[Continuing interviews with the 2009 Independent Games Festival finalists, Eric Caoili talks to Ace Team' Andres Bordeu about Zeno Clash -- a first-person action game set in a "punk fantasy" world and emphasizing hand-to-hand combat -- nominated for the Visual Art Award.]

Looking to separate its title from the dozens of other PC first-person game hitting the market this year, Chilean developer Ace Team set Zeno Clash, its first commercial title, in a punk fantasy world that's both beautiful and disturbing, populated with grotesque creatures that seem taken from The Island of Doctor Moreau.

Zeno Clash also stands out for its focus on up-close, hand-to-hand combat, allowing characters to punch, deflect, knockback, and grab their opponents, learning new moves and combos as they encounter new enemies with different fighting styles.

In the Source engine-powered game, players take on the role of Ghat, a member of his city's most powerful clan and the son of an aberrant, hermaphrodite creature named Father-Mother. Ghat seeks to escape his family and explore the world of Zenozoik as part of a quest that the studio hints could be driven by feelings of rebellion or revenge.

We spoke with Ace Team game designer and artist Andres Bordeu about Zeno Clash, nominated for the Visual Art award at this year's Independent Games Festival (part of Think Services, as is this website):

What kind of background do you and your team have making games?

Andres Bordeu: The Ace Team group was formed around 1998, when we were just three brothers (Andres, Carlos and Edmundo Bordeu) making mods. We developed some large conversions for Doom and Quake 3 before we decided we wanted to make commercial games. We were a very small team committed to big projects; there were only the three of us doing the art and design, plus a programmer, Juan Pablo Lastra.

After working on a prototype game, which was in some way Zeno Clash’s “spiritual predecessor” -- we never released this prototype -- we managed to capture the interest of some companies and scouting agencies, and some of us started working at Wanako Games when they were just starting out.

Wanako Games is another Chilean development studio that’s developed several casual games and XBLA games. At Wanako, we contributed to many great games, such as Assault Heroes, which was awarded XBLA Game of the Year by IGN.

After working with them for four years, we decided to leave with David Caloguerea, our lead programmer, and start our own studio. Zeno Clash was then born.

What sort of development tools did you use?

AB: For Zeno Clash, we’ve had the privilege of working with a great toolset from Valve’s Source SDK.

One of the features we considered very important when making a first-person game that emphasizes close combat is facial expressions. The Source SDK has a very powerful facial animation tool called Faceposer, which has enabled us to give life to our characters and creatures. The tool has allowed us to do lip sync for our voice overs using phoneme extractions, and we’ve also been able to create predefined expressions that are triggered during the game.

The Hammer level building tool is also very powerful and versatile, giving a lot of control with the level designer. Many tasks that could have been coded were resolved in Hammer through an intuitive Input-Output system, saving us a lot of time.

The SDK has several other tools that are very welcome for a smaller team that wants to focus directly on building the game and not the toolset that sustains it -- a complete particle editor, a model viewer, and exporters are just a few more examples of what we didn’t have to build ourselves.

How did you come upon this idea of developing a first-person action/fighting game with an emphasis on hand-to-hand combat?

AB: Basically, we were looking for a way to add a new ingredient to the repeated formulas many FPS games have used. As a small company, we knew we were incapable of competing with the AAA titles on their own ground. We thought that the best way to stand out was through innovation, so we wanted to use something that felt new to the genre.

It’s true that melee has already been attempted by a few games, such as Breakdown and The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay, but it wasn’t standardized and we were confident that we could give it our own approach.

Can you talk a bit about your Zeno Clash prototype, and how it evolved into what it is now?

AB: The prototype was developed using Touchdown Entertainment’s tech (formerly Lithtech). This prototype was called Zenozoik. The Zenozoik demo we developed was a mixture of several games. It featured characters with dialogue trees, branching options to problems, shooting with weapons, and of course melee combat.

The melee combat was much more basic than the melee in Zeno Clash. The majority of all the other features were also underdeveloped. The game was unsuccessful in becoming more than a prototype because we tried to do too much. Instead of focusing on a few strong features, we decided to add too many ingredients in the mixture.

After we finished the Zenozoik demo, we looked back at our work and thought about what we would have done different if we had to start all over again. We made a list of the features we had included in the game, and scored them by level of interest. The entire team agreed that melee combat with a first-person perspective was the single feature we should have focused on.

We eventually realized that the decision to go with hand-to-hand was ideal for us from many other perspectives. We wanted to bring something new into the FPS genre, and a strong melee combat component had been attempted by very few other companies.

We could also focus on melee because it didn’t require us to build tremendous levels that involved a lot of exploration; we were too small team to tackle something like that.

Can you tell us a little about Zeno Clash's "punk fantasy world" and its characters/creatures?

AB: The decision to create a punk fantasy world was because of personal interest of the team, but also for the same reasons I've already mentioned. We wanted to stand out through innovation, and what better way to capture the interest of players than presenting an art style not seen in today’s games?

Many of today’s titles seem to look at competitive titles or related media such as blockbuster movies when looking for sources of inspiration. You can tell that Star Wars, Aliens and war-themed movies are a common source of inspiration for many shooters.

The punk fantasy theme was a great way to stand apart from other titles because it doesn’t make a reference to traditional media. It was also considerably more reasonable for a small company like ours to focus on the artistic qualities of the graphics, instead of the technical qualities.

The world and the characters have been designed to express the freedom with which we’ve been able to design this game. The surreal art style is great to work with, because we’re not bound to scale, form ,or color.

The punk fantasy has also had a great impact in other aspects of the game, not only the graphics. Sticking to our desire to innovate, we also decided to avoid clichés often seen in the fantasy genre.

Again, many fantasy games tend to refer to specific media when looking for sources of inspiration. The Lord of the Rings is a common source of inspiration in games. Our world, in contrast, is not about elves, orcs, or wizards. There is no obvious separation between good and evil.

In a punk world, there is no state, no law, and no authorities. We wanted to make a story of something more personal, and not so overwhelming like saving the world. A great story can be about a simple thing like a conflict within a family.

How did you develop Zeno Clash's visual style, and were there any particular sources of inspiration?

AB: For Zeno Clash, we were looking for something not seen in the first-person genre. As I mentioned previously, we started looking for sources of inspiration that were not from the video game industry or blockbuster movies.

We were very interested in the work of illustrator John Blanche. We were acquainted with his work through some adventure books that featured his illustrations, The Crown of the Kings adventure books from Steve Jackson.

We also looked at traditional art as a source of inspiration. The paintings of 15th century painter Hieronymus Bosch had fantastic creatures and designs that we could refer to.

Another great source of inspiration was The Dark Crystal film from Jim Henson & Frank Oz. The world and the characters featured in that film are absolutely marvelous. Not even the rocks and the plants are real. They were designed to convey the idea that the characters were in a world nothing like our own. But that world also has mountains, woods, deserts, and the animals that live there. We wanted to do the same; build a world where everything was immersed in a particular art style.

The direction of the final art style was developed by Edmundo, our art director. He had of ton of his own style to add to the mixture. The end result is something we’re very proud of. We’re definitely happy with the surreal art style, and we’ll definitely continue to look at sources of inspiration that are not traditionally seen in video games.

Can you share how you came up with the Father-Mother creature's odd look?

AB: The Father-Mother character was developed in a later version of the story. We went through several scripts before reaching the final one.

Actually, Father-Mother was born as a reaction to some of our early play testing sessions. In these sessions, we had people playing in a dark bar setting with some unfriendly looking characters hidden in some dark corners. One of these characters was a shadowy figure, similar to Father-Mother.

He was sitting at a table, and next to him, on top of the table, Edmundo had placed a small baby. All the testers who saw the scene said something like, "Oh no! That thing is going to eat the baby!"

Edmundo was surprised by the reaction, because there was nothing that indicated that the creature wanted to harm the baby. Edmundo thought; "Why can’t that be its baby, and it is taking care of it?"

After that, Edmundo developed Father-Mother to defy the monster concept. The character was created to demonstrate that even a huge ugly creature can have an attachment to its family, and it doesn’t have to be inherently bad.

What do you think you're able to accomplish with this setup that you don't think you could with a more traditional 2D/3D fighting game, or a first-person shooter?

AB: The level of immersion has always been one the biggest strengths of a first-person game, because you feel like you’re playing through the eyes of the character. On the other hand, combat is one of the most engaging actions a player can experience in a game, because it’s close and personal.

The combination of the engagement of hand-to-hand combat from a fighter and the immersion of a first-person game was the great mix we were looking for. So, with Zeno Clash we have the best of both worlds.

With the first-person hand-to-hand combat, the camera moves and jerks around a bit -- were there any steps you consciously took to ensure that players didn't become too disoriented? Or were you looking to convey disorientation?

AB: We were well aware of this many years back when we started thinking of having a strong hand-to-hand component. Some external people were thinking it was a bad idea because the camera would move too much for the player to be able to focus during combat. At that time, shooters mostly felt like their avatars were moving pivots with a gun attached to it.

We quickly prototyped scenes to test disorientation issues using a 3d package. We developed several videos from a first-person perspective where we animated sequences that involved severe movement of the player’s point of view. It’s true that during moments, the player could become disoriented, but at the same time, the videos were extremely fun to watch.

These lessons were taken into consideration during the development process, but we eventually realized that this was no longer such a big issue because it became a standard in today’s games. Many shooters have included realistic camera movement during certain actions.

Take Mirror’s Edge as an example; the player’s view is coherent with the player’s running, jumping, and climbing, and this doesn’t necessarily mean that the player will become disoriented.

We also thought that at some key moments, a certain level of disorientation is acceptable. If you’re getting run over by a huge elephant man, you wouldn’t expect not to be disoriented while you’re flying through the air.

The way the player's health is presented, along with their current targeted enemy's, is very much like a more traditional fighting game or even a brawler; why did you choose this particular health design over something more like what you see in a traditional FPS?

AB: Zeno Clash is a hybrid game. We see it like a mix between a brawler and a FPS. We wanted to include many elements from the fighting genre to convey this perception. That’s why we decided to include versus screens prior to battles and HUD health bars like you’d see in classic Final Fight, where even the enemy’s health is visible.

We also didn’t want players to think Zeno Clash was a game like The Elder Scrolls, where the focus of the game is in exploring huge open environments. Our first game is all about the fighting, and the GUI had to reflect this.

Were there any other first-person or fighting titles that you looked at for ideas or things to avoid?

I suppose that to some extent, we did think about other games. We had already worked on a lot of mods and played every FPS there was to play.

I remember I was also lucky enough to attend an Arkane Studios session at GDC, in which the team behind Dark Messiah of Might and Magic talked about their design. They had sp,e very interesting feedback to provide. Our melee combat system is very different from theirs, but they surely had to deal with many of the same problems we encountered during the development of our project.

We also looked at some old school 2D fighting games when we were looking how to get the attacks impact feeling right. It was important that the attacks felt punishing, with a good sense of weight and good sound cues. I remember checking out some cool animations from The King of Fighters when we were looking into that.

What aspect of developing and designing Zeno Clash did you find most challenging?

AB: From a design point of view, the combat mechanics were definitely our biggest challenge. There are no formulas for fun, so we pretty much worked with an iterative process. Our first builds had a lot of things going right, but also a lot of things going terribly wrong.

The first combat mechanics were very restrictive, because we were convinced that we had to take control from the player and let the combat system handle certain events for some combat actions.

We were trying to avoid some excessive key configuration nightmares from some shooters. I’ve spent virtually 5 minutes configuring keys in some first-person shooters. When you have to press ‘prone-> reload-> aim down the sight-> zoom in-> hold your breath-> press trigger’ just to fire a sniper rifle, it can be a little too much, don’t you think?

Still, taking too much control from the player is never good, so our final control configuration is a good balance between easy to use and having a good learning curve.

From a technical point of view, the lighting was very challenging, too. We were able to get great results with our new lightmap technique, but it also involved a ton of hand tweaking. With the existing lighting techniques and the inclusion of other lighting tools, such as our self projected shadows, good lighting was very hard to produce.

If you could start the project over again, what would you do differently?

AB: Hmm, that’s a hard question. Maybe we could have invested some more time in planning the levels to support the combat system. We had to work around some levels because they felt too confined. Re-editing them took a lot of valuable time.

On a side note I remember something similar was said during Arkane Studios's presentation at GDC some years ago. When they built Dark Messiah, they finished the levels before developing all the features of the combat system. So they said pretty much the same thing I’m saying now; if we could have designed the levels with all the features ready, we could have designed the levels to maximize those features.

What lessons were you able to pick up from your previous mod work that you were able to apply to Zeno Clash's development?

AB: I think the most important lesson was learning to identify the strength of our game before starting to develop it. When you’re building a mod, it’s not very different from making a game. You have to be able to focus on your key features and identify your weaknesses. We made a lot of mistakes when we built our prototype, and learning from those mistakes was an essential part of getting things right with Zeno Clash.

Aside from that, building mods is the best way to train yourself in professional video game development. You have a bunch of tools at your disposal that the big AAA companies are also using. You face many of the same technical challenges.

You also have to do a lot of things that aren’t directly related with the game: you have to promote your mod, you have to manage a team, etc. We’ve always recommended getting involved with mod making for people who want to get into the industry. At least from a designer’s point of view, it’s a great way to start.

What do you think of the state of independent game development, and are there any other independent games out that you currently admire?

AB: I think that independent game development will continue to grow and will expand, the same way casual games expanded some years ago. The advantage of indie games is that they can take much more risks because there is no corporate pressure when developing their ideas. The current trend in today’s industry is that larger budget games with traditional funding from publishers are taking safer bets.

Many of the innovative titles are coming from the indie game group. It’s no coincidence that the Independent Games Festival is getting more submissions every year. And there are a lot of quality projects among those submissions.

I think that my personal favorite is Braid from Jonathan Blow. It’s a great example of how thinking outside of the box can produce an outstanding product. I admire people who take chances and succeed. The guys making Machinarium also have a fan with me. I love the art style of their project.

Is there anything unique that you feel that Ace Team, as an independent studio operating in Chile, has in its development process or identity that isn't present in most other developers in other countries?

AB: I think that making a game from Chile obviously gives our project an identity that is not in other games. Latin America is very new to the game industry, so there are very few games developed from this region. And if you think in proprietary IPs it’s even less.

We weren’t looking to make something "Chilean" with Zeno Clash, but it has some small references to our country and culture. We probably perceive it less because we are from Chile, but I guess Zeno Clash feels like a very ‘foreign game’ to the rest of the world. And that’s a great thing to have because it sets us apart.

I think that having an identity is one of the most important things a studio can want when working in a creative environment, and we’re happy because we know we have that. I think nobody will be able to say in many years to come that Zeno Clash was just another cookie cutter game. I hope we can keep that identity with all the future projects we make.

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

In this round-up, we highlight some of the notable jobs posted in big sister site Gamasutra's industry-leading game jobs section this week, including positions from Telltale Games, Konami, Krome Studios, Lucasfilm Animation Singapore, and more.

Each position posted by employers will appear on the main Gamasutra job board, and appear in the site's daily and weekly newsletters, reaching our readers directly.

It will also be cross-posted for free across its network of submarket sites, which includes content sites focused on online worlds, cellphone games, 'serious games', independent games and more.

Some of the notable jobs posted in each market area this week include:

Gamasutra.com - Game Industry Jobs

Lucasfilm Animation Singapore: Lead Artist
"Lucasfilm Animation Singapore, which opened 2005, creates top quality entertainment in the television, film and handheld game community. ... The Lead Artist leads an art team in the development of the highest quality of art work for Games. The art team is comprised of animation, environments, character creation, visual effects and user interface and works directly with the Design and Engineering team."

Konami Digital Entertainment Co., Ltd.: CG Designer
"Konami, a Japanese leading group in the entertainment industry, is famous for its titles such as Metal Gear Solid, Winning Eleven and Major League Baseball. Hideo Kojima, the head of Kojima Production producing mega-hit series Metal Gear Solid will be speaking at GDC on March 26th. If you are interested in becoming part of this amazing team, please come to the Konami Digital Entertainment booth at the Career Pavilion."

