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 Gamasutra.

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.

In this week's top Expert Blog stories, industry veterans write in depth about infusing games with morality, balancing weapons, and going indie:

This Week's Standout Expert Blogs

Infusing Games with a Moral Premise
(Reid Kimball)

Morality systems are becoming common in more and more genres, frequently tossed out as a bullet point in marketing materials. But how often do they meaningfully convey any true sense of morality and consequence? Reid Kimball goes in-depth on the topic, also generating an extremely lively comment thread.

Weapon Balancing Based On Gameplay Situations (Part Two)
(Daniel Helbig)

Following up on last week's initial entry, Daniel Helbig continues exploring the practical aspects of weapon balancing in game design, drilling down into specific attributes and variables.

Bytes: Exhaustion Disguised as Stress
(Adam Saltsman)

The games industry is known as being a demanding way to make a living, and that can be all the more true when you're going it alone. Adam Saltsman shares some of his experiences in working independently -- the challenges as well as the personal rewards.

Game Programmer Books: General Programming
(Neil Gower)

Even in this high-falutin' digital age, books can still be a great way to learn about even purely digital topics like programming. Neil Gower singles out some essentials.

Principles of Inspiring Creative Play
(Adam Saltsman)

In another post this week, Adam Saltsman tackles the complex (and oft-disputed) topic of allowing player creativity, and how to achieve that goal from the designer's perspective. He admits his points are somewhat theoretical, but they are also concise and well-considered.

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

[In his cheerfully quirky way, our own Brandon Sheffield talks to U.S. Natsume president Yasuhiro Maekawa about his uncommon hands-on approach, the acquisition of the Afrika license from Sony, and using niche genres to build out new franchises.]

Natsume is known primarily as the U.S. publisher of the Harvest Moon series, developed in Japan by Marvelous Entertainment. But the company has much more to it than that.

First, there’s the Japanese developer of the same name, which is not so much a parent company as a sister developer. Most recently in the U.S., Natsume Japan developed Omega 5 for XBLA, which was published by Hudson, not Natsume U.S.

Also curious is U.S. Natume president Yasuhiro Maekawa’s very hands-on approach to development. Often he will come up with an idea himself, and hire a developer in Japan to realize his vision. Such was the case when he commissioned the young female-targeted DS game Princess Debut from classic shooting game stalwart Cave.

Perhaps most intriguingly, Natsume has gotten the license to release Afrika, a quirky first-party Sony PS3 title involving wildlife photography, in the U.S.

In this interview, we discuss with Maekawa all of these facets of Natsume, as well as the why and how of the Afrika deal, and how the company uses lower-selling niche titles as a market test for bigger ideas.

We also discuss here the cancellation of the U.S. version of the PSP action title Umihara Kawase, (to be Yumi’s Odd Odyssey in the States) which had something of a cult following, and was to have a number of bug fixes and improvements over the Japanese original:

Afrika, Umihara Kawase

How did you wind up getting Afrika? This was a big surprise to everyone, because it’s a Sony first-party title.

Yasuhiro Maekawa: This is kind of a difficult question to answer, because Sony has a lot of third party people. But to make a long story short, Afrika was something we were very interested in. But of course, it’s a first-party title. So we thought in the beginning, we can’t do anything. But there was an opportunity, and it became apparent that we could get the license.

And when I thought about it, if you look at our titles, they’re very much oriented toward peaceful, friendly, type of titles. Afrika’s nature perfectly matches with our lineup. So we started talking about it. Just saying “this game is really good. Good for Natsume’s family of titles.” So basically that’s what happened.

Is this the beginning of a larger relationship with Sony in that way?

YM: I don’t think so. As I understand Sony basically doesn’t license products developed by Sony. As is shown with Afrika there might be one or two exceptions to the rule, though.

Yeah, that’s why it was something of a surprise.

YM: I know – there have been a lot of people walking by saying “oh, you got it! How did you get it?” (laughs)

That’s pretty much what everyone thought! So when will Afrika be coming out?

YM: We are targeting some time around September. We want to run some special presale promotions. So the game might be ready for release even in July, but we’d like to hold until we feel comfortable.

Is this the first HD game published by Natsume?

YM: Yes, it’s the first.

Do you think Natsume will do more in that direction, or is this just an experiment?

