Yeehaw, time for GameSetLinks, and there's a fun set of randomness in here, with everything from a new trailer for the LucasArts-ian A Vampyre Story through Nokia's Scott Foe on the (pictured) Reset Generation, as well as Kohler discussing the new craziness from Japanese quirkoid developers Skip.

It's very cool, actually, when developers are individual enough that you can just tell they've made a game, and that's why folks like Skip -- which has Nintendo paradigms to deliciously subvert -- are such a delight to behold.

Things things stuff:

Game Revenue Issues | Moving Pixels | PopMatters
'What about a Victoria’s Secret catalogue that uses the Unreal 3 Engine to let people have their customized avatar try on clothes and see how they look?'

The Greatest Video Game Ad of the Year - Nerd World - Lev Grossman - Matt Selman - Technology - TIME
I also saw this and was kinda entranced.

1UP: 'Bionic Commando Producer Ben Judd Interview'
Ah yes, this is v.good, thanks to Christian for reminding me to link it, after the fact.

Game Designer Jonathan Blow: What We All Missed About Braid | The A.V. Club
Yesh, more Braid interviews, but this one's a goodie.

'Scott Foe at EIF 2008' video on Vimeo
The Reset Generation creator lectures on the 'MP3 of games' - fun stuff.

Games We Love - Popfly Wiki
Microsoft's Popfly Game Creator trying to do interesting user-gen stuff here, dunno how well it is working just yet, but hey.

A Vampyre Story - streaming trailer
Ah, LucasArts-y goodness, finally coming soon.

The Making Of... Oddworld | Edge Online
Lorne Lanning still loony, but charismatic loony.

Hands-On: Chibi Robo Devs' Latest Weirdness, Captain Rainbow | Game | Life from Wired.com
'Amusingly, the old story from the U.S. version of the Mario 2 instruction book about how Birdo is a transvestite has now been retconned into canon. He's a cross-dressing dude, now.'

AAMA: 'About Coin-Operated Products'
Two newly posted case studies (the top PDF links) talk about how coin-op arcade/redemption games can help U.S. pizza parlors, pubs retain customers and grow - in other words, the realistic and practical face of arcades in the U.S. today. Neat.

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

Hello! My name is Akemi Kamio and I work PR at Konami! Or, at least, I did back in 1986 when Famicom Tsushin did this very small portrait of me back when they were trying to start the "Akemi Kamio Fan Club" in an attempt to give the 8-bit video game world a sexy idol of its very own.

Like I think I've said earlier, the magazine that would eventually be renamed Famitsu and become the most influential game media outlet in Japan was pretty kooky in its early years. Remarkably, this wasn't some kind of joke, either -- Famitsu really did cover Kamio off and on for the first few years of its existence, and while she was no Howard Philips, she became known enough that other magazines would introducer her as "that" Akemi Kamio whenever Konami-related news came up.

I bring Kamio up this week because, frankly, there isn't a heck of a lot else going on in magazine-land lately. All of the October '08 Future mags are out, most of them are still 100 pages, and half of them have a cell-phone ad insert, this one sponsored entirely by...Konami. Whoa, I've got a theme going after all! Damn, I'm one hot writer!

Nintendo Power October 2008

Cover: Wario Land: Shake It!

Out of all the Future mags this month, this is definitely the least "fall preview"-y. Yes, there's a top-15 E3 feature in there (and, er, it's kinda large), but there's also big bits on the new Wario, Time Hollow, and the new Kirby, along with a retrospective on 20 years' worth of fanart and an interview with Hideki Konno, the top man at EAD you've never heard of.

Official Xbox Magazine October 2008 (Podcast)

Cover: Guitar Hero: World Tour

The "10K in One Day" feature is the tops -- except that, during the test run outlined in the feature, the author only manages 8675 Gamerscore in the alotted time, which makes the coverline a little correct. His basic strategy of abusing sports games and licensed junk is sound, however, and either way it makes for humorous reading.

That, along with the extensive World Tour cover feature and a bit on the new 360 updates that graced the cover of Edge this month, rounds out the highlights. Otherwise, this is "fall preview issue" in everything but name.

PlayStation: The Official Magazine October 2008

Cover: DC Universe Online

The cover feature is about the same thing as Edge's a month back, so read this one if you are feeling patriotic and don't want to support those dirty British magazines. The other feature is on Valkyria Chronicles, which I think is a great game -- so great, in fact, that it was supposed to be on the cover of PiQ's theoretical sixth issue, which sadly never got close to being made. You should read this one, though, it's about as good as the one I would have written.

Otherwise, fall preview.

Wii Gamers' Guide Fall 2008

There isn't quite as much original content in this special as in past ones. Still, I guess the Wii Gamers' Guide seasonal has been a fairly decent success for IDG, given that Code Vault had nearly no ads and this issue features at least a few. (Quite a lot for games not on the Wii, though. Probably some kind of bonus throw-in?)

[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 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

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

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

The goodies in this latest version include a couple of YoYo Games competition entries, a Java-based physics game, an addictive but also difficult puzzler, and a remake that will please fans of classic adventure games that were released before the creation of point-and-click interfaces.

Game Pick: 'The Lost Snowmen' (Red System, freeware)
"A platformer starring three characters with different skill sets, who will have to assist each other during their adventures in order to fulfill a variety of level objectives. Think The Lost Vikings, but with better graphics and watered down difficulty."

Game Pick: 'Towerball' (Måns Olson, browser)
"A physics game created in less than forty-eight hours, where players will attempt to guide two coloured balls on a string towards the yellow target found in each tower. Another enjoyable entry from the twelfth Ludum Dare competition, which is also available as a zip file download."

Game Pick: 'Hexiom Connect' (Biclops Games, browser)
"A puzzler where players will have to swap and rearrange tiles on a hexagonal board, so that all coloured lines are connected in order to clear a level. The game includes forty stages of varying difficulty, a color blind mode, and a level editor where players can save or share their creations by copying a line of code."

Game Pick: 'Quest for Glory II: Trial by Fire' (AGD Interactive, freeware)
"A fan-made remake sanctioned and approved by Vivendi, Quest for Glory II: Trial by Fire tells the tale of a hero who travels to the land of Shapeir with his friends for more adventures, fame and treasure."

Game Pick: 'Karoshi Factory' (Jesse Venbrux, freeware)
"A new sequel to Jesse Venbrux's popular platformer series, where players must find unorthodox methods to kill all suit-wearing characters on screen in order to progress from one stage to the next."

Posted by timw at 12:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

[In an in-depth opinion piece, game designer and researcher Douglas Wilson urges more collaborative approaches to game design, suggesting that "the 'auteur' school of game development is not only outmoded, but dangerous to the vitality of the medium".]

As I see it, indie game culture faced a major crossroads at the 2008 Nordic Game Jam.

The biggest event of its kind, the Nordic Game Jam brings professionals, students, academes, and enthusiasts together at IT University of Copenhagen for a frenzied weekend of experimental game development.

At a game jam, the operating principle is deep and messy collaboration. People pitch and trade their ideas, then coalesce into small teams. The more diverse the team, the better – different skill sets, ages, nationalities, you name it.

It's precisely this collaborative spirit that made the keynote speech seem so, well, out-of-place. After a relatively harmless speech, the speaker, an acclaimed indie game designer, launched into a curious Q&A.

Asked how he motivated himself to work largely alone, the speaker bluntly stated, “I don’t like team dynamics very much.” His justification was one of artistic control: “My goal is to express things that are very intimate and personal.” Indeed, the speaker went as far as to suggest that sharing the game vision is a secondary option for developers who aren’t fortunate enough to have the resources to work alone or control their own team.

Suffice to say, this is not the kind of pep-talk you want to hear right before a game jam.

Collaborative Design versus Auteur Theory

Right there, in that moment, the Nordic Game Jam was confronted with two fundamentally different schools of indie game design. On one side, the collaborative team approach. On the other, the do-it-yourself game designer as Artist.

The latter line of thinking dates back to the Romantic era of art and poetry, during which the creative soul rejected “mere” depiction in favor self-expression. More recently, the question has famously plagued the study of film throughout the 20th century. Is the director an “auteur,” the one true creative visionary? Or is filmmaking somehow a more messily collaborative endeavor?

Do “game auteurs” exist? The question is not a new one. Espen Aarseth, for instance, explored the question a number of years ago. More recently, my colleague Yavuz Kerem Demirbaş wrote an excellent Masters thesis on the debate.

My article here is not a discussion of whether the game auteur makes sense on some sort of theoretical level. For my purposes, game auteurs do indeed exist, if only because some indie game designers view themselves as such, and many fans accept them as such.

I believe that the “auteur” school of game development is not only outmoded, but dangerous to the vitality of the medium. Instead, we must pursue deeply collaborative work styles and seek out diverse teammates if indie game development is ever to reach new heights and thrive beyond its current audience.

Looking Beyond Self-Expression

One particularly illuminating example of the auteur school of indie game design is Jason Rohrer’s Gravitation. It’s somewhat unjust of me to single out Rohrer, given that he seems like a cool guy who takes risks and tries new things (more than we can say for many of his peers). Nonetheless, Rohrer’s games – avidly discussed around the Net – are helping to set expectations for what “artistic” indie games might look like.

I take issue with Gravitation because the Creator’s Statement advocates a kind of creator-centric approach to game design that seems to be gaining cultural currency in the indie games world these days.

Rohrer’s stated goal is to make an “autobiographical” game. The circumstances around the development are certainly touching, but such a romanticized conception of artistic expression is naïve. It’s no small wonder that the gameplay flounders (compared to, say, Rohrer’s Passage).

This isn’t to suggest that game designers should altogether avoid self-expression, or even biography. Both Shigeru Miyamoto and Will Wright, for instance, incorporate their childhood experiences and dreams into their work, and their games are undoubtedly better for it. But these games manage to transcend the purely personal; they never seem self-indulgent.

Keep in mind that, despite their star power, designers like Miyamoto and Wright work in large teams in which other individuals contribute to the core vision. Self-expression, after all, is only one small part of the full range of aesthetic and formal concerns, especially in a medium as multifaceted as games.

Above the Low-Hanging Fruit

Not all indie games are so overtly concerned with personal self-expression, of course. Indeed, two of my all-time favorite indie game projects, Knytt and Cave Story, are (largely) the brainchildren of individual visionaries.

Yet as much as I love both games, I can’t help but feel that these kinds of projects are low-hanging fruit, or at least well-trodden ground. That’s not necessarily a bad thing in itself, as evidenced by how engaging both games are. But when are we going to start pushing our games into more uncharted territory? And how many more retro-styled platformers and shooters can the indie games community really withstand?

Developing small games on your own can be a great way to hone skills, explore new ideas, and share concepts with others. But such games are only that – prototypes on the path to something more intricate or ambitious.

This does not necessarily imply that we need “bigger” or more complicated games. Rather, we need to recognize the limitations of our own creativity, and look to our peers for inspiration.

A closer look at Knytt actually seems to support my argument. As an experimental platformer with sparse visuals and a lonely atmosphere, Knytt features a fragmentary soundtrack that is as essential to the game experience as the game mechanics are. One of the most poignant parts of the game, the Greenlands zone, relies on music co-written by both Gopher and Nifflas himself. Close collaboration in action!

Practical Concerns

More collaborative modes of design and development can only help to attract new types of people to the industry, thereby leading to new ideas and new kinds of games. Given the troubling dearth of females and minorities in the game industry, we might do well to consider Pauline Kael’s famous invective: “auteur theory is an attempt by adult males to justify staying inside the small range of experience of their boyhood and adolescence.”

I don’t mean to suggest that close collaboration is easy. It’s difficult – like, Paranoia Survivor Max difficult. Obviously it takes more than a group sing-along and team spirit to keep everyone on the same page while maintaining a shared core vision. A successful group project requires the right mix of people, the right team structure, and the right process.

It may be tempting to shy away from such organizational headaches, especially when developing games in a grassroots indie setting. Group projects can fail catastrophically – I’ve been there, and it can get ugly. But given the enormous potential payoffs, we owe it to ourselves to take the plunge; and not merely to work in teams, but to work in teams that are messily collaborative, teams that reject easy hierarchies.

And even though group projects deserve method and structure, we should also be careful not to blindly emulate the working methods of the industry. What makes indie game development “indie” is precisely the freedom to experiment – not only with the game itself, but also with the development process. We must re-conceptualize what it means to work together, and find new ways to collaborate.

"By your powers combined, I am awesome game!"

This isn't just some superficial hippie rhetoric. It's about making better games, more ambitious games, more meaningful games, radically new types of games. Those are the stakes, and that’s why every card-carrying games aficionado should care.

Don’t believe me? Just ask the team of students who made Narbacular Drop.

Speaking for myself, my own collaborative game design experiences have been nothing short of magical. My 2008 Nordic Game Jam group, for example, consisted of six people (male and female) representing four different countries.

