In big sister site Gamasutra's weekly Best of Expert Blogs column, we showcase notable pieces of writing from members of the game development community who maintain Expert Blogs on the site.

Member Blogs -- also highlighted weekly -- can be maintained by any registered Gamasutra user, while the invitation-only Expert Blogs are written by development professionals with a wealth of experience to share.

We hope that both sections can provide useful and interesting viewpoints on our industry. For more information about the blogs, check out the official posting guidelines.

This Week's Standout Expert Blogs

The Cost Benefit Analysis and The Sorites Paradox
(Armando Marini)

Ubisoft Montreal creative director Armando Marini says that gamers are constantly conducting cost/benefit analyses when playing games. The “costs” associated with a game don’t necessarily have a monetary value – shoddy controls can be the cost of playing a game.

But in the end, Marini says that game makers have a “great responsibility” to stay true to their promise to entertain audiences, and “breaking the promise is the greatest crime that can be committed in the eye of the user.”

Game Music Postnatal: Nancy Drew Dossier – Lights, Camera, Curses!
(Matt Sayre)

Game composer Matt Sayre has posted his reflections on creating the audio for Her Interactive’s Nancy Drew Dossier series. With links to videos and MP3 files, and clear statements on what went right and what went wrong, Sayre’s recounting is a fun read for both musicians and just anyone remotely interested in how sound can create a game’s mood.

An Endless Choice Of Free Games
(Tadhg Kelly)

Tadhg Kelly, industry veteran and current CCO at social gaming company Simple Lifeforms, has been pondering the effect that free games will have on the industry and the market. To him, video games “have the most to lose and the most to gain” from the emerging free game market. But the customer, who has been trained that games should not be free, may not be ready for the free revolution quite yet.

Designer Postmortem: Porting Marble Blast From XBLA To iPhone
(Joshua Dallman)

Joshua Dallman with Red Thumb Games talks about the challenges he encountered porting Marble Blast to the iPhone. It’s a platform that offers designers a lot of new freedom, but also presents unique challenges. This lengthy, descriptive postmortem explains exactly how the game made it to Apple’s handheld device.

Crunchy And Delicious
(Eric Hardman)

Reacting to a recent Gamasutra article denouncing crunch, Lincoln Interactive’s Eric Hardman has professed his love for crunch in a blog post: “While only production folks have been required to work for ten hours a day, that's still a major win in the man-hours column, with over 900 hours of additional time spent on the product! That's 22.5 extra weeks of polish.”

Maybe crunch isn’t so bad? Some commenters on the blog aren’t convinced.

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

[Launching a new console in today's market may seem a little strange, but Zeebo is trying just that with its emerging-markets, 3G digital-transmitted console, and Game Developer's Brandon Sheffield just sat down with Zeebo's creators to delve deeper into their plans.]

During this year's Game Developers Conference, new company Zeebo, Inc. (a firm created by Brazil-headquartered distributor Tectoy and BREW creator Qualcomm) detailed the upcoming full launch of its Zeebo console, a product aimed at the middle class in developing markets where the Big Three consoles are prohibitively expensive.

Players obtain games for the $199 system exclusively through digital distribution, thanks to a built-in 3G wireless connection -- a move intended to sidestep the piracy issues that frequently impact Zeebo's target markets. Each game is expected to run between the equivalent of $5 and $10.

Partly due to the familiarity of its BREW-based system architecture, powered by Qualcomm processors, Zeebo has already lined up a number of ports from established game makers like Electronic Arts (Need for Speed Carbon, FIFA 09), id Software (Quake, Quake II), Capcom (Resident Evil IV), and Sega (Sonic Adventure).

In advance of the system's official Brazilian launch next month, Gamasutra sat down with Zeebo CEO John Rizzo, founder Reynaldo Norman, and Qualcomm games and services senior director Mike Yuen to discuss the system's target market, its plans for original titles, why it's not competing with Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3, and why North America isn't yet in the cards:

There has been no mention of the North American market. Do you have any plans for it yet?

John Rizzo: No immediate plans, certainly not this year or 2010 -- maybe 2011, but nothing in the short term.

There are a couple reasons. Number one, 3G coverage has got to get really pervasive in North America. It's not quite there yet. Number two, more importantly, there is a lot of entrenched competition with existing gamers who are used to Wii and Xbox and PS2 and PS3. As a result, there's already a pretty well-established market here.

So I think we have a chance to be successful in the emerging first-world markets because we're re-applying the ruleset, but it's hard to redefine the ruleset in North America.

Mike Yuen: If you just get into those emerging markets -- Brazil, India, and China of course, but also the rest of Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe, as well as Latin America -- which is what we believe we could do, then we could very well survive there. We don't want to go all over the place.

With the launch titles, there's more of an emphasis on ports than I initially expected. But there's Zeebo Racing, which must be an original Tectoy property. Which direction do you want to go?

Reynaldo Norman: When it comes to most of the audience, they don't know most of the games we are showing. For us, Quake or Tekken 2, well, we played that ten years ago, right? But for most of these guys, they might be playing for the first time. And as we were impressed by these games before, we believe that these guys will be impressed by these games today. It's a different market.

As for the original titles, we can't announce many of them yet, but we are working on good stuff and original titles for Zeebo. It will be both. It will be catalog titles ported from other platforms, and original titles as well. But we need to get closer to the launch of those titles to announce them because there's more involved.

MY: On the traditional console platform, like the PS2, it's not until the tail end that [developers] really master the hardware. So, the first couple years, there may be one or two titles that kind of come down as, "Wow, that's really impressive." But usually it takes a while to get going. We really don't think it will take that long [with Zeebo].

It's not going to be that five years from now, people are really starting to mash with the Zeebo, because it's not a complex development system in the sense of being a Cell processor or anything like that.

We believe we'll see original content, which is key because it's native and it goes faster and it exploits the system, won't be at the tail end of the life cycle. We'll probably see it, like Reynaldo said, coming up later this year.

Is it only Tectoy that's making original stuff right now or other studios as well?

RN: No, other studios.

JR: Some of the titles that are shipping in June are originally-produced content.

It's not as strong as it used to be, but there was a very strong arcade culture in Brazil, so getting something like The King of Fighters series and SNK Playmore's games would be a selling point.

RN: Exactly. On the arcades in Brazil, as you know, most of the titles that are popular today are titles from the 90s. Even Daytona is still very, very popular, and Sega Rally -- the ones from '93, '94, '95. We are working with other publishers, and we are trying to bring the titles that are relevant to each country.

MY: Right now it's primarily a one-time download model; you buy it and own the whole thing. But since it's a BREW-based device as on varieties of phones, there is a variety of billing methods. With the arcade style being popular still, they could get The King of Fighters and put it on there with a token model, pay-per-play. Or if they wanted to move to subscription, they could do that.

I noticed that when you did the live demo at GDC and deleted Quake, it warned that you will have to pay to download again. So you will have to pay to re-download titles?

RN: This is in the manual in the first version in Brazil. Right now, we are rolling up a new UI that will remove this feature. What we want to do in the future, and probably will coincide with our full launch in Brazil, is that if you previously purchased that game -- Quake, as an example -- the server will know that you already purchased it. Then, you just download it again and don't pay anything.

Hasn't the console already soft launched in Brazil?

JR: It was publicly announced to the press, but it was not shipped. The ship schedule was publicly announced in November. The ship schedule was Q2 with limited retail availability, so that's where we are right now. It will go into Rio de Janeiro in June, and then there will be a big roll out. The key date to get ready for is Children's Day, which is October 12th. That's the beginning of the Christmas season. It's a whole massive retail rollout.

Mexico is second for launch. Is that for language reasons or for market reasons? It's easier probably to transition from Portuguese to Spanish.

JR: We want to get Brazil locked and loaded and running, and then switch to Mexico. We're actually in active conversations with partners in Mexico now, we just haven't signed them yet. We'll be ready for the October retail season in Mexico.

MY: We actually were in India a few weeks ago. But with places like India and China, politically and culturally there are lots of pieces. Mexico is a little simpler.

RN: Latin America has the same game culture in general. So, multiple games that we use in Brazil, we can use in Mexico. We can roll them out for them as well. India is more specific -- different content, different approach -- so it will take more time.

India in particular is interesting because it's a slightly unproven game market. How do you figure out what content to release there?

JR: We started ten months ahead of time. We spent a lot of time with the content producers, people in the film and entertainment business. We talked to consumers and started early.

MY: It's not about, "There's EA and Activision, all the gigantic Western catalogs, and we'll just find some way to bring it into another country and spread the word." There's certainly some of that -- cricket, say, if it's India. Maybe FIFA. But the whole goal, like John says, is to go to the right local developers. We don't just have to take everything in the Western world and force it on people in another world.

It seems like the difficulty is that you're not just trying to push specific content. You're also trying to push the idea of a console. Sony has paved the way there to some degree.

MY: But it may not even be a known or called or marketed or positioned as a console, because then you get put in a bucket of video game consoles. So, sure, in Brazil, with the heart of gaming culture, maybe it's more gaming-oriented. But that whole UI can be changed.

When we were there, we found that the educational theme is so strong. All these kids are trying to get into certain colleges, or when they're younger, they're just starting to learn math. So perhaps, it's a fun and learning box.

JR: We had dinner with the head of Qualcomm India who manages thousands of people; he lived in America, was American-educated, wants to buy a PS3. Well, it's not acceptable in India necessarily to buy a pure-play video game console because kids need to be educated. There's a big emphasis on education. The fact that it runs Blu-ray Discs means it's really not a video game console. It's a Blu-ray Disc player.

In our case, with the Zeebo, because it doubles as a wireless 3G modem in the future -- we can upload that software -- if I've got a netbook, I can now surf the internet using Zeebo's modem. Or I can plug it into my TV, plug a keyboard in, and use it as a browsing device. So, it has some utility beyond simply gaming.

We have some customers in India saying, "It could be great if I could allow my kids to learn math or physics or science, and then reward them with Crash Bandicoot for half an hour, or a Bollywood game for half an hour, after they've done all their homework." It's going to be positioned slightly differently in that market.

Another key thing about India is distribution channels. They're not well developed for video game consoles. But they are well developed for other products like televisions, refrigerators, satellite set-top boxes, and so on.

So we're talking to all those key players to see if we can partner from a distributor's perspective, just like we have in Brazil. Because in Brazil, it's the Tectoy Zeebo. It's not the Zeebo Zeebo. And in India, it will be the X Zeebo. In Mexico, it will be the Y Zeebo. It always comes with a brand that's trusted by the local customers.

RN: In other words, in India, it needs to be a console for the whole family, with appeal to everyone that is a decision maker, and everyone in the family.

MY: Which is critical, because in those markets, they have one TV in the home. If they're going to share it, the father or mother might say, "Well, I'm buying it for my kid, and my kid is just playing shooting games. I saved all this money over 18 to 24 months to buy this thing, and he's taking time away from all of us, and all he's doing is playing these violent games."

By positioning it a little differently and offering the right type of content for the whole family to enjoy, whether they play it together or whether it's edutainment, we can do that. Mickey Mouse Teaches Math for the younger kid, something about college for the older one, a Bollywood soap opera trivia thing for the mother, cricket information or whatever for the dad.

Then you create something of value that the whole family sees, and there's not really an issue of, "There's one hour less during the day we're using the TV because there's only one TV in the house."

You said if you reached America, you would have to lower the price point potentially. That means that the perception is that in the lower-income market, you don't have to.

MY: We have this mass market chipset, and our next-generation chipset is getting faster. What we announced, [Qualcomm's] Snapdragon [chipset], is going to netbooks; it bumps it a few notches above that. The cell phone business, including us, is never going to build a processor that's going to match or surpass what the video game guys do. So, why chase that?

When this thing turns on, it's as quiet as unplugged. It doesn't burn any energy. The position if we came into this market wouldn't be, "We're trying to get close to the PS3 and catch them."

It's about a different demographic. Maybe it's a different type of contact. Think of Jakks Pacific, those guys sell millions of those $20 or $24.99 things.

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 two difficult shooters, a platformer about descending into the depths of hell, a block-based sandbox building application, a horror adventure game, a new release from Execution-er Jesse Venbrux, a card game that could possibly put you to sleep, and a Zelda-like action game from the developers of La-Mulana.

Game Pick: 'SYNSO2: Squid Harder' (Oddbob, freeware)
"An arena shooter created by Robert D. Fearon, featuring glowy graphics and eye candy that (at maximum setting) is guaranteed to push the limits of any computer setup you may have. A host of configuration options are included, allowing players to change screen size, toggle autofire, activate motion blur, or even enable the practice mode where novices could take the game for a spin without worrying about dodging bullets or colliding with enemies."

Game Pick: 'Underworld Trip' (Yoshio Ishii and Yossa, browser)
"Nekogames' Underworld Trip is a platformer created in a style that is similar to Terry Cavanagh's Don't Look Back, where players will attempt to figure out what has happened to them by journeying deeper into the realm of the dead. There are a total of eight stages to play and six single screen endings to discover."

Game Pick: 'Minecraft' (Markus Persson, browser)
"Markus Persson's Minecraft is a block-based sandbox building game originally inspired by Infiniminer, but one that requires no installation of any software to play. A Java-enabled browser is all that is needed, and though the current alpha version does not have multiplayer features yet the developer has promised that new single and multiplayer game modes will be added very soon."

Game Pick: 'Downfall' (Harvester Games, commercial indie - demo available)
"A horror adventure game created with Chris Jones' AGS engine, featuring hand-drawn background art and original soundtrack by Remigiusz and Michal Michalski. The story is about a couple who decides to stay the night in an old hotel before resuming their journey home the next day, although things start to turn spooky when you wake up the next morning to discover your partner missing without a clue of her current whereabouts."

Game Pick: 'Super Karoshi' (Jesse Venbrux, browser)
"Jesse Venbrux is back with the fifth chapter in the popular Karoshi series, and his second Flash browser game to feature everyone's favorite protagonist with the trademark blue suit. In Super Karoshi you not only have to figure out ways to commit suicide but occasionally assist other similarly-looking characters to do the same as well."

Game Pick: 'Storm Assault' (Storm Project, freeware)
"A horizontal shooter created by the Storm Project development team as a tribute to Konami's early Gradius series. Everything from the classic power meter, upgrade capsules, and boss ships with specific weak points have been transferred and updated with slight changes for this loose remake."

Game Pick: 'SHEEP!' (Alexander Shen, freeware)
"A simple yet addictive card game which is great for wasting a few spare minutes. Sheep cards are placed down three at a time with three fence cards underneath. The objective is to uses the fence cards to box in the sheep as efficiently as possible."

Game Pick: 'Miracle Witch' (Nigoro, browser)
"In Miracle Witch you assume the role of an apprentice magic caster named Polfe, chosen by her peers for a quest to defeat the evil king Yeah Walusa and his invading party of monsters. This involves going around the island dispatching creatures, acquiring new spell books and searching for treasures to loot."

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

In a slightly odd -- but intriguing -- crossover move, language software company Rosetta Stone will host its first Annual Game Jam, and is inviting interested gamers and developers to gather at its Harrisonburg, VA offices from July 17th to 19th and develop a game within 48 hours or less.

Teams of up to four members can compete, though each team should have at least one programmer with "game development programming experience using either Flash, XNA, OpenGL, PyGame, etc.", and all team members should be 18 or older, or be accompanied by a parent/legal guardian.

Since you need to answer the question: 'Describe your passion for building games that teach and motivate people', it seems that the company might be looking to video games to help work out how to teach languages in the future.

The grand prize includes a Macbook Pro with a 30-inch cinema display and three levels of Rosetta Stone software. The company will also publish the winning game on its site. The second place winner will receive $500 and three levels of Rosetta Stone Software.

You can find details on how to enter the competition at the official Rosetta Stone Game Jam site.

Posted by Eric Caoili at 6:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

['Homer in Silicon' is a biweekly GameSetWatch-exclusive column by Emily Short. It looks at storytelling and narrative in games of all flavors, including the casual, indie, and obscurely hobbyist.]

"Kate's Fix-It-Up Adventure" is a PC casual time-management/tycoon game developed by Polish team World-Loom (here's a neat interview with them) in which the protagonist, Kate, is apparently a genius for car repair.

It's a balanced and entertaining piece of work in its genre, which is more strategic and less speed-based than pure time-management games like the "Diner Dash" series and closer to building/real-estate games such as "Build-a-Lot" and "Be Rich." And I'm on record here often enough complaining that these games could be narratively interesting but just, in general, aren't.

In the interstices between levels, "Fix-it-up" offers a story told in comic book style, another mainstay in the time-management genre. But this one was better than average: instead of following a perfectly upward trend line of career advancement and social success, Kate encounters some problems.

She has family members who help her, but some of them are not actually that nice and are really using her for their own benefit. She has to deal with egocentric jerks, and with friends who make poor choices. By the end, she is divided between the claims of her buddy/romantic interest Steve and the career-oriented claims of her Hollywood business partner.

The story ends with an argument between the two men, and Kate tells them not to fight over her because she gets to choose for herself what happens next -- but the game does not record her preference. We get the credits where the final scene ought to go. The story has a hole in it, and it's interactive strictly in the sense that you get to imagine for yourself what fits in the hole. It's the Lady-or-the-Tiger approach to interactive storytelling.

