While I was creating the Sokay Zine, I thought it was a good opportunity to highlight some artists in my life that were doing some great things. In my day to day I get so caught up with trying to use my creativity to simply make a product as quickly as possible. That makes it difficult to see outside of what’s directly in front of me. Seeing people maintain their imagination and use their creative abilities in refreshing ways continues to rejuvenate me during my own journeys.

For the first issue of the Zine we interviewed the homie, Gabriel Gaete (aka Gabotron). Check out it:

Photo of Gabriel Gaete (aka Gabotron) by Stephanie Sparks

So from my perspective, you do art and animation. Music and storytelling. How would you describe what it is that you do?

I use art, animation, music and storytelling and fuse it all together to create work intended to convey, explain and communicate concepts, ideas and information. I create work for myself and for clients but it all stems from the same communicative standpoint, although the understandability of my projects can range from, “Aha! I get it!” to “What the hell did I just watch?” it all has some kind of message to convey. For my clients I have to be very clear in communicating certain information. For my personal projects I use more abstract means to communicate ideas and concepts that can be more vague and difficult to understand, but represent the weird stuff that goes on in my brain.

I also take visual notes, I started taking visual notes in my community college classes and I found it as an invaluable and powerful tool to retain information. From client work, to games conferences to personal work I’ve created many doodle filled notes that really help me in synthesizing information.

Artwork by Gabotron

What are some sources of your inspiration?

I’m really inspired by brain science, culture, human interactions, different perspectives, experiential video games, the way music affects us, animals, plants and my cats. Continue Reading…

A few weeks ago I attended the Unity LA Meetup OUYA talk. There was a talk and lengthy Q&A with some people from OUYA. The event cleared up a lot of questions I had about the project.

Representing OUYA on stage was Raffi Bagdasarian, who left product development at Sony to join the OUYA team. He explained that OUYA was originally known as Boxer8. He also brought on the Unity plug-in developer Tim over Skype to talk about some technical aspects of the Unity integration.

Developers can sign up for the OUYA developer program for free at http://devs.ouya.tv . There you can download the SDK, view the actively updating documentation, and lurk in the forums. They’re still ironing out the upload process so you’re not able to upload to the OUYA online store yet.

Unity LA Meetup (photo courtesy of the Meetup page!)

And now some bullet points:

• The console will be running Android 4.1 Jellybean.
• The SDK consists of in-app purchase and controller APIs.
• Games are required to be free to play, but features can be unlocked with in-app purchases. This apparently is also a method to curb piracy.
• There’s the typical 70% (developer) / 30% (provider) split.
• They’re focusing on app discovery for the OUYA store, aiming to organize the shops by more detailed metrics than “highest grossing” or “most downloads.” Using metrics such as most played, longest played, etc.
• Approval process will have guidelines — not total free for all. Initially they’ll be reviewing every game manually. Eventually they’ll work peer review into the process, similar to Xbox Indie Games.
• As far as the style guide, they were working on prepping an official one. But in the meantime, feel free to use OUYA name and branding as long as you’re not presenting yourself as sanctioned officially by OUYA. Also, it’s supposed to be spelled in all caps! haha 🙂
• There won’t be a content rating system like ESRB, but they’re planning something similar to Google Play.
• Online matchmaking, achievements, Xbox Live features, etc. Not at launch, but planned for eventual release. Until then, feel free to roll your own systems.

More Stuff, Etc…

• With only 8 gigs of built in storage, game sizes should be developed with that in mind. They’re working out what the hard limits should be as some games currently in development are a few gigs.
• They recommended tools like the Unity asset store’s APK Splitter, to give a quick initial download from the store and load in assets as needed during the game.
• They’re looking into cloud storage. At the time they were apparently debating it.
• Looking into system level integration of Facebook and Twitter. I’m assuming for viral sharing games, and another metric for surfacing content.
• Developers won’t be restricted from accessing websites from within games, should be able to pull any kind of data.
• No access to Android Google Play store from within OUYA.
• They’re open to accepting apps that are outside of games, like video players, etc.
• No vibration with controller, mouse + keyboard are allowed.
• They’ll have store analytics available to developers at launch, supposed to be better than Apple’s minimal dataset.
• Piracy – since every game is free to play, they’re relying on in-app purchases API calls to unlock things.