YM: We are not so interested in the so-called “value” titles. Most of the Natsume games I’d say are about in the middle. Sort of normal retail price titles with normal graphical levels.

Like with the DS, we want to price things at $29.99, not $19.99. But for a PlayStation 3 title, this will probably be $49.99. That’s what we’re thinking. Between $39.99 and $49.99. $59.99 is probably too much.

I also mean whether you think you’ll publish more games of this level.

YM: If this game is successful, we may. This game is kind of a test.

Whatever happened to Yumi’s Odd Odyssey (known as Umihara Kawase in Japan)?

YM: That’s on hiatus.

Why is that?

YM: That one, basically with the copyright, there seems to be some issue outside of us between the copyright holder and the publisher in Japan. So we were trying to get the license from the publisher and apparently they have some issue with the copyright holder. I think at the last minute we had to put it on hold. Which means it won’t come out. From our side, it’s canceled. We don’t want to be involved in some complicated... stuff.

The DS version is also getting made, might you pick that one up instead?

YM: If there’s a chance, or if somebody offers it to us, certainly we’d look into that.

Building Niches

How did Princess Debut do, in the end? Was it ok?

YM: I’d say it did so-so. It’s not like a big hit, but certainly Princess Debut, got a really loyal fanbase. So we’re now planning to release Princess Debut in Europe in August. So we localized it into French, and German.

Do you think you’ll ever work with (Princess Debut and classic shooting game developer) Cave again? Because I love Cave.

YM: If there’s any chance, yes. I’d like to.

I keep hoping someone will release Cave’s Xbox 360 titles in the U.S.

YM: Right now we’d like to concentrate on Sony and Nintendo titles. As you know, we don’t have a big overhead. So in the future when there’s an opportunity, we will branch out more.

And it looks like you’re still trying to expand further into the girls’ market, because you’ve got this game Cheer We Go! here.

YM: Yes, we’re targeting the tween girls’ market there. Age 8-11, and the storyline is based on something like a popular middleschool cheerleader, with an intriguing storyline.

How do you feel smaller titles like Squishytank for instance, will do on the DS going forward?

YM: You mean like these sort of unknown titles on DS? I think it’s a niche title. And if you look at what we have now, we have a bunch of niche titles nobody’s heard of before. But niche titles are one of our marketing strategies, along with competitive marketing strategies.

For example, with Squishytank, or Cheer We Go, we’re not thinking about selling a big amount of units. If we can sell even smaller units in the beginning, that should be fine. Then when we think – ok, there are some real fans there. Then we’ll gradually expand the franchise.

Like Harvest Moon. Way back almost 11 years ago, the first Harvest Moon for SNES wasn’t a big seller. But I realized, ok, this is a niche title. It may have great potential to grow. Then, my idea was correct.

Do you foresee something similar for Princess Debut, since you said there are some devoted fans?

YM: Yes, that’s what we’re thinking.

Natsume and Downloadable Content

What do you feel is the current status of Natsume in the U.S. right now? Are you expanding more?

YM: We are expanding. As I probably explained to you before, we don’t want to just jump all of a sudden. We want to grow slowly but surely. One way we’re expanding now is growing from the package business to download contents business as well.

We have downloadable contents for WiiWare, with Harvest Moon: My Little Shop, and Reel Fishing Challenge, which is exclusively for WiiWare. And also we’re expanding our business into cellular phone and iPhone business as well.

We have Harvest Moon: Frantic Farming for cellphones, in Java, Brew, and iPhone versions. So this is where we’re heading. We’ll keep our packaging business. Of course we’re trying to expand that too. But at the same time, we’re trying to grow our downloadable contents business.

What do you think about the DSi hardware, do you foresee releasing games for that as well?

YM: I think it will do well. I don’t know how well, but we have a pretty big expectation for the DSi.

So will you be bringing Harvest Moon to DSi?

YM: Yes, yes.

Any plans for when?

YM: That should be probable sometime in summer of next year. For now we’d like to wait and see just how well DSi will go in America.

What about the PSPgo?

YM: I think it’s an excellent idea, just because we are now expanding our business model to download contents business, and as I understand the PSPgo is download-specific. So yes, it’s a good opportunity for us. Oh and by the way, we’re already working on the PSP so-called “legacy” titles, converting them to download.