Telltale Games: Gameplay Programmer/Software Engineer
"Telltale is a new breed of interactive entertainment company that is ideally positioned to capture a significant share of the fastest-growing market segment in the game industry. ... Telltale Games is searching for a qualified Gameplay Programmer/Software Engineer to work on our growing library of unique episodic games. Gameplay Programmers are responsible for the implementation of the games using Lua, C++ and the Telltale Tools."

Krome Studios: User Interface Designer
"Our studio in Melbourne is looking for a talented, experienced UI Designer to join our team on an upcoming licensed title. Melbourne is widely known as the hub of Australia for its art, music, culture and sport. A relaxed yet bustling city, you can find wineries, spa country and beaches only a short distance from anywhere in Melbourne! This role will focus more on the technical side of UI to complement the skills of our resident UI Graphic Artist. Your role will include but not be limited to the following:"

WorldsInMotion - Online Games

ArenaNet: Senior-Level Graphics Programmer
"ArenaNet, located in Bellevue, WA, is a wholly owned subsidiary of NCsoft Corporation and is the creator of the block-buster RPG, Guild Wars. ArenaNet has built a state-of-the-art, interactive game network and develops premier multiplayer online games for dedicated game players. ArenaNet's first title, Guild Wars, is a global online role-playing game that allows gamers to play with anyone, anytime and anywhere in the world."

GamesOnDeck - Mobile Games

Ngmoco: Launch Coordinator, AQ Manager, and Live Producer
"Ngmoco is a venture- backed creator and publisher creating games exclusively for the iPhone & iPod Touch. We think the iPhone is the next great gaming platform, and it’s the first of a class of devices that will radically reshape the landscape for mobile games. We are committed to developing the very best of those games and entertainment experiences for the iPhone. In 2008, ngmoco released the critically acclaimed Rolando, Topple, Dropship, Dr. Awesome and MazeFinger to the iTunes App Store."

Scholastic Media: iPhone/iPod Touch Developer
"Scholastic Media is looking for partners to create fun, smart games for kids on the iPhone/iTouch. Our games are designed to get kids thinking and playing in new ways. We will be adapting some existing games to the iPhone/iPod Touch as well as creating some new games. We are open to working with Mac programmers with an art background, or Mac programmers who have teamed up with an artist. Please include your portfolio of launched iTunes Applications with your response."

To browse hundreds of similar jobs, and for more information on searching, responding to, or posting game industry-relevant jobs to the top source for jobs in the business, please visit Gamasutra's job board now.

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

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

Usually I write something that tries to be pithy or witty to kick this column off, but this time I'll just begin by introducing a new Future special right off: 20 Years of Nintendo Power, which you should be able to find at any bookstore chain right now.

This is, to be succinct, the sort of thing I wish I saw more often in the US marketplace. It's all original content, and it essentially tells the story of Nintendo through spreads from old Nintendo Power issues -- as opposed to the year-long feature series that ran in NP throughout '08, which covered the history of the magazine itself.

The effect is at once nostalgic and very authoritative, and the text's not at all throwaway -- it's filled with very tiny little behind-the-scenes tidbits and neat (and also surprisingly honest) commentary from Scott Pelland, the man who's hung around NP for nearly its entire history.

This is a great piece, to sum up, and I think everyone should buy it. My only qualm is the price. This sucker's only 68 pages long, and yet costs ten bucks, which is more than even what an imported issue of Edge rolls in at. The pages are nice and thick, yeah, and that's 68 pages of ad-free content, but I can't help but think this woulda been twice as good if it were twice the size. Regardless, well done on all ends.

With that done, let's move on to the other mags that hit stands the past fortnight. It's been a busy one, too:

Edge March 2009

Cover: Infamous

An inordinately thick issue of Edge (166 pages), thanks to another "Region Specific" look at the Nordic game development scene -- pretty dense going, but it's fun to read studio peeks at places like CCP without the devs burdening to PR the hell out of whatever game they're working on at the time.

The top highlight of the mag may be the Metacritic piece, which has already been reported around the net and echoes what I've written a few times in other publications.

The cover piece is good, as what we usually see when Edge does a follow-up cover to a game GI just gave the hotsclusive cover to, as is a rather deep piece about the labor of preserving video game history even as it gets erased from online on a regular basis. That, and a game (not telling which) gets a 2/10 review this issue -- always my favorite sort of Edge review to read. Guilty pleasures, I know.

PC Gamer March 2009

Cover: Dragon Age: Origins

I put PC Gamer a bit closer to the top this installment because this is the first edition led by lovely EIC and former Kevin Gifford boss Gary Steinman -- a man who is very smart with magazines and games and such, but, let's face it, has been leading console mags for years now and doesn't have much experience with PC game media. Will be comfortable in the world of WASD and MMO and SARS and such? I hope it works out!

Changes will undoubtedly be a-coming to PCG, but this issue's not so different from the norm. There's a lovely and exhaustive cover piece -- and exhaustive it should be, given that the game's rumored to be all but ready for shipment despite its delay. The GOTY '08 piece is remarkably non-straightforward -- no simple list of categories and screenshots here; every page has its own theme and design, and it's all very UK-like in style, actually. Very eye-catching.

Retro Gamer Issue 59

Cover: Battlezone

Distribution of Retro Gamer seems to have mysteriously restarted in my neck of the woods, although Issue 58 never made it down here. (I think I've got it ordered from Imagine, but it's hard to tell since I've been having odd credit-card issues with their website, complete with back-and-forth emails with their tech support. Hopefully it will work out soon.)

Those who think Retro Gamer is getting a bit stale will find ample ammunition for that argument in that issue, given that they interview Jon Ritman and cover Head Over Heels for about the bajillionth time, this time as part of a top-25-isometric-games piece. The mag's still worth buying, though, because of the cover piece and because of the massive Wing Commander history inside -- one of the first times, I think, that creator Chris Roberts has talked much about the series since he left games for the film industry.

Game Informer March 2009

Cover: God of War III

GI certainly wins the pretty-cover sweepstakes this time around, although the piece inside is a bit long-winded and heavy on tiny little plot details and other things that ain't my bag. More interesting: An interview with Dave Shippy, a guy with an amusing name who led the team behind the PS3 and 360's processors, and a news piece on the tendency of modern video-game credit sequences to be long as hell. No, really. Hey, it's annoying if you're hoping for hidden content at the end of it, okay?

Play March 2009

Cover: Dante's Inferno

Classic Play here -- a cover piece that's mostly rambling interview, a lot of pretty pictures, and it's all over very quickly.

This issue must've been heaven for Dave Halverson to work on, given that he got to write about Ayumi of X-Blades and the Oneechanbara games in one go. ("I wouldn't give either [game] a second look if it wasn't for the novelty of all these ferocious young girls getting drenched in zombie blood, especially Aya, whose sinful animation, especially on 360, is to me what added realism must be to a modern warfare junkie.")

Nintendo Power March 2009

Cover: Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings

The new Indy is a neat game that seems to have the curse of not being seen as a AAA title by the media for some reason. NP does a good job of covering it (though the cover feature is a bit bland in design), as it does with The Conduit and the new Shin Megami Tensei and Major Minor and all that -- nothing exceptional, but still nice, plus I don't think any game mag actually interviewed Rodney A. Greenblat before. He's pretty deep, man.

PC Zone February 2009

Cover: Empire: Total War

Choice quote of this issue: "Don't think about it too hard, but a few years ago a couple friends of mine used to enjoy donning Halloween masks and contacting random webcam owners on some instant messaging program. People would scream or laugh at them, or both -- it was weird, harmless internet fun. One day they came across a fat, topless man sitting in a bedroom. Before they could disconnect, a baby elephant walked across the screen. Then it came back, and just stood there. A baby elephant, flapping its ears in a topless man's house. Until I played Left 4 Dead, I thought that was the most amazing thing that's ever happened online..."

Game Developer February 2009

Cover: Golden Axe: Beast Rider

You can tell Game Developer isn't Play Magazine because Game Developer published screenshots from GA:BR that doesn't have Tyris in it and postmortem author Michael Boccieri doesn't spend paragraphs discussing breasts. In all seriousness, though, the fun-to-read quotient of a GD postmortem seems directly proportional to how how much trouble the staff had making the game, and this one is a corker as a result.

[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 (1)

[GameSetLinks is GameSetWatch's daily link round-up post, culling from hundreds of weblogs and outlets to compile the most interesting longform writing, links, and criticism on the art and culture of video games.]

Just before we hit the weekend, here's a cornucopia of not entirely out of date RSS-trawled wonders - some of which date, yes, from a little closer to last weekend, but all of which are just marvelous, so shh.

Among the delights - Tiny Cartridge talking to Gaijin Games about their bleeptastic WiiWare game, Cory Barlog at WETA, Jeff Green on designing games, and the Vancouver Game Design folks on having opinions about things. Which we all do, don't we? I know I do!

Crazy horses:

Seriously...don't play games with me!: ...yeah, we have a Warthog.
Cory Barlog is still working on the Mad Max game with George Miller, but more importantly, he's been riding a Warthog at WETA, like Wallis. The lucky so and so.

Fullbright: Basics of effective FPS encounter design (via F.E.A.R. and F.E.A.R. 2)
Another good Gaynor post: 'In my mind, the design differences between the original game and its sequel highlight a few essential elements of good encounter design in a first-person shooter.'

Well, That’s Like, Just Your Opinion, Man « Vancouver Game Design
A fun post, with non-game industry examples, of why - well - opinions are opinions!

Tiny Q&A: Gaijin Games' Chris Osborn (BIT.TRIP:BEAT) - Tiny Cartridge
Not sure I agree that the Wii Art.Style games 'showed us there definitely was a market for tight, retro-inspired games on WiiWare.' More like... Nintendo just paid for them and shoved them out there :/

Greenspeak: Game Design is Hard, Part II
Asinine comments section aside, it's interesting to look at Jeff Green's transition from journalist to designer at EA from his own perspective, in terms of the humbling complexity behind video games.

How PC Gaming Ended Up on Your Couch from 1UP.com
Heh, Robert Ashley in the comments: 'Keep in mind that this story was written for EGM, an explicitly console-centric magazine.'

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

['Chewing Pixels' is a regular GameSetWatch-exclusive column written by British games journalist and producer, Simon Parkin. This time, a surprising press release sheds light on a dangerous profession.]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Video Game Critic Killed Over 7/10 Review

A white, male video game reviewer has been murdered at his home in South London.

Charlie Drummond, a 30-year-old print and web journalist, was hacked to death by between 12 and 20 members of the gaming forum New-Gaf in his bedroom on Saturday morning.

According to police, his attackers had become riled at a review Drummond had written of the, at the time unreleased, videogame, Gears of Killzone 2, a product which the writer valued at 7/10 in a review printed in the Wedge Magazine two weeks ago.

A friend and fellow journalist told the BBC that Drummond’s killers had carved a 7/10 into his forehead using a DS stylus, a reference to the value judgment that apparently led to his demise.

While most of Drummond’s attackers are at large, one man, known at this point only by his online handle ‘Dutka-Fan’, handed himself in to a police station on Sunday morning. The police are yet to issue a statement, however one officer confirmed to the BBC the suspect had “not played the game in question yet”.

A discussion thread on New-Gaf, which ran to 60 pages prior to Drummond’s killing, was filled with expressions of dismay from forum members who accused the writer of “indulging [his] massive ego in an underhanded attempt at getting attention”, arguing that Drummond should “not be allowed to do things like this” and, in reference to the score he awarded the game, elliptically claiming: “This...is...a...lie.”

Such volatile discussions of unreleased videogames on the web are well-established, young men often defending products they have become heavily invested in. However, this is the first time that such anger has manifested itself as real world physical violence.

Drummond is believed to be the first videogame reviewer killed in the country, although game journalists have long lived with violence or the threat of it.

In 2008, games writer Oli Welsh received death threats for scoring the hotly anticipated Metal Gear Solid 4 an 8/10 for gaming site Eurogamer.

Likewise, Alec Meer was once threatened by a reader in response to a review of Star Wars: Empire At War claiming that he was going to “find your house, construct a giant wax statue of you outside it, and set fire to the thing”. Both men, and other writers working in the field, will no doubt take such anonymous threats more seriously in the future.

Veteran editor at Wedge Magazine, Anthony Mitt spoke of his shock at the news while praising Drummond as "brave and multi-talented", a writer who “was never frightened to speak truth to publishers and consumers alike”.

He went on to add: “We would always encourage readers to read the content of a review, which is often useful for understanding what the reviewer thought of the product with more detail and nuance than the ten point score system allows.”

But some members of the gaming community weren’t quite so sympathetic to Drummond’s fate. One prominent PR man from a large publisher, who asked to remain anonymous, told us: “Publishers and developers have long had to live or die by their Metacritic scores. Perhaps now it’s time for game reviewers to get a taste of their own medicine.”

However, the local office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights deplored the murder and called on the authorities to identify those responsible and bring them to justice.

"This tragedy should galvanise those responsible for protection of media freedom to take the necessary action to ensure the security of game reviewers,” said Vera Bingotits. “Every person should feel free to score anything whatever they like without fear for their safety,” she said, before giving our reporter a 6/10 for punctuation and dress sense.

The game in question, Gears of Killzone 2, entered the all format gaming charts last week at number 1. This week, however, it had dropped out of the charts altogether, superseded by a raft of fresh releases.

The New-Gaf thread about the game had also lost its head of steam, some posters adding comments such as, “Drummond might have actually been right about this one LOL”, “The zeitgeist has left the building: please move along now” and, “Tits or GTFO.”

Drummond is survived by his Nintendog and a pretty badass PC.

Posted by Simon Parkin at 4:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

[Every week, sister site GamerBytes' editor Ryan Langley passes along 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.]

This week, gamers can finally check out Death Tank on Xbox Live Arcade. Despite the 1200 Microsoft points ($15) it may cost you, those interested in checking it out before buying should know that the demo includes free online play for Gold users.

This is a whole hour's worth of free online multiplayer to try out, and needs to happen more for downloadable console demos - and it helps that it's a great game.

Last week, the PlayStation Network got Flower, and this week, users can check out Noby Noby Boy. Even the creators aren't quite sure what sort of monster they've created this time.

Finally, WiiWare users can download Evasive Space, a space shooter where you... do not shoot. If you're a fan of Geometry Wars' passive mode you might want to give this a shot.

Here are the top stories of the week:

Xbox Live Arcade

Death Tank And The Maw DLC Now Available
Hey kids, it's time for a blitz round!

Sega Vintage Collection Expands - Sonic 3, Gunstar Heroes And More
Leaked screenshots show more Sega classics coming to Xbox Live Arcade.

XNA Roundup Episode 5 - Johnny Platform's Biscuit Romp
This week's XNA Roundup episode showcases one of the best XNA titles currently available.

Watchmen: The End Is Nigh Hitting XBLA March 4th, PSN March 5th
Check out the Watchmen companion game, days before the theatrical release.

Xbox.com Reverts Dates, Galactrix, Exit 2 Now TBD
We thought Exit 2 was coming out this week, and Galactrix next week. Looks like we were wrong.

PlayStation Network

NA PSN Store Update - Noby Noby Boy, Zuma, And Burnout, HV Bowling DLC
Keita Takahashi's super-quirky downloadable title debuts, alongside a casual game classic and notable DLC.

Comet Crash And Hammer Fall Announced For PSN
A new Desktop Tower Defense game coming exclusively to the PlayStation Network.

EU PSN Store Update - Flower
Flying through the sky so fancy free.

NA PSN Store Update - Flower, Lumines Classic Pack
Become one with the wind, as you fly through this beautiful game.

WiiWare

Crystal Defenders Splits Up On WiiWare, XBLA And PSN Only In The West?
Square-Enix's Tower Defense game gets expensive on WiiWare.

Animales De La Muerte No Longer WiiWare Bound
High Voltage Software's zombie animal decapitating simulator now on hold.

Mr. Driller Burrows His Way To WiiWare
Famitsu magazine shows off the latest Mr. Driller title coming to WiiWare and DSiWare.

EU WiiWare Update - Onslaught, Pop Up Pirate
Hudson's first person shooter comes first to WiiWare, as well as Tomy's classic toy going digital.

NA WiiWare Update - Evasive Space
High Voltage Software's non-shooting shooter now out in America.

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

['The Interactive Palette' is a biweekly GameSetWatch-exclusive 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. This time - a look at puzzle design in the Myst series.]

