Aha, weekend means new GameSetLinks, starting out with the tail end of a PlayStation Network interview on CrispyGamer which really does - through no fault of the interviewer's - degenerate into a bit of a crazed jargonfest.

Also wandering around in here - some odd updates from Signature Devices, Space Invaders memorabilia, the anti-Ubisoft war game protest (pictured), controversy from Sheffield, pensioners going to DanceTown, and lots more, thankfully.

Y'know, stuff:

Crispy Gamer - Column: PlayStation Network Honcho Susan Panico -- In the Firing Line (Page 4)
'You look at the Pimp My Rides of the world, things that are socially relevant, socially engaging, and that become part of pop culture --we want to make the PlayStation Network a destination.' My buzzword bingo pen just broke.

Legend of Neil, Episode 3 - Atom.com
Creepy 'viral' video about someone who gets transported into Legend Of Zelda through auto-erotic controller asphyxiation. Yes, really.

Signature Devices Updates Shareholders on Status of Company - MarketWatch
Signature Devices I've covered before, and are so weird (penny stock shareholder press release crazy, they are) - interesting to see specific numbers for Mazes Of Fate DS. But they "cut expenses by 2/3"? Maybe pennies don't pay bills.

Activists Protest America's Army Game With Songs and Stickers | Game | Life from Wired.com
Hey, cool, Kohler covered the protest I mentioned in GameSetLinks a few days back - the Wired offices are just right round the corner from GSW central.

NeoGAF - View Single Post - Game Developer magazine joins the next-gen hate train (Wii > *.*, Blu-ray sucks, etc)
Game Developer EIC Sheffield explains his treasonous words!

Jane Heald's comment on GameSetWatch - Analysis: Making DDR For Seniors With Touchtown's Dancetown
Awesome 77-year olds are totally all over Dancetown.

Good game, good game - joystick - E4.com
Oo, B3ta's Rob Manuel making a game from scratch in 6 weeks, and it's already v.amusing.

Taito teams up with LaForet Harajuku to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Space Invaders « Arcade Heroes
Games as pop art, more plz.

chewing pixels » War(hammer) of Words
Yeah, this is clearly what Barnett said, no weaseling, plz.

Cliffski’s Blog » Press release day
Kudos 2 art by Jamie McKelvie. Neat. I think it needs a copy edit/script punch-up, looking at some of the screenshot typos, though. RPS-ers, someone offer!

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

['Homer in Silicon' is a biweekly GameSetWatch column by Emily Short. It looks at storytelling and narrative in games of all flavors, including the casual, indie, and obscurely hobbyist. This article looks at the problem of separating player and protagonist goals.]

Last year I participated in a panel on tragedy in interactive storytelling. One of the big questions there was: if the player identifies with the protagonist and is motivated by the desire for the protagonist to "win" or "succeed", how can satisfying interactive tragedy exist? Won't the player always be trying to avoid actions that propel the story to an unhappy conclusion? What can an interactive tragedy offer to the player in place of traditional metrics of success?

My ideas then were largely about tapping into the player's desire for other kinds of gratification: the desire to see the end of the story; the desire to make significant choices (even if those choices lead to endings that are unhappy in different ways); the desire to explore the constraints of the universe in which the story takes place.

To that list, I would now add: the desire to precipitate a dramatic crisis.

The player faces a situation where he could do something risky and stupid, with negative ramifications for the protagonist, which would nonetheless be narratively interesting. He's probably curious about what would happen if he did.

How does the game get him to go ahead? How is the player cajoled into doing something that sets the protagonist back?

The clearest example in my experience comes from a game you almost certainly haven't heard of: "Treasures of the Slaver's Kingdom", a text adventure by RPG author S. John Ross. It's set in the parody-RPG universe of "Encounter Critical", and was marketed primarily to Encounter Critical's existing fanbase -- namely, people who enjoy a spoofily ridiculous mix of elements from Star Wars, Star Trek, Conan the Barbarian, and similar geek-sacred texts.

To discuss how "Treasures" gets the player to betray the protagonist, I'll need to spoil it a bit. Details after the jump.

The protagonist in "Treasures" is a metal-and-furs-style Barbarian. His sword is broad, his wits dull. He makes regular visits to a Delicate Doxy, who treats him to the sorts of pleasures a Barbarian enjoys most (for a very reasonable fee). The player likes her too, because she's got lots of useful plot information.

On the second or third visit, the Barbarian notices that the Doxy doesn't look like herself. She appears to have grown antennae and to be making a strange buzzing noise. But he assures himself that this is nothing to worry about, and is eager to proceed with the usual transaction.

Now the player, who has by this point seen several references to evil bee people, cannot possibly be so credulous as the protagonist. But when I played I felt no compunction about walking the protagonist into the obvious trap -- in fact, I enjoyed doing so. It was in character for him. It was much more interesting than getting away. Moreover, I was pretty sure that whatever happened next, I wasn't going to ruin the game for myself.

Several things have to happen to create a context for such dramatic choices. The connection between protagonist and player has to be attenuated a little: I have to sympathize with my protagonist while at the same time not feeling that my fate is bound into his. My primary commitment has to be to the story, rather than to my avatar. That allows me to enjoy and get something out of a narrative that features set-backs for the character. And there has to be a guarantee of safety. I'm not going to play with the interesting but potentially negative outcomes nearly as much if I think they might later interfere with my ability to finish the story.

"Treasures" addresses all of these points. It accomplishes the player/protagonist separation through one of the most straightforward means available: it draws the protagonist as significantly less intelligent than the player. The text of the game frequently describes things in such terms that the player understands them better than the protagonist (a trick also used by the award-winning "Lost Pig").

This is not difficult to do in prose, since a reader will often recognize from a literal physical description what something must be, even if the protagonist doesn't know the name of what he's looking at. A graphical interface would have to work harder to create such a separation between protagonist and player perception, perhaps offering access to the protagonist's thoughts via a voice-over or other hints; and the characterization still needs to be deft enough that the player enjoys spending time with his stupid protagonist, even while looking down on him.

"Treasures" also takes full advantage of the conventions of its genre. The barbarian warrior is supposed to be proud, strong, and stupid, so "Treasures" plays that to the hilt: the protagonist frequently notices the manliness of his own thews. The player is more or less forced to regard him as an example of a type, rather than a fully-fleshed person.

Finally, "Treasures" makes it feel safe to experiment with the dramatic possibilities through external assurances that the game will never become unwinnable: as the website memorably puts it, "If your arm falls off, that's part of the story, I promise."

This still doesn't get us all the way to interactive tragedy. "Treasures" is certainly not one, and some of the techniques it uses wouldn't be appropriate for a tragedy meant to be taken seriously. "Make the protagonist thicker than bricks" isn't exactly a design methodology suitable for all seasons.

Some of the other techniques are more widely applicable, though: guaranteeing that the story will never become unfinishable; offering the player options that are in-character but disadvantageous to the protagonist; and setting up scenes in which the question of what's behind the door marked DANGER is just too fascinating to leave unexplored.

The player's curiosity provides a game-play reason to try the dangerous action. The protagonist's flaws (if not stupidity, then pride, vanity, greed...) provide the narrative justification.

It can be done.

[Emily Short is an interactive fiction author and part of the team behind Inform 7, a language for IF creation. She also maintains a blog on interactive fiction and related topics. She can be reached at emshort AT mindspring DOT com.]

Posted by Emily Short at 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

[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 delights in this latest version include a Western 2D shooter, a gumshoe adventure, a browser game not unlike something from Orisinal, an addictive puzzler, and a new monthly game from this year's IGF Grand Prize winner.

Game Pick: 'Floating Islands Game' (Arvi Teikari, freeware)
"A puzzle game described as Lemmings crossed with Hapland. Your challenge is to figure out the order in which to click on each object, and clear the path for the protagonist to reach his destination conveniently marked by a checkered flag in each of the thirty-five levels included."

Game Pick: 'Super HyberDoze' (John Evelyn, browser)
"Cute little action game by John Evelyn, created in a style that fans of Ferry Halim's works would be familiar with. A girl is fast asleep and dreaming of bad thoughts, which appear in reality to wake her up. Make sure she isn't disturbed by patting, shaking, popping and throwing the mischievous creatures of nature to knock them off their stride."

Game Pick: 'Calamity Annie' (auntie pixelante, freeware)
"A new action game by dessgeega, developer of Mighty Jill Off and Invader. Step into the high heels of a gunslinger as she attempts to save the old west from a group of wanted criminals by engaging them in a showdown, one hombre at a time."

Game Pick: 'Fedora Spade - The Last Job' (RPGCreations, freeware)
"The final episode brings closure to the four part adventures of the suave detective, where more is revealed about his mysterious past as Daphne seeks the truth behind the loss of his brother and Spade's ex-partner."

Game Pick: 'Choke on My Groundhog, You Robots' (Kloonigames, freeware)
"A new monthly experimental game by Petri Purho, where players will engage waves after waves of enemy robots in a fight for their survival. This Assembly 2008 Gamedev entry employs a certain time travel gimmick to make subsequent attempts at each level a little easier."

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

[In this in-depth opinion piece, game commentator Duncan Fyfe considers the educational potential of games -- and wonders whether the ardent hype that surrounds certain flagship titles may be a part of that potential.]

What makes learning fun? Check with any demographic that's high school age or younger and the answer will probably be "nothing."

School is where we are introduced to the idea of learning as a regulated process, and it is expressed to us there as a punitive contract.

Often we try to learn because we fear the consequences, not because -- especially not at an early age -- we have a Jeffersonian zeal for knowledge. Rare and precocious are the self-made seven-year-old scholars, and the rest become combative and reluctant when faced with calculus and biology.

The truism we learn the best is that learning is work. That's even the case with ostensibly enjoyable subject matter. Kids are smart, and they sense that To Kill A Mockingbird is really about writing essays and delivering presentations. Put any great work of literature in a class of high school boys and watch it be diminished to to a laughable, pretentious relic. Few can appreciate a classic in that environment.

The problem isn't with the novel or even with the intelligence of the boys. The contract of learning is the problem. In high school, they'll discover way more about chlamydia than they will about Keats. Students are conditioned to approach literature with entirely the wrong mindset.

Allow Learning To Entertain

The trick to enthusiastic learning is the trick. We need to have the right attitude, need to be in the right frame of mind to develop interests in art on its own terms and at our own pace. It's not necessary to instantly attempt a codification of its merits even when the art does not move us to speak.

We grow up viewing classic fiction as homework first and art second. It follows that we like learning best when we don't think we're doing it. We like literature more when there's no studying involved. What better medium for learning, then, than that apotheosis of anti-intellectualism, the video game?

We can learn a lot from games in ways we cannot from more traditional avenues. Simply by virtue of being entertainment, of course, video games automatically bypass defenses against intellectualism. I posit that there is more to it. Certain games are in a position to take advantage of gamer psychology peculiarities and have players happily engage with potentially educational themes. The game's intention is probably not to teach, and the player's intention is certainly not to learn, but it will happen nonetheless.

Educational video games are represented on a broad continuum. Educational and Serious games, those that are exclusive to school computers, are one thing. Mass market puzzles like Brain Age and Typing of the Dead are one more. Another thing entirely is high-profile, sophisticated games like BioShock, Metal Gear Solid 4, and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.

Clearly, they do not explore their political and philosophical themes -- objectivism, the war economy, the Middle East conflict -- at any level deep enough to substitute the video game for a university education or even the introductory paragraph of a Wikipedia article. They are not academics, nor comprehensive, nor credible.

Graduates will boast that their college professors were Cornel West, John Rawls and Michael Abbott; no one will cite BioShock, PhD on his thesis. Compared to video games like Big Brain Academy and Darfur is Dying, however, BioShock and Metal Gear Solid have the potential to be better teachers.

They have a captive audience. At present, the psychological climate of gamers is both frightening and alluring, but it is, amongst other things, the right mindset.

Capitalize On Hype Catalysts

Video games are an exceptionally diverse medium, but they suffer from a dearth of creativity within sub-strata. If one likes the fundamental gameplay model of an RPG, they'd better learn to to like fantasy and science fiction, because that's all they have. If one likes the visceral action of a shooter, they'd better learn to like World War II and... science fiction. If one has only a PlayStation 3 for gaming, they'd better learn to like Resistance and Ratchet & Clank.

No one bought Metal Gear Solid 4 solely for Hideo Kojima's unique treatise on private military corporations and the war economy, but a lot of people bought it because it was a major title for the only console they own, and were looking to validate that original purchase. When Metal Gear Solid is the only game in town, the player is going to get very well acquainted with it.

More still bought it because they were invested, via message board proxy wars, in the financial success of the PS3 platform. Metal Gear Solid 4, as a major exclusive title for a console which attracts relatively few major exclusives, evoked a great protective fervor in its audience that it would have done had it appeared simultaneously on Xbox 360, PC, Wii, DS, PS2, PSP, the iPhone, and the N-Gage. Or if there were a dozen other titles releasing at the same time -- on any platform -- with comparable levels of production, positive hype and potential for high sales.

BioShock and Call of Duty were not exclusives but, as triple-A titles, they reached such a critical mass of excitement and press that guaranteed their voice would be heard, as hardcore gamers had to play them to stay in the loop.

1UP.com's Shawn Elliott wondered recently why Monolith's Project Origin generates less hype than Guerilla Games' Killzone 2, when Monolith has the better track record with F.E.A.R. and Condemned, more to show of Project Origin itself, and no major PR blunder like Killzone 2's "possibly real" pre-rendered footage at E3 2005.

The disproportionate levels of enthusiasm are because Project Origin is coming to the 360, the PS3 and the PC. Neither it, nor F.E.A.R. before it are able to inspire the zealotry associated with flagship titles for the Sony consoles, which the Killzone series can enjoy. Killzone 2 has a dedicated audience that Project Origin doesn't, and so it has a chance -- that it shouldn't waste but probably will -- to talk about something important, to teach.

