Studio Cypher: Category announcement

Ludium 2

Will Emigh — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 03:20:00 -0700

The second Ludium begins today, so that’s where you’ll find us bright and early this morning setting up.

It should be a lot of fun and hopefully we’ll get a good list of statements about video games and policy (watch this space for details).

For those of you who can’t be here today, you can follow along with the Ludium Flickr group and Twitter page!

Ludium II

Ian Pottmeyer — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 21:17:00 -0700

The Synthetic Worlds Initiative and Studio Cypher are happy to announce the opening of registration for Ludium II. The Ludiums (Ludia?) are conferences about gaming that are, themselves, games. The topic of this Ludium is “Principles of Sensible Video Game Policy.”

Registration before May 16 is $95. After that, it’s $125, so be sure to register now!

Studio Cypher featured on ARG Netcast

Ian Pottmeyer — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 13:46:00 -0700

The great people over at the ARG Netcast had a very nice interview with Will and Nathan this week. They talk about designing ARGs, the work we’ve done in the past, and what we see for the future.

Have a listen!

Ludium II

Ian Pottmeyer — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 14:07:00 -0700

Studio Cypher is working with Ted Castronova on the second Ludium conference at Indiana University. The first one, which we also worked on, was a big success, and we look forward to the next one. From the article at Gamasutra:

Indiana University’s Synthetic Worlds Initiative has announced Ludium II, its second conference bringing together experts from academia, industry, and government to create a consensus platform that answers, “What policies should real world governments have with regards to synthetic worlds?”

...

Designed by Studio Cypher LLC, the game has attendees play as delegates of a political party convention who must agree upon a common platform, and, SWI hopes, “will lead the group to a set of policy recommendations believed by most participants to be important, sensible, and feasible.”

High Stakes!

Ian Pottmeyer — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 17:28:00 -0800

Studio Cypher’s next game, High Stakes, has officially entered its pregame. Head on over to Vox Diaboli to get a glimpse of what the game will be about, or cut to the chase and sign up now!

Congratulations go out to Red Hatty for winning our survey drawing. Enjoy!

Descry.us survey

Will Emigh — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 18:25:00 -0800

The Cypher’s third adventure, Descry.us has come to a successful close. Thank you for being a part of it!

Whether or not you participated in the MPN, please take a minute to fill out the Descry.us survey. Submit a survey with your email address and you’ll be entered for a free subscription to the next MPN.

We appreciate your feedback and will use it to tweak the next MPN, which will start February 1st, with pre-game beginning in mid-January.

Talk to you then!

Descry.us

Ian Pottmeyer — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 18:37:00 -0800

Registration has opened for Studio Cypher’s newest MPN: Descry.us!

Professor Erikson has opened a connection to a dimension of symbols. Are you ready for what you’ll find there?

Congratulations to ndemeter for winning a free subscription from the survey drawing!

Also, we have new forums! Check them out!

Finally, if you tried to access the site yesterday, we had some technical problems, which should now have cleared up. If you encounter any more problems, email webmaster (at) studiocypher.com

We're doing it!

Ian Pottmeyer — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 01:16:00 -0800

What is that, you might ask? Well, during the ARGNet Netcast #1, we were mentioned as being one of the few creators of serialized games, along with Mind Candy.

If you enjoy MPNs and ARGs, and since you’re reading this blog, I can only assume you do, then I reccomend their netcast (which is the same as a podcast). It was a nice overview of a number of different games going on right now, as well as discussions on several other topics, like the lack of creativity in advertising.

An unfortunate delay

Ian Pottmeyer — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 16:01:00 -0700

As is so often the case in the entertainment industry, we have to push back the release date of Episode 3. It’s for the best, I promise.

Studio Cypher, the Future, and You

Ian Pottmeyer — Fri, 08 Sep 2006 12:06:00 -0700

Greetings, Agents and Wakeful Agents. This is Ian and not, as you may expect, Will. I’m the sound engineer and lead puzzle designer. If you had issues with any of the ghost’s puzzles in Perfect Friends Forever, you can blame me. But we’ll get to that later. It’s been a busy time at Studio Cypher, with a lot of changes on the horizon.

First and foremost is the undergoing redesign of the site (of which this blog is the first major change!), which will hopefully tighten up the navigation and make it easier to find what you’re looking for. If you have any comments or suggestions for us, leave a comment. We always love to hear from you.

As a sneak peek at the redesign, our new logo is beneath the fold.

Now that things are starting to settle into place, you should also see more content in this blog. The post-mortem for PFF will be ready soon, and all of us here will be writing articles about how we do what we do. There will also be a podcast and weekly puzzles coming soon, so keep an eye out!

Now, as the lead puzzle designer, I’m interested in what your favorite and least favorite ghost puzzles in PFF were. I’ll start:

Favorite: Nickolas’ Company Charter. A lot of the puzzles in PFF were basic codebreaking, but this one seemed more of a genuine puzzle that took some solving and a little lateral thinking to get through.

Least favorite: Samuel’s Greek. I don’t think this even counts as a puzzle. It won’t happen again.

Oh, and our target for the next episode is October 1. If you’re interested in that sort of thing, sign up to be notified when things start happening.