Blog for Jay Moore at GarageGames.com

Life is More than a high Gamerscore

Jay Moore — 2008-02-07T13:04:39+00:00

Life is More than a high Gamerscore
When "Recent Blog Post" becomes an Oxymoron

I thought I'd take a moment and reconnect after what has to be the "BIGGEST" year of my life 2007 and share some highlights.

I enjoyed a great year pursing my passion of helping game devs build value in their IP and organizations (I call it brand value) with my consulting work through The Strategery Group. I enjoyed my first large "liquidity event" with the now much publicized IAC merger. I numbered GG as the 7th starve-up that I've entrepreneur-ed. Looking back since I struck out on my latest new venture 19 months ago, I realize I participated in a great moment in time that will be part of my legacy in helping build The Garage, but it has been a great joy to see some very tangible rewards.

We got a new Samoyed puppy, Epiphany or "Pip", and of course we had to get her a new car, new house (with minor remodeling) and now more obedience lessons (I think it was the $1500 first edition of Charlotte's Web she ate that was the last straw).

As usual I traveled a bit, Amsterdam, Austin, TX 4x, Las Vegas 2x, Seattle 8x, Victoria, BC 2x (23rd anniversary), Los Angeles 3x, San Francisco 3x, Leavenworth, WA, Minneapolis, MN, and Orlando, FL (Didney World) - only 27 weeks away from home this year (down from 35 last year), speaking only 4 times at only 10 conferences and more importantly I got to take Julie, my wife, with me on 10 of those trips - with six weeks just vacation (making up for 15 years of no vacations).

Oh yeah, Julie and were in a serious car accident and I was diagnosed with low level bladder cancer, received immunology treatments and now have a conditional clean bill of health (part of why I slowed down a bit to enjoy the recovery time). I've started discovering all things antioxidant, vitamins, whole grains, new red wines, taken up darts, walking 3 miles a day at the dog park and Wii fitness. Taking time to enjoy life during my rush to build new dreams and help others realize their visions.

I enjoyed getting to go to IGC this year and just "be", but I miss being present in the GG community and am constantly amazed at what I see coming out of 'The Garage'.

Launching My New Venture -

Jay Moore — 2006-09-15T18:17:37+00:00

I've officially launched my new consulting venture at the Austin Game Conference. Making clients smarter, more popular and better looking.

The Strategery Group Watch for the website at: www.thestrategerygroup.com

So for those who are not familiar with this bushism that has slipped into the lexicon it is pronounced Stru-tee-jur-ee. You can imagine I'll fully own this word in the years to come with Strategery Alliances, Strategery Reports and of course Strategery Summits (if you liked IGC you'll really enjoy these).

We're at an opportune moment in time where game developers can take advantage of key opportunities to build games, wealth and brands. It became clear to me in my time at GG that most developers lacked the resources and some of the sophistication of business practices to bring in the kind of talent they need to really leverage this expanding opportunity. This was just part of the nature of this space and it leaves an ongoing need to outsource the branding and business development to those who can make a living providing that service to a broad group of talented game developers.

Giving developers access to key contracts, funding and even with a longterm eye to aquisition (that big pay check). I'm working to help developers work smart in building their companies. Since I launched just over a week ago I've been able to be part of preparing or pitching games to Microsoft, Nintendo, Atom Entertainment, NC Soft, K2, Capcom, Vivendi, Oberon and soon many more. My quote of the week was:

Quote:
"I'm buying what your selling... we're funding projects, buying game IP and aquiring talented development studios"

(attribution of this quote is part of what I provide clients who have me on retainer).

Yes the big players are coming to the casual and console downloadable space with great speed and resources, but that also equals a very strong opportunity for developers shrewd enough to leverage this next wave of expansion.

For those devs who have got the passion to build real companies, assemble great talent, find their mission, build proof of concept and are ready to bring those to market, I can be a great resource. Call me mercenary or the standard slur of he's just a conslutant but, currently I'm only taking on new clients who can already afford my services - sometimes it does take money to make money.

