The Everyday Lives of Videogame Developers

So, I know that my article over at Transformative Works and Cultures, "The everyday lives of video game developers: Experimentally understanding underlying systems/structures," has been live for a while now, but I have yet to blog it. It's a nervous tick I have about my work I guess. I like to see a little more reaction after the fact. It also doesn't help that I was in pre-GDC chaos, which I have now returned from. Anyway, the article is indeed live and can be reached at:

O'Donnell, Casey. 2009. "The Everyday Lives of Videogame Developers: Experimentally Understanding Underlying Systems/Structures." Transformative Works and Cultures 2

The editors and reviewers at TWC were excellent and I'd recommend that other scholars of new media look at it as a venue. I was quite impressed with their process. They have also really mastered OJS, the Open Journal System. Between reviewing for New Media and Society and working with TWC, I've gained a lot of insight into using it and am now trying to mobilize that for Cultural Anthropology. TWC is an Open Access journal, so for numerous reasons I really appreciate what they're doing.

There have been a few folks who have commented on it and I really appreciate the email feedback that I've gotten thus far. When you send these things out into the aether-web, you never know if anyone reads them or how they find them. A couple of other blog posts out there have mentioned the collection and my essay in different ways. Here are some of the spots that have noted the special issue thus far:

• Mark "Danger" Chen who has an essay in the issue.
• Sergio Santos, who is a Portuguese Game Developer.
• The folks over at Preserving Virtual Worlds.
• Slashdot via Deepa Sivarajan.

No Popcap Developer Framework Love for the Rest of Us

I'm working on another post related to my efforts on finding useful frameworks and tools chains to use in my classes and independent game development here in Athens, GA. That is a longer post, but this seemed important enough to be its own post. I recently found the Popcap Developer Framework, which for independent 2D game development looks really exciting. It is my understanding that this framework was used in the development of games like World of Goo and of course many ofPopcap's games. What a boon to the community I thought! Then I clicked the download button, which sends me the following message:

Forbidden
You do not have access to this page.
You must be logged in to developer.popcap.com before downloading files

To which I dutifully clicked the "Register" link, which returns the following:

Sorry, registration has been disabled by the administrator.

I've sent several messages through the "contact us" link with no reply. I have found the alternative Tuxcap port of the library, but it is a little sad to see such a great community boon lost to the non-responsive industry ether that pervades in many cases. Of course I can't ask the question on thePopcap developer forum because registration is closed. Thus I cry my tears into the Internet ether.