We jam because there is no limit to what we can jam. No idea is too crazy. No mechanic too unlikely. No technology too advanced.

We jam to discover, not to find out what we already know. Jamming is a process of extreme creativity.

We recognise that a good jam often starts by riffing of a familiar melody. We make sure to return to old favourites and try to see them in a new light.

When it's difficult to start, we gamestorm, with no constraints, to forge new territory, finding nuggets of fun in the most peculiar of places.

I've been doing some mocking up for one of our game concepts. As you may know I'm not the primary artist for RH. Simon is busy with other things. My first attempt at a useful mockup was kind of cool but actually sorely lacking. After a trip to Simon for art director feedback I had a nice list of things I needed to address.

Back in the dawn of the games industry, it was not unheard of for small teams, even lone coders, to develop commercially successful games. These days, big budgets mean that a single game might take HUNDREDS of people more than FIVE YEARS to develop. That's enough to drive a person like me karazzzy.

I do a lot of my game prototyping in python. I love python. It is a beautiful, flexible, elegant language, it's quick to get things up and running in, and it has several libraries which are perfect for game making, with active communities working to make them even more awesome, every day. Sometimes it is amazing how close to home the members of these communities can be...

When we created RocketHands we got in touch with a bunch of people we know, from savvy local investors, Internet entrepreneurs and industry-insiders. One of these is now acting as advisor for our little venture, and he gave us the following ultimatum: "Do these three things... totally NAIL them, and I'll speak to you again". Yes, dear reader, we've been given our first quest.

For the curious among you, the three tasks are given below.

In shocking news, the following image was today received by RocketHands central.

from letsmakegames.org:

"The Perth Games Industry Community Profile (March 2009) report is now available for download. (Hardcopies will be available for purchase in future).

The report contains a summary of results from the recent industry survey (conducted in early March 2009), and details a number of practical directives that we will be pursuing to help ensure sustainability and growth of the local games industry."

Congratulations on getting the report out Nick. It's an impressive and insightful document and we're all looking forward to the impact it has on our industry here in Perth :)

This Mega64 video, made for this year's IGF presentations, probably goes a little overboard with the definition of Indie. Sure, we want to make crazy-awesome games for XBLA, WiiWare, PSN and so forth, without the assistance of a publisher... but what's wrong with making a bit of money, huh?

A big cheers to Jack (beets) for the reskin implementation. I'll be making design iterations in the near future but it's looking a lot more swish than the placeholder.

I feel a sudden urge to dance, and by dance I mean blog.

Let the dancing commence!

S

So we had our first little game idea session. We haven't started in earnest yet because from a business point of view we aren't ready. But we wanted to get the ball rolling as soon as possible. We have around 15 solid and interesting game ideas ripe for a trip through the prototyping meat grinder. We are well aware that any of these ideas could prove to be unworkable after some consideration or gameplay testing but it's great to have such a nice list so early on. Check out the Games page for a list of their names!