['Quiz Me Quik' is a weekly GameSetWatch column by journalist Alistair Wallis, in which he picks offbeat subjects in the game business and interviews them about their business, their perspective, and their unique view of life. This time, the inevitable E3 retrospective, from a distinctly different perspective.]

Growing up, I remember E3 being a pretty amazing, mystical event. I could never remember exactly when it was, but when it appeared in the game magazines I bought, it always meant big exciting things. Obviously, the whole event is now rather different to what it was, but it’s still a focal point for the industry, and still brings with it more than a fair share of announcements. This year was interesting – it might not have brought the games that people expected, but I think the word ‘interesting’ still more or less applies here.

But really, no one needs to read another twenty-something journalist with pretentions of grandeur prattling on about their view of the whole thing: “I really believe that this series of announcements represents a shift in the momentum of this generation of consoles in regards to the juxtaposition of core versus casual users blah blah blah”.

Especially now, a few days after it’s all over, and especially from one who sat at home in Adelaide and read about the whole thing hours after the press conferences were actually held. It’s not that I don’t care, but quite frankly, I’ve done the whole writing about E3 at 6am Australian Central Standard time thing. I’d rather just sleep.

I thought I’d spare you the systematic pseudo-intellectualised babble. After all, as I keep saying, this is Quiz Me Qwik, not Masturbatory Analytical Journo Hour, though that is a very good name for a column and I hope Simon is making a note of that somewhere so he can use it later.

Anyways, we’re going to take a look at E3 from a very different perspective. Like I said, it was a very spectacle when I was younger, and it occurred to me: it wasn’t just me, was it? Or just that era? So I asked my nine year-old cousin Steven to do me a little favour.

For the events of E3, Steven was to take note of the announcements, and at the end of the week, I would interview him to see what he thought of the whole thing. Originally, I asked him to try and stay up and watch the press conferences – generally on at around 2am ACST – but his mother suggested that might not be the most awesome idea ever, even though he was on school holidays this week.

Actually, what she really said was: ‘Alistair, he’s a nine year-old boy! Do you really think that’s a good idea? Really? Christ - honestly, Alistair, I fear for the day when you have children.’ But nevermind. I managed to work past those issues, and give Steven a call to get the inside word on whether or not E3 still really is the magical event I remember it being.

GSW: Hi Steven.

Steven Wallis: Hi. Are you recording?

GSW: Yes.

SW: Cool.

GSW: Yeah, I guess. So did you check out some of the stuff about E3?

SW: Yep.

GSW: Great – let’s start from the top of the week, then. Did you see any of the Microsoft conference?

SW: Sorta.

GSW: Sorta?

SW: Yeah, sorta. I read about the good bits.

GSW: Okay, so what would you consider to be the highlights of the conference?

SW: Huh?

GSW: What were the good bits?

SW: The Mii things were cool.

GSW: Well, technically they're not Miis, but yeah. What did you think of the new dashboard?

SW: What's that?

GSW: Um, that dashboard, you know? What you see when you turn the 360 on.

SW: Are they changing it?

GSW: Yeah.

SW: Why?

GSW: I'm not really sure. [Pause] So, what about the end of it?

SW: What happened at the end again?

GSW: They announced that Final Fantasy XIII is coming to Xbox 360 as well as PlayStation 3.

SW: Really? Cool. I didn't know that.

GSW: Um, yeah. Well, it is. How do you feel about that?

SW: It's pretty cool, I guess.

GSW: Yeah. Did you see much of the Nintendo press conference?

SW: I read some stuff about it.

GSW: Yeah? What did you think?

SW: Seemed pretty cool. I can't wait to play the new Animal Crossing, cause talking to people will be awesome.

GSW: Yeah, you liked the DS one a heap when you played it at my place, didn't you?

SW: Yeah, it was cool.

GSW: Yeah. What about the Grand Theft Auto for DS that was announced?

SW: Is it really coming to DS?

GSW: Yeah.

SW: Awesome!

GSW: Yeah. What about Sony?

SW: I dunno. Didn't really find anything cool about it.

GSW: God of War III? You liked God of War II, didn't you?

SW: Oh yeah! That's going to be cool.

GSW: Yeah, so anything else catch your eye?

SW: Not really.

GSW: Okay. [Pause] Well, all up, was E3 a magical experience?

SW: I dunno. Kinda. It was alright.

Posted by alistairw at 4:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

[Every week, IndieGames.com: The Weblog editor Tim W. will be summing up some of the top free-to-download and commercial indie games from the last seven days, as well as any notable features on his sister 'state of indie' weblog.]

This week on 'Best Of Indie Games', we take a look at some of the top independent PC Flash/downloadable titles released over this last week.

The goodies in this latest version include a unique platformer featuring imaginative use of cadavers, a casual card game, and three different simulation games which allow the player to exercise near god-like powers over a population of dwarves, planet Earth, and the universe itself.

Game Pick: 'Deaths' (Jesse Venbrux, freeware)
"A 2D experimental platformer by the developer of Execution and Karoshi 2, where the last fifty failed attempts by players from all around the world will be loaded and displayed as cadavers in various parts of the current stage you're in."

Game Pick: 'Pandemic 2' (Dark Realm Studios, browser)
"In Pandemic 2, players are given the chance to exercise god-like powers in deciding how to mutate a certain disease while trying to annihilate mankind in the process. This is achieved by spending evolution points on disease symptoms, resistance or transmission methods to increase the chance and rate of infection."

Game Pick: 'Dwarf Fortress' (Tarn Adams, freeware)
"The latest version of this well-regarded single-player fantasy game has debuted - for those not in the know, you get to control a dwarven outpost or an adventurer, in a persistent world that is randomly generated with distinct civilizations, dozens of towns, hundreds of caves and regions with various wildlife."

Game Pick: 'Universe Sandbox' (Dan Dixon, commercial indie - demo available)
"A physics and particle simulator that simulates applied gravity to planetary bodies. This educational toy for Windows-based computers can run scale simulations of our solar system while giving you the power to control gravity, time and everything in it."

Game Pick: 'Loot' (Casey Sillito, freeware)
"A casual card game set in a dungeon, in which players are to equip themselves with a deck consisting of potions or spells procured from the rooms they've explored."

Posted by timw at 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

[Continuing Michael Abbott's excellent coverage of the recent Games, Learning, and Society Conference for GSW, academics Erica and Rich Halverson described their efforts to “reverse engineer” fantasy baseball gaming as a principle to help learning in more formal ways - essentially, how gaming concepts can transition into learning realities.]

Erica and Rich Halverson's talk at the Games, Learning, and Society Conference in Wisconsinprovided a snapshot of their research into the ways “learning, play, and engagement in fantasy sports require a combination of fan cultural practices and skills characteristic of gamers in order to be successful.”

Erica Halverson is an assistant professor of learning sciences and Rich Halverson is an associate professor in educational leadership and policy analysis, both at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

The Halversons believe expert fantasy sports players “construct organizing metaphors for their gameplay and that these metaphors guide both in-game decisions and experts’ mental models used for reflecting on play.”

Understanding how expert gamers think and behave could yield great benefits to educators and game designers alike. Such an understanding “could help guide the design of learning spaces that use the competitive fandom model as a principle for design.”

Fantasy baseball emerges, according to the Halversons, via the convergence of three activities: Primary activity (Major League Baseball); Fan activity (watching games, collecting cards, etc.); and Fantasy activity (organizing or participating in a fantasy baseball league).

The fantasy activity “repurposes the primary activity content” with fan activity to create a game-based environment with its own unique set of player-created rules.

The Halversons are trying to “reverse engineer” fantasy baseball to better understand how data-rich games work. They are trying to determine “what is added to fan knowledge to produce fantasy gaming expertise.”

To find the answers, they are analyzing the discourse of in-game play (both spouses are fantasy baseball players) and conducting semi-structured interviews with expert players. Much of this has occurred within “an incredibly complex transmedia environment” of phone, voice and video chat, multiple internet resources, email, charts, graphs, databases, etc.

Expert players, say the Halversons, rely on what Aristotle called practical wisdom: “patterns of problem-setting and problem-solving; an eye for the appropriate move in navigating complex systems.”

High-level gamers rely on reasoning, data reduction techniques (“chunking large bodies of information into meaningful patterns”), and an ability to adapt knowledge to novel situations.

Stories and analogies are constructed around play and are often mapped onto other experiences, such as stock market analysis. The Halversons' research suggests that expert players routinely use their fantasy baseball acumen to succeed in other situations requiring skillful analysis of ever-changing data and information.

High-level players must develop and utilize adaptive expertise, according to the Halversons. “The primary activity is dynamic, so rules are really heuristics. Things change quickly, and players must respond nimbly by developing strategies for multiple scenarios.”

Expert fantasy players are ready for almost any situation and quickly turn unexpected events to their advantage. “It is also a social learning and adaptive situation. You must know the other players, know the league, etc.” Referring to one especially successful fantasy player, Rich Halverson described him as “the smartest man I know.”

Of particular note to educators is the Halversons' finding that fan knowledge and primary activity expertise go both ways. An expert fantasy baseball player's knowledge of the primary activity (MLB) “enables hypothesis testing that makes you an expert fantasy player.”

