[In the first of a two-part series discussing the Wii, designer Brice Morrison first concentrates on the positives of Nintendo's breakthrough console to ask - in its two years since launch, what has the machine done for the biz, and what is its legacy to games?]

Almost two years since its launch, the Wii has certainly made a splash in the games industry. Though not a godsend, as I will discuss in a later article, the Wii is responsible for many uncanny feats.

It is incredibly fun, sure enough, but the pioneering console's reach goes far beyond the enjoyment of swinging the Wii remote. What else has it done? In what ways has the Wii affected game players, the games industry, and games as a medium?

You Don’t Press Buttons? Let Me Try...

Without a doubt, the most influential change of the Wii is its effect on the demographics of the video game market.

In the days of old, video games were made for “gamers”. These core gamers were quite homogeneous; most of them were boys and young men who played video games anywhere from 10 to 30 hours a week.

They were familiar with the usual franchises: Halo, Street Fighter, Final Fantasy, and they knew them in depth. They suffered from genre addiction, where players become incredibly skilled at a particular type of game by having their finger reflexes burned in, sequel after sequel.

Developers created the same game over and over again with more difficulty and complex gameplay in order to satisfy these core gamers.

Today, the people who are likely to buy games are vastly different from the people who would have bought games several years ago. Nintendo called their shot in the dark the “blue ocean strategy“: searching for people who didn’t currently play games, but who would play if given the right interface.

Nintendo recognized that many potential customers didn’t come to the party simply because they didn’t like the house’s welcome mat. They weren’t giving games a try because pressing the buttons was too complicated.

Before Nintendo’s newest generation, many had never played games for that reason alone. They now enjoy the simplicity of swinging the Wii remote, an action more closely resembling the activities they are familiar with.

This shift, caused by simplifying the connection between the game and the player, is hardly new; a similar explosion occured in the home computer market three decades ago.

Early in the 80’s, personal computers were only used by specialized techies who enjoyed working from the command line, since having to type all of your commands was too difficult for the majority of consumers.

It wasn’t until the Macintosh appeared in 1984, with a graphical interface and mouse, that it became accessible to the average consumer. The ugly welcome mat was replaced, and everyone was able to join the party.

It is worth noting that it has not been the Wii alone that has allowed this movement (though it is arguably the largest proponent). Casual games such a Bejeweled were around on the internet long before the Wii, entertaining everyone from the core gamer to the 35 year old woman who never touched a console in her life.

But these games were largely underground and from independent developers, away from the cutting edge of the games industry. To have one of the big three consoles (the other two being Sony’s Playstation and Microsoft’s Xbox) go after casual and mid-core gamers aggressively was the final thrust that resulted in a monumental shift in the market.

Mom Doesn't Want To Fight Aliens?

So now that all of these new casual gamers own a Wii, what will they play? Mom and Pop don’t seem eager to get in on a Halo deathmatch. So what do they want?

This is the second major effect of the Wii: the broadening of the types of games that can now aspire to be successful. Nintendo chose to position the Wii (along with the handheld Nintendo DS) as a console that was different from the others. On the Wii you’re more apt to find games that are about more than the simple fun of violence and gore.

It should be realized that the Wii could have just as well been marketed as a hardcore system, just as the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360.

They could have created the Wii, motion controls and all, and still had the same types of difficult games. Games that required dozens of hours and intense practice to complete. Games with the same action and fighting themes as before. Games that were made for the hardcore gamers of the last generation.

Luckily, they didn’t. Nintendo decided to differentiate. Instead of making the last generation of games more difficult in order to satisfy hardcore gamers, they struck out for new territory and went after the non-gamers.

And because those consumers are now ready to play, other more interesting titles are marketable. Games like Big Brain Academy and Wii Fit can now be pitched as possible commercial successes.

Now that consumers are ready and waiting, game designers can aspire to create the games that will feed this new market of consumers who want more than entertainment, but rather want to improve their lives.

Dissolution Of The 'Gamer'

The Wii has already changed many aspects of the games industry for the better. But it has also paved the way for immense change in the future of games.

“In the future there will be a TV in every home,” said Charlie Gordon, hands clasped on the side of his podium. The crowd, without a second thought, laughed at him.

If Charlie had been speaking in 1990 and instead claimed that “In the future, every single person will play games,” he would have likewise been laughed off the stage.

Heck, if you would have told me as soon as five years ago that my family, wonderful people who live on a farm in southern Virginia, would one day own a game console, I would have called you crazy. But now they own a Wii. And so do many others like them, people who had never played games before.

The shockwave that the Wii has sent out is continuing to gain steam. As more and more people play games, the term “gamer” will fade into the past. When describing themselves, no one says, “I am a television-watcher,” or “I’m a movie-goer”.

Instead, a person is more likely to tell you what kind of TV and movies they watch. The fact that they watch them at all is a given. Now that games have become more accessible, so too will they follow suit.

Broadening Of The Purpose

The other long term effect the Wii will have on games isn’t necessarily a prediction, but rather a simple extension of the current trend: the functions that games serve in our society will continue to expand.

When games were exclusively for young boys, games were about entertainment, and rightfully so. But now that we have adults, mothers, fathers, and senior citizens playing games, interactive software is becoming much more than entertainment.

A 72 year old woman doesn’t play Wii bowling just because it’s fun; she also plays it for the exercise. Players of Brain Age aren’t turning down a movie or a trip to the ballpark to try the game, they view it as an investment in their mental health. These are noble goals that were never possible when core gamers were just looking to kill some time.

Over the next few years, games will continue to change and redefine how we think of them, likely moving further and further from entertainment. In fact, we may have to come up with a new name for them.

The Future Looks Bright

The execution of their console by Nintendo, the marketing, the design of the controller, and the software titles have all worked together with one goal in mind: get people who have never played games before to give it a try.

Truly, the mid-core and casual games market is an exciting one. As a game designer, it is a relief to finally be able to talk seriously about games that are more than entertainment and be able to expect profitability.

Such designs were once constrained to nonprofit art, but can now be embraced and rewarded. This, my friends, is a very good thing.

[Brice Morrison is a game designer who has been developing quirky titles since he was in middle school. Before taking a job at Electronic Arts, he developed several successful independent games such as Jelly Wars, an action adventure franchise, and QuickQuests, a casual MMORPG.

While at the University of Virginia, Brice founded Student Game Developers, an organization which continues to produce games every semester and open the doors to the games industry for students. His blog at BriceMorrison.com discusses games in a broader context and how they can be more than simply entertainment.]

Posted by Simon Carless at 4:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

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

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

The delights in this latest version include a new release update from the prolific dessgeega, an isometric shooter by Sigma Team (of Alien Shooter fame), a life simulation game, an innovative tower defense game, and a Breakout remake by nekogames.

Game Pick: 'Mighty Jill Off - Jill Off Harder Edition' (dessgeega, donateware)
"Not an entirely new game, but an enhanced version updated with reworked tile graphics and a second tower to conquer - although you will need to beat the first level in under twelve minutes to unlock this extra content."

Game Pick: 'Theseus - Return of the Hero' (Sigma Team, freeware)
"A game by Sigma Team that uses the updated Alien Shooter engine, recently released as freeware. This isometric action game features ten playable stages, in which some are actually rescue missions instead of the standard alien genocide fare."

Game Pick: 'Kudos 2' (Positech Games, commercial indie - demo available)
"A sequel to one of Cliff Harris' earlier commercial releases, which has been described by some parties as The Sims in 2D. There are plenty of improvements over the original, although the artwork by James McKelvie has to be the main draw of this life simulation game."

Game Pick: 'Immortal Defense' (RPGCreations, commercial indie - demo available)
"Rarely does a developer spends an entire year updating their first commercial venture instead of concentrating on the next release, and allowing players to access one-third of the full game in the demo seems illogical but the critical acclaim for this innovative tower defense game has paid off in spades. One review even went as far as proclaiming it a better game than Portal and Bioshock - a shocking revelation indeed."

Game Pick: 'Nekogames Kuzushi' (Yoshio Ishii, freeware)
"A Flash banner game created by the developer of Cursor*10 and the Hoshi Saga series. This Breakout remake turned sideways consists of a single area filled with blocks for the player to destroy, although the concept isn't exactly a new one as Firestorm Productions released a similar freeware title called Poing PC some time back."

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

Thank you all for your kind feedback in my last column. I guess I'll keep this sucker on rolling, then, and cancel my previous plan to start covering the illustrious history of ferret magazines instead. Sorry, Simon.

As I've discussed earlier, this isn't such a merry holiday for US print mags, most of which are peaking just a wee bit above 100 pages even though the number of games they're expected to cover continues to balloon. They're doing the best they can, though, and I'd like to take a look at the holiday editions I didn't get around to last week -- including Game Informer, which I continue to foster a love/hate relationship toward.

Game Informer November 2008

Cover: Dragon Age Origins

The postman kind of mangled my copy of GI this month, leading me to wonder if the magazine was suddenly using cheaper, flimsier paper. It isn't -- I compared it with early-'08 issues and it's the same. Just a perception, I guess. (GI is the winner in page count this month with 144, which beats EGM by a country mile.)

Never have the two directions GI pulls itself become more obvious than in this cover. GI's the only mag to actually put a picture of Jonathan Blow right on Page 1, for example, to say nothing of giving him two pages of interview text. It's arguably the best thing in the mag this month; Blow is a handsome lad and he speaks intelligently. There are one or two nitpicks I could bring up, but the fact is that I don't see any other print mag tackling the guy and his game with nearly as much gusto.

The cover feature, meanwhile, is GI's other face -- the face of game PR, page scans on forums, and instant obsolescence. The text is nothing IGN couldn't do -- it needs editing, is written awkwardly, and has passages that go on for several lines without actually stating anything, like some parody of a 19th-century lecturer. I'm know I'm far more critical of GI's x-clusive covers than those of any other magazine, but if you've got over triple the circ of your nearest competitor, you got higher standards to fulfill in my mind. Where's the thought and insight that I just saw in the Braid interview, not to mention the rest of the news section?

The Left 4 Dead piece, meanwhile, is far nicer -- despite what the cover suggests, it's much more Valve history piece than L4D preview, and it's nicely laid out and interesting to read even if you know all the players already. Very Edge-y.

Official Xbox Magazine December 2008 (Podcast)

Cover: Fallout 3

OXM does for Bungie what GI did for Valve this issue, and the result's even more impressive because they're covering a story -- Bungie going independent -- that I think not enough industry watchers realized the full impact of. It's got quotes from rival developers and everything. Brilliant! The Fallout 3 review gets more pages (and has a similarly lovely visual design -- I think I see why OXM gives its designers full bylines alongside the writer these days), but this was the highlight for me.

Play November 2008

Cover: Street Fighter IV -or- Bionic Commando

It's not mentioned on the cover, but Play seems to have a "girlzzz in gaming" theme going on this issue -- there's a profile of ladies around the industry that prominently features the Frag Dolls (most recently seen in mags on the cover of Future's PCXL one-off?), a review of a book called "Porn & Pong," and another piece on "Game Widow," a book written by the wife of SOCOM's lead designer.

The SFIV cover piece is pure passion and pure Play, in the good sense of the term -- in-depth and filled with neat trivia. The Bionic Commando counterpart is pure Halverson and pure Play in the other sense of the term -- filled with Dave talking about himself and writing one-liners like "100% pure, game and player. This is what it's all about" which sound straight out of 1994-era GameFan. They both have their charms, really.

If you want pure, refined Halverson, though, flip directly to his review of Golden Axe: Beast Rider. My favorite line comes right at the end: "If you love [the game], buy two for yourself and one for everyone you know as Christmas presents, whether they have a console or not, to assure we get another." If it's got boobs and/or a jump button, Dave loves it. And I love him.

PlayStation: The Official Magazine December 2008

Cover: Prince of Persia

Can I take the time to mention that Future is awesome for printing PTOM in such thick, heavy, fancy-feeling paper? This issue's 112 pages and is still way thicker and sturdier than GI at 144. It demonstrates that someone at Future cares about more than the bottom line when it comes to print.

The cover piece is incredibly text-dense, backed up by some neat visual aids, like the full spread devoted to the "anatomy" of the Prince. I usually hate vertically-oriented spreads, but this one was done right. It reminds me of me 'n Gary's old Newtype days, pieces like these. Besides that and a horror-game roundup, this mag is almost all reviews.

[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)

Steaming straight into the weekend with straight-ahead intent, this GameSetLinkDump extravaganze is headlined by InfiniteLives' Jenn messing with a Lovecraftian Virtual Boy game that I, also, had no freakin' idea existed - and this comes from someone who bought (but has not yet affixed) a 'Miskatonic University' license plate frame.

Also hanging out in here - the LA Times on game schools, a good iPhone game store piece from Kim, a video series touches on the tortuous-ish history of games and IP/patents, Joust 3D rears its pretty head (I heard it got canned partly because it had glider-quality uber-physics insanity controls, I believe), and plenty more.

Rainbow connection:

Majoring in video games - Los Angeles Times
Super well-researched piece on game degrees from Alex Pham.

Finalists - joystick - E4.com
'In alphabetical order, these are the top ten games submitted into the Grand Master Flash competition, as selected by our expert judging panel.' All playable and pretty interesting.

Ascii Dreams: Review: World of Goo
Yep, as Riccitiello fanfic. The weirdo.

Xbox Live Arcade Sales, 2 Weeks Ending 10/11/08 | VG Chartz.com - Video Game Charts - Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, Wii, PS3, Xbox360, DS, PSP, PC
New update! Some interesting stats here (Braid still doing 5k a week?), and they are, at least potentially, much more reliable than VGChartz' WiiWare ones, as I've mentioned previously.

Mine!...Gaming and Copyright | ON Networks
History of patents and IP in games, from a pretty interesting web-only video game show I had no idea about - via Alex.

...on pampers, programming & pitching manure: iPhone Games Market: Promised Land or Cesspit?
'While at TGS, I had a lot of hallway & dinner conversations about iPhone games, with people weighing in on whether the iPhone Appstore was the promised land (a la XBLA circa 2005) or whether it was going to rapidly turn into something less than that.'

Infinite Lives » Games I’ve never played: Lovecraftian, stereoscopic FPSes
'The ill-fated Virtual Boy did, indeed, have exactly one 3D first-person shooter, and it took place in Innsmouth, and in it, you actually shot freaky fish people.'

brandonnn.com — RJDJ Takes Me Into The Rainbow Vein
Wow, amazing music-generating iPhone app.

gone is gone: Joust 3D
Is this the first video to surface of this online? (This and below via Brandonn too, just catching up!)

Media Molecule - we make games. » Blog Archive » LittleBigBang : The Evolution Of LittleBigPlanet
'Here is a video which gives some insight into how Little Big Planet ( and Media Molecule! ) evolved from next to nothing into what it is today! This was generated from our source control repository using a awesome tool called codeswarm.'

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

['GDRI Wisdom' is a bi-weekly column presenting highlights from select interviews with overlooked game developers of years past, as seen on Game Developer Research Institute (GDRI).]

