Well, news have a bit slow during the holidays, with most of the people rightfully so occupied with getting in touch with family and friends again – I hope you all had a good time! And of course: a happy new year! And with that, let’s jump right back in what the new year has to offer!

What has happened

As a reaction to the the discussion of last time whether computer games need support or not, listen to IGDA.ch president Matthias Sala talking on SRF why not all games are able to recoup their production costs.

Jeremy Spillmann created a Facebook fan page for his upcoming iOS game (and master’s project) Hollow Grounds. Go join his page – and enjoy the truly colourful pictures that are sure to drive the winter blues away!

Unity 3D released a beta version of their engine, allowing game authors to export their games in Flash. While something similar has been possible before with Unity’s own browser plugin, the Flash Player plugin is (still) one of the most installed players, allowing users to jump right into your game, without having to install yet another plugin.

To promote their beta, a contest has been held, and several Swiss game developers followed the call. Check out the entries of Gregor Falk (“Planck”), Kobold Games (“Rise of the Wisp”) and Mario von Rickenbach (“Rakete”). Anybody else out there?

Chris Solarski of Gbanga takes a look back at the past year and what it has brought in regards of mobile games – and what the next year will likely bring. His predictions? Better touch controls, more emotions, but most of all? More experiments. Definitely looking forward to that!

An occasion for such experiments could be the Global Game Jam on 27th-29th of January this year. Just like last year, jam space will be provided by Dock 18. Want to see what experiments might result from such a jam? Look no further than this. Will you be there?