But perhaps more importantly, expertise in the fantasy game creates heightened expertise in the primary activity as well.

This could result in broad applications for teachers who wish to apply the competitive fandom model to teaching a wide range of other subjects. It could also impact game designers who want to better understand how and why players engage on a deep level with games.

Posted by Simon Carless at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Eureka for Friday afternoon - especially on E3 week - but that doesn't mean the GameSetLinks have to stop, of course, and there are flecks of E3 goodness (yay, Rhythm Heaven!) hanging out in the soup of the general link goodness.

Also in here somewhere - a Defender remake inside a favicon (!), neat Into The Pixel winners, the robotic Guitar Hero winner, and a new development blog for The Path, among a number of fun things.

Nine one one:

Hands-On: Rhythm Heaven Coming to America, Awesome | Game | Life from Wired.com
Kohler has taste, this will rock.

'DEFENDER of the favicon' game
'DEFENDER of the favicon is a JavaScript remake of Eugene Jarvis' brilliant arcade game Defender written by Mathieu 'p01' Henri and inspired by Scott Schiller's experiment with generated favicons VU meter.'

Gametrailers.com - Dead Space - E3 2008: Lullaby Trailer
Someone from EA mailed this in, and I wouldn't normally link to random game trailers - but this is ultragory and ultrascary, and very un-'big publisher' in terms of R+-rated content. Iinteresting.

Project Lore: Five dudes. Four cameras. One World of Warcraft.
More of the pro video/gaming crossover stuff - monetization still boggles me a bit for stuff like this, but maybe with enough high-end sponsors?

Into The Pixel - 2008 Contest Winners
Some great stuff in here - 'Untitled' is Kyle Gray's EA Tiburon project he showed at IGS 2008, too!

It's inevitable: soon we will all be gamers | Rob Fahey - Times Online
Fahey sneaks into The Times, a la Robertson in the BBC - Brits getting into mainstream a bit better than Yanks right now!

JeremyBlum.com » DeepNote™ Guitar Hero Bot
Chronicling the rise to power of an awesome robotic Guitar Hero player.

Meaningful Play 2008: Designing and Studying Games that Matter
Interesting serious game-related conf in October.

Telltale Games - Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People
'It has recently come to my attention that the Electronical Superface Ratings Boys (ESRB) have made us remove all the many head-offings that SBCG4AP was SUPPOSED to have in order to avoid an M for MATURE rating.' Really?

The Path —— development blog
New blog for the (pictured) IGF-nominated artgame from the ideological radicals (hee!) at Tale Of Tales.

Posted by Simon Carless at 4:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

['@ Play' is a kinda-sorta bi-weekly column by John Harris which discusses the history, present and future of the Roguelike dungeon exploring genre.]

Usually, when I talk about roguelike games here, it's in the context of being a kind of old-school Dungeons & Dragons simulator. This is an awesome thing all to itself, for reasons covered previously. Yet there are other attributes of the games that differ from D&D, or indeed any other RPG, either pen-and-paper or computer.

One of the most entertaining of these, if one has followed the evolution of the genre far enough, turns out to be a direct result of one of roguelike gaming's major limitations. While some have moved on to using simple graphics to represent the dungeon and its inhabitants, most roguelikes still at least have the option of using ASCII characters to represent the playing field. And the method of representation is one of the aspects of the genre that ties it back to Rogue: line-drawing characters for walls, an at-sign for the player, and letters for the monsters.

Letters for the monsters. Oh, the troubles that spring from this simple idea.

First problem: there are only 26 letters.

One of the many tiny, sparkling shards of awesomeness embedded in Rogue's thick hide is how it turns the limitation on monsters into a theme. The first level of rogue has a handful of monsters: Bats, Jackals, Snakes, Hobgoblins and Kobolds. Every level after the first introduces one new monster until Dragons enter the game on level 22. I submit that it is no coincidence that the Amulet of Yendor appears on level 26.

But Rogue, for its coolnesses, is still a fairly short and simple game. Most games these days want to offer more opponents than just 26. And so the great bestiary proliferation began.

Now those games that offer more than 26 monsters have to come up with some way to represent the new monsters. There are three ways this is done. The oldest, going back to the lost roguelikes, is to treat uppercase and lowercase monsters as different species. Nearly all of them do this now, but it still limits the opponent types to 52. The second was is to use different colors to distinguish between monsters, and this is also pretty common. A DOS-style terminal is capable of displaying 16 different colors, although one of them is black. 15 * 52 is 780 beasties, which sounds like a lot, although for other reasons we'll get to shortly still isn't enough.

The final idea was to allow a few symbols in there to add a few more creatures to the mix. Nethack uses @ symbols to represent humans and ampersands (&) for demons, along with a few others. In that game colons are lizards, semi-colons are sea monsters, and apostrophes are golems. We are not quite sure what system was used for assigning these; the secretive Devteam hasn't said anything about it, although there is certainly a chance that there is some pattern at work. Fiendishly, both Nethack and Angband use the same symbols as game terrain to represent hidden monsters. Nethack ghosts are represented in-game by spaces, and Angband trappers use the same character as the floor. Angband mimics use the same characters as object types lying on the floor.

There are other letter-like symbols that could be used, if one is willing to poach characters from other languages. The basic ASCII alphabet doesn't have any of those, but extended ASCII and Unicode support them. This isn't as helpful as one might suppose, however; the advantage to ASCII is its universality, and furthermore, the primary advantage of using letters if that monsters are more easily recognizable by using the first letter of their name to represent the foe. Most players speak English, and there just aren't many monsters iconic enough for inclusion that use diacritical marks on their first letters.

Yet, despite all these options, it's still not enough for some games. Nethack, in particular, has a scheme whereby monster letters (upper- and lower-case considered separately) indicate a general monster type, and color depicts species. A comment in the source code notes the pattern behind these: monsters with an elemental affinity are to use an appropriate color (red for fire, white for ice), and leader or royal monsters are purple. Yet under this system there are some monsters that appear identical on an ASCII display. The most troublesome result of this happens near the end of the game, when the player reaches the elemental plane of Earth. Upon entry, the first two monsters the player meets are always another reincarnation of the Wizard of Yendor and an elflord, both represented by a purple "@". The elflord is a middle-level foe, not dangerous to a player who has literally been to hell and back, but the Wizard could be quite a pest.

Second problem: Finding monsters for the less-common letters

Fitting all the monsters into 26 letters isn't exactly easy, but worse is finding monsters for the less-common letters of the alphabet.

ADOM is maybe the game least burdened by these considerations. While it does try to conform the monsters into families represented by particular letters, there are many letters that don't obviously match family names. Grues are 'x'es, while humans are generally '@' barbarians are 'K's, bugbears are 'g', bears are 'N', golems are 'Y', sea monsters seem to be 'A', and so on.

I've been thinking a bit about this problem myself, and started compiling a list of monsters that begin with different letters. A few letters are easy. It turns out there are an abundance of G monsters: Gnome, Griffin, Gargoyle, Gremlin, Gorgon, Golem. V, a fairly uncommon letter, has more monsters than one might expect: Vampire, Vrock and Vortex.

A few letters are troublesome, in particular: J, K, Q, X, Y and Z. It is entirely because of the letter Y that the Yeti appears in so many roguelike games. The difficulty of finding good monsters for K, Q and Y, ultimately, was responsible for the beginnings of a roguelike tradition: the inclusion of weird monsters in order to fill out the whole alphabet.

To elaborate: the first versions of Rogue borrowed much of the opposition from Dungeons & Dragons. Later revisions switched out some of those monsters for a more idiosyncratic set. The rumor is that this was done in order to foil Rog-O-Matic, the early Rogue-playing borg, but to me it seems at least possible that it was to distance the game from D&D around the time the game was being sold commercially by Epyx.

When the monsters were changed, they had to find new monsters for some of the hard-to-fill letters. This was the point that Lewis Carroll's Jabberwock became a Rogue monster, as did the Quagga, an extinct relative of the zebra, the Kestral, a type of falcon one might not expect to find underground, and my personal favorite, the Xeroc, replacing mimics. (Think about that name for a moment, in relation to copying things.)

Artist's rendering of a Yeek

Not even Angband is immune to this. One of that game's trademarks is a race of very-low-level humanoids called Yeeks, which actually originated in Moria. Yeeks are something of an unofficial mascot for the games, a race of monsters that are comically weak. According to the deleted Wikipedia page on them, they're called Yeeks because that's the sound they make when stepped on. Yeeks have a kind of popularity in Angband culture; the basic game includes the King and Prince of the Yeeks (Boldor and Orfax) as unique monsters, and variants add the Yeekish Queen and President.

Some recent variants even make Yeeks a playable race. Being so weak, they gain experience levels rapidly, but unfortunately they must live with a -5 to Luck. Why would that be? Because, if you were born a Yeek, it's not exactly like the laws of chance were on your side.