Guerilla, Kojima, 2K and Infinity Ward have gamers right where a teacher would die to have them. Gamers in the console war mentality are fastidious, enamored and strangely protective of their subject matter, and hyper-attentive to every detail in every screenshot, press release, and NPD chart. They're primed to absorb information.

These developers, of course, don't have a teacher's benevolence, and if their students are learning anything practical, it's because they're being manipulated. They won't, however, be any less engaged. This is condescending. Yet gamers are far more amenable learning about private military corporations when the source is a crazy anime about clones and nanotech rather than an international relations class they don't want to be in.

A Time magazine article on Mark Twain had Yale law professor Stephen E. Carter observing that "Twain melded his attacks on slavery and prejudice into tales that were on the surface about something else entirely. He drew his readers into the argument by drawing them into the story." BioShock does the same thing. Twain's intellectual subversion, however, is rendered inert when his books become part of the classroom.

We're not in a classroom. We're in an arena of spectacle, and while we bemoan all the fanboy bullshit, the hype, the perfect scores, the jaw-dropping graphics, all these little things that are so symptomatic of the race to the bottom, they are still what secures our attention, and that's the first step.

Imagine if that compulsiveness and fanaticism ever translated to those high school English students, who'd form an appreciation society around Huckleberry Finn, ready to defend it to the death. Developers have never had a better opportunity to found their game on real-world subtext. At the moment we don't see the mainstream video game as preachy, or work, or a lecture, and so we will listen.

This is the same phenomenon which spontaneously ignites in three million gamers an interest in fitness. Is Wii Fit attracting fitness buffs, or gamers interested mostly in the Wii, and with gaming trends? Thomas Jefferson would have read all the airport thrillers he could have got his hands on if only they had existed.

Let The Game Sell The Message

Narrative-heavy video games are almost exclusively airport thrillers. Some of those airport thrillers, though, like Metal Gear Solid, like BioShock, like Call of Duty, touch upon serious issues, perhaps introducing the very concepts to a certain fraction of their audience. These games are not didactic -- they're entertainment, first and foremost -- but, at their best, serve as the preamble to an appendix of further recommended reading.

Call of Duty 4, however subliminally, can make gamers more interested than they previously had been in the current Middle East situation, and from Call of Duty it's George Packer and Thomas Ricks and Seymour Hersh, and from there it's so much closer to actually doing something about it in the real world.

Call of Duty is not a history lesson. It doesn't need to be; in fact it needs to be so little. All it has to be is that fleeting spark that lights the fire. To be sure, it will sound bizarre to remark some day, while shaking hands in the White House, that this was all made possible by Call of Duty 4, that renowned catalyst for positive social change.

Yet why should the indignity in that statement matter to anyone? Surely the ends justify the means. Video games can be gateways to higher learning. Is it idealistic? Sure. But the base repudiation of idealism is so often used as a shield against saying anything interesting. Anti-idealism is what keeps triple-A games generic, and the reversal of that trend should already be a good enough target.

Compare the social value of these games to that of Halo or Oblivion. They're just as entertaining, but they are not relevant to any humanitarian or political discussion, and are certainly not literary. The Wire and The West Wing will not reform government but they will challenge and galvanize their viewers.

Now imagine if The Wire was one of five titles available for Blu-Ray at launch and how much larger a pulpit it would have. Blacksite: Area 51 had something provocative to say, but unfortunately for Midway and designer Harvey Smith, it wasn't an exclusive nor did it have the promotion or production of BioShock. Blacksite was marketed on its message (at least by Smith, and to a greater degree than Call of Duty or Metal Gear Solid) and that selling point was evidently not as exciting to gamers.

The game, commendably, still said what Smith wanted it to, but it never reached the audience it could have, because subtext doesn't sell. It's the blood and the psychic abilities that draw gamers in. Sometimes teaching is like a magic trick. You need to hide the blackboard.

We still see video games, the commercial blockbusters, as entertainment first and art second. One can read as much into the philosophy of BioShock as they like, but it can still be experienced as just a fun shooter. In this narrow historical window, video games can make learning fun. They can be a podium for developers to share with gamers their ideologies; their interests; their bookcases.

Shakespeare and Milton quotes read as superficial gravitas through overuse, but Deus Ex's inclusion of passages by the less-ubiquitous G.K. Chesterton surely spurred players to investigate Chesterton's body of work. That's the reaction that video games can shoot for but so rarely do.

Talk To Us

It's not all about saving the world. We can still discover things like objectivism, Chesterton and BMI through video games. With the second Guitar Hero, Harmonix, then holding a monopoly on the franchise, had the chance to include whatever music they wanted, lesser-known bands that without Guitar Hero would never have drawn a massive audience of video game players. The tracklist could have been limited entirely to early-eighties post-punk because maybe that was what the developer happened to like.

Even if gamers didn't think they would be interested in the music, they would buy it anyway because it was the only new Guitar Hero they had. They may have found in Mission of Burma or The Fall something that they liked, and have Guitar Hero to thank. Now, the Guitar Hero and Rock Band franchises are bloated and overexposed, and gamers might as well pick a SKU based on what bands they recognize, and never discover anything new.

In time, this will happen to video games at every level. There will be twenty games that look like BioShock and gamers will choose the one with the best graphics and AI over the one that is sort of a consideration of philosophy and society. Which is why it's important to act now.

This is a call to developers. Ken Levine cared about objectivism and he said so. What moves you outside of games? What matters so much to you, but because you make shooters instead of social policy or literary journals, you never thought you the audience were receptive? Rock music? Mark Twain? Calculus? We're listening. Talk to us.

Posted by Simon Carless at 4:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (20)

[In a special version of his regular GameSetWatch column, British games journalist and producer Simon Parkin interviews editorial leaders from Eurogamer, IGN, and Edge Magazine to produce 'a snapshot, albeit partial, into the state of the specialist gaming press in mid-2008.' Oh, and the picture is how the games press are portrayed, not necessarily how they are.]

Few avenues of journalism are so dimly regarded as the specialist gaming press. Viewed as little more than hobbyists covering an adolescent industry, game journalists earn few accolades and command little respect from their peers in the older mediums. And readerships too can be vicious in their skepticism, accusing gaming websites and magazines of being fawning mouthpieces for the industry they cover, their writers rarely breaking real stories or offering anything approaching lucid commentary or incisive critique.

Poorly paid and overworked, a minority of game journalists continue to cover games full-time into their thirties, drawn away instead by more lucrative jobs in gaming PR, acquisitions, consultancy or development itself.

But despite this grim, stereotypical overview, the gaming press is far from an impotent one. The disrespect it attracts is more than matched by raw readership figures, which would be the envy of many a news editor in 2008. The biggest-hitting gaming websites attract in excess of a million unique hits a month, and even boutique-y publications, such as Edge Magazine, while boasting monthly ABCs of only 31,304 issues, exert a global influence on the industry and its consumers that few specialist publications manage.

As the games industry matures and diversifies, so too does the range, breadth and ability of its commentators, reviewers and critics. There are those who are writers first and gamers second, who love the games industry enough to be able to examine its products with white honesty, rooting out the real stories behind the precision-written press releases. And, of course, leading, coordinating and inspiring these writers to produce their best work, work that bucks the stereotypes, are the editors who steer the publications, define their tone and set their boundaries.

GameSetWatch directed a clutch of identical questions to five of western gaming journalism’s most prominent editors: Eurogamer’s Tom Bramwell, IGN’s Tal Blevins (Vice President of Games Content), Kotaku’s Brian Crecente, Edge Magazine’s Tony Mott and Gamespot’s Ricardo Torres.

In the interview we ask each man (and they are all men) for their perspective and approach to game journalism, the relationship between advertising and editorial, what the most popular articles and posts are with readers and what advice they would give to young writers looking to get into the industry.

All five editors initially agreed to take part but only three actually delivered their answers. Their replies are presented here in full to offer a snapshot, albeit partial, into the state of the specialist
gaming press in mid-2008.

What, if anything, is wrong with videogame journalism and how are you working to fix it?

Tony Mott (Edge): There's so much of it out there today, especially on the internet, that it's difficult to have a catch-all opinion on the state of game journalism. There's certainly an awful lot of shit out there, but there are lots of people happy to read shit about videogames in the same way they're happy to watch shit on TV or read shitty newspapers. If enough people are satisfied with that -- if it's fulfilling their needs, such as they are -- then it's serving a purpose, right? It's just different to what we try to do. I don’t think we’re in a position to 'fix' anything, and it would probably be arrogant to think that it's in any way our responsibility.

Tal Blevins (IGN): The biggest thing that I think is wrong with "videogame journalism" is classifying it as "videogame journalism." What makes reporting on videogames any different from any other form of entertainment reporting or product critiquing? One of my biggest pet peeves is when someone compares IGN to a publication like The Economist. Compare IGN to Entertainment Weekly or At the Movies, not The Economist. Writing about videogames is nothing to be ashamed of, and I don't feel the need to try and justify it as anything more than it is. Are we investigative journalists or war correspondents? No, but we don't want to be, either. We strive to be just as accurate, in-depth, and compelling as any publication in existence, but we're also very aware of our audience, and we write with them in mind.

Tom Bramwell (Eurogamer): Videogame journalism isn't as glamorous or highly paid as film, music or literary criticism, so the quality threshold isn't as high. Eurogamer's popular, so I can employ the best writers and that's how I try and fight that. I also evaluate what we're doing and listen to feedback from our readers and contributors as well as other people who work in the games industry.

It's a bland answer. I don't have a manifesto or anything exotic. But I think I have the right principles and instincts and I think that shows in the site's growth and the level of respect for it among our readers, peers and folks within the games industry.

What differentiates your publication to your rivals?

Tony Mott (Edge): I have to be honest and say that I don’t read enough other multi-format magazines to be able to offer an opinion.

Tad Blevins (IGN): At IGN, we stress the importance of entertaining our readers as well as informing them, so we write with a very casual voice and try to come across as if we're talking to an old friend. We also strive to expose our readers to more than just games, so we report on other subjects that gamers are interested in, such as movies, television, comic books, music, and more.

Tom Bramwell (Eurogamer): Having not edited GameSpot or IGN, I can't answer in terms of how they are run except to say that we're privately funded and they are part of big organisations, but there are a number of obvious differences.

Europe may be the "most important continent" in Phil Harrison's phrase, but the people who control access to games and their developers rarely see it that way, so we have to fight harder for big stories and exclusives than our US rivals.

Our location also means that our readers are very sceptical, and the only way to satisfy them is to employ writers of exemplary skill and pedigree, so our core staff and contributors are veterans of broadsheet newspapers, fierce trade-press environments and prestigious magazines like Edge and PC Gamer UK.

We also publish in four languages (English, French, German and Portuguese) with another four set to come online this year. Individual territories have complete editorial autonomy but we share resources and cooperate when it's useful.

Which has been your most popular post/ article in the part six months? Why do you think that is?

TM (Edge): We had lots of positive feedback on the cover feature we did focusing on the making of the Grand Theft Auto series. It was popular because GTA is obviously such a huge deal, but also because we were fortunate enough to spend a lot of time with Sam Houser and the Rockstar team when we were putting it together. Actually, we still have plenty of interview content left over from that article. We'll have to make it available online soon.

TB (IGN): The Grand Theft Auto IV review was our most popular article. We published the first online review, and the franchise has always been very popular with our readers.

TB (Eurogamer): Oli Welsh's review of Metal Gear Solid 4 is our best-performing feature of 2008.
Early MGS4 reviews were controversial because reviewers had to sign up to complicated review guidelines that restricted what they could say, but after exploring those thoroughly and discussing them with Oli it was obvious we could still say everything we had to say.
Oli's review also drew attention because he didn't give the game 100 marks on a 100-point scale as some of our competitors did.

Who's the best videogame publisher to work with and why?

TM (Edge): I don’t have a favourite. That probably wouldn’t be healthy. All I'd say is that any company putting out good games tends to be easier to work with, for obvious reasons.

TB (IGN): We're in contact with nearly every publisher on the planet, big or small, and we really take the same approach with them all, which is to inform our readers of gaming titles, news, and events from around the world.

TB (Eurogamer): The level of access to games and developers that UK PRs are empowered to provide varies from publisher to publisher - certainly compared to how equivalent roles are fulfilled in the US - so you can't easily compare the qualities of people working here.

However, there are a number of very devoted gamers in the ranks of UK PR, and while their job is to manage expectations and public opinion many of them are pragmatic and honest when it comes to bad games and brilliantly productive on the best ones. PR in the UK does more for the European games industry than a lot of the people who sign their paycheques.

How do you balance the needs and pressures of your own publishing parent with those of your readership?

TM (Edge): We’ve never been about chasing reader numbers, so we’ve never suffered from management pressure. We just make a magazine about games we're interested in. Sometimes we put a game on the cover that has obvious commercial appeal, and sometimes it's something a little bit more leftfield -- this year we've run covers on both Grand Theft Auto IV and MadWorld, for example. Hopefully our readers are interested in the same games as us. If they're not, they usually write in to let us know about it.

TB (IGN): We really see them as being very complementary to one another. Without the readers we wouldn't have a publication, and without a publication we would have the readers. We're very cognisant of keeping the needs of the readers a top priority at IGN, because without their trust in us as an editorial unit, we wouldn't have a successful Website.

TB (Eurogamer): The question implies that the needs and pressures of my boss differ to those of our readers, but I don't think that's true. They both want interesting and timely content on the website because it drives traffic upwards, so that's what I try to commission.

What are the ways in which videogame publishers put direct or indirect pressure on your publication to inflate/ weight coverage of their games?

TM (Edge): I honestly don’t think anyone bothers to try that sort of stuff with us, so I couldn’t say.

