creating Your Own Virtual Worlds

I’ve always loved video games, ever since I first played them on a friend’s computer in the afternoon after elementary school. There’s something almost magical about the fact that we can move images around and interact with virtual worlds, a living fantasy presented for us to interact with however we please. I’ve also always wanted to make games myself but, until recently, didn’t have the technical knowledge to do so. Now, I’m a second year software engineering student, so if I weren’t able to code a game without too many dramas there’d be something drastically wrong. But what about the common person: the person for whom the term ‘memory leak’ conjures up images of their grandfather, ‘pipeline’ is where the water flows, and ‘blitting’ is unheard of? Well, everyone can get in on the game creation process, and you don’t even need to learn ‘real’ programming to do so.

So where do games start? With an idea. Games, like all fiction, require an idea to be successful. Sure, in the same way you can just sit down and write a story without foresight, you can jump on in and slap a game together. However, unless you get ridiculously lucky, the best works are usually the ones that have been well thought out beforehand.

There are two methods of planning a project. You can start from a known technological standpoint and build your project on top of that or you can just go for the design, add as many features and ideas as you like, and then remove the ones that you can’t use when you’ve decided on the technology you’re going to implement the game with. In general, the second type is probably the best one to go with when designing games. When you’re first starting out however, the first option will save you many headaches.

So, for a first game you’re going to want a pretty simple idea. Don’t get me wrong, crazy-go-nuts game ideas are fantastic, and there should be more of them out there, but you’re not going to be able to create a real world simulator with fifty billion virtual people all interacting real time with your actions having a butterfly effect on the future of the virtual universe when it’s just your first game. Really. Many people try it; none that I know of have succeeded. Imitation is the best way to start out. Simple games such as ‘Space Invaders’, ‘Tetris’, ‘Pacman’ or even ‘Pong’ are great places to start. All are largely simple to create but have some inherent challenges. ‘Pacman’ for example, requires path finding for the ghosts. I recommend that you start even simpler than that for your very first attempt. ‘Space Invaders’ is a nice point to jump in. You can make a simple, complete game without much effort and it’s almost infinitely extensible.

If you’re stuck for an idea, pick a genre that you enjoy. Do you love adventure games such as ‘Monkey Island’, ‘Grim Fandango’, ‘Space Quest’, ‘King’s Quest’ etc.? Design one of those. Are you into fighting games like ‘Street Fighter’, ‘Tekken’, ‘Soul Calibur’, ‘Mortal Kombat’ and so on? Come up with an idea for that. Do you like first person shooters such as ‘Quake’, ‘Half Life’ or ‘Doom’? I don’t recommend it as a first project, but you can always give it a go. Feel free to be as generic as you like, this is a learning experience after all.

Now that you have your idea it’s time to flesh it out. Don’t worry about the technology or the fact that you may not know how to actually implement a game just yet, just grab yourself some paper and a pencil and go crazy with ideas. Describe the main characters, game play, goals, interactions, story, and key mappings, anything you can think of. Make sure you have enough detail so that someone can read through the notes and play through the game in their head with relative accuracy. Changing game design during the coding process is almost always a bad idea. Once it’s set, it should remain set until the tweaking phase (I’ll go into this more later) or you’re likely to enter ‘development hell’, where the project goes on and on; more and more work is done with less and less outcome.

At the end of this period of your game creation, you should have the following:

- A written outline of the game’s characters and possibly a sketch or two (be they space ships, yellow circles, cars or the prince of the dark kingdom of Falgour, you need to know who or what the player will be and who they will compete against)

- A written outline of the story (if there is one, this isn’t too vital for ‘Space Invaders’ or ‘Tetris’, but for ‘Uber Quest: An Adventure of Awesomeness’ it’s a really good idea)

- A description of game play, written or storyboarded. Storyboards are visual representations of ideas. Draw your characters in actions, with arrows showing the flow of action and short written descriptions detailing the events occurring in your image (because some of us aren’t fantastic artists and our images can be a little… open to interpretation…)

Now that you have a fleshed out idea, it’s time to work out how this will all get put together. If you’ve gotten to this point and are worried that you’re going to have to spend years learning complex programming languages in order to implement your idea, fear not! Others have already done the hard yards for you. There are many RAD (Rapid Application Development) Tools available for game creation, a number of which are available for free online. Some of them still require you to learn a ‘scripting language’ (a simplified programming language made for a specific task) but in general this isn’t too complicated or involved. I’ve compiled a brief list of some of these I have found at the end of the article. The free ones are listed first, organized by game genre.