Others:

Nethack: commercial-at: Human or Elf, space: Ghost, colon: Lizard, semi-colon: Sea Monster, apostrophe: Golem, Amphersand: Demon

Angband: period: Lurker, comma: Plant Monster, dollar-sign: Creeping Coins, various symbols: Mimic

Sources:
The Rogue Vede-Mecum:
http://www.monmouth.com/~colonel/rvm.html
Wikihack:
http://nethack.wikia.com/
Angband monster spoilers:
http://www.thangorodrim.net/spoilers/monsters0.html

The ampersand demons above come from the Geoduck Tileset, a clever Nethack modification that makes monster graphics tiles into appropriately-customized ASCII versions.
Image of a quagga (R.I.P.) from the Wikipedia entry on that animal.
Image of Fobby (shamelessly pawned off as a Yeek) is from Earthbound, copyright by Nintendo. Used here because Earthbound is awesome. Pic stolen from Fobbies Are Borange.

Posted by John Harris at 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (10)

[Well, E3 is just about done, apparently, but just wanted to point to a few things that my lovely Gamasutra colleagues extracted from game developers at the show. In many cases, there are longer, neater feature-length chats coming, but this will do fine for now! Also I must highlight our own Chris Remo's saving the Internet (according to GAF) by getting Mr. Miyamoto to announce a new Pikmin. Good job that man!]

- E3: Halo Wars' Rouse: Age Of Mythology Console-Controller Prototype Informed Game's Genesis
"Speaking with Gamasutra about its upcoming Xbox 360 RTS title Halo Wars, Ensemble's Justin Rouse revealed that the firm experimented with an Xbox controller-using version of Age Of Mythology before deciding to "build this thing from the ground up" and start on Halo Wars."

- E3: Sony's Tretton Talks Sony Home Vs. Microsoft's Avatars
"At Sony's E3 roundtable, SCEA exec Jack Tretton has suggested that there was "a lot of learning... and a little naivete" in the construction of the Home online world for PlayStation 3, but that the "worst thing" Sony could do was look at Microsoft's new Xbox 360 avatars and try to react based on them."

- Square Enix: Final Fantasy XIII Going Multi-Platform Is Game Changer For Biz
"Talking to Gamasutra, Square Enix SVP Shinji Hashimoto has been discussing the fact that Final Fantasy XIII will go multi-platform in more detail, commenting that "more than a turning point... perhaps this is a change in trends for the game industry as a whole.""

- E3: Gearbox's Hurley on Borderlands Vs. RAGE
"Speaking with Gamasutra at E3 about multiplatform shooter/racing-combat hybrid Borderlands, Gearbox Software producer Simon Hurley joked about the "convergent evolution" that led to Id Software announcing RAGE, also a shooter/racing-combat hybrid, less than two weeks before Borderlands went public."

- Nintendo's Miyamoto: 'We're Making Pikmin'
"Talking during a Nintendo developer Q&A, legendary creator Shigeru Miyamoto has confirmed in response to a Gamasutra question that a new title in his unique Pikmin franchise is currently in development, simply stating: "We're making Pikmin.""

- Sony's Tretton: 'Disappointed' In Multiplatform FFXIII Through MS' 'Currying Favor'
"Speaking at a roundtable Q&A attended by Gamasutra, Sony's Jack Tretton has been discussing Final Fantasy XIII's move from a PlayStation 3 exclusive to a multiplatform title, suggesting "I guess disappointed is clearly an appropriate term", and suggesting Microsoft has spent most of their money "trying to curry favor with third parties"."

- High Voltage's Corso: Wii Deserves Better Games Than It's Getting
"Talking to Gamasutra during E3, High Voltage creative director Matt Corso has been discussing the developer's just-announced Wii FPS The Conduit, suggesting that, for the core gamer, "The Wii is a really cool game system... it's worth better games than it's getting right now.""

- Sony's Jack Tretton: The Full E3 Roundtable Report
"Gamasutra brings you a full account of Sony CEO and president Jack Tretton's wide-ranging roundtable discussion that covered everything from platform exclusivity, the state and future of Home, PSP piracy, and Sony's desire to bring a PlayStation 2 to "every last consumer on earth.""

Posted by Simon Carless at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

[Regular GSW column 'The Game Anthropologist' is all about gaming communities. Recently, Michael Walbridge interviewed a number of game writers and summarized their thoughts on why so many game writers spend their spare time writing even more on their personal spaces. In the coming weeks, Walbridge will be detailing some of the key points from the individual interviews conducted for the piece. This week describes the second interview with Kieron Gillen of Rock Paper Shotgun.]

My second interview was with a writer from the blog Rock Paper Shotgun, a place that covers my favorite games format, the PC. Not knowing how to approach, I thought, “Well, they’re four game journalists and they’re all British.” So I tried my best to do what an intelligent British gamer would: I mailed all four of them with the subject “I request a sacrifice”. One of them replied in part with

"Hi Mr Walbridge

You have prompted a shadowy gathering of the RPS hive mind. I step forth, and give the answer. Imagine this in a voice that's very deep, and flames are spouting from my nostrils.

Anyway - pleasure to meet you. Sorry that Carless has talked you into doing work for his evil GSW. I fear and shun him."

That’s how I met Kieron Gillen. I chose to talk to him over talking to all four of the RPS writers because I'm not sure how to talk to four people at once at this point, and I'm still collecting my thoughts. It turned out to be the right choice.

Like N'Gai, his being early in line set the tone for the rest of my interviewing. His being in the UK forced me to use Skype, a thing I'm grateful for. I also had some slight difficulty understanding him. The guy talks a mile a minute and he talks with excitement, enthusiasm, and anxiety. More than once he interrupted himself with "Oh yeah, your question," then answered the question.

He seems comfortable speaking to me but also seems to be exerting a lot of effort in not jumping to conclusions about anything. The only thing he's actually conclusive about is RPS; he owns part of it, he feels he can represent it. But anything else? No. Perhaps it's a British thing, or perhaps it's because he's dealt with some harsh, unfair criticism.

“Why’d you make RockPaperShotgun when the four of you are writing at plenty of publications who pay you in English money?” I said. “It’s about the PC only. You surely aren’t writing only about consoles, are you? You’re making enough money, aren’t you?”

Yes, he tells me, they write about PCs. But some PC stuff needs more coverage. “Every few days we’ll discover something that people don’t usually see, and it’s a shame if it’s not exposed,” he explained. "I've been a games journalist for a decade at least. 13 years. RPS is an outlet for our PC stuff because we're not seeing people write about the format the way we want to."

“And how do you want it done?” I pried.

"You gotta understand—the editors I work for do give me a long leash. I just…I'd be lying if I were to say it doesn't bring me pleasure to have the cuffs off."

Unregulated? “It’s just part time. Games journalism doesn’t tend to emphasize the PC. But I do. So commercially and intellectually, making and working on RPS makes the most sense because it’s not something anyone else does. It’s especially something that American readers don’t see in approach in tone.”

And the other blogs? Do they get a label for style or purpose? And I don’t remember what he said, not only because he’s a fast talker with a foreign accent, but because he soon jerked me out of my chair: “Well, I wrote this thing called ‘The New Games Journalism’”…

I had read it a long time ago and hadn't gotten around to looking at it again. There are four writers on RPS and the one that I get just happens to be the guy I didn't know wrote "New Games Journalism." Oops. There already was a guy who loosely did what I'm doing right now in this very interview! He had made an attempt at clarifying the changes that occurred. Could I learn from it? I gently encouraged him to talk about it. I was awe-struck; here was Mr. "I've been writing for 13 years, have my own successful space and am well-read and liked by my peers" feeling frustrated; he sounded like a man who felt that fate had dealt him failure and there was nothing he could do about it.

I was digging up skeletons, picking at old wounds, resurrecting old fights, and he let me proceed. I'm not sure why he was so willing to talk about it, other than the fact we got along. He took a deep breath beforehand, knowing that anything he said about "New Games Journalism" to me was going to be added to the long-buried canon on it.

“The whole thing was not something I foresaw,” he said, exasperated. “It was more of a letter, really. I was speaking to my peers, not the readers, and so it ended up seeming condescending to some people. Most people thought it said ‘no reviews.’ People thought I was trying to change games journalism—I was simply trying to add to it.”

He also gave me an ultimate summary: “It helped precipitate the debate about what games journalism could or should be. It seems there were more pieces written about it than in the style of it. Some people got inspiration from it. I’ve had enough people tell me that to make me think it reached enough people and some of the people it was intended for.”

So no, (duh), he didn’t have a name or label for me; he was kind enough to concede hmm, yes, look at those similarities! But no more. "I didn't think it would get passed around so much. I had no idea so many people would read this thing and take it so seriously." We then calmed down--he talked to me more about games journalism as a whole and I begged him to tell me more about what I should do to succeed, and he obliges me.

I ask him if many people get to talk about games in this kind of way, or if people are feeling lonely in the land of games writing. "Actually, I've always had someone to talk to about games," he tells me. "But I know that for many others, that's not the way it is."

He's got plenty of friends and has no label for me, and I don't blame him. Combined with N'Gai, I have now had two different kinds of warnings that I'm barking up the wrong tree.

I'm grateful he still mentioned my article here on RPS. The tagline? "Michael Walbridge talks to assorted games writers trying to find a scene name. I just tell him the one he shouldn’t call it. For God’s sake, not that."

Posted by Mike Walbridge at 4:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

[The Brainy Gamer's Michael Abbott is still reporting from the Games, Learning, and Society Conference - this time, Surreal (This Is Vegas) creative director Patrick Lipo has been been talking about the "blessing and curse" of working on large games.]