TB (IGN): It doesn't happen often, but we have had a few requests not to run a review before a product is released unless we give it a favorable score – which we’ve never agreed to and violates our editorial review policy. Some publishers also don't send us pre-release review builds unless we promise a certain score – which we also never agree to. We would never change our score just to post a review early, so we just wait until the game is publicly available in stores. At that point, we go and buy the game and rate it as we see fit.

TB (Eurogamer): Very few actually do this in my experience. The ones who do will threaten to withdraw advertising money or access to games we want to write about. My boss insulates me from the former and sometimes you have to accept the latter.

What’s been the most dramatic fallout from a publisher when you’ve not bowed to this pressure?

TM (Edge): See previous answer.

TB (IGN): We may get a terse phone call after the fact, but it usually doesn't affect the relationship in the long run. The publishers understand that we have to maintain an independent voice lest we damage our credibility with our readers.

TB (Eurogamer): We've had five-figure advertising deals pulled and I've been shouted at on the phone a number of times.

Which other videogame publication do you enjoy reading for commentary (not news) and why?

TM (Edge): I like some of the things the guys on the official UK PlayStation magazine have been doing. I very much like NGamer for its personality. I think N'Gai Croal's done some interesting things online, coming at the industry from a slightly different perspective to most game journos, though obviously a disclaimer applies in his case because we have him on board writing a column in Edge. I recently enjoyed a piece written by Bill Harris, about playing videogames with his son, on Level Up.

I don’t really follow one publication over another. It’s all a bit difficult for me, because I've been reading computer and videogame magazines for something like 25 years, and working on them, on and off, for about 15, so nowadays it takes something a little different to catch my eye.

TB (IGN): I enjoy reading N'Gai Croal's Level Up blog. I think he has an interesting take on the industry, and is an entertaining and brutally honest writer.

TB (Eurogamer): I like blogs like Kotaku and Joystiq because they're direct and uncompromising. My favourite magazines are Wired and Private Eye. I think the majority of British newspapers are appalling but I find Observer interviews amusing.

In terms of books I very much enjoyed Raph Koster's Theory of Fun and I'm reading Jim Rossignol's recent effort, This Gaming Life, at the moment, and it's very thoughtful and observant.

How do you work to maintain integrity in the face of advertisers?

TM (Edge): We've all heard stories about advertisers leaning on publications in an attempt to influence review scores but, again, that's not something we've ever experienced on Edge.

TB (IGN): Our editorial department and sales department are totally separate, and even work on different floors in our office building. The editorial teams have no prior knowledge to what ads are running before they appear on the site, and don't know how much a publisher is spending on any given campaign.

TB (Eurogamer): By having absolutely no professional connection with them whatsoever!

Videogame review scores: pointless or pertinent?

TM (Edge): It's a weird one. On the one hand you want to say that you shouldn't need to put a number at the end of an opinion in order to communicate what you think, but then you look at how people talk about your magazine and see that most of the discussion centres on the numbers that appear at the end of its reviews.

A few years ago, when I wasn't working on Edge, the guys on the team experimented one issue by removing review scores, but the experiment didn't really work because all of the scores merely appeared in a group at the end of the review section rather than alongside the individual reviews. Perhaps we could try something like that again in the future, but not include scores at all. I’m not convinced that the majority of readers would really go for it, though.

The problem, I think, is that review scores have existed for so many years that they've become deeply embedded in the commercial critical process. So it’s a conditioning thing. It can get silly, of course, when you're trying to differentiate between things like 93% and 94%, but also 7 and 8, and 6 and 7, and so on. Actually, the other day I was saying to someone that I'd like to launch a videogame magazine called Seven, which focused exclusively on games that were 7/10s. You could have some fun with that. Well, for one issue, after which the joke probably wouldn't work.

TB (IGN): I'd say review scores are pertinent, but they don't live on their own. Review scores are a useful gauge for readers to compare games that are released around the same time on the same platform -- seriously though, you can't compare an Xbox 360 score today to a PC score from 1993 -- but they don't live by themselves; the text is the most important part of any review, and should do the job of explaining what a score means. I've seen so many arguments on message boards similar to "IGN gave this game a 9.2 when the game is clearly a 9.4," but I rarely see the a debate along the lines of "IGN said this game fell short as an overpowering emotional experience, but I found the scene where Sir Yardley sacrifices his own life for that of his squire to be truly moving."

TB (Eurogamer): I'm not sure there are absolutes in this debate. Review scores add context to a writer's comments and I find them valuable. I think our readers do too, although there are always debates about how things are weighted or explained.

How do you balance the need to attract readers with avoiding sensationalism and maintaining balance?

TM (Edge): As I say, we've never been driven by reader numbers. We just try to make a mag about games we're interested in.

TB (IGN): Our editorial philosophy has been to exude passion, but only when that passion is warranted. As I said earlier, our voice is as if we are a friend sitting on the couch next to you talking about this game that you probably haven't seen yet, so we want you to know when we are excited. With that said, we also want you to know when we are disappointed, or when we're rather indifferent. As writers covering an industry that such be fun and exciting to write about, we think it's important that our personalities, enthusiasm, and passion shine through the page.

TB (Eurogamer): As much as I'd like more readers tomorrow, I'm more interested in having even more readers on the same day next year. They won't come back unless you treat them with respect.

On past evidence, what is the most effective way to generate hits to your website?

TM (Edge): Anything with a negative spin tends to get attention. It seems that you’ll always attract a bigger audience by giving something a kicking. There are people out there who seem to make half-decent livings out of it, actually.

TB (IGN): It's really about maximizing information, speed, and creating a community where readers feel like they are a part of the site.

TB (Eurogamer): First, writing about the biggest games every day and being honest about them. I know it sounds obvious, but it works. Second, looking at what did or didn't work and then recalibrating.

How long do you expect your writers to have played a game before submitting review copy and why?

TM (Edge): I don’t think you can make a hard and fast rule. If you want to include in your review section a 70-hour RPG but only have time enough to play it for 50 hours, should you hold the review until the following issue? Most reasonable people would say that you shouldn’t, that 50 hours is enough. In an ideal world, of course I’d like every game to be completed before the reviewer arrives at a conclusion, but that’s only practical up to a point. I think this discussion and the one about review scores are probably longer ones than we have time for here, though.

TB (IGN): Our reviewers complete most games before they submit their final reviews, but it's not a requirement. Some games are simply unable to be "finished" (MMOs, sports games, etc.), while others don't necessarily have to be fully concluded in order to write a balanced, insightful review. With that said, our reviewers always have the last say in the review process, and we tell them they don't have to post a review until they feel comfortable giving their final judgment.

TB (Eurogamer): I don't employ reviewers unless they're enthusiastic about and devoted to games, but you have to take a certain amount on trust. I expect our contributors to play the game until they know what they're talking about, and that varies depending on the game.

What advice would you give to a writer wanting a career in games journalism? Would you try to put them off? Why?

TM (Edge): If the candidate was only a mediocre writer I would absolutely put them off entering game journalism, because there are more than enough mediocre writers already out there. But I would encourage anyone with talent to go for it, because they will stand out -- they have the opportunity to make a difference.
If someone was applying for a job on Edge I’d tell them to write something original about gaming. Don’t send in another review of Ico or Rez. I’ve seen too many of them already. In fact, don’t write a review at all. Reviewing a game is one of the most basic activities in game journalism, so give us some copy that proves you’re already capable of something more demanding.

One advantage prospective journos have today is that there are so many more entry points than there used to be. I've hired plenty of people whose writing talents I first became aware of via the internet. If you're any good, there's no excuse any more. When I applied for my first job in game magazines I bought a second-hand Amstrad PCW256 word processor, printed out my sample copy on a ‘near letter-quality’ dot-matrix printer, and then had to walk to town to fax over my sample copy. Then, obviously, when I got home, my dad and my mother killed me and danced about on my grave, singing ‘Hallelujah’. You try and tell that to the young people of today, though, and they won't believe you.

TB (IGN): Keep writing, keep trying, and keep bugging whoever you can until you hear a definite "yes" or "no." Because of the few open slots and the large number of people who would love to write about videogames for a living, it's a tough career to step into. Yes, you have to be a gamer and know your videogame history, but don't overlook the most important skill of being a good writer. Also, learn to live meagerly, because this kind of work doesn't pay much, and it's coupled with the unforgiving truth of being centered in three of the most expensive areas of the country: San Francisco, New York City, and Los Angeles. A taste for ramen is a good trait to have.

TB (Eurogamer): Read and write. When you're reading, pay no attention to literary prestige or commerciality, just read everything you can get your hands on! Then work out why it works or doesn't work on you. And write all the time - but you shouldn't need to be told to do that. A good barometer for whether you're improving is if you hate everything you write within about half an hour of finishing it. That's how it goes!

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

Good Lord, there's a bunch more GameSetLinks here - and let's be honest, GSW is giving you a good deal here, given there's 50-60 GSLs each week, and I could be posting one per post and stringing you along instead of compiling them handily and compactly.

This time, some of the highlights include some rather conceptually odd Monster Hunter cutlery from Japan (there's a lot of in-game cooking), Jake Simpson on publishers and IP ownership, GameCulture referencing game preservation, Kokoromi on demakes, and a whole bunch more besides.

Mew mew mew:

The Today Show makes Konami's Rock Revolution look frickin' sweet | Fidgit
Willard Scott music game horror!

University of Texas at Austin Looks at MMO Preservation | GameCulture
'With a constant release of software updates and an ever growing list of subscribers, MMO's present a difficult task to those interested in game preservation.'

Jonathan Blow on Story and Gameplay « Save the Robot - Chris Dahlen
A review, of sorts, starting from the GSW write-up.

1UP: 'Virtual Jihadi'
'Terrorism, Censorship, and Videogames in Upstate New York.'

insertcredit.com: 'News: Latest astounding coin op news'
Sheffield back with the awesome arcade ephemera.

Welcome to Jake World: 'Publishers and IP ownership'
'There's just rampant greed right now on the part of publishers to get as much as they can for as little as they can - particularly with start ups.'

NCSX Import Video Games & Toys: Monster Hunter Airu Kitchen: Utensils - New, In Stock
Good Lord. 'Cospa's Monster Hunter utensil set includes a stainless steel spoon and a fork which may be used to each soup or spear a ham hock.'

Japanmanship: Piracy
'Software piracy is one of those perennial problems that just refuses to go away, no matter what we throw at it.'

Kokoromi Collective - Sequel Prequel, Remake Demake
'To celebrate the announcement over a TIGSource of the Bootleg Demake Compo, i figured id take a shot at explaining what exactly constitutes a demake, and why the concept is so damn awesome.'

Not So Few Monstrosities » Blog Archive » Leng Bound for Lovecraft Unbound
Valve's Marc Laidlaw goes Lovecraft for a 2010-bound (!) new anthology.

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

[Our own Mathew Kumar attended a recent lecture that saw Bungie's Damian Isla detail the "30 seconds of fun" approach to game AI in the Halo franchise - discussing the advantage to "territorial" enemies that make "smart mistakes", giving the player opportunities to feel smart. Neat.]

The "30 seconds of fun" model Bungie has used to describe Halo's design mentality has been cited countless times.

During a recent programming keynote at the Develop conference in Brighton, Bungie's Damian Isla framed that model in terms of AI, and shared with the audience a number of AI development stories drawn from throughout the series.

"I would guess that it's one of the most sophisticated AI systems out there," said Isla of his studio's work on Halo. But he then noted that the series' AI is not so much an attempt to create a true artificial intelligence as it is a system to facilitate "a player experience," an experience that has been under "constant revision."

That experience hinges on the "30 seconds of fun" -- the notion that you can put "200 or 300 of these experiences laid back to back and you can make a game out of that."

Exploring Primal Games

A single 30-second encounter consists of a player entering a space, planning an attack approach, and then executing on that approach. "The thing that bears stating is that every one of these steps has their own associated pleasures and rewards," Isla noted. "A lot of the AI is specifically designed to address one or the other of these phases."

Halo's designers wanted the title's gameplay to explore mankind's "primal games" such as hide and seek, tag, and king of the hill, and the game's encounters were created with them in mind.

"It's evolution that taught us these primal games," said Isla. "They're the ones that are played with our reptilian brains. The idea was for the AI [to] play them back with you."

Out of that goal was born three main principles that stayed at the center of the game's design process: territory, a limited knowledge model, and satisfying enemies.

Territory

Isla pointed out that the importance of territory in Halo's encounter design is closely connected to the recharging shield mechanic that has appeared since the original game.

"Part of that recipe demands that at some point you have a safe zone," he explained. "In a sense we needed to make the AI territorial. Once you have this idea, you have to think about the problem of encounter progression as the player expands their safe zone. That itself is a pretty fun process. It gives the player a sense of progress, and is extremely plannable.

"If AI are given a territory they are supposed to occupy, it's very possible for a player to walk into a space and know that if he will open fire the whole room of enemies isn't going to come crashing down on him based on the distribution of enemies across it," he continued. "This helps build the concept of encounters as puzzles."

Enemy AI in Halo sees areas as maps of squares. If an enemy needs to take cover, it determines which squares do not fall within the player's line of sight, then plots its route from square to square. Isla pointed out that this "prolongs the 30 seconds," as well as introduces variety to the encounters, as enemy behavior is dependent on player behavior.

Added Isla, "We recapitulated this system many times in Halo 2 and 3, and formalized it with deeper topologies."

The Limited Damage Model

In order for hide and seek, one of the crucial "primal games," to work, the AI cannot always be aware of the player's location. Without that limited damage model, the player would be unable to sneak up on enemies.

When the AI makes mistakes, it gives the player opportunities to feel smart. There are "bad mistakes" -- NPCs running into walls, or standing atop one another -- which break the fourth wall, but there are also good mistakes -- if the large "Hunter" enemy misses with its melee attack, it has a long recover time during which the player is able to flank it.