Not only did our game turn out better for the wide range of backgrounds and opinions, but my life is now richer for the experience. Corny, I know – it sounds like something out of an episode of Captain friggin’ Planet, but it’s the honest truth.

Game as Process, not Object

We designers, critics, and players tend to focus too much on the game itself. We should remind ourselves that the development process and the discussion afterwards – all the stuff that feeds into the game and evolves out of it – are equally essential to the total game experience.

The wisdom is simple: push yourself to work with people very different from yourself; because at the end of the day, it’s just as important to let the world impact you as it is for you to impact the world.

If you still don’t believe me, I invite you to stop by the next Nordic Game Jam. Sitting at ScrollBar in a multi-national team of friends and strangers, with a beer in one hand and a sketchpad of crazy ideas in the other, you just might find yourself surprised at how fast innovation happens when creativity is finally freed from the prison of the self.

gl hf, collaboration.

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

[Perhaps EVE Online economy articles are a little passe at this point, but hey, Mathew Kumar was at the Edinburgh Interactive Festival to see in-world economist Dr. Eyjolfur talk about some neeto macro-economic trends he sees in the trading and pillaging-crazy game, and who are we at GSW not to bring it to you?]

As economists struggle to come up with answers to the mortgage meltdown and credit crisis, developer CCP's lead economist Dr. Eyjolfur Gudmundsson oversees a very different, yet surprisingly complex, kind of financial market: the persistent, single-server online world of spacefaring MMO EVE Online.

"By 2008, the market has become completely player-driven, and that's where I came in," says Guðmundsson during an Edinburgh International Festival session. "The whole economic structure has become so complex, the data so vast, that a specialist was needed."

He has 15 years of non-virtual experience in his field, and holds a PhD from the University of Rhode Island. When hired last year, he described himself as "a sort of Alan Greenspan for...EVE Online," referring to the United States' former chairman of the Federal Reserve. Players, designers, and CCP executives alike benefit from real economic analysis of the in-game world, he argues.

After all, Gudmundsson says, EVE is a "pure capitalist" market -- its economy is emergent, not constrained to a fixed state like those of most MMO games. It was not always that way.

Earlier in the game's life, non-player characters participated in and partially drove the economy, as in nearly all such games. But as the population grew -- and, crucially for the sake of a robust economy, remained within a single server environment rather than being fractured into several realms as with -- the player based reached a critical mass that allowed the market to become entirely self-sufficient and player-driven.

"The number of possible one to one relationships grows like the square of a population, so a population of one thousand has a potential for one million unique relationships, while a population of 100,000 has a potential for 10 billion," says Guðmundsson, "and that's why it's so important that EVE is on a single server."

Corporations, EVE's equivalent of guilds, have long been a staple of the game. Though they can operate on a massive scale, and can be as organizationally intricate as their real-world counterparts, they proved insufficient to support the increasingly complex needs of the world. Like a real governing body might, CCP responded by enacting practical allowances to solidify constructs spurred by the "citizens" themselves.

"By 2005, with 50,000 players, some began to feel that corporations were not enough, so they themselves implemented 'alliances,'" which are larger confederations of corporations, Gudmundsson says. "[They] asked us to implement it officially, which we did, and they have since become the dominating political institution in the game. So you could already see emergent social structures with only 50,000 players."

EVE's population now exceeds 245,000. Guðmundsson calls it a "nation state, with all the institutions that come along with that." Players create political influence maps that illustrate political influence geographically -- much of that influence the result of diplomacy rather than by warfare.

Examples of economic flux are extremely similar to those that occur in the real world. At one point, increased supply of a certain mineral caused a considerable price drop. To try to balance it back, developers planned to make the mineral more difficult to obtain, implementing the change on the game's test server. When players caught wind of the plan, a speculative boom erupted, sending prices sky-high -- and then back to stability once the change was made permanent and the market settled.

In another instance, the mineral Tritanium was in enormous demand, and thus extremely expensive, so the developers enforced a price cap. "I as an economist didn't like the price cap," says Gudmundsson, and the cap was removed. "The market went berserk!" he says, with "people buying and selling waiting for the price to go up." Contrary to expectation, the price dropped -- just as in the real world, economic behavior does not always function like clockwork.

This year, CCP sanctioned a Council of Stellar Management, an elective voting body comprised of EVE players who had to campaign for their slots. Of 64 candidates, nine were elected (seven males and two females, roughly matching the population's gender makeup, with an age range of 17 to 52 years). The group debates a wide range of in-game issues, including such close-to-home topics as using ships as suicide bombers.

As much as possible, CCP prefers to leave EVE's markets to their own devices, entrusting them to the players.

But the development team still has to tweak things, and a trained analytical eye can be useful to that end. "My role is to ensure that there is a certain level of stability," concludes Gudmundsson, "and that no changes are made without understanding the economic impact."

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

Ah yes, some marvellous GameSetLink-age, headed by the delightful Stephen Fry -- British comedic genius -- grinning happily over his Nintendo DS, as all of us often do.

Also hanging out in here - a very cheeky Mariopolitical video by Jared Rea, dieting as an RPG, the Antiques Roadshow twins discussing video game collecting, the 'Learn By Death' concept, and lots more.

Going going gone:

Dork Talk: Stephen Fry is tickled pink by his Nintendo DS | Technology | The Guardian
'A simple pocket knife can be more appealing and usable than a bristling Victorinox, and a dedicated little games machine like the DS can engage us far more than the sleek power of the PSP.' Via Kotaku.

Siliconera » Inside the development of DJ Max Fever
Interesting, if not very professional with the leetspeak: 'The game should be easy to find. Almost every retailer has made a commitment to the game. The drought of PSP games has really helped us, lol.' :P

Fear and Levelling in Las Vegas Article - Page 1 // MMO /// Eurogamer
Cute piece, not too many Hunter-isms, engaging writing, yay.

[Video] John McCain, POW Bros | Jared Rea
Rea is braver man than I for putting his name to this!

Kotaku :'Games As Art, But At What Cost?'
Some heady things to examine here - Leigh's guest Kotaku column tries with some success.

MSN Tech & Gadgets - Collect This!
OMG, the Keno bros from Antiques Roadshow interview the guy behind Digital Press on game collecting, silly Guitar Hero rock-outs and all!

Metacritic: Order Up! (wii: 2008): Reviews
Just rented this, surprisingly fun Wii cooking game from the fl0w/Dungeon Siege PSP creators.

Design Rampage: An Open Letter To Mark Jacobs
'Give credit where it is due, and I can guarantee your organization will be held in a much higher regard with developers, including ones you will try to employ some day.'

Wired: Games Without Frontiers: Fun Way to Lose Weight: Turn Dieting Into an RPG
'The Weight Watchers program is designed precisely like a role-playing dungeon crawler. That's why people love it, stick to it and have success with it.'

Game-ism: 'Challenge vs. Frustration'
'Within the last ten years, there’s been a very deliberate progression away from “hardcore” ludic aesthetics. Before the 64 bit era games, pretty much everything on the market was “Learn by Death.”'

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

You may recall that I blogged about the rather fascinating demo-scene part of the NVision show in San Jose earlier this week. Well, as part of it, there was a pretty large demo competition, and the NVScene 2008 results -- including pictures, downloadables, video and comments where available -- are posted over at demo-scene nexus Pouet.net.

Basically, here's what's going on with the two NVScene 2008 competitions. All demos need to run in real-time on your PC -- even though they are non-interactive.

The best designed one that shows off impressive real-time effects (you may find you need quite a powerful PC to run them!) will likely win the competition. There were two sections to NVScene -- a regular demo competition, and a 4k intro competition, in which the application had to fit into, yes, just 4096 bytes.

If you'd like to watch the competitions 'as they happened', excellent streaming video resource Demoscene.TV has full web-streaming versions of both the demo competition and the 4k intro competition. In some cases, that's the only way to see a streaming version of the demo right now.

But of course, the best way to check these demos out is to run them on your PC (there are downloadable/streamable individual versions of quite a few of them too, if you get stuck). So let's link to the Pouet info-page for each (since all the info is contained there!), and add some brief commentary on the demos I personally loved in the competition:

Texas by Keyboarders (1st, 4k intro)
[Absolutely spectacular geometric wonderland, with spiky objects, some kind of abstract story involving seeds being birthed that overwhelm the world, and just an insanely beautiful thing to fit in 4k. Vista-only, and there's controversy over it using samples from a Windows Vista-bundled song by Karsh Kale for the soundtrack, but hey, it technically fits within 4k.]

Receptors By TBC (2nd, 4k intro)
[Easily one of the best 4k intro soundtracks ever, with insane sub-bass and a wicked drum&base tune, given there are no samples used at all, one would presume - just synthetic real-time effects. The demo itself is distorted, geometric, and heavily music-cued, and surprisingly rocking.]

Photon Race 2 by Archee (3rd, 4k intro)
[Gather this needs a bit of a monster PC setup to run in a decent frame-rate, but nonetheless, this has -- wait for it -- real-time raytracing on multiple glass objects, all reflecting and refracting each other, all in 4k. Seems like a glimpse of the future, to me - although the demo itself is pedestrian past that rendering insanity.]

Stargazer by Orb & Andromeda (1st, demo competition)
[Already being hailed as an all-time classic, this is, for sure, a pretty conventional demo - wibbly effects, lots of polygons being thrown around, and 3D rendering techniques galore - but my God, some of the detail and effects in it (look at the liquid near the beginning!) are just crazy for real-time. Also, it's well-designed in an oldskool demo style. So a deserved winner.]

Into The Pink by Plastic (2nd, demo competition)
[Taking a very different tack from Andromeda & Orb, this demo is gritty, with lots of organic shapes such as cockroaches, bugs, and rats, with the super-realistic rendering making things really interesting. As with a lot of the other demos, you need a super high-spec PC to see it running full framerate, but them's the breaks.]

n-0505 by Xplsv/Nine Inch Nails (Joint 3rd, demo competition.)
[The most interesting things about this demo is that it actually uses a Creative Commons-licensed Nine Inch Nails track from the Ghosts album as the soundtrack - something that I think is really neat, even as it causes a ruckus in the somewhat more insular demo community. Overall, lots of crazy overlaid blood and gloop effects and a creepy 'spreading epidemic' theme work well, though the end is perhaps a little anticlimactic - I kept waiting for the blood vials to explode.]

Midnight Run by ASD (Joint 3rd, demo competition.)
[Oh. My. Being a bit of a design geek, this is my absolute favorite demo, despite only making third. It's an almost Sgt. Pepper-ish trek through weird dynamically generated pipes, with swimmers and lines of weird people and hangliders and other extreme strangeness. Of course, it's all in 2D, and could practically have been done in Flash in terms of effects -- and also I hear it has similar elements to a recent ASD demo. But I still love it.]

[NOTE: The images in this article are from my NVision pictures -- mainly just some shots of everyone watching the earlier parts of the 4k intro competition.]

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

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

Here's a look at a roguelike game that some of you might not quite be familiar with. The graphics are very well-done, at least.

It's got an isometric view, fairly detailed character and monster art, and decorated room walls and floors. Looked at with unfocused eyes, it even begins to resemble Diablo. So what game might this be?

Of course, it's Nethack.

Would you go Head Over Heels for this?

(If you recognize why I picked these section titles, you're probably an even bigger geek than me.)

Nethack is one of the most widely-ported games in existence. Probably, the only games made for more platforms were from Infocom. And all of Nethack's official ports, amazingly, are compiled off the same source tree, with customizations to work around the crotchets of this operating system, or that C compiler. And since the facts of the display varies greatly across platforms, the output portions of the source code are compartmentalized in a very thorough way.

This compartmentalization makes it relatively simple to create a new graphics system, simple enough that many ports support multiple styles of output. A few years ago there was a version for Linux and Windows systems called AllegroHack, that was like the basic tile version but with much more detailed graphics and more colors. Soon after that we saw the release of Falcon's Eye, a version of the game that provided isometric graphics, even more detailed images, and a somewhat-improved user interface.

After a couple of years updates died out, although its developer still plans to continue work on the port (the original site is still on the web here), leaving the world bereft of a maintained, high-quality graphical Nethack port until DarkArts Studios forked it to produce Vulture's Eye and Vulture's Claw, which are graphic versions of Nethack and SLASH'EM respectively.

Perfect for playing on either the Solstice or the Equinox

Some of the eye-candy in the Falcon/Vulture games goes far beyond the call of duty. Different rooms have different wall styles, and dressing elements remain consistent within each room.

There are several tilesets used for mine levels. An isometric minimap in the corner assists the player in keeping track of his position in the level, and a map window can be called up to get a look at the board in a more traditional format.

But the most useful thing here for new players is the various user interface enhancements. Most of the traditional keypresses work as before, but the inventory screen has been made much more capable. Not only is it graphic, but pressing the right mouse button on an item brings up a submenu of things to do with it. Yes! Finally a version of Nethack that's light on the need to memorize commands!