You have to love announcements like this one from Nintendo yesterday about the Virtual Console:

Quote:
Virtual Console: The Wii console will have downloadable access to 20 years of fan-favorite titles originally released for Nintendo 64, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) and even the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). The Virtual Console also will feature a "best of" selection from Sega Genesis titles and games from the TURBO GRAFX16 console (a system jointly developed by NEC and Hudson). It also will be home to new games conceived by indie developers whose creativity is larger than their budgets.

One of my current mottos is "I'm tired of the game industry making the same mistakes, I really want to make some new ones." I look forward to sharing the war stories from this next round of engagement both the wins and losses.

It's been an incredible ride.

Jay Moore — 2006-07-29T02:17:06+00:00

It is with mixed emotions that I'm announcing my departure from the Garage to pursue new opportunities.

I will always consider the last four years of my life a great legacy, pulling off the first IGC in 5 weeks, a few weeks later launching the first Torque games, first GG booth to GDC 2003... Now what seems like a moment later, we have a Torque community of over 70,000, new logos for GG and Torque, new website look, two additional engines, a bunch of content packs, MB on millions of Macs, more great games - even on console, more great IGCs and way too many conferences later, I feel like I've seen the most amazing years of GG even though I know there is much more to come.

Getting any company through the startup phase or as I like to call it for GG the starve-up phase takes a fierce entrepreneurial commitment and vision for how things can be different. It has been my privilege to be the Evangelist out spreading the word and connecting with our community and partners. Today, I find what we started out proclaiming as a vision for the future is now an anthem shared by the many in the industry including Microsoft. There is always more to do, but the question of if we could realize our vision, build this enterprise or build a vibrant sustainable Independent Game Dev. segment of the industry are all visions that seem inevitable if not already realized.

I count the relationships I've built with many of you to be my most important accomplishment. Seeing you succeed, as I'm confident that many of you will, is what will make this endeavor all worthwhile. I hope many of these relationships grow over time.

It is with a great sense of accomplishment I pass the Wrench off to my partners to take this enterprise on to be a mature well managed organization. I know that more great innovation is still to come out of the Garage and I'm glad to have been a part of Changing the way games are made and played.

Open Letter to the GarageGames

Jay Moore — 2006-04-21T05:58:50+00:00

Open Letter to the GarageGames' Community
GDC Binge, What's on my to do list, personal rant and Job Opening.

You are the greatest. If we don't tell you that often enough, our bad.

As proud as I am of our technology and the products we've created - I spend an equal amount of time telling the planet about what an amazing community of developers surround GG and Torque and how that is value we can't manufacture and passion we can't package. I believe it is partly a result of being a company with the best interests of our customers behind EVERY decision that we make.

Through various forum threads, emails, and general buzz around the water cooler, it has come to my attention that perhaps not everyone in the community is feeling appreciated, communicated with, or generally in the know like as they felt when it was just 10-12 employees hanging out online with only 40,000 or so community members that contributed to GG (that was just last year - now at over 30 GGers nearly 100 associates and 65,000 community members - it appears we're growing).

Let me share a few highlights from GDC that might help explain, but in no way excuse me from not communicating better with everyone in the Garage:

Leading up to GDC I had the chance to respond to over 1,000 requests for meetings (not that I was able to respond to everyone). You read right, now granted many were people trying to sell us something, get us to outsource something or just want to let us know they'd always believed in GG (and most came by the booth even if I didn't personally reply to their emails to tell them to). We have very valuable partnerships we enjoy in the industry with companies like ATI, Creative Labs, Logitech, AMD, nVIDIA, Oberon and many more all of whom it wasn't possible to find time to sit down with and talk about 2006 plans during this busy GDC (more work for me at e3).

This was the first event where every new meeting didn't start with 'Can you take a minute to explain to us your business model. We're not sure we understand how you make money'. Finally, by having the highest grossing title on the very successful Xbox 360 Live Arcade, people are understanding that if you do good things, make great games, empower people and don't get greedy, the money will follow.