Puzzle. The word has many different meanings in the context of video games. The term "puzzle game" can refer to a game in the mold of Tetris; there are many shaped or colored blocks or jewels or bubbles that must be cleared by manipulating them within a time limit. In this context, the "puzzle" tests the player's coordination and reaction time.

However, the word "puzzle" is also commonly used in a broader and more conventional context to describe an intellectual obstacle in any video game. When the developers of Half-Life 2 break up the shooting-and-driving gameplay to have the player assemble a makeshift ladder, that's a puzzle. So are the ubiquitous sliding-block puzzles of Zelda infamy. In these cases, puzzles are intended to serve as pacing devices, allowing a moment to relax and think in the middle of all the killing.

However, there are categories of video games where the game is entirely composed of puzzles. One group is games like Chip's Challenge, 3D Logic, or Portal, which all present a sequence of similar puzzles differing only in complexity and scale. However, to the true puzzle connoisseur, the height of the art is to be found in the adventure game.

The Monkey Island series, the Infocom interactive fiction games, and escape-the-room games portray worlds in which puzzles are a fact of life. The developers try, with various degrees of success, to incorporate puzzles seamlessly into the game world, so that players can inhabit a character who thinks her way around difficulties rather than shooting her way through them.

In the adventure game category, few games are more maligned than Cyan Worlds' Myst series. Spanning five single-player games and one repeatedly-resurrected online game, Uru, the Myst series is often blamed for bringing about the death of the adventure game. It popularized the concept of a silent, faceless protagonist exploring an uninhabited game world, and led to a myriad of copycat games where the atmosphere was spooky but the puzzles were arbitrary and banal. These concepts were anathema to fans of the character depth and humor of the Sierra and LucasArts adventures.

However, it really is the puzzle-solving where the Myst series shines. By looking at the best (and worst!) puzzles of the series, we can gain an understanding of how to construct truly compelling intellectual challenges. For a puzzle to be effective, it must be three things: fair, novel, and integrated.

A Fleeting Glimpse

First, let's look at my three favorite puzzles from the Myst series. These are Riven's marble puzzle, Myst III: Exile's Amateria Age, and Uru: The Path of the Shell's Ahnonay Age. All three require observation and logic, then reward the player with an "a-ha!" reveal. Below, I'll discuss the setup and solution to each puzzle.

The marble puzzle is the trickiest challenge in Riven, the second game in the series. In order to restore power to the mystical linking books that lead to the villain's haven, the player must enter a combination into a device on Dome Island. Luckily, the villain has an unreliable memory, and has based the solution on the geography of the game world. The player must place five marbles in a grid, with each marble's color and location matching that of a small dome encountered over the course of the game.

Part of this puzzle's genius is that it brings together all of the challenges surpassed so far in the game. In order to know the locations of the small domes, the player must have solved all of the earlier puzzles which provide access to the domes. Discovering the associated colors requires the player to have determined which symbol matches each color, and which dome matches each symbol.

At a few points in the solution process, a process of elimination is required to account for damaged machinery. The solution requires a full exploration of the game world, over five leaps of associative logic, and the use of several devices to process and sort the proper information.

Trial and error would get the player nowhere with this puzzle; there are thousands of possible combinations, and only one correct one. The puzzle is fiendishly difficult, but it isn't unfair; every aspect of the solution is prominently clued somewhere in the game, and all the player needs to do is put the clues together. Many players, including myself, required more than one hint to solve the puzzle, but my reaction to the solution was "Why didn't I see that?" rather than "How could I have been expected to see that?"

Amateria is one of three main puzzle worlds in Myst III: Exile. It is an island with hexagonal geology and enormous crystal spheres that roll along metal tracks. In a series of preliminary puzzles, the player must get spheres to traverse short patches of tracks, using simple logic to disable obstacles. This provides access to a central control station, where the player discovers that the three short stretches of tracks are connected, and must arrange a route so that a sphere can roll through all three tracks in sequence.

Finally, when everything is set up properly, the player discovers that the tracks are more than puzzle elements; they are a transportation system. The reward for solving the puzzle is a roller-coaster ride through each of Amateria's puzzles, finishing at the part of the world that the player has been trying to reach the whole time.

Like Riven's marble puzzle, Amateria's final puzzle brings together each of the previous puzzles of the Age. The player must have solved each puzzle and understood its solution in order to complete the challenge. Beyond that, the puzzle is based on real-world principles. Amateria does not just ask for a secret password which magically opens a door; the player is constructing a path for herself to take to her goal. Beyond that, the reward of the roller-coaster cutscene is one of the most exciting and good-looking sequences of the series.

Finally, Ahnonay is one of the worlds from the Uru expansion, The Path of the Shell, as well as being included in a modified form in the short-lived, GameTap-sponsored Myst Online: Uru Live. This Age was constructed by a charlatan named Kadish to fool people into believing he had power over time travel.

When the player first enters the Age, it has been abandoned for some time; she must use a description of how the Age used to work in order to experience Kadish's illusion of time travel. By experimenting with objects in the world, the player finds that Ahnonay is nothing more than a soundstage that is somehow being transformed from one "time" to another.

Diagrams within Ahnonay suggest a fourth "time" that is not part of the usual tour. By combining the player's knowledge of how travel between worlds works with the controls found behind the scenes, the player can reach an observation room outside of the entire structure, where the true nature of the world is revealed.

There's nothing mystical about Kadish's trickery. He simply built a huge device which rotates each "time zone" into place in preparation for a group's arrival. There are four separate soundstages, each one able to be rotated in and out of the active position.

The player's progress through Ahnonay works on two levels. As the player solves small puzzles within the Age, her understanding of the mechanisms behind the world grows. At the beginning, Kadish's illusion is powerful, and the puzzles within seem impossible. By the end, the player has solved all of the puzzles and understands the mechanism behind the Age's trickery.

Each of these puzzles — Riven's marble puzzle, Myst III: Exile's Amateria Age, and Uru: The Path of the Shell's Ahnonay Age — is memorable and compelling because of certain qualities they share. By looking at these qualities, we can better understand how to construct equally effective puzzles.

Not Yet Been Written

For a puzzle to be a good one, it should be fair, novel, and integrated. A fair puzzle is one which can be solved using information and tools provided in the game, without depending on guesswork, specialized knowledge, or a walkthrough. A novel puzzle is one which is unique to the game, not a reskinned version of one the player has seen before. An integrated puzzle is one which can believably exist in the game world, and which has appropriate in-game consequences.

For a puzzle to be fair, it should be possible to solve it using only information provided in the game and accompanying materials. It's fine for a puzzle to require things like basic math and logic skills or the fundamentals of gravity and electricity, but more specialized knowledge should either be avoided or provided in an in-game text.

In Graham Nelson's "The Craft of Adventure," he cites Zork II's diamond maze as an example of an unfair puzzle; it requires knowledge of baseball, which is uncommon outside of America. This is a mild offense, but imagine a game which assumed knowledge of medieval heraldry or Indian Carnatic music. In the worst case, a player might not even notice a puzzle existed, which would mean she wouldn't know to look up the required information in an external source.

Additionally, a puzzle can be unfair because it requires undue guesswork. A puzzle solution that only makes sense after the fact is unfair, as is an unclued, arbitrary solution like Dare to Dream's use of a fish tail as a key for a door. Generally speaking, if a walkthrough is the only way to figure out a solution, then the developer is being far too clever. There should be a continuous trail of logic from the clues to the solution.

Novelty is also important in puzzles. At some point, the boxes-on-a-slippery-surface puzzle was novel. Not anymore. Any experienced player who encounters one of these puzzles knows the way to solve it; she just needs to carry out the solution algorithm. There's no intellectual challenge, which makes the puzzle nothing more than a time-waster. The same goes for a sliding tile puzzle (or "fifteen" puzzle). As a general rule, if a puzzle is included with the default installation of your operating system, it's not novel.

Novelty is important because the fun and challenge of a puzzle is in discovering its solution. Just implementing a solution the player already knows is pointless. Nor is it enough to just dress an old puzzle up in new clothes. A Tower of Hanoi puzzle is not made new again by making the disks precious coins or UFOs. It might be acceptable to do something clever like make the disks actual floors of a tower that could be navigated in different configurations... but only as a last resort.

The final requirement is integration. Players are perfectly willing to accept a world full of absent-minded folks who write down the combination to their luggage in code, but there are limits to their credulity. Take 7th Guest, which is famous for its puzzle in which rearranging soup cans opens a door. This is a game where ghosts are evidently murdering other ghosts, and the puzzle is still hard to believe. At the very least, a puzzle should make sense in the game world.

More than that, though, a puzzle should fit. Most of Myst's puzzles suit the game world; there is a reason for them beyond the game designer's need to challenge the player. The series' use of Ages, or dimensions, helps with this by providing a strong theme for sections of the game. Channelwood's puzzles are related to the water-based power system used there, while Kadish Tolesa's puzzles all feel like they were created by a conceited and slightly crazed con man.

Fairness, novelty, and integration are all important for making good puzzles, but what makes the puzzles discussed here stand out is their payoffs. Each of them has a moment of epiphany, where the odd structure of the game world suddenly makes sense, and all the pieces fit together. Because they are especially tricky, the reward is sweeter, and the player feels a greater sense of accomplishment.

It's this puzzle with a twist that is the greatest strength of the Myst series. By starting with a solid puzzle and then adding a twist, developers can make their own puzzles stick in players' memories. This doesn't just apply to adventure games, either; any kind of game that uses puzzles will be better-served by a cleverly crafted obstacle rather than just another game of Nim.

[Gregory Weir is a writer, game developer (The Majesty Of Colors), 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 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (12)

[While you'll also find Gamasutra stories on DICE talks like Dave Perry's and John Riccitiello's, we're just printing the longer-form, less business-y stuff here - and this Capcom talk, written up by Brandon Sheffield, hits a lot of the right buttons re: intriguing cultural questions.]

Jun Takeuchi, creative director at Capcom and producer of Resident Evil 5 and Lost Planet, opened DICE's first full day of programming with a keynote intended to tackle the issue of global game development and Capcom’s recent success in the Western market.

But in effect, he wound up making a better case for why Japanese game companies are not succeeding in the West.

"Maybe it’s strange for a Japanese person like me to be speaking to you," he began at the Gamasutra-attended talk during the Las Vegas business summit, "but I want to tell you a bit about how it’s like for us in Japan just now."

Takeuchi frequently punctuated his talk with similar kinds of casual and perhaps somewhat unconscious remarks, which ensured the audience got the idea that Japan is different from America.

"Japanese people, when they come to a place like [America], have a very unique feeling," said Takeuchi, presenting a slide representing Japan's perception of the West. "The first thing I feel when I come here is ‘wow, you’re all not Japanese.’ This is of course down to Japan being an isolated island country for many years."

While he delivered his comment as a half-joke, the comment about Japan’s isolation is valid, and is a point of "differentness" to which he kept referring during his talk.

But the harsh realities of the game market do not escape the company. "When I look at the games world market right now," he said, "I have no choice but to admit that Japan is a small part of that market."

Mistakes On The Way To A Bold Goal

"For software sales, Japan is just 6 percent of the global market. For the past several years, Capcom has had the goal of making the majority of its products for the Western market. We plan to increase our sales in the West to 70 percent of our total."

This is indeed a bold goal, and likely that focus is helping Capcom sell its games here, especially given that keeping other markets in mind from the beginning makes localization far easier. In terms of Capcom’s initial approach to this goal, Takeuchi highlighted the company’s initial missteps.

"I think the first mistake we made is thinking ‘we have to understand how foreigners think.’ And the first way we thought to do this was to dye our hair blonde, and then think wow, I’m a foreigner!" He joked.

"The game that came from this strategy was Onimusha 3. Of course, this was still a game about samurai, and it didn’t sell as well as we wanted."

For that title, Capcom tried adding Moroccan-born French actor Jean Reno, to whom Takeuchi referred as a "popular Hollywood actor" -- an indication that the company misunderstood what it takes to make a game popular in the West.

"We dyed the game blonde," he admitted.

Developing A New Approach

At this point, Capcom hired current Bionic Commando producer Ben Judd, who at the time was simply consulting. Judd asked: "How will this help?"

Takeuchi joked that the next approach was to put baseball caps on their developers, because Americans like baseball. The Western-focused game that came out around this time period was Shadow of Rome.

"Just as Ichiro [Suzuki, of the Seattle Mariners baseball team] has his teammates who are American who help him," he said, "we decided to get lots of feedback from Westerners. It didn’t really work out, either.”

At this point, Judd expressed to Capcom that he felt they weren't taking Westernization seriously. "We were taking it seriously as Japanese people," said Takeuchi, "if there’s one thing we hate at Capcom, it’s quitters, so we went back to the drawing board."

The company’s new approach was based on the Japanese proverb: In order to defeat your enemy, it’s not enough to know your enemy - you must truly know yourself. "We used this as our touchstone in our new strategy," he said.

With this in mind, Capcom looked at the problems of Japan itself. Japan is a society that is nearly homogenous, Takeuchi reminded the audience. And Japanese as a language is only used within Japan itself. It’s a very small and built-up country, which leads to small communities as well, he says.

"But we realized that we in Japan enjoy lots of different cultures. We listen to music on iPods, watch movies from Hollywood, eat at McDonalds, want to own Mercedes, and love rock and roll."

Obstacles In The Way

The crunchiest bit of his talk was in the recognition of three problems within Capcom, which also reflects on the Japanese industry as a whole. "First, we realized that risk reduction can actually increase risk," he said.

Concentrating investment on the Japanese market first that will succeed just in Japan, is not a good idea. "The Japanese market is quite small, so the amount of money you can spend on a title like this is quite small."

"The second issue was that our understanding of the Western market was nowhere near clear enough," he admits -- thinking too simply about making games just for the West would also lead to smaller budgets. "A typical result of this might be to take a really stylish character and turn him into a big macho man," perhaps echoing the transition of Capcom’s title Sengoku Basara from Japan into the muscle-bound Devil Kings.

The third problem was that "management was only thinking about the West as an extra sales bonus, not a target market for development." New technology was developed blindly without a proper goal in mind.

Capcom's 10 Commandments

As a result of their rethinking, they came up with some new practices for themselves. Here then, are the 10 commandments of Capcom development.

1 – Keep staff turnover below 10 percent per annum.
2 – Maintain the ability (and cash reserves) to increase personnel by 10% each year.
3 – Keeping the first two points in mind, keep development cost fluctuations within 10%.
4 – Investment in new IP needs to be kept within 20% of total development budget.
5 – The structure and organization of the company needs the flexibility to change in response to growth; the goals and objectives must constantly be reviewed.
6 – Goals and objectives must be adaptable to external forces.
7 – Objectives and aims must always be set from the top down.
8 - Reform must always be taken from the bottom up.
9 – There should be no taboo areas where it comes to reform; reform must be undertaken at all costs.
10 – Don’t set unachievable goals.

"The first three points reflect the fact that Japanese people look first and foremost for stability in their companies," he admitted. "Japanese people view switching developers as a big risk, so people rarely do that."

New IP is important – "but we don’t think it’s a good idea to spend over 20 percent [of budgets] on new IP. If one of those new IP doesn’t take off, it can damage the company quite seriously," he said, adding that "Japanese companies don’t like organizational change – but if you can’t adapt to the time, you can’t succeed in the market."

Troubling Signs In Implementation?

Perhaps most distressing was his discussion of how these sorts of company adjustments need to be undertaken. "When there are problems in the company, they’re almost always within developers themselves," said Takeuchi, explaining that managers must always enact reform from the top down, and communicate this to their employees, as seen in the seventh Capcom commandment. "Management must always work with developers to enact these reforms."

The trouble here is that the idea of adapting the company to changing market conditions is a new one to Japan, and it is extremely telling that this needed to be a commandment in order to come to fruition. This also reflects how quickly Western developers were able to overshoot their Japanese counterparts in the last 10 years or so.

"There’s one more rule that’s as important as the rest," said Takeuchi. "Make games that users will enjoy! This has been the philosophy at Capcom for many years, and is the thing developers learn when they first come to Capcom."

"All things we do in Capcom have to be tied to how the end user will feel. If you can’t do that, you lose the reason for your company to exist."

"Make fun games" seems like an amazingly vague thing to say to other game developers. Perhaps it occasionally needs restating, but unfortunately the reason a game like Lost Planet or Resident Evil succeeds in the West is not because of adapting business practices, or management telling the developers the right way to do things, but because Capcom came up with a good mechanic, executed on it well, and made the locations non-specific to Japan.