It should also be noted that the right-click menu is fairly inclusive, offering functions such a "eat" for all items, not just food. This is probably by design; there are times in the game when the player might want to eat something that wouldn't ordinarily be considered food, or wield something that's not a typical weapon, or throw something that's not a missile. Having commands mysteriously appear and vanish from the list at different times would be a subtle spoiler.

The right-click inventory feature, should a player discover it, makes Nethack vastly more accessible to a new player. So it really is a shame that it isn't easier to discover itself; most new players wouldn't expect to find it there. And although there are command icons in the corner of the screen, some of the most important utility commands, particularly searching, saving and quitting, are still only accessible through keypresses.

A knight is nothing but a Light Crusader

One of the first things players will notice about Vulture's Eye, probably before the new graphics in fact, is that the game has music and sound effects. The sound effects, particularly, are implemented in a haphazard manner: the sound code scans the message buffer for a number of strings, and if one is found, it plays a roughly-appropriate sound. So, the word "kitten" will play a sound of a meow.

This might seem clever at first, but the program is not at all discerning about context. The same meow is played whether you display your kitten, whether you're being attacked by an enemy kitten (standard definition of awesome: enemy kitten), or whether you're stepping over the corpse of your deceased pet. Fortunately, both music and sounds can be turned off from the options menu.

What I consider most interesting about the Vulture's games, ultimately, is that they're easier to play if you have no prior Nethack experience. The more familiar with standard Nethack a player is, the more comfortable he'll be with its key commands and simple, but information-rich, screen.

Vulture's Eye's isometric graphics may help a new player to better perceive the world as a place, but the graphics take up lots of space, meaning the player can't see as much of the world at once, corridors and walls are easy to confuse (especially with walls overlapping floor spaces), and the greater diversity in monster and item representations makes it harder to distinguish them at a glance.

For a new player, these distractions aren't substantively greater than those presented by Nethack itself. But for an experienced player, Vulture's Eye has poses a surprising learning curve, even though the game itself is identical to vanilla Nethack.

Posted by John Harris at 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Aha, may be time to pick the best posts of the week so far from big sister site Gamasutra and elsewhere on our Think Services sites/blogs - with a number of neat features such as the 'Demystifying Portal' piece heading up the line-up.

Also in here - a further look at obstacles in games, an awesome Yasuhara interview, Gas Powered Games' Chris Taylor on the media talking directly to developers, Game Career Guide on the art of manual making, and lots more fun.

Erk splat googoo:

Gamasutra Features

Defining Boundaries: Creating Credible Obstacles In Games, Part 2
"Sidhe designer Griffiths (Gripshift) sparked much debate with his previous article on invisible barriers in games -- and he returns with an in-depth design article, examining practical solutions."

Sponsored Feature: Inking the Cube: Edge Detection with Direct3D 10
"In this Intel-sponsored feature, part of the Gamasutra Visual Computing microsite, Intel senior graphics software engineer Joshua Doss delves practically into techniques for edge detection, crucial for many approaches to non-photorealistic rendering."

Games Demystified: Portal
"In this neat technical article, Alessi deconstructs Valve's Portal -- including a demo and example source code -- to give a clear understanding of the physics principles behind the game's compellingly-executed teleportation mechanics."

Game Design Psychology: The Full Hirokazu Yasuhara Interview
"Unsung game designer Hirokazu Yasuhara, one of the 'original three' behind Sonic The Hedgehog, also helped make Western titles like Jak & Daxter and Uncharted - and gives Gamasutra a fascinating lecture on game design and fun."

Gamasutra/Other Original News

GPG's Taylor: Developers Should Interact More Directly With Press
"Controversy abounds when developers don't receive their deserved credits on a title -- but what about credit and acknowledgment in the press? Gas Powered Games' Chris Taylor (Dungeon Siege, Demigod) explains to Gamasutra why it's important, even essential, to allow development teams to speak directly with the media."

GCG: ‘The Professional Game Manual Maker’
"Belinda M. Van Sickle has one of those ‘other’ jobs in the game industry, the kind that doesn’t fit neatly into the designer-artist-programmer triangle. GameCareerGuide.com, Gamasutra’s sister site for game-related careers and education, has just posted an interview with her in which she talks about making video game manuals and documentation."

Devs And Pubs On Pitching Game Ideas: Be Persistent, Specialize
"Industry veterans like Foundation 9's Chris Charla, Capcom's Adam Boyes, Namco Bandai's Zack Karlsson, and DDM's Jeff Hilbert get practical with tips on what to do (and what not to do) when pitching your game to publishers. Among them: "If you can't pitch your game in seven seconds, you've lost."

Interview: Xbox 360's Japanese Saviors Talk Tales Series
"The Xbox 360 has seen an impressive Japanese hardware bump thanks to Tales Of Vesperia, and Gamasutra has been talking to Namco Bandai's Tales brand manager Hideo Baba and producer Tsutomu Gouda on Japan's fastest-selling Xbox 360 game and its Wii stablemate."

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

["Ninja" outsourcing developer Tose has racked up numerous development credits -- yet are hardly ever credited. You may recall that our own Brandon Sheffield (Game Developer magazine EIC) has been semi-obsessed with them - well, he returns for another bite of the Tose cherry here, hurray.]

Japanese developer Tose has worked on many hundreds of games since 1979 and employs about a thousand developers in multiple studios all over Japan -- and consumers have played many of their games without ever even being aware.

The company has associated itself with only a handful of its titles: Sega Casino, SNK's Sasuke vs. Commander (1980 arcade game), Nightmare Before Christmas (GBA), Shrek: Reekin' Havoc and Shrek: Hassle at the Castle (both GBA titles for TDK Mediactive), and a series of Nickelodeon licensed mobile games for THQ.

Other than that -- and the notable exception of Starfy, a series for which the company holds half the IPl, Tose keeps mum. This is because the company's business lies largely in outsourced development, and confidentiality agreements prohibit Tose from discussing the games it's worked on.

In fact, confidentiality's so key to Tose's business that we can't even give the name of the Tose exec to whom we spoke for this special Gamasutra interview.

Two years after our first in-depth feature on the company, we revisit Tose to find out how Nintendo's market dominance in Japan is affecting the development climate, about the challenges Japanese developers face in reaching Western audiences, and whether Tose -- who primarily develops now for Wii, PS2 and DS -- is prepared to make the move onto next-gen consoles.

How do you feel the Japanese market has changed in the last two years, with the advent of new consoles?

In the past two years, the DS and Wii have become the dominant players in the industry. Sony took a large marketshare in the industry with the PS2, but has been a little bit behind for the PS3. Overall, the industry is still growing.

The third-party publishers of the industry have been growing, but Nintendo’s growth is too significant. So for me, that is not good for the publishers. That is just good for Nintendo. For us, we still can have lots of projects for many companies for the Wii and DS, but for the publishers, it's not a good situation.

Is it a more attractive position for Tose to be in than before?

More projects are coming to us than before. Not only from traditional game publishers, but also new companies publishing DS products which are not games, like brain-training titles.

How many next-gen games has Tose had to do development for, so far? I mean like Xbox 360 or PS3 or high-end PC.

We are just doing a couple of titles for the PS3 and the Xbox 360 as well.

Is that next-gen end of your business coming from the U.S., or is it all in Japan thus far? As other countries start to outsource more, do you have to change your tactics?

From U.S. publishers? Not yet. We haven't changed our strategies at all, but more projects are coming from the U.S. and the European publishers, so we have to deal with that demand, as well.

Also, we have just opened three studios in Japan -- Okinawa, Nagoya, and Sapporo -- to supplement manpower for that demand. So we guess we are a little bit worried about the situation, because other countries are trying to catch up. Fortunately, we have been in this industry for 29 years, so we will be okay.

How many developers are working at Tose, now that you've opened more studios?

It's 1,000 in Japan, 200 in China, and two in the U.S.

Big office! (laughter) Very important.

There may be a strong development environment in Sapporo, but not a lot in Nagoya nor Okinawa. Why did you choose to open studios there?

Our first reason to have studios in Nagoya and Okinawa is there are no publishing companies like Capcom and Sega. If there are lots of publishing companies, it's very competitive to employ talent in that area.

The second reason is that there is a special school for the students to learn video game development, so it's easier for us to find talent.

Also, our company policy is to train people from entry-level to a higher level, so those places -- Okinawa and Nagoya -- are very good places for us to have people training.

I've noticed that games from the Kansai [Osaka and Kyoto] area have a different feel than games from the Tokyo area. Do you think that games coming from Nagoya and Okinawa will be stylistically unique, too?

I agree with you, that games have different flavor from different places. It will not happen from Okinawa yet, because we're just starting. But for another studio, we'll have Okinawan-flavor games in the near future.

Are there any plans to do any more original IP out of Tose in the near future?

We already make original games for publishers, but we will not own the IP of that project.

Will it be based on ideas generated from Tose, or from the publisher?

From both. It depends on the project.

Have there been cases in the past where Tose has come up with an idea, pitched it to a publisher, and the publisher released it as their own?

Basically, that is what we are doing.

Are there any examples you can give?

Sorry. That's all we can say.

How is your tools integration going? Does everyone use the same toolkit, and do you develop in-house engines?

We have a central technology team in charge of all the technology for the platform. They are controlling and managing the technology for the entire company. Usually, we can share the information through the internal website.

We don't have an engine or anything. We have basic libraries and stuff, and each team can share. Each team has a different project and different clients, and they use those basic libraries, but they have to customize them for different projects and stuff. But they have tools, you know -- different types of tools. Those are shared by all the teams throughout Tose.

From the Japanese perspective, how's the Western expansion going?

We want to expand more, especially as the U.S. market is much bigger than Japan's, so we need to get more projects from U.S. publishers.

Do you think it's easier for Japanese companies to develop for the Western market by working with Western publishers, or from Japan and market it from there?

Both are not easy, because it's business. In the past, it was easier to work with Japanese publishers even though we had a project for the Western market, because we have known Japanese publishers for a long time, so both already know how to work together. So it was much easier before. But now we are getting to know the Western style, so it's becoming easier, but still it's not easy.

Has it been difficult to adjust to the way Western publishers deal with things? I think they probably do a lot more micromanagement and a lot more check-ins and milestones than I would guess from Japanese publishers.

We didn't have any difficulties in scheduling issues, because we have had the same experience working with Japanese publishers.

But we think we have to do lots of work before starting actual development, like game design documents and technical design documents. There's lots of documentation that we have to prepare for Western publishers. That's probably the biggest difference between Japanese and U.S. publishers.

Do you find that Western publishers give you more feedback during the project?

We don't find any big difference between Japan and the West on that. Probably the difference in the West is in what they want us to do, in terms of gameplay or game mechanics -- it's very hard to explain, but for us, the companies in both countries are trying to make the game as good as possible, but in each area, there's something of a difference in taste or something like that. That's a kind of difficulty.

In the West, there's a lot more focus on a multiplayer component, and most games are required to use the network in some way. Is that another difference?

That's true, but we haven't had lots of projects for next-generation machines yet.

Are you concerned about that? At some point, these consoles will become the standard -- do you worry about being behind?

We are not concerned about it at all. We are based on a work-for-hire model, so projects will probably be coming for the Xbox 360 and PS3 if publishers want us to do that.

Is the staff being trained for next-gen stuff in advance of getting the projects?

Yeah. We already have knowledge of technology for those console games.

By your business model, the names of your new staff that you'll be training from entry level won't really become known to the outside world. How do you evaluate their work and promote them up in that case?

We have a kind of mentor system. We have one mentor for one new person, and he should be responsible for training for that person. For example, for the Nagoya and Okinawa studio, we sent people there who have been in this industry for many years, to train people locally from the beginning state.

Also, our company policy is that once people join Tose, we want them to work at Tose for their entire life. Right now, that works well in Tose, so we don't worry about people leaving the company.

What do you do when people are not very good at their job, then, if you want them to stay there forever?

For people to join the company, they have to pass a lot of steps, like examinations, in terms of technology. People who pass that test should be good, so we don't have to worry about that aspect.

But with a thousand people working at the company, how can you identify if someone's not doing well?

We work as a team, so everything is a team's responsibility. If someone is lazy, that's totally the team's responsibility. We shouldn't have that kind of lazy guy in the team, so that team has to take care of everybody.

It's very Japanese, so... (laughter)

I guess in the U.S. if one engineer is sick in bed, his part of the work should be stopped. But we work as a team, so even if someone is sick, the team covers his part.

Tose is not supposed to discuss which games it's worked on -- have you ever had issues with people breaking non-disclosure?

Top secret stuff stays in the minds of the people working on it. It doesn't go down to lower levels.

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

['Roboto-chan!' is a fortnightly column, by a mysterious individual who goes by the moniker of Kurokishi. The column covers the announcement of Armored Core For Answer's Western release via Ubisoft and the trials that will face it.]