What do you think about download-only titles? For the PSPgo for instance, do you think download only will make sense for that console?

YM: Yes, and the reason why is I think that Natsume, and also publishers in general have a big issue right now. Basically, there are so many titles out there, but retailers, store shelves are very limited. If you go to Wal-Mart, they have one case there, which may hold 48 titles. However the top row is all Nintendo titles, second row, all EA.

Which means the middle-size publishing companies like us, if it’s Reel Fishing or the Harvest Moon franchise, or maybe Afrika, they might possibly show interest. But if it’s our original titles, and we have some more original titles here, it’s very tough to sell to retail stores.

In that case, the online downloadable content becomed viable. Plus the development costs are not as high as in the package business. So for us, I think it’ll do well.

One of the difficult issues with some downloadable stuff is that there can be too much on there too, and it can be almost as hard to get noticed, sometimes.

YM: Right. So first we have to establish some brand image. Then after that we’ll extend into different arenas.

Who’s developing your iPhone game?

YM: I don’t know if you’ll know the name of the company, it’s a company called Platinum Egg.

Yeah, they do a lot of stealth development, like Tose and other companies.

YM: Yeah, Platinum Egg, we’ve been working together for many many years now. So when I thought about the iPhone, all of a sudden it came to my mind, “ok, that’s the only company that can develop the Harvest Moon game for iPhone and iPod Touch, based on my own idea.” You know a lot of creators are not so flexible sometimes. But Platinum Egg is really flexible.

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

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

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

The delights in this edition include a physics-based puzzle game about lobbing grenades, a platform game in the style of the old Metroid series, a freeware 2D fighter, a biographical art game, an office-based strategy game, and a puzzle platformer that features slow-moving bullets.

Game Pick: 'Aubergine Sky' (Jonathan Whiting, browser)
"Aubergine Sky is a short puzzle game which is controlled entirely using the mouse, with no keyboard input required from the player. The story follows a man who is taking a quiet stroll on the outskirts of his town, lost in his thoughts and deeply troubled by some personal worries. Your task is to figure out a solution to the puzzle in each location, and to execute the action correctly in order to progress."

Game Pick: 'Fragger' (Harold Brenes, browser)
"Fragger is like a simple, more mindless version of Crush the Castle but just as much fun. Players choose the power and trajectory of a grenade and aim to blow up all the gormless-looking fellows dotted around each level. The number of grenades at your disposal is limited, however, so working efficiently is essential."

Game Pick: 'Vanguard Princess' (Sugeno Tomoaki, freeware)
"Vanguard Princess is a freeware versus fighting game created with Enterbrain's 2D Fighter Maker engine, featuring the sort of quality normally reserved for full-price commercial releases. There are ten playable characters to choose from, an assortment of special moves distinct to each combatant, excellent sprite work, creative costume designs, and a multiplayer mode for you to duke it out with a friend."

Game Pick: 'HRmageddon' (THUP Games, browser)
"Funded by Adult Swim, HRmageddon is a great office-based strategy game. Two players take turns to spread around the office, claiming cubicles as their own and destroying the opposition with wacky methods like stapling their eyes or crashing the office servers. There are four different classes to choose from and each has his or her own special abilities, plus you can choose to play against either the computer or anyone over the internet."

Game Pick: 'Holdover' (Fox Eye, freeware)
"Holdover is a platform game in the style of the old Metroid series, where you are in control of a girl named Marie who had just woken up from a deep slumber inside an abandoned research complex. Nearly half of the facility is flooded with water, and there will be tense moments where you would have to take a deep breath, dive in, and hopefully make it to the other side of a pool before the air in your lungs run out."

Game Pick: 'Bulletsss' (Arvi Teikari, freeware)
"Bulletsss is a puzzle platformer that requires a fair amount of quick reflexes and serious thought from the player in equal parts, as the challenges and obstacles found here can be rather difficult to complete even at the normal difficulty setting. Bullets move at a slow speed in this game, and you can use them as platforms to reach areas which are normally inaccessible with your basic jump skill."

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

Even more impressive than Keyboard Cat's NES transformation, chiptune metal group Dr. Zilog has released an 8-bit cover of Animal Collective's "My Girls" from the Merriweather Post Pavilion album, even producing a pixelated version of the band's psychedelic music video (original shown after the break).