Jim Reichert is an inventor and rapid prototyper whose work has been featured in Disneyland's Innoventions Dream Home and the Microsoft Home of the Future. He also worked at Microsoft Game Studios, doing games such as MechWarrior 4, MechCommander, Crimson Skies, and Links 2001.

But early on in his career, Reichert worked as a programmer at Sega Midwest Studio (aka Sega Midwest Development Division), a little-known Sega studio that was located near Chicago. Only two games developed by the division were actually released - a conversion of the Neo Geo game World Heroes and NHL All-Star Hockey '95, both for the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis.

Fortunately, GDRI got to catch up with Mr. Reichert. We asked him about World Heroes, Sega Midwest itself, and even an unreleased 32X game.

GDRI: Tell us about developing Genesis World Heroes. Was a lot of time and effort put into doing it? Why was an American division of Sega tasked with converting a Japanese fighting game?

JR: Well, as I was only the developer of the game, I can't really answer the question as to why an American development house was asked to do the port. As for myself, I'd never really heard of the game, and I was simply happy to enter into the game industry at the time -- I wasn't about to ask probing political questions.

It was funny; the original "wunderkind" who was supposed to do the port, a British guy named "Steve," turned out to be all talk. But before he "left," he managed to bilk Sega Midwest out of a fair amount of money (he got a car as part of his deal). Ultimately, I came in to restart the port from the ground up and had very little time to do it. Thankfully, another guy at Sega, whose name was John [Walsh?], helped out with certain parts.

It was actually quite a feat to get all of the 8 characters, plus the end boss, in the game -- with all of the animations. Back then, cartridge ROM was expensive!

Yeah, World Heroes (even the original) wasn't anything to write home about. I had to squeeze 82M into a 16M cartridge. The source code was in assembly with absolutely no documentation. There were no testers. There was no one to help me port the artwork.

Anyone who owns this little turd can fire it up again, just to type "JJJ" as the 1st place high score initials -- and have an Easter egg to throw tomatoes at (my portrait). Take that, SOA corporate!

[ED: You do not have to have the 1st place high score for the "JJJ" trick to work.]

GDRI: So did you have the source code from the original game to work with?

JR: I already answered that. "The source code was in assembly with absolutely no documentation." What that basically means is that I had a file that looked like several hundred pages of:

0F77:0000 B8790F MOV AX,0F79
0F77:0003 8ED8 MOV DS,AX
0F77:0005 B409 MOV AH,09

Essentially, it was likely that I was working with a post-compiler assembly dump. I'd worked in assembly before, but on a different chipset. I guess you could say I had only the assembly to work from, not the source and no access to the original authors. Basically, the game was written from the ground up by me, a novice at 23.

GDRI: We talked to Jim Rohn last year, and he said, "There were a lot of confidential, in-house developments that I don't think I can speak about." Are you willing to talk about them?

JR: I'm not sure what Jim Rohn was referring to about the in-house developments, but I think he was talking about office politics, incompetence, and SOA's capital "disappearing." At one point, we had an art director who knew absolutely nothing about art. I think there was some nepotism going on at high levels. He forbade artists to learn 3D Studio until he'd learned it first (he wanted to make himself indispensable). So me being the rabble rouser that I am, [I] learned 3D Studio on my own and taught it to the artists behind his back. The artists rapidly eclipsed him in skill, and he was basically driven out based on his incompetence.

Overall, the "trench forces" at Sega Midwest were incredibly gifted, but all their talents were wasted on incompetent leadership. Still, amid all the BS, we turned out two fairly decent games at a time when the market was evolving very quickly. We probably could have made a go of things if Sega hadn't blown its console strategy.

GDRI: There was a segment on an episode of a show called Rox featuring you at your job at Sega Midwest. Some footage from a 32X game called Aftershock was shown. Was an actual game being worked on? It looks more like a "proof of concept" to me.

JR: Aftershock got beyond the proof of concept stage, and we were developing the game when I left. I remember that Aftershock got rave reviews as a product pitch at SOA, but by that time, Sega Midwest had pissed away so much money (with little ROI [return on investment]) that nobody trusted them with SOA cash -- and Sega itself was totally floundering (32X?!?).

It was too bad because that game actually had some legs, and the whole studio was excited about it -- and I was the lead designer. I still have all the videos and game assets associated with it -- I even have a cartridge with the prototype on it. We had a professional cartooner design all the characters for the game, and the images were completely awesome.

GDRI: Could you tell us what Aftershock was about? What kind of game was it?

JR: Essentially, it was Jungle Strike set in a post-apocalyptic world where you could fly, drive, and cycle around.

I'm looking at the Aftershock pitch folder, and here's the "high concept"-- a game industry term used to describe a short paragraph that can be related in a minute or less.

"A combination of aerial assault, ground combat, and cinematics bring a compelling storyline to life in the post-apocalyptic world of Aftershock. Lead your team of skilled mercenaries through the ruins of L.A. in a desperate search for the source of the mutant infestation. It's a race against time as you infiltrate enemy strongholds, collecting weapons and power-ups in preparation for the final conflict with an evil tyrant."

Of course, that's just the pitch. There's over 30 pages after that, of flowcharts, illustrations, and story. The folks at SOA were pretty enthused because we had an amazing artist on staff who was a brilliant comic illustrator, and we were going to leverage the 32X's video playback capabilities to do some amazing cinematics.

Looking back over the documents, it's still a game that looks like fun. But as with anything from the 90s, perhaps it's best left in the past!

(EDITOR'S NOTE: More from this interview can be found at the GDRI website.)

[Game Developer Research Institute is a website dedicated to finding out more about game development companies and people in the industry.]

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

[Perhaps it's heartening that Republican presidential candidate John McCain used a video game to demonstrate his position against pork barrel spending -- but designer Brice Morrison explains just why McCain's Pork Invaders "fails miserably" -- and what the candidate should've done instead.]

The 2008 Presidential race is at the top of the news headlines, with all eyes on Obama and McCain, all ears to the issues. In this particular election, I've been pleased to see the willingness of both campaigns and the nation as a whole to embrace technology, from the YouTube debates to Obama's extensive website which debunks myths and rumors generated by bloggers.

Both candidates' teams have done exceptionally well in coping with new technology in an effort to woo a population that is more connected than ever before.

One of the efforts by McCain's team to reach voters was a game for voters to play called Pork Invaders. It is a classic Space Invaders-style arcade game, where the player moves around on the bottom of the screen while enemies float up above.

The player can fire bullets at the enemies and destroy them, earning points. In this particular version of the game, the enemies are pigs (representing porkbarrel bills that spend taxpayer's money needlessly), and the bullets that the player can fire are vetos (representing John McCain, in office, vetoing the bills).

Unfortunately for both the McCain campaign and game developers interested in social change, the game is nothing short of an embarrassment to games as a medium. It does nothing to expand on its blindingly clear initial message: McCain hates pork barrel politics, and he intends to fight against them when elected to office.

Okay, so we get it. Thanks for sinking a good chunk of change into developing this game, since the message "John McCain thinks porkbarreling is bad" is clearly beyond the scope of written text. The game was likely an attempt to reach younger voters, but that logic goes nowhere if the game does nothing to convey its message.

Backing Up Social Messages With Gameplay

Games like this upset me, because they both reflect and perpetuate a lack of understanding of the capabilities that games have to convey experiences, teach players, and change minds. These are the kinds of games people think of when developers try to talk about games for social change, games for education, or games as art. No wonder no one takes them seriously.

Pork Invaders is a terrible game in that it fails to present a coherent system. The game attempts to use arguably the least-important aspect of games -- the graphics -- to make its point. The Space Invaders controls, enemies, and movement are left intact -- in essence, standing silent -- when they could be used to share an experience with the user about John McCain.

Imagine if what was done in Pork Invaders was done in another, better-understood medium. Take the recent Batman film, The Dark Knight, exactly as is, except replace Batman with John McCain. Then replace the antagonist, the Joker, with a pig-man named "Porkbarrel". And the movie unfolds in the City of Taxpayer's Dollars.

Obviously, this is completely ridiculous.

But this is exactly what Pork Invaders does. The developers took another game, whose mechanics had nothing to do with government spending, and painted over the graphics in a sad attempt to convey a political message.

In attempting to express through a game what could have been expressed through an ad slogan, they wasted both time and money while failing to take advantage of the interactive medium they chose. It would have been better for everyone to cut out the middle man and simply write the message that the game is circuitously trying to convey.

Looking at the game's main menu, you see evidence that not even the developers think the game is worthwhile. Before starting, the player has the option to select between "Play" and "Get the facts".

Clicking the latter link will take you to another page, where you can read about McCain's plans for reform. Giving the player this choice essentially positions the game as a waste of time, something that you do for a few minutes until you decide to become an adult and read some actual information.

The Kind Of Game McCain Should Have Made

Games are the best medium for conveying real life experiences, because they have the option of choice. The player can choose what to do, and the system will respond. Any life experience can be described by this model, and so there's no reason why such a medium couldn't be used to convey a message much more powerfully than text.

"Experience is the best teacher", says the proverb. Truly, most people's opinions and beliefs are shaped by their experiences, McCain and Obama included. What if you could experience the same life events that lead the candidates to hold the views they currently do?

Instead of hearing the candidates spout their views, why not go back to the events that caused them to develop the views?

Imagine this: A game where you are playing as a United States Senator. In the first stage, you visit your home state and speak to constituents. You learn of their hardships and their struggles, and you agree to do everything you can to help them. In the second stage you return to Washington to vote on several bills. You refer back to the requests of your constituents and make your decisions, and bills are passed.

However, as the game goes on, the budget begins to run low. You go back to your constituents, who are still eager for change, and unfortunately need to tell them that the money simply is not there to help them. Your constituents are irate. You head back to Capitol hill to review the bills that have been passed, only to discover that while they may have had good intentions, many of the funds were spent unnecessarily.

In short, through playing the game, you have an experience that awakens you to the real life dangers of porkbarrel spending.

This is just a quick example, but it's still more compelling than Pork Invaders. I'm not privy to the exact experiences that McCain would say caused him to develop the views of his platform, but those experiences would provide a starting point for building a game that does more than spout a slogan. It could actually change people's minds.

Games That Already Do This

The ReDistricting Game, a browser-based game developed by a joint effort of University of Southern California's game design and political science departments, is a game about the effects of altering lines that define voting regions in order to manipulate the results of elections. It is a magnificent game that has thankfully garnered much media coverage in a short period of time.

Why does The Redistricting Game get a stamp of approval while Pork Invaders fails miserably? The former is designed from the ground up for one purpose: to have the player understand the effects of gerrymandering.

It uses the rules that govern the game's system to convey a difficult concept, one that few people would understand after simply reading about it, and helps the player understand by giving them the experience of having it unfold before their very eyes.

While everyone has learned about gerrymandering in school, few people would claim to actually understand how it makes a difference. Thus, the game goes above and beyond written text and teaches through experience.

Pork Invaders, on the other hand, presents no semblance of porkbarrel politics in its gameplay. The attempted message and the game itself are completely unrelated.

Games For Real Change

I hope that we see more and more games for political issues, and I hope that those funding them become more and more aware of their ability to influence voters.

If games can be used to convey experiences, a world where the average voter can tackle even the most complex issues may not be far away. But to get there, game developers need to understand exactly where the compelling powers of games lie: in their gameplay.

[Brice Morrison is a game designer who has been developing quirky titles since he was in middle school. Before taking a job at EA, he developed several successful independent games such as Jelly Wars, an action-adventure franchise, and QuickQuests, a casual MMORPG.

While at the University of Virginia, Brice founded Student Game Developers, an organization which continues to produce games every semester and open the doors to the games industry for students. His blog at BriceMorrison.com discusses games in a broader context and how they can be more than simply entertainment.]

Posted by Simon Carless at 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Heading blissfully forward with the GameSetLinkDump - and there's actually a surprising amount of good randomness this week - the attached picture is the fun, devious concept of an intentionally corrupted, gradually graphically destabilizing Super Mario Bros ROM. Can you complete it before it becomes unplayable?

Also in here - the PixelJam guys vs. Sarah Silverman, IFComp reviews times infinity, homebrew DS goodness, GAMBIT's Phorm, and plenty more besides.

Telling no tales:

Comedy Central: Games - The Sarah Silverman Program: Cookie Party 2 - Info
Totally cute promo game done by the indie kids at PixelJam - via Brandonnn.

sardius_: glitch, please
'The king of all corrupted Mario hacks is still Proceduralglitch3.nes, though. I don't remember who made it, but I got it off of an old thread at selectbutton.net. It turns Super Mario Bros. into a race against impending and inevitable doom, as levels will gradually become more and more corrupt over time.'

GAMBIT: Updates: Introducing Phorm!
'Phorm is the first game where players create their character using free-form modeling.'

IF Competition: General Reflections and Favorites « Emily Short’s Interactive Fiction
Wow, gigantic, scarily big round-up - here's everyone else reviewing.

Joystick Division: Video Game News, Views and Reviews - Post-GameCyte/TriplePoint Roundtable
Milking it much, guys?

Ludus Novus :: Necropolis
'Necropolis is a game about Ms. Lilian Trevithick, lady adventurer and radical steam technician, who has come to the infamous Necropolis of Ao in search of adventure. She descends through 25 procedurally-generated levels of traps and treasure to achieve her goal.'

Gaming by the people, for the people - Citizen Gamer- msnbc.com
'I checked out 29 of the community games in the beta and, of those, I’d say maybe seven were worth paying actual money for.'

Multiple:Option: UZA: The First Journey
'UZA: The First Journey is an arcade action game similar to Robotron/Geometry Wars.' Oo, please enter IGF Mobile with this, plz.

Achieve360Points.com - Live Score Tracker - Xbox 360 Achievements
As Danny points out - these achievements are bananas (B A N A N A...) - 35 points for pressing pause?

Play This Thing! | Game Reviews | Free Games | Independent Games | Game Culture
'Fraid is a quick parodic riff on Jonathan Blow's brilliant Braid. It features completely impenetrable "puzzles" that you essentially "solve" by doing random things until something happens, along with vaporous story text with the illusory feeling of literary depth but that ultimately means nothing.'

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

[As mentioned in the recent GameSetLinkDump, here's a brief write-up on the Nite To Unite event, which is probably one of the lower-profile industry events from a public perspective, yet still raises a great deal for kids' charities - bravo, all participants.]

The ESA Foundation's eleventh annual Nite To Unite For Kids was held in San Francisco on Wednesday night, and Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto was on hand to receive the 2009 ESA Champion Award.

The charity event at the historic Westin St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco, which includes a dinner and a silent and live auction, is run by the ESA Foundation, the Entertainment Software Association’s charitable arm.

Nite to Unite for Kids has raised an impressive $11 million for children's charities since its inception in 1999, through a combination of donations from game industry companies and individuals of all kinds -- showing the potential of the game biz for giving back to the community.

But the excitement was perhaps centered around Nintendo's Miyamoto, on hand in San Francisco to receive an award that had previously been given to notables such as Electronic Arts’ Bing Gordon, Nintendo of America's Howard Lincoln, Sega's Isao Ogawa, and Sony Computer Entertainment’s Ken Kutaragi.