Trained on interactive fiction as I am, I would have preferred to be allowed to pick an outcome in-game, either through a choice at that point or (even better) via strategies I pursued in the final level of game-play. "Fix-it-up" doesn't try anything on that order, even though some of the framing of the later letters almost suggested that it might.

Notably, on several occasions, Steve and the business partner give Kate different recommendations about what she should do next. It seems like the perfect set-up for letting her/the player choose which goals to fulfill in that level, thus choosing a narrative path. But no, we don't get anything quite that genre-bending.

There are, however, three ways that the story leveraged the interaction to its advantage.

1. The gameplay suggests a certain personality for the protagonist, and the story uses that.

Kate is sketched — lightly, but it's there — as someone who is a bit manipulable, a bit too giving to the people around her. She sometimes grumbles about the things people say to her, and the demands they make on her, but she goes on helping them and bailing them out even when she's conscious of being used.

That character trait is sort of implicit in the personalities of many time-management game protagonists, since many such games provide the player with increasingly absurd goals and dictates from customers, bosses, and other affiliates. All these challenges have to come from somewhere, right?

But most games never bother to acknowledge what sort of person the protagonist would have to be in order to put up with such treatment. (The exception here is "Miss Management", which does at one point have a side character point out that Denise is a little too desperate to keep everyone around her happy. But otherwise, most time-management games don't come near that level of human insight.)

2. The narrative uses the player's frustration.

Kate's Hollywood partner gets her some good connections and helps her set up, but he's also manipulative and keeps finding ways to take money or goods out of her business as well.

That makes him responsible for a few gains, but also for the setbacks that set up each new level. Because, at each level of play, Kate has to get her business up and thriving, it wouldn't do for her to be able to keep all of her money and cars over from the previous level: we need some reason for some of her resources to go away.

The clever part is tying that into the characterization of the partner, giving the player an active reason to resent him.

3. The narrative uses the player's enjoyment of gameplay.

The story avoids the most obvious possibilities: it is not about a romantic triangle in the classic sense. Steve's real rival is the protagonist's business, and, what's more, that rivalry has some punch to it; it's not the stuff of a romantic comedy where the business is merely a distraction until the hero or heroine realizes that Love Is What Matters Most. In some of the dialogue Steve almost comes off as a bit of a slacker -- though we also know that Kate misses him when he's not around.

The most telling moment comes quite late in the game, when Steve is trying to persuade Kate to come away and do something else. He asks whether she even really likes running her business, with the clear implication that she is supposed to say no.

I don't know whether I'm unique in this, but my reaction was to think, "Well, yes, actually!" From a gameplay perspective, Kate's life is about her business. I never get to play her doing anything else, after all! And, what's more, I've enjoyed helping Kate to be pretty good at what she does.

So though Kate is written to be attracted to Steve, and though I felt (with her) a strong annoyance at the manipulative false friends she had to work with, I also felt (on her behalf) a sharp slap of resentment that Steve chose to belittle her work-- especially after she has repeatedly helped him with business and money up to this point.

As a result of all that, what I really wanted was to disengage my business from the irritating, manipulative partner, but not to quit and run away with Steve either -- to tell him that I liked my work, and that I was open to dating him but not to giving up my career. So I guess I do know what goes in the space before the credits.

I would still have liked that outcome to be officially part of the story, though.

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

Posted by Emily Short at 4:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

As with Rockin' Android, Curious Factory specializes in bringing doujin games -- titles created by hobbyist developers in Japan, like Cave Story -- to U.S. audiences. The company also provides services for releasing English games in Japan, offering text and voice localization, Japanese gaming and entertainment PR solutions, and distribution through six Japanese on-demand sites.

The publisher has already released one doujin PC game in North America, Supercharged Robot Vulkaiser (see video above), through Direct2Drive and its own site, the latter of which offers a free demo.

Developed by Astro Port, the horizontal-scrolling shoot'em-up has players taking control of flying robot Vulkaiser in a tokusatsu superhero-styled battle against the "Gogoh military group from outer space".

Curious Factory has two other shmups from Astro Port planned for release, Witch-bot Meglilo and Armed Seven, both with trials available for download:

Witch-bot Meglilo:

"Using 'tokimeki warp', a magic to stop the time and warp the space, shoot the enemy! This is a magical girl shooting game with lots of lightly melancholic drama! In the bonus dress-up feature, every time you beat stage 2 and stage 4 on each difficulty level, you will get a dress up roulette where you can get a new part for Meglilo. When you beat stage 6, the final stage, you will get two parts for her."

Armed Seven (I'm pretty sure this takes place in the Supercharged Robot Vulkaiser universe):

"In 1989, already 12 years have passed since the invasion of Gogoh military group. Due to the introduction of the alien culture, the technologies on the earth have progressed immensely. The conflicts between the countries were diminished. The earth federation was established as the earth unification government. People are about to enter into the era of unprecedented prosperity in history.

However, the peace was abruptly broken. The armed secret organization, Neo Roland party, was planning on controlling the earth society. They managed to exploit the weapons from the federation, and began a massive assault on the entire world. Now, the newly formed earth federation began fighting back to save all the human lives!"

Curious Factory is also working to release Ultimate Knight Windom XP, a 3D robot action game featuring 17 different mechs and online battles for up to 10 players:

Posted by Eric Caoili at 3:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Independent studios Hucast.net and KonTechs announced that development for Dux, the latest in a string of Dreamcast shoot'em-ups releasing long after Sega discontinued production on the system, is now complete, and that it will ship the game in early June.

The horizontal-scrolling shooter features six stages, three upgradeable weapon types, a "risk and reward scoring system based on enemy and bullet chaining", three loops with different difficulties, and more.

All preorders for Dux include a small sticker with the game disc, but orders for the limited edition (500 copies, already sold out) will come with an original soundtrack CD and "orange borders on the spine to make it fit to a NTSC-J Dreamcast collection". You can watch video of some of the game's bosses below:

[Via Arcade Renaissance]

Posted by Eric Caoili at 1:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

[Every week, 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, we exclusively revealed evidence that The Secret Of Monkey Island is coming to the Xbox Live Arcade, in what has been called a "Special Edition" of the classic 1990's point and click adventure.

Everyone is excited at the prospect of Monkey Island finally making its return, but what can we expect from a remake of the original, and on a console without a pointer? We're wondering, too.

Here's the top XBLA, PSN, and WiiWare stories for the week:

This Week's Releases

XBLA Update - Gel: Set & Match, Blazing Birds, Buku Sudoku Puzzle Pack

EU PSN Store Update - Zen Pinball, Texas Cheat'em, Bejeweled 2, Buzz Jr, PAIN DLC, And Bargain Bionic Commando
NA PSN Store Update - Texas Cheat'em, Zen Pinball, Free Rag Doll Kung Fu And Cheap Bionic Commando

EU Nintendo Update - Swords & Soldiers
NA Nintendo Update - Crystal Defenders R2, Silver Star Chess, Legend Of Zelda: Majora's Mask

Xbox Live Arcade

The Secret Of Monkey Island Coming To Xbox 360
Is LucasArts finally making its first step towards digital distribution?

Workman Says Things: The Ship, Bust-A-Move Live! To Download Services
Classic puzzler and overlooked shooter making their way to the XBLA?

New Worms 2 Armageddon Trailers, Glorious Return Of Fire
Burn enemies, reflect rockets, and react to your near-death experiences in these latest trailers.

Bounce into Space Ark
StrawDog Studios gives its game a new name.

PlayStation Network

Gameloft Bringing Battle Tanks To PSN?
Is this Gameloft's first console-only title of recent?

WiiWare

Max's Magic Marker Draws Its Way To WiiWare
Platforming with physics-based Kirby Canvas Curse gameplay? Yes, please.

BIT.TRIP CORE Takes Things Up A Notch
You thought BIT.TRIP BEAT was difficult? Check this out.

Posted by Simon Carless at 11:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Released last July in Japan and nowhere else, Nanashi no Game, or The Game with No Name, is Square Enix's first-person survival horror game for Nintendo DS. It's a video game twist on Hideo Nakata's The Ring film, centered around a cursed RPG, whose players die seven days after starting the adventure if they haven't completed it.

Players alternate between exploring creepy 3D environments filled with puzzles and zombie-like spirits, and fighting their way through a Dragon Quest-styled 8-bit RPG on a "TS" system (played on the top screen). According to Optic Camouflage's review of the import, the cursed game features a "haunting melody which distorts at various points" and "graphics that ... glitch whenever you take a step".

Much like other studios promising game announcements for the coming weeks, Square Enix has put up a countdown on its Japanese site for Nanashi no Game, encouraging visitors to return to the page in seven days. Sounds like a sequel! The company has also inverted the site left to right -- inverted things can be kind of scary, I guess!

If the original game sold enough to warrant a follow-up, perhaps that has also motivated Square Enix to consider bringing Nanashi no Game stateside? You can watch a trailer for the original below:

[Via Andriasang.com]

Posted by Eric Caoili at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

[Why is it that "epic" seems to be the ultimate height of ambition in the industry? In this Gamasutra editorial, editor-at-large Chris Remo explores the merit of games that succeed on their sense of restraint.]

I recently happened upon some footage from the upcoming Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time film adaptation. Without speculating on the quality of the final product, I feel confident in expecting the big-budget Bruckheimer bonanza to be epic, for better or worse.

That sounds like an implicit endorsement. After all, works of epic scale have become so in vogue in recent years that the word "epic" has transcended being a qualifier of scope, and has become a broader positive descriptor that can refer to just about anything that is totally rad.

It's not much of a surprise that a Hollywood adventure film would shoot for "epic." But while the film might end up being a fun, well-made flick (competent director Mike Newell is behind the camera, and talented Prince creator Jordan Mechner co-authored it) I can't help feeling a little dismayed that this cast-of-thousands affair is borne out of a game that I remember so vividly for -- of all things -- its sense of restraint.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time was a masterful game in many respects, including its well-executed 3D platforming mechanics and clever time-rewind conceit, but Mechner's input as writer, designer, and general creative supervisor is likely what lent much of its unique tone.

The Sands of Time demands a certain amount of patience from its players, its protagonist initially impudent and distrusting before slowly transforming into a sympathetic, appealing character. The game teeters between thoughtful, atmospheric isolation and charmingly tentative companionship -- not the traditional stuff of epics.

Games are clearly capable of those emotional directions (Mechner's underappreciated previous game The Last Express is another fine example) and in many cases being successful at the same time, so why is it that "epic" seems to be the ultimate height of ambition in the industry? Note that for the purpose of this piece, I am focusing on character-, world-, and story-driven games, as opposed to puzzle games, mini-games, sports games, and so on.

Is it a lingering byproduct of the traditional adolescent target demographic, even as average gamer age rises? Is it a function of those seemingly ubiquitous game developer influences -- Aliens, The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Saving Private Ryan, Sin City, 300, Quentin Tarantino, et al?

Is it because games are often played as power fantasies? Is it because, when the default progression mechanic in most games is combat, grand conflict and badassery just make the most sense?

The most recent trailer for BioWare's upcoming fantasy RPG Dragon Age: Origins, succinctly and accurately entitled the "Violence Trailer," epitomizes the epic-fetishism of "hardcore" video game setting, narrative, and marketing to such an astonishingly extreme degree that when I first saw it, there was a brief moment when I considered whether it could be parody.

"Think something like Mass Effect, except more...epic," imwritingsomething comments earnestly in the YouTube thread. Adds VinceM51, "If this was a movie it'd kick more ass then 300."

As time goes on, I've found that I increasingly appreciate games with a sense of restraint, even if it comes only in scattered doses. The continued potential for hilariously proposterous mayhem in Grand Theft Auto IV has been exhaustively documented. But when you're in a less anarchic mood, you can soak up the amazingly atmospheric city, cruising through the boroughs and even slowing down to pay a bridge toll -- just like a real human!

In a wackier example, the unapologetically insane No More Heroes featured ridiculous "part time job" side quests as a minor counterpart to the main course of chaotic (and tongue-in-cheek) violence. I've seen a few online complaints about their inclusion, but I got a surprising amount of enjoyment from watching protagonist Travis waddle around with armfuls of watermelons to make a few bucks.

It's unlikely many gamers have much interest in playing a game that exhaustively recreates all the minutia and mundanity of daily life for its own sake -- nor should they. But I believe there is value in at least allowing for personal (and interpersonal) interactions that are self-initiated, not explicitly tied to the player's direct goal at a given moment.

This can be reflective of a character who, even if he spends a majority of his on-screen time kicking asses and taking names, displays evidence of occasionally also doing something else.

Of course, if I had my way, there would be more games that simply exercised a broad sense of restraint to begin with, making those sharp mechanical contrasts less necessary. In Sands of Time, your only options are near-superhuman acrobatics and one- (or two-) against-the-world combat, but you never get the sense that the game is trying to actually be, well, a Bruckheimer film.

It's a hard trap to avoid in games, because it's so much the standard, and it so neatly fits into the idea of gameplay that increases in challenge or spectacle. Even BioShock, which expertly avoids feeling like a gratuitous player fantasy even while allowing the player to become quite powerful. It explores some of the most interesting themes tackled by games, can't resist falling back on an enormous, somewhat incongruous, bosstastical final boss.

Of course, the failed underwater utopia of Rapture remains one of the most well-conceived, fondly-remembered settings the medium has seen in recent memory. Like the sandy palaces of Prince of Persia or the enigmatic ruins of Ico, it evokes a sense of faded grandeur. It invites us to fill in blanks with our imagination, it creates the potential for speculation and thought, even idle thought that forms no complex theory.

Those places may not be as immediately and directly "epic" as three thousand orcs laying siege to a castle, or a battle-hardened space marine cutting through enemies in the middle of an orbital bombardment -- or a mutated agent who single-handedly lays effortless waste to whole city blocks. But they offer a different kind of enjoyment that can be a refreshing alternative to those time-tested video game tropes. It's not about combat gameplay versus non-combat gameplay; it's about restraint.

I don't believe games should aspire to be an interactive form of film, or any other medium. But that doesn't mean they can't learn something from other forms of expression, which have long understood that there is a place for the action-packed blockbusters and there is a place for smaller stories.

There is clearly a place for the latter in games as well, or I wouldn't have been able to cite examples here. There are obviously many more I could have cited. It's just that it's a disproportionately small place, and we end up with a feedback loop.

It's often unclear how to market those games or even make the proper audience aware of their existence. So if they don't sell well, publishers get frightened away from the franchise or "correct" the direction (see: Prince of Persia: Warrior Within). This then reinforces the narrow focus of traditionally-successful games, and keeps the industry within its traditional understanding that core gaming is necessarily epic and/or badass.

As for a solution, I don't have one to offer. But I suspect that as more developers with more disparate personal influences make their way into the medium, there will be an eventual, inevitable broadening of salable themes, settings, and characters in the games themselves.

There are good signs now and then: Just in the last few days, sales of the brutal yet quirky and relentlessly imaginative Zeno Clash seem to be supporting a confirmed sequel. And, if a leaked internal teaser is to be believed, Team ICO's next protagonist doesn't wield a combination sword/laser to cut down legions of his foes.

Because while it's good fun to engage in an old-fashioned epic power fantasy, it's not all that video games can do.

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

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 Radical Entertainment, Ubisoft 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

2K Sports - Visual Concepts: Software Engineer
"We offer a streamlined development process, state-of-the-art technology, competitive benefits, opportunities for advancement and a great place to work. If you are serious about game development and working with the industry's top talent, then you should come join our teams and share our passion for creating the very best."

Radical Entertainment/Activision Front End/Tools Programmer (Junior)
"Join an awesome team that loves to make great games and have fun. The combined experience of this Radical team includes Simpsons Hit & Run, Crash Tag Team Racing, Crash of the Titans, Crash: Mind over Mutant and Scarface: The World is Yours. This team is committed to open communication, a fun environment, and high quality, innovative games. If this sounds up your alley, we want to hear from you."

Ubisoft San Francisco: Lead Designer
"Ubisoft Entertainment, a global leader in the video games and entertainment software industry, is currently seeking a full-time Lead Designer. We are looking for a highly talented, motivated and experienced person to help guide the creation of an exciting new cross-platform music based game."

Demiurge Studios: Senior Artist
"Demiurge Studios is searching for a talented lead artist with the experience, skills and drive to turn our next-gen projects into works of art. Our ideal candidate will have the ability to define project style, as well as the expertise to execute on an artistic vision. Prior experience leading teams of artists and reviewing artwork is required. If you can inspire our team with amazing art and game production technique, we've got a job for you."

WorldsInMotion - Online Games

NetDevil: Social Designer
"The studio is currently developing Jumpgate Evolution and LEGO Universe as well as an original IP. The Social Designer is responsible for design and creation, maintenance, and oversight of all socialization features in the AAA MMOG, LEGO Universe. This includes responsibility for safety and consumer service issues, in order to provide a premium, trusted online experience for "kids of all ages"."

Working Library: Senior Software Engineer
"Working Library is a Manhattan-based digital creative agency. We are currently seeking a game programmer to develop content for a virtual world environment on PlayStation Home. If you want to develop cutting-edge creative on a new platform, we have a place for you here!"

Serious Games Source - Serious Games

Merlin Simulation: Computer Analyst/Programmer
"Applicant will have hands on experience in simulators (primarily airplane and helicopter but could be any type of simulation such as car, tank, boat/ship."