He closed by reminding us of our differences: "You’re all Americans, and I’m Japanese," he said. "The things we eat, the language we speak, it’s all different. But I don’t think there’s any difference in our understanding of what a fun game is."

"While I was developing Resident Evil 5, I really fell in love with BioShock," he continued. "I’m really struggling with the fact that I can’t work my way up the rankings in Call of Duty 4. There are no borders to fun."

Question And Answer Session

First, Chris Kohler of Wired asked, to paraphrase: "Localization was difficult on Game Center CX (Retro Game Master) because the developers didn’t think the game would ever leave Japan. Should games be created with localization in mind even if they’re created primarily for Japan?"

Takeuchi responded: "As you say, this is a big problem that’s happening in the Japanese market. There are some developers out there who, because their games don’t take off in the West, can start to ignore the West when developing games."

"I think that’s a very sad and dangerous game for the Japanese market. I think we should remember that in the development of games, the idea of fun, goes beyond national boundaries. I think the fact that we’ve developed games with the thought to release them in the Western market has really helped us."

Seth Schiesel from the New York Times asked: "Why do you think games have become Japan’s most successful cultural export, when other media like film and music are not as successful?"

Takeuchi responded: "Certainly I can see how you’d think that way, but the Japanese film market used to be more popular worldwide than it is now." He cited filmmakers like Akira Kurosawa (Ran, Rashomon), and movies like Godzilla.

"So I think the real question is why, with experience from the past, Japanese films aren’t popular anymore," he said. "And I think that reason is because filmmakers decided to reduce risk by not focusing on the West."

"I think that if an American studio were to make a movie like Godzilla, they would view it as a product to sell around the world, and might spend $100 million. But in Japan, they would never spend more than $5 million, and hope to make their money back only in Japan."

His specific comments regarding games were especially interesting, and summed up rather well the difficulty of making games in Japan in the first place, as well as the trouble with bringing them to the West.

"I think the reason games are different is ultimately down to Nintendo," he said. "Nintendo -- in contrast to other Japanese companies -- really made a big effort to succeed not only in Japan, but also in the West, and all over the world."

"And after them of course came Sony. So we in Japan were inspired looking at these companies. I think that if Nintendo and Sony hadn’t blazed these paths first, I don’t think we at Capcom would be developing games for the West."

"I think with better management, Japanese films and comics would be able to do much better in the global marketplace," he concluded.

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

[In honor of Noby Noby Boy's PSN debut, I specially wanted to highlight these new GDC talks because I was surprised and delighted to see Keita Takahashi pop up at the last minute - and I'm wondering if Level-5 will discuss their Ghibli game in any detail, yum.]

Organizers of next month's Game Developers Conference have revealed major new talks from Keita Takahashi on Noby Noby Boy, Valve's Michael Booth on Left 4 Dead, and Level-5's Akihiro Hino, on Professor Layton and his firm's other titles.

A high-profile late addition to the program for the San Francisco-based developer event, Katamari Damacy creator Keita Takahashi will present a talk called 'All About Noby Noby Boy', discussing his supremely quirky new PlayStation Network title. Attendees are promised that "This class will be a refreshing change of pace."

Also newly confirmed is 'From Counter-Strike to Left 4 Dead: Creating Replayable Cooperative Experiences' from Valve's Michael Booth. As the description explains: "This session will review the high-level design of Left 4 Dead, how it evolved from Counter-Strike, and the importance of procedural systems such as the AI Director in creating replayable and compelling cooperative experiences."

Finally, in one of the firm's first-ever Western conference appearances, Level-5's Yasuhiro Akasaka will speak alongside company president Akihiro Hino on 'Level-5’s Techniques to Producing a Hit Game — From Professor Layton to Inazuma Eleven and The Another World'.

The studio is noted for games spanning Dark Cloud through Dragon Quest VIII. More recently, its acclaimed Professor Layton DS puzzle game series and move into self-publishing in Japan is notable, with upcoming titles including Studio Ghibli co-operation The Another World.

Game Developers Conference 2009 takes place at the Moscone Center from March 23rd to 27th, and more information on the event and registration is available at the official GDC website.

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

[My colleagues Chris Remo and Brandon Sheffield are at the DICE Summit in Las Vegas right now, and Gamasutra has our full coverage, of course. But I thought we should run the most thought-provoking write-ups here, starting with Remo's write-up of Gabe Newell's excellent opening lecture.]

Kicking off DICE 2009, Valve co-founder Gabe Newell discussed a theme central to his company’s success: entertainment as a service.

“The old way was using intermediaries,” Newell said, in a lecture attended by Gamasutra as the Las Vegas game business event.

“The product would be sold through retailers or other intermediaries. …You were really focused on spending three years to build value for your customers to get through the friction of the retail experience.”

When you focus on entertainment as a service, on the other hand, “you will use your customer base to reach new customers, and your focus is much more about providing ongoing value to your customers – maybe every three weeks, or even more often than that.”

The internet is fundamentally changing the medium, says Newell, and the new model affects all parts of the business.

“There are songs that are dusty, sitting in the back catalogue, and by putting a service layer on top of it – some level of interactivity – those very same songs become very profitable all over again,” he says, pointing to games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero as ways of making existing media “vibrant again.”

The Piracy Thing

Moving onto the hot-button issue of piracy, Newell says pricing is not the main problem. “The pricing issue, I think, is really misleading,” he says. “In the PC audience, these people are spending thousands of dollars on their PCs and their internet connectivity. They are perfectly happy to spend money, so that’s not the issue. But when it comes to the service, that’s where the pirates are way ahead of us.”

He gave an example of wanting to own copies of the Dr. Who television series on DVD – but being unable to legally do so, because it isn’t available in his region. When consumers are presented with such scenarios, pirates win out.

Furthermore, Newell claims, techniques like DRM actually increase piracy, not decrease it. It puts more distance between content creators and their customers, which ends up disempowering the creators.

Keeping The Customer Close

On that theme, Newell noted that Valve conducts huge amounts of gameplay and other data tracking on Steam to help with game design and pricing schedules – but rather than putting a veil of secrecy between users and that information, Valve makes it available to the press to distribute it out to the gaming community at large, strengthening the bonds between creators and consumers.

The word of mouth and other “natural” marketing that occurs as a result of close communication with the user base ends up being far more meaningful and effective than traditional paid marketing, Newell notes.

Newell says Steam, Valve’s digital distribution platform was formulated after asking the following question: “How can we have a relationship with our customer to maximize the relationship to our customer and monitize that relationship?”

Steam currently boasts 20 million users and 350 games – and the service is seeing consistent year-on-year growth of 100 percent.

What People Want

There are some key desires on the part of both the customer and the provider, Newell notes. Customers, for example, want portability of their content and files, multiplayer games that are free of cheating, software that keeps itself updated, a broad and diverse variety of games, and a rich social environment.

On the other hand, says the co-founder, businesses have their own desires. They want to be paid for their content without needing to worry about rampant piracy, and they want to be able to maintain worldwide pricing structures.

“If it makes total sense for me to have certain pricing in one part of the world, I want to make sure that price doesn’t flow into other parts of the world and mess up my distribution models,” he says.

Developers also want to stay in touch with their customers – a desire that intersects with the consumers’ own desires. But they also want useful data that shows if, and to what degree, promotions are having a real, tangible effect. Trying to track such information at retail is “like handling your data with oven mitts on,” says Newell, but Steam-like platforms make it trackable in real time.

Businesses also want a choice of business models – some games might be subscription-based, some might depend on advertising revenue, some might rely on downloadable content, and so on.

A Case Study

Valve’s Team Fortress 2 provides a real-world example of the “entertainment as service” model. When the company shipped the game, “that was just the start,” Newell says.

In the 14 months since the game shipped, the PC version of the game has seen 63 updates – “that’s the frequency you want to be providing updates to your customers,” he adds. “You want to say, ‘We’ll get back to you every week.’”

“The degree to which you can engage your customer base in creating value for your other players” is key, says Newell. “When people say interesting or intelligent things about your product, it will translate directly into incremental revenue for the content provider.”

“We think our customers are ahead of us on the notion of what kind of entertainment company they want us to be,” he says. “They’re saying, you can’t be a game company anymore, you have to be an entertainment company. …The successful entertainment companies are the ones who have product development groups who are successful at making cross-media entertainment choices that are the most valuable.”

For example, Valve has made a series of Team Fortress 2 short films that have proved very successful in increasing visibility of the game – and the company plans to have the team responsible for those movies to move onto creating comics.

“Why does it work?” he asked. “It works because the people who build it are the same people who build the game.” Newell painted a strong contrast between keeping such supplementary content in-house, and contracting it out to a third party that has less investment in the core property.

Converting Customers

Much of the success of Team Fortress 2 comes from players who become evangelists for its games – Valve hands out limited-time Steam-based “guest passes” to its most fervent players, who then introduce their friends to the game.

The hardcore players tend to become invested in making sure their friends have a good time for the duration of their free pass – and the conversation rate among those friends ends up being incredibly high.

“Converting people from being spectators to being paying participants,” Newell sums up, “is something that a clerk at a retail store can’t possibly do.”

Pricing As A Service

The retail model of “lower the price until the game ends up in the bargain bin” is purely a function of “friction in the [retail] system,” Newell argues – it’s not a necessary pricing model outside of brick-and-mortar stores.

In reality, he says, with an online service, pricing can be moved up or down depending on appropriate data, those changes can be executed instantly, and customer response data will be available “within five minutes.”

“Last weekend, we decided to do an experiment,” he says, referring to this past weekend’s Left 4 Dead sale, which brought the game down to $24.99 through Steam – sales rose 3000 percent, and revenue far eclipsed the game’s sales during its launch window.

Meanwhile, Newell notes, retail sales did not change at all (full Steam integration allows Valve to monitor retail sales as well) – defeating the assumption that Steam sales cannibalize retail sales.

“One thing that really annoys me is the inefficiency of pricing we have in our industry,” Newell says.

When Valve held its recent holiday sale, titles discounted by 10 percent (the minimum) they saw revenue (not unit) increases of 35 percent. At a 25 percent discount, revenue was up 245 percent.

At 50 percent off, revenue was up 320 percent, and at a 75 percent discount, revenue was up an astonishing 1470 percent. Newell stressed again that those revenue boosts represent actual revenue dollars, and not unit volumes.

Wrapping it up, Newell again pointed to emerging services like Kindle and iTunes as further proof of this service model permeating modern business development – and reinforcing its importance to the games industry.

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

[Originally published on Gamasutra but with distinct GSW relevance, not least because Facade creator Andrew Stern is trying to bring some really interesting design aspects back to those darn cute virtual pet games, here's a Christian Nutt-conducted interview about Touch Pets Dogs.]

Rolando publisher ngmoco and Stumptown Game Machine have announced the spring 2009 release of Touch Pets Dogs for the iPhone -- a networked virtual pets game, and the first product from the Portland, Oregon studio, founded by Andrew Stern.

This game marks the reemergence of Stern into the world of virtual pets, a field he was at the foundation of, with the creation of the Petz PC CD-ROM franchise on PCs in the '90s while at PF Magic.

The Petz franchise has successfully been resurrected (largely in name only) by Ubisoft following the success of Nintendo's title Nintendogs. But Stern is also known for the narrative experiment Façade, and is promising that this iPhone title be significantly more interesting than your average virtual pet game.

In addition to the predictable touch interaction with an adorable cartoon puppy, the game features advanced AI simulation and social networking features that make it a more interesting proposition.

Thus, Gamasutra used a detailed demo at ngmoco's San Francisco offices as a chance to talk with Stern, who is the director of Stumptown Game Machine and is designing the game and working as an AI behavior engineer on the project.

Also present was Karlo Kilayko, the game's producer at Stumptown, and subjects discussed include the foundation of this new developer, the game itself, the state of virtual pets and AI simulation in games, player agency in AI-driven games, and more.

New Games, New Company

Can you catch me up on your personal history?

AS: I started working on the Façade R&D in January 2000. I've been working on that for four or five years. I did some other freelancing in between. It took a long time. I actually continued doing more on R&D until 2008 and continued past [the inception of Stumptown]. At the moment I'm fulltime on this stuff. Like I said, it borrows from it.

You recently founded your company, Stumptown Game Machine. This is the first game that you're working on, right?

Andrew Stern: Right. The Façade technology out there -- there was another studio I worked at called Procedural Arts that sort of owns the Façade tech. And so Stumptown Games is like a sister studio to that.

So you're maintaining both studios for separate projects?

AS: At the moment, yeah.

You're back to developing mainstream products. Façade was not a commercial product.

AS: Right. It was a lot of R&D, but gearing towards smart products. And so, right, that's exactly what I'm interested in and what we want to do with Stumptown Game Machine -- discover new genres where AI is one of the primary components of enabling [gameplay].

What was your intent in founding Stumptown Game Machine?

AS: iPhone games were the way we wanted to go. We started working with ngmoco. Yeah, that is our focus.

How many people do you have working on the game?

AS: In our studio we have three or four full-time, several are three-quarters time and several are contractors. The total number of people involved is 14 or 15. Just about every game developer in Portland. [laughter]

So, everyone who is working on this game is actually working out of your studio, even if they are contractors?

AS: Yeah. They are all in town. There are a couple of people who are not in town, like the lead animator who I used to work with on the original Petz is in LA. But, virtually everyone is from Portland. Yeah, we have an office there.

Is that the model that you are pursuing for your studio, to keep it together? Or are you outsourcing?

AS: I have always found, development-wise... I've mostly worked at start-ups. Definitely as much face-to-face time, with everyone working together very closely, works really well. Well, sound effects, for example, or music is something that you can more easily outsource.

But, for the core game, we are trying to keep it as face-to-face as we can. I've found that we just get more. The iPhone games are on short schedules. We're trying to get to market, so the faster we can make it and the better communication, so face-to-face is good for that. I lean away from outsourcing important features.

Karlo Kilayko: Yeah. Art and sound can be broken off a little bit, except for animation. I think the only reason it works with our animator remotely is because Andrew and Jeremy have worked together for a long time.

AS: Yeah, we worked together for a long time. We know what to do. We have built similar things in the past, so we know what we're doing.

The AI Question

Now, obviously your background has been in AI, and behavioral simulation with the original Petz.

AS: And also direct interaction. Very lifelike animation, too. It's a combination of AI and animation.

And Façade sort of carries the same conversational simulation and behavioral simulation aspects too.

AS: Exactly.

So what's really compelling to you about simulating those things?

AS: Yeah. I mean, applying AI to games is like the killer app for AI -- games are the killer app for AI. You know, everyone's fascinated in creating simulated living characters in games.

It's just a super-compelling area to work in. It's the medium for the twenty-first century for the story, obviously. It's where the next generation of the story is going to go.

What do you think about the state of AI in games right now? First of all, in terms of execution? What's being done right now, do you think?

AS: I mean, today's games are really impressive. No doubt about that. Especially graphics environments and AIs are getting better. I mean, they're still mostly focused on tactical AI, strategy AI -- the actual emotional life of characters is still really shallow, unfortunately.

There can be fancy cutscenes, but in terms of actual interactivity with characters and their emotional lives and conversation, the technology still has a long way to go.

So the Façade project was a big experiment in R&D to try to push on that. Virtual pets are in the same universe, trying to push hard on creating models of emotion and personality, having them express themselves. So it's all sort of the same push, more and more lifelike characters.

And of course that enables new genres of games. I mean, this is a new genre here, we've got. We're taking virtual pets but we're adding social networking to it, and mobile. So it's sort of a cross-genre thing, but the AI enables these new genres of games. So it's really exciting.

So is the AI technology in your new game particularly advanced compared to what you've done in the past?

AS: It borrows some of it. It has new things. The Dog Feed, this sort of ongoing story -- it's a bit of story generation. And there's a bit of AI -- how do you describe the events, you know? And how do the dogs decide, are they going to become friends or romances, there's a little bit of personality there. So, yeah, it borrows some from the Façade stuff, and it adds a few new things.

Is there an AI model of the dog in terms of its attributes, and the AI model in terms of like, building relationships or things like that? How does that work?