He was introduced by Nintendo Of America head Reggie Fils-Aime, who chose to honor the legendary Nintendo designer by explaining what Miyamoto-san meant to him personally.

Fils-Aime explained that his first console was a Super Nintendo, and the first game he owned Super Mario World. Working in marketing at Pizza Hut at that time, he became completely enthralled, managing to complete the game with 99 lives.

Then came The Legend Of Zelda: Link To The Past, and Fils-Aime praised the title's creative genius, saying that to him, "That game was like another child... that game was like a second job."

He then related an anecdote about his 6-year old son playing Zelda at the same time as he did, and the circumstances whereby his son took over Reggie's save -- poised at the last boss in the game -- and beat it.

"I was so pissed," Fils-Aime joked, but he explained that he felt his personal gaming story was just one of the millions that Shigeru Miyamoto has inspired, and ended by simply saying of the Mario and Zelda creator: "There is no-one like him."

Miyamoto then took the stage to a standing ovation from the assembled industry vets, and said in English, "I am very honored," before gratefully receiving his award and giving a brief translated speech in Japanese.

As he explained in starting, "All of us have grown up seeing how our video games have touched the lives of children and whole families."

Indeed, he commented of those currently creating games, "I often hear that a lot of those people played Super Mario Bros, and that's why they joined the industry and started making games."

Miyamoto believe that it's an exciting time for the games industry, since "we're seeing new genres being born every day."

His mind was particularly on his new title, Wii Music, and though he joked, "I'm not here to do any PR for Wii Music" -- getting laughs from the audience -- he did say that he was excited about the title introducing children to the "future that they may potentially have with music."

In fact, Miyamoto said that he hopes, in a few years, to see professional musicians who were introduced to the profession with Wii Music, in a similar way to Super Mario Bros inspiring game developers.

He concluded that it's the job of developers such as him to create games that enchant the world, and for children, to "see what we can do to put smiles on their faces."

Also during the evening, an enthusiastic live auction helped to increase the charity giving. Some of the most enthusiastic bidding went to a meet and greet session with teen pop stars The Jonas Brothers, as well as a spring training visit to the Seattle Mariners baseball team, donated by owner and one-time Nintendo lawyer and chairman Howard Lincoln.

There was also a host of silent auction items to help with the event's charity goals, spanning everything from UFC posters to a Metalocalypse Adult Swim cartoon show prize package (intriguingly donated by Konami).

This regular event continues to fulfill a vital charity function, and it's likely that the ESA Foundation will update in the near future with a final tally from this year's Nite To Unite.

Posted by Simon Carless 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.]

Last week was slow, yet not. It's surprising how little Xbox Live Arcade and WiiWare news popped out, while the PlayStation Network got the lion's share of announcements and revelations. Doesn't happen too often.

This week, you'll be able to pick up Portal: Still Alive on Xbox Live Arcade. If you've never played the Orange Box versions on the console or PC, you'd be silly not to download this. Cheaper than the PC version, too.

Last week on the PlayStation Network, we got SOCOM Confrontation. New and old players alike are enjoying it quite a lot -- though it seems that it's going through a few problems right now. Hopefully everything settles down once the weight gets taken off the servers. The 500MB instant patch didn't help either.

On WiiWare, you've got Tetris Party -- apparently a great new addition to the platform -- and The Incredible Maze, a game that nobody had heard of before today.

This week, we're also starting a new set of columns - the monthly wrap-up of the best games for each downloadable service:

Xbox Live Arcade

This week on Xbox Live Arcade - Portal: Still Alive
2007's PC game of the year is making its way to the Xbox Live Arcade this week. If you never got the chance to play this game, I'd suggest you do so now.

Gamerbytes Interview - NinjaBee On A Kingdom of Keflings, Boingz and Doritos: DOD
We get the chance to chat with indie downloadable game aficionados NinjaBee about their three upcoming titles for WiiWare and Xbox Live Arcade.

PlayStation Network

NA PSN Store Update: Confrontation, No Booty
It's been a long wait, but the PlayStation 3 was able to become a Navy Seal in the multiplayer of SOCOM: Confrontation. People have been having quite a few problems getting online, I hear -- hopefully that gets fixed. Unfortunately, Age of Booty was not released - instead, delayed until November for PSN users.

TGS 2008 - Gamersyde Gomibako and Flower Gameplay Videos
Gomibako aka "Junk Tetris" was a hit at TGS last week, but there was little to no media for it anywhere. Video ninjas Gamersyde get some videos on the sly - check it out.

PomPom Games Announce Astro Tripper For PlayStation Network
From the people who brought you the Mutant Storm series on Xbox Live Arcade comes Astro Tripper - a grand rethink of their classic PC title, and exclusive to the PlayStation Network.

Guest Analysis: A Curmudgeon's Review Of Qore - Episode 05
This months Qore review by guest analyst Matt Matthews discusses Fallout 3, Resident Evil 5, and Dead Space, as showcased by Sony's official online video magazine.

High Velocity Bowling Becomes What It Should Have Been
Remember High Velocity Bowling? The developers sure do - they're bringing a giant update to this title soon - including online play and Trophies!

WiiWare

NA WiiWare Update - Tetris Party, Mega Man 9 DLC and... The Incredible Maze?
Tetris Party bursts onto the scene with online play and a flurry of gameplay modes, while The Incredible Maze sneaks in on the side, unnoticed by the masses. Not our fault - they didn't tell us they're even making the game!

The September Wrapup

Every month, we'll recap the top games for each console for the previous month, with review round-ups galore. This time, we have a look back at WipEout HD, Shred Nebula, Mega Man 9, Strong Bad, Duke Nukem 3D and more.

The September Wrapup: What You May Have Missed Out On XBLA?

The September Wrapup: PSN Gets Wiped Out On Classic Titles

The September Wrapup: WiiWare's Strong Mega Bomb

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

['Roboto-chan!' will again be a fortnightly column by the indomitable Ollie Barder, who has returned from the blinking LED encrusted future to warn humanity about the inevitable robot apocalypse. This column covers the problems surrounding making a Macross game and how the series has thus far been portrayed in a functional sense.]

Firstly, it's nice to be back writing this column again. I've looked on from afar and wanted to take the reigns again several times but real world requirements dictated otherwise. I hope to resume the column on a regular fortnightly basis as well, so at least the wonderful Game Set Watch readership can once again have their robot gaming fix.

Anyway, what with the latest TV series, Macross Frontier, finishing a scant few weeks ago and the new PSP game Macross Ace Frontier being released recently, it seems that now is a good time to talk about a series that has often been given a somewhat unfortunate gaming treatment.

Of all the mecha franchises out there Macross is one of the most badly represented. This isn't because developers want to sabotage the series but more down to the fact that each Macross game is actually comprised of three disparate gaming genres all vying for dominance via one control method.

To clarify, Macross is a series based around love triangles, giant aliens, music and, of course, planes that can transform into large robots. Naturally, each game focuses on these variable fighters, which results in a game that has to offer control for each of it's three modes; fighter, GERWALK and battroid.

To say that that this is a pretty tough undertaking isn't in any way an understatement. It's actually, almost utterly impossible.

With that, let's get on with the column...

The annals of Macross gaming are pretty extensive but this column will only be covering the more recent 3D efforts. This is not to say that the older 2D shoot-em-ups aren't worthy of discussion, as the PC Engine versions were developed by none other than NCS who created the incredibly influential Assault Suits series, but that the problems with the various modes of transformation only reared their head once greater functional (3D) scope became available. As such, I apologise that this is a somewhat of a selective breakdown rather than anything exhaustively thorough.

It also goes without saying that I won't be covering the numerous Robotech games, not out of blinkered otaku tendencies but because the faults that befall the newer Macross games are equally present in the Robotech editions (in some instances, even more so).

So why is it so bloody hard to get a variable fighter working in-game? Well, it's down to the aforementioned three modes that they can transform between; fighter, GERWALK and battroid.

Fighter mode is basically a plane so any functional tenets from flight simulators are an easy match. Battroid mode is your nimble Japanese mecha and, as this column has shown, that genre has a lot of reference material already. Switching between these two modes would be do-able and wouldn't require a complex control scheme, however there is one more mode left.

GERWALK, a wonderful acronym that stands for: Ground Effective Reinforcement of Winged Armament with Locomotive Knee-joint. Basically, it's a halfway house between fighter and battroid. To explain, the legs come down and the arms pop out but the main body remains that of a plane. Interestingly, the mecha designer responsible for the variable fighter design, that of Shoji Kawamori, actually came up with this mode first. On a skiing trip he noticed how jumpers legs dangled in mid-air and wondered how that would work on a plane. GERWALK, as such, is the crux of the variable fighter's capabilities as it allows the high speed pursuit of fighter mode but also the VTOL capabilities seen in battroid. This is also where the functional problems start.

With this extra mode sandwiched between fighter and battroid, the controls have to offer a new disparate control scheme. At worst this means that each mode ends up with a massively different set of control inputs, making the learning curve suitably counter-intuitive.

Macross Digital Mission VF-X (PlayStation)

This is where the 3D games start; with UNiT's abortive VF-X games. The first game was set around the same time frame of Macross 7, so the roster of available variable fighters was pretty extensive. It also featured, for the first time ever in fact, a fully transformable VF-4. Something had never been since it was introduced in fighter mode way back in Macross Flashback 2012. All in all, it was shaping up to be every Macross fan's dream.

Then it got released.

After multiple agonising delays, VF-X hit the shelves. It had a wondrous opening FMV with Fire Bomber singing Try Again and animation by GONZO. The front end was stylised a la Macross Plus and then the game started. Oh...dear.

The first problem was that because this game was in 3D the developer, UNiT, couldn't resist showing the animation sequence for each transformation. So you'd have the controls wrenched from you as your variable fighter transformed. Thankfully, you were invulnerable during this phase but comedically this oversight could be used to break the game until it was made farcically easy.

The second problem was a mixture of a badly implemented GERWALK mode and a neutered battroid mode. In the case of the latter, battroid mode was unable to fire missiles, which whilst inaccurate to the anime was also functionally frustrating and limited the usefulness of the mode.

GERWALK was a mess though and sat between the two other modes, meaning that the player had to toggle through each mode rather than select them individually. The reason why it didn't work was down to the means in which your variable fighter gained and lost height. Thrust for the other modes was almost reversed in GERWALK, in that in order to gain height you had to pull down on the d-pad. On its own, it made sense but between the other two modes it just jarred. Couple that with the surreal choice to have the player strafe in GERWALK when not applying thrust and then allowing them to turn once the boosters were activated, meant you often over shot your target. The camera also had a habit of looking straight down in GERWALK, which was almost inevitable as it was tied to the player gaining altitude.

All in all, the first VF-X game was a pretty rocky start to the 3D generation of Macross games.

Macross VF-X2 (PlayStation)

This was a direct sequel to the original VF-X and whilst UNiT were still onboard it was clear that Bandai was ghosting a lot of the development. Overall, VF-X2 was actually pretty decent. The camera got a re-working allowing the player to track targets despite their actual orientation and a more consistent control configuration.

GERWALK still caused problems however, as it had certain additional functional nuances that jarred with how the other modes worked. Admittedly, it wasn't anywhere near as bad as the hellish nonsense seen in VF-X but it was cumbersome enough to avoid using the mode most of the time. Battroid mode also still couldn't fire missiles, bizarrely.

All that aside, VF-X2 was pretty compelling and visually it was a massive improvement. This was also one of the first Macross games to see a potential Western release but due to the complex rights issues associated with Macross outside of Japan (courtesy of Robotech), it never made the jump. There is a limited edition demo available, featuring a playable VF-5000B, but it goes for crazy money these days (if you can find it).

Separately, VF-X2 actually played an important narrative role in the Macross saga as a whole. Set in 2050, it laid the groundwork for the formation of privately funded military organisations, such as SMS in Macross Frontier occurring 9 years later, due to the inherent corruption of the government military. It also had a similarly fantastic opening FMV.

Macross Plus Game Edition (PlayStation)

By this point Bandai had probably had enough with UNiT. So they looked elsewhere and found Shoeisha. Weirdly, they went with a dedicated Macross Plus tie-in rather than a series catch all. Of all the series Macross Plus was one of the least successful in Japan and considering the difficult rights issues abroad, the game would never have been able to be released anywhere else but Japan. Still, they went ahead with it and the result was moderately impressive.

It's also worth pointing out here that Shoeisha flat-out cheated in terms of offering the full gamut of variable fighter control. The game was actually split into two parts; aerial missions and ground based missions. In the aerial missions you played with fighter mode and in the ground based missions you played with battroid. So where were the transformation capabilities seen in the VF-X games?

Well, these had been relegated to quick time events. Specifically, when a missile volley was headed your way you would get a prompt to press X this would then kick off a cutscene of your variable fighter transforming into another mode and dispatching the missiles. Technically, GERWALK was present as a mode in this game but not one you could directly control.

It was a shrewd move as it meant the other two modes received a far more cogent functional treatment. It also looked rather lovely and what with Yoko Kanno's seminal orchestral score playing in the background, it felt more inline with the host work.

Macross M3 (Dreamcast)

After the previous Macross game, you'd think Shoeisha were onto a near winning formula and wouldn't drastically change their approach. Wrong. Macross M3 was close to a carbon copy of VF-X. In that it allowed the player to transform into any mode during gameplay, rather than separating the modes out in different gaming segments.

It almost worked as well. The transformation was handled on the d-pad and movement on the analogue (something Artdink shrewdly copied on the recent Macross Ace Frontier but more of that later) and a simpler approach to acquiring a missile lock (you just held down A when the enemy was in your targeting reticule and at the appropriate range). However, the camera setup was appalling as it placed the variable fighter squarely in the player's field of view making it very hard to track targets. GERWALK also received its perennial functionality, with different controls for that mode and an inability to look up. Battroid mode could fire missiles though, so that was at least something.

This also had a wonderful opening FMV and filled in the gap on Max and Myria's history prior to Macross 7. It also featured a slew of the more esoteric variable fighters that hadn't been seen in animated form. Anyway, M3 sealed the fate of Shoeisha's involvement with the Macross franchise and this was, thankfully, the last game they did.

Choujikuu Yosai Macross (PlayStation 2)

This is when things started to change for the better. Bandai approached SEGA AM2 for starters, which can only bode well. This was down to SEGA having access to the tech behind the popular Aerodancing games and Bandai hoped that having that arcade flight simulator would work well with Macross.

It worked very well in fact, SEGA's Macross game is to date probably the most accomplished of all the dedicated Macross tie-ins. Unlike the games that preceded it, AM2 picked a base mode that the other two hinged off. Due to the usage of the Aerodancing engine the main mode was that of fighter, so the base dog fighting combat worked beautifully.

However, all was not sublimely wonderful. Even with the flight simulator focus, GERWALK did still cause problems. Requiring a mysterious new control configuration for gaining and losing altitude, one that wasn't used in the other modes to boot. Battroid mode also lost its ability to fire missiles, again. That being said, the game did play well for the most part and some of the final missions were suitably epic.