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 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

With the release of Monster Hunter Freedom Unite's demo yesterday to the PlayStation Store, Capcom posted this huge scroll artwork featuring the PSP game's characters and creatures, big and small. That green hill looming in the background? That's actually an elder dragon, "a veritable god of the sky made of the richest soil". Wacky! You can see the full version here.

Capcom also posted its Encyclopedia Gigantica with an introduction to the game and details on all its monsters, quests, weapons, and more. The site is designed to eventually allow visitors to contribute and rate articles, as well.

Monster Hunter Freedom Unite (or Monster Hunter Portable 2nd G, as its known in Japan, where it was the top-selling game in 2008 across all platforms) is slated to release in North America and Europe late June.

Posted by Eric Caoili at 6:00 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.]

As we steam purposefully in the direction of the weekend, GameSetLinks returns with a whole set of neat pieces - headed by a story about an altitudinous arcade which you might also have seen on Bitmob, but appears here from its original location, hurray.

Also in here - platform studies, dubious abandonware claims, Game Center CX updates of the most fun kind, Wired's current issues, a whole heap of hardcore WiiWare discussion, and lots more.

Go go stay:

THE HIGHEST ARCADE IN THE WORLD « Collect
Nice piece on an arcade somewhere you... wouldn't expect! (UPDATE: the writer is now trying to find the person he played against 10 years ago!)

Videogame Nation; A Museum Exhibit in Manchester - Negative Gamer
Hey, cool, they have Introversion's jacket from when they won IGF. In a museum exhibit! Epic.

Is it just me or is Wiiware mostly craptacular? - NeoGAF
Very interesting multi-page thread on what is working, isn't on WiiWare - be aware that these are the hyper-informed gamers, obviously.

Wired Struggles to Find Niche in Magazine World - NYTimes.com
Upsetting to see such a downturn here, because Wired is really trying to do interesting things in print right now. Maybe just leaner and meaner will have to do?

QBlog - The Hunter and the Hunted
A really nice piece of writing from Richard Bartle on smart design in World Of Warcraft.

Game Center CX Episode Guide | crunk games
Aha, the 11th season is here, and Ray Barnholt interprets as per normal - but WHERE'S THE LEGAL ENGLISH-LANGUAGE VERSIONS, guys? Gah.

Platform Studies, a book series published by MIT Press, Ian Bogost and Nick Montfort, series editors
Call for entries into this series - 'platforms' includes languages, game systems, etc. I find MIT Press books to be the most interesting around, but sometimes infuriatingly academikwak. (To be expected, I guess.)

Abandonware: Driving Sales Without a License at Slide To Play
On Flashback on the iPhone: 'Nobody actually owns the license anymore, which means anyone with the skill to make a port can bring it out on the iPhone.' Wow, what a load of rubbish - you should know better, Manomio _and_ Slide To Play.

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

Eurocom founder and director Neil Baldwin, who we recently featured for his frank examinations of the NES game soundtracks he composed for the company, recently took part in a Q&A over IRC (#NESdev@EFnet), discussion topics like his current NES sound engine project Ninjuu, and Eurocom's humble development environment starting off:

“We never had any official docs, Taxan managed to get photocopies of Japanese docs from somewhere, and we had them partly translated and guessed the rest through trial and error. It took a long, long time. Loads of debugging variables that we’d watch by just hex-printing them on screen and staring at the code for hours and hours and hours.

I think we were hacking away at it for six months before we got anything working. We were desperate to get it all working, there was only Rare in the UK doing NES stuff, and we saw an opportunity in the market. OK. [Admittedly], they did make some ace stuff. There, I said it.”

The fledgling studio's office wasn't exactly a state-of-the-art setup either, as the team of five borrowed an office from one of the director's fathers, cardboard boxes taped to the inside of all the windows to block out sunlight. "[We] felt like real pioneers," said Baldwin. "Ignoring the fact that Rare were already doing it.”

One interesting detail the Eurocom director revealed was the existence of a never-released but nearly completed Nintendo game based on a book by British director and Monty Python member Terry Jones, though he stopped short of providing its title:

“The game was practically finished. We just kind of lost communication with the Japanese publisher and it got shelved. It was based on a Terry Jones book. I have a ROM of it. I’ll have to see if I can twist some arms and get the game ROM released like Hero Quest.

The unreleased game [is] actually pretty good. I seriously would love it to get out into the community; if only to put the music into context. It’s a role player, similar to the old Zeldas. It was one of those rare occasions when I actually paid attention to what was in the game.“

I'm pretty sure this game was never even announced! God willing, Baldwin will receive permission to release the ROM, as I'd love to see how an old RPG from the mind of Terry Jones would turn out. You can read more excerpts from his Q&A session at True Chip Til Death.

Posted by Eric Caoili at 6:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

[It’s yet another zombie game to add to the festering pile, yet PopCap's Plants vs. Zombies is attracting both the core and the casual in droves. What can we learn from it about universal appeal? Kris Graft investigates...]

I could be blowing off the high-def heads of the athletic zombies of the superb Left 4 Dead with a few friends, or tossing incendiary grenades at a group of the persistent undead (and screaming in frustration at the shoddy co-op A.I.) in the blockbuster Resident Evil 5.

Heck, I haven’t stepped into the motherf***ing shoes of Agent G in House of the Dead: Overkill lately – perhaps I should. I could even revisit that mall in Willamette, CO.

But no, there are more urgent matters – the real threat is right at my front door. My immaculately manicured lawn is a no man’s land and the only thing between me and an undead, looming doom is an army of flowers, nuts, fruits and tubers.

I had gotten so used to the grabbing the nearest shotgun to defend against the zombie apocalypse that I overlooked the potato that would be my savior.

Of all the multi-million dollar so-called triple-A games out right now that I bought for $50 or $60 a pop in recent weeks, the game I end up playing is a cheap (as in inexpensive), low-fi, pixilated dandy known as Plants vs. Zombies from PopCap Games.

Why PopCap's Fastest-Ever Selling Game?

Apparently I’m not alone. PopCap PR man Garth Chouteau told me that Plants vs. Zombies is selling “incredibly well” and “At this very early point in its history, it’s the best-selling game PopCap’s ever had.”

It’s received much love from critics and gamers on blogs and message boards, where people can’t stop talking about this mixed up plant-zombie premise that, strangely enough, seems to become more feasible the more you play the game.

And it's not just the core gaming, internet denizens who are picking up Plants vs. Zombies. PopCap's "casual" market is picking up this game too.

I love the big-budget interactive adventures as much as the next person, but it’s always a bit of a relief (okay, for me, a big relief) when something comes along so pure and fun like Plants vs. Zombies. But it’s not just that: it’s weird, and I like that too, and the market responds to that.

The name of the game tells you what it is, and your interest is piqued to where you need to know how those two entities can possibly be at odds. (The gaming blogosphere was abuzz on the game's announcement on April 2 -- people weren't even sure whether or not it was a belated April Fool's day joke.) Next thing you know, you’ve bought the game and the entire afternoon is shot.

The unique premise of the title draws you in, and the gameplay makes you stay (and also compels you to tell all your friends about the experience).

Long Development, Big Rewards?

The development of Plants vs. Zombies is also a bit weird. Part of the appeal of developing pick-up-and-play games for the mass market is that you typically don’t have these extended development periods.

But the first prototype for Plants vs. Zombies was completed three years ago, says designer George Fan, who was also the man behind the fish vs. aliens game Insaniquarium. Over the years, Plants vs. Zombies transformed from more of a plant-nurturing game originally called Weedlings to a plants vs. aliens game before becoming what it is today.

Two years into development of the game, tower defense-style games amassed a big following, and zombies proliferated interactive entertainment even more than previous years. As much as we’d like to be the jaded snoot that looks down on such cliches, the goofy and beautiful cartoon presentation has been inescapable.

“I thought, hey, I could do plants. No one would expect plants to move. So they really made great towers to me,” Fan says in a podcast with Blog Critics’ Multiplayer Chat. He almost makes it sound logical.

He says the game was inspired by gardening games that were coming out around a few years ago, but he wanted his game to stand out. “I thought zombies would be really cool.” Plus, they move slow enough for gamers to set up their plant defenses.

So here I am, yet again, playing another zombie game. Yet I am not ashamed.

The Hardcore Vs. Casual Conundrum

And that brings us to another element of Plants vs. Zombies that is unique, or weird: for a PopCap game, it has a very strong appeal to the hardcore.

“There’s certainly a larger contingent of ‘hardcore’ gamers purchasing [Plants vs. Zombies] than most of our other titles, with the notable exception of Peggle,” PopCap's Chouteau said. “At the moment, we’d estimate that at least half of all buyers of PvZ would fall into the ‘hardcore’ category.”

Other than proving that hardcore gamers are the most predictable bunch around (marketing tip: add zombies to your game), Plants vs. Zombies makes me even more annoyed with the term “casual", because Plants vs. Zombies shows that the term doesn't really mean much at all -- everyone's buying it, the hardcore set and the "non-traditional" set.

And everyone's playing it. A lot. But I can either use the term "casual", or “mass market pick-up-and-play interactive entertainment that appeals heavily to atypical gamer demographics.” So I’ll probably stick with casual, much to my distress.

To the game's credit, Plants vs. Zombies’ appeal to hardcore gamers isn’t just a product of our love of the festering, shuffling undead. PopCap was more methodical in its launch of the game.

The Deceptive, Rotting Depths

Chouteau adds, “There are several possible reasons for [the game's hardcore appeal] beyond the game itself: casual buyers tend to take longer to go from trial to purchase; [Plants vs. Zombies] has been available on Steam, an essentially ‘hardcore’ service, since launch and at a discount; et al.”

Plants vs. Zombies also draws from conventions of more "core" games such as MMORPGs and RTS games, such as the recharge times for plant "weapons" and the use of sunlight as a resource akin to Tiberium.

But Chouteau claims that PopCap doesn't really try to pigeonhole its games, or actively try to address a particular audience.

“At this juncture, we don’t worry much about ‘casual vs. hardcore’ – we try to make games that will appeal to both audiences more or less equally. In this short attention span century of ours, this can be tricky since people tend to judge things quickly."

"However, our games can be ‘deceptively deep’ in some cases, and require 50-plus hours just to unlock all the modes and access all the power-ups or ‘towers’ or etc. Thankfully, Plants vs. Zombies is engaging enough that people end up spending a ton of time in the game before they really realize that an afternoon has just evaporated.”

…
…

I’m sorry, what was that again, Garth? I got distracted by a zombie on a Zamboni.

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

Interactive fiction author Emily Short, who enriches GameSetWatch every other week with her wonderful 'Homer In Silicon' column on game narratives, tallied a selection of games that she feels should be played to understand interactive storytelling.

Though she admits that the list is still incomplete and slanted towards interactive fiction, Short covers a broad range of categories, from commercial titles like Planescape: Torment and Portal to casual releases like Miss Management and Emerald City Confidential. She even has a section on "games in the newly emergent retro/art genre", suggesting Judith and Don't Look Back.

If you're looking to learn more about interactive storytelling, this is definitely a great place to start. And once you've completed all the games in her must-play list, make sure to go through the post's comments for more suggestions!

Posted by Eric Caoili at 3:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Nearly two years since he posted the last installment of Jmac's Arcade, software consultant Jason McIntosh has put up the sixth episode of his video series sharing his personal experiences growing up in the 1980s with arcade games on the south shore of Massachusetts.

This latest episode covers his obsession with Pac-Man, a fixation that was put behind him until Jamey Pittman's recent publication of The Pac-Man Dossier. The bit about McIntosh's loathing for the Atari 2600 port of Pac-Man is particularly excellent.

If you've never watched or listened to Jmac's Arcade, you really should! I've embedded McIntosh's first video below about Konami's 1981 arcade shoot'em up Scramble, so you can start from the beginning!

[Via Auntie Pixelante's Twitter]

Posted by Eric Caoili at 1:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The final deadline for Dr. Dobbs Challenge Deuce, a game competition from the world-renowned Dr. Dobb's website for software developers and Microsoft's Visual Studio, is June 12th.

This date marks the end of the competition’s main challenge -- to use Microsoft Visual Studio to code a mod of the Silverlight-based Dr. Dobbs Challenge game -- but also the final chance for users to win the monthly $500 best level prize, awarded to players who create levels using the web browser-based in-game level editor.

In addition, users will be able to win Dr. Dobbs bobbleheads for the best level created per week until the June 12th deadline.

As an example of the high quality of games submitted to the competition, the winner and runner up of the Dobbs Race-To-The-Finish Challenge (a $1000 prize for the best mod developed within half the length of the competition) have been uploaded to the Dr. Dobbs Challenge Deuce website, with users able to play both the winner James Paulin’s entry, Day of Ape, and the runner-up, Martin Szinger’s Tornado.

Also, examples of popular and fun user-submitted levels can be found on the official and the official Dobbs Challenge Deuce Twitter.

The base game, co-created by game developer Adam Saltsman of Semi Secret Software (Wurdle for iPhone, Gravity Hook), builds on the success of the original Dobb’s Challenge game competition which debuted in March 2008.

The Dr. Dobbs Challenge Deuce once again gives away almost $10,000, but switches things up by going in-browser. As one of the most advanced uses of Microsoft Silverlight technology to date, it allows full in-browser game play of an addictive platform title, again starring Dr. Dobbs and the machinima characters.

All of the mod competition categories (open to coders and artists worldwide, with the results to be available on the Dr Dobbs Challenge website) are as follows:

- The Dobbs Race-To-The-Finish Challenge ($1,000) - Produce the best modded game (of any kind) in half the length of the competition.
- Best Game ($2,000) - Produce the best modded game (of any kind) across the whole challenge.
- Best One Button Game ($1,000) - Produce the best game that uses only one button for input.
- Best Game Starring Dr. Dobb And The Defy All Challenges Crew ($1,000) - Produce the best game that still stars the Dr. Dobb and The Defy All Challenges Crew (though these characters can be redrawn or otherwise used in any way in the title.)
- Best Total Conversion ($1,000) - Produce the best game that is completely different from the original Dr. Dobbs Challenge -- i.e. uses no design aspects or assets other than the use of Visual Studio icons.

The deadline for Dr. Dobbs Challenge Deuce is June 12th, 2009. Full information, including rules, source code, and the in-browser game, is available at the official Dr. Dobbs Challenge website.

Posted by Simon Carless at 11:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Media Molecule co-founder and technical director Alex Evans disclosed that the company is beta testing an online portal for LittleBigPlanet, which will offer leaderboards, photos, commenting, and the ability to send download links for user-created levels to others.

"Rather than going on forums and saying, 'Please search for my level,' you can just say, 'Here's a link'," said Evans according to a report from gaming news site 1UP. When a user clicks the link, they're taken to a page with an option for adding the level to a download queue that will appear when they turn on their PlayStation 3.

The LBP portal will also feature an API for programmers to create custom LittleBigPlanet applications, such as a Google Maps page that shows the locations of levels on the game's Craft Earth. Evans says the API and portal will launch "as soon as possible".

Posted by Eric Caoili at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

[Continuing a set of GameSetWatch interviews with intriguing alt.game makers, Phill Cameron catches up with the Australian duo Touch My Pixel, discussing their collaboration with illustrator Nathan Jurevicius on beautifully constructed Flash game Scarygirl.]

Touch My Pixel are an Australian based developer made up of Tarwin Stroh-Spijer and Tony Polinelli, previously based primarily in web design, who've used the Scarygirl project, based on Nathan Jurevicius's designs and funded by Film Victoria and Passion Pictures Australia, to springboard themselves into the public consciousness, and create a really beautiful and rather fun game in the process.

The game, which is available to play freely as a Flash-based browser game on ScaryGirl.com, really is something; the visuals alone, taken from Nathan's work and adapted carefully, are something gorgeous to behold in motion.

We talked to Touch My Pixel about the transition from web design and Facebook Apps to 2D platformers, what it was like to work with Nathan Jurevicius, and what they plan to do with themselves now they've made a name for themselves:

Could you explain a bit about who you are and what kind of games you make?

Touch My Pixel: Two kids trying to take on the world. Well, two grown up kids. We were web designer/devs for years, then did some advergames and then started working together in our current business, Touch My Pixel, as a result of working on Scarygirl.

After recently finishing the rather fetching Scarygirl, do you feel that you’ve gained a level of awareness in the public eye you wouldn’t have had before?

Absolutely. Before the release of Scarygirl we were completely unknown, and in a way untested. This has been our first major game and has given us a platform to really show what we could do. After we released the second demo video we actually had a few people sit up and take notice which was nice (a wave to the guys at The Behemoth) but nothing like the media / industry attention we've got now.

How did you set about working for Nathan Jurevicius? Did he approach you?

It was part luck, part who we know and a little but of us being awesome. We were actually recommended by a good friend of ours, Suren Perera from Renmotion (the guy that single-handedly did all the great in-game animations). He'd met Nathan at an animation festival where he'd had an animation of his short-listed.

With Scarygirl, did you have a good deal of input in how the final game turned out? Was Nathan Jurevicius easy to work with?

A lot of what the game was, as a game, was up to us. We had to trawl through Nathan's previous comics, his sketches and toys, and pre-release mockups of his upcoming graphic novel to work out what his world was, then we had a lot of free reign.