AS: Yeah. It has a model of what its base personality is, and we're probably going to expose some of the players to that, some not exposed yet. Like, is the dog, how social is it? How greedy, or generous, or tolerant, or energetic -- all these various personality traits.

And then those determine what is going to make another dog attracted to it. So some dogs are really attracted to high-status -- dogs that have accumulated lots of toys, for example. That might attract a sort of materialistic dog. And some other dogs might be sort of introverted, and want another dog that's also introverted.

Or maybe some dogs are more conservative; so, they meet another dog who's got, like, six romances going on. Maybe at first they get wooed by them, but once they meet some other girlfriend or boyfriend of that dog, now they're totally turned off. So there's a little model. It's not super-sophisticated; we have to keep it simple.

How does player agency fit into that? Some of these things are values that can reflect the way the player perceives, or wants to aim, their dog.

AS: Yeah. So when they first adopt the dog, we're going to expose some of the personality. So you're already making a decision, in the adoption center -- do I want a dog that's promiscuous? [laughter] Do I want a dog[-friendly] dog? There'll be some decision there.

And then you can influence your dog's personality, to some degree, depending on how you take care of it. You know, the identity, try to shape more of it with these missions, can be an influence. And during the play date, you can buy gifts in the pet store to give to your dog, to give to other dogs. Or depending how I dress my dog up, make him dress up in an embarrassing outfit or not, you know, that might influence things.

If my dogs start to scuffle, and I decide -- do I pull them apart, or keep fighting? So there's various factors, and the idea that the Dog Feed is explaining to you, what is the reasoning behind what just happened? So, yeah, the player has agency there. But the dog also has a mind of his own, too. So it's like a collaboration between you and the dog.

Are you working with anyone who has a background in social networking or web development or is that sort of like stuff that you just taken as an influence?

AS: Yes, and its influence. We're learning as we go. We're working closely with these guys here [at ngmoco] of course. And we've been working on some stuff for a while now. But yeah, definitely surveying what's out there and learning what works and what doesn't work.

Adding Social Networking: The Sharable Player Story

It's interesting, and the fact -- you talked about it in the demo -- the Dog Feed is a status report on the interactions your dog has had. And I'm assuming it's going to cover the missions you talked about, where the dog goes off and you send him on missions and, also, the relationships he has with your friends' dogs.

AS: Yeah. And, maybe, any other things that you just happen to do. If I train my dog to now catch a Frisbee, then that will be announced, too. Also, dogs that need to be fed or that no one has been playing with, it will announce that they need that. It's a whole huge mix of stuff.

The key to making this interesting for a lot of people is having dog relationships between themselves and other players. Especially in San Francisco, almost everyone I know has an iPhone, and probably a bunch of people are going to play this game. But you still have to make that leap to both agree to buy the game and then network together. What kind of challenges do you see in terms of getting that sort of social networking aspect up and running in a game context?

AS: Word of mouth is obviously huge with these kinds of games. We are trying to make this so that the game is so cool that I would want to show you. Right? "How cool is this? You have to get this game so that we can have our dogs play together!"

We are thinking of other mechanisms for ways to have players find other players. There will be a global feed, too, where you can view activity going on in general over the whole network. You could potentially find other players who you've never met that way.

The social networking aspect of it is something that I think is probably going to be compelling for people. Obviously, that's why you put it in there. People like to compare, and I think people like to compete in different ways. That is probably going to drive it.

AS: Yeah. Some of it will be competition -- like "my stats are higher than yours." Or I see cool stuff that you're doing with your dog, and I'm going to want to do that. But I think some of it -- I don't know if "cooperation" is the word, but the "play" is going to be fun, to make our dogs go through relationships. Oh, our dogs were in love, now they've broken up and now they're back together again. That's great.

KK: It's like a soap opera.

AS: Yeah. There's some competition and there is some just play.

KK: It's a story.

AS: Yeah, a story.

A sort of a procedural narrative emerges from the dog's life.

AS: Yeah.

Is there any sort of arc to it? Is it a chronology of events, or is there an arc that you see emerging?

AS: As your dog's social life gets richer over time, I think the dog will eventually need to reflect that. If two dogs had been together in the past, they'd broken up and they got back together, then you have now progressed to that point. They are reunited.

And with those missions, there is definitely a progression that you make in terms of achievements in the missions. There are some arcs there.

In a way, with soap operas, you can go on forever. Right? The way that soap operas do, things happening again... It is always interesting to see why: "Why are we friends or not, today?"

There are also moods. We can still be friends, but our dogs could be annoyed at each other today for some reason. Then they would recover from that. Or our dogs are in a romance, and then my dog is attracted to some other dog but hasn't started a romance with that other dog. I think it will be, hopefully, endlessly entertaining to see that unfold.

Tell me about the design of the missions. You alluded to the missions, but we weren't able to check it out. What I got was that you pick a mission and send your dog on it. You don't see that mission happening but you get the result.

AS: You'll get a screen shot, though, of what happened. You'll see your dog rescuing a cat off of Mount Everest. Then, on the Dog Feed, if you click on that item, Dog Feed, anyone can see that image.

The State of A.I. Today

What do you think of this state of the virtual
pet genre? I'm not asking you specifically talk about any project, but do you think it's evolved, or do think there's a lot of room to evolve?

AS: Yeah, there's a lot [of room]... it needs to evolve more. Yeah, we need to see more new stuff with the genre.

It seems to me that with the current capacity of any of the platforms that I have mentioned, iPhone, DS, anything, there is probably more things to be done, but the simulation aspect is very weak. I would think probably in terms of behavioral simulation, there's room for improvement.

AS: Yeah. That's the hardest thing to do. That's no surprise that most virtual pet products are a little light on the AI and the simulation part. It's hard. It takes a lot of expertise and a lot of time. So...

What's the benefit to concentrating on it? What's the concrete benefit to concentrating on that part?

AS: It's coolness. It's cool, the actual product, the quality in the product. Just shipping it and get help to sell products.

Do you think that's what the end user is going to perceive that?

KK: Even when I play it, after so many months, I'll see the puppy do something that's emergent or a little different that I've not seen before and it's really cool. You start to form a better connection with it.

AS: You just believe in it as a living thing. It's not fake. It's not simple, or obvious... it feels more alive. That's the goal at least. That's what we are striving for.

What about communicating that to the player?

AS: There's going to be more of everything you see here [indicates screen with dog on it] but there's going to be even more facial expression. Like if he's hungry he's not going to be running around happily -- if he is starved, really needing to be fed. He's going to whine and howl and yip.

With characters, there's sort of the underpinning of AI but what's important is the way the AI expresses itself.

KK: Yeah. If it's not expressive it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter how much affect is going on if it is not showing it, right?

It goes back to -- how does the simulation engage the player?

AS: Right.

Have you talked to people, like other professionals who are working on AI? Have you found that there is a demand for people wanting to push forward? This is going to sound accusatory; I thought that AI would push forward more in this generation than maybe it had, in terms of behavior.

AS: Yeah. I think a lot of us want it to. I think the reality is that large studios... I know a lot of the AI programmers and designers, and they all of course want to push and innovate.

But it has a lot of constraints. They have to ship product. They can't take too much technical risk. So, it's really the smaller studios and indie studios that can afford to take technical risks and innovate. I think that is where a lot of the innovation will come from, like ngmoco.

KK: My total personal opinion, but I think the expansion of online gaming has actually slowed down a little bit with the perceived value, from the business side. Because when you have other humans to play against...

AS: Yeah. That is true. With the rise with online gaming, AI perhaps takes a little bit more of a backseat for a little while.

I've heard people say that explicitly, at least in terms of, "Who can make a better opponent than another person?"

AS: Well, but it's not about opponents. It's about cool characters that are creating, potentially, a story. So, it's about when you need strong characters.

The problem is that you can make small, incremental innovations in AI, working in a large studio. But to really make a revolutionary leap, you have to take more risks, and you have to take more time. It's tough to do within larger companies. It's part of how larger companies work, I think.

There's that, combined with the fact that it is a really hard problem, even if you have a lot of time. I spent five years, off and on, working on the Façade stuff. It was like three person-years for my collaborator and me. We made some progress, but it is a long way to go.

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

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

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

The delights in this edition include a simple yet polished space-based RTS, a small but atmospheric maze game, an arcade game which features a talking moon, an action RPG in which you're supposed to beat in thirty seconds, and a mod for a new release from last year's IGF finalist in the Seumas McNally Grand Prize category.

Game Pick: 'The Space Game' (Casual Collective, browser)
"A space-based RTS which involves building up a mining base while holding back enemies. It's simple but very polished, with a number of different modes to choose from and a variety of baddies who are always on the offensive."

Game Pick: 'Where' (Mike Inel, freeware)
"Where is a small but atmospheric maze game created by in under three days, and apparently 3D glasses can actually be used while playing for that added effect as well. There is an actual way to reach your intended destination, although you will have to figure out the solution to a puzzle or two in order to get there."

Game Pick: 'Classic Night' (Akarolls, freeware)
"A strategy game with arcade elements, where players are asked to help a talking moon grow brighter by constructing utilities or buildings which give off light. Light from flowers and structures can then be collected as the main resource for upgrades or new constructions."

Game Pick: '30 Second Hero' (UUE, freeware)
"An action RPG consisting of really short battles that require no interaction, as players race against the clock to save the kingdom from an evil wizard's wrath. As indicated by the title, you only have thirty seconds to level up your character sufficiently for the final battle, although additional time can be bought if you have enough gold to cover the cost of your purchase."

Game Pick: '4 Minutes and 33 Seconds of Uniqueness' (Petri Purho & friends, freeware)
"An extremely strange yet unique invention by which the user loaded the 'game' and then simply sat and watched a bar fill up. If anyone else in the world booted the program up while you were 'playing', it would quit and you had lost. If, however, you managed to last the entire time as the sole user, you win... Now Jonathan Basseri has created a tracker so players can follow exactly who is 'winning' at any time."

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

[Have independent games finally "come of age"? Venture Arctic creator and indie veteran Andy Schatz looks at the recent history of the scene to examine why this decade is "defined by the rise of the casual game and the subsequent birth of the modern indie game."]

We always knew "indie" meant something. But no one could ever define what it was.

With the success of high-wattage Independent Games Festival winners, the divorce of the casual gaming market from the indie gaming market, and the continued commoditization of free-to-play flash games, the beast has finally emerged from the mud. It has become clear what indie games are.

How has indie games distribution evolved, and how has it shaped the content and helped to finally define what indie means as a genre of game? Let's discuss.

The 80s were defined by the golden age of computer games, the rise of the console, and the apex of the arcade. The 90s will probably be remembered best for the move to 3D. And it is becoming clear that the 2000s are defined by the rise of the casual game and the subsequent birth of the modern indie game.

What Blessed Road Hath Led Us Here? (2003-2007)

The first half of the decade saw the rise of the portals on the strength of sales from games like Diner Dash and Zuma in 2004. This opened up a digital distribution route for smaller games made by small "proto-indie" teams.

The fact that some of these small teams were making buckets of cash turned the heads of game industry execs and spurred many devs to quit their jobs working on AAA games to try to strike it rich working on smaller, more personal projects (see Last Day Of Work, makers of Virtual Villagers).

During these times, indie just meant "small and unfettered". A majority of the people making indie games were actually making casual games intended for distribution on portals like Yahoo Games, MSN, and the like.

From 2004 to 2007, two things began to happen:

1) So many people were trying to get into the game that production values (and thus costs) started going up.

2) Portals began to switch from finding games with hidden potential to spending their time and money on sure bets -- games in proven genres like Click-Management (Diner Dash) and Hidden Object (Mystery Case Files).

Then, portals like Big Fish Games started the price wars. Big Fish started offering "game passes" to customers, who would pay a subscription fee in order to pay a smaller amount, $7, per game purchased. Eventually, the other portals followed suit, most recently with Reflexive’s price drop across the board to less than $10 per game.

The Road Forks (2007-2008)

The next two years will be remembered as the high water-mark for indie games.

As the casual game market became inhospitable for indie developers, a few other big players saw the casual portals covered in cash and decided to open up their own distribution portals.

Like the earlier web portals, Microsoft, Nintendo, Sony, Valve, and others decided that there was a fortune to be made on the backs of indie developers. Xbox Live Arcade, WiiWare, PSN, iTunes, Facebook, and Steam all offered distribution routes for the indie devs who made games that no longer fit into the narrowing definition of "casual".

Like the golden age of the casual games, these new portals are still searching for a formula for success. Every time it seems that they have it figured out (XBLA with retro and casual games, WiiWare with their Nintendo back catalog), an indie game comes along to break the mold.

Titles like World of Goo, Castle Crashers, Audiosurf, Braid, Everyday Shooter, and fl0w have all broken rules, bended genres, and proven that in the entertainment world, there is still lots of money to be made with innovation.

There may be dark times ahead, though. Microsoft dropped the developer’s share of royalties in half on Xbox Live Arcade. After a very strong start with the iPhone store, games have been dropping in price dramatically, and the indie applications are slowly getting choked out by licensed brands.

New Allies

Luckily, indies have a new ally in their relationship with distribution portals -- the gaming press.

The lack of excitement about hardcore gaming has left the gaming press starving for content. Lo and behold, indies come along to save the day.

Sites like Kotaku and TIGSource have benefited hugely from the oddities coming out of the indie gaming world. And their attention has allowed indie devs to command more lucrative deals and even make money on direct sales.

Distribution is no longer the only key to success in the indie world; PR is the second avenue to indie success.

Is This the Promised Land?

If the quality and innovation of the content is defined by the distribution opportunities, we are currently hitting a high point in independent game development. The "core portals" such as Steam and XBLA are still experimenting, and smaller distribution avenues are opening up as well (see Kongregate and Newgrounds).

In 2006, indie games were lumped with serious games and casual games, because they all had one thing in common: they were less expensive to make than AAA games. But the changes in funding and distribution has split those markets from one another and helped define what indie games mean to the customer.

Gamers and customers now see indie games as the poetry, the short stories of the gaming world. They are different, they are thoughtful, and they make you appreciate nuance.

As 2D Boy's (World of Goo) Kyle Gabler said in his recent Global Game Jam keynote ,the best games made in game jams "introduce one new concept to gaming as fast and as clear as possible." This is largely true for all of indie games as well. The finalists in this year’s IGF competition also tend towards this concept.

Why is this important? Because in the past, indie games didn’t mean anything to customers. We, the developers, knew what it meant -- it was important to us because it meant that we were unfettered. But customers didn’t have expectations about what an indie game was.

Customers do have expectations now. Indie games are games that, by definition, don’t fit into any other box. They cost from $0 to $30. They are "cool" -- knowing about them is "cool."

Five years ago, the market looking for games that fit this description was very small. Today, it’s a viable market, and one that is likely to be resistant to overly oppressive distribution portals.

The Future of Indie Games

It is always true that every business-related article in any publication is wrong. It is the visionaries that find and exploit exceptions to the rules.

Take Grubby Games, for example -- they still manage to exploit the casual gaming market with My Tribe, while developing the ultra-indie, ultry-nerdy, web-based community game, Incredibots.

Indie games will change. But indie has finally emerged from its adolescence and found its own identity, unique from casual games. Indie games have come of age.

[Andy Schatz created the critically acclaimed indie titles Venture Arctic and Wildlife Tycoon: Venture Africa and is currently working on the next title in the ecosystem-sim series, Venture Dinosauria. You may also recognize him from the 2007 and 2008 IGF awards, which he hosted. Andy writes for his business and indie game devblog at www.pocketwatchgames.com/blog.]

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

[Have been enjoying my Gamasutra colleague Chris Remo's Idle Thumbs leisure-time podcast of late, and especially the game-related songs he's been doing for it, so I thought it might be nice to showcase a couple of the highlights here. And here's a brand-new, fresh one.]

For the latest installment highlighting songs from the Idle Thumbs podcast, we're looking at the song 'A Letter To Edge', from Idle Thumbs 19: "Citizen Killzone". As Mr. Remo is away covering DICE in beautiful Las Vegas, I thought I'd explain briefly what you need to know:

- The UK's Edge magazine re-published (via Edge Online) a review of Guerrilla's Killzone 2 for PlayStation 3 in which they assigned it a score of 7 out of 10.

- Over at PSXExtreme.com (bear with me, here!), one Ben Dutka published an editorial called 'Edge Killzone 2 Review: A Disservice To Game Consumers'.