In his presentation at the Games, Learning, and Society Conference, Patrick Lipo proposed a set of simple tools for game design aimed at helping teams prioritize features and focus on the player's experience.

Lipo, a 15-year veteran designer who served as project lead on X-Men: Legends and as studio creative director at Surreal Software (This Is Vegas), suggested that such tools can “provide inspiration for the design of anything from a small side project to a magnum opus.”

A Matter Of Limitations

Lipo characterized the process of working on large games as both a blessing and a curse. Big budgets provide the resources to add a nearly endless set of features and realize even the most ambitious vision - “so why do so many big games seem to have development troubles?”

Lipo believes limitations can help guide designers and a keep a project on course, noting that “a game that tries to do too much often fails at most of them.” Despite what many young designers may think, a blank sheet of paper can be a dangerous thing. “Every game needs a box to be built within.”

Big games are often driven by a fear of player expectations. This often results in what Lipo calls “resources without meaning,” big budgets and personnel devoted to over-ambitious goals. It is possible for a design team to have an excess of ideas, and without a clear set of project priorities these ideas can paralyze, rather than inspire, a team.

A Matter Of More

Part of the problem, according to Lipo, is that “we all have the same enemy: more. Everyone wants more stuff, more features, more everything. We want our games to be cool, and more stuff adds value.”

Audiences are demanding breadth in all things, which is pushing designers to create design mash-ups with shooting, driving, open world, and MMO elements that rarely all work well. “GTA has set a ridiculous precedent,” Lipo observed, noting that it is unrealistic and unwise to mimic its formula. Spider-man 2, he said, is a telling example of what can happen when a game tries to be all things to all players.

Lipo believes the ideal approach is to focus your efforts within a clearly defined set of constraints. “This is not an argument for simplicity. Depth is best targeted at carefully chosen places,” Lipo argued. Constraints enable you to prioritize features and support a game's objectives. “They assure that each feature is worth the cost of entry, and they demand that the gamer will notice your efforts.”

“The big question designers must ask is very simple: what will impact your players the most?” Lipo suggests this may be an unpopular stance to many gamers “who want to feel you're giving them everything you've got,” but most well designed and popular games adhere closely to this credo.

A Matter Of Focus

Lipo cited God of War as an example of a highly polished game focused on epic fighting with a simple combat system and light RPG elements. BioShock, according to Lipo, is a simplified version of System Shock 2, a game that may have been too complicated for its own good. “I'm sure these were tough cuts to make, but BioShock is still complex and deep...and more successful.”

Lipo outlined a set of Tools for Focus:

* Use verbs to abstract player activities, keeping them “chunky” and high-level (e.g. fight, collect, build, etc.), and letting them group features (“fight” can branch into other related sub-features)

* Identify Pillar Verbs - these are what the player does 90% of the time, used as “a razor for prioritizing features”, and to spot where you are trying to do too much. The verbs, he says, should identify the activities that will impact player the most.

* Identify Secondary Verbs - these are side activities that provide breadth and variety of gameplay (e.g. a rail-shooting sequence). For instance, Half-Life 2's secondary verb is driving, Diablo 2's is crafting.

Lipo gave further examples, saying God of War's pillar verb was 'fight,' with 'upgrade' and 'explore' its secondary verbs, while Super Mario Galaxy's pillars were 'traverse' and 'collect,' while its secondary was 'fight.'

A Matter Of Values

Lipo also suggested that designers identify Pillar Values. “Beyond verbs, what abstract concepts make your game memorable? Where should your extra love go?” These function as short vision statements that define the game experience.

Examples of this were given for X-Men Legends: It's about a team of heroes, not an individual, it must contain the most destructive environments possible (this meant a trade off between dynamic and visual detail), and the player must be able to create his own team of X-Men.

With Halo, its values are cinematic set pieces, unique vehicles, and genre-defining multiplayer, while God of War's are an unapologetically brutal main character, powerful, visceral combat, and epic moments.

“Make sure your game screams your pillar values. Make them plain and easy to understand. Ask yourself 'What are people going to remember most about this game,” Lipo observed.

A Matter Of Scale

Finally, Lipo suggested designers pay attention the the scale of a game. “At what level of organization does the bulk of gameplay occur?” Different games make different choices in this regard, and Lipo cited the evolution of his own game This is Vegas, which began with “a vision of GTA meets The Sims.” While the team was excited about this idea, and the technology was up to the task, “the problem was scale.”

The player had the run of the city and could enter dozens of buildings, and the player could sway entire crowds with a single outrageous act. But the player could also affect his relationship with any individual. “This required the player to think on a 'per room' basis and a 'per person' basis.”

Suddenly one out of every 100 people wasn't just part of the crowd, which led to unpredictable behavior that hindered the player's ability to understand what was going on. “Gameplay was deeply rooted in two places. Ultimately we had to pick one.”

A good designer must be adept at creating guidelines and limitations as well as generating new ideas, noted Lipo, “because in the end it’s about deciding how to deliver the greatest game experience.”

Posted by Simon Carless at 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Time to rip some GameSetLinks up the wazoo, headed by Jane McGonigal talking about why having fun gaming in real life with real people in London at the Hide and Seek Festival.

Also in this compendium of goodness - Cliff 'Democracy' Harris on why getting player stats is useful, USA Today on the indie game scene, John Carmack on software patent litigation, (the pictured) Civilization Revolution's outlet-specific goodies, and a host of other RSS-scraped goodness.

Yee hah hah:

Avant Game: Hide and Seek 08 Rules Me – and why real-world players are so game
Jane McGonigal on the real life game revolution.

gamedev.sessions.edu » Blog Archive » Art?
A rare game-related essay from Chris Crawford.

bit-tech.net | Game Phone Home!
Cliff Harris: 'We need to learn that sharing usage data is good.'

Civilization Revolution gets even more Wonderful | Fidgit
'People who buy from Best Buy will be more cultured. People who buy from Gamestop will be better at exploring the oceans and outer space.'

1UP: 'Welcome to the World of Videogame Law'
'[John] Carmack saves his most aggressive hatred for patent shops -- companies like Immersion and Intellectual Ventures that are in the business of licensing technology.'

The Escapist : Game Design Sketchbook: Regret
'Regrets often center on mistakes that were unavoidable at the time. Though you can learn from each mistake that you make, it's not clear that regretful thinking is valuable.'

Wadjet Eye Games: 'Wadjet Eye Games announces publishing deal with Lively Ivy Studios'
Some of the best pro/semi-pro Adventure Game Studio creators banding together.

NeoGAF on the Nintendo press conf - animated GIF stylee
Oh dear, core gamers are grumpy, hee.

Small game developers get on fast track - USATODAY.com
Hey, more indie game buzz.

Lookspring » Playing with history
Ms. Robertson on some slightly revisionist history re: Edge and its website.

Posted by Simon Carless at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Utah-headquartered indie developer NinjaBee has built up a major catalog of XBLA titles - from Cloning Clyde and Band of Bugs through the upcoming A Kingdom Of Keflings, and has more than broken out of the shadow of its parent developer, the more contract development-driven Wahoo Studios.

With the upcoming Keflings still shrouded in mystery, and the firm also helping out the winner of the 'Doritos Unlock Xbox' game design competition to create the amusingly unlikely Doritos Dash Of Destruction, we spoke in-depth with NinjaBee president Steve Taylor.

Some of the topics discussed during the interview include the differences between contracting and working on new IP, on working with Microsoft during the submissions process, and on the future of digital distribution for PC.

Is Ninjabee still considered a division of Wahoo Studios?

Steve Taylor: Yep! Wahoo Studios continues to do contract work and NinjaBee is the brand we use for our own creative efforts, usually from one small team within the company working on a self-funded project.

How are the differences between contracting and developing your own titles?

ST: The big differences for me mostly center around money and creative control. With work for hire, we don't have to come up with a bunch of development money ourselves and somebody else gets to deal with the marketing and release. But with indie projects we get to make the game we want!

Having experienced both ways for a while now, I've learned it's not always as black and white as it seems. For instance, if you want to sell your indie game on certain portal sites, you've got to follow a few rules about what you can do with your game, and suddenly you feel a little less indie, since you're not calling all the shots any more.

On the other side of the issue, work for hire doesn't mean unconstrained cash - it means milestones and cash flow and the risk of cancellation and balancing teams from project to project.

Each type of project has some hefty pros and cons, but we really enjoy doing both. We're making games either way, and it's the best job in the world!

What have you contracted on recently?

ST: Well, there's the Doritos Unlock Xbox project, which is public. This is technically a contract job for us, but it's a big collaborative effort between us, Microsoft, Doritos, and Mike, the contest winning designer. This is going well and has been a pretty interesting project. I'm confident people will be happy with the results.

You were one of the earliest companies to be developing new IP for Xbox Live Arcade. How did that happen?

ST: It was a bit of a strange path with Outpost Kaloki X - we designed a console game, pitched it to 30 publishers, got 30 rejections, and released an adapted version on the PC.

We continued to pitch the game around and finally showed it to Ross Erickson and Cherie Lutz who convinced us to consider Live Arcade for Xbox 360. We considered it (for about 15 seconds) and jumped at the chance to execute on the original console vision of the game and make it even better.