Isla made special mention of AI misperception -- "the most interesting form" of good AI mistakes. If the player moves stealthily, the AI will assume the player is still sitting where the AI last knew him to be. The team took that concept further in Halo 2, explicitly designing levels to allow for plenty of cover with which to outmanoeuvre enemies.

"Each AI has an internal model of each target, and that model can be wrong," Isla summarized. "This allows the AI to be surprised by you, and this is very fun."

Satisfying Enemies

Still, Isla stressed, enemies shouldn't be dumb. "It's more fun to kill an enemy that's cunning, formidable, and tactical," he said, pointing out that that goal is not just an AI problem but also related to convincing animation and game fiction.

For one thing, enemies must be reactive: "They have to let the player know that his presence is important to them one way or the other, and they have to make the player understand how his actions affect them."

They must also be capable: "They have to be roughly player-equivalent in terms of capabilities, which doesn't mean that we're making bots, but [they must be able] to use and board all the vehicles, and use all the weapons."

Halo 3

Isla took some time to speak on some of the AI changes for Halo 3, most of which dealt with scale -- environments became more sophisticated, enemy and vehicle counts rose, environments gained more complex scripting.

Still, the AI performance challenges from the original Halo, such as perception raycasting and pathfinding, remained constant. Additionally, the team could afford less spatial processing than in the original game, as the levels' increases in geometric complexity outstripped the increases in analytical capability. "That's depressing," commented Isla.

Changes in scale affected all three major AI focal points. Territory was affected by massive battles, more characters, and more complex scripting; the limited knowledge model was affected by more realistic enemy perception, group perception, and group dialogue; and satisfying enemies were affected by an increase in enemy variety and ability, as well as the simple increase in enemy count.

For example, the introduction of more pervasive physics created significant AI issues. "I sometimes forget this when I play Halo 1, but all of the crates are static," Isla recalled. "By the time we've reached Halo 2 all of the creates are exploding and moving everywhere, and that created a terrible problem for our pathfinding. All of this is great with me, however, because I believe that more is better when it comes to AI -- the more things that you have to react to, the more things you can do, and the more AI seems to have common sense."

The Social Contract

One particularly wide-reaching issue is the interaction of player characters to AI-controlled friendly characters.

Isla elaborated by way of an example: "If I'm an AI, and the player drives up to me, which seat do I get in? This is actually quite a difficult proposition, because if I'm carrying a rocket launcher I should really get in the passenger seat so I can use it. When we tip over, what do I do? Do I just walk off? Or do I stick around and wait for the player to right it? And what does sticking around even mean? Because I should be doing all my normal behaviors -- taking cover, fighting."

The real answer, he offered, is telepathy. "This is not just a flip example," he added. "We run up against the problem of a lack of telepathy all the time."

The team took different approaches to more practically answering those questions in Halo 2 and Halo 3. In Halo 2, it was attempted to be solved behaviorally ("It was not pretty," conceded Isla). In Halo 3, the team created "concepts" for territories or objects that require interaction; these concepts holds the knowledge of what a character will do with that thing. So, rather than having behavior determine how the NPC interacts with that vehicle, the vehicle contains all that interaction knowledge.

"In Halo 2, if an AI tips over his vehicle, he walks off and forgets completely he was ever in one," said Isla. "In Halo 3, if he tips it, he remains in its vicinity fighting until there is a point where he can right it again."

According to Isla, the latter approach is "the way things should be going" -- as he puts it, "behavior should be a very thin layer on top of a world of concepts."

Plenty Left To Solve

Isla wrapped up his talk by admitting that there are a multitude of big AI problems still unsolved.

Some of these problems are related to other development fields. "Animation technology still sucks," he offered. "I'm out of luck if I want to make a game that involves picking a pencil up."

Design interfaces are in a similar state, he said; they are still incredibly abstract and require a huge amount of training for designers to learn how to effectively use.

He wondered aloud if it is possible to create a WYSIWYG interface for AI design. "What would it even look like?" he asked, adding, "I imagine something like dog training."

Rather than attempting to create a 100 percent accurately modeled AI, however -- and, after all, even humans aren't 100 percent when it comes to the type of behavior that needs to be convincingly modeled -- Isla is more excited about improving communication between players and AI.

"The problem is not that mistakes are made, but there are no ways to correct it," he explained. "I have no way of saying, 'No, try again.' What I want is a 'you're doing it wrong' button. But I don't want to give them orders; I want to have a conversation."

He was quick to note that he is not calling for a natural language solution, but something more like a symbol language, or even a binary system like "good job" and "bad job."

Of course, as he concluded, "The ultimate tragedy for the AI programmer is that this is not an AI problem but a design problem."

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

['Chewing Pixels' is a regular GameSetWatch column written by British games journalist and producer, Simon Parkin. Here's a story about games led him to and from vice city.]

One, two, three, four fingers uncurl. I don’t see them because I’m past her window by now, but I hear them in the reaction of the beery men stood around.

“400 Euros?!" “She must be kidding”, “F***ing princess”, “She’d be lucky to get 40”

Albert Camus described Amsterdam’s concentric canals as being like the circles of hell, the crimes becoming denser and darker the more you progress through them. If that’s true then this girl’s huge 1st floor window advertising space stands at the fiery epicentre. She leans in, back arched, hand on knee, lingerie-clad hind in the air, eyes masked heavy with makeup and affected lust; four fingers uncurled.

These brutes, these heavy louts, are as much her tormentors as prospective lovers. They mask their disappointment at her prohibitive cost with loud, retorting undervaluations.

Prostitution, at least, of the kind offered in Amsterdam, is a game whose stakes include, perhaps more than anything else, self-esteem. It’s legal here so sellers can refuse clients in relative safety. Prices are adjusted on the fly: raised sky-high for the repulsive, kept reasonable for the reasonable.

So when a group of boorish British men are quoted 400 Euros for twenty minutes funtime it’s as much an attack on their self-esteem as their consequent rejection of the offer is on hers.

“She will only sell herself to me for how much?”

“He wouldn't even pay that?”

Halo 3. It’s a press trip and I'm here to play Halo 3, not sex tourist. I have wife and child and my desire to keep everyone happy in those roles mercifully outweighs any baser instincts right now. But go sightseeing in Amsterdam and these are the sights you'll inevitably see.

These are certainly the sights most of the assorted lifestyle press, here to write up a game they've at most a passing interest in, are here to see. Not that there's necessarily much to see that is. The event finishes early evening and everyone is shepherded out into the arms of the city.

Girls stand in shop windows in underwear and red light. It's sleazy but they appear as little more than animated mannequins, the likes of which stand in the most respectable department store window modeling knickers and supportive bras to all. It's not such a tortured analogy: both sell sex, one to middle age women on their way home from the weekly shop, the other to middle age men running away from whatever. But, of course, there's much more if you've eyes to see.

Without drugs or alcohol to soften the mind's focus, humanity and ruin spills from every crack. They try to keep it hidden because if you, just for a second, see one of these girls as a sister or a daughter, or catch a whiff of the desperation that has nine times out of ten brought them here, you'll want to sleep alone tonight.

But look and the clues are all around: the peeling wallpaper framing her figure, the half-eaten Chinese takeaway under her chair, the light on her thighs cast from a television set nestled and hidden between her feet, distraction for when she tires of fluttering endless promises to passers by. Occasionally a man will barter with a girl, convincing her to accept a lower price. The assembled crowd, caught up in the to-ing and fro-ing, will whoop and cheer as he enters the room and the curtains draw shut. But it's the quieter dalliances that haunt.

A girl opens her door a crack as a dark figure sidles up: she hand him a clutch of something, notes probably, and he recoils back to his watch-point. A coercive boyfriend, perhaps? A loan shark or a dealer; who knows, who cares? Another girl bursts from her room to scream bloody murder at two teenage boys loitering by a nearby trashcan. They've been taking camera phone pictures, she accuses, transformed from lithe siren to hissing, fizzing banshee. Truths behind the makeup. Truths behind the makeup.

At the end of my short walk there's a church. I'm sure, I hope, that its congregation work tirelessly to help those of their neighbours who are in need. But as a piece of raw architecture this church stands dark, tall and uninviting, peering down on the red glow, lusts and regrets from which it rises. It towers, an unlit, disapproving father figure, more cold, stony judgment seat than hospital for the soul.

I trace around its borders and start back to the hotel. These nether streets, tendrils from the scarlet epicentre, are where the niche hookers work: those of uncommon ethnicity, weight or looks. Those I look at beckon me, or stare back, but mostly I look at the pavement.

Then a glance into a final room: the last window in this confused voyeuristic tour that has been one part faint titillation, five parts deep melancholy.

She's eighteen, porcelain and God knows what horror stole her and sat her down on that chair. And in her petite, cross-legged lap, rests a DS. What game she's playing I've no idea: Tetris as a way to clean up the mess? Animal Crossing for the warm home and the sofa and the weeds that you can pull up? Advance Wars for the reliable rules, constant and dependable parameters rarely found in reality. Hmm. Probably she's just playing a game she really likes and there's no poetic significance for a sentimental writer to heavy-handedly wring from her choice.

Maybe she's happy and doesn't need saving. Maybe nothing broke her and she just really likes having sex for money and that is her contribution and she's thankful she can make that contribution in a place that offers some sort of safety and protection. I don't know. But just as nobody sets out wanting to make a bad game - stuff happens, choices are made or made for you and then that's where you end up - so I don't think any little girl sets out wanting to sell herself like this.

And she looks up slow, all stretched eyelashes and smiles, into the deep focus shadows outside at another prospective client.

And he looks back at her, and sees a sister.

Posted by Simon Parkin at 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (45)

It's midweek, so time for a round-up of notable features, interviews and write-ups from big sister site Gamasutra and other Think Services sites thus far - headed by David Hellman's explanation of creating a graphical style for Braid.

Other neatness in here includes the design thinking behind Mega Man 9's (optional!) sprite flicker-heavy retro stylings, another excellent Mick West technical article, new-school 'focused' news interview snippets from Valve's Doug Lombardi and Microsoft's Kevin Unangst, plus the new GCG Design Challenge, stats on Xbox Live DLC, and more...

Je suis un chapeau:

Gamasutra Features

The Art Of Braid: Creating A Visual Identity For An Unusual Game
"In this fascinating deconstruction, artist David Hellman explains his creation of the evocative, painterly art for Jonathan Blow's acclaimed downloadable game Braid, which debuts tomorrow on XBLA."

Random Scattering: Creating Realistic Landscapes
"Neversoft co-founder Mick West continues his acclaimed Gamasutra technical analyses by showcasing a technique (including source code) for procedurally scattering trees across a game level."

He Is 8-Bit: Capcom's Hironobu Takeshita Speaks
"Capcom's Mega Man 9 is, surprisingly, an intentionally NES-styled downloadable game - producer Hironobu Takeshita explains the artistic and design choices behind a retro franchise renaissance."

Gamasutra News Originals/Other

Microsoft's Unangst: PC Gaming Initiative, Blizzard Good For Windows
"A little over two years ago, Microsoft aimed to show its support for PC gaming with its Games For Windows Initiative -- but what's the status of the initiative when a company like Blizzard can achieve record success without participating? GFW head Kevin Unangst explains to Gamasutra..."

In-Depth: The ABCs of Xbox 360 DLC
"Downloadable content experts from Microsoft's Interactive Entertainment Business division and the Xbox 360 content management team explain, in a recent Gamasutra-attended session, how to make the most of game extensions - with tips on hard numbers, customer longevity, and DLC certification."

GCG's Game Design Challenge: 'Hero'
"GameCareerGuide.com has posted the latest interactive design challenge for its readers of students and aspiring game developers. The task this week is to develop the next great video game hero. Readers discuss their creations on the site’s forum, and professional game developers are invited to participate, provide feedback, and give advice."

Q&A: Valve's Lombardi On Turtle Rock, Left 4 Dead
"Valve continues its twelve year evolution, recently picking up Turtle Rock Studios along with its upcoming zombie co-op shooter Left 4 Dead. VP Doug Lombardi talks to Gamasutra about the role the acquisition and the game play in the company's ongoing journey, supported by the success of Steam and the Half-Life games."

Microsoft's Unangst On The PC, Xbox 360 Multiplayer Cost Divide
"Microsoft Games for Windows head Kevin Unangst discusses with Gamasutra the company's reasoning behind the PC Games For Windows Live service now being free, while Xbox 360 multiplayer gaming is not - revealing a major PC-centric UI redesign for the upcoming Games For Windows Live Marketplace."

Lombardi: Doom Single-Player Mode Helped Birth Half-Life
"Valve's Doug Lombardi says the success of Half-Life and its sequel permanently set the company's quality bar, and in an interview with Gamasutra, he explains how Doom's influence helped the game find its "special place" in the era of Quake."

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

[PC game developers and publishers often cite piracy as a primary reason why the format generally enjoys less success than console titles -- in this opinion piece, Gamasutra's Chris Remo passionately deconstructs the usual gamer arguments that aim to minimize piracy's impact.]

Every time a developer brings up the reality of extensive game piracy on the PC -- and recent examples include not only console-heavy Capcom but also PC-slanted Crytek -- there is a huge contingent of gamers that angrily responds with derision, citing any number of excuses ranging from the general ("those people wouldn't be spending money on games anyway") to the specific ("that game was buggy and didn't deserve to be purchased").

Before getting into the meat of those arguments, it should be noted that there are indeed a wealth of factors that contribute to the PC being a difficult platform for developers, completely aside from piracy.

Compatibility and other development issues, the lack of a true central platform-holder marketing role, the perception of the PC as more utilitarian than a dedicated entertainment console, and other such stumbling blocks present their own challenges.

(There are, of course, related benefits, such as the freedom of an open platform, the lack of royalty rates or the need for concept approval and certification, a more direct line of communication to the player base, a wealth of distribution options, and so on.)

Back to the topic at hand, while there is certainly some truth to the notion that not everybody who pirates a game would have purchased it -- "free" is an attractive price point -- it is preposterous to suggest that this axiom can be extended to the full body of pirates.

