GameSetRoundUp: Surfer Girl's Latest Scuttlebutt
We've covered her 'insider'-related game biz posts before, and the still-mysterious 'Surfer Girl' has made at least four or five notable posts since we last mentioned her.
So let's go through them and pick the best from'Twenty-Five More Things, plus 'Disaster: Day Of Ubisoft's Wii Problems', 'November's First Things', 'For The Various People Who Do Not Read Comments', and 'Dante'.
Here are the items I personally found interesting - with my comments in brackets - and again, it's worth mentioning that Surfer Girl is the only anonymous alleged industry insider we've covered at all on GSW, and that's for a very rare reason - her information looks largely legit to me:
- "Ubisoft will be publishing Soma, the Human Head/Mark Ecko collaboration coming to PS3 and 360 sometime before two years from now, and which I guarantee is way cooler than the overrated Prey." (First time this announced partnership has a game name and publisher, if correct.)
- "Zoonami has a few titles that will be available through WiiWare next year... Q Entertainment is working on WiiWare title or two for release for next year... Wii Motor Sports Airplane is a WiiWare title." (Somewhat rare to see WiiWare rumors right now, and Martin Hollis' Zoonami makes theoretical sense, so again - nothing fanboy obvious, here, which means it's more likely than not.)
- "Ubisoft Montpelier is working on Beyond Good & Evil 2, Frédérick Raynal's new game (creepy), and an MMO. One of those will see release next year and the other two in 2009." (The Raynal thing is obscure but confirmed, and blimey, BG&E 2 would be interesting, for sure.)
- "Before the [Xbox's] announcement, Microsoft had a mandate for the game studios it owned to come up with ideas, ideas that have never been realized before in games. ACeS' Dante was one of the lucky few that made it to prototype phase... the game would have put you in the place of firefighter Jeremiah Dante, as he was followed around by the "911 HoverCam" that filmed his adventures for a live TV show, as he fought fires using his futuristic, high-tech equipment like the cannon on his arm that used a combination of lasers (yes, lasers) and water to fight fires." (The post also has screenshots, and this is far too specific and visuals-accompanying to be made up, also given previous familiarity with ACeS from Surfer Girl.)
- "Nintendo really did not want Rayman Raving Rabbits 2 to come at the same time as Super Mario Galaxy, since their game had a stratosphere of buzz and the limbless guy's popular party might disrupt sales of SMG, Nintendo tried anything they could do to refuse to give their approval; for example, in one instance, they said that one of the clouds in the game was shaped like Pikachu." (Probably subjective from the developer end, but cute, in any case.)
Comments
i double-confirm the BGaE2 thing. theyve been on it for quite some time now.
Posted by: fish | November 4, 2007 7:03 PM
I can imagine that SMG would disrupt sales of RRR2, but honestly I can sort of buy that Nintendo would be jerks about this so their games get the stand on their own.
BG&E2 I honestly can't see. How in God's name did they get the green light for it from Ubisoft?
Posted by: Merus | November 4, 2007 8:33 PM
Ancel is their Will Wright, or at least their Mikami. If they feel the need to keep him, they'll indulge another pet project. They also might be smart enough to realize the original BG&E failed mainly from bad timing. It was a quality game tossed into a holiday abyss.
Posted by: Aaron | November 4, 2007 8:38 PM
The success of "Raving Rabbids" probably gave him a lot of leeway in petitioning for a BG&E follow up. Money talks.
Posted by: nowak | November 4, 2007 10:16 PM
Beyond Good and Evil 2? Naaah, it's too good to be true... Or is it?
Posted by: gnome | November 5, 2007 3:13 AM
Beyond Good and Evil 2 would be great! It's one of the few platformers which is simply fun to me (considering you can't fall of any areas unless you jump wrongly, yay).
The story was such a cliffhanger with great characters too, and the games world barely explored or explained.
Posted by: Andrew | November 5, 2007 4:20 AM
"Microsoft had a mandate for the game studios it owned to come up with ideas, ideas that have never been realized before in games."
LOL!!! "We command you to innovate!"
Anybody who wants innovation needs to know that the environment you create is the most important element. Maybe instead of using a top-down command approach - telling people to innovate - they might use a bottom-up approach - asking people who have been innovating to come forward.
But, as I have complained, the game industry isn't as interested in that as seeing how well people know how to make game companies and easily recognizable (semi- or un-innovative) game demos.
Posted by: Grassroots Gamemaster | November 5, 2007 7:19 AM
re: michel ancel
here's a story.
at first, RRR was going to be your usual rayman platform game, but with wii controls. or atleast that's what ancel wanted to make. but it became clear early on that this wasnt going to be possible.
so, so other designer stepped up and came up up with the mini/party game idea using the rabbids character that ancel had came up with himself. higher-ups were pleased and the project was given a greenlight. ancel was FURIOUS. he threatened to leave ubisoft if he didnt get what he wanted. afraid to lose their ONE big famous designer (altho i guess clint kind of fits that mold now), ubisoft caved in and pretty much gave ancel a carte blanche to do whatever he wished next. so he made beyond good and evil too. and thats why ancel isnt credited as a designer on RR but rather just as a character designer.
OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT.
Posted by: fish | November 5, 2007 11:16 AM
The Rabbids were the best part of the game... I thought the majoirty of mini-games were a bit rubbish.
Posted by: Cycle | November 6, 2007 10:44 AM
I have to agree with Cycle. A few of the minigames were fun to laugh at once (find the bad singer, for example), and the lightgun-type play was surprisingly fun, but the rest was so meh from a play standpoint. The Rabbids deserve better than to be featured in another minigame compilation.
Posted by: John H. | November 6, 2007 11:57 PM