Bizarrely, a far bigger roster of variable fighters was planned (namely those from Macross Plus and Macross Zero) but these were pulled prior to release. This may be down to the narrative focus being on the original TV series and movie, as such the added continuity was probably deemed too confusing.

Another Century's Episode 2 and 3 (PlayStation 2)

Now I've already covered the first two games in this column but whilst the ACE series isn't solely dedicated to Macross it did offer some of the best variable fighter controls yet seen. Like the AM2 game that preceded them, both ACE 2 and 3 had a specific mode focus. Instead of being based on a flight simulator engine, ACE was always based around mecha combat. Unsurprisingly, the variable fighters had this imposed on them as well. The result was a far better approach to GERWALK mode and a seamless control configuration for all three modes.

In ACE2 the emphasis was more on the mecha combat and whilst fighter mode didn't get used it was a tad clunky. This was also true for all the transforming mecha that had a flight mode attached to them. In ACE3 this changed and a new more responsive flight mode was offered. This had a better camera setup as well and generally improved the variable fighter handling, as fighter mode became more viable.

Ultimately, what made the handling work was that GERWALK was treated as a similar mode to the other two. Admittedly, the games were still weighted towards the mecha end of the spectrum but GERWALK was finally viable. It was faster than battroid but slower than the fighter, it sat between the two as a stopgap offering further graded functionality.

Specifically, GERWALK acted as the VTOL jack-of-all-trades it was always intended to be. Battroid mode was meant for the heavy mechanical take downs and the fighter as a way to cross the huge mission areas quickly. GERWALK sat between the two and aided the mid range combat in a beautifully organic fashion, as it had enough potency and speed to keep the enemy at bay without ending up as a massive mechanical target,

On their own, the variable fighters depicted in ACE were a finer and more accurate representation compared to almost all that had preceded it. This was down to From Software's expertise in the mecha genre more than anything else.

Macross Ace Frontier (PlayStation Portable)

So where does this leave us? It's clear that approaching Macross with more its mecha in mind is obviously the better route to take but is that all? Well, Artdink have made a name for themselves recently with their Gundam Battle franchise (also covered previously in this column). Their focus and tech is very much suited for handheld mecha games but could they pull it off with a mecha that has two other disparate modes?

In short, yes. They pulled it off quite well in fact, almost too well though more of that later. Remember the usage of the d-pad in Macross M3 to change modes? Artdink used something similar for Ace Frontier by having the analogue nub select each mode specifically (so no cycling through the modes basically). They also retained the camera viewpoint seen in VF-X2 and Macross Plus Game Edition. All that aside, like the ACE games, the game's focus is very much on the mecha. This means that GERWALK acts as a halfway house between the too modes.

However, Artdink took it upon themselves to create two new problems with GERWALK mode. In the original anime, GERWALK mode can skim across vertical surfaces due to it's VTOL configuration. Ace Frontier offers this functionality, which probably sounds fantastic but ends up being very not. To clarify, when you're in an enclosed space and switch to GERWALK you often end up attaching to a vertical wall. This plays merry havoc with the camera and can cause the player to actually get stuck on geometry. Not entirely brilliant that. Secondly, GERWALK mode has a bizarre way of losing altitude The X button normally generates an upward thrust in GERWALK and Battroid modes, but to go downwards you have to double tap the X button and hold. In a frenetic dogfight it's not uncommon to yo-yo in terms of your altitude when in GERWALK. Not exactly great that.

The above probably sounds more damning that it is but GERWALK is still causing problems but more down to Artdink's zeal at trying to replicate functionality that nobody in their right minds had tried to do previously.

For a PSP action game though, Ace Frontier puts a lot of games to shame (especially the earlier console iterations listed above).

Dedicated to all pioneers...

I've probably been a tad disparaging throughout this edition of the column and whilst these faults are very much present in the games I've covered, it is by no means the direct fault of the developers themselves.

They're doing their best to reproduce something that is purely aesthetic. Ichiro Itano's mecha choreography has a lot to answer for, both good and bad (again, I've covered this before in the column). The issue here is that everyone has forgotten where the variable fighter came from; that of gangly ski jumpers and the thought of "what if a plane had legs?".

Well, not so much forgotten but conveniently omitted I suppose. After all, how many decent 3D arcade helicopter games can you think of?

[Ollie Barder, formerly a freelance journalist, is now a senior games designer at doublesix. He also spends a sizeable amount of time playing robot games and dusting an ever growing collection of Japanese diecast robot toys.]

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

Ah yes, a few more GameSetLinks, posted during (or shortly after) my attendance at Nite To Unite, the ESA's kids charity event in San Francisco.

I gather that Shigeru Miyamoto is being honored with the 2009 ESA Champion Award, so it'll be interesting to see what he says (for I believe he will be present).

In the meantime, here's some intriguing links, spanning everything from an Echochrome analysis through new indie games and IGN's new casual game site.

Gung ho:

Consumer CULTure : Retro Remakes
'It’s Robotron without the guns, only instead of saving the last human family - you’re collecting meaningless junk and being constantly bombarded with meaningless adverts for even more meaningless junk whilst you play.'

War Tw@Eurogamer Expo 2008 : Retro Remakes
'Eurogamer is also proud to support Pixel-Lab’s Indie Arcade at the Expo, showcasing 10 of the best titles in independent PC game development.' Oo, more Top 10 indie-ness, this time at the London expo.

Kloonigames » Blog Archive » Pirate Fishing
'The game was made back in 2006 and I’ve been keeping it as a backup if I ever for what ever reason won’t be able to do a game that month.' Hee, cheat!

Video game censorship and the art of horror | NEWS.com.au
Yahtzee: 'If we willingly delude ourselves that video games are just for children and banish everything beastly and unwholesome, we miss out on something important.'

The Pretentious Indie Gamer Scene » Blog Archive » The Notorious P.I.G.: Indie As F*ck
Increasing indie rap wackiness: 'You wanna be my shorty? Why don’t you come talk to me after you’ve beaten Cave Story.'

SEGA America Blog | PlaySEGA is Live - Read All About It!
'PlaySEGA is a new site that allows SEGA to put a new spin on web games, and offer some cool perks to go with it.' Avatars, rings to collect in-game, interesting.

Mediapost: News Corp.'s IGN Rolls Out Greenpixels.com
'News Corp.’s IGN has quietly rolled out Greenpixels.com, a new content Web site geared for the fast growing universe of casual gamers, which includes a substantial number of women.'

Steven Poole: Puppet play
'Echochrome’s protagonist is one of these mannequins, hinting perhaps at an allegory of the relationship between player and game.'

Noby Noby Boy, then and now... - Tiny Cartridge
'Showing off a spectacularly weird game is one thing; but then he scrapped it and switched it out for a completely different game design that is also weird, but in a different way.'

The Future of Reading - Using Video Games as Bait to Hook Readers - Series - NYTimes.com
'Increasingly, authors, teachers, librarians and publishers are embracing this fast-paced, image-laden world in the hope that the games will draw children to reading.' Via VirtualPolitik.

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

[Our own Christian Nutt dissects what went wrong with E3 and posits that the return to form sought by the ESA for next year's show might not have the intended effect -- or, at least, laments crawling crowded hallways once again.]

So, E3 is changing again. Today, the ESA confirmed that E3 is largely returning to the format it had from 1995 through 2006: a big, brash show, with lots of people crawling the halls.

Now, it's hard to predict whether this will invite a full-on return to three-floor steel booths dripping with schwag and staffed by out-of-work "models", but that's the way it feels from a glass-half-empty perspective.

Over the years up until 2006, E3 got gradually more ostentatious -- and, from a business perspective, untenable. The press and others doing business at the show viewed it as something to suffer through: the crowds were ridiculously large and largely unconcerned with doing anything besides ambling through the spectacle and scoring some free T-shirts. So getting from appointment to appointment was a journey through a human obstacle course.

The show put on by publishers -- like NCsoft, which was fined in 2006 for exceeding decibel levels and making it difficult for Sega to conduct closed-doors meetings in its own, adjacent booth -- ultimately became essentially ridiculous.

And at some point, a cadre of powerful publishers got together and decided that it wasn't worth spending millions of dollars every year to hand GameStop managers inflatable rubber rafts from atop metal edifices in which nobody could hear themselves think.

The Gizmondo E3 booth, circa 2005, is reliably rumored to have cost $5 million. In the style of a Hollywood B-movie backlot, it was done up like a town, a Mayan temple, and who-knows-what else, and crawling with scantily-clad women, it was a symbol of what E3 had become by that point: a big spend with no substance.

Rumors pointed to EA and Nintendo -- at first -- backing out of the spectacle and the competition. E3 2006: too expensive, too loud, not doing its job. Finito. But now it's back. Why?

When the news hit, Gamasutra's Leigh Alexander remarked, "I don't get it; when it was noisy people complained, and when it was quiet people complained."

It's true. Though it was exceptionally easy to get business done at this year's E3, nobody seemed to like it. The repudiations of the new format came harsh this year, from powerful figures in the industry like EA CEO John Riccitiello saying "I hate E3 like this," and Ubisoft president Laurent Detoc calling the show "terrible."

Perhaps even more importantly, there was a suggestion that, behind the scenes, retail buyers didn't bother to attend the new show, making it all press, no business.

Without a robust business aspect, E3 loses even more of its draw for publishers. And without the glitz and the glam, the mainstream press (particularly TV) didn't bother turning up -- another big problem for publishers seeking to expand their audiences.

But what's annoying, if not outright worrying to me, is that the format sounds more or less like it's returning to the E3 of old. If we needed the E3 of old, it wouldn't have died.

I'd like to think that, this time, with a little perspective, the publishers can work together to stop the arms race of more and more ostentatious booths... but it's hard to believe that would happen. That's not how these things work.

And with an "expanded" audience of tens of thousands of T-shirt-grabbing hands, it's very possibly going to be as loud and as difficult to deal with as it was two years ago. The thing is, there's the GameStop Expo now. This does a great job of showcasing games to retail staffers of the largest specialty retail store. Who else makes up the "expanded" audience the ESA is talking about? Anybody care to enlighten us?

Anyway, the point is -- we're just going to enter into another cycle of E3 waxing and waning if it returns to the way it was. Especially if the business people have been permanently scared away. Especially if the show doesn't re-attract the media attention it squandered. Especially if the publishers spend money and don't see a return on it. Especially if nobody can get anything meaningful accomplished. Especially if publishers continue to resist making important product announcements at the show, afraid that their games will be lost in the din -- a din which will no doubt increase next year, no matter what.

My wish is that the organizers had taken the same tack that's been working so well for CESA and Nikkei BP's Tokyo Game Show: two business-oriented days limited to press and businesspeople, and two public days, which charge admission, and are open to all.

At this year's TGS, not even two weeks ago, I was able to get all of my appointments accomplished without a hitch, and was able to skip the crowd-surfing misery of the public days completely. Everybody, it seems, was happy. Why wouldn't it work in the U.S.?

Let in the press and businesspeople the first two days; let in the "expanded" hall-filling audiences, if not the "true" public, come Saturday and Sunday -- and let the TV crews know the Navy SEALs will be rappelling from the roof on those days.

E3 2009 doesn't feel like a solution -- it feels like a regression. It may be a mark of desperation, because it's obvious that things didn't work this year.

Or maybe I should quit complaining -- because maybe everybody actually knows that, and instead of repeating their mistakes, they'll evolve the way the show is handled, and business (and pleasure, for the crowds) will be able to get done. But all I can think about now is spectacle, distraction, and the inability to get between South Hall and West Hall in anything under 20 minutes.

The best thing about the return to the old format (or a close one) is that game developers -- largely shut out of the new-form E3 in 2007 and 2008 -- will once again be able to evaluate the work of their colleagues and competition before it's released. Otherwise, I don't see much of a silver lining.

My fear is that this move is what it appears to be -- the organizers of E3 having no idea what to do with the thing, but acting because they have to act. As with the Santa Monica E3 of 2007. As with the quiet LACC E3 of this year. Each year we're told that after careful consultation, the current iteration of the show is the result. And each year, since 2006, nobody likes it.

Will anybody like next year's show?

(Title photo from Mulling it Over on Flickr, used under Creative Commons license)

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

['Homer in Silicon' is a biweekly GameSetWatch column by Emily Short. It looks at storytelling and narrative in games of all flavors, including the casual, indie, and obscurely hobbyist. This time, in honor of the debut of the game's sequel, Emily looks at the original version of unconventional life sim Kudos. ]

Positech's Kudos is a game of social interaction and self-improvement. In subject matter, it's a little like The Sims, except in that the player controls only one avatar, and does not get to design the layout of her house.

But play entails many decisions about how to allot time and money: should we buy a bike? take Italian lessons? go to the opera? And these feed into larger goals: what career do I want to have? How in-shape do I need to be? Which friends do I want to cultivate?

The avatar starts at age twenty. You get to play until she's thirty, and then a curtain drops: whatever you've accomplished by that time is it. Plausibly enough, many of the best jobs are hard to reach in that time period, especially if you make some false starts.

On my first play-through, I got my player educated enough to take a job as a biologist, but the jump to the next level -- as a senior botanist for a major pharmaceutical company -- would have required that I raise her intelligence farther than I considered achievable, given her starting abilities. So I gave up on lab science and had her embark on a new career as a chef -- but she never had adequate people skills to rise really high in that field, either.

There are some implausible pieces to the way the simulation is constructed. Among other things, your character lives in such a high crime area that you are likely to be both burgled and mugged several times a year, until you acquire a dog to protect your home and take kickboxing or kung fu lessons. (Once you have enough fu, you can perform citizen's arrests. Listen for the combination of fight noises and triumphant battle cries.)

Despite these quibbles, though, the bulk of the simulation is effective. The strength of Kudos is the realism of some of the large-scale social dynamics at work. You keep your friends by spending time with them, but these interactions are only satisfying as long as there are things that both of you want to do.

As you become wealthier, more of your acquaintances also tend to want to go out to expensive restaurants or throw wine and cheese parties. If, at the age of 28, you decide to scrap your reasonably prosperous career and aim for an ultimately even more fulfilling one, and that requires you to start over with a job at $16,000 a year, your friendships are going to take the hit -- because you can no longer afford to do the things that the people in your current social circle like to do.

Another part of the simulation is the focus on your ability to bring people together and form new friendships. Your friends appreciate you as a social hub figure if you're always throwing delightful parties at which they get to hang out with people that they like.

Also unfortunately true to life is the way that it can be tricky to maintain friendships with people who are very unlike the rest of your social circle. They're never happy around your other friends, so you have to go out with them solo -- which is fun, but makes them much more demanding, time-intensive friends to have.

If (as happened to me once or twice) these friends only ever want to go on expensive jaunts to the opera or to French restaurants, they can become extremely high-maintenance. From a gaming point of view, they're not worth keeping. In real life, decisions like that are more often accidental than intentional, but the factors at work are the same.

Yet despite all this focus on social dynamics and friendly interactions, Kudos ultimately plays as a cold and rather lonely game, and one in which it's difficult to care about any of the other characters besides oneself.

Part of this has to do with the simplicity of character profiles. Everyone you know is made up of a handful of likes -- ranging from "beer" to "opera" to "gossip" -- and you throw your most successful parties by inviting people to activities that feed their likes, alongside other people who like to talk about the same things.