- Among the gems within the PSXExtreme critique, which refuses to link to the Edge review: "[The score] is assigning a numerical value to a game that basically says, "it's good, but there are better titles out there for your money." This...is...a...lie. That's right, a lie."

- Oh, and also: "We're not saying everyone is going to enjoy KZ2, but this review is akin to saying something similar about "The Godfather II" or "Citizen Kane."

As a result, Chris composed a charming ditty on this very subject. The song and podcast can both be downloaded directly from the official site. The lyrics (and download link) are as follows:

A Letter To Edge (MP3)

"Look, we're not saying that we're right
We're just saying that you're wrong
With your quote-unquote review of Killzone 2
Edge, you're desperate for attention
Yet barely worth a mention
Except to take contention with your desperate grab for hits

You gave Killzone 2 a seven
I wanted an eleven on our site
Our scale doesn't go that high but I had to try

And who are you to say Killzone 2 is a good game?
Because it's not
It's a perfect video game
Yes, it's a perfect video game
Oh, it's perfect

You can't give Citizen Kane a seven
Everybody knows, just ask Roger Ebert
He would tell you that's a disgrace
Citizen Kane gets two thumbs up
and therefore so does Killzone 2
The SDF [Sony Defense Force] said so

I would give it three thumbs up
But I don't have three thumbs
So you can lend me one
And together, three thumbs up for Killzone 2!
Me and you, giving Killzone 2 its due

And that leaves one Idle Thumb
Who thought this game was a little bit dumb."

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

[We're talking to this year's Independent Games Festival finalists, and this time Eric Caoili interviews Amanita Design's Jakub Dvorský about Machinarium -- a gorgeous full-scale adventure title populated with rusty, hand-drawn robots -- nominated for the Visual Art Award.]

Based in the Czech Republic, Amanita Design has made a name for itself producing visually unique point-and-click 2D adventure titles, crafting several commissioned games for the BBC, Nike, and symphonic group the Polyphonic Spree.

The studio is best known for its Samorost games, a series of Flash-based releases in which players control a gnome on his quests to save his home planet and recover his kidnapped dog, exploring and interacting with a collection of surreal backdrops to advance the plot. Samorost 2 was a finalist in two categories for the 2007 IGF competition, and took home the "Best Web Browser Game" award.

Machinarium, Amanita's latest title, is once again a point-and-click title featuring detailed, decayed scenes, but it's also the developer's first full-length project. The game will release later this year for PC, with other platforms under consideration.

Featuring hand-drawn graphics, Machinarium follows a little robot who's been left to rust in a scrap yard, as he tries to save his robot-girl friend and stop a bomb attack from the "Black Cap Brotherhood."

We spoke with Amanita's founder and designer Jakub Dvorský about Machinarium, nominated for the Visual Art award at this year's Independent Games Festival (part of Think Services, as is this website):

What kind of background do you have making games?

Jakub Dvorský: I grew up on early 8-bit computer games; I owned an Atari 800XE, and later I had my first PC 386. Of course, I loved to play all their great games. Later on in grammar school, I started doing my own games with some schoolmates, and we enjoyed it a lot.

My first game, Asmodeus, was published 12 years ago. Later, I studied at the Academy of Art in Prague at the Studio of Animated Film (my diploma work was Samorost 1).

What sort of development tools have you been using for Machinarium?

JD: Our tools are pencils and paper, digital camera, tablets, PCs, Photoshop, Flash, Rebol, sound recorder and some musical instruments.

How long has your team been working on Machinarium?

JD: Two years already. It should be finished and released this fall.

What advantages or attraction do you see with the point-and-click genre over others that have kept you producing these adventure titles?

JD: The narrative part -- the story, puzzles, characters and the whole micro-world itself -- are the most important things in adventure games. I prefer these things over game mechanics and tactics, which are the main elements of first-person shooters or real-time strategy games.

It's also possible to create a standalone adventure/puzzle game independently in a small team like ours, which is probably absolutely impossible for a first-person shooter.

Did you notice any differences in your development process, working on a full-length adventure title versus the shorter experiences you've usually released?

JD: We put together a bigger team, and the communication between us is now a very important part of the work. Therefore, it's more complicated, but we also have more fun and the results are better. Also, we need more patience as the development process is really long and it's always difficult to stay concentrated on one project for such a long time.

What lessons did you take from your previous games that you were able to apply with Machinarium?

JD: Firstly, we gathered important general experiences from creating games and working in a team. However ,smaller projects like Samorost 1, can almost be made without a proper scenario, which is necessary for a bigger full-length game. Secondly I learned a little about how to create game puzzles, which I hope will be much better in Machinarium than in our previous games.

What can users expect to see in Machinarium that they didn't see in your previous games, or perhaps in any other titles in the genre?

JD: Compared to our older games, Machinarium will be bigger and more detailed. [It will have] a stronger story line, more logical puzzles, an inventory, and a couple of other new features, like mini-games and animated communication between characters. The main character, a little robot, will be able to walk freely around the locations and be telescopic.

Compared to other titles in the genre, I think we try to put a bigger emphasis on details and things which aren't in the main focus -- subtle animation jokes, music composed carefully for each location, and every building, character, or item in the game having its own history and meaning. We also try to think a little differently when designing the puzzles.

Was there any specific art or media that you looked to for inspiration or guidance for Machinarium's visual feel?

JD: We were influenced by a lot of science fiction books and films -- Stanislav Lem, Douglas Adams, Jules Verne, Ray Bradbury, Stanley Kubrick, Karel Zeman -- and also by older adventure games like Grim Fandango, Myst, Gobliins, Discworld, Neverhood, and Monkey Island. Besides that, a lot of our inspiration comes from old rusty machines, abandoned factories, and industrial buildings.

Machinarium's protagonist -- a little robot left behind in a scrap yard -- will naturally draw comparisons to Pixar's recent film Wall-E. What did you think of the movie? And did seeing Wall-E affect the development or direction of Machinarium at all?

JD: I saw Wall-E when we had the whole concept, main character, and also many backgrounds and animations already finished, so it didn't affect us at all. However ,I must admit there are many similarities -- the post-apocalyptic world, the main protagonist being a rusty robot, almost no dialogue, etc.

Still, the poetics and the conception of our game is very different. I enjoyed that film; the animation part is especially awesome.

The characters in your games speak very little, if at all, and hardly converse with each other. Why do you feel this is important in your games?

JD: It's for a couple of reasons -- listening to endless conversations is boring, I'm a bad writer, and it's easier to localize the game when there are no words in any existing language. However, this time the main character sometimes communicates by comic bubbles with simple, funny animations instead of written text or speaking.

Can you describe the process with which you usually create the puzzles and scenes in your adventure games?

JD: First, we create a lot of small assorted ideas -- puzzles, characters, environments, situations or pieces of a story. Then we usually make a very rough drawing of some location and think about what should happen there and take some older ideas to use it here.

When the location with all of the puzzles is designed, we paint the background and characters, and then it's all animated and programmed.

What animation technique did your team use for Machinarium, and why you decided to use it?

JD: We use cut-out animation, which is a simple classical animation technique where you paint all parts of a character's body separately, cut it out with scissors, and the animate it frame-by-frame under the camera.

It's similar to puppet animation, only it's 2D. Of course, we are doing all the graphic parts and animations in the computer, so we don't use scissors and a camera, but most of the animations are done essentially similarly -- frame-by-frame and very carefully.

Were there any elements that you experimented with but decided didn't work with your vision for Machinarium?

JD: Yes, we wanted the main character to be more convertible into different shapes with different functions, but it was technically very difficult and it also didn't fit into the story, so we abandoned that idea.

However, I still think it could work nicely in a game like this, so maybe we'll try to implement that feature in some future game.

What do you think of the state of independent game development, and are there any other independent games out that you currently admire?

JD: I've seen independent game development growing and blooming recently, and I'm very glad about that. There are a lot of really great new ideas, and big developers are obviously inspired by that.

I really enjoyed Knytt Stories, World of Goo, and most recently Dyson, an addictive RTS. I'm looking forward to Fez, Blueberry Garden, Feist, and Night Game.

Is there anything unique that you feel that Amanita, as an independent studio operating in the Czech Republic, has in its that isn't present in most other developers in other countries?

JD: The Czech Republic has strong tradition of animated film -- Jiri Trnka, Jan Svankmajer, Bretislav Pojar, Jiri Barta -- so I hope that we are its followers.

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

[GameSetLinks is GameSetWatch's daily link round-up post, culling from hundreds of weblogs and outlets to compile the most interesting longform writing, links, and criticism on the art and culture of video games.]

A few more of the trusty RSS-extracted GameSetLinks here, and we're starting out with Spitfire on what you should be looking for in game education, before moving on to Gaynor's GDC guide and some House Of The Underdogs mourning.

Also in this set of links - designing around existing IP for games, and how we can calculate scale and therefore return for lots of tiny indie titles for things like newsgames, based on Global Game Jam numbers.

Cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo:

Game-Ism: 'Education: Getting Your Money’s Worth'
Excellent and practical advice about game schools.

Fullbright: GDC Guide 09
2K's Gaynor does an excellent job of tracking down some of the very best GDC lectures this year.

Flash Of Steel: 'RIP HotU'
House Of The Underdogs was not the way to preserve games, but it had a lot of important metadata. Luckily much of the metadata is available via Wayback Machine, though.

Elder Game: MMO game development » Designing For An IP
Some interesting, perhaps controversial thoughts here: 'A movie might take a tiny IP based on a book and literally reinvent it for a completely new audience. A video game cannot do that. Video games must take an already-mainstream IP and play off of it to make something that appeals to existing fans of the IP.'

Games and Men: Video game innovation and storytelling incompatible?
Yep, yet another article discussing You Have To Burn The Rope's IGF nomination. We'll be announcing a slight naming (and judging) redefinition for that particular category going forward, btw, so at least people know what they are expecting when they see nominees there.

Practical Matters in Breaking Newsgames - News Games: Georgia Tech Journalism & Games Project
'What the [Global Game Jam] demonstrates is not the fact that it is easy to produce a good game in two days with a few people. Rather, it demonstrates that a such an thing can be successful when operating at scale.'

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

[Continuing a series of GameSetWatch interviews from Jeriaska on video game audio, a chat with Tenchu series composer Noriyuki Asakura examines the music behind the notable stealth-based ninja game series.]

The restrained intensity of Noriyuki Asakura's soundtrack to the 1998 Playstation title Tenchu: Stealth Assassins was one design feature that helped to underscore the memorably strategic gameplay. While infiltrating the castles of rival feudal lords by ducking through their shadows, protagonists Rikimaru and Ayame were accompanied by songs that maintained the steady rhythms and artful purpose of a trained assassin.

Developer Acquire's production of Tenchu 4 for the Nintendo Wii and Sony PSP intends a return to the stealth gameplay conventions of the original. In the West, the influence of the first game is mirrored by the title Tenchu: Shadow Assassins.

Asakura, head of the sound studio Mega-Alpha and composer of Tenchu 1 through 3, also makes a return, this time introducing a broader palette of international musical conceits to Tenchu's world of ancient espionage. The latest installment in the series continues to apply progressive rock concepts in broadening the bounds of traditional Asian music.

Taking place in a meeting with the composer during the production of Tenchu 4 Original Soundtrack, an album published by Aniplex Records in Japan, this interview centers on the intersection of audio techniques found in the original Stealth Assassins along with the recently localized Shadow Assassins.

The discussion offers various insights into how the composer sought to differentiate the game's audio from mainstream renderings of traditional Japanese music, in favor of a fusion of Asian musical influences, so that game players could savor an otherworldy soundscape more reflective of the historical setting's distance from everyday reality.

Interview conducted by Jeriaska with translation by Ryojiro Sato. This article is available in Japanese on Game Design Current, in Russian at Game-OST, and in French on Squaremusic.

Composer Noriyuki Asakura

GameSetWatch: Asakura-san, thank you for joining us for this discussion of your music for the Tenchu series of games. In English-language regions, players have commented on how the use of instruments on the original title matched the pace of the game and helped provide the stealth combat with an immersive quality. How did you go about finding a balance between traditional instruments and modern musical styles that would complement the gameplay?

Noriyuki Asakura: I was interested in taking a different approach from what you find in most narratives set in a historical Japanese era. Often an ambient soundtrack styled after imperial court music is used. Because that is frequently the norm, I looked instead to establish a novel vision of Asian music. Instead of limiting myself to Japanese traditions, I opened up the score to Chinese and Thai influences. Beyond that, I incorporated West Asian musical styles, such as the Arabic scale practiced in Turkey. The goal was to fuse these various elements with Western rock and fusion in a way that would defy anyone's expectations. Just like you had progressive rock music in the '70s, I was exploring the idea of progressive Asian music.

GSW: How did you first become involved in the making of Tenchu for the original Playstation console?

Asakura: I had been introduced to Masami Yamamoto (producer at Sony Computer Entertainment), who had been searching for a composer for the project. I was given an impression of the storyline and based on that I delivered a sample from a previous project that I felt might be appropriate. Clearly it resonated with him because he asked to include that very track.

The song had been written for another project, so I was required to speak with the copyright holders, but eventually this track became an important part of Tenchu. This is the theme that plays during the game's opening. For the remainder of the soundtrack I was asked to continue along those lines. Looking back, it was serendipitous that this music arrived in the hands of Tenchu's producer at the right time.

Tenchu Original Soundtrack translated track list

GSW: What previous experiences would you say prepared you for scoring the soundtrack to the game?

Asakura: As far as videogame music is concerned, I was involved in the making of Crime Crackers, a game that was released close to the hardware launch of the Playstation. Sony was going strong, they told me they wanted a cinema-quality music score, and that money was no object.

The quality of a music project cannot help but be influenced by the budget. In this case we had access to the equipment needed for various audio experiments. The end result was as polished as one could have hoped for. For someone who prefers working with actual acoustic instruments, as I do, it was a blessing.

At that point I had yet to recognize the full appeal of the Asian musical aesthetic. When I did come to grasp it, the newfound appreciation was perfectly timed. I had just started composing for Tenchu and the anime Ruroni Kenshin.

GSW: What language do the vocals heard in the intro to the original Tenchu belong to?

Asakura: That's Hausa, a language from West Africa. I was interested in conveying images like "a sense of isolation within the vastness of the surrounding earth" and "being alone at prayer on the dry desert sand." My plan was to use English lyrics, but it felt like the wrong choice for conveying this image. The next step was try it with Japanese, but the language was too close to everyday conversation. I made a variety of attempts at lyrics that suited the original concept, and Hausa was the best match.

GSW: It sounds like you must do a lot of traveling.

Asakura: To get ideas and acquire musical instincts, yes. I've gone to Turkey and Malaysia for this purpose. To generate the energy required of working in the entertainment industry, I visit New York and LA. It's all about a sense of balance. But when I travel, it tends to be by myself.

GSW: The character of Rikimaru is a prominent example of ninjas in videogames. How has the history of the character affected your approach to writing music for the Tenchu series?

Asakura: He's a powerful representation of masculinity, I'd say. There is a scene in Tenchu 3 where he is surrounded by armed assailants and the odds against him are overwhelming. I named the introductory theme of the game "Fate ~SADAME~" as an indication that the character's destiny is to persist, no matter how many enemies face him. That's my image of the character.

GSW: The performers of the song are people you have worked with since?

Asakura: We have a unit called add'ua composed of a guitarist, bassist, vocalist and myself. The vocalist, as you may know already, is Yui Murase.

GSW: Tenchu's gameplay style is often referred to as stealth action. How have you gone about providing a mix of action and suspense in the music to suit this genre?

Asakura: This subject actually relates to the idea of progressive rock as well. Prog rock musicians in the '70s found a way to introduce significant variation to the atmosphere of a given piece by changing keys frequently. To apply this approach to music with an Asian background it seemed to me would organically expand the horizons of those conventions. Sudden dramatic changes in the intensity of the score are situated so as to make listeners more aware of these shifts. However, the most important part of implementing this concept of progressive Asian music was to make it sound natural.

GSW: Tenchu 4 is anticipated as a return to the spirit of the original game. Was the goal to revisit concepts from the Playstation title while also exploring new territory?