You can download the cover for free from chiptune community site 8-bit Collective. If you've never checked out Dr. Zilog before, you should also listen to the band's cover of MGMT's tune "Kids" -- it's just as catchy as the original version, even without lyrics.

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

[‘Design Diversions’ is a biweekly new GameSetWatch-exclusive column by Andrew Vanden Bossche. It looks at the unexpected moments when games take us behind the scenes, and the details of how game design engages us.]

The (new) New Super Mario Bros. game’s proposed new self solving features is already raising a lot of eyebrows. At the time of writing, its not even clear how it will be implemented, but the very idea of a feature that would essentially take the controller out of the player’s hands is more than enough to raise questions about how good of an idea this really is.

To a lot of people, there’s just something that feels wrong about a game that plays itself. After all, a game can only do so much to aid the player before it stops being a game at all.

But does letting the game take over when they player has had enough really go too far? Fortunately, we don’t have to wait to see the implications of a feature like this. In fact, Nintendo's patent of this feature is somewhat amusing considering T&T Software’s humble Spacestation Pheta, a late eighties platformer reminiscent of Lode Runner, beat Nintendo to it by nearly two decades.

Thanks to them, there exists an excellent case study for how a feature like this could potentially affect gameplay:

Learning Through Failure

The image just below explains practically everything you need to know about the game. It’s very puzzle oriented, without any enemies or moving elements of any kind other than the player (one of the reasons why a show solution feature was possible). There are lots of different objects to interact with, and while they behave in predictable ways, it isn’t always clear what the ultimate fate of your poor spaceman will be once subjected to them (especially when considering the interactions of multiple elements in a sequence).

Not to mention that between the fatal falls and electrified floors there is also a time limit in the form of a bar of oxygen that depletes when you move, ensuring that there is a consequence for doing the right thing but taking too long to do it.

So you might already see the complications between the trial and error gameplay and the fact that the player can stop the level at any time and let the computer finish the job. Failure is not only common, but necessary to the experience of the game. Every failure of the player contributes to learning and eventually solving the level. This learning process is what makes the whole thing interesting.

Think of Spacestation Pheta like a series of problem sets from a high school math textbook, complete with the answer in the back of the book. But unlike your calculus class, Spacestation Pheta will not flunk you if you get the answers wrong or turn it in late. In fact, it's because the game lets players progress at their own pace that this potentially game ruining feature facilitates the learning process of the game rather than hinders it.

Learning Through Experience

One of the biggest reasons for this is due to another important feature of Spacestation Pheta. Although the show solution feature is the most striking, the game also allows you start at any level you choose, skip levels, or go to random ones. This one feature has two distinct applications: the ability to skip levels that are too challenging, and the ability to pick up where you left off after a game over.

What this means is that means that players are presented with plenty of alternatives to repeating difficult levels or looking up the answer. Additionally, the answer to being stuck in one level might be found through completing a different one. It's better for the learning process, and also ensures that getting stuck does not effectively bar players from actually playing the game.

The show solution feature is never invoked frivolously because there is no reward for doing so. Players are not unaware of the fact that they'll pretty much ruin any enjoyment they would get out of a level by watching its solution. This is quite a bit different from puzzles in other genres which, while entertaining, will completely block any kind of progress until completed. While many games depend on a succession of challenges to make a greater whole, spending hours on a single puzzle with can really kill the atmosphere of anything (survival horror, anyone?).

Of course, players still have the option of seeing the solution before they have truly exhausted all other options. But this effectively doesn't matter because there are so many other alternatives and the most entertaining option will always be to play rather than watch.

Players usually only sacrifice their experience of fun in pursuit of external rewards, and using this feature disables the only aspect of the game that could qualify as this (the high scores). It's hard to accuse T&T Software for ruining a game experience when they've so clearly encouraged players to take the alternatives.

So why even have this feature in the first place? Looking at it this way, it might seem like no one would ever even use it. But there is a point where frustration ends and curiosity wins out, when players want to see the solution for no other reason than to learn something new. There are techniques that players can miss without first seeing in action, and even the most perceptive can learn new things from experts (or in this case, the game's own designers).

Learning Through Example

Showing the solution, therefore, is not as problematic for the game experience as one might think, because there’s no incentive to use it other than for self education. Most importantly, the solution is never forced on the player, as some games do when the player takes too long to solve the problem. The feature is self selecting and non-patronizing.

