Panda's Big Adventure

Our son, Rob, has just published the third game in his Panda series on his Bad Viking games web site. This one is called Panda's BIG Adventure. Having played it, I think it will appeal to old and young alike. There are one or two amusing scenes.

For this one he has moved away from the sniper format in Panda, Tactical Sniper and in Panda II to one where you have to collect things in different scenes. It doesn't take long to play but it will test your lateral thinking.

If you are above these kinds of games, try them on your kids. They're fun and they'll make them think a bit too.

Bad Viking

During the Christmas holidays I found Rob doodling in his bedroom. He had drawn a rotund Viking character not unlike Obelix the Gaul from the Asterix cartoons.

More than that, he had animated the figure that was carrying a large mallet. Then he began looking around at names for a website. Some, like RedViking, were already taken, but he found that BadViking was free so registered the site.

That was a few days before his new game Panda Tactical Sniper II went live. Now that game is heading for 1m plays on the internet. Since then Rob has created his BadViking.com games website which he launched today.

So now the new site contains the games he has made plus a few more he has added in there. I like this one, Synapsis, by his collaborator on Panda II, Rob James, who works under the nickname, RobotJam.

I love these games. I love the way hundreds of young people all over the world are creating them in a kind of cottage industry that is hardly noticed by the mainstream games industry.

As some of you may know, I have written for years about human resources, recruitment and the workplace. All the time I come across recruiters moaning about the dearth of talent. They are so wrong. The trouble is that these people sit in their offices behind complex recruitment and sifting systems, weeding out candidates as they have always done. They should get off their backsides and get in among this nascent flash gaming community and find some real talent.

Only I hope they don't because the young people creating this industry are building it themselves through informal collaboration and ideas-sharing without the kind of of process-driven, managerial and restrictive atmosphere of the modern corporation. They needn't worry about losing their jobs because they don't have jobs. They have the stuff they enjoy doing like drawing little Vikings and making magic with computer code.

Panda Tactical Sniper II

Rob's new panda game is up and running. It's in the beta stage at the moment, available only here on Bubblebox. com for a few days before it will be released to the web.

The first version of the game mentioned here has registered more than 2 million plays since it was launched in October.

He goes back to Lille University today where he seems to be finding the time to work on these games. Who know's, it may be the beginning of a career?