Asakura: This was in fact the request I received from the director: to make something entirely original while retaining the image of the original Tenchu. It made me think... That sounds like a contradiction in terms! (laughs) The way I interpreted this challenge was to include new instruments, try and see if drums could be used to different effects, and include a touch of classical. Just how to continue the tradition of Tenchu within an all new context was an enigmatic assignment.

GSW: Were you involved in the making of the Aniplex soundtrack album?

Asakura: Of course. I oversaw the process in its entirety.

Tenchu 4 Original Soundtrack translated track list

GSW: What instruments were recorded for the live tracks?

Asakura: On this score, violins have a strong presence due to the participation of Gen Ittetsu Strings. A frequent collaborator on Tenchu, Kiyotsugu Amano also offers his familiar guitar accompaniment. New to this project is the use of live shinobue [a high pitched Japanese flute] and shamisen. While previously I have sampled sounds for these instruments, I sought out musicians for original recordings for Tenchu 4.

GSW: Can you tell us about some of the other performers that have participated in the recording sessions?

Asakura: Hyakutaka Fukuhara plays the shinobue, while the shamisen is performed by a third-generation shamisen master, Yutaka Oyama. The drummer is a friend of mine, and we performed in a band together back in the day, so he picks up on my ideas quickly. It concerns me that among young composers today, very few have experience playing in a band, as this can be an invaluable experience for a musician. It teaches you to communicate as a musician and work as part of a team. Practicing a given song together with a group, you will learn more about it than by working on it by yourself. Creating only according to one's own personal tastes, a musician finds few opportunities to grow.

GSW: What will be added to the soundtrack for the upcoming PSP port of Tenchu 4?

Asakura: Fundamentally the score is the same for the Wii and PSP versions, but two new tracks have been added to the portable game. There are additional classical elements, something of a departure from the norm. It is a continuation of the Asian musical theme, but with hints of classical music blended in. The audio recordings that took place earlier today included drums and percussion instruments. That is to give the audio more of the feel of a film score.

GSW: Overall, what were you most interested in emphasizing in the process of writing the score to Tenchu 4?

Asakura: Love. The theme is love. It might sound misleading but throughout the series a prevailing theme has been Rikimaru's love for others. As a composer, my job is to help make this love manifest, which is also an expression of care for the figure of Rikimaru. In that sense, the meaning is love.

[The original soundtrack for Tenchu 4 can be imported from Amazon.co.jp. Images courtesy of Ubisoft. Photo by Jeriaska.]

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

[Every week, we sum up sister iPhone site FingerGaming's top news and reviews for Apple's nascent -- and increasingly exciting -- portable games platform, as written by guest editors Danny Cowan and Mathew Kumar.]

This week's notable items in the iPhone gaming space, as covered by FingerGaming, include an upcoming port for Toki Tori, the free release of Magnetic Joe, and reviews for Jetset and WordJong.

Here are the top stories:

- Review: Jetset: A Game For Airports
"Jetset can roughly be described as a time management game — though it's not exactly similar to titles like Diner Dash, the game essentially relies on the player being able to remove the correct prohibited items from passengers' luggage and move them along (without removing acceptable items) before the queue gets too large and the game ends."

- Free Full Version of Magnetic Joe Debuts in App Store
"Most Wanted is using the free version of Magnetic Joe to promote the upcoming App Store release of its sequels, along with ports for the Nintendo DS and WiiWare. Magnetic Joe features 40 levels in all, and has the polish and fullness of a paid App Store title."

- Puzzle Quest Update Brings Lite Version, Free Second Chapter
"Following up on last month's update that fixed a number of issues and bugs, publisher TransGaming has submitted Puzzle Quest's second chapter to Apple for App Store review. Better still, this update will be available as a free download for those who purchased the first chapter."

- Toki Tori Bound for iPhone and iPod Touch
"Dutch developer Two Tribes announced yesterday that its Game Boy Color and WiiWare puzzler Toki Tori will soon make its way to the iPhone and iPod Touch. An App Store release is scheduled for the first quarter of 2009."

- Review: WordJong
"It's rare, then, that a word game features a concept so novel that it stands out among its App Store competition. WordJong features both a unique gameplay mechanic and near-limitless replayability, making it one of the best puzzlers I've played on the iPod Touch so far."

- Bush Shoe-Throwing Title Denied App Store Release
"It's interesting to note Apple's interpretation of the TOS' original (and somewhat vague) wording, which makes no mention of parody content relating to public figures. MyShoe's developer is upset by the rejection, claiming that the issue is one of freedom of speech."

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

[As decided by developer nominations and my lovable wrangling of his peers within the Choice Awards Advisory Committee, Hideo Kojima is being honored for his 20+ years of Metal Gear at GDC next month, hurrah. Here's the full press release.]

The 2009 Game Developers Choice Awards, the highest honors in game development acknowledging excellence in game creation, will honor Hideo Kojima with a Lifetime Achievement Award at this year’s ceremony taking place at the Game Developers Conference next month.

Kojima is Corporate Officer, Executive Producer and Director of Kojima Productions and creator of the seminal Metal Gear series, and the Lifetime Achievement Award recognizes the career and achievements of developers who have made an indelible impact on the craft of game development.

Renowned as one of the world’s most influential contemporary game developers, Hideo Kojima first decided to get involved in the game development business while studying economics.

Driven by the hardware limitations of the MSX personal computer, he pursued a fresh approach to the action game genre – and thus the stealth genre was born with 1987's Metal Gear for Konami.

After creating the cult Snatcher and Policenauts franchises, the global breakthrough for Kojima’s career took place in 1998 when Konami's Metal Gear Solid was released on Sony’s PlayStation platform.

This seminal title has been followed by a host of important sequels and franchise additions, including the critically acclaimed Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, and 2008's multi-million selling Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns Of The Patriots.

Kojima also produced the well-received mech action Zone of the Enders series, and also created Boktai: The Sun in your Hand, a Game Boy Advance game which contained a photometric sunlight sensor in the cartridge that charged a vampire’s solar weapon, another example of the designer's signature disruption of traditional gaming mechanics.

“For years, Hideo Kojima’s contributions to game development have broken new ground and inspired the community to think about creating games in never-before-imagined ways,” said Meggan Scavio, event director of the Game Developers Conference.

“From giving birth to the stealth action game genre to showing game makers how to interact with their players by breaking the ‘fourth wall,’ Kojima’s achievements make him an obvious choice for an award that in previous years has gone to luminaries including Sid Meier, Shigeru Miyamoto, Richard Garriott, Eugene Jarvis, Mark Cerny, Gunpei Yokoi, Yuji Naka and Will Wright.”

Presented by GDC and Webby-award winning Gamasutra.com, the awards ceremony is held in conjunction with the Independent Games Festival and will be hosted on March 25, in the Esplanade Room in the South Hall of San Francisco’s Moscone Center.

The editors of Gamasutra.com, who are in charge of award management, worked in association with the Choice Awards Advisory Committee, which includes notables such as Doug Lombardi (Valve), John Vechey (PopCap), Ben Cousins (EA DICE), Ray Muzyka (BioWare), and Clint Hocking (Ubisoft), to pick the Special Award winners following audience nominations.

Hideo Kojima will also be making his Game Developers Conference speaking debut at GDC09 when he gives the keynote lecture, “Solid Game Design: Making the ‘Impossible’ Possible,” the morning after the Choice Awards Ceremony, on Thursday, March 26, 2009 from 10:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. PST in the Esplanade Room of the Moscone Center’s South Hall.

For further information about the Game Developers Choice Awards, please visit the official Choice Awards website. For further information about GDC and to register for attendance, please visit the official GDC website.

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

[GameSetLinks is GameSetWatch's daily link round-up post, culling from hundreds of weblogs and outlets to compile the most interesting longform writing, links, and criticism on the art and culture of video games.]

Whoa, fresh new week, new GameSetLinks appear to also be here - headed by the 'games in journalism' blog - which is Knight Foundation-supported, btw, a great example of philanthropy taking games seriously - discussing Dead Rising and news reporting, thought-provokingly.

Also in here - what Usenet thought about SNES, why everyone in the game biz itself is still missing the point on Wii, Project Horseshoe reports, and plenty more besides.

Wheeze wheeze wheeze:

Dead Rising and Interventionist Media Ethics - News Games: Georgia Tech Journalism & Games Project
'Does the exclusion of the photography mechanic in the Wii version of Dead Rising change anything about what the game says about photojournalism as a practice?'

Project Horseshoe, 2008 reports
The craziest, most oldskool, borderline theory-tastic whiny, but still fascinating discussions on gaming surface, after last year's instalment of the invite-only micro-conf.

1UP's Retro Gaming Blog : Heart on Fire: Deleted Scenes - #04A
Looking at Usenet for classic gaming opinions of the time is a really nice idea - in this case, the SNES launch.

Video Games Business & Marketing: Video Games needs a Copernicus
You know, I've really liked and respected Russell's posts on this subject to date, but this one goes too far for me. There are some Wii and DS titles nominated for many of the major awards shows (including Choice), and I don't really see, despite being accessible, what 'best of the year' categories that games like Wii Play, Wii Fit, or Mario Kart Wii would fit into. Anyone?

Missed news: Cecropia shuts its doors « Arcade Heroes
I also completely missed the shutdown news late in 2008 - they were the folks behind knob-based arcade storytelling title 'The Act'.

MMOG Nation » The developer of D&D’s online tools needs to go back to school
Usability is just incredibly important - some excellent comments by Michael (who is off to work on DC Universe Online, congrats!) here.

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

[We're continuing a series of quirky Todd Ciolek-conducted interviews for GameSetWatch, and here's a really odd one - with the folks at O'Shea, Limited, who have stashed 3 million sealed Atari cartridges in a cave back in 1990, and have been selling them ever since.]

A Missouri limestone cave is hardly the place you’d expect to find a towering tribute to the excesses of the Atari era, but that’s exactly what a liquidation company created there years ago.

When Atari ditched its stockpiles of unsold games in the early 1990s, O’Shea Ltd. was there to buy up some three million brand-new copies of Joust, Galaga, Tower Toppler, Pole Position, Ms. Pac-Man, and other common titles for the Atari 2600 and 7800.

O’Shea chose an uncommon place to store them: 150 feet underground, in a warehouse built from the unused space of a limestone mine. In the 20,000 square of storage space leased by O’Shea, stacks of sealed Atari games stand in testament to Atari’s past dominance of the video game market, and every title there is available for sale to the public (along with a few Jaguar games) through O’Shea’s website.

In an interview, O’Shea president Bill Houlehan (right) revealed just how the market for mint Atari games is doing today:

How did you come to buy these games in the first place? How did you find out that Atari was liquidating them?

We've been in the closeout business for many years and we were notified by Atari that they were selling everything off.

What really inspired you to grab all of the games? Was there heavy bidding for the unsold games?

In our business it is important that if you have an opportunity to purchase an entire inventory instead of just part of it, you purchase all of it. Otherwise you run the risk of having another company purchase the remaining inventory. Yes, there was heavy bidding for the games.

What year did you buy all of these games? What was the market for Atari games like in the early 1990s? Had Atari 2600 collecting really taken off at that point?

We bought the inventory in 1990 and we had a great deal of business from overseas. We were selling container loads of games to a company called Intertoys based out of Holland. At the time we purchased the inventory, Atari collecting had not taken off. That really happened in the last few years.

What games are the best sellers? Why do you think they're popular?

Pole Position, Ms. Pac Man, and Dig Dug are our three best sellers, followed by Battlezone, Galaxian, and Hat Trick. I think these are the most popular because they are the videogame classics.

So many of our customers say how they feel like a kid again when they get these games. Atari started the videogame industry and they built themselves on games like Pole Position and Ms. Pac Man.

Do you find that most of the people who buy your games are simply going to open them and play them, or do you get a lot of business from collectors who want their sealed copies to stay that way?

We have numerous buyers who buy two of each game so that they could play one set of the games and then they can put the other set of games aside as a collectable set.

Do you see the demand for Atari 2600 games increasing in the years to come, or do you think that nostalgia-driven collecting has already peaked in the generation that grew up with the system?

The generation that grew up with these games have children now and with the new movie Atari coming out with Leonardo DiCaprio, it is bringing back childhood memories around the Atari console. Their kids have the Wii, but they were the generation of the original videogamers and many customers want to bring back a piece of their childhood with these games and also show their children what they grew up on.

You've been selling these games for some time now. You started with three million, correct? How many games are left? How many do you sell a year?

Yes, we purchased Atari's entire inventory of just over three million games and we have about one million left. There is usually a very steady flow of purchases for the games, but since the announcement about the movie Atari, we have noticed a drastic spike in sales over the past few months.

How do you decide to raise the price on these games? I see that you've gone from $2 to $5 per game in the past few years.

The cost to store and maintain the games has considerably increased since we first purchased the inventory in the early 90's, and it got to a point where we had to increase the price a few years ago to maintain a reasonable profit.

Posted by Todd Ciolek at 4:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

[Promised my colleagues at Game Developer magazine that I'd crosspost this here. Developers who read GSW and would like to contribute to our salary survey, maybe you can help us out? Appreciated.]

The editors of Game Developer magazine and Gamasutra are reminding readers of the annual Game Developer Salary Survey, the only statistical study of game industry salaries and benefits across the years. The information provided will help inform the entire game development community.

The survey takes approximately 5-7 minutes to complete, and will run until Monday, February 16th. The results will be published in the April 2009 issue of Game Developer magazine, and further expanded in a forthcoming Game Developer Research report.

In appreciation for their time and effort, participants' names will be entered into a drawing to win a Main Conference Pass for their choice of the lineup of Game Developers Conference (GDC) events in 2009: GDC in San Francisco, GDC Canada, GDC Europe, GDC Austin, or GDC China. (Contest rules are available here.)

Interested developers can now fill out the survey and register for the GDC Main Conference Pass drawing. This survey is anonymous, and none of the information presented will be associated with any individuals.

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

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

It was noted in the comments for last week's column that Play Magazine is, perhaps, a misunderstood title in the US marketplace.

I want to set the record straight on this one as soon as possible, especially because assuming Dave Halverson's little game mag makes it to May '09, it will have published more issues than the infamous Die Hard GameFan, the publication that made him gamer-famous.

There are many good things to say about Play -- mainly, its unique design and ability to take any kind of game asset and make it look pretty. There are a few bad things to say about it -- mainly, the fact that the staff seems to not believe in copy editing, perhaps for religious reasons.

But the greatest attraction that the mag has going for it is undoubtedly Halverson himself. If you think the publisher and former EIC of Play has changed his writing style any from the age when he wrote things like "Atari is back, come pet the cat......", you are blissfully incorrect. His penchant for snappy, occasionally nonsensical closing lines has aged like fine wine over these past 15 years, and in recent times, it's only been improved by his new-found undying love for games starring either furry animals or girls with big breasts.

It is not an exaggeration to say that I subscribe to Play half because of its visual design, and half because of Dave's whimsical writing. The man is such a stud that he wrote a report for Play's E3 coverage in the September issue without actually attending the event, something he freely admits in the text. Does your favorite game media outlet have anyone ballsy enough to do that? Of course not. That is because they are not hardcore.

Don't believe me? Just take a look at these actual excerts from Dave's 2008 work:

"You want 'casual' gaming? And you bought a Wii? Ah-hahaha. Take it back and do yourself a favor. Meet Eye of Judgment; shelf life...forever! I need more cards STAT by the way Wizards of the Coast." -- Dave discussing his favorite PS3 online game in February. Does he still play it?

"I get a few (like 2-5 a month) hate letters of my own griping about how we score games too high. They obviously don't read Play as I've explained our philosophy over and over, but I'm pretty sure that none of them really play games. Seems like they pretty much surf the web and then grab a torch." -- Dave hatin' on the haters in March. Play dropped scores entirely a few months later.

"If this one doesn't launch a major franchise, then there's absolutely positively no justice in the world for Valhalla." -- Dave giving a 9.5 score to Viking: Battle for Asgard in April, approximately 30 points above the Metacritic average.

"If this doesn't float your boat, then you live in a dingy [sic]. See that 80ft. motor yacht about to run you down; that's me." -- Dave goes nautical without warning while previewing The World Ends With You in April.

"The genius behind [Hellboy:] Science of Evil started in the board room, which is never the case, when someone said 'rather than constrain ourselves to the rigors of creating a game based on the movie, let's make a game that further solidifies Hellboy as a top quality brand. The last time that happened we got Diesel-powered perfection. I rest my case." -- A bit from Dave's May preview of the latest Hellboy, a game that got average reviews from nearly every other outlet.

