One of the things I will be focusing in 2009 is researching new ideas for games. A lot of things changed since we released our first hacker game. I know the first thing that crosses your mind is the hot new graphics cards, but that’s not what’s on my mind. Computers are no longer what they used to be. We have so much new hardware we can take advantage of.

Think of mobile phones. They come with generous displays, fast processors, high resolution cameras, GPS, etc. This can open some very new ways to think of, and implement multiplayer games.

One of the things I became fascinated about is the ability to use the geotags from within the photos taken by mobile phone cameras, and reconstruct the real word as a 3D scene for a game. I need to figure out a way to digitally process those images, and turn a few photos of a real life factory (for example) in a similar 3D world, set somewhere in a decayed future world, as a scene for an online game. There is a lot of research and math that will be going into this, but I hope I will be able to develop a tech demo, sometime this year.

Also, I have decided to try and allocate more time to write and publish various documents for developers and gamers. Just as I was finishing this thought, Chris [Editor-in-Chief] at GDN proposed the idea of running a developer blog on his website. I think it will be a great opportunity to get in touch with gamers, listen to what they have to say, and develop our next games accordingly.

-Robert Muresan, Technical Director, exosyphen studios