Well, that should be enough to get you started in the creation of your game. The most important thing to remember once you’ve gotten this far is that you need to complete your game. Many people start a project and then lose interest and it fails, or they keep moving on to one new project after another without finishing anything. Start small, build a working (if simple) game that is, above all else, complete. When you get to this stage you will always have a huge number of things that you wish to change, fix etc. but you’ll get a great feeling from knowing that it is, in its way, finished.

From this point, you can start the tweaking phase. Play your game a few times and ask others to do the same. Take note of what isn’t fun or could be better and change things here. At this stage, it is more important than ever to keep backups of previous versions so that if a change doesn’t work you can go back and try something different without losing any of your work. It is at this point that you can add all new features, improve graphics and sounds, whatever you please, safe in the knowledge that you’re working on a solid foundation.

When you’re happy with your game, why not share it with the world? There are many cheap or free places out there for you to host your files on and then you can jump on link lists and forums and let everyone know about your creation. Well, I hope that this has been a helpful introduction into the art of creating games. It’s a great deal of fun, and can open whole new avenues of creative expression for you to explore. Jump in and have fun!

Virtual Wrapping Paper and EGift Is There Really An Online Santa

The internet has proven to be an amazing delivery conduit for words, information, music, pictures and generally anything that can be turned into little 1s and 0s. As we approach the end of the year the question is asked “Can the Internet deliver my Christmas presents?” Now thanks to a remarkable innovation at www.ustargames.com the answer is yes, there really is an online Santa.

Kite Capers, the first of the U Star Games range of interactive, personalized PC Story Books is now available as a present that can be delivered over the internet.

What the brains behind U Star Games have discovered is that although the ultimate worth of their product comes from the experience the end-users enjoy once they play the game, the actual giving of the gift is an experience rich in value itself.

So how do you replicate the whole experience of opening the carefully chosen card, reading the thoughtfully composed message, the unwrapping of the brightly colored wrapping paper and the joy of digging in pulling out your present? By simply providing exactly the same experience through an online animated, interactive experience.

The present buyer has their choice of 3D e-cards which they can personalize by writing their own message on the inside. Unlike usual e-cards, these appear much more like real-world cards, complete with front cover and two panel interior. Unlike real-word cards, however, these cards are interactive and even contain small simple games for the child to play.

The buyer has their choice of virtual ribbon and wrapping paper which is used to wrap a 3D gift box. After the easy job of personalizing their gift-box and card, the user simply fills in the recipient’s email details includes a brief message and the present is on its way.

The child gets an email, addressed from the sender’s email address, containing a gift-link. Once this is clicked on the child is taken to a special site where they are presented with their card and gift-box.

After opening and reading the card, the child is then offered the option of “opening” their e-gift. This causes harps to strum, the ribbon to gracefully slide off the box, the lid to swing back and balloons to fly out of the box. Springing out of the box then is the 3D graphical representation of the Kite Capers CD-ROM package.

The child is asked if they’d like to download their present, if they do, the package is then downloaded quickly onto their hard-drive and away they go.

The process seems as fun to the gift-giver as to the lucky child and provides a wonderful option for those with young relatives they’ll be unable to visit on their birthdays or this Christmas.

And much less mess for the rest us to clean up.

Counter Strike The Beginner of Broad Band PC Gaming

This is the world of 21st century, the century of technologies. Every thing is fast now a days and as far as the Computers and games are concerned, they are at the top of all. Every one these days like playing games and some of them love it. Well few years ago PC gaming was not so advance and usually was single user based and if any one wanted to play with any other player then one must have an extra input or any compatible playing device .

An era of new technology began after the entrance of Network gaming or Multiplayer gaming which revolutionized the PC gaming world.

The term of multiplayer gaming was that from now on if a person wants to play a certain game with any other person the he can easily connect to the other person’s computer using broad band internet connection .

Usually before the arrival of Broad Band, games were played thorough Modem. This was perfect in those days as the games were not too heavy and only few packets of data are sent and received. However over the years this scene has changed greatly.

SWITCHING TO BROADBAND:

Now a days multiplayer games send and receive more data and therefore need faster protocol for sending and receiving data items. Amongst those of course is COUNTER STRIKE.

Few years ago when there was no concept of Broad Band, one would really be able to get anything faster than the ISDN connection. But today as compared to the past we have much greater availability and much greater broad band technology like DSL and Cable Modem as compare to normal dialup modem. So PC gaming has become very much advance and high quality games can be played at a very high speeds. Counter Strike is the most popular multiplayer game using Broad Band Connection. THE GAME :

Without any doubt it is the most popular game played over the years and is the modification of half life developed by Valve. It is FPS (First Person Shooter) type game and is totally action packed. The game is divided into two teams The Terrorist Forces and The Counter Terrorist Forces. The game is played on some Maps which have different locations and objectives. According to these Maps the Counter Terrorists and the Terrorist Forces assassinate/ Escapes, Hostages/ Rescues and diffuse bomb etc..