Yes, I was the "Tradeshow Man" that Jeff referred to in his blog. We, between our teams, had over 200 sit down meetings at GDC - many with very exciting outcomes. We actually had rooms at the Hilton(attached directly to the convention floor) - it astonished those used to staying 10 miles away at the cheapest flea bag hotel. I think I only logged over five nights a total of 13 hours in my room - 3 of which were answering emails. A typical day would start at 8 am, I'd have 2-3 breakfast meetings (that can get expensive), meet at the booth to kick off the day (sometimes the only time the other 15 GG people would see me the entire day), then to 2-3 more meetings before lunch, a lunch meeting or reception, 6-8 more meetings before dinner, then like on Tuesday evening the Torque Educational Advisory Board Meeting (wow was that fun - Davey and GG enjoy some extremely passionate partners in education doing great things), an IGDA reception, 1-2 parties and then at about 11pm end up at the Fairmont for time connecting with old friends and going up to the suites to party some more. I was on a bit of a jag as pictures someplace on Flickr attest.

This year along with other casual game companies GG hosted our first party at GDC - board games and poker night.

On the floor (Eric Fritz managed the booth) and Benjamin Bradley handled press, Justin DuJardin and Adam Larson got to show off Torque Game Builder as it is poised to leap out of Early Adopter phase (only 1 year and 3-4 months after launch), Matt Fairfax and Paul Scott showed off Constructor (it is inspiring to think about how fully customizable tool and interior brushes can be manipulated through script), and Pat Wilson, Ben Garney, Mark Frohnmayer (mostly playing MB Ultra) and Tim Aste showed off TSE Xbox 360. Adam deGrandis and Tim Aste showed off all of our art pipeline in the Autodesk booth everyday and Tim Aste and Ben Garney showed off the making of the Legions demo at the ATI theater on Thursday. Davey Jackson was on Education and Stephen Zepp worked with the serious games and training & support customers. Jeff Tunnell, Josh Williams and Mark F. took on the heavy lifting in business development meetings.

To get to GDC required new brochures, back drops, buttons, mouse pads, signs, temporary tattoos, web site updates and demos, that took nearly everyone and our service providers working for 8 weeks solid to get to the 'ta Da!' stage at GDC.

So to tell you a little more about what I'm doing around the Garage these days, here are a few things I'm spending 12+ hour days working on now:

1) Torque Game Builder Marketing Rollout:
A) A 'potential' contest to be revealed soon that will culminate at IGC - think lots of hours working with sponsors, media and promotional teams. For the developers it will mean fame, trips to IGC and dev. hardware for the best (most fun) indie TBG games (see I can spread rumors).
B) Case Studies and developer spotlights on key studios and projects
C) Curriculum and lesson plans for teaching TGB in higher Ed.
D) Marketing & promotional paper - The Flash Game Developers Guide to the Torque Game Builder.
E) Website(s), demos and hype to fuel the proverbial marketing machine.
2) Torque Constructor
3) TSE and TSE Xbox 360
4) Marble Blast Ultra ongoing marketing
5) The FIVE - yes count them FIVE new games that we're launching and taking out to distribution!!! (its been awhile!)

Ok, so maybe I'm leaving out a few top secret things that I honestly can't tell you about, but that is a large portion of just the marketing teams efforts right now.

It also might hearten everyone to know GG has had full on company meetings trying to figure out how we can hit our milestones, take advantage of the key opportunities we're focused on (among MANY we don't chose to focus on) and still interact and support the community more in this time of accelerated growth.

2006 will be a very exciting year with much history being written in the GG saga, but I want one of the footnotes to be that we were able to sustain amazing growth and still have a vibrant and connected community that made the journey as rewarding as the arrival at our destiny.

Beginning of personal rant:
======================
If you doubt GG at some point that's fine, we understand that (I had my concerns in the early days). If you question us in a constructive manner, that's can be ok too, I try to answer all emails & phone calls from contributing community members, associates and customers large and small (I don't always succeed) - usually on how we can work together to reach your dreams.

BUT, If you don't want to contribute or don't believe in what GG is doing, I personally wouldn't mind if you found another community to join that is doing more to change how games are made and played. We rarely moderate our forums, but at times we find them hard to read, if you just want to bitch start your own blog or go over to slash dot.