I had planned on discussing the various design issues with making a viable Macross game but that will have to wait until the next column. The reason behind this is that the game that many thought wouldn't see a release outside of Japan has finally been picked up by Ubisoft.

The game is Armored Core For Answer and I played both versions extensively earlier this year. It's a remarkable functional achievement as it pits the player in a mecha travelling at 2000 km/h against huge mobile fortresses. Think Shadow of the Colossus meets guns and robots and you won't be far off.

It's also very much a standalone game, as you can't transfer money or parts from Armored Core 4. This is a first for the series, as From Software have normally rewarded long-time players with a distinct advantage over newcomers.

So, it seems only sensible to go into Roboto-chan overdrive and give a low-down on the new game.

This is the third instance in which the Armored Core series has been covered in this column. The reason behind the renewed coverage of this series is a simple one; it's a successful unique gaming IP that has lasted over a decade, releasing numerous varied iterations all evolving off one another. However, in this instance For Answer has crossed an event horizon of sorts making it particularly noteworthy.

Why all the fuss then, what makes effectively an expansion pack to Armored Core 4 something worth even mentioning?

Normally, in the history of Armored Core, the subsequent releases within the numerical classification are broader in scope and obviously more polished. Master of Arena had a customizable AI setup called Ranker Mk, Silent Line had an organic learning AI and an enormous amount of parts. Yet all these improvements were off the base release that preceded it. Admittedly, I am selling the earlier games a tad short but compared to For Answer, the improvements were linearly obvious.

This cycle has been broken with the latest version as it's evolved past its roots to a terrifying degree.

Shadow of the Arms Forts

In previous games, there have been normally one instance where the player faces off against a larger MT that's in its prototype stage. You normally only have one per game and in all honesty they weren't all that big or that complicated to take down either.

For Answer by contrast has seven unique Arms Forts with an additional three variations, totaling ten in all. All of which require bespoke strategies to enact their demise. They are also absolutely huge.

To clarify, one Arms Fort is a vast land based train that goes by the name of the Great Wall. It's 7 kilometres long. You have to fly over it's entire length in order to reach it's entrance at its rear, only to speed back up its innards to take out the generator room. That's quite a simple Arms Fort but still an epic endeavour and something that is wholly unique in the world of gaming. The sheer visceral thrill upon taking out something so malignantly monstrous is refreshingly palpable.

Unsurprisingly the work that went into creating these mobile fortresses was rather extensive, so much so in fact that For Answer also broke the mould yet again in regards to its creative background.

Mecha Design Magnates

Previously, one man has been involved in the mecha design for Armored Core. That man was Shoji Kawamori, a monolithic figure in the world of anime having created the Macross saga and a sizeable portion of the Transformers lineage. Put simply, without Kawamori Armored Core wouldn't be where it is today.

Which was why his absence on Armored Core 4 was something that hurt the series somewhat, as many associated Kawamori's involvement as a necessary part of the process. Admittedly, the work of Yuzo Kojima was greatly appreciated and it was only fair that he be given a chance to flex his creative worth (as he had been a shadow mecha designer on the series for a good few iterations) but Kawamori needed to be involved.

Instead of having him create the entire parts list, as per the original games, From Software gave him one task; create the new version of White Glint. As this NEXT plays an iconic role in the game's narrative.

So having Kawamori return to the fold was a natural and obvious thing to do. Yet, he wasn't the only mecha designer that got on-board.

Along with Kawamori, two other prominent mecha designers were hired. Specifically, to design certain Arms Forts. From Software also picked their designers quite carefully as the respective styles of Kazutaka Miyatake and Makoto Kobayashi fit the sheer scale of these immense structures.

To clarify, Miyatake created the design of the original Macross. This being the transformable spaceship that housed a city inside it. He also penned the massive amount of detail to make the structure seem believably huge. Having someone with this kind of talent design the "Stigro" Arms Fort was a stroke of genius.

Kobayashi on the other hand is also a man of fine detail, coupled with a practical sculptor's gift. Of all the mecha designers in Japan, Kobayashi is one of the few that creates scratch built kits of his creations. He has garnered quite the name for himself in the Japanese modeling community for his attention to detail and sheer expertise. Having someone with this level of tactile understanding design the floating Arms Fort "Answerer" of impossible proportions seems fitting for a game where you would obviously functionally interact with it.

Even without these designers on board, the artistic proficiency within From Software has generated a huge amount of interest. With several non-gaming magazines going into great detail on the whole process (most notably of these being the animation mook, Animation Note, with this particular issue being available here).

Creatively, For Answer has set a new benchmark for the mecha genre of gaming. The only other series of games that has this amount of designer variation would be Super Robot Wars but that's more a re-appropriation of what has gone before. Having unique designs created to flesh out a bleak yet epic dystopian future is definitely something that lifts the game above its peers.

Mechanical Darwinism

All of the above, whilst impressive, are really only surface dressing for something quite functionally profound. For Answer isn't just a simple continuation in terms of content, it positively antiquates what has gone before it.

To clarify, taking out huge mobile fortresses requires a design solution as to how you'd reach them without being shot to pieces. The mad but brilliant solution is the Vanguard Over Boost, a literal extension of the over boost functionality that debuted way back in Armored Core 2. The difference here is that you've got solid fuel rockets strapped to your back and it hurtles you forward at a terrifying speed. Not even Ace Combat 6, with its array of super sonic jet fighters comes close to the sheer insane velocity witnessed in For Answer.

Yet this is something that folds into the remainder of the game and could only make sense if the rest of the game tried to match this ratcheting up of functionality. In short, the whole game is blindingly quick and the player is placed in a position of unique potency that almost no games dare to offer (as the balancing is no mean feat).

Everything has been souped up, armor, boosting, weapons. It all feels as though this is what an AC should handle like. Even the new Assault Armor setup, where the player can purge their Primal Armor in a spherical detonation that obliterates almost anything within it's radius, is something that when absent in earlier games is now almost inexcusable.

Unfortunate Futility

Yet all this amazing functional progression will ultimately amount to very little outside of Japan. Let me explain.

Madden is a series of American Football games that's very successful. Each iteration is keenly waited upon and devoured upon release. Well, in America this is very much the case. However, in the rest of the world Madden is pretty much ignored. This isn't because they are inherently bad games but the sport they are based upon isn't really prevalent anywhere else but America.

As such, reviewing Madden or even trying to play it without the nascent understanding of what it's based on would be a completely idiotic undertaking. It's not meant for an average gamer who isn't equipped with the necessary knowledge base and fascination with the sport.

Consequently, Armored Core is not meant for your average gamer. It's built upon half a century of mecha mythos that is only beginning to show its true depth outside of its native Asia. For Answer absolutely will not convert those unfamiliar with its heritage, it will most probably terrify and infuriate them in equal measure.

This isn't because it's a bad game but not one to played without some prior understanding of what it is trying to achieve. As such I should finish this column off with a gentle nudge to certain reviewers.

When Reviewing For Answer...

• Finding the Right Reviewer: Having read multiple reviews for each Armored Core game with an increasing level of dread and despair, please try and get a reviewer that has at least an interest in what the games are trying to do. Almost all the reviewers given the task of reviewing mecha games would rather be playing Madden. My advice; let them play Madden and give the mecha gaming reviews to someone who would actually want to play them. Simple really.


• Narrative Subtlety: Armored Core is a series that has often been given a less than brilliant localisation. This is down to the subtle and inferred narrative that is then portrayed literally in English. Unfortunately, most Americans prefer their narrative subtlety delivered from the barrel of a gun, that's shaped like a penis being fired by Michael Bay. Please bear in mind that the rest of the world does operate somewhat differently in this regard.


• Learning Curves: For Answer has one and it's rather large. Understand that people who pay for games with their own money will inevitably invest more time and effort into cracking complex games open. The vast array of parts and functional scope is something that has to be learned, this doesn't make games bad but the motivation to play to this extent needs to be taken into consideration. If you feel stupid playing a complicated game, that's because you are (initially at least) very stupid within the context of the game. Take it on the chin and have some fun with the game instead.

[Kurokishi is a humble servant of the Drake forces and his interests include crushing inferior opponents, combing his mane of long silvery hair and dicking around with cheap voice synthesisers. When he's not raining down tyrannical firepower upon unsuspecting peasants in his Galava aura fighter he likes to take long moonlight walks and read books about cheese.]

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

[Just booked my plane tickets for Austin GDC - actually my first trip to the show, for weird previous scheduling reasons, and whole bunches of the Game Developer/Gamasutra crew will be in town for the shindig. Perhaps see some of you there - here's a final early reg reminder.]

The organizers of 2008 Austin Game Developers Conference (Austin GDC) are reminding possible attendees that the final early registration deadline for the September 15th-17th event - which includes keynotes from Bruce Sterling and Club Penguin co-creator Lane Merrifield - ends today, August 27th - full rundown inside.

Austin GDC 2008 is presented by Think Services, organizers of the industry-leading Game Developers Conference (GDC) and the parent of Gamasutra.com and GameSetWatch.com.

The event is a three-day, multi-track game conference taking place at the Austin Convention Center in Austin, Texas September 15-17, 2008, and continues a multi-year tradition of an Austin-based game event appealing to a nationwide and worldwide game community.

The Austin GDC this year consists of the following elements:

- Austin GDC Online Summit - Austin's signature summit, with four parallel tracks on business and marketing, technology and services, design, and social networking and community for online games. Major speakers from Bioware, Cartoon Network, Disney, EA, NCSoft, and Sony Online Entertainment are participating, with Club Penguin's Lane Merrifield keynoting.

- Worlds In Motion Summit - specifically concentrating on virtual worlds, and expanding from the successful GDC Summit, this business-focused two-day event includes sessions on Facebook gaming, user-created virtual world content and the future of the metaverse - with speakers from IBM, NBC.com, IAC, and more.

- Austin GDC Writing Summit, featuring a keynote from futurist and science fiction writer Bruce Sterling on 'Computer Entertainment 35 Years From Today', plus notable lectures from leading writers from id Software, Carbine Studios, Red Storm Entertainment and Ubisoft.

- Austin GDC Audio Summit, with a keynote from Sony's Jason Page on next-gen audio, and other speakers including Austin Wintory, composer of fl0w, Slipgate Ironworks' Kurt Larson on adaptive music for MMOs, and a special 'Iron Composer Texas' to be fought out on site.

- Game Career Seminar, including notable lectures and panels for those wanting to get into the game biz, such as 'The Game Job Interview RPG', the ever-popular 'Pitch Your Game Idea' panel, and 'You're Hired! How to Get HR to Notice You' - featuring speakers from Vicarious Visions, Nexon, Ghostfire Games, and more.

In addition to an Expo show floor with many game technology companies in attendance, Austin GDC will also showcase the recently announced winners of the 2008 IGF Showcase for Austin GDC, picking the very best examples of 'local flavor' in terms of indie games from Austin and the Southern U.S.

Those interested in registering for the event can visit the official Austin GDC website to purchase their pass - final early registration ends on August 27th, although passes will still be available following that date and on site.

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

A Wednesday night, and I'm typing this from the demo competition at NVScene, where all kinds of insane real-time graphic antics are currently in play - will probably blog about this more in due course.

But anyhow - onto the links, which include David Edery on 'the definition of lasting appeal', as well as discussions on game narrative and Gillen on 'steps towards an elitist critic future' - thanks to The Brainy Gamer for popping up on my Google Images search with the illustrative picture above!

Hurray hurray hurray:

GAMBIT: Updates: Cheese! Picopoke is now live!
Facebook game: 'In Picopoke, players take photos to match a set of abstract captions (for example, "human bowling pins" or "feet in the air") to be voted on by their friends and fellow players.' Extremely interesting university-initiated titles, as per normal with GAMBIT.

Spend three minutes with Will Wright that have nothing to do with Spore or the Sims | Fidgit
The first three of these are up now - despite hype, they're a lot of fun.

Game Tycoon»Blog Archive » The Definition of Lasting Appeal
'The answer to the problem with reviews is more focused review sites that cater to specific target audiences.'

Music Catch review - Jay is Games
'Music Catch is a full-featured downloadable version of the previously released Flash game also titled Music Catch. The name describes exactly what the game is all about: catching music.'

Lost Garden: Shade: Prototyping Challenge results
'Even in these simple prototypes, Shade shows promise as a game concept. It just needs pass upon pass of polish to turn into something glorious.'

mentisworks: Game Narrative: An Internal Struggle
'What is perhaps a more resounding consensus than what type of narrative structure games should follow, is the fact that there are just so very few games to have created a truly compelling narrative to begin with.'

GamerDad: Gaming with Children: Welcome to the Namco Museum: Special Galaga Tour!
Wow, awesome Galaga series history, if not kid-relevant, but hey!

1UP: Flagship Founder Bill Roper Interview
Forgot to mention this - it's honest and unmissable.