There is a large range of possible social activities implemented in Kudos, but that range is still small enough that over ten game-years of play, the whole process becomes very repetitive: you have a certain posse that you can invite to a Mexican restaurant, and another group that likes to come over for an evening of video games, and just occasionally you can mix things up a bit by throwing a dinner party yourself.

But what people like is constrained, never changes, and never admits the possibility of new fads. Your friends never reach the point where they like each other, and you, so much that they'd be happy to go out for Chinese instead of Mexican if it makes a new person feel more included. They never become so close to you that your friendship becomes a semi-permanent institution, rather than a chance byproduct of proximity.

Which brings us to the second point: the other characters are largely represented as selfish, tactless beings. Though some have a positive effect on your confidence or mood, their few lines of dialogue are often off-putting.

This comes to play especially when you try to spend time with a character (such as a friend of a friend) who is more cultured or intelligent than your avatar: your invitations can get such pointed responses as "I think you've mistaken me for someone less popular" or "That doesn't sound like an intellectually stimulating evening, does it?"

In game terms, that's supposed to tell the player to spend some more time reading 19th century novels from the bookstore and watching the art channel on TV, in hope of becoming sophisticated enough to appeal to these acquaintances. But in story terms, it's hard not to be repelled. I might get a higher social score by earning the privilege of friendship with these characters, but why would I want to? Why wouldn't I, in practice, run the other direction from these self-absorbed snobs?

In fact, the fictional aspects of the game frequently subvert the message of the mechanics. Mechanically, from the point of view of score, it's valuable to spend time with the (supposedly) cultured and clever, going to expensive restaurants and other venues that raise your character's status. But the fictional dressing of these activities hints that this is shallow behavior and that the people involved are unpleasant beings.

(Kudos doesn't seem to take seriously the possibility that some of the people who go to French restaurants, or host wine and cheese parties, are doing so because they actually take pleasure in the food and want to share that experience; these are framed chiefly as gestures of pretention.)

Even an invitation to a close friend can be met with a frank, not-especially-tactful rebuff like "We do that way too often for my taste." In gaming terms, I understand the point of this: the player is intended to invite friends to a range of varied activities, rather than settling into a routine of one constant kind of interaction.

From the story perspective, though, it's bracingly cold. And when you do go out with friends, they may decide they like you less if you happen to be unhappy on the evening in question. Now, I concede that Eeyore-like personalities get wearing after a while, but my avatar wasn't in a constant sulk; surely my closest friends might try to cheer me up on my occasional moody days, rather than retracting their friendship?

It turns out that there is a way to buffer this reaction a little. At least, my impression after a bunch of experimentation is that if you drink alcohol on your outings, your friends are less likely to notice that you are unhappy, and less likely to judge you negatively as a result. But this is another message that makes me question the worldview implicit in the mechanics of the game.

In the end, a full play-through of Kudos left my avatar lonely and withdrawn, focusing more and more on her work (which at least offered reliable prospects of advancement) and her dog (whose love was unconditional) rather than her fickle, self-absorbed friends. Trying over again with different characters and different initial personality traits did not seem to make matters any easier. It may be that I just haven't worked out the right strategies to win -- but it says something that Kudos also manages to make winning look unappealing.

If the message of the original Kudos is supposed to be that social advancement pursued as a status game is empty and leads to unhappiness, then I guess it works. However, the new sequel promises significant updates, both in graphical style and gameplay, so those interested in this type of game might want to check it out nonetheless to see what has changed.

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

Posted by Emily Short at 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Time for a few more select GameSetLinks, headed by another fun hiphop and gaming-related link-list from Examiner.com - although one that curses my hero Parappa The Rapper, so must presumably be completely wrong.

Also hanging out in here - the disturbingly graphic Bayonetta, silly Halloween costumes, some Rockstar Vancouver shenanigans you might have missed, how physics in games matter, and plenty more good stuff.

Enjoy the silence:

Video Game Examiner: Best (and Worst) Hip-Hop-themed video games of all time
'Being the hip-hop purist that I am, I’ve always hated PaRappa the Rapper. I saw it as a stereotypical, exploitation of hip-hop that had no redeeming merits to the culture.'

virtualpolitik: Meaningful Play, Day One: Art without Beauty
Good write-up of a conf we missed - def. read Ian Bogost's comments on art-games.

Gametrailers.com - Bayonetta - TGS 2008: Gameplay Revealed Trailer (Cam)
Good Lord, I missed this - Platinum's female-led Devil May Cry-ish blaster is superduper iffy.

Wired: Games Without Frontiers: 'Pure' Shows Off Fun of 'Artistic' Physics
'Painters use colors and texture to create moods; authors use words and imagery. But action games? They use physics.'

Vintage Computing and Gaming | Archive » VC&G’s Halloween Video Game Costume Ideas (2008)
Wow, incredigeek.

matthughson.com: Radical Changes
'Vancouver has a massive game development community. If you happen to walk past the Radical offices last Thursday afternoon you might have seen some subtle hints left from our competitors reminding us of this very fact.' Cheeky.

Kotaku: 'New Xbox Experience: Community Games And The New Xbox Experience'
Interesting video about what's going to be an Xbox 360 highlight, most probably.

Games Media Awards 2008: The Winners in Full Gaming Industry | Press Release by MCV
Aha, the results of this 'interesting' thing - funded by buying seats at the event and sponsorship from the firms that journos cover, it's not exactly impartial, but it's still better than nothing at all, right?

Tech Report: E for All // Current
Alex Litel claims of an interview embedded within this video: "'You're stricken with Malaysia' says one of the Frag Dolls on Far Cry 2 at E for All."

Why is everyone saying "fail" all of a sudden? - By Christopher Beam - Slate Magazine
Claiming that Neo Geo title Blazing Star is the slightly oblique meme originator here, interesting - via Waxy.

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

[Sister site WorldsInMotion.biz has been finding out about the relatively un-noticed market of prepaid online game cards in U.S. physical retailers like Target. It's much bigger than you might think, with claims here that the sector is set for an estimated $100 million in revenue this year - pretty intriguing stuff, going back into meatspace to help the kids pay for games online.]

GMG Entertainment is a publisher of "digital currency cards" for online gaming/entertainment companies, working with major U.S. retailers such as Target, Best Buy, Wal-Mart and Safeway, and has just announced a new range of pre-paid virtual item cards to be sold exclusively at Toys "R" Us.

The cards are individually branded with titles from GMG partners, including AdventureQuest, Cartoon Doll Emporium, Gala-Net, Stardoll, WildTangent and Zwinky, as well as a new partner, WeeWorld, allowing children to take the card and then enter the code in the online game of their choice, giving them in-game currency or items.

The announcement was made today by Rob Goldberg, founder and CEO of GMG Entertainment, and sister site Worlds in Motion talked to Goldberg to discuss the company's entry in to the space, the unusual way that retail buying works, and the potential of pre-paid cards for both retailers and publishers.

How did the pre-paid card business start to take off in North America?

GMG started in the marketing services working with retailers -- specifically Target -- but around the same time as that, well, it's not very well known, but it's Target who actually brought the idea of the pre-paid iTunes card to Apple and sold them on that.

The first iTunes cards were co-branded and were exclusive to Target. In terms of retailers in North America who were focused on pre-paid cards for digital entertainment, Target were ahead of the curve.

So a few years ago that led to their head of digital entertainment, Tim Pechmann, looking for additional cards to sell. He tried the eMusic card, the Rhapsody card, none of those sold particularly well, until Nexon met with him and offered him the same kind of prepaid cards that they explained were selling so well for them in China and the rest of Asia. After a little research Target decided to sell those cards too.

Now, there's an interesting fact about these cards. Retailers love them over any other product they have in their store, because the cards themselves don't take up any inventory.

They're not activated until they're purchased, so they don't sit on the balance sheet of the retailer. They feel like "free money" to retailers. So it's a very positive business for retailers to get into, and it really lowers the bar for any retailers who are unsure about it, they don't need to worry about losing money on it.

So, Target and Nexon. The only advertising that they did for that card was on their website, and yet in-store, it did exceptionally well. I can't quote the revenue, but it did very, very well. So Target looked around for other companies to buy cards from.

Now, a very common part of retail is that the buyers are moved around the company constantly. So the DVD buyer from Target was promoted to diaper-buying, because it was a bigger category. So it's not like the gaming buyers at Target have years of experience buying games and know every new trend. They don't know free-to-play or microtransactions; they may not even have rudimentary gaming knowledge or experience.

Even with this kind of lack of knowledge Target were trying to get into the space. It's almost certainly the only time in history that a seventy billion dollar company has been cold-calling companies asking to sell their product.

Most of the comments Tim got back were along the lines of "we're a digital company, we can't get into the physical space," "if you do it for me maybe we'll think about it," that sort of thing. As GMG had been working with Target, I got a call from Tim to help find these companies and bring them to Target.

As we started to walk through this possible business, we realized that a couple of things. First of all there was a potential for huge growth; not just because of the retailers who were excited by these cards but by how much the digital entertainment companies were growing; not just in company size but in userbases.

Secondly, we returned to the fact that buyers very often didn't know about the industry they were buying from. The person who replaced Tim at Target had been buying country music before that; the games buyer at Walmart used to buy jewelry.

We saw that we could be the intermediary there -- we could use our expertise in both aspects to help both sides, and thought it sounds cliché, help grow the business for everyone. It's not as simple as just "place the cards in a store and they're a payment method." We look at them as a wonderful opportunity for brand building for the digital partners.

The really big untapped market for these digital media companies is gift giving. No matter how much someone loves an online world no one is going to say "hey, merry Christmas. I logged into your account and gave you 25 bucks." Not to mention the impulse buy.

Something I don't quite understand here is the idea that retail buyers don't understand the industry they're buying from. How does that possibly work?

Welcome to retail! The short answer is that it often doesn't. But I wouldn't say they always have no knowledge.

It's not as if they rotate all the buyers on a regular basis and all of a sudden you have five new people on a buying team none of whom has any experience. One of the ways it is made to work is that there is a chosen vendor for each category who is the "category captain."

So for example, GMG is the category captain for Target, Best Buy, GameStop, the entire Blackhawk network which includes stores such as Safeway and Toys "R" Us, and the role of the category captain is to provide industry analysis and data to the buyers. So for example the category captain for home video at Target is Fox, and for cereal it's General Mills at Walmart.

So what that vendor's responsibility is to provide that buying team with industry analysis, overviews… One of the things that we make sure to do as category captains is not just push our own views, but to show them why this business makes sense, whether it’s a demographics fit or any number of different things that could help the retailer.

That's what we do to try and work with this system, but to be honest, for the first six months in any new category a buyer tends to have no idea what they're doing. But you know, it's their job, so they do learn it, get good at it, and then get promoted… Out of that category to something else they don't know!

Why did you decide to offer individual cards for each IP?

For a number of reasons. People have said to us "what happens if some universal gaming card puts you out of business?" and we say there's already a universal gaming card -- it's called a prepaid Visa. If people really want to get their cash onto the web you can buy a prepaid Visa at millions of outlets across the country.

What we have seen -- not only from our digital and retail partner side but from our consumer side -- is that the individual cards are very positively received, even just down to consumers enjoying the collectability of them, because we refresh the art periodically.

In addition, we have the ability to do a lot more when the cards are individual -- for example, with Zwinky, when you bought a card you also received your choice of a free super power. That's the kind of value you can add when you're doing a specific unique branded card, rather than when you have a card that merely acts as a payment method.

Eventually there will be some value in the universal gaming card, but we think the space is simply too new. There needs to be a lot more education of the consumer to understand the value of these cards and what that kind of card could and couldn't do.

How popular have the cards been so far?

I estimate this year that you'll see EA enter this space for some of their games, and a few other big names are absolutely interested. In fact we're in final negotiations with a couple of recognizable names.

We tend to estimate the size of the total prepaid gaming card business when we do our numbers, and this year we're looking to something between $75-100 million dollars in sales across North America. We see that going to $250-300 million in 2009 and being in the region of a half-billion by 2010.

We see this market growing dramatically in the next two to five years.

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

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

It's incorrect to think that the Mystery Dungeon games are the first exposure to Japan of roguelike gameplay. It wouldn't have made sense for Compile Heart to release Rogue Hearts Dungeon (a remake and expansion of Rogue itself) in Japan if (a few) people hadn't been familiar with the original game. The Mystery Dungeon games do appear to be Japan's primary exposure to the genre, however, and have been a surprising influence.

Besides the many many games ChunSoft's made in the series, one occasionally finds other games that seek to duplicate its successes (and failures, too). The Izuna games are an example of this. And while it's hard to be sure, it's possible that the Super Famicom game Monstania is another. This is a look at that game, or more accurately a look at the English version, produced by famed translation group Aeon Genesis.

Monstania is an anime-inspired, character-centered soft of game, along the lines of Grandia but a bit less developed. The story is nothing to really write home about, but no matter. We're interested solely on its essentially-roguelike tactical gameplay, so I won't waste another word on it.

They discarded just about everything random about Rogue other than to-hit rolls. It's all painfully static: areas are designed instead of random, all monster encounters are set, there is no exploration, there's no money or shops, and there's very little loot-finding within an area. The characters don't even earn experience points. Instead, they just gain a level at the end of every area.

There are a couple of places where you can pick from one of two routes to take depending on how you answer conversations, but it's still rather little variety for such a chaotic genre. One of the best things about roguelikes is that you can have fun with them even after you win; here, other than seeing the other story paths (which can be done in one additional playthrough, and isn't even worth it), there's really no reason to play it more than once. Monstania is, sad to say, pretty disposable.

The game may not seem awfully roguelike at first, because its interface is kind of weird. Instead of moving directly, you use left and right to turn, and forward and back to move. (There is an option for direct movement on the options screen, but since the game doesn't use a diagonal constraint button like Mystery Dungeon does, it can be difficult to move where you want.)

By the way, this is an isometric game, and while you can move on diagonals, you can't move or attack straight u/d/l/r. You usually control two characters at once in this game, but only one can act per turn; the other will simply sit there, or follow the other. You can switch between them at will, and your main character can also sort of tie the other one to him to follow behind.

Ultimately, the two-character thing provides most of the game's interest. If the characters are split-up then it takes a turn to connect them, but once joined they can be moved at once. Every turn a character doesn't act he regains one Ability Point (AP), but if he's the follower when the two are joined then he can both move and regain AP at the same time. Understanding this is important to playing the game well, due to the fact that characters don't heal naturally as they do in most roguelikes.

A character must use a healing move, which consumes both a turn and some AP, to get hit points back. Every character has an ability called Recover that restores about half his hit points, and some characters can also heal the partner, but restoring AP usually relies on using an item (which are in very short supply) or relying on resting. Joining characters allow one to both rest and flee from monsters at the same time, which is quite useful.

The other interesting strategic aspect of the play is in the special ways the monsters move. Several of them have special movement quirks, including a good number that move at half-speed, which is less unbalancing here than in other games because a character needs to spend extra turns doing nothing to regain AP, and thus, HP. One particularly interesting monster type hops around as a chess knight. In the two areas I've seen them appear, it's easy to get swarmed if one doesn't recognize their movement strategy (which is quite rapid), but once their trick is determined it's relatively easy to shut them down.