Because sometimes working for a small percentage of what I could make at the job offers I frequently get unsolicited, traveling 20+ weeks a year promoting our developers and making their dreams a possibility and then reading that somehow a vocal minority of that community thinks we're out to rip them off or in some way don't care about them or delivering high quality tools (even when they are sold for BELOW reasonable prices) that can be a little demoralizing.

End of personal rant.
=======================

Last, but not least. We do most of our hiring as you've probably noticed through our very successful intern program, but sometimes we don't always find every role in GG filled this way.

JOB POSTING: Sales Engineer for Torque

It is a rare person who can understand game dev. tech, communicate well, you trust to set expectations your products meet and has the ability to consult, solve dev. tech problems for customers, and have sales skills.

If you think you have what it takes or know someone who might, contact me for details jaym @gargegames.com.

Finally, when I see the dev. snapshots, the resources contributed, the TDN posts escalating and all of the fun cool games under development on Torque I can't say how excited I get about our incredible community and how much I look forward to seeing everyone around the Garage reach their dreams.

The Golden Era of Indie Gaming

Jay Moore — 2006-02-24T08:12:02+00:00

I think someday we'll look back at this period as the beginning of the golden age of indie game development. For most of the last 4 years I've been living, eating and breathing Indie games and building the movement. As we begin planning our 5th annual Indie Games Con this October 6-8th its hard not to stop and take stock.

GarageGames began a call to arms back in 2000 around the idea with the right technology, community and online market opportunities developers could build studios that could remain independent of the ownership, control and economic constraints that are choking the fun and innovation out of games from the large commercial game publishers.

There have been a number of key milestones for GG that have defined our progress toward building this movement.

Torque launched August 2001
1st Indie Games Con Nov. 2002
Launch of GG Games Jan. 2003
TSE EA version launched June 2004
T2D EA version launched Feb. 2005

MB Ultra #1 XBLA Game Jan. 2006

There have been too many firsts along the way to count, but we're seeing the tech, an amazing community and now online markets emerge that prove that this is a very viable industry segment. GarageGames looks at the Casual Games segment as just one portion of the independent game market (which looks to become less independent all the time). At times seeing our vision of this market potential has been more SDS (shared dilusional syndrome) than proof of concept, but today it appears we're at that cross roads of deciding what we want this industry segment to stand for and I for one want it to be about the games and the players not the money and the selling out to make millions.

To quote a comment I made recently on Dave Myers plan...

Quote:
I'm more excited about the values and the mission GG stands for... I've had major players in the game industry introduce me as Jay Moore from GarageGames - "they are the good guys". Even when at times we see people making easier money, it feels good to know, as Mark F. says, "we're all about the games not about the money". Do I want everyone at GG to make boat loads of the stuff? Absolutely, but we can do that and if we don't make the games we have in us and get to empower indie devs to bring their games to reality then what's the big deal... lots of ways to make money in the world.

In a way I feel like we're working at Disney or Apple when they just started and we have no idea how cool this venture will be in 5 years or 50... GG is all about making cool tech, fun games and doing it on our own terms.

We've only begun to rock... 2006 is going to be another wild ride! (I think I say that every year and so far its been true).

Stay tuned we have more in store to announce at GDC, contests, an exciting re-invention of IGC and more products coming than I can keep up with this year. I can only hope one of these announcements might be your game as part of the GG portfolio.

Off the Road for a Minute!

Jay Moore — 2005-11-10T07:36:58+00:00

As those who have tried to reach me might know I'm a moving target. Since IGC on Oct. 7-9th, I've had the privilege to attend FuturePlay in East Lancing, Michigan where higher education considers the revolution of learning going on through games and become a greater resource to the digital entertainment industry. GG had a small reception and met some Torque developers there for the first time.

I then took a quick trip to SF to do some press presentations about GG and Marble Blast Ultra on Xbox 360 Live Arcade.

Davey Jackson and I also attended CIT put on by the League of Innovation, a conference for community colleges with a focus track this year on gaming. Then it was on to the Austin Game Conference, my first time since its always been scheduled right before Indie Games Con and my eighteenth conference in 2005.