For a long time we were worried that we were going to step out of line and make something up that just didn't fit into his world, but it turned out he was pretty good at Scary-ising anything we made. So the basic story is all Nathan's, but the gameplay is a lot Touch My Pixel.

Scarygirl is considerably more diverse and accomplished than most other Flash games. Did you push the engine harder than normal to achieve the results?

There was a lot of learning how far we could push the engine while we were creating this game, but there's also a modest system requirement to play the game. I think when we make a new game we can get Flash to do even more for us, especially with the new release.

With something like Scarygirl, the actual mechanics could be said to take a backseat to the visuals. Do you have to make concessions for the art, or was it a mutually beneficial relationship? We made concessions to the art in as much as we had to make the game work with his art style.

There were a few complaints from players that they had trouble knowing what they could and could not land/walk on, which we knew would be a problem from the start, but we didn't want to force Nathan to change his artwork, for example adding thick black lines on walkable areas which could be one solution. But mostly it was working out ways to get Flash to display his artwork at decent framerates.

The game works in Flash, inside the web browser. How versatile did you find Flash to be as a program? Were there any noticeable limitations?

Limitations. Yeah, there were a few. It's really annoying that you can't get it to go into fullscreen mode and still use the keyboard (some kind of security reason, I think). Other than that I really think it's a case of Flash being really good for what it is. As long as you know its limits you'll be happy with what you can produce with it. You can push it if you know what you're doing but you wouldn't want to make a 3D extravaganza in Flash, pick the right tool for the job.

What are some of the differences between a collaborative work and one where you’re allowed free reign? Do you find one preferable to the other?

We generally are collaborators, at least it's always a collaboration between the two of us. But with "outsiders", I think it's better. Means you get things done. We're trying to get some of our own games done at the moment, small projects though. On a completely different realm we've also just released a CMS (Content Management System) we're pretty proud of - we're still web monkeys as well as game junkies!

What was it like making the CoinCan application for Facebook? Have the results been positive?

The CoinCan game is actually headed by some other friends of ours, amazing designer/typographers, Something Splendid, who we share a studio with. We're just doing the grunt work of getting the Flash stuff up and running for them. That said, it's been fun making an avatar system and I think it's been pretty popular. The mini-game "Catch" has had heaps of plays and I think we did well in re-inventing a very old style of game. There's going to be more mini-games to come in this project soon too.

You also do quite a bit of web design. Do you find your skills are transferable into game design?

I think the programming skills we've been honing doing game design have really paid off in how we structure our web projects, making them cleaner and slicker. It also means that doing web, whether it is design, CSS/HTML or development seems so much easier it can almost be a holiday doing it sometimes.

The way you have to think about your users when you're creating a game can sometimes be the same as when creating a website, especially if you're trying to work out how to stop them from breaking either.

As you do a lot of contract work for various clients, do you find that you are able to express yourselves in that kind of work, or are you quite restricted in what you can do?

Sometimes doing exactly what the client wants isn't such a bad thing. It teaches you to be meticulous. Then again, if a client wants something "stupid" we'll tell them.

With the success of Scarygirl, are you looking to move more into game development, or will you remain a diverse company?

We'd like to do more game development, but we'll probably end up doing web sites as well. It's always just choosing the right tool for the job, or idea, or random inspiration.

Is there anything else you’d like to add?

Just a big thanks to everyone else we worked with on Scarygirl. Without all the amazing work they did on the project no one would take a second look at the game. So that's Nathan who's world and amazing artwork it is the whole reason the game exists, Luke who did the great music and SFX like a hurricane, Suren who brought life to the characters and Halo Pictures who made the intro that everyone raves about.

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

For some time now, I've wanted to splurge and import one of those Japanese piggy banks (counter-productive, I know) with built-in LCD screens that display bits of a game each time you slip in a coin -- BankQuest, for instance, is an RPG that has you fighting monsters in a tower; and Ikemen Bank lets you fall in love with and choose from five different male suitors.

The only thing that's stopped me from purchasing one, other than the fact that I'm an adult with a bank account that already does a fine job of keeping my money safe, is that I don't actually have any Japanese yen coins to plop into the toys.

Those yen coins might not be necessary, though, for these little banks. In import shop NCSX's preorder listing for Full Metal Alchemist Coin Banks with an LCD that displays animations of the anime/manga characters, the site points out, "For stateside savers, please note that a standard nickel can be used in place of the JPY100 coin since the dimensions are very similar."

Looks like I'm going to have to invest in a mini Space Invaders cocktail machine now.

Posted by Eric Caoili at 6:00 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.]

Ah yes, the continuation of GameSetLinks goodness, this is, starting out with a pretty darn interesting Schlaghund piece on the ol' 2D vs. 3D fighter conundrum - always a tricky one, that, esp. for the purists.

Also hanging out there - PixelVixen707 continues some strangeness, the wonderful Marcus makes a Mega64 re-appearance to mystify Peter Molyneux, Waiting For Godot versus Left 4 Dead, Clover's political message oddness, and lots more.

Import expert:

Fighting games and the role of execution « schlaghund’s playground
'My personal experience has led me to the conclusion that the 2D fighting game has a much greater focus on execution, while the 3D fighting game has a slightly greater focus on strategy.'

Raph’s Website » Metaplace is now in open beta
'Yesterday was a big milestone for me. Anyone can now go to Metaplace.com and register. You get a small world for free, with full access to all the content creation tools. Lately, I’ve been describing it at “the power of Second Life, with the ease of The Sims, on the web.”'

The Lost Coin-Op: The Chi-Town Coin-Op Caper » PixelVixen707
This is getting pretty wacky - actually, here's the whole thread, for reference.

Mike Darga's Game Design Blog: The Tortoise and the Hare
'What I find so interesting about this situation is that we have two games, both somewhat niche and aiming for fans of PvP, at approximately the same number of subscribers.' Guess which two!

Mega64 » Archive » SEASON 2 BEGINS! MARCUS RETURNS WITH PETER MOLYNEUX!!
'Marcus’ Corner has returned for Season 2! Episode 201 is an interview with Fable creator Peter Molyneux.' Complete awesome.

Ludus Novus » Blog Archive » Left 4 Godot
'Like in Waiting for Godot, the Survivors of Left 4 Dead are trapped in a never-ending cycle, figurative or literal, of constant struggle.'

Fire Hose Games » Digital distribution comparison
Not actually many extra numbers in here compared to my GDC lecture, but probably a lot easier to read :P And the games per week metric is good.

Clover delivers political message minus gameplay | Fidgit
'I'm the target audience for Clover, an artsy indie game supposedly about the way 9/11 was used by the Bush Administration as an excuse to invade Iraq.'

Posted by Simon Carless at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

To accompany the debut of its first in-game screenshot for Interstellar Marines, developer Zero Point Software also uploaded this humorous video of the "photo session" from which the shot was taken from, trotting out the game's baffling but kind of awesome enemies.

The idea of walking sharks isn't a new one, and the developer introduced them years ago in its 2006 trailer, so I'm willing to accept the mutated creatures' existence, but what are these sharks doing in outer space? Why would someone bring sharks of all creatures to space? Who does that?!

Nevertheless, it's certainly an aspect that helps Interstellar Marines stand out from other space marine shooters, as is the Denmark-based studio's AAA Indie concept, which helps fund and direct development.

Zero Point Software describes AAA Indie with this list:

1. AAA Indie is AAA games done independently from publishers
2. AAA Indie is the gamer and the developer, no one else
3. AAA Indie is development with open doors, so gamers can track games in development
4. AAA Indie lets the gamers 'vote' for the games they want to play - simply by expressing their interest
5. AAA Indie is open for anyone with a dream a the will to deliver on that dream

As part of this program, the official Interstellar Marines site invites interested gamers to register a profile, or "enlist as a marine". Once enlisted, members can "upgrade" their marine's rank by donating anywhere from $5 to $29, earning badges indicating their level of contribution and enjoying benefits like access to higher quality files, early access to playable releases, and more.

Zero Point argues that this concept allows participants to "can get behind the scenes of the development of games they fancy" and allows titles to be "priced and distributed much more liberally" among other benefits. It has also launched a "viral initiative" through AAAindie.com with this video:

My first thought after watching the corny clip: Why would you do that to your hardwood floor? Who does that?!

Posted by Eric Caoili at 6:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

[Showcasing highlights from sister site Gamasutra's Member Blogs,they hand out a lifetime Game Developer magazine subscription for a rant against the domination of cutscenes.]

In our weekly Best of Member Blogs column, we showcase notable pieces of writing from members of the game community who maintain Member Blogs on Gamasutra.

Member Blogs can be maintained by any registered Gamasutra user, while invitation-only Expert Blogs -- also highlighted weekly -- are written by selected development professionals.

Our favorite blog post of the week will earn its author a lifetime subscription to Gamasutra's sister publication, Game Developer magazine. (All magazine recipients outside of the United States or Canada will receive lifetime electronic subscriptions.)

We hope that our blog sections can provide useful and interesting viewpoints on our industry. For more information, check out the official posting guidelines.

This Week's Standout Member Blogs

- Putting The Cut In Cutscenes
(John Mawhorter)

For all the talk about the decreasing reliance on cutscenes and greater focus on complete gameplay immersion, there actually remain extremely few games that follow through on that philosophy. Here, John Mawhorter rails against that state of affairs. (This topic seemed to become a minor Member Blogs trend this week.)

For his effort, John will receive a lifetime subscription to Gamasutra sister publication Game Developer magazine.

- Unscripting The Scripted Event
(Jaime Kuroiwa)

Scripted sequences have a lot of power and utility in games, to convey information or provide elaborate showpieces. But Jaime Kuroiwa argues that, in the decade since Valve's influential usage of scripted sequences in Half-Life, the technique has become stagnant.

- TOJam #4 - Day 0 - Upset Bowels, Sun Battles, A Lack of Bricks
(Jim McGinley)

Everyone's favorite game event correspondent (well, my favorite anyway -- what, you don't have one?), Jim McGinley, is back with his first day of coverage of the recent TOJam #4, the fourth annual Toronto Independent Game Development Jam. This is just a pre-event warmup; more reports are promised.

- On Murderous Video Games
(Stephen Dinehart)

Why do we enjoy horror games? Stephen Dinehart takes a stab (har har) at answering that question, by delving into the psychological roots of fear, sadism, and masochism. Also, are we all just a bunch of hypocrites? Perhaps!

- Help! I Think I Peaked
(Benjamin Quintero)

Developer Benjamin Quintero reflects on whether his current status as "project lead" is an indication that he has hit a limit to his upward mobility. Does this indicate a broader trend across the industry? Might it suggest one reason why employees so often split off and create new studios? You be the judge.

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

A recently found and posted prototype build for Final Fantasy X (speculated to be from two months before the game's final release) offers several neat debug mode treats that you won't see on the PS2 discs that Square shipped. The shot above, for example, comes from the game's battle debug room, which lets you talk to Cactuar and load different scenarios and chapters.

The following video, recorded by Knuckles500, shows an extra cutscene with an NPC's speeding Blitzball barely missing Yuna and Rikku. Notice the sped-up version of "Otherworld", already an odd song for the series:

Knuckles500 adds that there's a lot more to be found in the prototype:

"There are TONS of debugger jokes, kinda like what you find in FFVII, except more creative. ... There's a lot of weird crap. For example, one of the programmers added a bunch of party members on this really scary looking map (not sure if it's used, or even meant to be played on) -- and if you talk to them (all female btw), they do all sorts of weird animation for you (perverted animation btw). For example, when you talk to Lulu, the camera sets on her breasts as she does her 'Battle Victory pose' and doesn't stop until you press X."

[Via Unseen 64 Forums (registration required)]

Posted by Eric Caoili at 2:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Japanese developed Yudo, whose previous apps include Rectools02 and Aero Guitar, revealed its newest software, 8bitone, a "Retro 8-bit Synthesizer + Sequencer", for iPhone and iPod Touch. The app is designed to allow people to use their fingertips to arrange and "simulate sounds for 8bit Personal Computer and Console Game Generator from the 80`s."

In addition to its piano roll sequencer, 8bitone's synthesizer features the following:

• Up to 128 monophonic voices per song
• 1 oscillator or LowBitNoise
• LFO
• Envelope
• Hi-Speed Arpeggiator

You can watch a video of 8bitone in action below:

[Via True Chip Til Death]

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

GameSetWatch sister site GameCareerGuide has posted the results of its ‘Change Mario’s Career’ game design challenge, with readers conceptualizing alternative career paths for Nintendo’s famous plumber.

The best entries include Super Mario Thief, Mario: Stuck In Time and Super Mario Barber.

The introduction for the article outlines the results:

"Science teaches us that a crushed butterfly or an errant sports almanac can sharply skew the earth's timeline, resulting in an unpredictable and dire alternate future. But what would happen to the video games industry if Nintendo's mascot character, Mario, had chosen another career?

The world knows Mario as the star of Nintendo's flagship Super Mario Bros. franchise, which began with a pair of plumbers being sucked into a drain pipe that deposited them into the platform-filled Mushroom Kingdom.

Would Mario and Luigi have embarked on similar adventures if they had chosen a different line of work? What kind of fantasy world would await Mario if he was a taxicab driver, or an accountant, or a bartender?

In its latest Game Design Challenge, Game Career Guide tasked its readers with describing Super Mario Bros. or one of its sequels in an alternate past, in which Mario chose a different career path.

Many readers submitted entries that were similar in concept to Super Mario Bros., save for a few crucial differences. Others hypothesized that Mario's job change would result in the birth of an entirely different genre, taking the games industry in a new and unexpected direction.

What follows are the best and most original entries we received. Here are our top picks:

Best Entries
Stuart Lilford, University of Wolverhampton, Super Mario Thief

Stuart Lilford reimagines Donkey Kong as a stealth-based action-puzzler, then details the sequels and spinoffs that follow. The Super Mario Kart-inspired cops-and-robbers racer is particularly noteworthy, and would likely be very fun to play.

John Healy, Mario: Stuck In Time

Healy's entry puts Mario in the role of a watchmaker's son, and envisions Super Mario Bros. as a collection-based platformer. The many subtle changes noted in the Mario series' traditional structure and mechanics make for a compelling read.

Dean Ray Johnson, Super Mario Barber

In this entry, Dean Ray Johnson replaces the Mushroom Kingdom with a series of danger-filled heads of hair. In the process, Johnson effectively argues that a simple change in career may not have had much of an impact on Mario's first platforming adventure, at least in terms of gameplay.

Honorable Mentions
Loic Ramboanasolo, Universite de Montreal, Mario the Undertaker
Max Nikolaev, Mario the Magic Pimp
Daina Corey, Student at Westwood College Online, Super Mario Brothers: Urban Legends ."

Interested readers can now read the full GameCareerGuide.com story revealing the winners - and the site will be setting a new Game Design Challenge in the near future.

Posted by Simon Carless at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

[In a peppy opinion piece, Reset Generation/Pocket Kingdom co-creator Scott Foe waxes lyrical on the job market, ways to get hired, and approaches to presenting yourself, explaining why you should 'burn your resume' and go with network, skills, and different documentation altogether.]

i.

A medical mystery worthy of Dr. House himself, my body is incredibly resistant to any and all forms of anesthetics – why I couldn’t have come down with a much cooler mutant power, like that guy Mystery from VH1’s The Pickup Artist, is a lament for another column. Last week, I checked myself into a San Francisco medical center for out-patient surgery. Fifteen
injections and two hours in, I could still feel every little touch from every little metal instrument. “We should stop,” the doctor warned. But I just wanted to get it over with.

I should have stopped. The pain was, in a word, indescribable – in a few words, the pain was worthy of a prescription for “The World’s Largest Vicodin.” The doctor actually waved my payment. “Let’s never talk about this to anyone,” he said. “I don’t charge for torture.” Not to worry, doc: Anybody who has ever gone through what passes as games industry interview process can tell you that there are worse ways to spend your time.

I’ve heard it estimated that, at this very moment, some 12% of North American game developers are out of work. And I still say burn your resume.

ii.

It’s not that I don’t feel for the interviewers. Creating a good test for interviewing candidates is a lot like being the Dungeon Master in Dungeons and Dragons: You sit for hours, carefully preparing your castle maps, monster encounters, and clever dialog for the surprise villain that will ultimately threaten the very fabric of the Elven queen’s gown, just to have the players (the candidates) decide that instead of saving the world, they would rather go to the beach and drink Kobold Kahlúa.

Interviewer: “What’s your greatest strength?”
Candidate: “I execute shit like shit’s a mass murderer in Texas.”

Interviewer: “What’s your greatest weakness?”
Candidate: “I am a surprisingly weak interviewee: For all of my world-beater talents, people never seem to want to hire me.”

But, to be completely fair, you really can’t compare Dungeons and Dragons to the interview process. If you did compare Dungeons and Dragons to the interview process, resumes would be character sheets, and in Dungeons and Dragons, people actually read the character sheets. “Send us your resume,” is pretty-much without fail the first request that you will receive when dealing with a company’s Human Resources department.

In most cases, you cannot visit to interview without having sent a resume ahead of you: So why do we allow people to interview us without having read the resume that we sent?

iii.

Of course, The Simpsons’ Comic Book Guy might comment that, “Resumes aren’t character sheets: Job descriptions are character sheets.” Well, here’s a little tip for the Comic Book Guys of the world: The only people who answer obsessively crafted job descriptions are kids out of college and mediocre performers. Amazing talent already has a job, a job where amazing talent is kept busy with work that is both satisfying and challenging, a job where amazing talent is very, very well cared for – a job where even the masseurs have masseurs.