But despite how cool these things may seem, it's difficult to really recommend Monstania. One fairly severe flaw in the game is that most of the time, the monsters are idiots. It's not uncommon for them to take paths other than the most direct way to the players. Indeed, the game is designed around this, often throwing enough monsters at the player that he'd be in hot water if they were to all suddenly realize the shortest path between points is a straight line. The AP system means that, at most, the player needs six turns without doing anything to heal for half his maximum HP.

Getting enough breathing room to heal up is often just a matter of running away for a few turns. And in those areas where you have a missile-using character helping you, making short work of even bosses can be simple, a matter of shooting until he gets close, running until he loses the scent, and repeating. I believe that bad AI doesn't necessarily harm a game if it's designed around it, but compared with Shiren's simple-yet-effective monster algorithms, it does seem inexcusable that Monstania's developers couldn't implement smarter opponents.

Difficulty is a mixed bag. Many areas are remarkably, even laughably easy, but every so often the game will throw in a devilishly difficult area. The first of these puts the player's two characters against two strong golems in a confined area where the AI doesn't have much chance to screw up. These places are where the game is most interesting. At its best, the AP rules, the joined character movement and difficult adversaries make it feel almost like a puzzle game. Actually, since all the areas are pre-made scenarios, levels are handed out after each level, and nearly all equipment is handed out at the end of battles so there's no opportunity to vary a level's opening state, that's perhaps the best description for Monstania.

What I'm about to say is perhaps needlessly reductive, but I think it's true in the general case: the big thing about the Japanese game industry is how they're willing to take a game concept further into the abstract, making the game less realistic in order to fit in a new play mechanic. This is just way Monstania abstracts roguelike games down further than Shiren (which already abstracted them a bit).

But roguelikes aren't typically abstract games, because they lean on the conceit that they're simulations, that they're presenting a Gygaxian playing-out of the possibilities of a situation. When you allow only one character in the party to act in a turn, when you allow the players to tie them together arbitrarily, when simple movement may or may not restore energy based on whoever's leading, and when monsters bumble around instead of relentlessly chase the player, that takes away from the simulationist aspect of the game.

JRPGs these days push ever further into unrealistic, abstract concepts. It seems like every one of them has its own new flavor of points to introduce to the world. (What on earth are "job points" supposed to measure?) At the best, this results in interesting play unburdened by concerns of realism. At the worst, the game becomes disconnected from the real world, and it's difficult to relate to it. Monstania demonstrates why roguelikes aren't helped by this approach.

[@Play celebrated its second birthday in August. Since it started, its update schedule has wavered between once every two weeks and monthly. There are still a good number of games to cover, but it's getting harder to write about them.

Because of this issues, and to assuage the massive guilt I feel whenever a column is late, @Play is officially moving to a monthly schedule for a while. To make up for it, I'm beginning a new column here on GameSetWatch, beginning in approximately two weeks. See you then.]

Posted by John Harris at 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (15)

[Every week, Gamasutra's sister iPhone site FingerGaming, headed up by Matt Burris, sums up the past seven days' releases and news for Apple's nascent - and increasingly exciting - portable games platform.]

This week's notable items in the iPhone gaming space include ngmoco's plans to publish three iPhone titles, a free preview for music-based rhythm game Thumstruck, and the release of the Ultima-styled, turn-based RPG Perilar.

Here are the top stories:

ngmoco to Publish 3 New Games
"There’s new content over at ngmoco that shows them publishing 3 new, upcoming iPhone games... One game, which you may have heard of, is (the pictured) Rolando. Hand Circus announced today their highly-anticipated platform/adventure game will be published by ngmoco today."

Thumstruck Free, Rhythm Game, in App Store
"Resolute Games has a free preview release of Thumstruck Free (Free), which showcases an upcoming music-based rhythm game for the iPhone/iPod Touch that 'allows players to physically touch the music' according to their CEO, Chris Przybyszewski... In Thumstruck, you match colored balls with their corresponding colored lines, timed to the music which is provided by Ardent Records band, Skillet."

Perilar, Turn-based RPG, in App Store
"Originally the game is available as a Java-based computer RPG which is free and can be played on Windows or Mac OSX, but Mark has ported it over to be played on the iPhone and iPod Touch. Perilar is a homage to classic computer RPG’s such as the Ultima and Might and Magic series, with old-school gameplay mechanics, graphics, and strategies."

Finger Gaming Review: Plank
"Even though there are a plethora of match-3 type of games already in the App Store, Plank’s uniqueness, riveting gameplay, and polish makes it worth checking out. Tilting the device to move marbles around on a plank, and a shake to destroy marbles on the bottom row, is a great way to utilize the accelerometer and breathe some fresh air into the popular match-3 genre of puzzles."

Spore: Origins Price Drop to $7.99
"Originally being sold for $9.99, Spore: Origins ($7.99) from EA Mobile joins many other big-name games in dropping their price to $7.99. Although many are now finding $5.99 to be the new sweet spot. With gamers now setting the market prices based on demand (or lack thereof), we’re now seeing things start to balance themselves out in the App Store."

Cube Runner 2 Now in App Store
"The sequel to the incredibly popular Cube Runner has shown up in the App Store, Cube Runner II ($2.99). You can still get the original Cube Runner for free, but this new version from Andy Qua has a slew of new features and gameplay modes, such as Time Trial where you not only have to avoid blocks but tilt your iPhone/iPod Touch forward or backwards to speed up and slow down and beat the best time. There’s also a built-in level and object editor to make your own courses to play and share with others."

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

['The Interactive Palette' is a biweekly GameSetWatch column by Gregory Weir that examines the tools and techniques of the digital games trade with a focus on games as art, using a single game as an example.]

Musical composition has a technique called theme and variation, where a musical theme — a sequence of notes, chords, or rhythms — is repeated throughout a piece with variations, inversions, and embellishments. Variations serve both as a demonstration of the composer's prowess and as an exploration in depth of a specific theme. The most famous example of this technique among layfolk is probably Bach's Goldberg Variations.

We see a similar technique used in video games. Many games, especially those focused on puzzles, start with a simple concept and complicate it by embellishing and expanding that initial idea. Lemmings is a classic example. The game begins with simple introductions of the various "skills" that the player can assign to the lemmings, then gradually adds hazards and obstacles until the player is navigating truly complex levels.

This technique of increasingly complex variations is useful enough to be presented as a design pattern, a specific, repeatable approach to a commonly encountered situation. As Staffan Björk and Jussi Holopainen have pointed out [PDF], a creative task like game design is less-suited to the solution-based approach used in other software design patterns. Instead, game design patterns serve as a template with certain advantages and consequences. By looking at 2D Boy's recent (and excellent) game World of Goo, we can see how this pattern works in practice.

Going Up

The "theme" for World of Goo's variations comes from an earlier game by the same designer, Tower of Goo. The concept is simple: create a tower from a lattice of "goo." Build it as tall as possible, dealing with realistic physics simulation of the springy, wobbly goo.

World of Goo immediately elaborates on this, and be warned, spoilers are coming. The first variation is the addition of a specific goal: the pipe at the top of the level that the goo is trying to reach. Starting from this basic framework — the player has goo, and must take it to the pipe — the levels begin expanding on it by making the original concept trickier. What if the pipe is across a gap, necessitating a bridge? What if the player doesn't have enough goo to reach the pipe, requiring that she awaken sleeping goo first?

This is the first step to variation: adding complications. By keeping the gameplay mechanics the same, but introducting additional constraints on the player, the depth and versatility of the mechanics are revealed. This is essentially an exercise in making the game more difficult, but if the progression is properly balanced, then players will have mastered the necessary skills for previous levels and won't feel overwhelmed.

Some Balls Are Prettier Than Other Balls

World of Goo doesn't leave it at that, though. Early on in the game and throughout the chapters, the player is introduced to new types of goo, from the green goo that can be reused to the red goo, which is flammable. These new goos provide the player with new options. Floppy goo bridges can be supported by balloons, and spiny goo lets structures cling to the environment for added stability... or transportation.

By elaborating on the starting theme, Goo's variations let the player incorporate new actions into the existing game world and mechanics. In apparent opposition to adding complications, adding new options typically makes the player's job easier. Insurmountable obstacles can now be surmounted, and previously tricky tasks are made easier. However, the player now must keep more things in her head at once. If new elements are introduced too quickly, the player won't have had time to fully understand and internalize the last addition before the next one comes along.

Complication and elaboration act in tension here. Satisfying gameplay flow can be maintained by slowly ramping up the difficulty with complication until it's quite tricky, then tossing in a new elaboration on the basic concept. Because the new possibility is unfamiliar, the difficulty should be reduced to accomodate the player's learning before beginning the slow ramp up. By progressing in this way, the game can present levels that would have been utterly intimidating at the start of play, and have the player regard them as tricky but approachable challenges.

20% More Infinite in All Directions

World of Goo also occasionally throws a curve ball. In some levels, there's not even an exit pipe. Sometimes the goal is not to build a tower up, but to knock it down. Sometimes goo is only tangentially involved, but the basic control scheme and concepts are the same. In these instances, the basic premise of the game has been subverted, but it's still recognizably the same game.

Inversion or subversion is the most extreme form of variation. It may seem strange to throw away the very basis of the game, but often the fluff surrounding the core gameplay can be just as interesting as the core gameplay itself... at least for a little while. Turning the game upside down like this can give the player a much-needed break from similar levels or give her new insight about the primary gameplay mechanics through their absence.

In World of Goo's structure of variation, the initial premise is alternately complicated by adding new obstacles and elaborated by providing the player with new abilities through goo. This generates a classic stair-step or zig-zag difficulty curve, which keeps the player both challenged and interested. Periodically, to break up the steady climb, a level is thrown in which subverts the theme by replacing the basic premise. The result is a gameplay experience which encourages the player to keep playing to see what new goo or level structure is coming next, and discourages boredom by preventing the player from anticipating the next twist.

End of the World

This design pattern, variation on a theme, doesn't automatically work. World of Goo has a simple-yet-deep premise, which makes it possible to generate a wide array of variations. The technique requires a "theme," or core gameplay mechanic, which is both versatile and emergent. That is, it must apply to a range of situations, and it must have interesting properties which are natural consequences of the basic rules.

Myst-style gameplay wouldn't be able to take advantage of this pattern because each puzzle or puzzle group's solution is discrete, not applying to the next obstacle. Diablo's gameplay, as another example, is not emergent; there are few interesting consequences of that game's simple melee/ranged combat system.

World of Goo is perfect for this technique, however. Its premise of building to reach a goal is versatile because it can apply to building up, down, or sideways, to closing distances and to filling spaces. The premise is emergent thanks in part to its origins in mass-and-spring physics. A long bridge will dip, an imbalanced tower will fall, and a dropped lattice will bounce due to the original physical properties behind the basic concept. This results in interesting consequences of the premise that can be exploited to add complications, elaborations, and subversions.

As a point of comparison, Lemmings offers a similar, and similarly versatile, premise: get a certain number of creatures from a starting location to an exit. The emergence here comes from the creatures' mindless and predictable behavior as well as the destructable terrain of the levels. Complication is provided by walls, pits, gaps, and traps, while elaboration is seen in the wide array of skills available to lemmings.

World of Goo, beyond offering gorgeous graphics and inspired sound design, has a deceptively simple premise that lends itself well to the variation design pattern. The competing forces of complication and elaboration give it a fun and engaging gameplay flow. The same design pattern is applicable to any game premise which can be used in a wide range of situations and has interesting consequences. The technique will lead to a gameplay experience with a unified feel and an engaging difficulty progression. Like with the Goldberg Variations, audiences will keep paying attention to see what happens next.

[Gregory Weir is a writer, game developer, and software programmer. He maintains Ludus Novus, a podcast and accompanying blog dedicated to the art of interaction. He can be reached at Gregory.Weir@gmail.com.]

Posted by Gregory Weir at 4:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

[Our own Chris Remo has been looking closely at one of the key holiday releases, Lionhead's Fable II for Xbox 360, and in this in-depth analysis piece, he looks at why real estate and sex are the perhaps slightly bizarre cornerstones of the fascinating title.]

When I think about Fable II, I think about real estate and sex.

That's not to say the game's mechanics surrounding those elements define the game, but I'll focus on them here because they are areas not commonly explored in the actual gameplay mechanics of most fantasy-set action RPG.

At least, they aren't often included with this kind of impressively egalitarian scope. With remarkably few exceptions, all property that seems like it should be ownable in the game can be purchased, be it a private home or a place of business. This includes a castle.

And matching that breadth, so too can you marry or engage in (strictly off-screen) intercourse with nearly any non-quest-related NPC with whom your sexual orientation and gender are compatible; each citizen is classified as straight, gay, lesbian, or bisexual, and nobody in Albion has passed a defense of marriage amendment.

All About The Humping?

Developer Lionhead Studios (and, one suspects, designer Peter Molyneux in particular) very much wants you to be aware of its sex-related feature set: the first item I encountered for sale by a merchant was a condom. Not long afterwards, my dog excitedly guided me to some buried treasure, and then panted and wagged his tail happily as I dug up another prophylactic.

Propositioning partners basically involves performing a bunch of wordless, amusing social gestures in front of them until their social meters indicate they're willing, and then inviting them to your bed. Marriage proposals are similar, with a wedding ring icon on the "love" meter indicating when they will acquiesce to your proposal.

Those condoms come into play when you do the deed. There's a binary choice of protected sex or unprotected sex each time; heterosexual couples can bear children.

Essentially, every non-quest-related interpersonal interaction you will ever have with other human beings in Fable II is predicated on acting like an idiot in close proximity to them for a few minutes.

The expressions are well-animated and amusingly voice-acted, and it's fun to learn more of them over the course of the game, but the mechanics behind them are so transparent that they become nothing more than a means to an end, which doesn't feel like what the game intended.

That's the downside of giving you so many options when it comes to personal things like marriage: the overall impact is dulled, because they have to be replicated systematically for everyone in the world.

Wives Vs. Dogs - A Contrast

Even after I was gone for ten full years undertaking a grueling quest of world-changing importance, having returned physically bulkier and extremely scarred with all my hair gone, my (lesbian) wife simply greeted me with one of her usual exclamations of, "So nice to have you home!" and another token gift of a health potion.

(Quite some time later, she abruptly divorced me for no discernable reason.)

My dog, on the other hand, seemed genuinely thrilled to see me again, and I was informed he had been loyally visiting the location of my departure with the firm conviction I would return. It resonated with me much more strongly, and as big a proponent of procedural and systems-driven mechanics as I am, it did say something for the storytelling usefulness of individually-crafted content.

It helps that the dog actually is a genuinely enjoyable component of the game -- Molyneux's pre-release hype of canine companionship panned out. The dog helps you find useful things, joins into your fights, sticks by your side, endears himself adorably to townsfolk, and generally acts like a dog.

That's one big advantage the dog has over human interaction: while the game's human interaction is perhaps necessarily abstracted, the dog's role is a lot closer to depicting reality.