Steps Towards An Elitist Critic Future | Rock, Paper, Shotgun
'Games writing, traditionally, has been obsessed with talking about stuff people already know about, and ignored the Stuff You’ve Never Heard Of But You Desperately Need To part of the gig.'

Satori: IGDA San Francisco August event summary
Spore talk, video included, too.

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

[Gamasutra publisher Simon Carless had a chance to visit Nvidia's Nvision 'visual computing' festival in San Jose, and brings this report on the show, real-time graphics creation, and the sometimes forgotten demo-scene.]

Since it's - well - about 300 yards from my house, I had no excuse not to wander down to NVision 2008 in San Jose today to check out the graphics card maker's first ever 'visual computing' festival, encompassing everything from auto manufacturers (yes, Daimler is here) through game tools, competitive consumer gaming galore and, gadzooks, even the demo-scene.

It's an interesting melange of different industries and interests - both developer and consumer-focused - which spreads out across the San Jose Convention Center and the surrounding hotels. Some of the highlights from a PR perspective include astronauts (Buzz Aldrin screening a 3D moon-related movie), Battlestar Galactica actresses, and the Mythbusters giving out prizes at the closing ceremony tomorrow.

And yes, if you squint at the title picture, you can see that they've dyed the main fountain outside the Center a virulent shade of Nvidia green, to match the green carpets outside the venue. Here's a close-up (below) - one presumes that the EPA are on their way (or it's harmless coloring). [NOTE: You can click through on any of the pictures to see a higher-res version on our Flickr gallery.]

On Tuesday, at least, the Convention Center is modestly busy, with the main areas being an exhibition hall for third-party technology companies (hardware companies, tools, etc), a large LAN party/Electronic Sports World Cup areas, with plenty of committed young gentlemen playing Quake, racing games, and so on.

In addition, there's a myriad of meeting rooms where you could see Tim Sweeney demonstrating Unreal Engine 3, panels specifically on Nvidia tech, more academic and research-related content (especially around the CUDA technology), and much more besides. The intention is for a kind of collegiate atmosphere of creativity, with some product promotion built in, naturally -- I think it's an interesting concept, abstractly.

While there are games such as Mirror's Edge and Crysis Warhead playable on the exhibit show floor, and game tools companies presenting at the adjoining hotels, something that stood out for me was the NVScene event, described on the website as "...the largest-ever US gathering of creative minds interested in demoscene, machinima, and digital art."

Well, while I hear Monday's sessions were extremely well-attended, I think it's probably safe to say that the actual attendance at NVScene isn't what some might hope. That may be due to the lack of a major, cogent demoscene in North America - it's always been the Europeans that lead things - rather than any intrinsic problems on the organizers' part. (However, the 4k and demo competitions are open to worldwide entrants, even those not here in person, so are pretty spectacular as a result.)

And it may be due to the demo-scene (non-interactive art created in real-time on the computer) being essentially past its sell-by date in terms of cultural excitement, much as it pains me to say so, being a demo-scene veteran. Nowadays, things other than demos are the most exciting CG-created things you can watch on your PC, and that didn't used to be the case.

Nonetheless, the relative paucity of turnout certainly doesn't shortcircuit the excellent presentations, many of which are being recorded for posterity. After all, as I discussed before, Chris Hecker and Dan Moskowitz of Spore find the knowledge inherent in demo construction important enough to turn up and lecture -- and part of that is down to the insane ninja coding needed to generate a lot of these newer realtime demos.

One of the highlights thus far - and a flagship for both the amazing code skills and what I'd describe as the 'ship in a bottle problem' for the demo scene, was a talk from Dierk "Chaos" Ohlerich of Farbrausch. The German demo-scene group are possibly the most technically astounding demo creators of the last ten years, thanks to their work with procedural content.

What am I talking about? Well, try watching their demo 'Debris' (pictured left) on YouTube, even, and remember all the way through it that it's created in just 177k, using an insane custom tool, Werkkzeug. On NVScene's HD projector and large sound system, Ohlerich's replaying of the award-winning 2007 demo was pretty much mindblowing.

It's definitely true that Farbrausch's amazing procedural creation tool allows you to do things that just wouldn't be possible if you fired up Photoshop or 3D Studio Max (reminder, what procedural means here is that no pre-rolled textures or shapes have gone into the demo. It's all created using mathematical formulae, extrusions, Perlin noise, and so on.)

It's also somewhat of a breakthrough to have a completely self-contained tool for demo making - well, RSI Demo Maker was one about 20 years ago, but that's hardly counted. The point is, with the correct flow, you can make almost anything from scratch. But another timely question nowadays is... why, and who will care? Isn't the final product the equivalent of putting a model ship in a bottle - a big 'how did they do that' impressed moment, but no real takeaway?

Well, I do care, because it's art, and it's beautiful, and because wringing that kind of performance out of your PC in real-time is breathtaking. In fact, you should be downloading the executable, not looking at the YouTube version, and that's where the demo paradigm starts to fall down nowadays. Demos arrived when there was no streaming video on the Internet, and the subtlety of something being created in real-time wasn't necessary to explain - because that's the only way it could arrive on your screen from your Commodore 64 or Amiga.

Ohlerich, a beautifully acerbic German, expectorated at some point in the talk: "Almost everything we do almost kills us." But he went on to say that it was worth it, and for those who understand what a big undertaking it was to create the demo (or their previous 96k FPS game, .kkrieger procedurally), there may be things to build on and use in other arenas.

In some ways, Farbrausch's predicament - and why I might feel the need to overexplain why their accomplishment is important - is a wider metaphor for why Nvidia's entire message at Nvision is hard. People - that is to say, average people - are just not impressed by graphics or 'visual computing' unless it improves their entertainment experience or directly touches their lives in some way, and tangibility is still thin on the ground - see the success of the Wii, and a recent Game Developer magazine editorial.

But there are ways in which this 'ship in a bottle' tech is breaking out and actually making things that couldn't be done before. For example, the Spore folks used procedural texturing and other procedural elements heavily in the dynamic creation in the Creature Creator - one of the first times that really complex procedural elements have been successfully implemented in games.

This is an interactive leap made possible by the kind of real-time elements the demo-scene has been playing with for some time, and it's a hint at some of the really neat, sophisticated advances that may be coming - as long as they're actually pertinent to the audience.

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

[Get ready for more non-game exploration as our very own regular GSW columnist Mister Raroo puts on his magic hat, picks up his Nintendo DS, and tries his hand at Master of Illusion. Unfortunately, it turns out being a master magician is not as easy as it would seem. Do you believe in magic, dear GameSetWatch readers?]

Come to Mister Raroo’s Magic Show… Or Not

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve always had a soft spot for magic. When I was in elementary school, I purchased a set of magic cards from the school’s annual book fair and put in hours of practice in order to “masterfully” pull off card tricks for all onlookers. Unfortunately, “all onlookers” equated to my mom, who was kind enough to sit and suffer through my clumsy magic routines, sweetly pretending to be impressed with my lack of magical prowess. I wasn’t a very good magician, it seemed.

But my poor performance as a magician never deterred my enthusiasm for magic, at least until I met my wife. At the time we first started dating, I was much more into music than I am now, and I especially liked a lot of symphonic metal, much of which uses a great deal of synthesizers and keyboards. Once while listening to a particularly synth-heavy album in the car, Missus Raroo noted, “This sounds like ‘magic music.’” I wasn’t quite sure what she meant, so she elaborated. “Magic music” is the cheesy keyboard-heavy soundtracks that accompany flashy magical performances. As magicians and their assistants prance around stage, the music blares to amplify the excitement and drama.

Being that it’s both over-the-top and thoroughly corny, being compared to "magic music" is hardly a compliment for any album. But here’s the sad thing: Missus Raroo was right. A lot of the music I was listening to at the time had more than a passing resemblance to the audio atrocity that is “magic music.” I couldn’t listen to some of those albums ever again without picturing some clown like David Copperfield waving his arms and raising his eyebrows as he turned a woman into a tiger.

Yet even with the cards stacked against me, so to speak, my affinity for magic was recently reignited when I got my hands on Master of Illusion for the Nintendo DS. After spending a couple of hours checking out all the neat tricks the software allows users to perform, I became even more excited and a grand vision played out in my head. I decided I was going to put on a magic show of epic proportions. I began thinking of people I could invite and I even told my teenage niece Autumn to let all her friends know about the upcoming event. I could hear the announcer’s voice…

“Ladies and gentleman, prepare to be dazzled by this showcase of Mister Raroo’s magical might! Expect the unexpected as Mister Raroo wows you with clever and mysterious tricks and puzzles! With the aid of his trusty Nintendo DS, Mister Raroo will—hey, wait! Where is everybody going? Come back! You’re going to miss the magic!”

Yes, that’s right. Nobody seemed to care about my magic show, especially when they learned I was going to be performing the tricks with my Nintendo DS. My show was a failure even before it even happened! Maybe it’s because people don’t trust the legitimacy of magic via an electronic device. Or perhaps it’s because magic just isn’t popular these days. After all, even the most famous illusionists like David Blaine are better known for their feats of endurance more than their traditional magic. Whatever the case, Mister Raroo’s Magic Show was a flop before it ever got off the ground.

Amateur Illusionist

Master of Illusion managed to mystify me from the get-go. There are a number of different types of tricks and modes available, such as illusions the software performs on the player, public performance pieces, and fun one-offs like a card-based horoscope. The first trick I tried was the classic “pick a card” routine, and to my amazement, the DS managed to pull off the illusion flawlessly! I was extremely impressed that the DS could tell what card I’d picked, so much so that it even freaked me out a little bit. My DS could read my thoughts!

However, my excitement quickly subsided when I demonstrated the trick for Missus Raroo and she immediately figured out its secret. Once I knew how the DS was pulling the wool over my eyes, the solution to the trick was so obvious. I chalk up my initial lack of comprehending the trick’s simplicity to my desire to believe the DS was truly capable of magic. Even though logically I knew that any illusions the DS performed were simply cleverly programmed trickery, a big part of me wished they were real. Understanding how the DS performed its illusions killed a great deal of the wonder.

But knowing how the tricks were pulled off didn’t deter me from wanting to put on a magic show. In fact, understanding the methods behind each illusion is essential for performance. Even though my preliminary marvel had been quelled by my wife’s logical thinking, Master of Illusion managed to draw me in with its ingenious set of illusions and the promise of impressing any audience members.

Before each trick, Master of Illusion provides players with an explanation of how the illusion is performed. This information is conveyed in the form of a cute cartoon depicting a young man expertly impressing an attractive girl with the power of his DS magic. The ease and success this cartoon gentleman was having in pulling off stupendous tricks was inspiring. If this average Joe in the cartoons could be a master magician, why couldn’t I?

I decided, then, that I would practice the public performance tricks and deliver a show of magical mastery that would impress any and all onlookers. I brought my DS with me to work, running through the tricks on my lunch breaks and studying up on the best methods to deliver the illusions. For a short period of time, I was confident things would work out as smoothly as they did in Master of Illusion’s informational cartoons. That is, until I tried out a trick on a member of the “general public.”

One afternoon at work, I asked my coworker Brenda to check out one of the illusions I’d been furiously practicing, Mystic Hand. The trick is really neat in theory. The participant uses the stylus to draw a hand on the DS’s touch screen, after which they select one of three icons on the top screen to represent what they are most interested in—love, wealth, or dreams. The magician then instructs the participant to tap the touch screen, which results in the hand extending to the top screen and grabbing the correct icon. Depending on what part of the screen is tapped (hand, fingers, or OK button), the hand will move toward the corresponding icon. It’s up to the magician to be tricky with his or her wording in order to lead the participant to tap the correct area on the touch screen: “You are interested in wealth, you say? Please tap the hand’s fingers and we will see if the DS knows your desires!”

Unfortunately, after Brenda drew her hand she quickly tapped “OK,” which resulted in the hand reaching for an icon other than the one she said she was interested in. She then stated that the trick didn’t work (as if I didn’t already know!), handed the DS back to me, and scurried off. Mystic Hand seemed like it’d be a flawless trick that would leave anyone stunned, but I didn’t take into account the numerous unexpected factors that can go into performing a trick on a live person.

Other attempts at presenting tricks for onlookers were met with similar results. Often times people didn’t seem to understand the directions I was giving and the illusions didn’t work out correctly. Or, in some cases, instead of bothering to see the trick through to completion, people told me that they knew the secret to how the trick was done. Maybe it was a lack of slight of hand on my part, but I think most of the people were just being cynical, especially because it was the DS performing the trick. Nobody seemed to believe that the machine was capable of true magic and most of the time the focus seemed to be more on how the trick was being performed than simply enjoying the illusion itself.

Thus, after a string of stinging disappointments, I made the decision to hang up my magic hat and decided not to bother trying to impress any more people with my Master of Illusion tricks. Quite simply, I was tired of every performance being a failure! Despite the widespread popularity of the likes of Harry Potter, Artemis Fowl, The Spiderwick Chronicles, the world truly seems to be shockingly devoid of magic.

