World of Goo Birthday Sales

By: Derek Yu

On: October 20th, 2009

I haven’t been able to access the 2dBoy blog for some reason, but I trust that Rock, Paper, Shotgun has reported this accurately: Kyle and Ron have released sales stats for their birthday sale experiment. During the week-long sale you could pay whatever you wanted for World of Goo.

Not surprisingly, the vast majority of people paid $2 and under. But I think things worked out well for 2dBoy in the end – they made 57,000+ sales and generated $100,000+ in one week. Not a bad present for the young game (and its proud papas)!

A survey that players could take after purchasing the game reveals more interesting information.

World of Goo Birthday Sale

By: Derek Yu

On: October 15th, 2009

World of Goo has turned one year old and is having a big sale this week to celebrate. Until October 19th, you can pay whatever you feel the game is worth! Yowza!

The World (of Goo) Wasn’t Built In A Day

By: Brandon McCartin (BMcC)

On: August 13th, 2009

Another one from my backlog: 2D Boy recently completed an ongoing feature on the development of their hit WiiWare game, World of Goo, from the first prototype with placeholder (Family Guy!) graphics, to slightly overambitious later versions of the game. (At one point seven chapters were planned — yikes!) Very interesting stuff if you’re curious to know just what goes into making a great game. They’ve even included downloads of some of the iterations.

I’ve collected all the links here, for your convenience:
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7

Planet of Goo

By: Derek Yu

On: April 21st, 2009

2DBoy’s World of Goo has been released in Japan today, on WiiWare, as “Planet of Goo.” It’s even got it’s own page on Nintendo’s website. Okay, now that is just really cool – congratulations, Kyle and Ron!

What does the name sound like in Japanese?

World of Goo Now on Linux

By: Derek Yu

On: February 13th, 2009

Still hot, still 100% DRM-free.

Kyle Gabler’s Global Game Jam Keynote

By: Derek Yu

On: February 4th, 2009

Here is 2d Boy‘s Kyle Gabler, giving a keynote for the worldwide Global Game Jam, which took place this past weekend (Kyle appears at 1:40). As to be expected, it’s a pretty hilarious and informative video, although I noticed a continuity error – at around 5:45 Kyle is wearing a jacket, but before that he isn’t. Also, at around 1:45 I was not wearing pants, whereas before I was.

I demand an explanation.

World of Goo’s 90% Piracy Rate

By: Derek Yu

On: December 23rd, 2008

This came up waaay back when, during our site outage, and it was reposted all over the place, but it’s important enough that I thought it was worth bringing up again here: 2DBoy reported that, by dividing the number of unique IPs in their highscore boards by their total number of sales, they estimated the number of pirated copies of games out there as anywhere between 82-90%. This created a lot of hubbub over the high percentage, but I think the most interesting part of the discussion is this:

It’s interesting to note that this is also the year that EA released Spore with some insanely crippling DRM, and it won top honors as the most pirated game of 2008. On the other hand, indies had the opportunity to experiment by trying out DRM-free solutions, posting numbers, and even talking directly to pirates themselves. Another nice little freedom that independence enjoys.

Speaking of 2DBoy, they’ve also been kept busy winning like every award on IGN, and also Indie Game of the Year at the Spike Video Game Awards, an honor that was bestowed to them by NPH (Neil Patrick Harris) of all people! You can watch an interview with them on SpikeTV here.

World of Goo Design Tour

By: Derek Yu

On: December 2nd, 2008

Wolfire‘s David Rosen has started something cool: a “design tour” of innovative games, where he examines their design choices and shares the lessons on video. His tour begins with World of Goo, which is rife with interesting design decisions. As far as reviews go, I think it’s tops – David’s analysis is spot on, friendly, and feels like it is thinking about the game from both sides of the screen. Great work!

World of Goo Demo

By: Derek Yu

On: October 17th, 2008

I hear that there’s a World of Goo demo on the loose, for those of you that are still not convinced.

It’s also now available on Steam, if that’s your platform of choice.

It won’t be long before it’s in your bed, smoking a cigarette and lying to you about how good you were.

That’s right, there will be a World of Goo under your covers with you.

World of Goo: Tomorrow or the Week After

By: Derek Yu

On: October 6th, 2008

People who pre-ordered the PC version of World of Goo will receive a download link tonight, at midnight (along with a hearty thank you!). The final deadline for pre-orders is 11:59pm PST, so there’s still time. For everyone else, the game will be released simultaneously on WiiWare and PC a week later, on Monday, October 13th. OSX and Linux versions are forthcoming.

For more information, hit up the 2d Boy website.