One of my favorite moments is Fable II is when I start running and my dog follows suit, overtaking me and anticipating where I might be going, as if we're having an impromptu race. It feels real in a way the game's systems-driven human interaction doesn't.

The Real Estate Boom

So as it turns out, it was the real estate mechanic that became a major drive for me to acquire wealth and fame in the world of Albion, possibly superceding the critical quest path in that regard.

"BUY THE CASTLE AND SEE WHAT HAPPENS," (caps original) a giddy Molyneux screamed at game journalists in a note included with the review code. Intrigued by his exhortation, I made it an unofficial goal to do so. One of the first things I did after reaching the game's first major town was to spend more time than I want to admit working as a blacksmith (a golf swing-like mini-game) until I had enough money to buy the blacksmith's shop.

Businesses will generate income, while homes can be inhabited or rented out, so the more property you own, the more money you can make to acquire more property.

You earn even when you're not playing Fable II, but as far as I can tell you make 12 times as much when the game is on (paid out every five minutes, as opposed to every hour when it's off, based on my calculations -- yes, I calculated it), so I admit to pulling the NES-era shenanigans of leaving my console running overnight.

It became almost an obsession of mine to buy every building possible. I think I must have done so, or at least gotten pretty close, because at one point, totally separate from any quest-based objectives, I received an Xbox 360 achievement that declared me Queen of Albion, apparently by default because I owned so much of the kingdom.

Like many other parts of Fable II, the property mechanic works into the morality system. In addition to the customary good versus evil duality, there are also things like karma, and attractiveness, and how much you are feared.

When you buy a building, its asking price will be affected by how the current owner feels about you, and you can affect regional property values by committing crimes or going so far as killing homeowners. When you own property, you can raise or lower rents or prices, which then affects your karma.

Conclusion: On Fable & Fallout

Though I've only played through Fable II once so far, I plan on playing through it again with the intention of creating a considerably different kind of character, with a different public perception -- the game gives me the impression that is quite possible.

I'm curious to see the comments on Fable II in contrast with those on Bethesda's upcoming Fallout 3. Both are Western-style RPGs (that is, they put an emphasis on player-driven, rather than tightly-directed, character definition and development) that purport to be heavily about moral choice and living worlds.

Both seem to want to coax similar feelings out of their players, but they are wildly different in their execution. Fallout 3 is darkly tongue-in-cheek, has a vast sprawling nonlinear world, uses a pretty in-depth shooting system, and (as far as I know) doesn't do much with sex and real estate.

Fable II is often joyfully goofy (though it has its darker moments), consists of locations connected only by a fast-travel system, features streamlined and button-mashy combat.

In my gaming fantasy land, I'd actually like to see a convergence of the two: a more Bethesda-influenced Fable game, retaining Fable's bright, inviting color palette and unique/social economic mechanics, but set in a truly open world rather than a disconnected one.

Oh, and please put the next one on the PC, so I can just point at the guy I want to select rather than make vague suggestions to the game's slightly-too-context sensitive targeting system.

But for now, despite some elements that lay its video gameness a little too bare Fable II is an extremely playable, and impressively unique, expedition in an inviting fantasy world.

Posted by Chris Remo at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Time for a little more GameSetLinksDump, of course, and scratching around GSW's multifarious RSS-ness, I think the Backstage.com articles on the game biz (from an actor's perspective) are an interesting outside-industry angle on the whole caboodle.

But also in here, there's my ears bleeding from Beat 'N Groovy on XBLA, the gorgeous video for the Love indie MMO, subscriptions vs. free to play, RTS goodness, and quite a few other things.

Do do do:

Backstage.com: 'The Biz of the Buzz'
Interesting stats on voice actor pricing: 'Actors' work in video games is covered by the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. The unions' Interactive Media agreements are almost identical, offering the same pay rates ($759 for day performers, $1,920 for three days, and $2,634 for weekly work) and same provisions.'

N+ Levelpack 3 is out! | metablog
'This one features levels from the original N, reworked and restyled for N+, in the form of: 150 singleplayer, 50 co-op, and 50 race. So the three level packs give you 675 new levels total.' Love it.

IDIOT TOYS: Tech news for the bored: Gadgets with FACES #81: A rocket about to eat space tourist Richard Garriott
Yikes, the gadgets with faces series gets scarier and more game-related, thanks to Zorg from UK Resistance.

World Exclusive: Love, The First Video | Rock, Paper, Shotgun
This looks quite wonderful - hope he's far enough along to enter the IGF.

YouTube - Beat'n Groovy: We Two Are One
XBLA version of Pop 'N Music franchise = fiddly (no custom controller), and oh my god cheesiest soundtrack ever. This is one of the least fromage-y songs. Seriously, I bought the thing.

Game Tycoon » Blog Archive » Wisdom, Deferred
'When I first joined the XBLA team, the conventional wisdom was that most games would take six to nine months to go from greenlight to launch. Today, it’s clear that the range is much wider — anywhere from four months for simpler ports (developed by experienced studios) to well over two years for an original game like Castle Crashers.' I still think there's too much concentration on complicated stuff like multiplayer modes which some games don't benefit by. But i'm oldschool.

Backstage.com: 'And Then They Thought About Game'
From the same series on games and acting: 'For instance, when Keaton voiced the character of Ryu in Ninja Gaiden II, he looked to the films of Akira Kurosawa for inspiration.'

The Forge · MMO Subscriptions vs. Free to Play
This is ankle-deep in an ongoing discussion, but Matt Mihaly has lots of good points, so what the hey.

Crispy Gamer - Column: Rush, Boom, Turtle: "For the love of God, Montresor!"
I see nobody linking this, which isn't surprising, because it's an RTS column, but hey, it's pretty neat.

Tokyo/Tokyo Game Show, October 2008 - a set on Flickr
Didn't get a chance to do more galleries on GSW, feel free to peruse other arcade, TGS, random Tokyo pics.

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

   

I picked up Mort's latest DVD in the mail a day or two ago -- this one a full collection of FORMAT, a British fanzine devoted to the ZX Spectrum that ran from 1987 to 1998. It's great stuff. I've gotten heavily into collecting local computer user-group newsletters and the like lately -- all that laser printing, local advertisements, and flamewars waged with the user group two towns away make for tremendous reading if you're as nerdy as I am.

FORMAT I'll discuss later, because there's 132 issues to read and I'm busy with work and preparing for a weekend vacation, but there was a bonus included with the disc: the first two issues of Load Runner, a British comic published on a biweekly basis by ECC in 1983.

I have never read a British comic magazine that wasn't Viz, but this 40-page title is familiar enough -- a collection of small ongoing stories, none running over five or six pages, with a few text articles thrown in here and there. (If you remember The Adventures of GamePro, the Load Runner comics are very similar in size and storytelling style.)

The difference with this comic is that everything is themed after the home computers, making Load Runner both extremely dated and extremely valuable as a historical curio. Remember, this was a time when computers were seen as "the future" (exactly what kind of future, nobody had fully worked out yet) and half a dozen 8-bit PCs were vying for consumer dominance. The results are just as chaotic as the local marketplace at the time.

The running features in Load Runner include:

- Load Runner itself, the tale of "Byte Killer" Mike Roman (a repairman whose work chiefly involves gunfights with rogue department-store robots) as he's captured by a computer and thrown into a constantly shifting virtual world.

- Time Plan 9, a hard sci-fi photo comic starring a schoolkid whose new computer (an Apple II with its nameplate rebranded "Akron 90") takes on a mind of its own and hatches a mystic plot of some sort, much to the consternation of his computer-hating mother.

- Andy Royd -- The Dominators' Rogue Star!, my personal favorite. A sports comic with a loopy sci-fi plot grafted on to it, the series is set in 1993, by which time pro soccer is played by super-powered robotic footballers and the game's purely a matter of technical engineering and managerial strategy. Andy is an athletic superstar whose body was rebuilt after a tragic "Computa-Kart" accident, and now he's posing as a robot on the Dominators' team. Can he save them from relegation and foreclosure?

- Countdown to Chaos, a serial novel about a passing comet throwing the world's computer systems haywire.

- The Adventures of ROM and RAM, a humor comic about two mouse-sized aliens posing as computers in order to spy on Earth.

- Trumbull's World, a story set in a vaguely Max Headroom-like place where the titular programmer has found the secret to interstellar travel and throws his kids into virtual-reality to escape government hitmen.

- The Invasion of the Arcadians, about an arcade game that brainwashes kids and turns them into roller-skating punks with mohawks (really).

All this is interspersed with the usual sort of "How they use computers at Heathrow / how they use computers on the farm" features you can see in any computer mag of the era.

I can't find any information on how long Load Runner lasted. The last issue I can find evidence of is the ninth. If anyone has an idea, let me know, because I really want to find out what happens to Andy and if they accuse his manager of cheating once he's unmasked as a human being. This is what game mags need more of -- speculative sci-fi sports comics. (Sentences like the one I last wrote are part of the reason I am no longer running any print magazine.)

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

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

Time to round up some of the top items we've run this week on big sister site Gamasutra and our various other sites, which seem to be on a bit of a post-TGS roll in terms of content.

Some of the more interesting links include some chats with EA's John Riccitiello, a good Mick West tech piece on debugging your game, a fun ode to short dialog, talks with the Fallout 3 and Skate producers, and quite a few other things, to.

Here's some links:

Gamasutra Features

New Tricks: Scott Blackwood Talks Skate And Skate 2
"EA Black Box's Skate has dethroned the long-running Tony Hawk franchise in sales, and with a follow-up imminent, Gamasutra talks to exec producer Scott Blackwood on design and tech fundamentals."

Debugging Memory Corruption in Game Development
"In an in-depth technical article, Neversoft co-founder Mick West discusses memory corruption in games, pinpointing the symptoms, causes, and solutions for many game glitches and crashes."

Building A Great Game Team: Measuring Progress
"When building a great game development team, how do you keep everyone on track? Game HR veteran Marc Mencher continues his current Gamasutra series, discussing progress, goals and rewards."

Space Adventures, Haunted Houses, Intergalactic Gaming: Richard Garriott Lives Large
"Ultima creator Richard Garriott is currently part of a mission to the International Space Station -- and we talk to him about his training, the Tabula Rasa tie-in and inspirations for future titles."

Ode to Short Dialog: Reconsidering the Sound Bite
"Big Huge Games narrative designer Schneider steps up to discuss why you should keep dialog short and sweet in games, arguing: "the sound bite is more poetry than prose -- and poetry is a powerful thing.""

Falling Into Fallout 3: Director Todd Howard Talks Scope And Evolution
"With Bethesda's much-awaited Fallout 3 done, Gamasutra talks to game director Todd Howard to discover how the company has managed the franchise's evolution, from game world through rabid fans."

Gamasutra, Other News/Highlights

Interview: EA's Riccitiello On Having Faith In Mirror's Edge, Grasshopper Manufacture
"EA CEO John Riccitiello talks to Gamasutra about creative risks; having "Faith" when he disagreed with his team on Mirror's Edge (he wanted a third-person game), why he "agonized a little bit" over the new Grasshopper/EA Partners deal -- and why he ultimately went with it, also commenting on Brutal Legend's "creative risk"."

Interview: Turbine Talks Multiplatform Initiatives And The Future Of PC Retail
"Just after opening a West Coast studio, Turbine CEO Jim Crowley tells Gamasutra about the LOTR Online maker's "very significant console initiative," why PC's growing weakness at retail "is not a platform issue; it's a distribution issue," and how Turbine will continue to address PC gamers even as it pursues a multiplatform strategy."

Gamer's Bill Of Rights Revised, Stardock Elaborates DRM Stance
"Publisher and developer Stardock has released an update to its Gamer's Bill of Rights, a ten-point list of PC gaming consumer principles it first announced in August. Included in the report is a two-page explanation of the company's stance on digital rights management."

GCG Readers Invent New Ways to Use Guitar Controller
Readers of educational site GameCareerGuide.com have come up with new non-musical ways to (theoretically) use the Guitar Hero guitar peripheral as a controller. The ideas are the results of the site’s weekly Game Design Challenge.

Interview: Riccitiello Hates DRM, Respects Protesters, Tackles Controversies
"Just when it seemed anti-EA sentiment was finally fading away, Spore's DRM controversy hit, the company killed Tiberium and the Take-Two deal came apart. CEO John Riccitiello tells Gamasutra about the "minority" of DRM-haters, why the company will kill one title per year "forever," and the role of ego in the Take-Two fight."

Posted by Simon Carless at 4:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

['Bell, Game, and Candle' is a regular GameSetWatch column by writer Alex Litel, discussing stuff that happens in the game business. This time - a conversation probes advertising, relationships, and the non-gamer's perception of games and gamers.]

A few days ago, I was ambulating about a metropolitan hotel after hearing word of an advertising summit (my curiosity especially peaked following a Mad Men binge) and noticed an eight-foot-tall hovering, cerulean being clamoring claims that he is “an advertising legend” to the concierge. This occurrence terrified yet intrigued me; I felt I had to talk this person.

Upon closer examination, I noticed a proximate nametag that said “Cory Van Starsdale” and “Massive Inc,” the in-game advertising subsidiary of Microsoft. I thought to myself, “Hey, I have found the topic for the next ‘Bell, Game, and Candle,’ which means I do not have to actually play a game.” Still slightly quaking, I approached Cory and asked if he would agree to an interview. I thankfully received a rather enthusiastic “yes.” What follows is a transcription of our discourse.

Hello there. Would you like to start by introducing yourself?

My name is Cory Van Starsdale, and I am an immaculate world-renowned world champion visionary of vision.

Would you care to qualify that statement?

I am a world-renowned world champion visionary of vision. I invented and won all the Olympics; set the records in all of them. To this day, my records have not been broken.

When was this exactly?

The 1999 Newark Fall Olympics.

No such event occurred.

While, I was terribly drunk—but I believe it started with an N or some letter or number.

I am pretty sure you get disqualified for alcohol use.

No, it was before any of those rules were implemented. It was one hell of a cosmopolitan shindig. Just for example, during track and field, we athletes were snorting lines that went on for meters and meters. Even beyond the athletics, I shook up the Marketing and Nomenclatural Olympics. I am really, really, really blessed, Alex.

The Nomenclatural Olympics?

Yeah, the only training that you really have is when you are in the womb, and one has to put the pressure on their parents to come up with an awesome name. I think I should that names altered through the legal system are disqualified. Would you like me to explain the Marketing Olympics, which I have revolutionized?

Please do.

First, it was sometime in November 2002, and I was driving across the Brooklyn Bridge banging some tunes from Justin Timberlake’s award-winning multi-platinum 2002 solo debut Justified when I was bobbing my head to “Rock Your Body.” This was a fantastic, classic song that just mesmerized me when I noticed the refrain of “I wanna rock your body/Please stay/Dance with me” could totally be transformed into “Centrum Silver’s gonna rock body/A to Zinc/Centrum Silver.” I called up Justin Timberlake’s management, and they instantaneously agreed to this amazing idea. Then I just shouted out, “Cory Van Starsdale, you are an absolute genius!” Then someone behind me shouted back, “Cory Van Starsdale, you just won the Marketing Olympics!”