This was a great conference, getting to see Marble Blast Ultra on the floor in the Microsoft Casual Games booth; meeting old and new friends, AGC is more about MMP and Mobile games markets, but those are becoming more driven by casual games all the time. We enjoyed meeting with more Torque developers at our reception on Thursday evening. Friday night, after a reception at Austin City Hall with an address from the mayor, we enjoyed the hospitality of Paul Trowe on the Pulse Interactive stretch hummer.

We enjoyed the evening around town (about 20 times) with Matt Scibilia, Billy Cain and wife from Critical Mass Interactive, Clarinda Merripen with Cryptic Entertainment, Victor Jiminez of Northrup Grumman and Krissie Franco with Hydrogen Whiskey Studios.

Some where after we figured out that you can't get more beer in Texas after midnight on a Friday and had to raid Billy Cain's garage, someone decided that it would be a great idea to capture me in a deal making pose at the back of the hummer would reveal how deals actually get made at GG. ;)

Next we're headed off to Orlando for I/TSEC and then back again for the 2nd G.A.M.E.S. Synergy Summit in January. Where last year Benjamin Bradley, Matt Fairfax and I thought IGC might have some real competition for great food

Next year we want to meet more of our developers, hopefully at IGC, but if not then while we're on the road...

GarageGames Enjoys Some PAXing

Jay Moore — 2005-09-01T05:40:11+00:00

GarageGames enjoys some PAXing
Last weekend a crew from GarageGames descended on Meydenbauer Center for the 2nd annual PAX. We got a booth this year so we could put the event under 'marketing expenses - conference".

There were 8 of us scheduled to trek out of the Garage on a pilgrimage to gamer Nerdvana only 5 could actually break away from crunch on our 360 project to enter the fray.

Tim and Adam joined me for booth duty. If we thought being from the team that made Tribes was considered cool we had no idea of the brand power of Timothy Aste. We discovered Tim has his own fan club, we really need to make t-shirts before IGC.

Josh and Brian went on a mission not to embarrass GG in the Tekken 5 & Soul Calibur 2 tournaments - they came very close to actually making us proud as they were beaten by the top competitors usually in the quarter-finals.

Brian playing against the champion Tekken 5 player

We played hard and we enjoyed getting to show off both our games and tools to those able to drop by our booth and not get away quick enough. We met over 100 Torque users over the few days of fun and had the chance to talk tech from everything from Xbox and TSE to T2D and casual games.

We got to see Orbz (the version now in final cert), ThinkTanks, Marble Blast and Mutant Storm get played on the Xbox and it was evident that those games were meant for the console.

I have to say the entire weekend was, as Josh would say, 'awesome'! The attitude of everyone was fantastic and I've never experienced a more pleasant and helpful team around an exhibit - makes wanting to go back an absolute must for 2006.

I can't wait for the 4th IGC just around the corner. If you're not having fun being an indie... you're not doing it right.

A Glimpse Behind the Scenes

Jay Moore — 2005-05-01T21:44:24+00:00

A Glimpse Behind the Scenes

Last year at e3 - I read all the public statements of what Microsoft said about Xbox Live Arcade and other partner initiatives we'd been working with, under NDA, to see what I could talk about - this year promises to be no different.

Some of what I do at GarageGames you can see if you read between the lines of our recent announcements, but frequently the kinds of things Jeff T. or I are working on fall under some level of NDA. But to give you a glimpse into some of the excitement that goes on behind the scenes...

A little over a week ago, on the heals of having ATI engineers fly-in to GG headquarters to work with Brian, Ben, Josh and the team on next gen shader tech, Mark F., Dave Wyand and I made a trip down to Cupertino to Apple headquarters, one of GarageGames most valued partners.

Rich Hernandez the stellar, Apple Game segment manager, went above and beyond on to put together a very full day for us, when at the same moment Tiger ship was eminent, WWDC preparations were in full swing and the annual investors meeting was being held on campus (complete with protesters and news crews). We got the opportunity to meet with a number of different groups in part to inform them about what GG is doing on both the dev. tech and games side and in part to find ways to do more together. Torque 2D came up a few times in discussion.

