Our blog & newsletter is on intermittent hiatus until we are ready to reveal our latest games currently in development.
Thank you for your support!
I had an excellent time at VRCORE in Qingdao, China. This was my first time demoing Luna, as well as my first time demoing a VR game so it was quite the experience.
Players of all ages came to try out Luna. It was the first VR experience for most of the players.
Here's a look at the award at the office in San Francisco.
There's been a lot of talk recently about what it means to make games for "grown ups"... ie: the generation of gamers who grew up playing games, and are interested in new experiences. This could include games that explore quieter, more adult themes like empathy, or loss, or integrating trauma.
In in this piece from NPR, Our CEO Robin talks a little about what it means to consider making games of this type - for existing gamers and new gamers alike. She also covers this topic in this interview with Fast Company, which highlights the work we are doing here at Funomena on our recently announced game Luna, as well as several other great indie games that approach new topics with a fresh perspective.
A few years ago, Vanity Fair called the 2000s "The Lost Decade" for Microsoft. Most of the reason for that name was financials and business decisions, but at the C++ and Beyond conference in 2011, Herb Sutter invoked Vanity Fair's expression to
e . He said it was important to be focused again on low level programming, despite the fact that people coming up in the web and the .NET era thought mainly of abstraction. Herb claimed that native code was still relevant even for application level developers.
For people familiar with working in restricted resource environments not much has changed- but on the web and in a lot of application development, abstraction and patterns have been king. In games, there have been developers cramming as much as they can into as few registers as possible for a long time. This is partially because that's what was necessary, and partially because that freed up thinking and resources to deal with bigger more important problems. It's a kind of sokoban puzzle played by programmers hoping to squeeze just a few more milliseconds out of whatever it is they are making, or an exercise in minimalism where each piece has great importance.
Now we're in an era where games as a medium allow us to tell many diverse stories. We're not just making efficient machines any more, we are making art. That's incredible, and the democratization of tools has meant that so many more voices can contribute to what we play. In the process however, it's easy to forget how knowledge of the craft can facilitate creativity. Games are at a point where we are lucky to have diverse audiences and still be able to try new things, building upon the work of many before us. It's natural to look for higher level abstractions. It is empowering! But, as developers we should still remember the lessons of "The Lost Decade".
Emil Persson spoke at GDC in 2013
about the nature of high level shading languages and how as we get further from the hardware, it's easy to forget about what is actually happening under the hood. Falling into, "the compiler will handle it" or "resources are plentiful" means when things change at a lower level, we may not question what the implications are and instead convert knowledge into mysticism. The beauty of where we are at is that we can use the benefits of high level tools better if we still take the time to know the how and why that things work the way they do.
There will always be places for high and low level languages but no matter what type of tools you use, it will always be important to understand why and how things happen. The great thing about this is that it doesn't take very long to test. Trying out the different collections, iterators, operations or tools to see what is really happening and what each thing is good or bad at means that you will always know the right tool for the job. Be inquisitive and critical, then focus on what matters. Use low level understanding to be optimal and be able to focus on high level problems.
Jon, Lead Engineer
-Jon McElroy, Lead Engineer
Lovely indie friends Andreas and Cory have put together a beautiful logo campaign to help you express your love of games, in all their forms, and all the people who make them.
Please encourage friends, family and colleagues to join the campaign and show <3 for all the things games have been, are and have yet to be!
WNYC put out a radio piece this morning about how gaming demographics are changing, and how that's going to change the games we play. Our CEO Robin talked about Luna, and what we're trying to build at Funomena: " The response from game designers is fascinating. From dealing with a family member’s cancer to managing depression, new games are exploring real-world phenomena like emotional loss, existential doubt, and a simple quest for beauty. They cultivate deeper connections between players, and even among players and their families.
“Our fundamental feeling is that as the audience of game players grows up, there’s a huge opportunity to make things that grow with us,” says Robin Hunicke the cofounder and CEO of Funomena, a game studio in San Francisco.""
© 2021 Funomena. All Rights Reserved.