You might be saying to yourself, “Hey! I’m amazing talent and I’m out of work!” Well, here’s a little test for you: Can you snap your fingers to control the weather? Now that’s a talent! Talent can’t be taught: You either have it, or you don’t. The Comic Book Guys will say, “Opportunity and experience trump talent.” And I say to the Comic Book Guys that what we
really want is somebody who has talent and has also had the opportunities and experience to develop talent: That’s what makes “amazing talent.”

Too often, hiring policy dictates that if an amazing talent can’t be found, a warm body will do – to the constant and quickening degrade of the organization. To paraphrase the old venture capitalist saying, “A’s attract A’s; B’s attract J’s through K’s.” Every warm body you seat lowers the value of your company.

It baffles me as to why companies will string along the warm-bodied while holding to hopes of finding an amazing talent: When you discover a body that is warm, but not amazing, tell them, “No thanks.” It also baffles me as to why companies will string along amazing talents, with no word, for days or even weeks, all because of some dumb-colored tape on hiring.

Uncertainty disturbs the colon, resulting in nasty bouts of mud butt: You don’t want your future star performer stinking up all the chairs in your office once you finally get around to hiring him, do you? If you don’t want stinky chairs, make sure that somebody is contacting the candidates daily, letting them know where they stand until a trigger can be pulled or the gun unloaded.

Now you, with your amazing talent for algebra, might be thinking, “If amazing talent has a job where amazing talent is happy, it is impossible to hire amazing talent.” Not exactly true. Sometimes it’s the publisher, in the library, with the candlestick; sometimes amazing talent’s husband has to move and so she goes too; sometimes, for whatever reason, amazing talent is in the wind, looking for work.

Human capital is just as important a component of your business as is the amount of capital resources at your command: Which is to say, a group of ten brilliant people in an empty room will beat the market-snot out of a group of ten dumb people charged with the management of a great product. With this in mind, you should spare nothing to bring amazing talent onboard when presented with the opportunity to do so: Different people are motivated by different things, not always money, and the words, “We don’t pay in used Women’s Shoes,” should never cross your lips.

And are you seriously going to turn away amazing talent when, “We don’t have a position open at the moment”? The top organizations create a position when amazing talent becomes available – a position which will maximize the utility of amazing talent while trivializing amazing talent’s weaknesses. Earlier I mentioned that I’ve heard it estimated that 12% of game developers are out of work. Well, the AAA studios – you know who they are – are still hiring, growing organically. I posted the availability of a former co-worker, one whom I consider to be most-amazing, to a private developer forum recently, and, within one day, the big-named studios were requesting his contact information.

I’ve heard the story so many times that it has become almost as comical as my writing: “Our company has a new CEO, and we’ve all been told to read From Good to Great.” From Good to Great is a good book, but I wish these CEOs would force their employees to read something greater: Mavericks at Work, by Bill Taylor and Polly Labarre, is the best book on the subject of attracting and retaining human capital that I’ve ever read. In fact, a great deal of this section was inspired by that very book.

The authors suggest replacing your “Recruitment” with “Harassment” – make everybody in your organization responsible for identifying the amazing talent in your industry, and then stalk amazing talent with offers like some jilted-ex-lover. At the very least, should amazing talent ever find itself out of work, amazing talent will be thinking of you.

iv.

“You’re walking down the hall and BAM! One of your employees, riding down the hall on a bicycle, smacks right into you! What do you do?”

This was one of my favorite questions to ask the people that could potentially become my bosses. The answer that I was looking for is, “Why was my employee riding the bicycle indoors?’” Before acting, great managers ask, “Why?” (I’ve since found much sneakier ways of getting to, “Why?”) I’m also on the lookout for pronouns: Does the interviewer say, “I,” a lot, or does the interviewer say, “we?” There is no “I” in “team” – well, I guess there’s no, “we” in “team,” either. But the “Wii” is the best-selling console of this generation. Never, ever be afraid to throw questions at your interviewers: You’re both the Dungeon Master, and don’t you forget it.

“The problem with resumes,” says Seth Godin, a globally recognized marketing mastermind and bald man, is that they are “just another reason for somebody to reject you.” If you’re lucky enough to have your resume read by the people you are interviewing with, your luck might involve those people scanning your resume for key-words. When, when, when will companies learn that just because people list “Python” on their resume, that does not mean that those people are very good at Python. And just because somebody does not list Python on their resume does not mean that they are not amazing talent that can learn all there is to know about Python in two weeks.

The truth is that even amazing talent will not be ready to win swims in your organizational ocean without first acclimating to the weekly waters. Education in America was conceived and founded mostly during the industrial revolution to be vocational – to prepare the populace for manual labor. As we have transitioned into a knowledge-based economy, high-specialization has left us needing to learn on the job, even the amazingly talented.

Yes, even amazing talent has weaknesses – weaknesses which amazing talent is very self-aware of. But top performers don’t psyche themselves out. If you ask the Los Angeles Lakers’ Kobe Bryant what his weaknesses are, I’m sure he could recount for you every last detail from muscle memory. But I’m also sure he wouldn’t, “I’m the Black Mamba: The deadliest animal alive.” Kobe Bryant has had twenty-four fifty-plus-point games in his career, third only to Wilt Chamberlin and Michael Jordan. When Kobe misses a shot, he doesn’t stop taking shots.

And if you are going to be taking shots, you’re going to need the ball. The problem with job descriptions is that they always list what the candidate will be held responsible for, but almost never list what authority the candidate will be given, should the candidate be hired. Responsibility is the converse of authority: Political science dictates that we should not be
held responsible for something over which we have no authority. Find out what authority you will have to execute before signing on to a new position.

v.

“Don’t make a resume: I don’t want you sending it around to other companies.” This is unintentionally sound advice from a triple-A studio head – “unintentionally sound,” in that having a resume is a very bad idea. Burn your resume, but never, never stop talking to people until you are signed. Getting somebody to almost hire you is the easiest task in the world.

Social networking is all the rage these days, and yes, you can most-definitely use those weak connections in your network to tweet your way into a job. Third-party validation is an invaluable tool for finding a new position, “I’ve worked with this guy, and he’s like a suitcase nuclear device: Put him down beside a problem and then bunker up, because there will
be nothing but the problem’s shadows on the wall.”

It always amazes me that companies fail to capitalize on, or even value, those weak connections once you have been hired. Business development is not just for business developers, and having people out there, incessantly singing like angels about you and your operation, can pay off for you in very tangible ways. I was having lunch with a friend, the president of a large gaming middleware operation; he lamented the fact that his guys were not plugged-into the development community; his competitors are talking to people constantly, both through private channels, and through industry celebrity, creating a greater perceived value for their services.

“But how do I test for social network when hiring somebody?” Well, it just so happens that there is no “Huge Social Network” column on the traditional resume. Resumes are just that, traditional: They all look the same. You have your objectives, your skills, your work history, your references (which are sometimes “available upon request”), but nothing that really says who you are or what is so special about you. You know that the games that you work on have to have a zingy-something-special to succeed at market: Why should you approach marketing yourself any differently? Do you really want to get in the same marching line as the other 12% of the industry that is delivering objectives, skills, work history, and references (which are sometimes “available on request”)?

Burn your resume. Yes, you will eventually have to send something when asked, “Please send us your resume.” Just make sure that that something is truly special, something that communicates not only who you are and where you have been, but also why you are truly special. If you are thinking that there is nothing truly special about you, then you’re probably a corpse. (Ha! I got you: If you’re a corpse, and you’re reading this, then that’s something truly special: Zombies are hot right now!)

Maybe you are a bad ass Scrum Master? Include a Sprint Report. Maybe you can beat Green Grass and High Tides on expert? Include a photo of you and your Rock Band. And, if your social network is truly overwhelming, make sure that’s reflected too.

Call your something a “Curriculum Vitae,” which is a term that sounds just plain fancy, and which won’t make people on the receiving end balk when you do not send in a resume. Make sure that whatever it is that you send looks as pretty as you possibly can make it. Graphic Designers are like adulterers, in that everybody knows one: Don’t be shy about calling for help.

vi.

I can’t recommend working with recruiters: In one of my worst recruiter experiences, a co-worker listed me as a reference to a recruiter, and that same recruiter immediately called me asking if I would be interested in the job for which my co-worker was interviewing. If you are going to work with a recruiter, the only advice that I can give is to avoid working with multiple recruiters at the same time: Recruiters are like cats in that they feel they belong to the house rather than to the owners; and they hate having their toes stepped on.

I can recommend working with agents, but I stress that working with agents is in no way essential to finding a great position. One of the biggest differences between working with an agent and working with a recruiter is that an agent should be making a percentage of every penny you make from the agent’s work – this is the only way to align utilities to ensure that an agent performs for you. If you are going to sign on with an agent, make sure that you deliver, in writing, the results you expect your agent to achieve, and instruct your agent that making a binding agreement without first clearing things through you is not permitted.

Once you’ve hired an agent, bow out of any and all negotiations: If a potential suitor calls you to complain about your agent, don’t panic: It’s a negotiation tactic, called, “hitting the high hat,” and the intention is to freak you out. Have them take it up with your agent.

Agents are like dogs, in that they’ll love you if you feed them regularly. Make sure that you are on the phone with your agent at least once a week – if that time cannot be yielded, the agent is probably too busy to perform effectively for you. And beware, there are a lot of companies out there who simply will not work with you if you have an agent – the old saying goes, “To get the money you want, you have to decide whose money you don’t want.” Some agents, like IDEA's Sean Kauppinen and indie agent/dev Dave Taylor, I can get on with, though.

Don’t place your fate solely in the hands of human resources departments, recruiters, or even agents. You are ultimately responsible for feeding your mouth, and so, make sure you milk those weak social connections like a perverse dairy farmer. Send your Curriculum Vitae everywhere, even to the loud neighbor against whom you filed a noise-complaint. You never know.

[Scott Foe was creator/producer of Nokia’s critically acclaimed cross-platform game Reset Generation, and has worked on titles including Sega’s Pocket Kingdom: Own the World, the first global, massively multiplayer mobile game. Foe began his decade-long industry career as a member of the Dreamcast product development team at Sega. And, although having a resume is "a very bad idea", here's his Curriculum Vitae. It's different... honest.]

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

Before yesterday, very little was known about Team Ico's (Shadow of the Colossus) third, unannounced title, other than its essence being "rather close to Ico", according to director and lead designer Fumito Ueda, and an in-game image of a chain that was included with the studio's job posting for an unspecified PS3 project.

That same chain reappears in this early test footage posted by PlayStation Life, which some are reporting was initially shown off privately by Team Ico over a year ago.

Keep in mind that because of the video's age, the final product will likely look very different from what's shown here, in terms of graphical quality if not content, and the game presumably won't be advertised with this placeholder music taken from the Coen brothers' 1990 film Miller's Crossing.

If the shipped game turns out to be even half as endearing as this test clip, though. allowing players to befriend and go on adventures with an adorable griffin-like creature, you can count me in.

Posted by Eric Caoili at 6:00 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.]

Woop, continuing with the GameSetLinks as the week wends on, it's time to take a wander around some of the more interesting in-depth pieces of late, starting with GSW columnist Simon Parkin's piece on game achievements at Eurogamer, discussing a startling phenomenon -- and one that didn't really exist in games until quite recently.

Also in today's bumper set of links -- Troy Goodfellow on games for foreign policy geeks, more on a recent survival horror game academic conference, Elder Game on City Of Heroes' user-generated quests gone wild, and lots more.

Goo goo ga ga:

Over-Achievers Article - Page 1 // Xbox 360 /// Eurogamer
'Of course, at their worst, Achievements seek to somehow make up for a lack of interesting in-game challenges... But at their best, they inspire us to play the game in new and interesting ways...'

Elder Game: MMO game development » User Generated Quests and the Ruby Slippers
'When City of Heroes released its user-created mission generator, it was mere hours before highly exploitative missions existed. Players quickly found the way to min-max the system, and started making quests that gave huge rewards for little effort. These are by far the most popular missions. Actually, from what I can tell, they are nearly the only missions that get used.'

Boardgames! | Daily Rodent
Wow, Rab of Consolevania has a board game review videocast that appears rather awesome.

Crispy Gamer - Feature: War and Peace and Everything in Between: 10 Games for Foreign Policy Wonks
'It wasn't long before I started thinking about games that have lessons for people interested in foreign policy. After all, politics and diplomacy have been central themes in gaming since Diplomacy, and maybe even earlier than that.' Only on Crispy, folks! Great piece, tho.

Chris' Survival Horror Quest: 'Thinking After Dark: Tidbits'
Fascinating discussion on the recent horror game academic conference in Canada - unfortunately the papers aren't available online, though many will be published soon.

Charge Shot!!!: Battle.blog – Going Solo, or Rubbing My Nose In It
Fun, eventful writing about going up against the crazies still playing Starcraft 2 competitively online.

The Brainy Gamer: OMG, girls in trouble!
'Most video games for girls send a steady flow of narrow images and self-limiting notions about how to succeed in today's culture. They reinforce all the worn-out essentialist tropes: be beautiful, be fashionable, be popular.'

ZA Critique: Bejeweled 2 | Moving Pixels | PopMatters
'The enormous amount of options and chaos going on in the average game takes time to master. Bejeweled 2 isolates the desire to manage that chaos into its purest and most accessible form.'

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

If you've waited years for the opportunity to offer previews for Game Boy, Super Nintendo, and Nintendo 64 releases in your own home just like toy stores used to in 1997, here's your chance!

An eBay seller has put a Nintendo Power Previews Laserdisc Update Kit up for auction, offering a Laserdisc with videos and information for games like Ken Griffey, Jr.'s Winning Run and Wave Race 64, as well as touch panels and other related items.

This particular kit was originally used for Nintendo retail kiosks in Toys R Us, and is only asking for a starting bid of $199.00. Small change for a decade-long dream, right? More photos:

[Via GameSniped]

Posted by Eric Caoili at 8:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Independent chiptune label VORC Records announced a new tribute album for TM Network for Japanese "techno-pop unit" TM Network, titled 8-bit Prophet, remixing the group's popular songs as chiptune tracks with vocals dropped in by Yamaha's singing synthesizer software.

For those of you who've yet to encounter Japan's "vocaloid" celebrities like Hatsune Miku or Kagamine Rin/Len (lucky you), the application "enables users to synthesize singing by just typing in lyrics and melody."

The album won't go on sale until June 3rd (with a digital release planned for HearJapan), but you can preview samples in the video embedded below. HearJapan also has two advance tracks for purchase.

8-bit Prophet track list:
01. Electric Prophet (K-> Remix)
02. Rainbow Rainbow (K-> Remix)
03. Be Together (K-> Remix)
04. Telephone Line (Tanikugu Remix)
05. Kiss You (K-> Remix)
06. Time Passed Me By (Kyonomori Remix)
07. Rhythm Red Beat Black (Tanikugu Remix)
08. Come On Everybody (K-> Remix)
09. Self Control (K-> Remix)
10. Still Love Her (Kyonomori Remix)
bonus. Get Wild (Saitone Remix feat. AsianDynasty)

Posted by Eric Caoili at 6:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

[We're delighted to announce that we're doing an Indie Games Summit at GDC Austin this September, and we're opening a call for lectures right now. Look for more info and first speakers in a few weeks - this should be a blast!]

Organizers of this September's GDC Austin have announced a call for submissions for the first-ever Independent Games Summit there, also revealing the Advisory Board and topics to be discussed at the two-day Summit.

Initial information about the September 15th-16th Summit is available on the GDC Austin website, with organizers noting that the Indie Games Summit will include "discussions surrounding business models and methods, promotion and marketing, deep game design techniques and inspirational case studies."

The Advisory Board for the Summit, which will be announcing its first speakers in the next few weeks, include local Austin-area independent developers Adam Saltsman (Paper Moon, Cave Story WiiWare contributor) and Brandon Boyer (editor of indie-friendly BoingBoing-affiliated game site Offworld.com).

In addition, the three main Advisory Board members of GDC San Francisco's yearly Independent Games Summit, Flashbang Studios' Matthew Wegner and Steve Swink (Minotaur China Shop) and IGF Chairman Simon Carless, are also helping to oversee the event.

The San Francisco version of the IGS -- held alongside the Independent Games Festival -- has hosted some of the most notable names in indie gaming over the previous years, from World Of Goo's Ron Carmel and Kyle Gabler through Flower's Jenova Chen, Braid's Jonathan Blow, and many more.

As the GDC Austin Indie Games Summit call for submissions page explains, organizers are looking for the following topics, spanning both smaller one and two-person indies and somewhat larger independent console and PC game developers:

- Indie Business: "How to make money, manage teams, and run a company without going insane."
- Promotion & Marketing: "How to get noticed when the "Marketing Department" = you."
- Design and Philosophy: "Deep dive into design techniques, for example: constraints, rapid prototyping, tools."
- Case Studies and Postmortems: "Inspirational talks that demonstrate what worked, what didn’t, what surprised you and made you wiser."

The submission deadline for presentation abstracts for the 2009 Indie Games Summit at Austin GDC is June 3rd at midnight PST, and more information is available on the official GDC Austin IGS website.

