Other Projects

Posted on June 30, 2013 by Martin Nerurkar

Sometimes other things just become more important. That seems to be usual for me with this blog-thingies. After all there’s just that much free time available, and now mine is mostly spent on the following things:

Foremost among these projects being my studio.

Sharkbomb Studios is a two-person indie game development studio. Together with my good friend Joachim we’re crafting interesting little indie titles. So far we’ve been focusing on mobile platforms but that is not set in stone. We’ve got lots of ideas and so far we have released two games into the wild:

If you like the writings on my blog you might want to give them a try. They’re both available for iOS and Android and Hipster Zombies is free to try!

Apart from trying to build that business, I’m also busy getting a German Indie Game Developer Network off the ground:

It’s called Indie Arena and it’s obviously in German. It’s mostly a forum but there’s also a blog attached. The blog itself is also mostly German for now but future articles will be in English, aiming to provide a sort of window into the world of German Indies.

Lastly I’m also regularly co-hosting a German game developer meetup:

The Game Culture Club (for distinguished Gentlebeings) is a monthly gathering in Karlsruhe, Germany. A bunch of game development professionals meet up, have a good time and discuss a different facet of games each time. We’ve taken to blogging about these very interesting sessions, so you might see some of my writing there.

So. In sight of all these other projects it’s time to acknowledge this: gamearch is now officially on hiatus.

Sorry about that. I hope you enjoyed my musings so far. I am still deeply interested in the topics of games and spaces but my focus is just elsewhere at the moment. I am sure I’ll eventually get back to game spaces, and I’ll hope you guys will be back then. Until then only expect very intermittent updates, if any. Feel free to reach out to me anytime though.

Gearing up for GDC

Posted on March 6, 2010 by Martin Nerurkar

Alright, I’m gearing up for this year’s GDC, which means two things for this blog.

The first thing is that, just as last year, I’m planning to update this blog with daily information on lectures from the conference. I’m not sure I can do this on time since I’ll be quite busy but I will eventually put up at least a short review of every single session I attend. For one thing because I want to for myself and then again because it’s kinda my job. I’ve been promoted to Team Lead Game Design here at Gameforge recently and with power comes responsibility or something. In short I have to hold a presentation on the GDC for my left behind co-workers (which I will be happy to do). So that said look forward to some writeups soon.

And while I’m on the topic of the GDC: If you’re attending and for one reason or another want to meet up feel free to get in touch with me, which shouldn’t be that hard. If possible I’ll also try to post my schedule ahead of time but I’ll have to figure that thing out first. There’s just too much good stuff to see.

The second thing is that this means GameArch is now officially one year old. It’s a good reason to take a look back at the past year: I’ve started this blog as a place for me to talk about and share my passion about games with the internet as a whole. My plan was to write about game spaces and occasionally do bigger articles that provide some value to the developer community as a whole. I’ve started out with the GDC reviews and eventually wrote a lot of smaller articles. I used to mirror most of the bigger posts over at my Persional Gamasutra Blog. I got some good feedback and discussions started over there which eventually motivated me to submit a big article to the site. Titled No More Wrong Turns (blog link, gamasutra link) it originally started as a post for this blog but outgrew it in scope. I’m still pretty happy with that article as I feel it was the one article that best fulfilled my initial vision. Admittedly after that activity on the blog kinda dropped off with only a few smaller articles now and again.

I’m hoping to get a little bit more impetus into this project though. Don’t expect any miracles but I’ve still got a couple of post ideas written up that I’m itching to write. And from those I’ve got one already as good as finished: My previously mentioned article on Boss Mob Design. Granted it’s again veering a bit off the game spaces idea but I believe it’s an interesting article and can be helpful for fellow designers. Because of it’s size though it might again end up at Gamasutra first. Let’s see how that goes.

Still here – just busy.

Posted on October 5, 2009 by Martin Nerurkar

Hey everyone. I’m still around and I’m sorry it’s been quiet again for so long. The usual excuse of being busy applies, but it’s not just life and work:

I’ve started working on another bigger article. It started out as a small work related piece of research and has grown into a bigger article about Bosses and Boss Fights in video games. I hope to be able to post it this month.

Maybe I’ll be able to do a few smaller pieces in the meantime, but don’t count on it.

It lives!

Posted on August 11, 2009 by Martin Nerurkar

Alright. The big article is done. It’s going through reviews currently and I’ve also submitted it to Gamasutra. If they approve then all that’s left is to add a whole bunch of pretty pretty pictures. But that stuff always takes way more time than you’d expect. I know cause I keep underestimating this.

Anyway, the title of the article is now:

No More Wrong Turns
Game Design tools and Level Design methods that help players better traverse your game worlds

Working on Navigational Tools

Posted on August 10, 2009 by Martin Nerurkar

Hey everyone. No need to worry, I’m still around. I’ve spent the last couple of days working on an article about navigation in video games. It’ll be done soon and then I’ll try and submit it to Gamasutra and possibly also post it here. It’s gonna be good.

And just to tease you guys a little, here’s the introduction:

Alright my dear readers, today I’m going to talk about navigation through the spaces of video games and the different tools that help us with that. This is mostly going to be relevant for 3d environments but much can be applied to 2d graphics as well. Also please bear with me, this is going to get quite long.

With the ever increasing complexity of our games and our game spaces, the need for some support has increased just as well. The earliest games often consisted of only one screen. All the action of the game was immediately visible at a glance. Think of Space Invaders or Pac Man. There are no hidden corners, no secret objectives. Nothing. These games are games of (almost) perfect information: You can see all there is to the game. All pieces are on the board, so to speak.

Nowadays it’s a lot different. The ability to display the entirety of the gameworld on one screen was quickly abandoned in favor of larger environments. Be this through scrolling or through leaving one screen and entering the next. The step to immersive, open worlds in 3d has just emphasized this even more. And that’s before we add the increasing complexity of the gameplay on top of it. Don’t fret it though, there’s help.

And we’re back…

Posted on July 1, 2009 by Martin Nerurkar

Sorry for the technical difficulties there but the old server was retired and all stuff migrated to a new one. Gamearch has been offline for the last 2 days but it’s all back and running properly now.

There might be some difficulties with my other websites, especially my RPG gaming downloads. The download service backend will most likely be entirely redone and the downloads are offline for the time being. If you need something from there really badly, get in touch with me and I’ll try to get it to you.

Game on.

Posted on March 22, 2009 by Martin Nerurkar

Welcome to Game Architecture, my new blog about analog and digital games their spaces and the design of both with the occasional personal tidbit mixed in.

Since I’m visiting the GDC in San Franciso for the first time this year, it’s as good a reason as any to finally start this long planned project. I’ll begin this blog by writing about my experiences at the GDC in the form of short reviews of the lectures and workshops I visit. If you are interested in more informaion about these events, just get in touch with me.

As for the blog itself, it’s still a bit rough around the edges but that shouldn’t stop you or me.

Game Architecture

Spatial Game Design and Discussion

Category Archives: Blog