No Data Doesn't Mean No Impact

No, not everyone who pirates a game would have bought it. But when you can go to any torrent site at any given moment and see thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people downloading a game, even weeks after it came out, how can any reasonable person not accept that there were lost sales?

We don’t know what specific percentage of those pirated copies are lost sales, but a lack of that data does not make those potential sales negligible.

After all, we know from firsthand statements that now-defunct Ritual, just as one example, saw considerably more technical support requests from pirates than from legitimate customers on Sin Episodes. The tailored excuse for that game was that it was too short, or not good enough.

But if those support-seeking pirates actually cared enough about the game working properly to call up tech support and deal with real people (people who are paid by revenue of game sales), they must have thought it was good enough.

Tech Support And "Deserving"

SiN Episodes is just one example. Every time the topic is raised -- be it by a top-shelf developer, or a less prominent one -- a million reasons appear as to why that particular game or that particular developer just don’t deserve the support of the discerning PC gaming community.

It happens every time, with the excuses tuned for each game. At that point, they stop being isolated examples, and they become part of a very clear trend.

Even developers who have done amazing things for the PC community have been ridiculed for daring to point out the obvious -- that piracy is a problem on the platform. In their particular cases, often their games are pinned as being too old and tired, or not innovative enough, or too targeted and demanding.

It isn't that such criticisms are invalid on their own merits, but the reality is that non-innovative games sell well all the time in this industry, and if people do in fact want to play them, developers have a right to take issue with piracy.

Some arguments are more general. ”Nobody wants to play this on PC” or “PC software is buggy and not worth the money” are common. If people genuinely didn’t want to play it or already played it on consoles, they wouldn’t need to pirate it. If they feel PC software is too buggy across the board, they shouldn’t be playing PC games.

The Cultural Environment

The sad and frustrating part is that the main effect this has is that more and more developers and publishers are simply going to stop bringing their games to the PC. Why even bother, if the system has so many challenges to begin with, and the community they are overcoming those challenges for is full of so many stubborn idealogues?

I don’t even accuse the apologists of being pirates, although doubtless some are. But many PC gamers do have an incredibly quick-tempered reaction as soon as piracy comes up, citing numerous potential factors, always the same ones: it’s too buggy, the game sucks, it’s not right for the PC platform, etc.

At the end of the day, if lots of people are still pirating those games, those arguments are basically meaningless, because in those games the pirates see something there worthwhile enough.

There is also the oft-made observation that PC piracy is a platform-specific cultural thing -- that many people pirate dozens of games and don’t even play them. If so, that's hardly a defensible culture. That huge base of potential pirates, whether players or not, only makes it easier and more likely pirated games will be available and accessible for people who actually plan on pirating the game rather than buying it.

Console piracy exists as well, obviously. But I would bet real dollars (the kind you buy games with) that it’s not remotely as much of a problem on home consoles as it is on PC. Take the PSP. There’s a system where piracy is known to be considerably more widespread, and unlike the home consoles it’s much easier to see the effect -- game sales languish, while the hardware itself sells extremely briskly.

Maybe it’s that piracy is less convenient harder on home consoles, or maybe it’s a psychological thing, in which people don’t associate those systems with piracy.

When it comes down to it, if PC software is consistently pirated more than console software, and it obviously is, it’s going to continue to be a disincentive for full-scale game developers to put their games on the system.

We Can't All Be Blizzard And Valve

You can point to Blizzard and Valve all you want, and many do, with good reason. Those PC-oriented developers have clearly not been crippled by piracy. But not every developer is, or can be, a Blizzard or a Valve.

In the real world, that’s just how it works. Other companies can’t afford to sit around and generate twelve years of goodwill while they hope their games turn out to be some of the best-selling titles of all time.

Not all studios are necessarily capable of that, and they shouldn’t have to be stacked up against two of the top few companies in the entire industry every time this topic comes up. It’s utterly unrealistic. If, every time I wrote an article, I was told, “Well, this sure sucks compared to Tolstoy or Vonnegut,” I don’t know if I’d find that very constructive.

PC gamers can be self-righteous and smug about PC games until the cows come home, but it’s not going to be doing anything good for the platform long-term.

For the record, I love the smaller, more niche, lower-budget PC titles, the ones like Stardock’s that eschew DRM and are less affected by this phenomenon. Those are great games, and it’s proper that their developers be praised for them. But I also enjoy the bigger-budget titles that, just by virtue of reality, need to sell more to make it worthwhile to put them on PC.

I like being able to use my PC for a wide range of gaming. I like that companies are starting to take more chances on the PC again these days. I don’t like that when they do, and they run into the sad reality of rampant piracy, they’re met with nonstop snarkiness.

I’m not even going to get into arguing against people who defend the piracy itself (rather than just attacking the developers who cite piracy), because those arguments seem self-evident. I am sure our readers can be trusted to fill in those blanks.

The PC is currently going through a great period of support, with a number of high-quality exclusives and multiplatform games coming to the system. But in many cases, those games are the result of companies seeing bigger market opportunities on the PC than they had previously thought.

If those opportunities are nullified by unchecked piracy -- with salt poured on the wound by the jeers of PC gamers -- those companies will see little reason to stick around, and PC gamers (myself included) won’t have much to feel superior about.

Posted by Simon Carless at 4:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (14)

[Over at sister online/virtual worlds site WorldsInMotion.biz, Mathew Kumar is continuing to be gently subversive whilst exploring the major online game worlds for the Worlds In Motion Atlas, and y'know, he even makes Mattel's Barbie world an interesting subject. So we're reprinting his write-up here for you probably non-tween GSW readers.]

Here's an overview of Barbie Girls, from Mattel, an online world attached to the Barbie brand. According to Mattel this browser-based MMO has a huge userbase (over 13 million registered users) and recently launched a subscription V.I.P. service.

Name: Barbie Girls

Company: Mattel

Established: April 2007

How it Works: Barbie Girls is experienced on the web through html and Flash. It requires no installation and navigation and gameplay are accomplished via mouse and keyboard input.

Overview: In Barbie Girls, players create an avatar, design their room and can then explore a virtual world where they can earn "B Bucks" play games, watch videos and chat with other girls in a safe environment.

Payment Method: Barbie Girls is free to play, but offers a V.I.P. subscription package starting at $5.99 a month, which allows users access to a larger world, the ability to own pets, and more. Access is also expanded for players who own Barbie Girl MP3 players.

Key Features:
- Girl-orientated virtual world attached to a popular established brand
- Customizable avatar and home, with clothes and items to buy
- Safe environment with several levels of moderated chat (B Chat, Secret B Chat, and Super B Chat)
- World is extended for users who purchase Barbie Girl MP3 players or subscription packages.

Barbie Girls: In-Depth Tour

I never thought in my life I'd have a reason to sign up for a Barbie MMO -- or indeed, have any reason to have anything to do with the Barbie brand in general. It's obvious that Mattel don't expect any male journalists in their mid-twenties to be signing up for Barbie Girls, as their site is exclusively designed for girls: there are no male characters, it drips with pink, and also sent me an e-mail to let me know that "my daughter" had signed up.

Like many child-orientated worlds the site has several pages of information for parents, and it also quite cleverly includes a "Parent's Place" login, allowing parents to update their daughter’s account settings, including chat level, at any point. Chat levels are important, as like Build-a-Bearville, chat is possible on several levels of freedom. B Chat allows users to select from a list of phrases, Secret B Chat is free chat specifically for girls who own the MP3 devices who are "best friends", and Super B Chat is free chat for players with their parent's permission.

All "free" chat checks words against an internal dictionary and will block any "rude" words.

This is a fairly stringent system, too, as when I began to set up my character, I became confused when it seemed to think that my chosen screen name (GermaineGreer; I was being ironic) was "rude". I guess picking the name of a feminist icon in a Barbie game is kind of rude, but then I discovered it was actually taking issue with the answer to my secret password recovery question -- "Kilmarnock". I'm not sure what is rude about Kilmarnock though. The production of Jonnie Walker?

Anyway, GermaineGreer materialized in Barbie Girls' world as a cute redhead on a blue and yellow dress, thanks to the avatar creator, which has an okay level of customization. It's the first place you notice that V.I.P. members have a much better deal (more hair, clothes and facial options) but I'm sure most players would expect their starting character to be a bit basic.

After that you can set up your room from a few options. The room can serve as a space for private chats between friends, and you can also purchase and place furniture here.

Something interesting comes up quite quickly after you've started playing Barbie Girls however -- and that is that only players who have a V.I.P. membership can purchase anything with their "B Bucks". So while people playing for free can earn currency, they can't spend it (!) so from this point I was stuck with what I began the game with.

That's no reason not to play the games which earn B Bucks, of course. The games include a very cute version of Pipe Dreams featuring hamsters and the usual word searches and match-3 games.

The world itself is very much the usual sort of thing. I don't want to make too many opinion calls in this look (I prefer to wait for the conclusion) so I'll just try and state ambivalently that movement is on a "block-by-block" basis, there isn't a huge deal of animation, and there are a limited amount of locations that are not especially interactive (especially if you can't buy anything.)

There is a cinema, which is kind of interesting (it plays trailers for Barbie movies and short Barbie "webisodes") and the world is actually very busy, with most locations full of players. I didn't find an especially talkative world, however -- perhaps because I managed to make it crash every time I tried to use B Chat. But I'll broach that subject in the conclusion.

Barbie Girls: Conclusion

I've said it about other MMOs, and I'll say it about this one too -- I'm not the intended market! Obvious, really, but I state it again as don't want hide my status (as very definitely not a preteen girl) and otherwise color your feelings on my opinions.

Especially as I feel that Barbie Girls just isn't very good. First of all, technically, it's flaky. I'm not sure if it's specifically to do with using B Chat, as I mentioned last entry, but after I use Barbie Girls' chat method, Firefox (my preferred browser) tends to lock up as a result of a script that causes the flash player to slow down. I've experienced an unacceptable number of these crashes playing Barbie Girls, for reasons I can't quite work out.

Of course, perhaps it's my PC (it could be -- the crashes are hard to replicate!) but a further problem with Barbie Girls is the content. Now, I'm not particularly bothered by the heaps of pink, or the emphasis on shopping and looking pretty (few MMOs emphasize anything else) just that there really isn't very much to it. Barbie Girls world is small (certainly smaller than something like Build-A-Bearville) and quite boring. Navigation is stilted thanks to very clunky movement and poor animation, and the interface is nothing to write home about.

Probably Barbie Girls most egregious crime however is its decision to be essentially pointless in its free-to-play incarnation. All play featured in Barbie Girls centers around raising B Bucks to purchase clothes and furniture, and in the free-to-play mode you can't spend B Bucks! It's a transparent way to force players to subscribe to the V.I.P. service, and while there's obviously no problem with being a subscription title, Barbie Girls offers very poor value at even $5.99 a month.

I tried to talk to the other users of Barbie Girls to see if they enjoyed the world, but thanks to crashes and the general silence of the community it was, frankly, impossible to gauge. But to be honest, I have to compare Barbie Girls with Build-A-Bearville. If Build-A-Bearville is an example of how to make a browser MMO based around a brand aimed at children, Barbie Girls is an example of how not to do it. People often criticize Barbie's world as pink, plastic and empty, and it's a shame to find her virtual world is exactly that.

Posted by Simon Carless at 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)

Ah yes, the sweet smell of GameSetLinks, this time headed by Forbes quoting folks like Gamelab's Eric Zimmerman on why the increasingly flooded PC casual game download market perhaps isn't quite what it used to be. Too much choice? That's the problem (and the blessing) nowadays, abstractly.

Also in here - the latest TIGSource indie game competition, all about 'demakes', as well as Harvey Smith hinting about his new game, the Stanford 'How They Got Game' chaps recording the last few minutes of The Sims Online/EA Land, and plenty more where that came from.

Gotta go go:

Casual Gold Bust - Forbes.com
'All of a sudden, the downloadable casual game gold rush appears to be over' - via Rampant Coyote.

Siliconera » Introducing 24: The Pachislot: The Game
Haha, awesome stylized Jack Bauer art.

1UP: 'Bloodthirsty Kodiak Bear Unlockable in Major League Eating'
Mastiff's WiiWare title getting crazier and crazier.

T=Machine » I like to hire on enthusiasm and fire on ability
'Over the years I’ve noticed a strong correlation between the extremely enthusiastic people *who also had good potential* and those who went on to fulfil a lot of that potential.'

the2bears.com » Knightly in the Dark Forest
'It’s really great to see so many pixel artists taking the time to make stuff for what is now an older genre' - really nice looking Western indie shooter - darn cute.

The Independent Gaming Source: TIGCompo - Bootleg Demakes
'Demakes: remakes of games on older generation hardware. Bootleg: not infringing on anyone’s intellectual property. You have a month.'

witchboy.net » Blog Archive » New Speech by Jon Blow
Harvey Smith on Blow's Develop speech, and some hints on an art-game 'side project' at Arkane Austin.

Wonderland: E4 sponsors Grand Master Flash award at the Golden Joysticks
Yay, Channel 4-sponsored Flash game competition, neatness.

"Lost Server Connection": The Last Minutes of a Virtual World | How They Got Game
The Stanford guys capture video of the last ever minutes of The Sims Online/EA-Land - great historical documentation.

press the ACTION BUTTON!!: 'THE ACTION BUTTON DOT NET MANIFESTO: A LIST OF THE TWENTY-FIVE BEST GAMES OF ALL-TIME'
Plenty of Rogers-ian whimsy here, considering Spartan: Total Warrior is one of this initial list (only #25-#23 reviewed so far).

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

[As big dev teams and bigger budgets become the norm, how do lone coders face the odds on their own? Thanks to Simon Parkin and Leigh Alexander for writing up this panel with Space Giraffe creator Jeff Minter, Desktop Tower Defense designer Paul Preece, and Boxhead series creator Sean Cooper talking passion, iteration and hard-learned lessons at the Develop Conference.]

