Doublesix Video Games, established by Kuju Entertainment in 2007, has been established as a new business division in Catalis. This move emphasises the importance of the self-published digital games segment in line with the Catalis Group strategy. Doublesix therefore now sits alongside its sister divisions Kuju Entertainment and Testronic Labs. Kuju CEO, Nigel Robbins, will also drive Doublesix’s ongoing development as a world class leader in its field with the provision of additional studio resoures. Under its Guildford-based studio head, James Brooksby, doublesix has a number of digital games in development based on original and established IP and due for publication in the near future.

We were recently visited by some lovely people from Deutsche Welle, which is a big German international broadcaster. They were interested in our take on the recent tax break reversal by the new UK coalition government, something that has been understandably rubbing people’s backs up in the UK games industry quite a bit. Apart from crediting me with creating Burn Zombie Burn (which is very generous as I only did the scripting, along with Jim and Chewie obviously) the rest of the piece covers the wider impact the tax breaks are going to have in the UK. Naturally, the below video is also available in German and the original link on Deutsche Welle’s website is here, as the YouTube one cuts out towards the end.

If you go to our jobs page you’ll see that we’re now hiring. Specifically for a gameplay programmer, two junior artists and an in-house QA technician. If you’re interested in any of the following positions, then follow the details and get in touch with our recruitment people.

We’re based in the heart of Guildford (right on the high street in fact), have a really upbeat studio atmosphere, we’re all gamers and we get free doughnuts too (yeah, FREE doughnuts). Put simply it’s an awesome place to work, so why not come and join us?

James Brooksby, our studio head, was recently interviewed over at Game Careers.biz about doublesix and the fact that our studio looks like a messy kids bedroom (it really does). Thankfully, they were kind enough to upload the interview as a video to YouTube, shown below. Despite the bizarre green screen effect, which gives James a fuzzy purple hairdo, it does cover the fact that we have three super tip-top secret games in production (self published too). In any case, enjoy the video below and guesses as to what we’re making next on an electronic postcard…

For those that played Super Mario World back in the day, you’ll find the following video pretty amazing. There are a few of these going the rounds, but this is by far the most brilliant. To really appreciate how wonderfully clever this is you need sound, as everything is synced up with the audio.

As part of BBC Four’s ongoing Electric Dreams season, a recent drama about the 80′s computer boom in the UK was aired a few days ago. Called Micro Men it featured the rivalry between Sir Clive Sinclair and Chris Curry. Considering that the vast majority of the people making video games today in the UK is a result of the fact that both these men enabled children to get access to personal computers, the legacy of hardware like the ZX Spectrum and the BBC Micro is almost palpable.

If you missed the drama first time around, then you can still watch it on iPlayer (if you live in the UK).

The indomitable Charlie Brooker did a one off gaming special last night in the same vein as his acerbic Screenwipe series. Naturally, it was similarly insightful and adroit as well as being refreshing to see gaming covered without it being painfully ignorant and/or hysterical. The show had some decent guests espousing their take on games too, including the chirpy chaps from Consolevania. You can watch it here (if you live in the UK).

A recent competition, over on the official PlayStation site came to a close not that long ago. The winners either nabbed a PlayStation 3 for their efforts or a t-shirt if they were the runner up (seen above). Naturally, we’ve decided to include the names of the winners below for posterity.

Winner:

• lucamig (Italy)

Runners- up:

• a_rosz (Poland)
• Caibert (France)
• Chelsea23 (United Kingdom)
• Komond_Deckard (Spain)

James was recently interviewed on GI.biz over the sales boost Burn Zombie Burn received off the recent PlayStation 3 firmware update (3.00). As it now features a “What’s New” section on startup, allowing people to see straight away what’s happening on the PSN storefront without having to load it up directly. In addition, the increase in PlayStation 3 Slim sales has obviously accentuated this new feature. In any case, it makes digitally distributed games more visible and this makes us happy.

With the success of Burn Zombie Burn, James spoke with GI.biz about how platform holders should allow greater transparency on sales figures for digitally distributed titles. As this would allow developers and publishers to make realistic plans in relation to actual sales data, something they’re already able to do with boxed games as the necessary data is widely available. Considering the skyrocketing prices of boxed games, the sooner digitally distributed titles get more accessible sales data the better it will be for the industry and the medium as a whole.