I know that my poor performance as a magician is partially to blame for my Master of Illusion failures, but I also believe that a general lack of faith in magic coupled with a distrust of the DS as a viable magical device spelled doom for me even before I could say “Presto!” Thankfully, even if Master of Illusion proved to be a disaster in terms of putting on a magic show, I still found the software to be enjoyable as a single player experience. At least in that case the magic was performed for an audience that truly appreciated it: me!

Master of My Own Domain

Strangely enough, for a title that is designed with the intention of being a vehicle for public magical performance, the single-player enjoyment of Master of Illusion is much higher than expected. In fact, I’d go so far as argue that the single-player component is actually the strongest aspect of Master of Illusion. Perhaps Nintendo knew that most would-be magicians would suffer the same fate as I did.

Along with the aforementioned “pick a card” trick and horoscope, there are plenty of other single-player activities included, including solitaire-like card games and rhythm tests. Even the public performance illusions are surprisingly enjoyable to investigate on your own. After spending some quality time with the software, it became clear that Master of Illusion is more of an ode to magic and a charming play thing for anyone even remotely interested in the art of illusions than a viable tool for putting on fabulous magic shows.

It seems obvious to me that Master of Illusion was a labor of love, even if its development seems to have been a relatively small-scale affair. The production values are unexpectedly high, with each of the many activities and modes displaying a first-rate level of quality in terms of graphics, sound, and creativity. The diversity and inventiveness of the game’s presentation is much appreciated and reminds me more than a little of that found in other Nintendo games such as the Wario Ware and Rhythm Tengoku titles.

That said, I do have to question the inclusion of Barbara the Bat of Daigassou! Band Brothers (AKA Jam With the Band) fame as a magic shop owner who guides players through the various game modes. Her sexy persona, with big breasts and skimpy clothing, seems rather out of place. Though it’s nice to Barbara appear in a game that actually made it outside of Japan (not counting her small cameo in Super Smash Bros. Brawl), she doesn’t seem quite right for Master of Illusion, especially given that the target audience includes younger kids. It’s like some producer stood looking at Master of Illusion and declared, “Hmmmm. Something’s missing. I know! Needs more boobies!”

Although I may not have succeeded in utilizing Master of Illusion to put on a spectacular magic show, I’m glad I gave the software the in-depth exploration it deserves. Master of Illusion flew under many gamers’ radars, but it’s a title that is worthy of a second look. It may be yet another “non-game” from Nintendo, but I’ve found Master of Illusion to be intelligently constructed and exceptionally delightful. It’s one of those rare titles that years down the road I can imagine I’ll revisit and spend a lazy afternoon with. And, as my son gets older and starts playing more video games, I hope to introduce him to the spectacular world of magic through Master of Illusion. Besides, you never know… perhaps he’ll be the perfect candidate for me to finally perform a successful magic show for!

Mister Raroo is a happy husband, proud father, full-time public library employee, and active gamer. He currently lives in El Cajon, CA with his family and many pets. You may reach Mister Raroo at mister.raroo@gmail.com.

Posted by Bill Sannwald at 4:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

[Every week, Gamasutra sister weblog GamerBytes' editor Ryan Langley will be summing up the top console digital download news tidbits from the past 7 days, including brand new game announcements and scoops through the world of Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network and WiiWare.]

While there has been plenty of news this week for the Xbox Live Arcade, including the release of Castle Crashers this Wednesday, there has been significant new information on PlayStation Network games from the Leipzig Game Convention too.

Sony released a stack of new trailers available for download on the PlayStation Store - reminding us of notable titles like Wipeout HD, Fat Princess and Flower - but has also announced Savage Moon, a new Desktop Tower Defense style game which I'm sure will tickle the fancy of many PS3 owners waiting for more PixelJunk Monsters-like content.

GTI Club+ was also announced for the PlayStation Network - I hear Gamasutra publisher Simon Carless is a huge fan of the original arcade cabinet version. It looks like it's in good hands over at Outrun 2 converter and Foundation9 studio Sumo Digital.

Finally, don't forget that Ratchet & Clank: Quest For Booty was released last week for PSN, and Helix has just debuted for WiiWare, as well.

Here's the rundown of the top console digital download news for the week:

Xbox Live Arcade

Castle Crashers is your XBLA game of the week!
It's been two years of waiting, but the long awaited 4-player cooperative beat-em-up Castle Crashers is set to debut this Wednesday. Grab it for 1,200 Microsoft Points.

Shred Nebula Creators To Release Design And Pitch Documents For Indie Devs
CrunchTime Games are thinking big for an Xbox Live Arcade title - they plan to hold a tournament in 2009 with prizes totaling $50,000! They also plan to release their pitch and design documents to the world, to help independent developers get a handle on how to get their games on Xbox Live Arcade.

War World Still Coming To Xbox Live Arcade
War World has been in limbo for an awfully long time - meant to come out August of last year, it is still sitting around waiting for a release. Now some new evidence seems to show that the game is still on track for release... someday.

New Darwinia+ Trailer - King Of The Hill Multiplayer Madness
A new trailer for Multiwinia was released this week to give us a good look at what Darwinia+ might end up like on the Xbox Live Arcade. Looks like a ton of fun.

Preorder Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts, Get Banjo Kazooie XBLA For Free
Fable II Pub Games must have done very well - Microsoft has announced that preordering Nuts & Bolts will net you a free copy of Banjo Kazooie on Xbox Live Arcade. The game is already $39.99 in the US -- it sounds like quite the bargain.

PlayStation Network

PSN Store Update - Ratchet & Clank: Quest For Booty For All
The standalone downloadable game of Ratchet & Clank: Quest For Booty has now been released across all territories. You can also grab a demo of The Last Guy if you're in North America.

GTI Club+ Coming To PlayStation Network
Little-known classic arcade title GTI Club is getting a good ol spit 'n' shine thanks to Sumo Digital, who will release this title with a full graphical overhaul on the PlayStation Network.

Montage Footage Shows Off Savage Moon, Fat Princess and More
Sony made several announcements regarding PlayStation Network titles during the Leipzig Game Convention. This video sums it up very nicely, including the first footage of the newly announced, FluffyLogic-developed Savage Moon Tower Defense game.

WiiWare

NA WiiWare Store Update - Helix Released, Ys Book I & II On Virtual Console
Bizarre trance dance robot simulator Helix has been released today for WiiWare. It's the first title released by Ghostfire Games, and an odd one to boot. Ys Book I & II and Samurai Shodown 2 are your Virtual Console titles this week.

De Blob Creators Make Side Scrolling RTS For WiiWare
Creators of the original PC prototype of Wii game De Blob are making a brand new RTS game for WiiWare. It's looking a lot like Defend Your Castle meets Patapon with the style of Castle Crashers, and all three of those have some big fans.

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

[Our new series of ‘Road to the IGF’ interviews profiles the nine recently announced winners of the IGF Showcase at Austin GDC - with the local Southern U.S. indie developers to be showcased at the Texas game development show next month.]

In this instalment of 'Road To The Austin IGF', we talk to IGF Showcase winner, Blazing Lizard's Chris Stockman, about upcoming Xbox Live Arcade release Pirates vs. Ninjas Dodgeball and his independent developer's projects.

The title “transforms the innocent childhood game of dodgeball into a vindictive, heart-thumping battle between outlandish groups of characters including ninjas, pirates, zombies and robots”, and equips players “with special moves and melee attacks”. Pirates vs. Ninjas Dodgeball is the first game from Blazing Lizard, which formed in March 2007.

What is your background with video games?

Chris Stockman: I started making games at 14. I worked for a very large independent developer called Park Place Productions in Oceanside, CA. They were the very first developers of Madden Football for the Genesis.

I knew pretty much at that point I wanted to make games for a living. From there I worked at a ton of different companies ranging from huge mega-corps like EA and Nintendo, to small indies like Ritual Entertainment to publisher owned developers like Volition.

Needless to say, I've been around the block a few times!

When was Blazing Lizard formed?

CS: March of '07. My partners and I all left Volition at the same time and spent about four months creating a demo, and most of our engine. We shopped the demo around and it got picked up pretty quick by my friends at Gamecock.

What inspired Pirates vs. Ninjas Dodgeball, and why did you decide to develop it?

CS: At first the idea was more of a joke. But as we thought about it more, we realized that there was a severe lack of dodgeball games. And pitting pirates against ninjas just seemed like the natural thing to do!

What were your expectations from your game, and do you feel the end product lives up to those expectations?

CS: I'm pretty happy with the end product. We set out to create a fun multiplayer party game for XBLA and I think we met those goals. The game is a ton of fun to play with a group of your friends either offline or online.

I think the singleplayer has a funny, lighthearted story that will make people chuckle.

What do you think the most interesting thing about your game is?

CS: Each character in our four teams has their own unique special ability they can use during a match. Designing and balancing all of those special abilities was akin to [designing] a fighting game, and definitely was a daunting challenge.

How long did development take, and what was the process like?

CS: About a year total. Overall, I'd say development went smoothly. We really didn't have to alter the scope that much - in fact, we ended up adding features late in development! And despite a few speed bumps during Microsoft's certification, we got through without many problems.

What's the scene in Austin like?

CS: It seems there still is very much an MMO-based mentality around here although that is changing rapidly with new start-ups forming.

Is there a feeling of community?

CS: Hard to tell. There definitely is an active developer community but I haven't really had the time to interact with it.

What do you think of the state of independent development, and how do you think independent games fit into the industry?

CS: With the advent of XBLA and PSN, and to some extent WiiWare, you're seeing a cheaper avenue to travel down in order to start a game development studio and to release indie games.

It will be very interesting to see how Microsoft's Community Games Initiative will take shape and how that will affect indie development.

How has Gamecock been to work with?

CS: Oh Gamecock has been fantastic. When they say they are a hands-off publisher that lets the studio create the games - that’s not hyperbole or lip-service. Sure, they'll give critiques and what not but they've never mandated we do this or that.

I hope to continue working with them on future titles.

Has the process of getting the game onto XBLA been a difficult one?

CS: No, not really. We had to go through the MS gatekeepers when we first signed with Gamecock, and that took longer than I expected, and then certification at the end - but that's normal.

However, releasing on the platform has been kinda frustrating. We were fully certified and ready to launch on July 3rd but all their slots were full until September 3rd. I really wish they didn't have this hard rule of 2 titles per week - which ofttimes they don't follow either.

What kind of feedback have you received so far?

CS: PvND is a ton of fun playing with friends both offline and online. Not many people have played through our story campaigns, yet.

Which recent indie games do you admire, and which recent mainstream titles do you admire, and why?

CS: Braid and PixelJunk Eden were released recently and both are incredibly fun, indie games. I highly recommend them.

Do you have any messages for your fellow contestants or fans of the IGF?

CS: If you want to keep the indie movement alive and prosperous, you really need to show your support by purchasing stuff on PSN and XBLA.

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

Yoo hoo, the GameSetLinks are back, starting out with some weird random graphics created by messing with NES save states - something you've probably seen when incorrectly blowing on NES carts, I know, but hey!

Also hanging out in here - Mega64 riffing in a rejected Guitar Hero-ish ad, comments on the (pictured) Galaga Legions, the 15 most expensive arcade games of all time, the jam that will be TIGJam, and lots more.

Gotta gotta gotta:

selectbutton :: View topic - Saving a state in one ROM then loading it in a different ROM
Some pretty 'art' created by trashing NES game saves.

Technology Review: TR35 2008
Jenova Chen from ThatGameCompany one of the top 35 tech innovators under 35, yay.

The Independent Gaming Source: First Ever TIGJam in Arizona next month
The Flashbang Studios folks and TIGSource doing the live indie jam thing, rawk.

ScottishGames.biz: EIF 2008 - I did it my way
Good coverage of the multiple tracks at Edinburgh, an interesting melange.

GameSpite: 'Legion of super excellence'
Parish explains why Galaga Legions for XBLA is worth careful attention - which it is, it's cunning and really well thought-out, just like Pac-Man CE, if much riffier/different than the original.

YouTube - Mega64: Rejected Ad for Undisclosed DS Guitar Game
This was rejected by the... ESRB? That's what the message implies at the end. Someone go do some follow-up on this.

Alt Text: 'World of Warcraft' Masters In-Game Bribery
'Just this week I've been fighting in battlegrounds -- special areas where armies clash and 12-year-olds question each other's sexuality -- over and over just for a chance to win a tiny little flying dragon.'

Sega Superstars Tennis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Just picked this up for $20, it really is pretty adorable fan service, and the minigames are fun, even if it's a little unsophisticated.

15 most valuable classic arcade games of all time | Rotheblog - Arcade Game Blog
Really nicely researched countdown, with some gorgeous early Atari cabinets featured.

