The Blood of the Indies

In Charlie Murder, the whole band gets Windows Phones on the fictional t2f (short for ta2fön) network.  There’s a bunch of stuff you can use your phone for, like email (some of it rote, some of it interesting), camera phone, and squid-themed microblogging site squ.iddl.us.  I thought it was a fun way to give your characters a bit of an info hub, and I’ve been a big fan of Windows Phone ever since my Samsung Focus and its marvelous bulging battery bomb (that’s another story). Also, we have a game on Windows Phone, and we definitely make a buck or two whenever someone buys it, so that’s cool. Yet still, I felt the need to tweet this:

In the comments in Joystiq’s rad Charlie Murder preview write up, there were a few begrudging Microsoft for what was (erroneously) interpreted as some sort of paid off order from up high to include the phone in the game.  This is obviously entirely untrue; if anyone’s guilty of some sort of slimy promotion, I guess that would be me, as I’d like to get more people interested in a pretty solid other alternative to iPhone (and, again, we’ve got Z0MB1ES on dat ph0ne!!!1)

But I think this illuminates an underlying issue, namely that of Microsoft’s misunderstood role as indie games publisher, and how that ties to the trending media narrative on Microsoft being “bad for indies.”  Where do we stand on all this?  Read on:

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9 Comments March 29, 2013

Happy Holidays From Ska Studios

9 Comments December 21, 2012

Good Morning Gato # 87 – Inner Demons

Gato is always battling her inner demons. In the photo here, and from time to time, she viciously attacks the bottom step of the stairs to the basement. We’re not sure if something in her little kitty brain is broken or perhaps if the bottom step has ghosts in it.
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6 Comments March 2, 2012

Merchtastic

Ska Studios has some shiny new duds for you to check out in our merch store. You probably noticed we’re phasing out some older Vampire Smile designs in favor of the newer, bolder threads that were found at the last PAX East. We’ll also be selling all of these shirts at the upcoming PAX Prime.
To those who were looking for one of the old shirts, sorry folks, but that’s the way the thread…(puts on sunglasses)… unravels.

Check out some more images of our current shirts in this fine gallery. You can also see some finer detail for the VS Clean and VS Rock on their respective wallpapers at the Vampire Smile website.

2 Comments July 18, 2011

Good Morning Gato #61 – What You Looking At?

That’s our little monkey-cat Gato just hanging out. You can see that her claws are dug deep into the furniture as she looks into the camera with a face that questions everything, yet at the same time questions nothing. Deep.

Anyhoo, this week we unveil the secrets behind the creation of our life-sized Violence Hammer, confirm some of our E3 plans and say “goodbye!” using third person narrative. Come on in!
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5 Comments May 20, 2011