A company with the name NeuroFocus could play a role in the flow-testing of games. Instead of filling out questionnaires, what in the game is rewarding or boring could be just measured with brainwave-technology. I even could imagine real-time statistics and nice visualisation about the things, that drive gameplay. Gamasutra writes about, what packages the company will offer. Quite a lot:

“The NGame suite includes NSequels, which is designed to identify core game elements that build into a franchise; NTarget, which offers user group analysis, design, implementation, and marketing recommendations; NeuroNet, which is geared for multi-player and social gaming; and TGA (Total Gamer experience), which measures multi-sensory gaming effectiveness. NGame also offers NPlatform Analysis; NLevels, which identifies “NeuroFrustrators/NeuroRewards” in games, and GCA (Game Compressions Analysis), an automated selection of the most powerful neurological components in a game.”

Top reading of the day is the sum-up of 2D-boys / Polytron’s speech at the Indie Games Summit over at Offworld, about successful hints, to market your game effectively. Well, the thoughts are neat, but not revolutionary. Best figure to start the day comes from Kyle Gabler:

Valve’s Left 4 Dead marketing budget was $10 million, Spore’s $35 million (compared to its $50 million development budget) and Wii Fit’s was $40 million, a figure Gabler reckoned could buy 21,917 indie devs a burrito every day for a year.

I left your thoughts with that beautiful new trailer of the Fez-game from Polytron. Also note the beautiful music and colors!

Ok, guys and girls. Bad Hint is a small experimental game-exploration from Qixen-P design studio with a soundtrack delivered by favorite chip-artist Goto80. And they like it experimental. You are a “little thought” that has to escape the “playful mind”. In order to do so, you can move, jump, pickup objects and use them, using the key A. It’s been a while, since I was confronted with experimental and exploratory gameplay and design as well (the website from the Qixen-People is just as cryptic), but it seems, that I totally suck at this game, not even getting the bright pink star. Any (bad) hints anyone?

This here is an advertisement for the ink and marker-manufacturer Krink. It reminds me, that it has been a long long time, since I worked with “real” colors. The video features real and digital colors as well, made in collaboration with the Megawords-Magazine. Krink itself are somehow obsessive and radical about their products. So, let it drift.

Money is virtual. We all know. This is not virtual, but fictional money. Mark Brooks created this design for a banknote form the Galactic Empire (Star Wars). He says about his work in the context of Star Wars fan art:

There’s a lot of artwork out there most as posters, lithographs or prints so I wanted to do something different. While watching The original Star Wars I realized that talk of money is thrown around quite a lot but you never actually see it (other than Han flipping the bartender a coin after shooting Greedo). I thought it would be cool to design a piece of Imperial currency as I saw it. I designed it mostly after American money but used some European influences as well.

What is more to say? It’s simply awesome.

(via 11k2)

More info at Farbrausch.com

Lately I came upon an interesting casual-gaming site, called the “GamesButler“. Well, what is so interesting upon this site? Basically it serves free games like most other similar sites. But the games they have online are more focused on storytelling and graphics, than just pure “casual gameplay” at its core. Not all games there have for exactly this reason a heavy replay-value or are addictive (some are). But if you seek for inspiration or just want to see casual games, that are a little bit different, this is your starting place. Give GamesButler a try.

Recommendation: Search the city on Globe Trotter XL – Gives warm nostalgia.

Screenshot: Some random games.