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

Famed bento lunch designer Anna the Red has uploaded her latest video game arrangement, this time reproducing a scene from PSP rhythm/strategy series Patapon using rice fried with ketchup (this is delicious with sliced hot dogs), broccoli, seaweed, snow peas, beef soboro, and other food.

You can see more detailed shots of the bento lunch below or on Anna's Flickr set:

Posted by Eric Caoili at 2:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

[Every week, Gamasutra sums up sister iPhone site FingerGaming's top news and reviews for Apple's nascent -- and increasingly exciting -- portable games platform, as written by editor in chief Danny Cowan and reviewers Tim Lockridge and Louise Yang.]

This week, FingerGaming highlights notable releases like Resident Evil: Degeneration, Peggle, and the Crystal Defenders sequel Vanguard Storm. Featured reviews for this week cover Shadowland: Shades of Black, Perfect Balance: Harmony, and 2XL Supercross.

- Square Enix Releases Crystal Defenders Sequel Vanguard Storm
"This follow-up is no mere expansion pack, as Vanguard Storm features greatly overhauled gameplay that is much better suited to the iPhone and iPod Touch hardware."

- Review: 2XL Supercross
"2XL Supercross is simply a beautifully rendered game, sporting slick and fluid graphics that are well beyond my expectations for the iPhone. The game's ten tracks are wonderfully designed, especially in terms of ground contours and terrain shading."

- Free App Roundup, May 9th - 15th Edition
"This week's free releases include demo editions of Pinball Dreaming and Leaf Trombone, along with free full versions of Denny's Dance Allnighter and Expedition Africa: The Game."

- Review: Shadowland: Shades of Black
"A fair deal of Shadowland's screen space is devoted to a trigger, and the controls center heavily on that trigger-driven interface. This is probably Shadowland's greatest asset: Using the trigger is much more immersive and natural than tapping the screen or pressing a button."

- Top Free Game App Downloads for the Week
"Uwe Meier's puzzler BrainTeaser has attracted a lot of attention in its first week of release, and finishes as today's most-downloaded game in the iTunes App Store."

- Review: Perfect Balance: Harmony
"Perfect Balance: Harmony is genius in its simplicity. The almost non-existent learning curve makes it a game that almost anyone — as long as they know about a little thing called gravity — can play."

- Resident Evil: Degeneration Premieres in App Store
"Capcom’s flagship survival horror franchise arrives for the iPhone with the release of Resident Evil: Degeneration, a 3D action title based upon the recently released CG-animated movie of the same name."

- Top-Selling Paid Game Apps for the Week
"Digital Goldfish's recently updated puzzler Bloons joins the App Store charts for the first time this week, finishing just behind last week's top seller Stick Wars."

- PopCap Releases iPhone Port of Peggle
"Peggle for the iPhone features 55 levels of peg-clearing action and 10 different Peggle Masters, each of which introduces new power-ups and gameplay mechanics as the game progresses."

- Review: Chippy
"In this iPhone rendition of Pang, you play a chipmunk who also happens to be an archer. In each stage, Chippy has to shoot large bouncing balls, which split into smaller bouncing balls until they disappear."

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

While expectations for Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars's lifetime sales have brightened since NPD's April report showed little drop-off for its second month on shelves -- assuaging worries after the game moved only 89,000 copies in March, well below analyst predictions -- Majesco has taken advantage of the attention on DS game sales to point out that Gardening Mama sold nearly as much this past month as Chinatown Wars.

The New Jersey-based publisher bragged on its Twitter feed, "Mama wanted me to share with you that for the month of April, Gardening Mama was just shy of Chinatown Wars in sales! You go girl!!!"

Though one can argue that the gardening simulator released on March 31st in the U.S., so NPD's April report should be seen as the game's first month of sales, it's still an impressive feat considering Chinatown Wars' critical acclaim (Metacritic average of 94 versus Gardening Mama's 60), online buzz, $20 Best Buy sale, bigger advertising budget (Take-Two even commissioned a theme song from rappers Ghostface Killah and DOOM), and likely much bigger development budget for Rockstar Leeds and North.

Majesco did not specify how narrow the gap was between the two titles, but at least two other games separated them in April's Top 20 Software all-platform chart -- Chinatown Wars placed 18th with 74,000 units sold for the month, while Guitar Hero: Metallica (PS2) and Major League Baseball 2K9 (Xbox 360) took the 19th and 20th respectively.

On the Nintendo DS-specific Top 10 chart for April 2009, however, Gardening Mama is ranked 8th, right behind Chinatown Wars at 7th. Other than Sega's Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games, the two games are the top-selling third-party DS titles for the month.

Also note that this dig at Chinatown Wars isn't Mama's first crack directed directed at competitors. Just last Friday, the series mascot aired out Science Papa's dirty laundry, indirectly chiding Activision for recruiting an obvious clone for its minigame collection. Mama accused, "[Science Papa] clearly wants a piece of the best-selling pie by associating himself with an incredibly successful, and I'll emphasize, happily married, woman."

You go girl!!!

Posted by Eric Caoili at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

[Continuing his GameSetWatch-exclusive series profiling notable game musicians, this time, Jeriaska sits down with Plants Vs. Zombies soundtrack composer Laura Shigihara, discussing the making of the music for the quirky, popular new zombietastic Popcap casual title.]

Laura Shigihara is the musician behind the original soundtrack for long in development PC casual game Plants vs. Zombies, a typically addictive addition to the 'tower defense' genre that brings adorable real-time combat to the front lawn.

PopCap's PvZ pits a battalion of vegetation against the tractor-riding, bucket-festooned undead in a race to the porch of your house! Drawing on the traditions of pop music genres and classic console chiptunes, the boisterous blend of audio ideas that make up the background music is part of the game's unique charm.

Here Shigi offers her perspective on the surprisingly deep casual game and its music. An angle on the process underlying the soundtrack and the accompanying online music video, the conversation offers a closer look at one game's mission to poke fun at horror and do so with style:

Plants vs. Zombies has attracted a lot of attention for the fun and humor of its music. How did it come about that you joined PopCap for this game project?

Well, [P Vs. Z designer] George [Fan] had been following my music for a few years prior to the development of this game, so at some point he asked if I'd want to compose the music for his next one, which at the time he was programming in his bedroom. I thought that would be a lot of fun because he's a very creative game designer. I did my best to come up with music that matched the theme of the game shortly after he put together a solid prototype. When PopCap hired him as a full-time designer, I just kept working on the music. I guess that's how it happened :)

When this Plants vs. Zombies project started rolling, were there aspects of the early concept art or gameplay that gave you the idea of a particular direction for the musical score?

There were some awesome pixel-art-zombies with long tongues, and for some reason that always made me laugh. Whenever I looked at them I thought "macabre... but goofy," which is basically what the soundtrack is all about. It mixes typically "dark" sounding music with a wide variety of melodies and uptempo beats. In the night level for example, I mixed together Big Band/swing beats with several haunting and serious melodies, and the result was pretty funny.

Two examples of this approach are currently up on your website mybluedream.com. Was there a particular setting in the game that helped inform their design?

"Loonboon" and "Brainiac Maniac" were both written towards the end of production. I think I was reacting to the game as a whole: I've actually played through the entire game a couple times, so I made the music to match the feel.

Things of an "undead" nature tend to go really well with creepy orchestral stuff... howling strings, lots of half steps, and weird sounding note progressions, soft piano and pizzicato... but Plants vs. Zombies isn't your typical creepy game. It will get you to focus really hard one minute, and have you laughing out loud the next. The zombies are goofy, and the plants are cute.

There are a lot of different "feels" going on. That's why I thought it'd be great to do something weird, like match the whole Danny Elfman style with melodic tunes and funky beats. One of the first stages has marching band percussion and swing beats. Another has this bizarre techno beat with lots of organic sounds that I made myself. I like to keep it interesting.

"Loonboon" was initially inspired by Metroid, our black kitten. The stage I was composing for was a tad frantic, so I just watched Metroid for a while as he ran around the house like crazy, attacking random strings, jumping at the walls, and chasing his toy mouse. "Brainiac Maniac" was inspired by the old Capcom games I played as a kid, especially the Mega Man series. That music was very melodic and complex. There were a ton of melodies going on at the same time that fit together nicely.

We are seeing a resurgence of Capcom's 8-bit era music lately, with the retro aesthetic of Mega Man 9 and the return of the Bionic Commando melodies arranged by Simon Viklund. Does the NES being so in vogue make it tougher to express a personal appreciation for it?

While I think it's great that more people are coming to appreciate music from the days of the NES and Super Nintendo, I don't think it has really affected my ability to express my affinity for it. I think I've always been fairly comfortable telling people how great I think that music is. Back then, composers had very limited space to work with. They couldn't rely on high-end samples in order to make their music sound good. They had to be creative with the composition itself.

That creativity is probably the main reason why there are so many NES/SNES video game remixes out there nowadays---because their main melodies were so wonderfully catchy and memorable. I can't get over how great some of the music was from the Mega Man games. I'm listening to "Gravity Man" from Mega Man 5 as I type this.

These days I think a lot of people feel that good licensed games are few and far between, but back in the day Capcom did such a great job with their Disney games. DuckTales, Chip 'n Dale's Rescue Rangers, even the lesser known ones like Darkwing Duck and Adventures in the Magic Kingdom were extremely fun. And their music was great!

I still remember very clearly several of the in-games themes because they were so catchy and creative. Some of my favorite themes from those games were the moon stage from DuckTales, the final stage music in Rescue Rangers, and Bushroot's stage in Darkwing Duck.

On your blog you have spoken about grinding through some of the tougher passages of Star Tropics on the Virtual Console, and mentioned some strategies you have employed for letting go of frustration and honing your focus. When it comes to music composition, have you developed any analogous tactics for surmounting those challenges and achieving flow states?

Oh yes, definitely :) I remember back when writing music or spending time at the piano was my most effective means of relieving stress. I always felt that doing something creative was immensely helpful in calming me down and helping me regain focus. Now that I'm composing for a living, I try to maintain other creative projects so that I'll always have something to turn to in case I need some sort of creative stress relief.

Besides that, I like going on little adventures to distance myself from all my electronic equipment. I used to ride the bus just for the purpose of talking with random people. I go on all sorts of walks. Exercise helps a lot as well: dancing, running to upbeat music or doing old Shotokan drills is very effective for me.

What's this about shotokan?

Shotokan is a traditional form of Japanese martial arts---karate. There is a lot of emphasis on mental and physical discipline through various exercises. There is also a lot of importance placed on having respect and compassion for others, patience, and humility. I think the idea is that you always want to strive to better yourself. I practiced for about five years back in middle school and high school, and although I haven't practiced formally in a long time, I still try to do Kata (forms) now and then.

You clearly have a personal history of appreciating and analyzing VGM from previous console eras. To what extent are you able to listen to your own music and recognize it as a departure from the precursors of the 8 and 16-bit eras?

Recently I went on a mission to try and pinpoint all the various musical influences I've had since I was a kid. It's been very interesting. For example, my sisters and I used to listen to this old Disney vinyl album called "Splashdance" when we were really little. My boyfriend recently got me this album on CD so I could listen to it again. I discovered that one of the songs, "Gyro Gearloose" has a lot of note progressions that as an adult, I happen to be quite partial to. I thought, "Ah, so this is where it came from!"

I think my music definitely has its own style, and it has developed over the years as a result of various influences and personal experiences. As your question implies, I've learned a lot about melodic structure from old video game music. But I also studied classical music and jazz. I love hip hop and R&B, so I probably learned a lot about beats from that.

The music from Miyazaki films has influenced a lot of my piano music. Basically, I listen to a lot of different kinds of music, I think there's something in almost every genre that I like and have learned from in some subtle way. And I hope to keep learning as I get older :)

What sparked the idea behind your Plants vs. Zombies music video?

Towards the end of production, I decided that I wanted to make a funny theme song. I thought it would be great if the lyrics were basically a dialogue between the Sunflower and the Zombies. Once I was finished, I showed George and he said, “Hey, let’s make a funny flash video to go along with it!” So Rich (the artist) flew down for a week, and along with Tod (the programmer) everyone worked really hard to put it together. It all felt pretty spontaneous, but I’d like to think it worked out pretty well.

Are there any plans for the music from the game to be available as a stand-alone item?

I would really love to do that actually, so there's probably a pretty good chance.

Now that we have heard something more about the story behind your Plants vs. Zombies soundtrack, how can listeners keep up with the music of Laura Shigihara?

I'm actually in the process of developing a new website, but for the time being the current site is divided into three parts: video game music, my old pop music site, and the development blog for my RPG. I think for now the best way to keep up with my music is to visit the "video game music" section. It's sort of my home base until the new website is online, so I'll try my best to post updates and share new music there :)

Thank you to everyone who has visited!

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

Adam "Atomic" Saltsman -- whose previous works include the addictive Gravity Hook and the Dr. Dobbs platformer/level editor, and who is also now working on the high-res graphics for Cave Story's WiiWare port -- announced his newest Flash game, Fathom (unrelated to the Atari 2600 game).

Fathom's visual style is in keeping with the games mentioned above, which is to say it looks superb, with detailed 2D backgrounds and a tiny protagonist inviting comparisons to Cave Story's Quote. Also, the soundtrack, composed by Danny Baranowsky (Blush, Grey Matter) is, as Saltsman puts it, "bangin".

You can play Fathom on the developer's site. If you get lost in the short game -- which was the case with my playthrough, and I embarrassingly instant messaged friends to figure out what to do -- pay attention to the creatures around you, they'll steer you in the right direction.

Saltsman also notes that the Flash framework powering Fathom will see a public, open source release in the next few weeks.

Posted by Eric Caoili at 6:00 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.]

Getting the week off to an extended start, we seem to have so many GameSetLinks culled from over the weekend that we'll need to go with eight link-outs per post this week, not our recent six. (Anyone remember when we used to do 10? That was crazy stuff!)

Anyhow, this set includes Appy Entertainment's speculation on what Apple might do next, a couple of nice Crispy Gamer pieces, a neat Japanese doujin indie games scene seminar, an interesting cover for the Boom Blox sequel (pictured), and lots more.

Deep forest:

Apple, The “Un-Console,” And The Future Of Gaming « Appy Place
'Apple will make a serious play for the living room that will involve the App Store and the direct download of console-type games to an Apple TV- like device. It is not a matter of “if,” but “when,” and not an “opportunity,” but an “imperative.”'

Crispy Gamer - Feature: You Have to Start Somewhere: Developer Origin Stories
With some high-end respondents, too - nice piece.

Exclusive: DJ Hero Interview With DJ Shadow
Oo, DJ Hero w/DJ Shadow = major win, at least for me. Mind you, I have bought pretty much every rhythm game ever.

BLDGBLOG: Evil Lair: On the Architecture of the Enemy in Videogame Worlds
'And yet, in spite of this freedom, most videogame designers choose to make a definite connection to familiar – or real-world – architecture.' Rossignol goes building-y!

Crispy Gamer - Feature: The Two-Minute Convention: GDC Canada Takes Off, Eh
Fun piece from Scott Jones: 'I kept thinking about that consideration during the past 48 hours as I steeped myself in Canadian game-development culture at GDC Canada. Egos are remarkably small here. Everyone talks in terms of "teams," of "working together."'

Canned Dogs » Blog Archive » Doujin game makers discuss doujin game scene
I presume Kiyoshi Shin (who created Sense Of Wonder Night at TGS) put this seminar on - v.interesting stuff.

Endpaper - Fiction reaches a new level - Telegraph
More cultural acceptance, if we even care: 'Tim Martin finds the computer game a growing force in literature.'

GameFly: Boom Blox: Bash Party Wii Video Game
Just wanted to note the v.interesting box art, since Boom Blox is massively de-emphasized as a brand, in favor of the words 'Bash' and 'Party' - actually a smart move by EA, I think.

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

Mighty Jill Off developer Anna "Auntie Pixelante" Anthropy posted a selection of standout games built with ZZT, Tim Sweeney's 1991 DOS game packed with a level editor and simple but effective object-oriented scripting language ZZT-OOP. Sweeney, as many of you know, went on to create the Unreal Engine, and the company he released ZZT under, Potomac Computer Systems, later became Epic Games.

Anthropy praises ZZT's approachable level editor for not requiring designers to create external resources, as well as its ability to attract many without any game-making experience:

"These are by and large the people who were drawn to zzt - people with the desire to make games or tell stories but without the experience or knowledge or technical skill to take the conventional route to game creation. Kids, amateurs, dabblers, and hobbyists. Videogame zinesters: much of what they produced is unpolished and unplayable, and much of what they produced is incredible outsider art. Which is why I thought a list of recommended games might be a useful place for the interested to start exploring."

Her recommendations include titles like Nightmare, a puzzle game in which "you drift through a dream world searching for parts of your shattered consciousness"; and Kudzu, a "strange adventure through a surreal landscape where the discord between one scene and the next form the thread that ties them together". You can see her full list of recommendations here.

To play the games, all you'll need is a free copy of ZZT and probably DOSBox to run ZZT in.

Posted by Eric Caoili at 7:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

[My colleagues at Game Developer magazine, led by Brandon Sheffield, continue to do sterling work on some awesome print-exclusive content for professional game industry folks - here's info on the latest issue.]