"[X-Blades] certainly has all the requisite ingredients [...] There's the parallax mapping, high dynamic range lighting and rendering, radiosity lighting, radiance transfer/indirect lighting, rim lightning, subsurface scattering effects, shadow depth mapping, ambient shadows, volumetric lighting, motion blur, dynamic color correction, advanced image post-processing, animation blending, particle effects, trail effects, and one of the most epic asses ever." -- Dave wrapping up a May preview in only the way that he can.

"I don't see a 360/PS3 version of Tak or Spongebob [sic], but I'm gonna let that slide." -- Dave kicking off a collection of THQ game previews in June.

"Portal is neat I guess, if you're bored, but short." -- Dave berates midgets (or is simply wording his sentences awkwardly) in July.

"Here's a game that's gorgeous on Wii and 360, endlessly creative and 100% FUN." -- Dave talking about (pause for a moment here and try to take a guess..........) Crash of the Titans in July.

"The only problem: We may never see Faith's beautiful face as it's been depicted on many a magazine cover -- including our own -- and advertisement. We also don't see much of her body. Her point of view begins below her chest and so far there are no in-game cutscenes. Then again, the game is called Mirror's Edge; it can't be long until she's standing in front of one." -- Oh, if only Mirror's Edge came through for Dave's wild fantasies!

"Prepare to fall in love with Sonic all over again, unless you're a hater, in which case do us all a favor and play through Brothers in Arms again." -- Dave explaining exactly what anyone who didn't like Sonic Unleashed can do in November.

"Tyris is a beautiful heroine; so beautiful, in fact, that the absence of dynamic animation is all the more puzzling. Her distinctive walk and run, separate animations for every beast (and there really isn't anything more intoxicating than a beautiful half-naked woman riding bareback on a snarling beast) and superb battle movement make the flat stance on sloped surfaces and steps a real head-scratcher. Her boobs are motionless until you reach Fiends Path, too, after which they have subtle natural animation, but I'm guessing that's due to the detail on her various tops. Some flies, eh? Darn limited boob animation!" -- Dave doing what he does best, devoting boundless page space to nubile fantasy game heroines, during his Golden Axe: Beast Rider preview in November.

"Is it too much to ask to enjoy my critter-based epics and various action/adventures without having to be reminded that the average on Game Rankings doesn't echo my enthusiasm? I don't pretend to be the authority on Call of Duty now do I? I just want to enjoy as many Crash, Conker, Kameos, Brutal Legends and Darksiders as I can before the big cryo-sleep (or we colonize space, whichever comes first) and the more heroines and less token GI-Joe's the better." -- Dave admitting what we all knew in August.

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

Posted by Kevin Gifford at 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

[GameSetLinks is GameSetWatch's daily link round-up post, culling from hundreds of weblogs and outlets to compile the most interesting longform writing, links, and criticism on the art and culture of video games.]

Finishing up the weekend with some fine GameSetLinks, this set includes some notes on PSN's line-up for 2009 - apparently including slightly obscure but super-neat former IGF finalist Hammer Fall (pictured) -- as well as a couple of other fun GDC-related links.

Also hanging out in here - an epic iHobo thread starter on QTEs. Even I'm surprised about how QTEs have sneaked into games in recent years, after Shen Mue and friends, but in general, they work. Don't they? Do they? Questions!

Well well well:

GamerBytes - Comet Crash And Hammer Fall Announced For PSN
Notable cos Hammerfall was a slightly obscure but very neat Russian (Ukrainian?) IGF finalist last year, now coming to PS3 and PSN, yay.

Running the show at Game Developers Conference | Geek Gestalt - CNET News
Nice interview with my colleague Meggan, even had some stuff I didn't know about in it!

ihobo: For or Against QTEs
Some good devil's advocate work on the increasingly popular movie/game mechanic.

The Escapist : Can Art Be Games?
Good to see outlets talking about The Graveyard, art, games.

Indie game and artist all-stars collide at Giant Robot/Attract Mode's Game Over II - Offworld
Very neat, indie game notables and Giant Robot-related artists team up for special games, with an exhibition opening on the Friday of GDC.

An Adventure Tournament - Taking Inventory
A Compuserve tournament for the classic Adventure, 25+ years ago - online tournaments are old!

Posted by Simon Carless at 12:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

['The Game Anthropologist' is Michael Walbridge's regular GameSetWatch-exclusive column looking at gaming communities and subcultures. This week, he examines and appreciates the togetherness created by the online forums of a popular game-related webcomic.]

Forum moderators only have control over what can’t happen. It’s up to regular forum posters (and hosting needs) to mold the forums into what they are.

So when one thinks of Penny Arcade, it is defined as one of two things: the artistry and writing of Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins or the people who follow it. The Penny Arcade forums are property of Penny Arcade but only in the strictest technical sense of the word; it has become a beautiful monster, a living, breathing, curious creature that, while not necessarily obedient, is forever loyal.

The Penny Arcade forums are almost a decade old; originally managed Mike, Kara, and other close friends, the forums quickly grew into something to large for them to handle. Both the software and the people became issues that were too complicated, and moderators volunteered to take over (future moderators can no longer come from volunteers; they must be asked).

Over time, the various moderators and administrators have changed. Since 2003, Kevin Hamilton has been the admin that handles coding and programming, while Patrick Groome has been the admin that handles policy and posters for the last two years. I spoke to them about what makes Penny Arcade’s forums so unique.

I asked Kevin Hamilton and Patrick Groome about what makes the forums work so well and they are modest, giving a lot of credit to its members rather than to administration.

“As far as [moderating] tricks go, one of the things you eventually realize is that the administration is a small part of the forums, and what really keeps it running is the people,” Groome said. Hamilton agreed: “We have a role to play…but I think the fact that that is a manageable workload is down mostly to two thing: a low tolerance for stupid and a large population of great people.”

The credit is well-placed. When asked for examples of how the members act toward each other, Groome gave me plenty of examples. “We've had multiple relationships that started on the forums, and at least two marriages, one of which crossed continents. Every year at PAX a vast number of forumers room together, and there are constant meetups throughout the year."

"Robert [Khoo] also frequently makes meet up threads in SE when he's visiting a part of the country and takes a bunch of forumers out to dinner. Last year I came out to the states and stayed with forumers the whole time I was there, people I'd known for five years and never met in real life. The community is very close in real life, many forumers room with people they met at PA. When a member of the forums dies, everyone takes it very hard and there's normally some kind of tribute.”

I’ve experienced the politeness of a forumer myself. A message came to my inbox from someone who noticed I lived nearby. It said: “I'm from Ogden, just putting some feelers out to see who else from Utah is here. Are you headed to PAX this year?”

“I wish,” I replied back.

He had done a search on the Utah members. “What would you think of a small Utah PA forum gathering? Just brainstorming right now.” He later then said maybe we could grab coffee in Salt Lake sometime. He asked me for my gamertags and asked if I played pen and paper RPGs. I said I didn’t really but still liked it.

Soon after, he invited me to an 8-hour session with some people he had recently met. Here, a total stranger was willing to make friends with someone via a blind pm. I had to decline the session and never got to know him, but the opportunity was there. He was incredibly polite, and sounded and wrote like many of the forumers I see.

The forums, along with PAX and Child’s Play, have truly allowed Penny Arcade’s followers to bind up their identities in it. This makes Penny Arcade not just a product or content but a community, and a community that acts. On the Internet, this seems like a small deal compared to other websites, projects, or movements, but when you consider the context—a profitable web comic about video games that is frequently vulgar—it’s curious to see followers define themselves not just as a consumer of the comic but as having it be a significant part of their lives and identities.

The members are truly great, but policies do help. For starters, moderators strictly require that posters stay on-topic. The base of forumers stays large, though, because the range of permitted topics highly varies. A forum exists for aspiring artists and a forum exists for aspiring writers.

Another is a general advice thread that usually merits questions about sexuality, relationships, computers, or mental illness, but the topics range from “Here’s a picture of my foot. What’s wrong with it?” to “Should I move to Austin? What’s it like there?” The gaming forum is huge, but discussion of MMOs became so prevalent they were given their own forum, “Massively Multiplayer Online Extravaganza”.

There’s also Social Entropy, affectionately called SE++, which features much looser restrictions, much more insults, and dumbed-down threads about YouTube videos or crazy celebrity behavior (Debate and Discourse is the other broad forum, calling itself a “structured alternative” to SE++).

Kevin Hamilton approximates that 30-50% of forum posters cover varying forums but that the rest stay in the same one, giving each forum its own personality. The difference between the MMO and regular game forums and the pronouncedly different writing styles of the writers forum posters easily witness this.

Moderation is not heavy-handed, but enforcement still exists. Justice is swift and impersonal. One moderator wrote in the sparse jails and bannings thread, “Wiggin gets a couple of weeks off for continuing to ignore the New Comic Thread rules.”

The Penny Arcade forums aren’t perfect and free of conflict; Patrick Groome was able to name at least four forums being formed due to mini-Exoduses, one of which he claims left specifically because of his decisions. But he, along with other moderators and managers, remain optimistic. “It’s a mixed bag, but good mostly outweighs the bad. I don’t think you can pigeonhole the average gamer any more than you can the average film enthusiast or the average hockey fan.”

The main site and the forums are very different, but they have a simple creed to agree on. The Penny Arcade forums are a place for gamers to be themselves, a place where they aren’t “gamers” but normal people who happen to like games.

Posted by Mike Walbridge at 4:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (38)

Yikes, it's the end of the weekend already, so time to recap some of the week's top full-length features on Gamasutra - plus bonus features from our student site GameCareerGuide.

Some really good stuff in here this week - including a nice Chris Remo chat to The Creative Assembly folks, Paul Hyman on making money with Flash games, a controversial Brian Green piece on legitimacy for game developers (do we really need to ask?), Noah Falstein on Darwin and lessons for developers, and more.

Here are the top stories:

PC Heritage, Bright Future: The Creative Assembly Interview
"Sega-owned UK developer The Creative Assembly (Total War) has some unique views on the enduring nature of 'core' PC games, as the studio's Kieran Brigden explains to Gamasutra."

Sponsored Feature: Light It Up! Quake Wars Gets Ray Traced
"Ray tracing can offer amazing graphical renderings, but it is often seen as too computationally taxing for real-time use. In this sponsored article, part of the Intel Visual Computing microsite, David Pohl of Intel's ray tracing group discusses how his team brought their past successes with the technique to Splash Damage's multiplayer shooter Enemy Territory: Quake Wars."

Design Language: Design by Darwin
"Veteran game designer Noah Falstein (Sinistar, Koronis Rift) commemorates Charles Darwin's birthday with an insightful look at how Darwin's evolutionary ideas have influenced game design."

Emerging Issues in In-Game Advertising
"In-game ad deals can benefit both game developers and advertisers -- experienced game lawyers Boyd and Lalla discuss business and contextual considerations for in-game advertising."

Legitimacy For Game Developers
"How can video games and developers achieve cultural 'legitimacy', and what does that even mean? Veteran developer Green explores how it works in other disciplines, and ramifications for gaming."

Where's The Cash For Flash?
"Is there money to be made in Flash game development? It depends -- Gamasutra looks at the role that revenue streams and clever marketing play."

Bonus GameCareerGuide.com highlights: GameCareerGuide's Game Design Challenge Restaurant Game; Master's Thesis: Game Design and Architecture; Results from the Game Design Challenge: Suess It.

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

[In this pointed opinion piece, David Chang, Executive VP of Business Development and Marketing at online game publisher Gamescampus (Asda Story) discusses what he feels is the error of calling certain MMOs "free to play".]

I would like our industry and media to consider is changing how we refer to our game category. In my personal opinion, the term “free to play” rings hollow and in many cases is completely inaccurate. In calling our games “free to play” I think our industry generates a lot of unnecessary cynicism and calls our product quality into question.

Unless the game is completely monetized by advertising, then the publishers are relying on a certain percentage of people who play the game to find enough enjoyment out of the game to be willing to pay for enhanced features and items. I feel from reading the commentary out there that there is a significant portion of people that feel like the term free to play is a bait-and-switch.

First we should look at our business model as a service that needs to be completely in tune with how a new generation is learning to pay for things; that is, only those things that benefit them, while expecting many other services to be completely without charge. Although it is not a perfect comparison, I do believe there are similarities with Google. For example:

Google doesn’t charge most consumers anything for consuming their most popular service—search. Google search is certainly a very useful free service! However, Google relies on all of the free traffic and searches to power its money making services—paid search and other value added services.

This is perceived to be acceptable because these paid services finance the very useful search service and allows it to be offered for free. In fact, the free search service has been deemed to be so useful, people do not give a second thought to the fact that Google reads very sensitive information about you—what you search for, and what your emails contain (if you use Gmail).

In our game model, almost all content is completely without charge. In fact, we actually rely on most people not paying as the game communities would be really small without them! The truth is that we need the free community to be active, happy, and engaged with the games we publish, if they are not, then we would have very few people that opt to buy a game item.

In both situations, people receive a valuable service—free search or a free game experience, however, both services do need to make money eventually otherwise they would not be able to provide these great services for free. This is where I feel the “free to play” label does more harm than good. I can tell you honestly that my company exists to make a profit—and we do hope that the people that play our games buy in-game items eventually!

In terms of a solution, I propose calling our games “MTS Games” (Micro-Transaction Service) or even MTG (Micro-Transaction Games) if you prefer. I think this label, while a bit technical, gets rid of the “As seen on TV” quality stigma and cynicism that “free to play” engenders (it really can’t be free—can it?) Equally important is to define what an MTS game is (and what it is not). An MTS game would be a game that:

1. Requires no purchase to download and play the game
2. Does not have a level-cap or content-cap beyond which you need to pay
3. Is at least partially monetized by sales of in-game goods

By calling our games MTS games, I hope to separate our games from the cynicism associated with the “free to play” label. I think the definition above also addresses the bait-and-switch concerns as well as an MTS game as defined above would not require any purchases to play.

In my opinion, a lot of the dissatisfaction about micro-transactions stem from the fact that many publishers require one to purchase the game at retail (or download) and then charge them again to experience additional content. In my opinion, this strategy is actually the most consumer-antagonistic as they require an upfront fee and then charge people again when they want more content.

At least with an MTS game, people can play the game without any upfront costs, and if they don’t like the game, they can walk away without a single fee. Also, recall that for any MTS game to be successful, you need a vibrant community that is only taking advantage of the free services (ala Google). There is a symbiotic relationship between the free community and those who choose to enhance their experience by purchasing an in-game item (which in turns allows us to offer the service for free to many others).

Addressing another bait-and-switch concern is to have the entire game playable—no level-caps or content-caps for free players. In my opinion, games that employ the level or content-cap model are really just distributing trial-versions and end up upsetting players—especially if you are less than clear about what you are doing.

People end up investing time and emotionally connecting with a game only to find out that if they want to continue they need to pay an admission fee. It is counterproductive. Not only will you lose most players at the pay-gate, the community on the other side (the paying side) will also suffer because of the lack of community—who wants to pay a cover charge for a club if there isn’t a huge party going on inside!

The last part of what defines an MTS game is that it is at least partially monetized by the sale of in-game goods. I say partially because I do think that there is room here to supplement revenue through ads or perhaps sponsorships if they are appropriate and fit the game property.

While some cynics may sneer at the inclusion of advertising in a game, I think there is definitely room for it as there is in other areas of our lives (during our TV programs, ahead of movies we pay to see, On billboards along our freeways). If it ultimately benefits the game community and is done right it can be a positive thing for the game. Remember MTS games are all about gathering a critical mass of players and then figuring out how to provide a service to the whole community—paying and non-paying players alike.

Our whole business model has just begun to grow and flourish in North America. I have no doubt that the model offers players of a new generation what they expect out of their online gaming experience and will continue to grow. But I also feel strongly that now is the time, when our model is just building a name for itself in this industry and its perception is so important, that we should be looking at re-branding from free to play, to instead being known as micro-transaction service providers.

[David Chang is Executive VP of Business Development and Marketing at Gamescampus/OnNet; he previously served as Vice President of Business Development of PlaySpan, the publisher-sponsored in-game commerce network. This editorial originally ran on sister website WorldsInMotion.biz.]

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