Programmers making games on their own face steep odds, butting up on one side against the gorilla of commercial development, and against the challenges of independence, finances and satisfying an enormous community on the other.

As lone coders, Space Giraffe creator Jeff Minter, Desktop Tower Defense designer Paul Preece, and EA expat-turned-Boxhead series creator Sean Cooper are a breed apart in the days of burgeoning dev teams and even bigger budgets on the AAA side of the business.

But the three had an opportunity to speak out at the recent Develop Conference and Expo in Brighton -- Gamasutra was there to hear Edge Magazine's Alex Wiltshire lead them in a panel discussion focused on their experiences in going it alone.

Doing It Your Way

"It's the only way I get the freedom to make the games I want to make," said Minter. "Love it or hate it, I have developed my own style, and this is the only way to pursue that with absolute purity."

Cooper agreed -- after 15 years of writing games for others, he said, "hang on a minute -- I want to make games for myself." Leaving EA, he said, was about fatigue for a team dynamic where he was tired of hearing "'that's rubbish design,' when I knew there was something good in there and they were just being too cautious."

Preece confessed to being a control freak -- teams are all right with him, he said, "as long as I get to run things. It works out well being left alone to make games on my own."

Wanting to be on one's own is all well and good, of course, but most Xbox Live Arcade titles require large teams. What do the panelists use as tools to support them in going it alone?

Iterative Advantages

Minter said he does many of his games procedurally, mainly using his Neon procedural graphics engine that he wrote for the Xbox.

"It’s been vastly upgraded and is now useful for freeing me from needing external artwork," he said, adding that he hopes to migrate into procedurally-generated music, and eventually the gameplay itself.

"It would be incredible if we could make a game and procedurally create an experience though the parameters that we put on it," said Cooper.

For Preece, quick feedback in the Flash games market means he knows nearly immediately on a title's release what players like -- and what they don't. "Get it out to them, get them to feel it, bring it back and take the lessons into the next thing.

Minter, on the other hand, expressed caution about migrating to XBLA -- "to be honest, I don't think it’s quite enough to sustain my business," he said.

Speaking of Flash, Preece cited scripting speed as its primary advantage, and debugging as its weakness, while Cooper agreed that it's "basically an artwork scripting tool."

Nonetheless, "For me, it makes things better," he said. "I can have a game open in an IE window, I know the limitations and have to optimize things that you did in the 8-bit days."

Confidence Amid The Noise

What about other internet-based advantages? Does the tech support and developer community online make it easier to do a title like, for example, Minter's Space Giraffe? Or does being so connected to the end user create challenges?

"At the end of the day, you can’t please everyone," he said. "There will always be people on the internet who will moan and tell you you’re rubbish and your game is gong to be terrible, but you just have to shut them out and trust that it’s going to be good."

What does it take to cultivate that sort of faith? A long apprenticeship within a developer?

"I think if you’ve got it, you've got it," said Minter. He also said completing projects can instill confidence just as surely as failure to finish them can shake it.

"If you try a bit of this and a bit of that you end up with thirty half-done games, and if you never complete, then you’ll never get the feeling that you can actually make games."

Cooper said that in "the old days" at EA, he found design documents to be one of the dev cycle's biggest flaws. "It would be like Ford saying, 'we’re going to release a car on paper, make it and release it without testing and refining its elements.'"

So then, how do you know when a game is actually finished? Never, really, said Preece.

"You can keep updating your game -- my game is a number of iterations along from its initial release. We take our own stats, so we can monitor. Most of the stuff you can do post-launch is refinement based on the data coming back." And Flash, he added, lends itself to this degree of iteration.

Hard Lessons

And is it difficult, flying solo? Do any of the developers long for a return to a big team?

"I would say that the last year has been really hard," said Minter. "We learned a lot of lessons through Space Giraffe."

"It’s a good life though... It can be a bit more demanding than an office job where you can close the door at 5:00. But it is my passion – it’s how I want to spend my life."

Money is the main stressor, said Preece -- adding that the Flash biz has become what he calls a "footnote for the casual games industry" causes issues, too.

Minter, however, said he doesn't mind the opinions of commercial developers. "I tend to say a bit separate from those things," he said. "I try to keep true to what’s in my head."

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

You may recall that we mentioned Tokyo Game Show's new 'Sense Of Wonder Night' a few weeks ago. Well, I wanted to revisit it and make sure all our readers were aware - because it's an admirable goal and an event I hope some Westerners will be submitting their games for.

There's always been a need to highlight elements in games that are, well, different. In the West, it's good we have an increasingly rich history of doing so via events such as Jon Blow's Experimental Gameplay Workshop at GDC - or the indie festivals such as IGF and Indiecade. And, come to that, with media outlets who are interested in focusing on the alternative.

So I think that Sense Of Wonder Night - which will be on Friday, October 10th at 6pm at the Tokyo Game Show venue, Makuhari Messe in Tokyo - is an explicit attempt to do something similar in terms of showcasing innovation in Japan, or at least, to creators and attendees of one of the biggest game shows in the world. And this is important, given issues with sticking to genre formulas or over-rigid thinking are just as prevalent in the East as the West.

Since it was first announced, I (acting as publisher of Gamasutra/Game Developer & chairman of the IGF) have signed up to be on the screening committee for the event, alongside some interesting existing judges such as Katamari Damacy creator Keita Takahashi, Enterbrain's Kenji Sugiuchi, who oversees the RPG Maker series, and the IGDA's Kiyoshi Shin. Why? Because I do think it's an important event in terms of showcasing alternate games and game ideas.

Some obvious information - the deadline for submitting your game prototype or completed game is August 31st - full information is on the official website. The event is intended to "...shine the spotlight on game developers who are seeking new possibilities of expression through the medium of games and will serve as a vehicle for a new style of presentation that broadens the possibilities of games."

Their explanation of what they want to see: "The games that we are looking forward to considering for presentation will be demos of prototypes, games with experimental elements that have already been released or that are planned for release, and games developed by students who have hit upon something out of the ordinary. There will be no distinctions made whatsoever between professionals and amateurs. We welcome submissions of games created by small venture businesses as well as doujin games developed by individuals."

If you're selected, then you get a Tokyo Game Show 2008 Business Day ticket and TGS Forum invitation ticket, which allows you to see the full show itself. Now, obviously, the big issue here for indies is that visiting Tokyo - flight, hotel - isn't cheap. But perhaps if you twin it with a holiday, make good use of youth hostels, and look for connections out there, it becomes more worth it. Or that's the concept, anyhow. So go check it out.

Posted by Simon Carless at 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Delighted to welcome a new week with some GameSetLinks - headed by a look into user-generated content, alongside the (pictured) art-mod of Civilization to get a little bit more keiretsu on your ass.

Also wandering around in here - Robot Finds Kitten makes it into Secret Agent Clank, in a cute 3D version (totally cool, I've been a RFK booster for a while, more zen gaming plz), Wil Wheaton on a Rock Band faux pas, the performance-enhanced sports game concept, and quite a few other things besides.

Thirty three and a third:

Lower Your Eyelids To Die With The Sun: A look ahead
'What's interesting about [user-generated content] is that it's the first real step toward moving away from the traditional 'walled garden' philosophy of videogame production.'

VGChartz.com | VGC Exclusive: Xbox 360 to Cut Arcade Prices to $199.99 on Sept. 7th
'Using Moore's Law , it is believable that the Xbox 360 has reduced it's price a further 35-50% from the November 2006 pricepoint.' MOORE'S LAW? God.

JEANSNOW.NET — Arcade Mania
More on the upcoming Snow/Ashcraft book.

jPod DVD news: Announcement for jPod - Season 1 | TVShowsOnDVD.com
Douglas Coupland's show about a video game developer goes to DVD.

Crummy.com: 'It Has Been Confirmed'
'The PSP game Secret Agent Clank includes a robotfindskitten minigame.' Complete awesome.

This cartoon popped a lot of pills back in the 80s. « the rut.
Cute.

Trends in Japan » Cyber Figure Alice with VIDEO
'While running the software, if you point your webcam at the cube Alice will then make that her centerpoint for entertaining oh-so-geeky you.'

ISEA 2008 - The Juried exhibition - we make money not art
A modded art exhibit 'Civilization V', in which tech companies rule: 'Players choose their company and instead of warriors and generals, employ CEOs and lawyers to build an army to win the war for market-share dominance.'

WWdN: In Exile: green grass and high tides forever (and ever and ever and ever and
Wil Wheaton on a horrendous Rock Band endless setlist error - and why it's only a game, after all.

Ironic Sans: Idea: Performance Enhanced Video Games
'I would be tempted to include a hidden “Steroid Mode” where the players can enhance themselves by taking drugs which make them stronger players.'

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

The August 2008 issue of Game Developer magazine, the sister print publication to Gamasutra.com and the leading U.S. trade publication for the video game industry, has shipped to print/digital subscribers and is available from the Game Developer Digital service in both subscription and single-issue formats.

The cover feature for the issue is an exclusive postmortem of Hothead Games' downloadable title, Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness by Hothead COO Joel DeYoung, offering insight into the episodic game's development. The piece is described as follows:

"Hothead has brought downloadable episodic games to both PC and console with this Penny Arcade partnership, and along the way learned some valuable lessons, from the difficulty of working with fresh licensors to the trouble with and benefits of outsourcing. A sidebar from Jerry 'Tycho' Holkins and cover art from Mike 'Gabe' Krahulik round out the piece."

Another major feature in the new issue is "Ready, Aim, Fire!" in which Page 44 Studios programmer Adam Hunter takes an in-depth look at the many different routes that can be taken when simulating weapons fire in first-person shooter:

"In first-person shooters, there is often a disconnect between the location of the gun on the screen and the destination of an in-game bullet. Here, Adam Hunter scans different models that seek to rectify the problem, and draws a few conclusions of his own."

In another notable feature, the magazine's own Jeffrey Fleming rounds up eight AI middleware packages available for game development, highlighting their major features, platform support, and examples of games they have serviced:

"Artificial intelligence middleware is coming into its own as a crucial tool for modern game development. In this market overview we take a look at eight products that aim to make thinking machines a reality."

In addition, code columnist and Power Of Two Games co-founder Noel Llopis delves into setting up code servers to try and lesson some of the gruntwork burden on programmers, and Bungie art columnist Steve Theodore takes a look at animation layering, wondering if it might become animation's equivalent of the seminal Photoshop layers.

Plus, BioWare Austin's design co-columnist Damion Schubert wonders where all the humor in games has gone, and LucasArts' audio columnist Jesse Harlin addresses the sometimes-overwhelming number of simultaneous projects that can come with freelance audio work.

Finally, in a new interview, former Sonic Team and Naughty Dog designer Hirokazu Yasuhara (Sonic the Hedgehog, Uncharted: Drake's Legacy), now senior design director at Namco Bandai Games America, who lays out his unique philosophies of game design and fun.

As always, the issue also contains product reviews and other notable editorial columns, as well as the latest game development news and industry perspectives.

Worldwide paper-based subscriptions to Game Developer magazine are currently available at the official magazine website, and the Game Developer Digital version of the issue is also now available, with the site offering six months' and a year's subscriptions, alongside access to back issues and PDF downloads of all issues, all for a reduced price. There is now also an opportunity to buy the digital version of August 2008's magazine as a single issue.

Posted by Simon Carless at 8:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

[In this detailed opinion piece, writer Andrew Vanden Bossche takes a look at games from Silent Hill through Metal Gear Solid to examine what you can, should - and shouldn't - believe in games.]

A sickening creature pursues you through the dimly lit halls of a subway station: A mangled dog, head split in half. You strike at it with a lead pipe, and it yelps, stunned. Finally you can run from the horror writhing on the ground. You turn, left, right, and run into a hallway strewn with cardboard boxes. Daylight clearly shines at the end of the hall. You push through... OH WAIT.

Apparently haphazardly strewn cardboard boxes in Silent Hill 3 are made of something more durable than say, corpulent living cancers, zombie dogs, or the common wall. You uselessly press the analog stick towards the boxes and Heather is messily devoured by dogs. Game over. Maybe they should have just sent zombie cardboard boxes up against you.

Invisible walls, convenient unbreakable magical barriers, thickheaded party members, stubborn commanding officers, spineless protagonists, and cardboard boxes; they come in many forms, but unsubtle and impenetrable barriers are an all too familiar feature of video games.

Limiting Player Choice

It’s understandable that designers have to restrict player choices because it simply isn’t possible a create an outcome for every conceivable choice a player would like to make. There are only so many possibilities that can be programmed into a game, and designers ultimately have to limit the player’s abilities.

Players will, for the most part, happily accept limits like these. But when a restriction contradicts the very logic that has so far applied to rest of the game world, you run into situations where a character that could previously bash the brains out of a zombie with a lead pipe cannot use that same lead pipe to break an ordinary glass window.

Gamers will find this problem especially glaring and frustrating if that window is the only thing stopping them from continuing onwards. If the designer can maintain limits that are consistent and subtle, then the player goes happily on unawares. If not... well, strap on your cardboard box armor, because it’s going to be a bumpy ride.

Suspension of disbelief is a delicate balance to maintain in any art form, but it is especially important in video games because the player is constantly testing the limits of the game world. The character the player controls may have limited abilities, but the player can use those abilities as they see fit to overcome the game’s challenges. Players will also assume, and rightly so, that a consistent logic will be applied to these abilities.

Developers must give the player ways to interact with and change this self-contained world while at the same time design the protagonist, environment, and NPCs in a such a way that prevents the player from thinking that they can make choices that haven’t been implemented into the game. The player will believe any world, no matter how far-fetched the premise, as long as the world is internally consistent.