We had to borrow some money, and a chunk of the work was me in a dark room after hours developing a personal relationship with my dev kit. Microsoft supported us with hardware and people, and we got the game done in time for the platform launch.

Cloning Clyde was a bit different. John Nielson came to a meeting with us to pitch a completely different game, heard the Live Arcade pitch and walked away with little dancing sparklies in his eyes.

A few days later he said, "OK, there this guy named Clyde and he's involved in this cloning experiment with sheep and frogs and stuff," and at that point we couldn't have stopped him if we tried. This was also well before the launch of the platform, but we weren't done with the game until the next summer.

We followed those up with Band of Bugs (more original IP, but in a very different direction), and we're actively working on more original stuff for Live Arcade, including A Kingdom for Keflings.

Can you talk about A Kingdom for Keflings?

ST: Not a whole lot, yet. It's a crazy cool city building game, different from everything else we've done, and completely different from anything else on Live Arcade. Is it a good idea to go so far off the path of what's currently selling on Live Arcade? I guess we'll find out!

What did you think of the recent "delisting games" news?

ST: It's probably not a great idea for me to comment directly on controversial Microsoft policies. I can see some pros and cons. How's that for taking a stand?

Well, how has Microsoft been to work with?

ST: Overall, fantastic. More than anything else, it's the people that have been the best part of the experience. The producers and technical guys working on Live Arcade titles are hard-working and dedicated to the service.

I've gotten many e-mails written in the wee hours of the morning by people at Microsoft who felt that following through on promised feedback was more important than sleeping.

Have you ever felt constrained?

ST: Absolutely. I'll be honest - Microsoft has not hesitated to push us one direction or another where they felt it was critical, or to demand the addition or removal of a feature related to a particular policy. User-generated content, for instance, is still a particularly dangerous area to be in right now.

Microsoft bears the ultimate responsibility for this service and platform, and if I were in their shoes I would probably be pretty demanding as well. I might disagree with some of their policies and choices, but this is their platform and each platform has its own rules - including the PC, if you count big web portals and other distribution services.

Speaking of user-generated content, I heard that on Band of Bugs your level editor only allows users to make particularly small levels specifically to avoid people being able to spell out any swear words with their designs.

ST: Sort of - in the end, the size and complexity of the user-created levels was really up to us. We chose those limits mostly for performance reasons (an open-ended editor lets people do some crazy stuff that's expensive to process and render) but we also felt large sprawling levels didn't work well with the game mechanics.

The scale and resolution of maps in Band of Bugs was a design decision we made early on - we wanted the feel of Vandal Hearts more than the feel of Halo, for instance. Now, it is true that this seemed to help when it came time to get the level editor approved. More than one conversation was had about blocky maps making it harder to create offensive content, but nobody pretended that made it impossible.

The bigger issues were related to where the maps got stored, how users got access to them, how we could keep people from seeing content they don't want to see, etc. This stuff is still a pretty hot button, unfortunately.

It was the people we worked with that eventually made this editor happen. We got some individuals on the Live Arcade team behind the idea of the map editor, and they championed it and helped us get it approved, even though it was opening several cans of worms and raising a lot of questions.

There's been a lot of talk about how onerous their submission and testing process is otherwise, too.

ST: Yeah, the more vitriolic complaints have surprised me a bit. It's a console platform, and every console platform has a difficult certification process. It kinda sucks, but was it any less painful on previous or competing consoles? Not in my experience.

Here's another area where the people we're working with matter a lot - the producers and test people on the Live Arcade team work pretty hard to cut down on the complexity and frustration of this process.

How have you felt about the performance of your titles on Xbox Live?

ST: It's a mixed but mostly positive bag. Outpost Kaloki and Cloning Clyde have done well. Band of Bugs has been ignored by some players and very well received by others. None of our games have sold like UNO, but they've done well enough for us to continue to spend our own money on Live Arcade efforts!

And I'm extremely pleased with the work we've done with the NinjaBee name. I'm more personally proud of these titles than of anything I've done before in my professional career.

What about their performance on PC?

ST: Honestly, we're still trying to figure out how to make sales on the PC. We come from such a console-heavy background, we had to learn a whole lot of new things to release a PC game on our own, and we're still learning. But we'll keep doing it - I believe there's a lot of potential for these games and for NinjaBee in general on the PC.

Can you make a comparison between the performance on each platform? Your games are mostly strategy orientated, and I wondered if you've found the games fit the PC audience better.

ST: Because of our lack of experience (and lack of a hit so far!) on the PC, I feel sadly under-qualified to answer this. I think there's a ton of untapped potential on both systems. Maybe there's a way for us to get at more strategy players on Live. And I'm sure there are several zillion strategy players on the PC that haven't tried Band of Bugs...

What do you think of the distribution methods currently on offer for PC?

ST: I'm excited about PC distribution services offering LIVE-like features and community elements, like achievements and friends lists and things. Unfortunately, the people responsible have their own rules about what gets allowed on the service, just like their competitors. In some cases, this'll mean our more off-the-beaten-path stuff may get the cold shoulder.

Well, do you think that those kind of "destination" style storefronts, like Xbox Live, are preferable to the "everything and the kitchen sink" concept of something like, say, iTunes?

ST: A somewhat frustrating thing for us to learn from PC game portals was that some portals pop your game on their front page for one day, and you sink or swim based on that. This hasn't worked too well for us, because we're not usually making the kind of game that people visiting the popular portals want immediately just from a screenshot.

What saves us, I think, is the middle ground of a genre or category list - if somebody's looking for a tycoon game or something in the sim/strategy genre), they've got a decent chance of finding Outpost Kaloki.

Fortunately, both destination and kitchen-sink style services offer category listings. I'll take the one-day promotion if they'll give it to me, but after that I just have to hope people who are looking for my kind of game can find it, and in that case I sure hope my game stays listed somewhere for a long time...

Which other indie developers do you admire?

ST: I won't be able to hit all the teams I admire, but here's a few... I bow down to Don and Jake at Gastronaut, who are insanely nice people and who are geniuses pulling off the work of a team five times their size.

I'm a big fan of some guys who I think epitomize key facets of the "indie" approach, like 2D Boy, Flashbang Studios and Grubby Games. And I've met some shockingly open and friendly people at indie conferences and Live Arcade gatherings, including the Twisted Pixel guys, the Reflexive guys, John Baez from The Behemoth, Denis from Load Inc., and a ton of others.

Indie developers are the most passionate yet down to earth software makers I've ever met. At the GDC last year, I found myself looking forward more to the Indie Games Summit than anything else!

Posted by Simon Carless at 4:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

[Hope all our E3 troopers are still alive down there! Here's the latest from the Los Angeles battle zone area, where I believe the megaton has yet to drop - and may in fact be lost behind the sofa cushions.]

Still fed up with 20-post summaries of E3 press conferences? Following our handy Day 1 round-up, big sister site Gamasutra has returned with a full round-up of the major announcements, press events, and kerfuffle on Day 2 of E3 2008.

Tuesday at E3 was dominated by the press conference from hardware giants Nintendo and Sony - while Ubisoft also showed off its line of titles and announcements from publishers such as Disney also debuted.

- First up was the Nintendo press event, and Gamasutra's bulleted announcement guide explained the major reveals, from from Animal Crossing: City Folk through the WiiSpeak microphone, GTA: Chinatown Wars, the 2009 debut of Wii Sports Resort and its bundled MotionPlus accessory, and even Wii Music.

- Our own Brandon Sheffield then analyzed Nintendo's announcements, concluding of the incrementally innovative new products shown: "It’s perfectly acceptable to go with what works for some time – after all, that’s what everyone else is doing, by and large. Small innovations work well. Large disruptions can only come every once so often."

- Next was Sony's press conference, and again, we boiled down the major announcements into a simple document, from the company's new $399 80GB PS3, the launch of its video download service, new PSP titles Resistance: Retribution and Valkyria Chronicles, and Zipper's MAG (Massive Action Game) for PS3.

- Gamasutra's Christian Nutt then took a closer look at the action, suggesting, somewhat concerningly, that "While SCEA president and CEO Jack Tretton promised "a lineup that features the biggest exclusives in the industry"... his promise that "we've just begun to scratch the surface on what we intend to deliver to consumers in the years ahead" was probably the most important message at the conference."

- In addition, Ubisoft's E3 press conference revealed a new 'survival adventure' title, I Am Alive, from French studio Darkworks, as well as new ranges of casual games, from Monkeyz through the Ener-G girl-targeted DS game series.

- Elsewhere at the Summit, a number of other smaller announcements, including Disney's announcement of its line-up and - particularly interesting for developers - AiLive's debuting of its LiveMove 2 tool for the Wii's MotionPlus add-on - also debuted.

Stay tuned for a similar Gamasutra-authored summary for subsequent days of the E3 Media & Business Summit from the Los Angeles Convention Center.

Posted by Simon Carless at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

['Design Lesson 101' is a regular column by Raven game designer Manveer Heir. The challenge is to play a game from start to completion - and learn something about game design in the process. This week we take a look at Konami's PS2 port of the original Metal Gear]

Being once a PC gaming zealot, I missed a number of console games during my youth. After the Sega Genesis, I didn't own another console until a few years after the original Xbox was launched. As a result, there have been a number of big franchises and games I've missed out on, and I've been slowly trying to catch up on them.