2theadvocate.com | Business | La. sweetened pot for EA testing site — Baton Rouge, LA
Really excellent local newspaper reporting on game developer tax incentives re: EA, of all things - via GP.

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

[Vox Populi, a somewhat unexpected new development for GameSetWatch, is a new bi-weekly column discussing things we've heard - and things you've told us - about video games today, and video games in the future.]

Well, there was a first Vox Populi column, and shortly thereafter - there was a second. And now, somewhat inevitably, there's a third column - more precisely, this column. Let's see what we've dug up:

- Factor 5's long-term relationship with Nintendo consoles - before its move to PS3 with the disappointing Lair - is well known. Well, Factor 5 president Julian Eggebrecht has previously confirmed that the company is developing a Wii game, sure.

But Vox Populi has confirmed that the company has two Wii titles in development - a Wii game for Nintendo (might be Kid Icarus, right?), as well as Wii title for another publisher. The San Rafael studio's 2010 title for Brash will also be ending up on the Wii, in addition to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Also confirmed: that Turrican revival is not in active development and Factor 5 is seeking a publisher for the title, which they intend to aim at next-gen platforms.

- Vox Populi has been keeping tabs on Renegade Kid, the Austin developer that created last year's rather neat DS horror title Dementium: The Ward, and is making Moon for DS right now. Now, we hear they're working on something mysterious called Son of the Dragon - might this be the moniker for the Wii game the studio has under development?

- Sony's portable machine seems to be getting another original, first-party exclusive - part of its attempted Western renaissance. Vox Populi found a job listing citing that the Sony Liverpool studio needs people to "work on an original IP PSP project." Previously, the only PSP games out of the veteran first-party studio have been entries in the Formula 1 and Wipeout franchises.

- According to Vox Populi's sources, sometimes un-noticed - but increasingly large - Montreal developer Artificial Mind & Movement (Monster House, WET, Happy Feet), traditionally console-centric, is starting planning on some un-named massively multiplayer titles. In fact, the studio's headcount of around 450 makes the notion of developing multiple MMOs at the same time plausible. Let's see what eventuates, hm?

- Vox Populi stumbled upon an interesting statutory filing by Electronic Arts, for a game mysteriously called Gunhead. Very blunt name for an EA project - maybe tipsters can help us out with what this title actually is? For what it's worth, we do not believe that this is the Redwood Shores M-rated action-adventure mentioned in the last column, though.

[DISCLAIMER: Vox Populi is the voice of the people. Literally. So it lives on what it hears. Please send it information. It endeavors to ensure that the information in this entertaining missive is correct, but, citing an excellent, similar column in another medium: "All stories are sourced from well-connected individuals. But I urge you to use your judgment and remember, context is everything."]

Posted by Vox Populi at 4:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

[Since I know a number of game developers do (hopefully!) read GSW, a quick call to arms - maybe you'd like to anonymously comment on your reputation and direct interactions with the top publishers for our sister mag's annual countdown? Sure you would.]

The editors of Game Developer magazine are asking all game professionals to complete a brief anonymous survey which will help decide the rankings of this year's renowned 'Top 20 Publishers' feature.

For this year's sixth annual Top 20 Publishers countdown, following last year's Nintendo-topping chart, the magazine is looking for two sets of feedback.

The first part is a reputational section, where all participants can rank and, optionally, comment on all major publishers.

The second part is open only to those game industry professionals who have managed or participated in relationships with specific publishers, either as employees or as third-party developers. Both are part of the same survey form.

This feedback will be combined with a multitude of other stats such as revenue, average game review percentages, and release SKU amounts, to determine the final Top 20 to be revealed in the October 2008 issue of Game Developer magazine.

All of the survey feedback is completely anonymous, and this year, alongside the in-depth magazine article and information disseminated on Gamasutra.com, full, canonical data will also be available in a forthcoming report from Game Developer Research.

The Top 20 Publishers survey will remain open until Wednesday, August 27th.

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

I am feeling morose. Yes, morose. Morose at the long summer heat, morose by the fact that I can't seem to make people pay me money without doing any work, morose because I just marathoned Ken Burn's The Civil War, and morose at how I am out $550 since I needed to replace the notebook PC I use to write Game Mag Weaseling after its horrible death last week.

So I've spent the afternoon getting to grips with Vista, washing all the crap off the hard drive, and generally realizing why nobody buys low-end Vista laptops. Wanting to find some solace, any solace, I picked up off the shelf the premiere copy of onComputing, a magazine originally from the Byte folks that ran seasonally from 1979 to around 1982.

Byte was always a heavily nerd and tech-oriented hobbiest mag, so onComputing was the editor team's shot at making a title for more casual, applications-oriented users -- the sort who were buying TRS-80s and Apple IIs because they wanted to accomplish something via software, not tinker with circuit boards.

This first issue of onComputing has something that caught my fancy -- a complete buyer's guide to the personal computer scene as it existed in the summer of 1979, complete with retail prices. They say the good old days were never actually good -- if I was a writer in 1979 and I wanted a computer to help me with my work, would $550 be enough?

The answer: No. Not at all. Even if I was playing with $550 in 1979 dollars (a buck then is about $2.86 today), pretty much the best setup my newbie ass could've afforded was a $500 Atari 400 package with 8K of RAM, a joystick, and cassette-based storage for my columns and resume and so forth. Assuming I had a TV to hook it up to, of course; otherwise that'd be another $300.

What? A printer? Jeez, do I look like Rich Uncle Pennybags here? (The machine, which was not memory expandable at all, would eventually ship with a much beefier 48K of RAM stock, but that won't be for another year or so. Until then, I guess I'd be stuck keeping all my writings to about 400 words or less.)

Printers, along with disk storage of any kind, was a luxury for home PC users back then. The cheapest end-user printers were $500-600, and the floppy drives a bit more -- again, in 1979 dollars. So, if I want a home word-processing system with hard-copy printouts and loading/saving that didn't take five minutes a go, I'm gonna need to skip lunches at Burger Chef for the foreseeable future.

The TRS-80 is nice for writers -- still all upper-case characters at this point, but hey, 64 characters per line is rad -- and a fully package with a disk drive and printer would cost me $2385. If I demand full-color, a loaded Apple II with 48K of RAM, two drives, floating point BASIC in firmware, and a monitor would cost me $3370, or just under $10k when you count inflation.

That, or I could do what Jerry Pournelle did. Pournelle, an SF writer who wrote a column for Byte magazine from 1982 to its closure in 1998 and still keeps it going today.

He contributed a feature to this issue called "Writing with a Microcomputer" that documents him building a PC to handle writing, filing, and other chores. To say the least, he went all out: a top-of-the-line S-100 bus system with 64K of RAM (monstrously expensive until '81 or so), two 15-inch video screens, a dual 8-inch floppy drive, a Selectric-clone keyboard that was surplus from some mainframe, and an enormous, clacking Diablo 1620 printer. By the standards of the time, Pournelle was doing the equivalent of calling up Alienware and saying "Gimme everything you got, bitches!"

Total cost, including installation fees: around $12,000. This is, to put it lightly, a lot of money. The average yearly American wage in 1979 was $11,018. You could've gotten not one, but several very nice cars with that sort of cash back then.

What's more, the thing didn't even work 100-percent correctly -- spurious control characters would appear at random on the screen, and while the software Pournelle used had a word-wrap function, it "often drops characters: there is either no buffer, or the line buffer is too small. Without a source [code] there's nothing to be done about it."

Still, Pournelle was happy with his investment: "Before I got the system, I could, in a good day, turn out ten pages...the computer lets me turn out words at more than double that rate. It doesn't get in the way of writing...every draft is a clean draft."

Plainly, if this were 1979, I'd be tapping on a used Selectric and be overjoyed with every moment of the experience. Even if my new notebook needs several years in the oven before it has a hope of running Vista fast, I suppose it could always be worse.

[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 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Gosh, another week, another dollar or two, and another set of GameSetLinks - headed up XKCD doing its deliciously surreal thing with a sorta Google Maps classic text adventure crossover.

Also hanging out in here - the Resident Evil 5 sound team, Irish music and Japanese game soundtracks, and the very silly (pictured) Sauna Dismount -- from the same folks who gave us Stair Dismount and Truck Dismount, of course.

Mee mee mee:

xkcd: 'Google Maps'
Some text adventure riffing by the excellently surreal Webcomic - via Alice.

Music 4 Games interviews the Resident Evil 5 sound team.
Interesting piece - M4G doesn't get much link love from anyone, for some reason - it's v.useful for game music composers, though the owners of the site also manage a lot of the featured artists, which can be a bit confusing.

Siliconera » Everyday Shooter PSP bundled with PSP-3000
Didn't spot this - Jon Mak's indie title bundled with Sony hardware? Indie rise is complete.

1UP: 'Retronauts Talk Up Nintendo's Famicom'
Ah, this is a better round-up post (linking the articles, not just the podcast!) on the Faminsanity.

Irish Music for Videogame Music Fans | Game | Life from Wired.com
One of the more bizarre game-related weblog posts I've ever read - but packed with great information, also!

Indie Game Panel Reviews [August 08 Edition] by Game Tunnel
'The 10 games reviewed for August include the quirky freeware adventure game Ben there Dan That!, the 'funky' dating sim Summer Session and Vega, a game that one reviewer called "the least fun game I've ever played."'

IndieGames.com - The Weblog - Sauna Dismount
Haha, those dismount guys!

Mister Raroo Reviews MLB Power Pros 2008 - Gaslamp Ball
Raroo moonlighting hilariously on a San Diego Padres baseball blog.

Halo.bungie.org: 'Link4044's Legendary Crest'
Wow, nice art, if you're a hardcore Halo player.

YouTube - Tiger Woods 09 - Walk on Water
Game bugs spawning actually funny commercials - more tragic proof that EA is cool nowadays.

Posted by Simon Carless at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

[Aha - in honor of Bionic Commando: Rearmed's debut, our own Brandon Sheffield had a good chat with its creative director - whose name is Simon, so really, his majesty is established - about Scandinavians reinterpreting classic Japanese arcade titles for digital download. With bonus commentary about the upcoming 3D-gameplay version, too, which has some pretty interesting swing mechanics.]

When Capcom decided to refresh the Bionic Commando franchise with a next gen title for PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3 alongside the Bionic Commando: Rearmed downloadable remake, it tapped Sweden-headquartered GRIN for the job.

As Rearmed's creative director, GRIN's Simon Viklund had some interesting decisions to make in reviving the original for XBLA, PSN, and PC. And as lead sound designer on the next-gen Bionic Commando, Viklund also had a key role in deciding how much of the game's aesthetic should echo its predecessor.

Here, Viklund talks about GRIN's experiences along the way, from selection by Capcom to the final aesthetic choices in both versions of the game, plus the challenges unique to a franchise reboot.

On Working With Capcom

Did you guys go to Capcom, or did Capcom come to you?

SV: They came to us, actually. Capcom Japan went to an American production company with connections in the game industry, and asked them, "Do you know western developers? Can you find us a couple of Western developers to choose from?" And those guys came up with a few studios -- and I have no idea which the other ones were, but I know that Capcom got pitches from a couple of other studios.

Apparently they were mostly interested in GRIN, in Stockholm, Sweden, and they sent over some guys; amongst them, Keiji Inafune, of course the guy behind Mega Man. He's like the head honcho over in Japan, so whatever he says, that happens.

He could see that we had the technology -- like the physics and everything -- which we are pretty well known for in our past titles... a technical expertise in physics and lighting. And I think that he and the rest of the staff at Capcom could appreciate that, and see that a Bionic Commando game needed that physics aspect of it. That's why I think they found GRIN so suitable for it. So it was like, "It's GRIN, or it's not happening."

[Ed. note: Inafune is in fact head of R&D for Capcom Japan.]

Did you need to develop Bionic Commando with any thought to Capcom Japan's sensibilities, or is it primarily considered a Western game for a Western market?

SV: Bionic Commando is one of those titles that was developed by Capcom, a Japanese company, and it flopped in Japan, but it was popular in the West and primarily the US. So they pretty much let us make it more of a Western title, which is inevitable because we are a Western developer.

Although, it's a Western title leaning toward Japanese, because we're working together with Capcom Japan, and they approve everything that we do. So it still has... this Japanese touch to it, and a lot of people... think it's the same engine running Lost Planet, so they think that the graphics kind of resemble that, although it's GRIN's own engine; so it's actually not the engine running Lost Planet.

But we kind of like that people seem to think that it's a title that -- or type of gameplay, whatever we have achieved for this -- that fits into the Capcom philosophy, or their style of games.

On Bionic Commando: Rearmed

Speaking of Capcom philosophy, it looks like there are little references to other Capcom titles in Rearmed -- will there be some of that in the full 3D game as well?

SV: Maybe. Rearmed is a more comical, cartoonish type of game. I was the creative director on that one, too, so I approved all of the... Like, on the construction site, you'll see that they always wear helmets, like the helmet character from Mega Man.

