We are going to be in San Francisco from March 7-15 for the Game Developers Conference 2010 and the Flash Gaming Summit.

We will be reconnecting with friends and looking for new opportunities.

If you are in San Francisco next week and interested in discussing casual & social game development, design and marketing or potential projects, contact us.

Direct contact details:

• Tadej Gregorcic (Creative Director) – twitter.com/tadej, blog: tadej.eu
• Jernej Kocjancic (CEO) – twitter.com/jerrnej
• E-mail: tadej@motiviti.com

See you next week!

We are giving a presentation on building casual and social games with Unity this Friday at the ITShowOff conference in Zagreb.

You can preview the slides below.

For people interested in Unity development, here are a few links to help you get started.

• Download Unity (free)
• Official Unity.com Tutorials
• Amir’s shader programming course
• Unity Forum

Motiviti is hiring!

If you have experience with Unity and/or Flash and are interested in landing a cool part-time game development job or just looking to publish your games, let us know! We are also interested in great web developers. Everyone is a potential full-time hire .

We are skipping the usual greeting card this year and would instead like to invite you to play our 3-minute holiday game.

Play the game online (requires Unity) or download the full resolution version for free!

There is a special offer hidden in the game for you if you collect 5 presents in the online version .

We just learned that the new Whitehouse.gov was build on Drupal.

Drupal is the open source content-management system that we have chosen to be the core framework for a number of our social websites (among others: www.bringler.com and www.surphone.net).

We have always liked the direction the platform has been taking, and are really glad to see it get this well-deserved boost.

Congratulations to the developers (and the client ) for the wise choice.

More information about the project: http://buytaert.net/whitehouse-gov-using-drupal

Nintendo has cut the price for its flagship console Wii 50$ to $199 (see this analysis at Gamasutra).

The Wii is a great console with lots of excellent hardcopy and Wiiware titles available.

Apart from foosball, it is our team’s favorite means of relaxation during a serious project.

I need to soon start beating Jernej at Wii Sports Tennis, though .

Image via Wikipedia

In games (especially casual), randomness (with its next-of-kin, user-generated content) is often misused as a shortcut or replacement for game design.

Even the random placement of gems in a Bejewelled-type of game is questionable as it can often leave the player frustrated.

There are many ways of achieving emergent gameplay, of which this is perhaps the least manageable one. I prefer good, thought-out game design and extensive player testing, with maybe just a hint of carefully seeded randomness.

Here is an article that provides a more elaborate analysis:

http://playthisthing.com/randomness-blight-or-bane

Motiviti is going to be at the Casual Connect conference in Seattle (3rd week of July).

If you’re around and you’d like to exchange ideas and business opportunities, get in touch with our CTO slash game designer Tadej through:

Twitter | Facebook | Linkedin | Tadej’s blog

or via plain vanilla e-mail at tadej -at- motiviti.com.