The May 2009 issue of Game Developer magazine, the sister print publication to Gamasutra and the leading U.S. trade publication for the video game industry, has shipped to print and digital subscribers and is available from the Game Developer Digital service in both subscription and single-issue formats.

The cover feature for the issue is an exclusive postmortem of Rainbow Studios' open-world action game Deadly Creatures. The article offers insight on the challenges and successes experienced by the THQ studio while developing its well-received sequel. The piece is described as follows:

"Original, adult-oriented games on the Wii are a rarity, and even fewer games possess the rather odd arthouse aesthetic of Deadly Creatures. Rainbow, known for its racing games, organized a small team of developers to build a creepy-crawly action-adventure original game for the Nintendo Wii."

The issue also includes "Gaming the System," a feature collecting practical career tips on getting ahead for those already working in the games industry:

"What does it really take to get ahead in your chosen field? A group of pseudonymous game developers shares uncensored, occasionally brash, opinions."

In addition, Javier Blasquez offers some guidance on asynchronous programming:

"Traditional asynchronous coding models increase responsiveness, but can complicate certain kinds of algorithms significantly. Javier Blasquez of LucasArts provides a method for for simplifying asynchronous operations considerably through the use of coroutines in C++."

Furthermore, industry veteran and former Game Developer EIC Mark DeLoura offers a useful and detailed survey of nearly 100 game developers on their opinions of currently-available major game engines, including Unreal, Source, id Tech, Unity, Torque, and others.

And as usual, our regular columnists contribute detailed and important pieces on numerous areas of game development -- this issue, we include Bungie's Steve Theodore on developer ages, Noel Llopis on unit testing, Maxis' Soren Johnson on designing fairness, LucasArts' Jesse Harlin on audio design documents, and Matthew Wasteland with his monthly humor column.

Worldwide paper-based subscriptions to Game Developer magazine are currently available at the official magazine website, and the Game Developer Digital version of the issue is also now available, with the site offering six months' and a year's subscriptions, alongside access to back issues and PDF downloads of all issues, all for a reduced price. There is now also an opportunity to buy the digital version of May 2009's magazine as a single issue.

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

Please excuse all the craft posts lately -- some things cannot be helped, especially when those things involve Bubble Bobble. Craftster Karen created this super-cute, fleece version of Bubblun (a.k.a. Bub) as part of a package swap. The soft toy features jointed arms, spikes along his back, and a smile you can't help but return.

It looks like it'd be a great toy for a kid, particularly for the kid writing this post. Here's are more shots of the bubble-blowing dragon from different angles:

Posted by Eric Caoili at 2:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Considered by many to be the worst NES accessory (an impressive achievement considering the Laserscope's awfulness), Brøderbund's U-Force controller used infrared sensors and programmable switches to recognize players' hand movements and send commands to the NES. Check out the company's corny ad copy from 1989:

"Introducing U-Force, the revolutionary controller for your Nintendo Entertainment System. So hot, no one can touch it. Now you can feel the power without touching a thing. It's U-Force from Brøderbund -- the first and only video game controller that, without touching anything, electronically senses your every move. And reacts.

There's nothing to hold, nothing to jump on, nothing to wear, U-Force creates a power field that responds to your every command--making you the controller. It's the most amazing accessory in video game history -- and it will change the way you play video games forever. It's the challenge of the future. U-Force. Now nothing comes between you and the game."

Gamers who purchased the peripheral quickly learned that it didn't work as well as advertised, usually after Punch-Out!!'s Glass Joe wiped the floor with them for the third time in a row while they used the U-Force. It was universally regarded as a terrible accessory, which is probably why THQ opted to not publish Brøderbund's U-Force Power Games for the NES after acquiring the company's video game division in 1990.

U-Force Power Games included four games specifically developed for the accessory -- Power Field B-Ball, Nuclear Rat Attack, Rock on Air, and Hose'Em Down. The title was previewed by at least six magazines, according to Universal Videogame List, which described the four activities:

• "Power Field B-Ball was a one-on-one basketball game requiring two U-Force controllers to be fully enjoyed.
• Nuclear Rat Attack was a sci-fi game. The player had to defend a spaceship from mutant space rats. (Speculation: 3D whack-a-mole?)
• Rock on Air was a rock band simulation featuring a music synthesizer. Hand movements were translated into sounds to compose songs.
• Hose 'Em Down was a comedy fire-fighting game. Described as Keystone Cops with firefighters. The goal was to rescue people from burning buildings with a focus on disparate jumpers. If any civilians in distress did not want to jump, the player could convince them with a high powered water cannon."

NintendoAge, the same gaming community that raised $1500 to purchase and release the ROM for Mike Tyson’s Intergalactic Power Punch, pooled $500 to do the same with a copy of U-Force Power Games discovered by prototype/rarity hoarder Jason "DreamTR" Wilson.

As rumors of U-Force Power Games's ROM release spread, Skyrbe, who had another prototype of the game, agreed to dump and release his version as well, so there are now two versions you can download for free!

U-Force Power Games unfortunately isn't much fun played on an emulator, as it require a U-Force controller (I presume its games aren't fun with the accessory, though, either!). To help you play the game with its intended hardware, Retrozone is selling reproduction NES carts with U-Force Power Games's ROM for $30.

Posted by Eric Caoili at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

[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's highlights include an interview with Capybara Games about their recently announced title Critter Crunch for the PS3's PlayStation Network.

We discuss what it's like going from cellphone game development to the PS3 hardware, as well as the new improvements they've made to this addictive puzzle game that was previously an IGF Mobile winner on cellphones.

Also this week -- our analysis for the Xbox Live Arcade sales for April, highlighting what went wrong and what went right. It appears that this was a month for few blockbuster hits on XBLA, despite a lot of promise behind a lot of them.

Here's the top XBLA, PSN, and WiiWare stories for the week:

GamerBytes Originals

Interview: Capybara Games On Crunching Critters
We interview Capybara on their upcoming conversion of Critter Crunch for the PlayStation Network.

Analysis: April 2009's Xbox Live Arcade Hits, Misses
We look back at the Major Nelson's Top 10 lists and leaderboard stats for April to see what XBLA customers were really after.

Releases For The Week

Xbox Live Arcade - Texas Cheat'Em, Star Trek D-A-C, Brain Challenge For Cheap

PSN Store (EU) - Savage Moon Demo
PSN Store (NA) - Puzzle Quest: Galactrix, Savage Moon Demo, SIREN: Blood Curse Pricedrop,PSOne Classics

Nintendo Store (EU) - Rainbow Island: Towering Adventure, Fantasy Zone II
Nintendo Store (NA) - Penguins & Friends, Tower Toppler

Xbox Live Arcade

Sega Vintage Collection Vol. 2 Officially Announced
We've been talking about it for months, but it's finally been formally revealed.

XNA Roundup #17 Orbyx : Mystic Orbs of Chaos
Do you like Peggle? Than you'll like this.

Mommy's Best Games Reveal Grapple Buggy For Community Games
From the creator of Weapons Of Choice comes the ultimate in grappling car technology.

XBL Community Watch - EZMuse+ Music Editor, Biology Battle Bargain
A robust music editor makes it to Xbox Live Community Games, and popular title Biology Battle gets a price cut.

Rainbow Islands: Towering Adventure Also Coming To XBLA
Classic WiiWare arcade update also journeying to the Xbox Live Arcade.

Xbox Splash Page Update - Wolfenstein 3D, Battlefield 1943
We've been talking about if for months, but here's your final proof.

PlayStation Network

Critter Crunch On Its Way To PSN
Learn how to deal with the food chain correctly, thanks to Capybara.

Sidhe's Shatter Bounces To PSN
It's Breakout meets Pong meets everything in between - and a little more.

WiiWare

Contra Rebirth Announced, Out Next Week In Japan
Konami continues the 'Rebirth' line of titles on WiiWare.

Posted by Simon Carless at 11:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Romanian publication Otaku Magazine -- an "independent platform [designed to promote] visual art from national and international artists" -- announced its fifth issue, titled Otaku Play, which looks to explore "the universe of players and play of all kinds", "how and when you play", and "what you learn while playing and where ... you risk arriving when you remain blocked within the same play".

The 132-page, English-language issue includes articles "Virtual Worlds Unplugged", "A Short Visual History of Videogame, NES Coffee table" and an interview with chiptune artist Nullsleep.

Otaku Play also comes with "New York Poster" (photo past the post break), a fabulous pixel cityscape from renown pixel art group eBoy, though its a quarter of the original print's size.

While Otaku is only printing 350 copies of the issue, each copy will come with an interactive DVD packed with chiptune music, live performance video from Blip Festival events, and trailers for indie games like Blueberry Garden, Osmos, Cletus Clay, and more.

[Via TIGForums]

Posted by Eric Caoili at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

[Veteran game programmer Tony Albrecht gives an in-depth look on the positives -- and challenges -- of being a remote worker in game development, and offers advice for successful teamwork from home.]

As the game development industry is getting older, so are its employees. These employees have families that are becoming increasingly important -- and these same families are putting extra demands on the time and even the location of these maturing developers.

One increasingly appealing option is to work remotely –- you get to spend more time with your family and spend more time at work too, so you get your cake and eat it too. But trust me, its not all that simple -– sometimes there is a little too much cake.

I’ve spent the last 2 and a bit years working remotely for a couple of companies with half a dozen teams in almost as many time zones and it would have been a damn sight easier to have been working with them in the same building.

"But…" you say, "but you get to code with no pants on…"

"No!" I interject. "Well, yes, but No! Shut up. Listen to me first, here’s why its more difficult."

Communication is much, much harder. You can’t just turn around and abuse the dickhead behind you who thought that thread safe programming merely meant adding volatile to variable declarations.

You can’t bump into the office graphics guru and strike up a conversation that leads to a new, more optimal way of performing motion blur.

Emails will be misunderstood and misinterpreted – there is no substitute for face to face communication. You can’t underestimate the power and clarity provided by body language. Communication via instant messaging is a pain in the arse for anything of any detail.

You will get overlooked for meetings and announcements –- you are out of sight and out of mind. And the larger the team, the more likely it is that you will be forgotten. Large meetings are awful over the phone –- you pick up a lot of ambient noise, and different speakers in different positions mean that you hardly ever hear what is going on.

Plus, it is an order of magnitude more boring not being there. I mean, its often hard enough to stay awake in some team meetings when you are there, let alone sitting in your room alone, eyes closed as you concentrate on the current speaker, leaning back on your comfy chair, thinking about the code you’re working on, or what you’ll be doing after work, or the last episode of True Blood you’ve just watched… well, you get the idea.

Testing your code becomes far more laborious -– and it is also far more important that your code is robust. The first person to get blamed for code not working is the person that’s recently checked something in who isn’t there. Which, when you are working remotely, is always you.

Here’s the typical cycle for submitting some code while you are working remotely:

You spend a week writing your code. You’ve been very cautious and carefully verify that it works flawlessly with your data. So you go ahead and check out the latest version of the code in the main branch (which has been automatically tested, so you assume that it works) and merge it with your own.

You attempt to test it against your own data, but realize that you need the latest data. So, you do a grab of the latest data in the art repository, hoping that there aren’t too many extra assets to download. When that finally finishes you munge the new assets -- only to discover that you need the latest version of the editor to munge all of your data as there have been some fundamental changes.

Without the benefit of an office full of machines that can be utilised for a distributed munge, you know that you’re going to be waiting for 4 or more hours before you can test again (BTW, the munge process is sometimes called cooking because the ambient temperature of your office rises by 10C while the machines you do have churn through gigabytes of data).

Finally, you test your code against the newly munged data -- only to learn that it doesn’t work. QA assures you (over the phone or IM) that the latest build is working, so you spend a couple of hours trying to debug your code, fruitlessly.

You stagger to bed, say hi to the wife, and sleep the restless sleep of a coder without functioning code. The next morning you spend some more time on your code, then chat with various people about your problem only to find out that the version of the editor that you grabbed didn’t work with the version of the code you had and that it was fixed not long after you checked it out (or that you have to roll it back to an earlier version).

At that point, you check out the working version of the editor, check out the latest version of the code, merge, check out the latest data, compile, fire off a munge, kick the cat, put your pants on and head down the pub.

Yes, it can be that painful -– I’ve spent days trying to check in working code. Even with continuous integration and a good QA team, the lag between your code and data and the main branch can be troublesome to say the least.

Another issue with coding is that you are pretty much on your own. If you are having problems with a programming problem it is very hard to get someone to help you remotely. Applications like UltraVNC are excellent and I recommend that you do peer reviewed code checkins using something like this, but it is (at least initially) a large intrusion on a co-workers time to get them to remote into your machine and help you with your code. It becomes less of an issue as they become more used it but it is still a hurdle to cross.

Sure, you have more privacy and less distractions – actually, no. You have more distractions -– family, a fridge with (theoretically) more food, alcohol, TV, games (not in the fridge), the internet with no-one looking over your shoulder, it’s just started raining and you’ve noticed that guttering is leaking so you get up on the roof to fix it ‘cos you can’t see where it’s leaking when its not raining… and did I mention games?

The temptation to work your own hours "when you feel like it" is quite high – I mean, you’re not impacting on anyone else's schedule, are you, and anyway, you work better at 3am, right? That is, until you pull an all nighter, sleep most of the next day and then can’t be arsed to work the night away again and before you know it you’ve lost a day of work.

Time zones complicate things somewhat also. It’s not too bad if you are only an hour or so out, but when working from Australia with the US or UK, you have a very large discrepancy in work hours. My current employer is in the UK and our regular office hours do not overlap at all -– in order to communicate directly, I need to spend part of my evening working. Sure, that means that I manage to avoid watching some crap TV with The Wife(TM), but part of the reason to work from home was to spend time with the family, wasn’t it?

One of the hardest things I’ve found is the lack of human interaction. I miss the idle banter you get in an office, the pointless chats while making coffee, the new friends you make while arguing over lunch, the things you learn when asking a co-worker to help you with a coding problem.

So you can see that there is some bad thrown in with the benefits of working remote and pantless. There is a lot of good though -– when you hit the zone there is nothing to break you out of it. The flow keeps on going and going. You can modify your working hours (a little) without affecting your routine too much -– an hour here or there to take the kids to the doctor or swimming –- and you can easily put in more hours when the need arises. The 5-second commute is awesome.

There are a few things that you can do to help you deal with working remotely.

You must know the team you are working with. Programmers are notorious for not trusting other people’s code. If you’ve not worked locally with a team before I would advise that you meet with them and spend at least a week or two working on site, learning the ropes, appreciating your workmate’s strengths and personalities and, importantly, socialising with them.

It is important that everyone understands each other’s sense of humor (or lack thereof) -– it helps with textual communication. I would advise that the remote worker and local team have at least one video conference a week: cover what you have worked on, what you will be working on, any problems you’ve been having as well as sprinkling the meeting with idle banter. You need to maintain a social connection with the team -– if people like you, then they are more likely to respond to your emails earlier and help you more.

Be disciplined with your working hours. Start at the same time, lunch at the same time, try and finish at the same time. Regular work hours will help you to maintain a sense of work life and home life -– you need to maintain a sense of separation, otherwise you’ll either end up working all the time or alternatively, watching Oprah and Dr. Phil instead of working.

Take short breaks like you would in a workplace -– culture some rituals. For instance, make a coffee (not instant mouth rot coffee, make something a little more involved. I use a stove top percolator to make beautiful coffee from beans bought at the local market). This will give you the type of break that you would get naturally at work, and give your brain a little time to work on in the background. Be careful that these rituals don’t become a form of procrastination though.

If you have a significant timezone difference, try to schedule some regular hours where you overlap with the team you are working with. Take those hours out of your regular work day, but be consistent. If your workmates expect you to be working within their work hours on a regular basis then they are more likely to instigate communication during those regular “cross over” hours. Make sure that your workmates are aware that you are working –- running a instant messaging client will ensure that your coworkers know when you are online.

With the problems involved with the latency in checking in and building or cooking your data, the best solution I’ve found is to get the local team’s QA to check in and label munged data and binaries when they test a specific code set. This means that you won’t have to worry about building the data yourself and you remove a level of complexity and another source of potential errors.

Also, with the size of modern game’s data sets its often quicker to download 5GB of data than it is to munge it (assuming of course that you have a decent internet connection. If you don’t then I suggest you relocate until you do). Of course this doesn’t work when you are changing the munging yourself.

Be proactive with communication. Answer all of your emails promptly (if you work in a dramatically different timezone then you have the benefit of getting a full day's emails when you log in in the morning). Regularly email team members with questions and even simple communication –- you need to cultivate your relationship.

Maintain an online presence via instant messaging. Don’t let yourself be forgotten. If you are being forgotten for meetings, ring the meeting room yourself. Make sure that management realizes how important it is that you are included.

I’ll mention it again as its so important; video conference at least once a week. The best remote relationship I had with a team was one where we had a video conference every morning. It was just a short scrum type stand up meeting, but invaluable as far as building a relationship with the team and understanding what everyone was doing and, even more importantly, letting your team mates know what you are working on.

So, if you have read this far, congratulations. This is a big topic, one that I deal with daily and one that I think is becoming more and more relevant to the modern programmer. I recommend you read The Pond for an excellent article on working remotely from the point of view of a manager.

I’ve managed a remote worker before and the best thing I can recommend is to call regularly for updates, to catch issues early and to just maintain a base level of interaction, letting the remote worker know that you know they are there and working and that they are appreciated.