And on the top-down level, which is in the desert, it's like you're playing in Gun.Smoke, almost. So, of course, we have these references to Capcom games. You have the yashichi, the pinwheel pickup that's in a lot of old school Capcom games, like Gun.Smoke, and the first Mega Man game; you could pick that up. 1942 had it, too.

So we put that in the game, too, as a secret pickup that you can find one of in each area. If you find all of them, you get something special. So there's a lot of that in Rearmed, but that's also a retro title -- a remake of a retro game -- so we wanted to reference all these retro games that really appeal to the retro market.

And I'm a retro gamer, myself, and I really enjoy those old games, so that felt natural. But I don't know about the 3D game... It's not humorous in the same cartoonish way, so I would say probably not as much.

As creative director, you made some changes in the remake -- what was your process like in deciding what to modify and what to keep?

SV: Well, once they approached me within the company and they said, "OK, how do you feel about being the creative director on Rearmed?" I started immediately to think about what I would change in the game. So, I had a pretty good picture. I knew immediately that I wanted the bosses to require you to use the arm. [Instead of having] a huge sprite that you can shoot anywhere, you'd need to find a weak spot on it -- more classic boss gameplay like that.

Bionic Commando is one of those games that it wasn't like years and years since I played it, when Capcom came to us and asked if we wanted to work with them and do it; it was actually one of those games that I brought out all the time.

So it was literally months, or, at most, a year since I last played the game on my NES. So I always had it fresh in my memory, and when I was asked to do be the creative director on Rearmed, I was pretty much like, "OK. I pretty much know what I want to change about it."

So it wasn't that hard to find out what I wanted to change; the hard part was deciding and setting in stone, like, "This is what we're going to change," and be confident about that decision. But I had a pretty good picture of it.

On Bionic Commando 3D

So, then, how do you move from that to the larger game, and differentiate it from Spider Man 3 or Lost Planet?

SV: It's been hard. Until people grab the controller and get to play the game themselves, they tend to compare it to Spider-Man, or something that has a grappling element. I mean, you have a grappling hook in Lost Planet -- which is, of course, another Capcom game -- but it works nothing like the swing mechanic in Bionic Commando.

So once you see gameplay footage, you kind of realize that it's something else, but not until you actually play it yourself do you completely understand how the swing mechanic works; and then you get that it's nothing like Spider-Man, actually.

Sometimes when you do make it more precise like that, and the learning curve gets steeper, it can be potentially limiting for the audience, in terms of making it mass-market; how have you balanced that? Is it a concern?

SV: Well, in a way, we feel that it's OK for this title, because the original has such an unconventional movement mechanic; the fact that you couldn't jump, but needed to use the arm. That was unconventional back in the day, and people have a hard time -- like, people playing Rearmed, and it's still exactly the same movement there.

And we think that it's OK [for] a sequel to such a game -- even though it's brought into the 3D environment -- to have a movement mechanic which is unconventional in this time and day, you know? So I don't know if it's been a concern; we just hope that people appreciate what we've done, and we go down another route that is unlike other games.

It seems that hardcore stuff is much more acceptable when you have, first of all, a clear understanding of what you're supposed to do, even if it's hard to do, as long as the mechanics aren't unclear or frustrating.

SV: Yeah, exactly. It's a game that's created for you to have fun. And it's not like we're trying to create something that's intentionally hard; we just wanted to give the player freedom, and that comes at the cost of more player initiative, and more player timing and practicing.

I think a lot of work has to go into kind-of gradually teaching the player, and not having the deadly traps early on, but just letting the player get used to the controls.

We have no fall damage in the game, and that's one of our design decisions -- I'm talking about 3D, of course -- we have no fall damage, so that's one of our decisions by which we try to encourage the player to be a daredevil, and take a leap of faith.

You jump out, and if you miss, all you have to do is climb back up; you won't lose any health or anything. It's just a matter of, I think, trying to encourage the player in that way, and try to teach the player, slowly, what he or she can do, and just gradually increase the challenge that comes at you. We have a game that starts off with sort-of a tutorial for people, so hopefully that will work out.

With a game that gives players a fair amount of freedom, in a way, how do you keep them from getting out of the world?

SV: That was a problem, initially; that we gave the player this ability that gave him or her the ability to go anywhere and get there very fast. With the swinging mechanic, once you get it, you can just zip up a skyscraper, and you're on top of the roof in no time. So we needed to limit the player, but we didn't want invisible walls.

So, how we solve that is: They blew up this bomb inside the city -- it's not a nuclear bomb, it's some kind of futuristic bomb. I don't know exactly what it is, but we can paint surfaces with these glowing cracks, and that's kind-of a futuristic radiation which your bionic grappling hook cannot connect to. So that's how we limit the player, and we can have that on surfaces where we don't want the player to get up too easily, or to get up at all.

How did you decide on the music with the 3D game?

SV: The game has this grand feel to it, with the huge outdoors environment, and the cinematic sequences and everything. It's more like a movie, more suitable with that cinematic style of symphonic music.

So in the 3D Bionic Commando, you get the kind-of symphonic, cinematic take on the melodies and harmonies from the original game; those melodies and harmonies are reused in that game. Whereas, in Rearmed, you have the techno, break-beat kind-of update of the original tunes; more like wink-wink towards the old NES sound, or course.

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

Aha, may be time to pick the best posts of the week from big sister site Gamasutra and elsewhere on our Think Services sites/blogs - and probably the most obvious post of the week is the 23,000+ word Atari retrospective from Steve Fulton.

Decided to pick my favorite three quotes from the magnum opus as a way of kicking off - scroll down for the other GameSetNetwork links. Oh, and we'll miss you, Jamil.

That Atari Special

Atari: The Golden Years -- A History, 1978-1981
"Following his article on Atari's genesis, game historian Fulton returns with an amazingly detailed piece on Atari's 'golden years', from the rise of the Atari 2600 through Asteroids and Battlezone."

"A funny story from this time that Al Miller likes to tell has to do with the Atari BASIC cartridge that was to ship with the system. Atari had contracted with a young programmer named Bill Gates to modify a BASIC compiler that he had for another system to be used on the 800. After that project stalled for over a year Al was called upon to replace him with another developer. So, while Al is the only person I know ever to have fired Bill Gates, I suspect that rather than work on Atari BASIC, Gates was spending all his time on DOS for IBM. Probably not a bad career choice for him, do you think?" (David Crane)

"Video Chess was created when a consumer from Florida sued Atari because there was a chess piece pictured on the system's box, but no game was available. The VCS programmers did not think a chess game would be possible on the VCS, but with some alternating scan-line tricks they got it to work." (Steve Fulton)

""My model in creating the secret room was the secret messages hidden in Beatle records ('I buried Paul') in the late Sixties, where you had to play the record backwards to hear the message... Atari manufactured several hundred thousand Adventure cartridges, sent them to stores all over the world, and sure enough, some kids here and there did discover the secret room." (Warren Robinett)

Gamasutra Features

David DeMartini on the Renaissance of EA Partners
"EA Partners has quickly become a publishing powerhouse -- now working with Valve, Epic, id, Crytek, Harmonix, and Grasshopper -- here, GM David DeMartini explains the state and future of EAP."

The Code/Art Divide: How Technical Artists Bridge The Gap
"In this intriguing technical article, originally published in Game Developer magazine, Volition's Jason Hayes discusses how the Saints Row franchise developer integrates the technical artist into its development pipeline."

Gamasutra News, Other Features

GCG: Zimmerman and the Systems Approach
"Eric Zimmerman, co-founder and chief design officer of Gamelab (Diner Dash), believes in taking a systems approach to game design. Sister site GameCareerGuide.com has just posted a new interview with him on what that really means -- for game design, resume writing, and understanding how people cross the street."

Crytek's Yerli On The Road To A Graphics 'Renaissance'
"Year-over-year graphical gains appear to be decreasing, yet Crytek's Cevat Yerli has been talking about how art direction, sophisticated AI and physics will help determine the successful game creators -- also discussing his predictions for the PS4's debut and CryEngine 3's planning stages."

EA's DeMartini Talks Hellgate: London Failure
"Following the near-shutdown of Hellgate developer Flagship Studios, EA Partners' David DeMartini, who co-published Hellgate, has been discussing the game's failure, revealing EA had staff "actively working" on the title and suggesting that the game "lost the fanbase" by the time it improved sufficiently, post-release."

GCG: Students, New Developers Dream Up Game Hero
"Game dev students and newcomers to the industry have voiced their thoughts on the next big video game hero. They were asked to develop an original character; the three best ideas for a new game hero have been posted on GameCareerGuide.com."

[Want to get RSSed-up with all Think Services' game sites? Quick list goes like this: GameSetWatch's RSS (editor.blog), IndieGames' RSS (indie.games), WorldsInMotion's RSS (online.worlds), GamerBytes' RSS (console.downloads), GamesOnDeck's RSS (mobile.games), Gamasutra's RSS (main.site), and GameCareerGuide's RSS (edu.news).]

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

[Mathew Kumar was kind enough to cover GCDC in Leipzig for us, and here's another notable write-up, with current Blue Fang-er and generally smart guy Steve Meretzky discussing what we need to do to get the mainstream industry, uhh, innovate-ier.]

Designer and industry veteran Steve Meretzky broke precious ground in the 1980s, heading up Infocom's Planetfall, Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, and other classic titles known for innovation.

While the modern game industry heralds its broadening audiences, Meretzky now feels that the industry's actually narrowing its focus on teen and young adult males, and innovation is suffering.

"I believe the problem is institutional -- that individually, almost everyone in the industry would rather do something very original than something imitative, but the huge budgets and corporate decision-making structures push us into the same narrow alleys," says Meretzky, talking recently at a GSW-attended talk at GCDC in Leipzig.

Meretsky says he likes to play a lot of board games because of the sheer diversity of roles available -- from Medieval French kings through power station managers, time travelers, paranormal investigators, cow exploders, and more.

Meanwhile, in video games recently, he's played "A Dwarven warrior, a WWII soldier, a Dwarven warrior, a WWII soldier, a Dwarven warrior... well, you get it."

"So why do we seem to keep making the same few games over and over and over again?" Meretzky asks. "Innovation is what has got us from Pong to Rock Band, it's true, so we have had a lot of innovation, but have we had enough innovation lately?"

Meretzky points to profit/loss figures and sales data stacked highly in favor of the Wii -- "one of the few shining lights of innovation in the past few years" -- to demonstrate why creativity is not only good, but vital to the health of the industry.

"You could argue the Wii is a technical innovation, not a creative innovation -- I'd argue it was a marriage of the two," he says.

Portal, says Meretzky, is an example of a "pure creative innovation," though time will tell if it's birthed a new genre on its own.

Such innovation, Meretzky says, is essential to helping the game industry avoid "a repeat of what happened to the comic industry," wherein industry standards eventually meant that superhero comics were the only sort being produced -- thereby creating a feedback loop where the only people who read comics were people who liked superheroes.

Broadening games beyond a self-referential state can also help the industry avoid censorship by elevating itself to a diverse art form on par with other media. As a bonus, the "Christmas table discussion" will no longer be full of careful explanations for family members on what the game developer's job entails.

"Aren't you tired of going through that conversation over and over again?" says Meretzky.

Finally, "Isn't it just more interesting and fun to work on something new rather than something exactly the same as the last game you produced, or the last ten games?"

"Let's get that fun back, let's get that passion back, it's our industry, let's take it back," Meretzky urges passionately.

"I feel like we're squandering the promise of games. We've been saying for years that it's an art form, but then we as an industry do as much as we can to disprove what we're saying!"

He continues, "I like violent games as much as the next non-psychopathic gamer -- but with the whole range of human experience, is there nothing else, nothing else that we can concentrate on? It would be like if the film industry did nothing but big budget blockbusters! We can do better than this! We should be doing better than this!"

Meretzky acknowledges that meeting publisher expectations in a high-risk environment can create a measure of self-censorship -- but having thrown out all one's best ideas before the pitch meeting is "fucking idiotic."

"Every time we've settled for the easy idea rather than search for the harder innovative idea or every time as a gamer in a store you've reached for the sequel rather than the new game next to it -- everyone is at fault to some extent and shame on us."

Making the shift to a culture that demands technical innovation while "actively [discouraging]" creative innovation won't be an overnight process, says Meretzky, but it needs to happen.

"We need to fight conservative ideas at every point -- from brainstorming to pitch meetings even just when talking to a friend. Be subversive. If you invent a better mousetrap, other developers will see it and they'll use it and the innovation will spread until it's the standard. And be an evangelist."

And the picture's not so grim, he adds, pointing to the independent game industry and user-generated content on sites like Kongregate as sources of future promise.

"Already a million flowers are starting to bloom and genetic mutation just has to occur. I know my talk has been a little pessimistic, but personally I'm very optimistic. The games industry as we know it may go away, but games aren't going to. The best is yet to come."

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