In addition to talking with k-12 and higher education, retail, .mac, marketing and others, Dave and Mark got to sit down with Apple's use-ability guru, John Geleynse, and walk-through both Torque ShowTool Pro and the prototype of Torque Constructor (the interior editor we announced at GDC). It was clear that we could have spent a few days collaborating on some of the ways both Torque and our editors could be more Aqua'ish' as well as ideas around improved work flow. It was also good to see all the parts that Dave and our team have right and are becoming a solid foundation to build on.

An Adventure in Widgets
While we were there and the excitement around the Tiger launch was everywhere it came to our attention that if we'd ever had any Dashboard widget ideas that hadn't gotten done it would be a very opportune moment to finish them up and submit them. Dave had been thinking of putting his server status monitor into a widget.

So with a 12" Powerbook that Rich loaned us we 'kicked off the project'; first we started the download of a Tiger seed (over 5 hours on wi-fi in our hotel room), then got ahold of Alex Swanson back at GG for some non-programmer art layouts, then we went out to dinner at PF Chang's with Rich (who had to be home by 9 to lead a band of his WoW guild into some fearsome lost temple). At this point it became clear we had no DVD to burn (so we could get it installed on Dave's machine (that somehow lacked a battery) - so he could work in the airport before his flight on Friday. So we took a quick trip to Fry's (which closed at 9:30 - what are they thinking) and ended up at a Long's Drugs who of course have all the DVD-Rs you'd ever want (Dave assured me you can't go into just any drugstore in Toronto and buy from a selection of blank DVDs). This got us to the first step... now when our download completed we could burn on my laptop, that has the DVD burner, this many gig operating system and begin the odessey of making a widget.

My part at this point was pretty much complete (thats right get everyone excited and then let them do the heavy-lifting). I guess I did pass on a few emails, filled out the submission form and got it uploaded and made sure Rich at Apple knew when we had it done.

I'm sure Dave could give many more details on the good, the bad and the ugly of porting his Perl code over, but with a working code base already established, from the time we got inspired it was only one short week later it was done (maybe we should do a WIW - Widget In a Week - event). Now you can find the GG branded widget next to Yahoo's and ebay's on the Apple.com.

There are more announcements coming soon and e3 press releases to read, but the our motto keeps taking us to more exciting 'people we want to work with and projects we want to work on.'

GameDevelopers Conference 2005

Jay Moore — 2005-03-06T18:17:12+00:00

GameDevelopers Conference

Indie's Invade GDC - Don't Miss GarageGames in Booth #912

The energy around the Garage has never been higher - everywhere you look there are amazing things happening.

I came in at 1:30am on a Friday night and what I call the 'night crew' was still there doing some amazing things. We've got a demo we're rolling out at GDC called Tim Aste's WarZone Demo (Timothy seriously resisted on this - he claims there is the Jay created Tim and the real Tim and he really felt strongly that everyone else who is involved isn't getting the credit they deserve and Robert Blanchet really has been a huge part of making this demo amazing - but the Aste / Blanchet WarZone Demo didn't have the right ring to it). We know once this is out everyone will want to pick up another Tim Aste Content Pack with some of these great assets (we'll have to see if we can twist his arm and get him to do another round).

Ben Garney was still there on a Friday night, doing some amazing work on the new terrain in the 'you have to see it to believe it TSE Water Shader Demo. Ben has been pushing the limits of the Terra Gen and making the buzz around the office for the last week being after people see Robert & Tim's demo, but 'have you seen the latest TSE water & terrain working? - no one will believe its not a pre-rendered fly-thru.'

We'll be at GDC in full indie form and force - be sure to pick up your 'g' button to show your indie colors and get a glimpse of some of the cool new stuff going on in the Torque Development Platform. T2D, TGE and TSE all have awesome new things to show-off. You'll find Josh & Ben Garney in the ATI theater on Wednesday and Thursday from 12:30 to 1:00pm proving that these demos are real-time in Torque and taking questions - we'll have a demonstration station in the ATI booth showing off what their tech can do.