One such franchise is Konami's Metal Gear series. With Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots having been recently released for the PS3, I decided it was high time I checked out the Metal Gear series, starting at the beginning. The real beginning, though, with the original Metal Gear for the MSX (or at least the ported version of it, which is available on Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence as an extra).

In playing the game, I was reminded how difficult and obtuse at times older games can be. What I found most interesting, however, was how the difficulty changed over time.

Design Lesson: By employing an inverse difficulty curve, Metal Gear is able to change the style of its gameplay as the player progresses.

Modern games do a fairly good job of introducing the player to new mechanics slowly. To help them along, designers often make sure the beginning of the game is the easiest, and difficulty increases incrementally from there.

Metal Gear's difficulty is flipped. While the player is introduced to new mechanics slowly, the beginning of the game is the hardest part. Solid Snake is given no weapons or items and charged with infiltrating an enemy base.

This means punching is the only method of attack available at the beginning of the game. Stealth is of the utmost importance during the early portions of the game, as a result. Sneaking around patrols to access new areas is how the majority of the beginning of the game plays. Being spotted alerts the guards, often leading to death or at least significant injury. Rations to restore health are rare at this stage in the game.

Soon, the player comes across a pistol, rations, and some key cards that open up new areas of the game. Part of Metal Gear revolves around saving prisoners. Save enough, and Solid Snake gains in rank, which ups his ammo capacities, maximum life, and number of rations that can be carried.

This is seemingly the primary game loop of Metal Gear. Sneak around, find objects that will gain you access to the next area, save people along the way, and rise in power over time.

By the time the player gets new weapons later in the game, like the grenade launcher and missile launcher, he is rather powerful. The enemies increase in number and strength, but not enough to counteract the strength of the player.

At this point, the gameplay changed for me. No longer was I supremely worried about sneaking. Sneaking was still a way of progressing, but I often found myself just running around the rooms trying to figure out where to go next. If enemies spotted me, I dispatched them easy.

Instead of dealing with enemies being the primary obstacle to game progression, the finding of the correct items to progress to the next area became the primary obstacle. Retracing my steps and trying to open every door became the style of play, and caution was slowly thrown into the wind.

As this continued, I would get even more powerful, to the point where I always had plenty of rations and firepower to defend myself against any aggression. The game world opened up dramatically, and I had many more options. This made finding the correct place to go difficult, but getting there wasn't. Whereas before, being caught by the enemy had significant ramifications, these ramifications were lost as I progressed through the game.

By the end of the game, I was a walking tank. I killed the last handful of bosses without breaking a sweat. I escaped easily. I conquered Metal Gear.

Normally games get harder as you go, but the core mechanic of the game stays the same. When the core mechanic is no longer necessary, a new way of playing is introduced. Because the game became easy from a survival point of view as I progressed, the way I approached the game began to differ.

I'm not sure if this was Hideo Kojima's intent when designing the game; it could just be bad game balancing or even something that happened during the porting of the MSX version of the game to the PS2. My preconceived notions of how the game would play were shattered, however. That's what ultimately made me enjoy the game so much; it did what I didn't expect it to do.

[Manveer Heir is currently a game designer at Raven Software. He updates his design blog, Design Rampage, regularly. He is interested in thoughtful critique and commentary on the gaming industry.]

Posted by Manveer Heir at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Wow, even through the swirling mists of E3, we still have some GameSetLinks left over from the weekend, headed by an awesomely diverse Diana Jones award shortlist - which I hadn't heard of before, but spans board and transgaming somewhat effortlessly.

Also in this set of links - the odd and neat homebrew Game Trivia Catechism (pictured - with Gremlin/Infogrames questions to peruse, blimey!), alongside games and art, bad hair, Kongai, and Rock Band 2 rockage,

Secular linkalige:

OgreCave » 2008 Diana Jones shortlist announced
Really interesting, thoughtful cross-media list from an originally board-game centric award.

Japanmanship: Good Art Director! Have a Creme Egg!
It's a bit Twinkie-ish, isn't it?

Multiple:Option: Game Trivia Catechism
More interesting DS homebrew: 'Game Trivia Catechism is a multiple-choice trivia game, testing your knowledge of video gaming.' With a story mode!

“Nooch on Gaming” will be signing off | Nooch on Gaming
Aw, the Merc News, my local, loses both Dean Takahashi and Mike Antonucci, some of the strongest mainstream newspaper game writers.

Playing by All the Rules | Quiet Babylon
'There is a certain arrogance that comes from being a scrub. It’s the idea that you know better than the designers whether or not their game is balanced.'

Rhizome: 'Games by Mark Essen'
Delighted to see 'game artist' being easily described on net-art site Rhizome.

GI Online: 'Bad Hair Day: Some Of The Worst Hair In Video-Game History'
Game Informer Online is pretty weird, post-Berghammer.

Play Kongai, a free online game on Kongregate
The David Sirlin-designed Flash CCG game debuts, aha!

Teaching Game Design: Giving Great Game Demos
Recapping a board game pitch discussion: 'Explaining the rules of a game is no different than teaching any other course material.'

Rock Band 2: The AV Club Hands-On Preview | The A.V. Club
Ex-GSW columnist Dahlen does a great job of explaining the heart behind Harmonix's sequel - lots of little specifics, too - via InSword.

Posted by Simon Carless at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

[Gamasutra's Christian Nutt returns from attending Sony's E3 2008 press conference to look past the announcements and analyze the trends, asking primarily - was Sony's message to consumers targeted to the now, or to the soon?]

The most important theme of Sony's press conference this year seemed to be "just wait."

That's not a good sign for a company whose next-generation platform has not yet hit its stride and which - it was revealed at the conference - will still cost $399.99 in the U.S. at year's end, albeit for an 80GB model.

While SCEA president and CEO Jack Tretton promised "a lineup that features the biggest exclusives in the industry" and reminded the audience that "as many of you have already written, 2008 is the year of the PS3," his promise that "we've just begun to scratch the surface on what we intend to deliver to consumers in the years ahead" was probably the most important message at the conference.

Recapping the PlayStation and PlayStation 2 lifespan, Tretton reminded us that big hits didn't appear on those systems until middle and later in their lives - for example, God of War II didn't hit the PS2 until nearly seven years after the system's launch. The same, it was implied, would hold true for the PlayStation 3 - but in the meantime, here's Resistance 2.

Sony does have one game it can rely on for generating goodwill in the mainstream and hardcore press like no other - and that game was used to deliver a typically staid presentation of the hard numbers to the attendees, which very much took the edge off (and served as a clever way to show the game without debuting any new features.) Yes, LittleBigPlanet was used to deliver a PowerPoint presentation in gorgeous, amusing, and clever 3D.

Tretton reminded us (with help from LBP's Sackboy) that the company has three very active platforms, with calendar 2008 sales in North America of 1.8 million for the PS3, 1.6 million for the PSP, and 1.5 million for the PS2. Tretton announced Latin American distribution for its consoles is commencing. Worldwide goals for the systems this year are 9 million PS2s, 10 million PS3s, and 15 million PSPs - showing continued confidence in the uptick the portable has seen in recent months.

Painting the PS2 as an "incubator for next-generation adoption", Tretton promised 130 titles for the system in the year and showed a video with no surprises whatsoever - relying on Madden and Tiger Woods from the perennial EA Sports lineup.

The PSP video was similar, though a Resistance game, developed by Sony's Bend Studio, was revealed later. Tretton also talked up Sony's social gaming efforts, showing Buzz titles for every Sony platform and plenty of Singstar titles for the PS2.

Earlier, Alex Evans, co-founder of LittleBigPlanet developer Media Molecule, expressed his happiness that his game is appreciated by a "wide range of people" and "what I find amazing is that this concept of creative gaming, people have just really got it."

Fortunately, LBP is not the only effort Sony is making to reach out to creative, networked gamers. Tretton revealed that there have been 180 million downloads on the PlayStation network since November 2006, across 10 million accounts.

Snarkily, after announcing a new download-only Ratchet & Clank game for PSN, Tretton remarked "We're not interested in filling up our store with titles nobody wants to play s owe can say we have the most games." Gran Turismo TV, a video-on-demand service for motorsports video which operates from within Gran Turismo 5 Prologue was unveiled. With licensed content from around the world, including Japanese and British programming (BBC's Top Gear), it appears to offer an almost unrealistically hardcore channel for race fans.

Basic promises for the eventual release of PlayStation Home came next - with nothing new or significant about the platform shown. Tretton said, "I absolutely guarantee that when PlayStation Home is available through our extended beta program, your patience will be more than rewarded." I'm still optimistic about Home, but waiting to find out what it will really offer is wearing somewhat thin.

Tretton next announced and demoed the PSN video download service with the help of Eric Lempel, PSN director of operations. It does look easy to use and impressive, and should help stave off the "Netflix advantage" Microsoft is enjoying, per its announcement yesterday.

Next, Sony presented a video reel of developers talking up developing on its PlayStation 3 system - to try and instill some sort of confidence in the press (and perhaps, other developers) that the platform has unique features, has matured its tech, has gained the necessary audience, and offers a future that is worth participating in.