Cardboard Boxes Vs. Holes

When games present players with the power to make choices but then stop them from making those choices, it violates the world’s internal consistency and ruins suspension of disbelief. Which brings us back to Silent Hill and the impenetrable cardboard boxes.

You can get a player to believe in zombie nurses, hysterical drug-dealing witches and drug peddling pseudo-Judeo-Christian death cults, but you can’t make them believe that three or four haphazardly strewn cardboard boxes and a knocked over lamp will stop them from walking down a hallway. The fact that the protagonist of this game is clearly strong enough to swing lead pipes at hideous monsters makes the obstacle particularly laughable.

The player logically assumes that since Heather is strong enough to escape the grasp of monsters or strike at them with weapons, she should be able to push aside a box or two. If a video game consists of using the abilities you are given to reach a certain goal, what can a player do if those abilities simply fail to work in arbitrary situations?

The fact that the cardboard problem is present in Silent Hill 3 is really a shame, because for the most part the first game of the series did a very good job of creating a structured world for the player without breaking suspension of disbelief. Early in the game, the player is exploring the town of Silent Hill, and finds that in the middle of otherwise ordinary streets, enormous chasms have opened up and completely blocked where the protagonist player needs to go.

These holes in the ground enforce the boundaries of the game world just like the piles of cardboard boxes, but they differ substantially in the effect they have on the player. Because they are mysterious, scary, and unexplained, the holes are also instrumental in creating the sense of fear that is key to survival horror games like Silent Hill.

Even though a giant hole in the ground is by no means realistic, it’s believable within the context of the game - and believable that they can stop you, whereas cardboard boxes are realistic objects with an unrealistic implementation.

Most importantly, the holes of Silent Hill allows for the smooth continuation of suspension of disbelief not just because they offer a convincing explanation for why the game world is structured in a certain way. After all, no one has any problem with floating coins in Mario games. The holes in Silent Hill work for the suspension of disbelief because of the atmosphere they create. The limitations the holes impose feel like a part of the world.

While they still limit players from making choices, a player won’t feel that barrier is arbitrary. The key is to limit choice in a way the player will accept. Freedom in video games really is an illusion, an issue that is explored extensively in Metal Gear Solid.

Metal Gear's Games With Choice

The Metal Gear Solid series, especially the second installment, are very self-conscious of the balance between player abilities and player limitations. In fact, the main plotline of Metal Gear Solid 2 revolves around the S3 (Selection for Social Sanity) program, which is a narrative arc that can force anyone into a specific set of personality-molding actions.

It’s an intensely meta-fictional meditation on the nature of video games, a metaphor for the true lack of freedom the player has. [NOTE: the following section has some story spoilers for Metal Gear Solid 2.]

In a unique moment in video game narrative, the player is in the same situation as the protagonist; able to examine and interact with the world, but unable to make their own choices. The idea of modeling a program for societal censorship and control after the defining features of a video game is a scary concept, but true to what a video game is: an illusion of freedom.

While most games try to maintain the illusion of player choice, Metal Gear Solid 2 specifically confronts the player with the reality that there is no choice outside from what has already been programmed into the game. By the end of the game, Raiden has realized there’s no real point in fighting the main antagonist, Solidus Snake, but by that time it doesn’t matter. As Raiden’s (fake) commanding officer points out, the narrative doesn’t allow deviations, trapping Raiden and the player like a cardboard box.

Of course, it makes a big difference whether or not the intended purpose is to make the player aware that the game’s reality is just an illusion; in Silent Hill it ruins the atmosphere, but in Metal Gear Solid it creates the atmosphere.

Conclusion

These barriers, both physical and narrative, don’t need to be a bad thing. In fact, limitations make up everything there is in video games. But design needs to focus more both on making these limitations believable and on accepting the fact that choice is limited. Games shouldn’t imply choices that players cannot actually make. Players tend to notice when they can’t do things they expect to be able to do.

Despite all the narrative flaws that Metal Gear suffers from, Hideo Kojima has a very good firm on the implications that video games have for narrative structure. Understanding and accepting the limits of what a video game can do will lead designers to create video games that are more immersive, and can better create narratives unique to the medium. Or at least stop badgering us with cardboard.

[Andrew Vanden Bossche recently graduated from Oberlin and now lives in Boston. He wishes his dwarves would learn to not encase themselves in magma but is glad they can at least do it on a Mac. He has a blog at http://mammonmachine.blogspot.com/, in which he talks about pop culture, blood, Ikea, and videogames.]

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

[Well, slight changing of the guard here on Gamasutra, and we're absolutely delighted to have Leigh back, even as we're sad to see Brandon Boyer depart for a life of freelance bliss. I believe she'll be starting up The Aberrant Gamer again for GSW, so watch out for the return of that. Onward!]

Leading game industry site Gamasutra has announced that Leigh Alexander has joined the site as News Director, rounding out a notable line-up of journalists working on the award-winning and most-trafficked game art and business website.

Alexander previously helped to edit Gamasutra's news section and established the popular WorldsInMotion.biz site for Think Services, and most recently worked at leading game weblog Kotaku, while contributing to notable trade publications such as Variety.

She is stepping in to continue the work of Edge Online alumnus and former Gamasutra News Editor Brandon Boyer - who is departing for a freelance career and is expected to contribute to Think Services' sites extensively going forward.

Also helping to deliver the most detailed technical, game developer and game business coverage available online for the two-time Webby award winning site are game journalism industry veteran and Features Director Christian Nutt, and Special Projects Editor and former Shacknews EIC Chris Remo, as well as Associate News Editor Eric Caoili. The Gamasutra staff are overseen by Think Services group publisher Simon Carless.

Think Services' unique editorial structure also allows significant symbiosis between Gamasutra and sister publication Game Developer magazine, headed by Editor-In-Chief and Insert Credit co-founder Brandon Sheffield and Production Editor Jeff Fleming - as well as input from leading educational game website Game Career Guide, run by GCG Editor-In-Chief Jill Duffy.

In addition, the editors of Game Developer magazine and Gamasutra.com consult and collaborate closely with the creators of Think Services' market-leading conferences, including Game Developers Conference in San Francisco and September's Austin GDC - making the company the only one to reach game creators simultaneously through website, print, and events.

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

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

Here's a bit of hopefully-useful insight into a topic that every roguelike designer has to cover eventually: how to simulate variable rates of movement on the game's essentially integral, Cartesian grid.

One of the most distinctive aspects of a roguelike game is time-equivalency of actions. Moving a step, picking up an item, dropping an item, hitting an opponent, drinking a potion, reading a scroll, wielding a weapon, putting on or removing armor or a ring, and zapping with a wand: all of these things take the same amount of time, that is to say, one turn.

This is a subtly powerful concept. If the player swings at an adjacent monster, it uses up the player's turn so the enemy can get a hit in. If he's adjacent to an armor-degrader, taking off his armor to protect it still takes a turn in which the monster can get a swing in first. If he's wielding a weapon ill-suited to a foe, like a bow when fighting an adjacent monster, it'll take him a turn to change it, again giving the monster a free opportunity to hit.

And significantly, so long as a player and monster are the same speed and adjacent to each other, the monster is impossible to shake. The player must use some special item or ability to get away, because no matter what direction he steps, the monster will be able to match it. Since the player can't get away, once a same-speed monster gets adjacent melee combat will, barring special effects on either side, always be tit-for-tat, attack-trading affairs. The player can run in order to pass time, hopefully regenerating hit points, but that gives other monsters the chance to join in pursuit.

All the actions that change the player's state consume a turn. There are a few commands, particularly Inventory, that never take up a move. It should be noted that this is not realistic. A real person rummaging through his pack for a particular item will probably spend more time unslinging it, setting it down, opening the flap, and getting out the needed item, than it would take him to walk across one space's worth of dungeon floor. Giving him this action for free is a concession to playability. If there were a game penalty for looking to see what you're carrying, then it would be advantageous to keep notes on paper of your inventory instead of relying on the command, and a game that pedantic would probably scare away even the most devoted of @-signs.

But concerning those actions that consume time, there are two major types of speed systems for handling them in roguelike games: player-centered, and world-centered.

The world revolves around me

Player-centered is the simplest and oldest system. Rogue used it, the Mystery Dungeon games and Izuna use it, and some other popular roguelikes used it early in their history. Hack probably used it, but its descendent Nethack dropped it some versions back.

Under this system, the player's moves are organizing moments of game time. All the monster turns are scheduled relative to the turns the player gets. Most roguelike monsters have "average speed," one turn per turn of a normal player, and such monsters behave identically under either system. The player acts, then all the monsters act, then repeat. It's when either the player or monster is faster this situation changes. Greater speed in roguelikes is handled by handing out more turns. If the player is faster (drank Rogue's potion of haste self, zapped the monster with a wand of slow monster, is wearing Super-Rogue's ring of speed, et cetera) then he gets two consecutive turns before the monsters can act. If a monster is faster, it gets two actions after each of the player's one.

Just because this system is simple doesn't mean it doesn't work well for many games. In particular Japanese roguelikes, which tend to latch onto roguelike play systems more for being like a special kind of puzzle game rather than a simulation of dungeon exploration, benefit from making turn ordering predictable to the player. (This is part of the general tendency of JRPGs to abstract role-playing game rule systems away from being a simulation towards general gameishness.)

Being faster than an opponent, in a roguelike world, is a tremendous benefit. Your options are greatly expanded by being faster than a foe, more than nearly any other single advantage. You can either get twice as many attacks, or you can attack and use magic items, or you can successfully run away from melee-only monsters, or, by using your extra moves wisely, you can change your equipment without danger. Most significantly, so long as you have running room, you can always kill arbitrary melee foes by using your extra moves to hit and running on the others, allowing the player to both get in his damage while himself escaping any attacks.

(By the way, being slower than a monster, while painful, is not usually as bad for the player as a fast player is for the monster. This is because very few roguelike monsters seem to have the presence of mind to adopt hit-and-run tactics as players can. In fact, only one comes to mind: not only will Nethack's unicorns occasionally hit then step away, they'll even attempt to remain at least a knight's move away at the end of a turn so they can't be hit by missiles or wands.)

But player-centered timing is a fairly limited system. There are only three "speeds" under the basic scheme: half-speed, normal, and double-speed, and each level is much more than twice as good as the one below. If the programmer is cagey, he might make an effort to simulate fractional speeds. If the player is fast by half a turn, then he gets an extra move every other time, and if monsters are faster they get extra turns at the same rate. But due to the nature of roguelike world simulation, this is actually only slightly worse than if the player were faster by a full turn. All a 1/2-turn speed advantage player has to do is to run on the two regular turns, and attack on the one extra. It'll take longer, and he'll end up running further, but the monster still doesn't get any licks in.

Also, the case where both the player and monster have extra speed must be seen to. If not handled specially, the game could run into a case where the player gets two turns, then the monster gets two turns, over and over, which is nonsensical; in such a case, each side should get one turn.

To counter these problems, a programmer may choose to randomize the awarding of turns, either giving him or the monsters an extra half the time (which sometimes gives him strings of lucky, or unlucky, extras) or dividing the player's moves into pairs, and randomly deciding which will be followed by the extra. This works, but by this point most of the benefits, in terms of simplicity, of using a player-centered turn scheduling system are lost.

Wait... do you hear ticking?

A world-centered system is rather more complicated to implement, and it loses the abstract purity of integral turn scheduling schemes. Although it loses that simplicity, it's a method of scheduling turns that's much more amenable to fractional speeds. The idea is that both the player and monsters get scheduled turns according to a world clock. There's an internal game timer that counts what we might call time atoms, instants of time that pass for every actor in memory simultaneously.

One way to implement such a system, similar to Nethack's current scheme, goes as follows. Each monster, and the player too, keeps track of its place in the global queue. The creature's readiness-to-act is measured in energy. After acting, the creature's energy is set to zero. As each atom of time passes, the creature's speed rating is added to its energy, and when it exceeds some value the creature gets a turn. Or alternatively, 1 could be added to energy when a time atom passes, and when the value exceeds (maximum speed - monster's speed) the turn occurs.

Under this system, the greater the energy threshold (or maximum speed), the more flexibility is available in timings. It's best to pick a number that's evenly divisible by many other numbers, like 24, 36, or 72, since the programmer will probably want most monsters to act in a manner similar to Rogue's integral system: a monster with a speed of 12, compared to a player with a speed of 24, will behave exactly as if it was a half-speed monster in Rogue. If the player were to obtain a slight speed increase, say a +1 to speed, then he'd get an extra turn only once every 12 moves, still an exploitable advantage, but one that's a bit trickier to take advantage of. And it even allows for different actions to consume different amounts of game time; a quick action could result in less energy being depleted.

I've used the words turn and move pretty much interchangeably here, but more-recent versions of Nethack make a precise distinction between these terms. There, move is when the player makes a decision, essentially a unit of volition, and a "turn" is an objective measure of game time equal to one old-style move. If the player is faster than normal, then there will be times when he gets two moves in the same tick of the game's turn counter, which can be observed by watching the turn counter.

Special cases
Two games in particular, one of each style, take advantage of the flexibility of their respective speed systems in interesting ways.

The Mystery Dungeon series, which either use player-centered timing or a system so close to it that it makes no difference, have extra, in-between levels of monster speed. One of them is two moves per turn, but only one attack. Mecharoid-family, Baby Tanks, Death Reapers and Guard Dogs and have this type of movement. Effectively, the monsters can move twice, but if it attacks on the first move it loses its second turn. The other system is single-move-multiple-action, and higher-level Sabergator monsters have it: a single move per turn, but if adjacent to the player they get multiple attacks (more for higher-level monsters).

Among games with world-centered speed there's ADOM, which uses a neat system whereby there's no real maximum to the player's speed, but the higher it gets the less frequent are the additional extra turns granted to the player. Greater speed increases player hunger at a linear rate, but additional turns increase at a declining rate as speed gets higher. Eventually a point is reached where further increases in speed are not worth the greater food consumption. While ADOM's source code is closed so we really have no idea how turn scheduling in that game is implemented, to work this kind of system in a game with player-centered timing would be quite annoying.