WEAPONS AND OTHER EQUIPMENTS:

Weapons armors and other equipment are very important parts of the game. There is a wide variety of different equipments like night vision, hand grenades and other pistols and guns. The player have to buy those stuff. In order to buy ammos and other equipments, player must be in a shopping cart area and more importantly have funds in his account.

There are a lot of small and big, simple and advance equipments available in Counter Strike pistols and sub machine guns are the main features of the game. Each Weapon is different from other. Thus all the Weapons and equipment gives a realistic touch to the game. Money management is one of the most important part of the game. Therefore by buying a particular equipment or weapon and using at the time when it is needed will take the player at the top of the game without any involvement of difficulty.

PLAYING THE GAME:

As there are two teams i-e Counter Terrorists and Terrorists. The player has option of either joining either of the team. A server is created by any player usually by the host and every player must join that server in order to play the game.

The Counter Terrorist look to eliminate the Terrorists completely or fulfill the map objectives while the Terrorist forces look to completely destroy the Counter Terrorists. Thus different Map have different challenges and strategies for each team.

When a player dies he is unable to continue playing until the whole round ends until the ending of the round the player enters a spectator mode which they are free to roam around throughout the map and check out all the remaining actions.

CONCLUSION:

It can be concluded in a way that Counter Strike will always have this privilege that it is the starter of the prefect broad band PC gaming which will lead to revolutionize the PC gaming world.

Mind Boggling Information About The Popular Bingo Game

Have you ever considered mind boggling statistics of a BINGO GAME?

The bingo game is the most popular online game in the world! Bing Crosby’s nickname as a child was “Bingo” Screeno, a form of the bingo game, was played in movie theaters during the Great Depression The casino game, Keno, is based on the bingo game Most online bingo players also like to play online slot machines A majority of bingo game players have a pet, most notably a cat In 1929, the bingo game reached North America, and became known as “Beano” The bingo game became popular in Australia in the early 20th century. It was known as Housie The bingo game’s origin can be traced back to 1530, to an Italian lottery called “Lo Giuoco del Lotto D’Italia”. It is still played every Saturday in Italy In the 1800s a Lotto game similar to the bingo game was used as an educational tool to teach German children multiplication tables Physical exercise will tone up the body, but a bingo game enhances the player’s mental speed, observation skills and memory. Research shows that a bingo game keeps you in peak mental form. It provides an enjoyable social experience, too!

No one could live long enough to print every possible BINGO card? How is this possible?

In the BINGO game there are seventy-five numbers broken up into five groups of fifteen numbers each; B-1 thru 15, I-16 thru 30, N-31 thru 45, G-46 thru 60, and O-61 thru 75. The BINGO game card has five columns corresponding to the letters B-I-N-G-O. The bingo game player’s card has twenty four numbers; five numbers pre-printed in four of the columns under the B-I-G-O and four numbers under the N. Calculating the total number of possible combinations yields the result that there exists 552,446,474,061,129,000,000,000,000. (That’s 552-million-billion-billion or 0.5 quadrillion) possible BINGO game cards. There would be 111,007,923,832,371,000 sets of bingo game cards with 4,976,640,000 cards (almost 55 billion) in each set. Every card in each set would have the same twenty four numbers, but in a different arrangement on each card. If we presume that there are six billion people in the world today, it means that there are 92,074,412,343,521,400 bingo game cards for each and every person in the world. If you could print a million bingo game cards per second, it would take 17,505,972,382,599.7 years to print every possible BINGO game card. If you put four BINGO game cards on a standard 8-1/2 X 11 sheet of paper, and if you spread all of the BINGO game cards out over the surface of the earth, they would cover the earth to a depth of over 800 miles. If there were one million bingo game cards per inch of height, and all of the possible cards were put in one stack, the stack would extend for 1485 light-years. (A light year is 6-trillion miles.) Alpha Centuri, our nearest star beyond the Sun, is only 4 light-years away.

Here’s some more proof.

You can have 120 different arrangements of five numbers under each of the four columns under the B, I, G, and O. You can have 24 different arrangements of the four numbers under the N. So, 120 times, 120 times, times 24, times 120, times 120 equals 4,976,640,000. That’s the number of bingo game cards that could exist, all with the same twenty-four numbers, but just in a different arrangement on each card.

Doing the arithmetic then, there are 111,007,923,832,371,000 possible unique BINGO combinations where no two cards would have the same twenty four numbers. (That’s 111-million-million.)

Ouch! All those numbers…Now my head hurts!