Points touched on included that it has much untapped power, that programmers can really use the complicated SPU architecture properly now, and the system was packed with "forward-looking" features "including disk space", according to Dominic Guay, tech director at Ubisoft Montreal, who joined others from EA Tiburon and Bethesda in praise of the machine.

A CG God of War III teaser was shown, but the final unveil was Zipper Interactive's MAG: Massive Action Game (pictured), which is the owner of both one of the worst titles in the history of games and impressive technology that will allow 256 players to join together to fight massive battles - presumably, anyway, as the trailer seemed to be target footage and not show gameplay-specific action.

Andy Beaudoin, lead designer at Zipper, promised that "It's a real workout for even the PS3 architecture - it's not remotely possible anywhere else... there's nothing like it on the market today."

Tretton summed it up like this. Having earlier recalled that we are now reaching the 15 year anniversary of the fateful meeting where the original PlayStation was greenlit at Sony, "If this is what year two of the PS3 lifecycle looks like, imagine years three and beyond."

The problem, of course, is that imagination can only go so far in such a competitive market, and with important exclusives like Final Fantasy XIII falling by the wayside, the price of the unit not coming down fast, and sequelitis becoming a real potential problem, it's not clear if the PS3 will be able to pull out of its current trend of doing pretty well, but not well enough.

Posted by Simon Carless at 10:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (10)

[Brandon Sheffield was at Nintendo's E3 2008 press briefing, and here looks at the major announcements made and asks - was there anything truly new on show, and if not, does that really matter?]

The Nintendo press conference at E3 2008 opened with a cheesy montage, which felt a bit like a commercial for Lifetime Television, hammering home the idea that all genders, races, and ages love the Wii. The theme for the conference was, “We promise to keep the world smiling…”

The first smiling presenter was Cammie Dunaway, Nintendo’s VP of Marketing and Sales, who recounted a tale of difficulty snowboarding, in which she took a fall. “Snowboarding is really a lot harder than it looks. But the fact is I don’t like a smile taken off my face for anything. And I really don’t like giving up. I decided that as a snowboarder, all I needed was a little help from a friend. A really talented friend. And I think I’ve found the perfect answer.”

The curtain rose to reveal a shoeless Shaun White, red-topped snowboarder extraordinaire, playing the Wii snowboarding game on the Balance Board. Shaun White then partook in the continued cavalcade of scripted banter for the fun-looking Ubisoft-published product, after which Cammie proclaimed: “Now if everyone would welcome me in joining our president... ‘Satooroo’ Iwata.”

Iwata was, as usual, and perhaps by design, the most sensible person to take the stage, claiming that “A big change, actually a big paradigm shift has taken place in the global game market.”

He mentioned that during E3 2005 everyone held a pessimistic view of Nintendo. But he understood this, because he says everyone was taking a common sense view of the game industry, saying that not even employees at Nintendo “would have imagined that we would be selling millions of bathroom scales around the world.” (referring here to the Balance Board)

Iwata made the bold statement that “A common sense view (of the game industry) doesn’t work anymore.” He continued on to highlight a few points about the current state of the industry from the Nintendo perspective, noting:

“In the past it seemed impossible to expect any software to sell for two years or three years. But titles like Nintendogs and Brain Age are doing just that - also New Super Mario Bros and Mario Kart DS. To use a western term, these titles seem to be evergreens.”

The Nintendo exec continued: “I believe it is no longer commonsense that players seek new titles only with more sophisticated graphics, and more complicated contents.” He also hinted that Nintendo’s more traditional design teams are cranking away at new products, stating that “Our internal team that creates Mario games, and our team that makes Zelda games, are both hard at work. They will bring new games to the Wii.”

Iwata admitted that people get tired of new ideas eventually - “This happens faster when others try to reproduce the initial change" - perhaps referencing both game-specific and hardware-specific Nintendo copiers?

"There is danger in standing still,” he added. “Personally I believe that we must find different ways for players to become engaged. We at Nintendo always challenge ourselves to be pioneers, seeking new paradigms.”

From here on out, it was game announcements, stats indicating Nintendo’s current and projected future dominance of the handheld space and successes in the console space. The inevitable Star Wars Clone Wars light saber game, Raving Rabbids TV Party and Call of Duty World at War all got equal time on the reel of third party Wii titles.

Perhaps the biggest announcement, which was demonstrated with no images or videos, aside from a logo, was Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars for DS. It was somewhat telling that this was the ‘big announcement’ for core gamers.

Certainly, Grand Theft Auto is a huge license, and a big deal to be on a Nintendo platform. It stands to reason that this GTA will be the best selling of all of them, given the installed base of the DS combined with name recognition and media hype.

But on the other hand, it’s clear that the core gamer is not what Nintendo is targeting - not that it really matters ultimately in terms of sales, considering how small the core gamer market is when compared to the potential markets they could reach with more accessible software.

One intriguing element to me was in the upcoming Wii title Animal Crossing: City Folk. Certainly there was the WiiSpeak microphone announcement, which allows a room full of players to converse with another, but this is far from an innovation.

I was most intrigued by the almost off-hand comment that users will be able to send messages through Animal Crossing, with pictures, to friends’ cellphones and PCs, as well as other users in the game. Depending on how Nintendo creates the interface and infrastructure for that service, this could be a Trojan Horse to get some larger-scale networking capability and interactivity with the Wii.

Reggie Fils-Aime was the main numbers man, speculating that the DS would soon reach the 100 million sales mark. He also indicated that 19 different third party games on Nintendo platforms have exceeded 400k+ units – coming from 11 different publishers. And Cammie returned to say that as of 2007, 48% of DS recipients are female.

She hinted at the potential future of the DS as a personal assistant as well, posing: “What if DS and air travel came together in a different way? For example, when I land, why can’t my DS provide information on where to get my luggage? What about the nearest ATM?”

When Reggie reclaimed the stage to talk about Wii MotionPlus, he admitted, “As every game player knows, technical advances can be empty promises without software.” Nintendo’s answer is the successor to Wii Sports, Wii Sports Resort.

The Reggie/Cammie duo demonstrated the one-to-one movement ratio of the new device, which does look quite precise. Then the scripted one-liners returned. After Cammie played catch with a dog, she said, “Oh Reggie, you’ve got to admit, is that the cutest thing you’ve ever seen?”

But Reggie, ever the man, posed that guys would rather play the jetski game, which he then demonstrated. “Guys like power stuff,” he said. The third Wii Sports Resort game they demonstrated was what looked like Kendo. Reggie and Cammie faced off, for one real match with Reggie winning the first round, and taking a fake fall the second round.

The last big announcement was Wii Music. Apparently you “play” instruments by pantomiming, and the software takes care of the rest. The demonstrations that ensued were uncoordinated at best, and even somewhat dissonant at times.

It’s clearly aimed at the casual market, though with the drums, you can use the Balance Board as foot pedals, and you should be able to take lessons as well – but without the tactile response of actual drums, it seems less effective than Rock Band at teaching, perhaps.

So what did I take from this? These are all logical extensions of Nintendo’s strategy. Reggie mentioned at the end of the presentation that the goal, after successfully disrupting an industry, is to disrupt one’s own thinking. I would pose that the announcements here were not disruptive to Nintendo’s currently line, but rather follow them to the letter.

That’s not a problem, as it’s working, and these new interpretations of what the Wii Remote can do will likely succeed for the company. But it’s not anything truly new. And does that really matter?

I would say not. It’s perfectly acceptable to go with what works for some time – after all, that’s what everyone else is doing, by and large. Small innovations work well. Large disruptions can only come every once so often.

So while there weren’t any huge announcements per se, Nintendo's E3 press briefing was in line with expectations. And frankly, what can one expect from a press conference other than a lot of pomp and circumstance?

Posted by Simon Carless at 8:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

['Welcome to the GameSetWatch Comic' is, once again, a weekly comic by Jonathan "Persona" Kim about the continuing adventures of our society, cultural postdialectic theory, and video games.]

EDITOR'S POSTSCRIPT: Well, we're delighted to say that Persona is a) over his Persona 3 comic fixation and b) back in full effect and full color, examining the telling differences between Slimes and Puyos. It's comitragic!

[Jonathan "Persona" Kim is a character animation student at the California Institute of the Arts. When not recovering from anime conventions, he continues the Mecha Fetus revolution on the Mecha Fetus Visublog.]

Posted by persona at 4:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

[Yes, yes, I know, you come over to GSW to get _away_ from the E3 shouting. Well, since we have a lot of people on the ground in LA on behalf of big sister site Gamasutra, and they're actually summing things up quite succinctly, I'll be crossposting our round-ups daily. Promise they won't get too obnoxious.]

Fed up with the 20-post summaries of single E3 press conferences? Never fear, since Gamasutra is your guide to the first day of E3, with a full round-up of the major announcements, press events, and kerfuffle in one handy, bite-sized post.

Monday at E3 provided the first of three hardware provider press events, with Microsoft showcasing its Xbox 360 strategy for the rest of the year and beyond - while other notables such as Electronic Arts and Square Enix also discussed their slate for 2008.

