By Stu Horvath

Innovation takes many forms within the gaming space, often beginning with insight and inspiration from a single person, be they a game developer, an engineer, a sociologist or anything else within the industry. That’s why we’re tracking down thought leaders: to give you a sneak peek of the digital arts future through their eyes.

In this installment, we talk to Michael Mateas, associate professor of computer science at University of California, Santa Cruz, about the intersection of artificial intelligence, art and design -- and its impact on the future of technology.

John Gaudiosi

By John Gaudiosi

Chair Entertainment -- based in Salt Lake City, Utah -- has catapulted to the top of the mobile game development business thanks to the success of its Infinity Blade franchise. In a little more than a year’s time, they’ve spawned a full sequel, a new iPad prequel (Infinity Blade: Dungeons), a digital book from bestselling author Brandon Sanderson, a hit soundtrack and a stand-up arcade game (Infinity Blade FX). The mobile franchise has also generated more than $30 million for Chair and its parent company, Epic Games. Donald Mustard, creative director and co-founder of Chair Entertainment, talks about the multiscreen future of gaming and how mobile, PC and console experiences will interconnect in this exclusive interview.

Matt Ployhar

By Matt Ployhar

In my last blog, I talked about a spring-cleaning I did on my contacts database and observed the number of companies that have either gone defunct or underwent massive layoffs since the downturn in the economy.

This got me thinking about how or why some ISVs seem to have weathered the storm better than others.

The most interesting transitions occurring are the ones that are completely disrupting multiple platforms and business models simultaneously. However, while I’ve heard some ISVs complain about the big shifts and transitions, I’ve also heard others discussing how to embrace these shifts as an opportunity. Some platforms seem to be better positioned than others in order to address these changes. When all is said and done, it will likely end up being a survival-of-the-fittest exercise.

Here’s how I view and summarize the biggest macro-shifts impacting the games industries. There are four big standouts for me: mobile, format and business model evolutions, globalization, and innovation game-changers. We’ll start with the largest macro-shifts occurring on devices, and in subsequent blogs I’ll cover the rest of the list.

The word “convergence” won’t mean quite the same thing to the next generation as it does to us. That’s because kids today will come of age in a time when phones were used to play video games, computers could double as a private movie house, and televisions were flipped on to browse the Web. Unlike us, they’ll be living in a world where “ubiquity” is the word -- surrounded by devices.

The most interesting development of the ubiquity age isn’t that we’re surrounded by screens and able to connect to the Internet in myriad ways, from smartphones to televisions to tablets. Most fascinating is that no one device serves as the ultimate Swiss Army Knife, acting as a substitute for all the rest

Rather, we collect these devices the way golfers keep clubs. On the go, we check movie times on mobile phones. On the couch, we research that movie on a laptop PC or tablet, or we play a game of “Words With Friends” while our significant other watches the big game. Rather than seek a one-size-fits-all solution for computing, consumer behavior indicates that there’s a time and a place for every kind of screen.

By John Moore

Construct 2 is an HTML5 game engine and the product of Scirra, a London-based software firm launched in June 2011. The software provides a boost to beginning game-makers, as the engine does not require programming experience. But the company says Construct 2 has sufficient power to “let experts work even quicker than by coding.” We recently talked to Ashley Gullen, a director at Scirra, who provided a few tips on working with Construct 2.

Rally driving is dominated by one thing: four tires. Every spectacular corner, power slide, or windshield-cracking collision is determined by the complex interactions between those spinning pieces of tread and the unpredictability of an unmade road surface. Small wonder that even after 10 years of the multi-million-selling Colin McRae Rally  games -- or DiRT, as the games are known in North America -- U.K. developer and publisher Codemasters  still maintains a laser-like focus on simulating that pedal-to-the-metal, rubber-on-the-gravel reality.

At GDC, Arti Gupta chatted with Blizzard Entertainment’s Frank Pearce about the latest World of Warcraft expansion, Cataclysm, as well as integrating mobile phone applications to support the experience of their core games and developing for fans new and old alike.

Matt Ployhar

By Matt Ployhar

It’s that time of year, when I speculate as to what the big technology announcements and impacts are going to be for the next year. For 2012, I looked for things that will in some way have a profound short- or long-term impact on the various gaming ecosystems. So what’s in store for 2012? Some of these suggestions may seem obvious, but there are often some things taking place between the lines that may not be so apparent.

By John Moore

Mobile game developers are beating a path to Corona SDK, a development platform built upon such components as OpenGL, OpenAL and the Lua cross-platform programming language. Corona Labs Inc. (formerly Ansca Mobile) lists games including Blast Monkeys, The Lost City, Cannon Cat, Dabble and The Secret of Grisly Manor as recent app store hits created with Corona. I recently talked to Don-Duong Quach, a programmer and co-founder of Cannon Cat developer Loqheart, about his use of Corona SDK.

The Corona website notes that developers can build apps ten times faster using Lua. Has that been your experience?

Don Quach: We were able to rapidly prototype lots of ideas for Cannon Cat with

Corona. Lua is a great programming language that lets you get a lot done with minimal syntax. Compared to Objective-C, the learning curve is a lot lower. The Corona simulator makes it very fast to iterate on your code, and Corona’s API gets you up and running very quickly with just a couple lines of code to add graphics, physics, sound, etcetera.

Screenshot from Lego Universe

NetDevil, based in Louisville, Colo., is one of those fairy-tale software developer stories: guys who love games start company in basement; work hard; move upstairs to spare bedroom; attempt to save the universe. That would be LEGO Universe, the online game the company recently released in collaboration with the LEGO Group of Billund, Denmark, and NetDevil’s parent company, Gazillion Entertainment.