Continue Reading…

It’s that time of month again! The time when I announce our Downtown LA Art Walk show at the very last second! (right before I run a couple blocks and set everything up).

SOKAY PLAY 6
THURSDAY, APRIL 12, 2012
FROM LIKE 8PM – MIDNIGHT
During the Downtown Los Angeles Art Walk

@ The Medallion
334 S. Main St Unit #334-5012
Los Angeles, 90013

COME AND PLAY SOME GAMES!

If you still don’t know what I’m talking about, check out a video from a previous show: http://vimeo.com/33895049

Peace!

I found a link to et tu Gamer? in the comments to a Gamasutra article about game preservation. Right away I saw that this was without a doubt a site worth bookmarking. The homepage features galleries for a select few games but the gallery section contains a comprehensive archive.

Apparently the creator is attempting to archive as much video game art as he can get ahold of. The I’ve seen so far is incredible quality and definitely worth a gander.

Check it out!

We’re showing some games again this week at the Downtown Los Angeles Art Walk!

This time we’re debuting Rush Hour Plus from our Chris Rock!

SOKAY PLAY 5

THURSDAY, MARCH 8, 2012
FROM LIKE 8PM – MIDNIGHT

During the Downtown LA Art Walk

@ The Medallion
334 S. Main St Unit#334-5012
Los Angeles, 90013

COME AND PLAY SOME GAMES!

Check out Play Peep!

A great site popped up in my Twitter feed a couple weeks ago, Play Peep. It’s a great resource for game art reference, especially in the area of UI. The site seems to have a focus on mobile phone games, with a bit of additions from social games and the 3DS game Pushmo. While many of the games have a similar “poppy” graphic look to them, it’s interesting to see how different teams have tried to differentiate and how they go about solving layout of UI elements in their games. Compare and contrast.

Some posts that stand out to me:

• Hungry Wolf
• Scary Girl
• Triple Town
• Baseball Stars 2012

PlayPeep was created by Dom2D.

Check it out!

Showing some games again this week at the Downtown Los Angeles Art Walk!

SOKAY PLAY 4

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY, 2012
FROM LIKE 8PM – MIDNIGHT

During the Downtown LA Art Walk

@ The Medallion
334 S. Main St Unit#334-5012
Los Angeles, 90013

Showing some games again this week at the Downtown Los Angeles Art Walk!

SOKAY PLAY 3

THURSDAY, JANUARY 12, 2012
FROM LIKE 8PM – MIDNIGHT

During the Downtown LA Art Walk

@ The Medallion
334 S. Main St Unit#334-5012
Los Angeles, 90013

Showing some games again this week at the Downtown Los Angeles Art Walk!

Thursday, December 8th, from like 8pm-Midnight.

Come cheggit out!

Peace.

-Bryson

Sokay Play 1 came and left quickly. Through the organization of an art show by my homie John “Alter Native,” I was able to show some games during the Downtown Los Angeles Art Walk last month. I had Thugjacker and LUV Tank on display. Here are some photos!

Some strangers giving the game a shot!

My Urban Noodle dinner on the table, along with some empty wine cups. haha!

Brian is legitimately excited to be playing LUV Tank. Haha!

Time to clean up! Rebekah starts taking down her stuff.

Chris and John discussing music theory, on the subject of Chris’ “Robot Music” blog posts

The galleries are calling it a night!

I’m grateful that I had a lot of friends show up and got the opportunity to discuss the games one on one with a lot of people. We’ve actually got another show coming up soon on December 8th! Same place, I’ll have the flyer ready soon.

Peace!

-Bryson