In our booth, we'll be showing a few surprises on Xbox and on the PS2 (you read that right), we'll be announcing a stealth project everyone making games in Torque will want to know about and we'll be sharing with the world just a few of the new things we have going on with our key partners.

And that's just on the development side... The other 'Invasion' will be in games the IGF with DH: Lore, GISH in the final 10 and RocketBowl also making a strong showing. GarageGames will be hosting a mini-IGC in our booth playing some Zap! (showing off TNL - there really is no reason any multiplayer game ships with bad netcode).

So if you're going to be at GDC come by booth #912 (far right front of the first aisle), we'll try to post shots from the floor (we usually get one or two up). Watch for the announcements and we'll be sharing all the cool stuff online after we get back and get it all 'tweaked' for download.

Road Trip Report Synergy & Desktop Summits

Jay Moore — 2005-02-14T09:12:39+00:00

Well the post show euphoria isn't wearing off quickly this time... On top of MacWorld with MB Gold rolling out on the Mac Mini, G.A.M.E.S. Synergy Summit where we premiered our first Torque Boot Camp and now Desktop Summit where Michael Robertson launched (or relaunched depending on how you look at it) MP3tunes.com and GG released DH: Lore Invasion exclusively first on Linspire, it has been a very wild few weeks.

Three years ago John Quigley, you all remember John he's the guy that before he started working at BraveTree and porting ThinkTanks to Xbox Live Arcade I could always count on to goto Linux Desktop Summit or Desktop Linux Summit (the only conference with 3 different names in 3 years) with me, so three years ago John and I went down to San Diego to see what was then just a dream of having a consumer friendly Linux distro - 3.0 was cute, but not really your mom's linux distro yet (at that time I didn't know anything about KDE or Debian, but John patiently tried to layout for me all the religious dogmas so I didn't offend too many people with my n00b presentation at that first conference).

This time I had Benjamin Bradley (he's the guy I met at Desktop Summit last year and later hired) along to get me to a console prompt and get all our games up and running on what were SCREAMING game machines in our GarageGames Arcade (we had amazing AMD 64 bit Athlon's with 2GB of memory and nVIDIA 5950's)... and boy did we have fun!

Lots happened during the week, Michael spoke, Mitch Kapor spoke, Doc Searle spoke, many others... Rob Glaser - CEO of Real Networks was a no show and wasn't missed. The real buzz was around the room besides the MP3tunes was the getting to play games (ok I maybe biased because I didn't get much time anywhere else in the hall, but in our booth).

We had some great GISH, ThinkTanks, Orbz and Zap! tournaments, but if I had to say where the heat was it was in dRacer wheelchair races and in DH: Lore Invasions play. Who knew that the BraveTree guys had put a wheelchair into dRacer (well anyone who went to select the vehicle with the tightest collision mesh) it was a riot and fun as well - lots of buzz.

Getting to play some heated DH:Lore Invasion had all the hardcore guys out playing and it seemed to be unanimous 'I'm definitely going to get this game!' both after playing the single player quick action as well as in our tournaments. It was great having people relate to our how independents who had a passion for playing mech games had created this very immersive game built on their passion for making the game that players could drive its outcome and contribute to its success.

The consumer Linux market and Linspire in particular have so many parallels to what we're doing at GarageGames - its building a new way of computing / for us gaming, its community based and dependent on good word of mouth, the markets are disruptive, but not interesting in size and scope to the current status quo and most of all they require an extreme change in human behavior (I'm comparing open source to indie game dev now). Linux doesn't represent a huge market to indies right now, but it does represent an immerging market that is hungry and dependent at the desktop level on independent game developers creating compelling entertainment content consumers will enjoy, for them to succeed (AAA commercial games don't look to be coming soon).

You'll probably see an announcement about it soon, but we're going to be shipping MB Gold with every Linspire 5.0 - maybe not quite as many units as with every OS X machine shipped globally, but still more fun for the consumer and more people who will find out about the indie games and GarageGames.