Elevator pitch
Elevator Pitch: Semantic web? Check. Grand ambitions? Check. iGlue? Check
Founded in August 2007 and with a staff of seven, iGlue calls itself "the superglue of the net" – and aims to be the future envy of Google
Elevator Pitch: JumpTo bookmarks video and audio
Nigel Cannings has already appeared in our Elevator Pitch column with auto-tagging service Jiglu, back in January 2008 and also worked on mymission2, which launched in April 2008. Now he's back again with JumpTo, a technology that helps navigate video and audio. By Jemima Kiss
Game Pitch: Electric Top Hat
The Dundee water must be a'flowing bits and bytes; it's one of the hubs of UK game development, releasing top quality from a thriving ecosystem of small developers like they're going out of fashion. Dundee-based studio, Electric Top Hat, has arrived in the gamesblog's elevator (yes, yes: lift) and they're here to pitch Modulo, their latest puzzle title in the App Store. So what compelled a bunch of BAFTA award winners to leave their cushty AAA jobs for a life in the indie lane? And how – how?! – do you get noticed in the jungle of iPhone apps? Bert McDowell, Director and Senior Software Engineer, shares
Game Pitch: The Go Game
The Go Game has been enticing players for several years now in the USA, but two of its members, Mei Li and Chris Olson, have recently moved to the UK to set up a branch of the pervasive gaming event company. Pervasive games use the real-world as their playgrounds, integrating new technologies into the location-based, team objectives. I caught up with Chris in the excitement before their first game this weekend in London, in association with gamesblog favourite Hide & Seek, and asked what the appeal is
Game Pitch: Fitba
Like your Xbox? Love football? Bored of the AAA competition? How about taking it old skool? Games industry veteran Jonathan 'Fritz' Ackerley (aka Triple B Games) has released his new game - Fitba - on XNA Community Games Store and for a mere pittance, you can see whether this Dundee-based indie developer has what it takes to challenge the big boys. Read on for his story, and why he left the big time for an indie future
Elevator Pitch: People's Music Store aims to put the character back into music retail
People's Music Store wants to bring back that indie record store experience to online music, and announced a deal with Universal Music today that doubles the catalogue of the site to include 300,000 tracks from artists including Morrissey, U2, Girls Aloud and Amy Winehouse. By Jemima Kiss
Game Pitch: Oil Productions
Channel 4 have been aggressively commissioning UK games companies to create multi-platform games for their Education strand over the past year, and they've had some rather modest success, including a Bafta for their co-production with Brighton-based Little Loud on Bow Street Runner.
Game Pitch: Phone Fight
Late in December, Barry and I presented the gamesblog's new game, Spaceship!, at a regular Brighton event, £5 App. Among the other incredibly talented people and amusing things on display that evening was Phone Fight, a swordfighting game for Nokia N95 mobile phones. It was, frankly, awesome. So we tracked down Russ from Lastminute.com Labs to give us the hack and slash on their free-to-download, newly released game.
Game Pitch: theHunter
Emote Games has been around since 2006, the brainchild of two Directors at EIDOS and iFone. The team has just released their first title, theHunter, which aims to combine social networking with pure gameplay. It's a meta-RPG: one that allows a player to take a single character from one game to another, using skills developed in each environment. It just so happens that this environment is a field full of animals, and you've got a gun. Dave Rose, COO of Emote, led the gamesblog through the carnage. Vegetarians, look away now.
Game Pitch: Vigster brings social networking to gamers
Vigster is the PlayStation3's Home without the proprietary software, the flashy avatars and the dancing. It's Doof for the consoles. Olu Guy got in touch to tell us about the gamers' social network, sharing his vision for gaming trophy rooms to come
Game Pitch: Strawberry Diva
This week's pitch is from the team behind Strawberry Diva, an indie MMO with a casual bent aimed, as founder Paul Carey describes it, "firmly at women". The interaction is based purely on "social navigation": every action must invoke trust or disdain, affection or enmity. So no smacking rodents and orcs with handbags. Damn
Game Pitch: Kudos 2
Cliff Harris is a veteran game designer, with a fine pedigree of time at British gems Elixr, Lionhead and Maxis (when it had UK offices). It's not surprising, for those who know these companies' outputs, that his indie games have a taste of the god sim to them. Take DemocracyGame, a politics game that's been used in classrooms and - as he told me - was even considered for use by the US Department of Defense
Game Pitch: Essex Girl
Indie game developer Luke Whittaker latest game, Essex Girl, takes the Singstar model and adapts it to the indie scene. Inspired by - and created for 'electro-pop artist RiK - the game gets you intimate with the song and the musician so you've got no other option but to buy it. Nice piece of marketing, that
Game Pitch: Operation Sleeper Cell
Last week, we belatedly announced the release of Operation: Sleeper Cell, a home-spun Alternate Reality Game supporting fundraising activities for Cancer Research UK. This week, we welcome one of the team who made it, Juliette Culver, who's stood under the grill and has answered our tough questions. Keep reading for all kinds of insights into how to build your own (alternate reality) game for just £1000.
Explain your game to my mum in 140 words.
Operation: Sleeper Cell is a game about biscuits, tea (stirred not shaken) and loveliness. It's an online game to raise money for Cancer Research UK and is free to play. You are trained as a special agent by a secret organisation known as The Agency that works to spread loveliness throughout the world. During the course of the...
Game Pitch: Plain Sight
Beatnik Games is an indie games company based in London. It's first game - a stunning 3D beat-em-up - Plain Sight, is soon to be released on the Xbox 360. It focusses on the Machiavellian tendencies of a little sword-wielding robot with suicidal tendencies. I spoke with Beatnik's Robin Lacy to find about the joys of the Microsoft's free XNA development platform - a boon for indie developers - the relative merits of Xbox360 distribution over PC, and more.
Explain your game to my mum in 140 words.
Plain Sight is a game about cute robots, flaming swords and blowing yourself up. The basic rules are simple: You're a little robot and you start with one point - that's pretty rubbish, so you want more. To get more points you have to steal them off other players – this you do by killing them with your sword. The more points you steal the bigger, faster and generally better you are. However...