After all the talk about the iPhone 5 in this big week of Apple announcements, I thought it would be interesting to put my thoughts on paper. After all, I’ve been talking about it with my fellow game developers for about a week now. If you follow my blog posts, you know that I am an indie developer who spent the last year making Zig Zag Zombie, a puzzle game on Android, Mac, and iPhone. But like most mobile games, at this point, we have to really pay a lot of attention to the iPhone market, because it’s still where people download our game the most. That being said, the schedule and nature of hardware releases by Apple has a pretty profound effect on game designers. So I’ll talk about the basic points here. Changing resolutions and dimensions so often is un-Apple If you see in my previous posts about Apple products, you’ll know that I’ve given a pretty unbiased lover/hater account of Apple’s decisions to keep a limited amount of devices and prevent third party devices from using their OS. Well, in the last year, I’ve felt that some of the device releases have fragmented the line-up. One of the things designers love the most about making games for Apple devices is that  you can test on a limited amount of screen resolutions, yet reach a huge amount of people. So basically, the cost/time to test a game per devise vs. the potential sales on the marketplace are great. For Zig Zag Zombie, we made high resolution art (for an iPhone 4 retina display), and we were able to adjust the game slightly so it displayed well on iPhone4 screens, iPhone 3gs screens (because they are half the resolution but the same proportions),...

If you read my column on the reg, then you know I spend about half my waking hours designing iPhone games. Oh and I also use an iPhone for my PHONE. So basically there is almost always an iPhone in my hand. This is a sad state of affairs, considering the fact that I’m not an Apple fanboy. All kidding aside, I give the iPhone its due; it made GPS maps actually usable on a handheld for the first time, it created the App store and improved the whole industry of making games for phones. We could go on, but let’s complain, that’s more fun. So here it goes, the reasons why iPhones make my life worse. Texting While Driving I think texting while driving is super duper dangerous, and I’d advise you to never ever do it. But remember when I had my T9, old school texting phone? The one with 9 numeric keys? You could text with that thing with one hand like it was your job. And because it had tactile, physical keys, you could do it without looking. So though you shouldn’t text while driving, you could text and walk, while looking at where you were going. With iPhones, you have to look AND use both hands to text. So with the advance in tech, you lose some of the very mobile functionality of the more simple phones. Oh and we all have to look like chipmunks with a nut when we text now. And that’s just not sexy. People talking on that stupid white headphone Mic That’s really nice of Apple to include a headphone with a mic with all iPhones, but we need to issue a PSA: You’re not really  supposed to use it that way. It’s supposed to be...

I always make the joke that people are so price-sensitive on iPhone games, that they think 2.99 is UBER expensive for a game, yet they buy cups of coffee for 6 dollars. Since I first started making that joke, we developers have been empowered with much better ways to make money, like in-app purchases. And in-app purchases have taken off. In fact, at the time of writing this, they comprise more money on the app store than actual game purchases! The app store has gotten to the point where volume sales, free to play, and ads have allowed developers to make money while the consumer doesn’t feel cheated. So how is all this innovation going to affect your old pal, the console game, otherwise known as “the stalwart of the 60 dollar price point.” Play-through time on games is always a focus at a game studio during the production process. Obviously it varies between genres, but for something like a First Person Shooter, the standard acceptable length is around 10 hours (at least in the last few years). For something mission-based, where areas of the game are reused over and over, like Borderlands, Grand Theft Auto, or Red Dead Redemption, it can be 30 hours to beat the game, and that’s not counting all the little bonus missions that they usually include. From an industry standpoint, it really comes down to art. There are a limited amount of locales the artists can create during the production time, so that’s why FPS games can tend to be shorter; the player generally runs through scenes quickly and doesn’t revisit the same locations. I like games of all shapes and sizes, but I really like short games. This is a personal preference thing. Even when I have...

In the nerd and tech communities, we pretty much argue every day about why Apple is horrible or perfect. The one thing we all agree upon is that, just like politics, Apple is polarizing. Let’s gab about the very high level concepts of the debate. Walled Garden A few of the practices of Apple are referred to as the “walled garden.” I like the term ’cause the Secret Garden is one of my favorite musicals (Mandy Patinkin, he’s like butter!). But I digress. What the term means is that a lot of the elements are controlled tightly. For example, to publish an app on an iPhone, you must go through the Apple app approval process. On the contrary, Android has several app stores, and some of them have no strict approval process at all. In short: No apps (unless you have a hacked phone) run on iPhones unless Apple approves them. Hater: You are a tech guy and think that the “walled garden,” un-customizable vault of the app store hinders the ability of developers and individuals to write programs, install custom programs, and use the device for other purposes like teathering to laptops (giving a laptop internet through the phones connection) and shopping on other app stores. Also, if you have your music and other content on an Apple device, it can be hard to move it somewhere else, so you kind of become stuck. This is especially true of less tech savvy peeps. Most of these people have chosen Android for that reason. Android allows your phone to be your phone. If you are a rookie, you can follow the rules and keep it in somewhat factory condition. If you are super tech in nature, you can hack the crap out of it...

. a blogumn by Justin Time No doubt you have seen the Apple commercials for the iPhone and its apps: “Say you’re a coal miner. Your canary dies and the entrance to your mining shaft collapses. There’s an app for that.” My wife joked last week that it should become the new catchphrase to replace “That’s what she said.” It has not caught on yet. So to promote it, and because this is an easy topic for me, I am giving you some App Store recommendations. I make software for iPhones and other less successful mobile devices (ever heard of BlackBerry, Palm, Windows Mobile?), so I routinely download apps to research for my job. I am constantly adding and removing apps but here are some that I like having in my pocket right now. I won’t shamelessly promote any of my company’s stuff, as much as my boss would like that. Productivity — iTranslate – Free – Easy to use pocket translator with 42 languages — Memory Info – 99 Cents – Frees up 40mb of RAM when your device gets slow or crashy — ConvertBot – Free – Beautifully designed unit and currency converter Lifestyle — Guitar Toolkit – $9.99 – Worth it. Tuner, Chord Charts, Metronome, Fret Board — Seafood Watch – Free – Monterrey Bay Aquarium lets you know which fish are OK to eat — Kindle – Free – Why buy another device for hundreds of dollars when this is free? — Drinks – $1.99 – Because researching through 35,000 apps is more fun with a buzz on Games — Lux Touch – Free – Classic Risk game. Great way to kill 10 minutes — Field Runners– $2.99 – The best tower-defense game for iPhone. — Flight Control – 99...