Z0MB1ES is IGN 2009 Xbox 360 Best Indie Game!

IGN agreed with Machinima!  Z0MB1ES is the best Xbox Indie Game of 2009!

Z0MB1ES wins 2009 IGA Best Indie Game!

We did it!

Thanks everyone for voting!  Thanks everyone for playing!

XNA, Flash and CD-ROM Graphics

I remember a conversation I had in about sixth grade, when CD-ROM was relatively new technology.  My friend Andrew was trying to convince me that “CD-ROM Graphics” was, well, something that only a CD could bring you.  Games like The Journeyman Project and 7th Guest definitely did things that you couldn’t do on 3.5″ floppies, but a graphic is a graphic, whether it’s stored on a CD, hard drive, laserdisc, etc.  Anyway, the dialogue would go something like:

“The background in Diamonds looks good, but it’s not CD-ROM graphics.”

“You know a 1 MB image will look just as good if it’s on a CD as it will if it’s on the hard drive?”

“Well, it’s still not CD-ROM graphics.”

Z0MB1ES nominated for 2009 Inside Gaming Awards Best Indie Game!

And I’m not quite sure I know how it works because, as far as I can tell, it’s a voting system entirely based on YouTube!

But, if you’d like to vote for I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES 1N IT!!!1 (which would be super-cool), I think just watching this video accomplishes that.  So vote.  Please.  Vote please!

You get to that video by following an embedded link from the Best Indie Games nominations (may as well have a look for fairness sake!).  It took me way too long to figure all this out; I’m chalking it up to my terrific inability to accomplish simple tasks.

Download I MAED A S0NG W1TH Z0MB1ES 1N IT!!!1

Because I get asked quite a bit, here it is:

James Silva – I MAED A S0NG W1TH Z0MB1ES 1N IT!!!1

(Probably want to right-click, Save As…)

I think I finally got the mastering to a “respectable” level, but no promises!  Also, the first thing I noticed upon revisiting this mp3 was that without the game going on, the song is… empty.  But hey, whatever, it’s free, so enjoy the heck out of it!

Update: Some wonkiness is afoot; if you can’t get the download working, just navigate to http://ska-studios.com/files/epicopus.mp3 and choose Save As… (unless QuickTime snarkily tries to play it in-browser!)

Update 2: I put it up as a zip too, that might be a better bet.

Z0MB1ES is #1 on Major Nelson’s List!

Title says it all, we’re #1! (top rated, too!)

And holy roundup, Batman:

• Kotaku would pay $1 just for the theme song
• Destructoid calls it this year’s “Still Alive”
• Joystiq thinks it’s “astounding”
• GameGirl is hooked
• GamingAngels was blown away by the awesomeness of the game
• TheXboxDomain liked the awesome music, addictive qualities, great replay value
• IndieGames.com thinks it’s way too much fun for its own good

50,000 downloads, 6,237 ratings and an average score of 4.75, these are freaking excellent numbers.  This was exactly what I had in mind when I heard Microsoft was rebranding XBLCG as Xbox Live Indie Games and switching the price points to let us sell games for $1.  It’s indie! It’s a dollar! It’s the type of thing that would’ve seemed like a really bad idea if you were trying to describe it to someone you wanted to borrow money from!

And to think that Joystiq’s Andrew Yoon just declared that XBLIG is “floundering” (qualified by a 5-month old article, no less).  Guess we can chalk that one up to Playstation fanboyism!  Of course, if Sony created some sort of zero-entry-barrier developer-friendly platform (think XNA), maybe my PS3 could be more than just a protein folding Blu-Ray player… burn!

High! Priority! Press! Release!

For Immediate Release:

Ska Studios LLC today announced a truly epic title in the true tradition of epicness with its latest video game entertainment product release, I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES!!!1, set for release August 16, 2009 on the Xbox Live Indie Games for 80 Microsoft Points.

Presenting a familiarly themed, engrossing and stylized “game universe,” then adding zombies to that world, I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES!!1 aims to completely revolutionize the videogames industry, destroy it in fire a thousand times, and resurrect it as a phoenix sitting on a unicorn atop a shiny city of golden gumdrops.  As we say at Ska Studios LLC, “our games will pique your interest and defenestrate your cats.”

I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES!!1 represents a culmination of years of intensive psychological research, bleeding edge engineering, and artistic collaboration by over two dozen internationally recognized art houses that may or may not exist, using such technologies as the HYPERMAGIC 3.0 engine to power never-before-seen eye candy and the MEGACORE X parallelization processor for smooth-as-glass presentation.

“You can make a game,” said Ska Studios Lead Engineer Gato Maria Hernando Rodriguez-Rodriguez in an exclusive interview with Chairman Meow Magazine, “but what happens when you put zombies in it?  Nobody knows, but they’ll find out soon.  We’ll all find out soon.”  And, with Xbox Live Indie Games interest flagging under reports of poor sales, difficulty locating the section in the Dashboard while inebriated, and super-smart people saying super-smart things on web forums, the game couldn’t be released at a better time.

“We were following trends and noticed that most people were buying Xbox360s for the DVD player, the Xbox Live Vision Camera, and the Calculator app on XBLIG, but not for games,” Gato continues, “I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MBIES!!1 will change that.  You’ll be playing our game.  It has zombies in it.  Ok bye.”

I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES!!!1 will arrive on Xbox Live Indie Games on August 16, 2009.  It will cost 80 Microsoft Points.

A word about Xbox Live Community Games/Indie Games

I haven’t done much with Xbox Community Games in awhile (this will change soon; I just need a break from Super Secret XNA Project 2.0), but that hasn’t stopped me from reading some fun articles lambasting the service for promising wealth, fame, and Princess-Bride-caliber true love, only to turn around and steal candy from orphans.

The main criticisms, as far as I can tell are:

• Microsoft hasn’t done enough to market XBLCG
• Microsoft has not made Community Games visible enough in the dash
• Stupid apps are taking all of the sales

So put your money where your mouth is.  If XBLCG is such a tragic platform, why not release on Windows?

Here’s why:

And then i forget to keep E3 blogging…

We’re two days in to E3 and, pretty true to trends, I’ve managed to forget to blog again. The best reason for this is that I have essentially no wireless Internet at my hotel, so the day is saved only by the fact that I have an iPhone.

Still, I should relate a few cool things that have happened:

- Jeff Gerstmann impromptu interviewed me. I’ve always wanted to meet him, so I gushed like an idiot the whole time. Seriously.

- I realized that El Pollo Loco sells magical grilled burritos that have that power to end all forms of sadness and suffering.

- Walking 1.3 miles to and from the center every day gets old fast, but I still welcome the challenge!

- My experience is completely unlike David Jaffe’s whatever that means.

Fun, fun.

I update on Twitter much more frequently, name is @Jamezila.

Airport Blogging

Hey all, I know status updates have been infrequent (I’m more active as @Jamezila on twitter these days), but may as well pop in for some E3 updates.

Now I am in an airport in Syracuse, NY. It’s 5 AM and I haven’t slept. Little tired, little wired .

Update over.