It is also imperative that the manager sets realistic milestones for the remote worker and gets regular status updates - it is all too easy for a remote worker to drift off into a little corner of the codebase which is incredibly interesting, yet ultimately irrelevant.

Working remotely is hard. It is more work for manager and worker alike, but it can be very successful and rewarding as long as both parties are willing to address problems as soon as they arise. I'm privileged to have been able to work from home for these last few years - my children know nothing different. Daddy has always been there, and if things work out, Daddy will always be there.

[Tony Albrecht is a console engine programmer who works from home, and contrary to all reports, does actually wear pants whilst working. He sporadically blogs at Seven Degrees of Freedom.]

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

This delightful Noby Noby Boy doll, crocheted by Asia Bur-Min, so far only stretches to about four feet, but that should be more than long enough for you to wrap Boy around household objects, or swing it around for your cat to chase -- it's true, cats love the odd PSN game, even if they're not quite sure what the point of it all is.

Bur-Min is selling the toy for $45 plus shipping. If you'd like to try your hand at making your own, though, she's also selling a pattern for only $4.50, ten percent of the premade's price! Of course, you'll need to supply your own yarn (and crocheting abilities).

[Thanks, Mister Raroo!]

Posted by Eric Caoili at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

This particularly balmy weekend is almost over - so time to wander around some of the week's top full-length features on Gamasutra, plus some bonus original news stories and interviews from Gama and sister edu site GameCareerGuide.

Particularly notable this time - a really nice longform Bill Roper interview, plus a chat with the Army Of Two franchise team at EA Montreal, alongside a detailed examination of DRM and games that birthed plenty of comments, notable audio and design articles, and bonus postmortems, mini-interviews and other goodness.

Go go gadget:

The Hard-Won Wisdom of Bill Roper
"Game development veteran Bill Roper played a key role in the rise of the seminal Warcraft and Diablo series throughout the 1990s, and then co-founded eventually ill-fated Hellgate developer Flagship Studios. Now at Cryptic Studios, he talks in-depth in a major Gamasutra retrospective interview."

The Future Of Game Audio - Is Interactive Mixing The Key?
"In the first part of a new analysis, high-end game audio veteran Rob Bridgett (Scarface, 50 Cent: Blood In The Sand) examines Skywalker Sound's mixing on the remastered Ghost In The Shell movie, then extrapolates to ask - is real-time mixing of sound effects, music and dialog in games an important part of the future of AAA game audio?"

Beyond Play: Analyzing Player-Generated Creations
"In this bonus Gamasutra design article, academic Tolino introduces his own classification for player-generated content, explaining what makes game player-created content special -- from new levels through cosplay, glitching, and beyond."

Building Franchise Power: An Army Of Two Interview
"EA Montreal's Army Of Two: The Fortieth Day is due later this year, and in this Gamasutra interview, new creative director Alex Hutchinson, fresh from Spore, and executive producer Reid Schneider, returning from the previous game, discuss the elements that came together to create the over the top franchise."

Examining Game Pace: How Single-Player Levels Tick
"In this in-depth article, veteran designer Mark Davies looks at games from Call Of Duty 4 through Dead Space to analyze the art of game level pacing."

PC Game Piracy: Why Bother With DRM?
"As the controversy over DRM in PC games continues, Gamasutra talks to 2D Boy and Stardock on their attempts to pioneer less restrictive or even non-existent DRM, as Ubisoft and EA comment on their loosening of protection controls for Prince Of Persia and The Sims 3."

Bonus Gamasutra, GameCareerGuide originals: Interview: Visceral's Schofield On How Studio Identity Builds Quality, Q&A: Recoil Games Reveals Eco-Themed FPS Earth No More, GameCareerGuide Feature: 'Student Postmortem: Gesundheit!', Interview: Vector, Mind Control Talk Vector City Racers' Flash, GameCareerGuide Feature: Game Job Interview Questions And How to Answer Them Interview: Combating R4 Piracy On The DS, Interview: Bruckheimer, MTV Add Execs Cohen And Veevaert To Game Concept Studio (pictured).

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

['Lingua Franca' is a biweekly GameSetWatch-exclusive column by Daniel Johnson which discusses the relationship between language, culture and video games. This time – a look at the way that dialects affect play.]

After a short prologue, the first thing said to you in the new DS translation of Enix's classic JRPG Dragon Quest IV is the following request, made by a servant to the king;

"His Majesty is aboot tae make an announcement tae youse all. Simmer doon an' listen noo."

The almost uninterpretable utterance is then followed up by more slovenly spoken English, until you soon realize that everyone in this world responds to you in such a manner, even the king himself! Later on, in the following chapter, you'll progress to another one of Dragon Quest IV's quaint, little villages and the small township will again have their own oddities of spoken language.

Initially it took me some time to wrap my head around what exactly developer ArtePiazza were intending by littering obscure English nuances throughout each villager's dialogue. Each new location has their own flavour of spoken language, they effectively have their own individual dialects. I'm not too sure whether indeed dialects are actually at play here. There appears to be a lack of specialized vocab and grammar to justify the classification of dialect (therefore making it instead an accent).

On further investigation, the press release for this title proudly notes a selection of 13 unique dialects based on global communities. Within the thirteen dialects there are Russian, French, Bristol and Scottish variations among others. I'm personally hesitant, but let's run with this.

Negative Interpretations of Dialect

The inclusion of dialects in video games stirs about some interesting implications. By using dialects as the main form of communication, it validates dialects within the language that the game operates. In other words, Dragon Quest IV is declaring that the English language does indeed have dialects.

Depending on the player, this may or may not sit right with them, therefore impacting on their experience with the game, particularly so in a title where language is a critical component of play. As proven somewhat by this article on Dragon Quest V (which also features dialects in the same manner), some players might simply refuse to acknowledge, or even be aware that English (/language in question) does in fact have different dialects, hence creating a dissonance between player and game.

For me personally, as an Australian, I rarely think of English as a language with dialects, sure there are variations, but we rarely consider those variations significant enough to label distinctively as dialects. You Americans (yes, you Americans!) say that we [Aussies] have an accent, rather than speak a dialect; so even if we actually do speak dialects, both countries are less acquainted with the term and therefore don't think with this connotation.

Hence I spent a good half hour confused as to why everyone was speaking with a broken English tongue – it took me right out of the game. Dragon Quest IV was localized in Europe; a continent with many languages, so I suppose (and am taking the assumption that) when people from Europe play this title, they might have not encountered the same confusion, instead pick up on the dialects intrinsically.

Dialects also rarely have written forms, so rendering dialect as text demands that the writers (or in this case: localization team) construct their own written approximations based on the oral forms. This vocabulary is therefore specialized, and while an English reader can interpret the text as having similarities to accents, it's still difficult reading to digest. This makes the reading of text a burden for the player, as they need to constantly self-translate chunks of dialogue.

Furthermore, when interrogation of villagers is required to progress, the oddly spoken English can become more of a hindrance than a help. As to how this was handled in Japanese, I'm unsure, but one would suspect that dialects would have taken on an entirely different meaning, which we'll get to later.

Perhaps the largest issue with dialects is something that goes well beyond localization, and represents important differences between east and west. In western culture, dialects are often derogatorily viewed as strange divergences from the normally accepted English vernacular. They're associated with people from lower socio-economic backgrounds.

It seems clear that the inclusion of dialects in DQIV is there to colour each township with a distinct linguistic flavour - and the game is no doubt effective at doing so. In western culture though this also reduces the NPCs to a bunch of backwards-sounding, uneducated hicks. Dialects (or even just accents) have different connotations in different cultures (one would wonder if I'd be fretting so much over this issue if this were in a Japanese context).

Therefore when implementing dialects into games, cultural misunderstandings can become a natural occurrence, proving that games are unique to the cultures that interpret them. The Dragon Quest IV I'm playing is very different to the one being played in Japan. Such a seemingly negligible cultural nuance can blow open one's perception of the whole product.

One of the initial impressions I had while plodding through Dragon Quest IV's quest was that the by using “exotic” English dialects and situating itself in a series of small-time, country villages, the game was poking fun at people from less fortunate backgrounds. That is, I assuredly feel that Dragon Quest IV could be interpreted as racist – or at least derogatory to those which accents/dialects. I don't believe that such an innocent game would dare imply such things, but it's very easy to see how one could interpret this.

Ask yourself this question. Having read the above quote at the top of the article, what impression did it give you of the speaker? Probably not a very positive one, I suspect. It sounds uneducated and broken. Now imagine that everyone in a given area speaks with the same awkwardness and you begin to understand how one could infer a negative image of these cultures. Further still, never we forget that these dialects are based on actual global dialects. How then does a player from Russia, France, Bristol or Scotland interpret the text? I'd sure like to know.

Positive Interpretations of Dialect

The interesting thing about dialects is that like language they're containers of culture. Our cultural norms are embedded within our language, dialects too contain specialized vocabulary, grammar, phrases and language techniques unique to a culture that shares the language of many cultures. In order to prove my point, here's a clichéd examples of culture in language and dialect;

In English we only have a handful of words used to classify snow. In languages used by the Eskimos though, there are many variations of snow depending on the hardness or softness. This additional vocabulary is required to operate in freezing-cold living conditions (building igloos, walking on stable ground) and hence representative of that culture.

Games such as Dragon Quest therefore have the potential to familiarize and hence teach these cultural norms to the player, giving them a knowledge that extends beyond the game itself. There are a few instances in which NPCs will spout out an unfamiliar word here or there but ultimately it's quite rare.

I suspect that this is due to the Japanese-English translation; where perhaps many of the dialect specific words as written in Japanese couldn't find an appropriate translation with the same level of significance in the narrative, in the respective English dialect. This hypothesis makes reasonable sense, after all, dialect quibbles aside, Dragon Quest IV has quite a good localization. Unfortunately, the potential here is lost in translation, but worth noting nonetheless.

The other main strength of Dragon Quest IV using dialects is the fact that it does acknowledge different cultures, and does so through the wise use of language. Very few games use language (besides crusty German accents) to express cultural divergence, and the ones that do (the Zelda series for instance) ensure that the linguistic differences are rather subtle, such as address or fixed phrases (rally-ho!).

While the application in Dragon Quest IV can be misinterpreted as derogatory towards some cultures or simply misunderstood by the player, including dialects only makes the player more conscious of multilingualism and multiculturalism in games, and indeed that's a strength.

I think that no matter which medium we're discussing, incorporation of dialects is tricky business. One suggestion for a western target audience would be to dig underneath the connotations of dialect and weave this to a narrative advantage. This was done successfully, and to much acclaim in the book A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers by Xiaolu Guo.

This novel took the form of the diary of a young Chinese girl living abroad in England. Her diary was written entirely in Chinglish, that is English affected by Chinese grammar and speaking patterns. The use of Chinglish allows the reader to understand, and in the end form an appreciation, even admiration for someone living in a foreign context and struggling with a language that they're still coming to grips with.

It's a psychological battle to live in an unfamiliar place, let alone live in an unfamiliar language, and the use of broken English depicts that mental frustration to express oneself with a cold accuracy, ensuring the book is undertoned with a gritty realism. Her English does improve, and you see the natural progression from Chinglish to “proper” English transitioning through the tale.

In this instance, the weaknesses that westerners see in dialects was exploited and used to create sympathy of the lead character and her challenging world. A powerful way in which dialects can be utilized in media.

Conclusion

It isn't my intention to scrutinize Dragon Quest for all its missteps in handling dialects. Rather, using DQIV as a case study allows us to understand the challenges of adapting dialects into video games amidst a series of cultural connotations.

On one hand dialects can be detrimental to the concept of “fun” and deconstructive to play, but on the other, it has the potential to nurture cross-language and cross-cultural understanding in a very intelligent manner.

[Daniel Johnson spends too many late nights conversing Mandarin to friends in Shanghai. He studies language and culture, and shares most of his video game musings on his blog at danielprimed.com]

Posted by Daniel Johnson at 4:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (11)

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

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

The goodies in this edition include a pizza delivery game, a platformer created with the Game Maker engine, two tower defense games, and a new release from the developer of the popular art game I Wish I Were the Moon.

Game Pick: 'Pizza City' (Pixeljam Games, browser)
"In Pizza City, you play the role of a delivery boy who has to help Uncle Tony distribute tasty pizzas to his customers around all parts of the town. This requires going back and forth between Tony's pizza place and the destination of each delivery, with occasional stops at the gas station to fill up the fuel tank of your car."

Game Pick: 'CannoDash' (Ida, browser)
"You control a robot with the ability to build turrets in CannoDash, a tower defense game where enemies appear from each side of the screen in turn and chase you down relentlessly. Tanks stop in their tracks when they hit any of your turrets, but paper planes will follow you around without the need to fly around ground units."

Game Pick: 'Mars TD' (Taro, browser)
"A puzzle strategy game created by Taro, developer of the unfairly difficult platformer Super Ear Man Bros. Just like other tower defense games, the objective here is to build turrets around the map and protect your base from the incoming alien invasion."

Game Pick: 'Crazy Over Goo' (Banov, freeware)
"Originally titled Yellow Goo Love, Crazy Over Goo is a mouse-controlled platformer which comes with fifty playable levels. You control an elastic ball who is after the love of his life, both looking suspiciously like a gaming royalty couple from the early 80's."

Game Pick: 'Today I Die' (Daniel Benmergui, browser)
"Daniel Benmergui's latest is a puzzle game created in a style that fans of his works should already be familiar with. Similar to I Wish I were the Moon, the adventure is a short one and shouldn't take longer than a couple of minutes to play from start to end. The game also features multiple endings to discover."

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

['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.]

If only Game Mag Weaseling was around in 1977! Then I could've covered books like this!

While clearing out my closet, I came upon my one and only copy of Video Games by Len Buckwalter, very possibly the first third-party book devoted to games (and, if you reeeeaaaally want to stretch the definition, the first strategy guide ever written).

The book actually predates the Atari 2600, so the majority of its coverage is devoted to dedicated Pong consoles. It's packed with great photos of 70s people in their 70s living rooms and 70s electronic stores playing 70s games, and it's a killer collector's item -- you generally won't find copies online in good condition for under $50. (I think I got mine back at a swap meet in 1996 for a couple bucks.)

But enough about the past! It's the present I must worry about now -- specifically, the three game mags that have crossed my desk in the past fortnight, to wit:

Edge June
2009

Cover: Blur

Back when I was at Ziff, there was a rule -- I'm not sure if it was ever a spoken one, or just a rule of thumb passed around the graphic designers -- that racing-game covers didn't sell. This may've been influenced from the time GMR did a cover piece on Auto Modellista that nobody really liked. I have to admit that Blur does not sound like a super-exciting game to me, but then when I think of arcade racers I think of Juiced so perhaps I'm too jaded for my own good.

The following feature on Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 is also a bit disappointing, given that it's the first look I've seen inside the post-Itagaki Team Ninja and yet it asks hardly any questions about life without the flashy biker cosplayer leading them.

The other features are far neater, including bits on underground/viral marketing, a progress report on Xbox Community Games, and the most in-depth look at adventure game developer Cing that I've ever seen. (The Cing feature has a bit of a gaffe in it -- one of the screenshots from their past games has a visible watermark on it from advanscene.com, a Nintendo DS pirate-scene news site. Undoubtedly it was just a careless Google Image search.)

N'Gai Croal finally goes in-depth on his meeting with Resident Evil 5 producer Jun Takeuchi in his column, and it's almost worth his touting it for a whole month, because he makes Jun look like a total fool, a guy who couldn't even remember where exactly in Africa his dev team was location-scouting. Whether you agree or disagree with Croal's views, it's "game journalism" at its finest.

Game Developer May 2009

Cover: Deadly Creatures

This is an issue of GD worth paying attention to. Not that any of them aren't worth attention, but you know what I mean. I wouldn't go so far as to call it a "redesign," but I think we're witnessing a restructuring of priorities with the mag.

The new GD is a great deal more visually resplendent than before. All the articles have much more illustration and design to them (the back-page humor column has a piece by Dan Paladin, artist for The Behemoth), and the cover story is designed almost like it would be in a Future mag, featuring a ton of neat concept art and making Deadly Creatures look a lot more exciting than the uninspired box art lets on.

What's more, the articles take an approach to game development that's a fair bit more kinder to the wannabe industry insider before. In addition to the usual postmortem, there's a roundup feature where anonymous writers from all the major departments of a game outfit chime in on surviving and making yourself seem important in your job.

There's a GDC recap that has quotes from all sorts of neat maker types, old and new, including Hiroshi Matsuyama talking about how he lived at work for three years. There's even a page written by Derrick Sobodash covering humorously bad Chinese NES ports of games like Final Fantasy VII and Chrono Trigger. (He wrote something similar for PiQ in '08, but nobody read it, so I forgive him for re-tackling the topic for GD.)

I like this direction they're taking, definitely, and I'm hoping that the mag consistently becomes interesting to the "common man" for more than its postmortems in the future.

Nintendo Power June 2009

Cover: Red Steel 2

A solid issue filled with lovely interviews -- though I think I say this about Nintendo Power every time a new issue arrives. (In fact, the lengths of the Red Steel 2 and Punch-Out!! interviews are just as long as something you'd see in Play. Maybe a little too much text, perhaps? I dunno.)

[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.]

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