I never saw or heard this.

Domestically, Wyeth is not really interested in the cougar demo for some bizarre reason, so we are saving him stateside for about twenty years. But the campaign ran overseas and it was an astounding success. It was a win-win situation, sales of both the Centrum brand and Justified increased tenfold in Europe, Asia, and Australia.

Then in 2006, I broke the Marketing Olympics world records—all of them. I was just brainstorming really creatively while strutting down the street, and I just came up with Jimmy Kimmel Live: the Hot Wheels Quest for Zardoz. Like instantly, I just came up with it. I just had to shout out, “Cory Van Starsdale, you are an absolute genius!” Then some guy walking adjacent to me shouted, “Cory Van Starsdale, you just won the Marketing Olympics and broke all of the records ever!” I was flattered, flabbergasted even.

Now, how is it being the CEO of Massive?

That is rather assumptious to speak of my occupation instead of myself.

I don’t think assumptious is a real word.

It most certainly is. I never speak in improper language; I am formal to the utmost degree. And yes, I am the Chief Executive Officer of Massive Incorporated, which is subsidiary of Microsoft focused exclusively on game aurification. You can think of Massive as essentially being the gaming equivalent of script doctors.

But unlike script doctors, Massive’s work is exclusively after the release.

As I have just said, Massive Incorporated is the gaming equivalent of script doctors because we both improve on the quality of products—we are a game aurification firm. For example, we made Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas 2 into an absolutely tremendous work when we added the sequence where you make extremely passionate, libidinous love to Norman Mailer on a blazing rooftop.

I must have missed that. What would such a sequence been an advertisement for?

The aurification was paid for and co-created by the Midas chain of automotive repair shops.

I am afraid I do not see the connection.

How could you not? It is extremely salient, Alex. Let me put this is the barest, most minimal of terms: Norman Mailer is wearing a Midas jacket, and the player gets rid of the fire by using a muffler.

How would that come across to the average player? I don’t see how anyone would see it.

All of the work that Massive does is taken from the lives of other people. My creative process is to actually transcend the Terraplane and look at life with eyes of your target demographic. I saw the perspective of a twenty-three-year-old St. Louis man stuck at the auto repair shop reading on Gawkthamist about these twenty pages of sex letters that Norman Mailer on his iPhone.

How do you know that the man plays games?

My guidance from the Terraplane is incapable of errancy. My vocational adventures are always, always, always informed and absolutely advantageous. In the end, I can say with confidence we outdid BioShock.

Speaking of BioShock, what did you think of that game?

Personally, I found BioShock to be extremely objectionable. I mean, these kids that played the game are going to have the idea that injecting needles into your arms will give one special powers ingrained because the protagonist Jack, who is a two-year-old that is physically in his twenties or thirties and whose mom was a prostitute. This problem would have been easily solved had the creators chose a more socially responsible route of having the player get powers from Vitamin Water or Gatorade or Powerade or Kool-Aid or Sobe.

Why and how would kids be playing BioShock when it carries a M-rating and probably would go over their heads?

Just like how the pornography industry denies that teens somehow manage to get a hold of their products, the game industry denies this. It as if they expect me to find an abundance of folks in the San Fernando Valley that say, “I don’t make porn, I make cinema that just happens to have gratuitous sex.” Unlike the United Kingdom, the area is not predominantly British. Or that children will just avoid Leaving Las Vegas: The Animated Series if it was sandwiched between Spider-Man and My Little Pony on the Saturday morning CBS lineup. Let us just ignore I just said that. Also, I read Atlas Shrugged and everything else from Ayn Rand when I was I the first grade. I read it hundreds and hundreds of times during my elementary school career.

Really, wouldn’t that be an anomaly?

Not at all, I actually started an Objectivists Club when I was in the third grade; we had around fifteen members. My best friend at that time, Rick, had a shrine devoted to Rand in his room right next to hundreds of posters and pictures and general paraphernalia of Kenny Loggins and Daryl Hall. But what might be an anomaly is the fact that I have actually been funneling Q3 bonuses to the Nader campaign. Their immediate tribulations will be offset by the forced entry of responsibility into all industry.

Isn’t that illegal? And those certainly are two diametrical ideologies, when did this epiphany that led the shift of belief?

Campaign finance laws do not extend to extraterrestrials. I don’t think they are opposing at all, and I think there is a complete opportunity for common ground. You could perhaps dub it an “ethical post-economy.”

Wouldn’t that entail an abandonment of a monetary system?

On my home planet, all financial transactions occurred psychically—it really is an ideal system. From my empirical experience, humans are unfortunately unable to communicate in such a manner. If I had the ability, I would love to elevate Earth communication to immaculacy. So, this common ground will still remain indebted to tangible money but, like, be amalgamation of self-interest in altruist—something you could perhaphs dub “post-interest.”

Speaking of aspirations, do you have any sort of “dream project”?

What does “aspirations” mean? I have never heard that word before. Is it, like, Klingon or Australian or something?

”Aspirations” is the plural of “aspiration,” which is essentially like a desire or an ambition that you want to achieve.

Oh, I know what that word means. Actually, I have not just one but two dream projects. First, I would like to bring together Soulja Boy and Ricky Gervais together for a FIFA 2010 advertisement to be filmed on Sealand, with the ulterior motive of mending relationships and reclaiming the territory for Britain—and I could write article that I could later sell the movie rights for. And second, I would like to make a game based on John Updike’s fantastic, fantastic novel The Witches of Eastwick with a soundtrack of Jake Holmes covers by Ani DiFranco. I know that it does not strike as remotely malleable, but I assure you that it definitely is. It was our favorite book, and I read it every week to remind myself of her. We even got matching John Updike tattoos.

I’m sorry to hear about your loss.

Oh, oh no no no no, no one died but she did break up with me. She gave this false excuse that she was unable to grasp my interdimensional wandering, and it left her feeling cold and distant, but I know that our intrinsic energies were meant to be fused together. It is a false excuse because of the aforementioned connection of our intrinsic energies and I actually taught her how to transverse without leaving anything out. So, she totally grasped everything. She dumped me for some tool in real estate, and they have assimilated into Jack Johnson’s barefoot entourage. I mean, this guy has completely indoctrinated her and she is completely utilizing the skills I taught her.

How long ago was this break-up?

Two years, five months, thirteen days, twenty-two hours, six minutes, and nineteen seconds ago.

You must have been going steady for quite a while for a relationship to impact you like this.

Yeah, four weeks.

You have at least tried to hop back on the dating scene, right?

Yeah, but I do not feel the transcendence of the dimensional realm as I did with Jess. I mean, when I am at bars, speed dating events, parties, what have you, it feels like I am actually there.

You realize what you are saying does not make the slightest bit of sense, right?

No, it makes perfect sense.

Thank you for giving up a few minutes of your time to talk.

Wait, wait, wait, wait. I just have to say something. Jess, baby darling, I just want you to come back. Those millions of times we spent together were galaxies beyond the subsisting energy plane of luminescence.

Who are you talking to?

The camera you are recording this interview with.

There is no camera. I am only recording this interview auditorially.

Oh, in that case, could you slice the reeks of desperation from this interview? Such a thing would be massively appreciated.

Sure. Again, thanks for your time.

As I was exiting the hotel, a Wesleyan undergrad (the rather posh attire and general intoxication were a giveaway) approached me and explained, “Our obsequious inclination to commercialize quandaries is to detriment of New York, Los Angeles, Denver, Minneapolis, Colorado, and elsewhere.” I have not the remotest clue what he actually meant with his words, but they sounded half-profound.

[Alex Litel can be reached at alexlitel@gmail.com and occasionally found at alexlitel.blogspot.com. This column may include some, many or an entirity of statements and facts which are not, in fact, factual.]

Posted by Alex Litel at 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

With Utah-based independent studio NinjaBee (Band of Bugs, Cloning Clyde) having recently announced Boingz for WiiWare, Ryan Langley of our sister console downloadable game site GamerBytes caught up with the team to discuss the game and their two other upcoming titles, city-building title A Kingdom for Keflings and the adver-game Doritos: Dash Of Destruction.

Gamerbytes spoke with Boingz team lead and NinjaBee president Steve Taylor, lead designer Jeremy Throckmorton, and art director Brent Fox.

Topics of discussion include the genesis of the various games, their inspirations and influences, and the development disparities between WiiWare and Xbox Live Arcade console distribution platforms, among other things.

A Kingdom for Keflings [for Xbox Live Arcade] is a very different game to what you've made previously. What is the objective for the game?

Steve Taylor: It’s definitely off the beaten path in comparison to our other games, and really to most games available today. That said, the objective isn’t too different from most city building games: to manage your resources in order to build a kingdom for your inhabitants, the Keflings. It’s just the way we get to that objective that’s a bit different than others.

What was your inspiration for the game?

ST: It stemmed from a game-in-a-day prototype I did years ago for a simple city management game that focused on what the inhabitants of the city were assigned to do.

We redesigned that basic concept a couple of times, and Jeremy suggested the avatar-based approach to controlling the game, as opposed to the “hand of God” approach that most management games take. From there, it sort of grew into what it is now, an avatar-based city building game with a big focus on working with the inhabitants directly.

Is there any sort of random element in the game, to change the experience for each player?

ST: Well, the game was designed to be fully customizable and therefore a different experience for each player.

For starters, the world is laid out slightly different each time a new game is started. From there, players have the choice of building things following the tech tree straight down or completing quests given by the Mayor which open up more blueprints on the tech tree and gives rewards such as upgrades.

Some crazy user content has been seen in LittleBigPlanet and Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts. Have you and your testers made some pretty bizarre town designs?

ST: The weirdest thing I’ve seen is a soccer pitch built by one of our designers. He created goal posts out of banner towers or building walls and then proceeded to play soccer by kicking the Keflings around. That definitely made for an interesting multiplayer game!

How does the multiplayer work? Does a second player work within your instance of your town? Can a second player earn new parts while they're not in their own town?

ST: Up to four players work together in the same kingdom, and everything stays inside that world. If a player leaves a multiplayer game and starts his own single-player game, that's a separate world.

We designed multiplayer to be a cooperative experience, and it works really well in that way, but I have the feeling that some games will be a groups of friends competing to see who can collect resources the fastest and jokingly tearing down each other’s buildings.

Doritos: Dash of Destruction

It's been almost a year since Doritos Dash of Destruction was announced for Xbox Live Arcade through the Doritos Unlock Xbox Competition, where a competition winner got to have his game created for XBLA. Where is it currently?

ST: A lot of hard work and thought has been put into the game during the past year. For a sneak peek at how the game’s coming along, check out some of the documentaries Doritos has done at UnlockXbox.com.

What is the premise of the game? How do dinosaurs deal with Doritos?

ST: The premise is simple: dinosaurs are still alive and their favorite snack is Doritos chips. The Dinos are on a rampage to hunt down as many Doritos-carrying trucks as they possibly can, while all the Trucks want to do is to make their deliveries and avoid becoming dino-chow.

Have Doritos or the contest winner had much of an impact to the game since the initial prototype?

ST: Definitely. Mike (the contest winner) has been on many conference calls and e-mail threads and he even made a couple of trips to our studio to work out game design and other details.

Xbox Live Arcade has seen an adver-game with Yaris, and it wasn't well-received. How are you making sure that you're not falling into the same trap?

ST: For starters, I assure you that many people are asking this same question frequently, and we are not lacking for detailed feedback from many invested individuals. Honestly, our best tool in this area is letting people play the game frequently and incorporating feedback as much as possible.

When should we expect this game to release?

ST: Due to the risk of getting eaten by dinosaurs, I’m afraid I can’t say.

Boingz

What is Boingz? Where did this idea come from?

Jeremy Throckmorton: Boingz is a physics-based platform/puzzle game built around elastic characters the player can stretch, bend, and flick about.

The idea came after some thought about what would be a fun game to play on the Wii. Stretching and flicking things has always been fun; I imagine the first rubber bands created were used to flick at someone. The Wii Remote gives players a great interface for this sort of gameplay.

Boingz is based around a pretty simple story: The Boingz were captured in a strange storm and scattered about an alien world. Lucky for them, the storm left gateways to their home scattered around the alien world as well. So your job as the player is to solve the puzzles and help get the Boingz back to their home.

What are the gameplay mechanics?

JT: Throughout the game, players control individual Boingz, guiding them to work together for a common goal and rescue themselves from their current predicament. Through the Boingz characters, players can interact with the world by moving elements or holding them in place.

What makes the game unique?

JT: The control and feel of the Boingz is a unique experience in and of itself. One of the goals we had on this project was to make sure the characters were fun to play with separate from any of the goal-oriented gameplay.

We also designed the game so players can't really fail or get stuck. You won't ever have to restart a level because you screwed up.

After working on Xbox Live Arcade for many years, you've made the jump over to WiiWare. What made you decide to work on the Wii?

Brent Fox: We are always looking for a new challenge and making games for the Wii seemed like a very natural fit for our team. It’s been fun to design a game around the unique controller. Nintendo has found a way to reach many non-traditional gamers and by making a game for the Wii we are also getting our games in front of a new set of people.

Has it been a difficult transition? What has been the most difficult hurdle to overcome?

BF: We have some really smart guys on the team so the transition has been pretty smooth. Each console has its own challenges but our biggest challenge was getting everything in the game to behave the way we wanted it to and to develop the physics engine just right.

What has it been like to work with Microsoft with XBLA and Nintendo with WiiWare?

BF: Outpost Kaloki X was our first opportunity to create and publish our own game on a console and we have to thank Microsoft for involving us so early in the process. We had a good enough experience then that we have continued to make XBLA games. A Kingdom for Keflings will be our fourth XBLA title, and I’m sure it won’t be our last. We certainly haven’t run out of ideas

Nintendo has also been great to work with. We’ve actually been working with Nintendo on the Wii for quite some time, just trying to find the perfect game for the platform. Nintendo’s approach with its developers is very hands-off, which has allowed us to make the game we want, and we absolutely love this kind of creative freedom.

Your previous work on XBLA has all been self-published. For Boingz you've teamed up with RealNetworks. How has it been working with a publisher in the digital space, particularly one new to game consoles?

BF: We teamed up with RealNetworks on this game specifically because they seemed as though they would be a good partner and they were very interested in our concept. They have been committed to making a good game and have put a lot of support and effort into this game. The results for Boingz have been really positive. Other than naming the game, we had a lot of creative control and that was very appealing to us.

Everything Else

You're now working on Xbox Live Arcade and WiiWare. Any chance that you'll come over to the PlayStation Network as well?

BF: This is certainly a possibility. We’ve made PS2 games in the past and we always welcome the opportunities and challenges of a new platform.

GB: When should these three games be coming out?

BF: We haven’t announced any release dates for these games yet but you should look for announcements of specific dates very soon. I would watch for Boingz first and the others won’t be far behind.

Any hints as to what else you're working on at the moment?

BF: These three games have kept us really busy but we do have other games in the works. As we finish up our current games we will be able to devote more attention to these other games, most of which still need to spend a little more time in the oven.

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