Game Engines

Advergaming Growing
There is not the only game embracing internal advertising. This trend continues to pick up steam. Article

Survivor 9
Here is the link for fall.

Sims2 Skins
There are only a handful of sites, but Sim2 skins are going to get big - fast. One of the great things that There has given the gamer community is...and incredible group of skilled designers. So many of us learnt to paint or build because of There, while other got even better at the craft. This will spill into new games as they come out. Here is a cute Sims2 skin site I found. It's foreign but pretty. TaiTai's. I never got too into Sims1, but I will buy Sims2. I was chatting with Starley yesterday and she was already deep into the Sims2 skinning land. We both decided to grab a couple of domain names, just in case. LOL Over at Dotster, Starley grabbed celestialstudio.net and simstudios.com, and I grabbed friskysims.com. :) The Sims2 skins are massive, allowing deep detail.

Gamer Engines
3D gamer engines are available to programmers and game developers. These range from noob to ninja pro-level, $0 to $250,000. Cute engine I believe is domation. Torque engine is $100 and $395 commercial license. Quake1 and Quake2 are open source licensing. You can license one of three Unreal engines. The king of them all is the Quake3 engine and is $250,000. Why re-invent the wheel? This is why I always question There's plan to design networking code from scratch. It cost millions and it takes years to get rid of lag. 250 large is not a high price to pay for serious code. One you have the engine, you then build your world or game around that. I also questioned Sims for not going this route. They continually struggled with networking code. id software and others have been doing it for years. Sure you might have to modify the game slightly, but that does ot change the overall flavor. For example, in Sims Online, if you used a pre-existing engine, you might have to make each house one server or maybe limit 2-3 houses per server. You might say "that will take 1,000 servers!" Yes it might, but that is how google is built and cheap strong servers are $500 now. You have 1000 servers for $500k and that is a lot cheaper than what Maxis and There spent on their server farms I bet. And lag would be hella less.