- First for the day, Microsoft's E3 press event had a host of new announcements, from avatars through karaoke game Lips to its biggest surprise - Final Fantasy XIII coming to the Xbox 360 in the West day and date with the PS3 version.

- Gamasutra's Chris Remo followed up with an analysis of the Microsoft event, adding color and noting overall: "Seemingly satisfied it has already demonstrated a broad, inclusive library for its Xbox 360, Microsoft mainly focused on value added propositions such as online offerings, video services, and exclusive downloadable content for high-profile titles."

- Square Enix conducted a press conference immediately following the Microsoft one. Justification for FFXIII coming to Xbox? Simply enough: "We considered the situation of the hardware, and that we would like to provide FFXIII to as many fans as possible in the world."

- The final major event of the day was the Electronic Arts press conference, which revealed the SimAnimals franchise, had Napster founder Shawn Fanning onstage talking about his Rupture gaming social network site, and demonstrated a lot of upcoming EA titles.

- The big reveal for EA, however, was the deal with id Software for RAGE, which Gamasutra has followed up with a chat to id's John Carmack about just how it happened.

Stay tuned for a similar Gamasutra-authored summary for subsequent days of the E3 Media & Business Summit from the Los Angeles Convention Center.

Posted by Simon Carless at 9:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

['Quiz Me Quik' is a weekly GameSetWatch column by journalist Alistair Wallis, in which he picks offbeat subjects in the game business and interviews them about their business, their perspective, and their unique view of life. This time - a look into the art game world with Tale Of Tales.]

Possibly one of the more interesting things that came up during this interview with Belgium based indie development duo Tale of Tales was the idea that they are, effectively, experimental outsiders in the games industry simply because of their focus on story based, artistically motivated work.

Isn't that weird? Can you imagine what the film industry would be like if narrative works were substantially less popular than action based films?

Well, okay, maybe that's a bad example, given the films that tend to come out on top at the box office these days, but you get the point.

The studio, comprised of Auriea Harvey and Michaël Samyn, admit that this isn't even something that's occurred to them before now. In fact, they consider what they do an “extremely traditional approach”, at least from the perspective of other medium, like cinema and music.

Then again, you get the idea from talking to them that maybe they're pretty used to being the outsiders at this point. Their favourite games are all at least five years old, proof that “a certain consolidation is happening where the big game companies are happy producing braindead toys for the masses”. Indie companies, for the most part are “creating braindead toys for the cliques”. Yeah, they're probably not exactly gunning for the Christmas card list, at this point.

But what would you expect from a group whose most commercial – for lack of better word – work is The Endless Forest, an MMO where the description is “You are a deer. So are the other players. You meet each other in an endless forest on the Internet. The setting is idyllic, the atmosphere peaceful. You communicate with one another through sounds and body language”? It's a bit bonkers, but gloriously so: wonderfully, artistically so.

They've also just started writing up a blog detailing the development of their next game, The Path, due in early 2009. So, we decided to chat with Harvey and Samyn about their beginnings, their somewhat provocative views on the industry, and why teenage boys find it a complete affront to their delicate sexuality to be asked to jump around as deer.

GSW: When did you start working together? Did you immediately start working under the name Tales of Tales?

Tale of Tales: We started working together in 1999 under the name of "Entropy8Zuper!" which was the merger of entrop8.com and zuper.com into entropy8zuper.org. We created Internet art and web-design. We were fairly well known in media art circles. A lot of our work was inspired by games. And we even made a few real-time 3D web-projects - one commissioned by the San Francisco MOMA. But it wasn't until 2002 that we started thinking about actually making games. A year later we founded Tale of Tales.

GSW: What got you thinking about games as an expressive medium?

ToT: It's important to make a distinction between games as such and video or computer games, when answering this. Because, even though we had used game-like elements in our web-based work, when switching to real-time 3D we had no interest at all in making actual games. For us computer games have always been something different.

Playing computer games has always been about immersion and characters and stories. The best video games were the ones that just let us enjoy these elements. But sadly, most video games, sooner or later, stopped us from enjoying ourselves - from playing - by confronting us with the rules and goals of the actual game, often by either making our character die or by blocking our progress with some inane puzzle.

So, for us, computer games have always been an expressive medium. Except for the "game" part, which destroyed the expression. Thus it was only logical for us to create video games that focused on this expression and to remove everything that did no contribute to the immersion and atmosphere.

GSW: Was your goal of embedding real-time 3D as an artistic medium one of your intentions from the beginning?

ToT: We have always been artists. We were making art with other media before. We chose real-time 3D because we thought it would be a good technology for the kind of art we wanted to make.

GSW: What was the first project you worked on?

ToT: Our relationship started by uploading Dynamic HTML love letters for each other to a common server. Later we made this "conversation" public as . It's still available from there.

But that was long before we started making games. As Tale of Tales, our first project was 8: a dreamy game that takes place in the palace of Sleeping Beauty during the 100 years of sleep. We haven't been able to finish this project because it requires a larger budget than anyone trusts us with, for now.

GSW: I assume your budgets are growing over time, though?

ToT: Actually, it's the opposite. The first arts funding we got was the largest we ever got. That was for our first game project, 8. Recently we have only been able to get much smaller budgets. This had more to do with a shift in the kind of people that are in the jury than anything else though.

But arts funding would never suffice for real video game production anyway. 8 was designed to be developed within the games industry, even if it was initiated within an media arts context. But so far, we haven't worked with any games industry funding yet. Which is odd, because it's not like our work does not benefit the games industry.

We're doing a lot of pioneering that could help everybody in the long run. So, I don't quite understand why the big players like EA and Ubisoft or even Valve or Konami don't invite independent game makers to create a project with them - for a fraction of the budgets that they are used to spending on games, we could make something that takes their entire company years ahead, conceptually.

To their credit, I must say that Sony has been talking with us - and some other developers as well - about small experimental productions for the PlayStation Network that they would fund. So somebody is doing it right.

GSW: Do you consider yourselves primarily artists?

ToT: Yes. But not necessarily in the elitist contemporary fine arts sense of the word. More in the sense that the expression, the meaning of what we make, comes first, before the technology, before the commerce, before the entertainment. But that doesn't mean that we exclude all these things. It's just a matter of priorities. Making games is only an art form when there are people who are making art with games. You know, like: on purpose.

Everybody who makes games, or at least the people in charge of the design and the story, should be an artist. We don't see much point to the whole thing otherwise. Otherwise you're just shipping products.

GSW: Product is an unavoidable part of the medium to a degree, though.

Of course. Because the high production budgets and low consumer prices require you to sell a lot of copies. We have no problem with the selling of art works to people. That's great.

It's just when the process is reversed, when people start designing these things for the purpose of selling them, that you fall into an industrial production logic. Which is hurting the entire industry because it is hampering creative progress.

Also, and perhaps more importantly, it's a matter of task division. It is absolutely vital for a marketing or sales person to think of commercial aspects first, to think of selling as much copies as required. That is their job. But a game director or artist should be focused on achieving the highest level of quality and usability. At the moment the games industry does a very poor job in allowing creative people to do what they are good at.

The industry forces everybody to think of the bottom line all the time. Even if they're not equipped to do so. It's another sign of its immaturity.

GSW: What would you say are your primary influences?

ToT: Figurative painting - renaissance, baroque, romanticist, symbolist - the Saint Bavo Cathedral in our home town of Gent, Belgium, films by Wong Kar Wai, Ingmar Bergman, Hal Hartley. And then there's a few video games: Silent Hill, Project Zero, Ico, Black and White.

GSW: It seems safe to say that you appreciate atmosphere and character, then. Particularly with the games that you've mentioned, they focus on location as a hugely important part of the overall experience. Ico's castle is arguably as vital a character as its two protagonists.

ToT: It's about situations. A character in an environment. That's where the story starts. A deer on its own is moderately interesting. But a deer in a forest is poetic and immediately triggers all sorts of associations in the mind of the player.

But don't overestimate the influence of other games on our work. Painting and architecture are far more important. Other games mostly serve the function of assuring us that we're not entirely crazy. That what we find interesting in this medium is actually feasible and enjoyable.

Also, other games than the ones we really like can be very influential. If only because frustrating with their gameplay motivates us to not incorporate that kind of stuff in our own work.

GSW: What do you find exciting in the industry, both in terms of commercial and independent product?

ToT: We're not particularly fond of any industry. Much like we weren't fond of the art world before. But at least the games industry is better organized to give the audience access to our work. There is a lot of hope in the games industry, and thus a lot of support for experimental designers like ourselves. That's nice.

GSW: Is it something that you've seen improve over the last six or so years?

ToT: Honestly: no. As you can tell from our little list of favourite games, all relatively old games, we don't think significant progress has been made lately. Five years ago, the dream seemed a lot more alive within the games industry. Now it seems a certain consolidation is happening where the big game companies are happy producing braindead toys for the masses.

So far, in turn, the independents have been mostly creating braindead toys for the cliques. But I think there is still hope there. Especially since new digital distribution channels are stimulating even big companies to have pseudo-independent side projects.

GSW: What has the reaction to your titles been like from gamers? Considering that one of your main goals is to "make art for people", is it an important factor in what you do?

ToT: Maybe we should rephrase that to "make art for people, not for gamers".

We would like to make games that can be appreciated by p