Breaking news! Temple of the Roguelike informs us that the maintainers of Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, the closest the game has to an official maintenance body, has announced a tournament to take place during the month of August! We've covered Crawl before, and need I remind you, it is an awesome game that plays many ingenious riffs upon the roguelike theme. Go forth and play!

Posted by John Harris at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)

[One more from Simon Parkin at Develop, then, and David Braben's comments are notable and GSW-worthy because he is one of those increasing numbers of larger independent studios - such as Dylan Cuthbert's Q Games - who understand the value of both developing for big publishers and striking out with original digital projects simultaneously. Good man.]

Pioneering Elite co-developer and Frontier Developments founder David Braben spoke at the Develop conference in Brighton to argue that, despite the frequent doomsaying by various industry veterans, the state of game development is in great shape.

Braben, who created pioneering freeform 3D title Elite with Ian Bell in the early '80s, went on to found UK-based Frontier, which has worked on games including Thrillville and Dog's Life, and is currently developing freeform action title The Outsider.

Summarizing LostWinds

To set the stage for his point, Braben looked back on the development process for LostWinds, Frontier's WiiWare sidescroller based around controlling the flow of the wind to aid the game's platforming protagonist.

The game was prototyped in a week by two developers, and was based on an idea by Frontier designer Steve Burgess that was spawned in the company's regular "Game of the Week" concept meetings. The graphics were taken from the game's concept doc, and Braben claimed that little attention was paid to "prettiness" (though the game ended up receiving praise for its soft, colorful visuals).

Part of the game's "dramatically short turnaround" resulted from the simplicity of the game's editor, which allowed level designers to place objects anywhere in the game while it was running in real-time, so they could "tweak the game without stopping it." As it turned out, the game ended up being extremely economical - the audio alone took more memory than the rest of the game combined.

Development spanned less than four months with a team that peaked at 12 members, with a release date of May 12 to correspond with the WiiWare service's launch. There were no demos or "distractions" to finish beyond the game itself. Braben called the whole process "brilliantly enjoyable development," and sees it as evidence that it's still possible to make a game in only a few months.

Lessons Learned

Braben then used LostWinds' development history to springboard into a discussion of various lessons either taught or confirmed by that process. He started by noting that developing "something new" creates a great deal of editorial coverage - indeed, LostWinds as well as 2D Boy's upcoming WiiWare and PC puzzler World of Goo received a disproportionate amount of coverage from the gaming press among WiiWare games.

The designer also noted that non-development staff such as secretaries make for great playtesters on casual games when tuning difficulty, as they are closer to the broader target demographic than programmers would be.

Online distribution, he went on, is a great way of "de-risking" the publishing process, as it removes much of the overhead of getting games onto store shelves. Frontier has already indicated it is working on a sequel to LostWinds.

To provide a contrast to the short, tightly-focused LostWinds, Braben brought up The Outsider, Frontier's long-in-development politically-themed action/adventure game for PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3. In contrast to LostWinds, it aims for immersion through nonlinear storytelling; Braben compared the approach to that of the original Star Wars film, which he argues is more about an immersive world than a chronology of events.

The two titles are "at opposite ends of the spectrum," but all games need innovation to stay fresh, he argued.

(An audience member asked about the oft-mentioned but never-detailed Elite 4. In response, Braben said, "It needs the right technology. We’re very nearly there. We don’t want to do something that is not brilliant.")

The Future Is Bright

Braben challenged the industry naysayers head-on. "There is more innovation now than ever, contrary to the implication of the retro community," he stated, noting that innovation and freshness sell copies. "We are an industry to be proud of," he added.

The media is reporting on games as a more respectable business, he pointed out, and the average age of gamers in the UK is now 28, with 48 percent of the gamer population being female. In 2007, the British Board of Film Classification age-rated only 2.4 percent of games as "18," with that segment representing only 5 percent of the market. Meanwhile, sales overall were up 26 percent year over year.

With the rise of the internet, the designer also maintained that game quality is now more important than ever for sales. Player to player communication is widespread and is becoming as important as reviews, as is the accessibility of gameplay videos. A good license or marketing alone no longer automatically generates sales.

The internet also brings new opportunities for publishers and developers, he said, even beyond the digital distribution channel itself, with delivery of additional in-game content, shorter paths to market, and vibrant online communities surrounding the games.

Trouble In Paradise

Still, Braben had one area of complaint: the gaming retail scene, which is increasingly dominated by used game sales, which provide no financial reward to the games industry itself.

The storefront of the film industry, Braben pointed out, is a shiny image of a film premiere and huge advertising around the cinema. The games industry's store front, on the other hand, is full of pre-owned games. "Only the paper announcing the new stock of the Wii Fit combo is new," as he put it.

Pre-owned games can go around about ten times, Braben noted. In some cases, it can be difficult to purchase a particular game as new even if one wants to, particularly if it is an older game. This kind of backdoor rental is not tolerated by other industries, he claimed. In the film industry, there are special rental copies sold to stores for higher prices.

To combat this and "help retailers make the right choice," the industry could make pre-owned games more detectable, he offered. Microsoft uses one approach by including a scratch-off Xbox Live voucher with its games, although that would only be effective as a used sale deterrent to those who do not already subscribe to Xbox Live. Alternatively, developers could withhold functionality of used games in some way.

Looking further, games could be purchased online with the disc mailed after as backup, he said. Braben cited Sony Computer Entertainment Europe president and CEO David Reeves, who projects that digital distribution is likely to be the main route to market within five years.

Conclusion

Despite veering off into a brief bit of frustration, Braben finished his talk by reiterating that the games industry's future is bright. As he put it, there is more innovation, the market is bigger than it has ever been, and the rise of online communication means that quality is being valued like never before.

Posted by Simon Carless at 4:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

So, yes, more GameSetLink-age is upon us, with Jeremy Parish's 'New Games Journalist' personal site subscriber button offer naturally heading our discussions for this set of just sliightly esoteric links.

Also in here - some brief comments on the user-generated level neatness in Blast Works for the Wii, my very own N+ level (yay), a march against America's Army-advocating game companies, a goodbye to WoTC's Gleemax, and much more.

Go for gold:

GameSpite.net - Jeremy Parish's 'New Games Journalist' button
Clearly everyone needs to be wearing these, soon.

The legacy of Level Names, from N to N+
Mare and Raigan write: 'In recognition of your years of hard work championing indie games, you've been immortalized in the form of an N+ Level Name' for the first XBLA level pack - 'scarless' - named after my amusing mail alias, I think. Thanks, guys!

Aug. 6th Direct Action: Stop the Military Recruitment of Children « Direct Action to Stop the War
Saw a flyer for this on the way into work - specifically targeting SF game companies (Ubisoft, Secret Level) for publishing or developing America's Army games, interesting - is Ubisoft even publishing any more AA games?

Video game's user content spawns naughty Web 'Sporn' - CNN.com
Mainstream coverage at this stage can't hurt.

MiiPlaza.net -[ Blast Works: Zycyzyx pr ]-
I wanted to write an article about the fascinating level-download hack-age for Blast Works on Wii, but I don't have time - so here's a link to the most notable level made so far. Suffice to say - awesome concept (you can download user levels directly to your Wii), too fiddly, not a lot of people using it, but user-generated content rocks.

The RAM Raider: Big Brother – Thy Name Is Future
Spilled coffee shocker from the ever-grumpy Raider.

PlayStation.Blog » PixelJunk Eden: Oh Glorious Gardens…and Did We Mention Trophies?
I heart Dylan and friends.

Gleemax.com blog post: 'Gleemax Farewell'
'Wizards of the Coast has made the decision to pull down its Gleemax social networking site in order to focus on other aspects of our digital initiatives, especially Magic Online and Dungeons & Dragons Insider.'Via OgreCave.

These games really push our buttons - Citizen Gamer- msnbc.com
On LeDonne's Super Columbine RPG, various other 'controversial' games.

Sid Meier's First(?) Game and an Early Look at MicroProse | How They Got Game
Wow, awesome super-early game artifacts from Stanford's collection.

Posted by Simon Carless at 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

['Game Mag Weaseling' is a weekly column by Kevin Gifford which documents the history of video game magazines, from their birth in the early '80s to the current day.]

Welcome to Mag Roundup, my regular roundup of all the game magazines that hit newsstands and/or mailboxes in the past two weeks. Excited? Sure you are! And so is Washington Redskins rookie Devin Thomas in this not-at-all-Photoshopped picture of him holding the latest issue of Beckett Sports Gamer...that was published inside the issue of Beckett Sports Gamer he's "holding." It's a time paradox! Help meeee!

The past couple weeks have been bountiful for more than silly 'shops, however. So keep reading and find out about the one magazine you must get this month -- and the five squillion or so you probably shouldn't.

Electronic Gaming Monthly September 2008 (Podcast)

Cover: Soulcalibur IV

For hardcore gamers (or for that matter any gamer of a certain age) this issue is simply a must. It's a little downplayed on the cover, but "Japan" is the theme here, chiefly taking the form of three awesome, blockbuster interviews: Hironobu Sakaguchi (with some comments from Uematsu and Amano, too), Kenji Eno (the former Warp head, in an interview which is an awesome look into the mind of the looniest developer of the 1990s), and Tomonobu Itagaki (a largely drunk and rambling interview, but it is still packed with rad quotes).

There's also a general roundtable piece about the Japan games business and an interview with Hideki Kamiya that's largely about Bayonetta (his latest) but lets him ramble a bit about the rest of the industry, too. Great, great stuff, and arguably EGM's best "theme" issue so far -- I just wish it a) was more than 100 pages b) had the guts to make the theme the main cover subject instead of Soulcalibur IV.

(PS. Hsu and Chan is ending this issue. I think this is the first time I have ever mentioned Hsu and Chan in around two years of writing this column, which sums up my impression of Hsu and Chan pretty well, I reckon.)

Nintendo Power September 2008

Cover: Sonic & The Black Knight

If EGM didn't give you enough interviews with Japanese industry giants (and ex-giants), just open NP up and Wham! Right there on page 18, they're interviewing Takahashi Meijin out of nowhere! There's no way in 'ell 99% of NP readers would know who he is, and I wonder if the piece could've better been pitched as a retro piece into the Famicom revolution in Japan instead of a kinda-weird interview where he talks about Bonk and Virtual Console games and stuff.

Otherwise, this is a preview-laden issue -- and also oddly celebrity-laden, including interviews with both Les Claypool (who did the music for Mushroom Men) and Dan Aykroyd (for Ghostbusters, the first time I think he's talked in print about the games).

PlayStation: The Official Magazine September 2008

Cover: Frakkin' Shaun White Snowboarding

Why does Future love Shaun White Snowboarding so much?!!?! It seems like it's been in every damn issue of every magazine they've published this year, including the ones covering systems Shaun White Snowboarding isn't coming out on. (Just kidding, folks. Please don't cancel my subscriptions and/or kill my dog.)

It's a rad-looking, whitespace-heavy feature, though, as is the following piece on Linger in Shadows (which features a design just as unorthodox as the title itself, it seems).

Play August 2008

Cover: Darksiders

This month's Play has more "Play being Play" in one go than I've seen in a while -- a spread on Snatcher out of nowhere, Dave Halverson going crazy about some B-game you never heard of (Monster Madness: Grave Danger in this case), and a piece on an Alienware-themed short film just a few pages away from an advertisement for the same Alienware short film. Woo-hoo!

The Others

   

There are a ton of specials and not-so-special regular mags out this time around, and none of them are eye-popping, so I'll cover them in rapid-fire fashion. Beckett Massive Online Gamer #14 is their big blowout issue for Age of Conan, but the still-terrifying comic the mag kicks off with makes it hard to keep the mag open for very long. Much to my chagrin, however, it's well-stocked with advertising and probably making a profit for Beckett Media by this point. That's life.

Beckett Sports Video Gamer: Madden 09 clocks in at 92 pages for $9.99, which is frankly painful, but I have to hand it to the editors -- this is definitely 92 pages about Madden, complete with interviews and statistics and strategy guides for all 32 teams, and I'm sure there's a huge market for something like this.

   

Tips & Tricks Codebook September/October 2008 touts "How to Kick Ass!" on the cover, though sadly it's talking about Super Smash Bros. Brawl and not life in general. Shame. As before, the games that get walkthroughs this issue seem really dated.

Nintendo Power Presents the 2008 Nintendo DS Game Guide is simply a compilation of old reviews, as you'd expect.

   

Game Developer Presents Game Career Guide Fall 2008 is the unlikely largest issue of this Mag Roundup at 112 pages, mainly packed with recruitment ads, game outfit and salary profiles, and a huge directory of game schools (Jesus, every college in the world has a 3D animation program these days, don't they?)

Video Game Collector Issue 10 marks a fairly extensive redesign for the classic-gaming mag, with "special guest editor" Bill Kunkel making his mark everywhere in the issue. There are more pages and a lot more articles than in previous issues, but overall it's still far below professional-level, much less Retro Gamer level -- pieces ramble on and on, screaming for an editor; several illustrations are extremely blocky and low-res for no apparent reason; and the name of the developer behind the Sam & Max series is repeatedly misspelled "Taletell Games" in a news article.

The patriot in me is still somewhat annoyed that the Brits at Retro Gamer perfected the formula for a classic-game mag long before anyone in America could, but Video Game Collector seems to cater exclusively to the fortysomethings that dwell in the Digital Press forums, and that's so colossally missing the potential audience for a mag with this subject that it boggles my mind.

[Kevin Gifford breeds ferrets and runs Magweasel, a site for collectors and fans of old video-game and computer magazines. In his spare time he does writing and translation for lots and lots of publishers and game companies.]

Posted by Kevin Gifford at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)