Will players benefit from beating their head against a level they can’t beat? If players reach a point at which they’ve no longer experimenting or learning and are just plain stuck, all they can really do is play it over again and hope for luck or revelation to strike. When players can no longer apply their skill and have to rely on chance, they've stopped learning and started guessing. This circumstance is one that truly detracts from the experience of the game.

This is part of the reason why skipping levels is so helpful. Players might be able to learn how to solve a difficult level by learning something from a level they can beat. Not only is there little incentive in the first place to watch the game play itself, but there are far more entertaining options to go to before players finally give up or let curiosity get the better of them.

Obviously this feature isn’t ideal (or practical) for every game. There’s obviously something to be said for sustained challenges, and Spacestation Pheta even acknowledges this with its high score system, which gives players the opportunity to run a marathon rather than a sprint. But for a pure puzzle platformer, Spacestation Pheta does a very good job.

Spacestation Pheta’s success are not due to the individual features themselves, but the larger whole. It would be quite easy to ruin this game with a feature that solves every level. But because of the way it’s structured, the feature helps the learning process central to the game experience rather than hinders it. Challenges should have their frustrations, but a challenge that cannot be met is no challenge at all.

Posted by Andrew Vanden Bossche at 4:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Ahead of Mobile Suit Gundam Senki U.C. 0081's PS3 release in Japan this September, Sony and publisher Bandai Namco Games are installing a giant Gundam RX-78 (from the original Japanese television series) in PlayStation Home's main pavilion area.

Like the real one-to-one scale Gundam statue installed in Tokyo that you've likely seen pictures of dozens of times (and if you haven't seen any yet, I've dropped some after the break), this model will tower over people and nearby structures.

The PlayStation Home version of the Mobile Suit will appear in the virtual world starting tomorrow.

[Photos via Danny Choo]

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

Fangamer, the spin-off gaming merchandise shop of Earthbound/Mother fan community Starmen.net, is finally selling the Pandora's Happy Box t-shirts I featured last April. Once again proving that its setup is a cut above other online shirt stores, the site has even posted a short and well-produced commercial for the shirt, which you'll notice mentions a matching pin that will accompany each order.

Designed by Omnitarian and available in Asphalt and Eggplant, the tee shows a throng of Mother/Earthbound enemies spilling out of a television, though you'll have trouble recognizing the characters unless you've played the import-only GBA sequel to Earthbound, Mother 3.

Speaking of Mother 3, the store is also now offering its unofficial handbook with a print-sized PDF, Fangamer's first-ever digital download product. It's a high quality production with original illustrations and photos of marvelous clay sculptures by Camille Young, not to mention nearly 250 pages of information on the game.

Confident with what the Mother 3 handbook has to offer, Fangamer has put out a free online version that you can view through your browser (in lower quality than the PDF). And if you don't have time to wade through its pages to see if the guide is worth buying, there's a short commercial for this product, too:

Fangamer has also restocked several popular items: PSI Rockin' shirts (shown below), Escargo Express Messenger Bags, and Courage Badge Keychains.

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

In this round-up, we highlight some of the notable jobs posted in big sister site Gamasutra's industry-leading game jobs section this week, including positions from Rockstar, Junction Point Studios, 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

Rockstar San Diego: Generalist Programmer
"Rockstar is looking at future needs and expansion of its RAGE engine and team by leveraging proven technologies created in our games as well as making key feature and optimization enhancements within all of its subsystems. Come make a difference and join the most talented and committed engine team in the industry!"

Blue Fang Games: Lead Architect
"The Lead Architect will play a key role in charting the future course of our technology and development process, and will adapt our technology to new games and applications. You will play the lead role in specifying system architecture. You will actively participate in determining design and feature set working with the design, art, and production teams. You will work with our engineering team to develop our skills, standards and best practices."

Disney Interactive Studios/Junction Point Studios: Visual Development Director
"The Visual Development Director is responsible for the overall look and feel of the game, working closely with both the Game Director and Art Director to create and maintain a consistent, engaging high quality art style throughout the pre-production and production of titles being developed by Junction Point."

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."

WorldsInMotion - Online Games

Trion Redwood City: UI Artist
"We are seeking an ambitious and highly motivated Senior UI Artist to work closely with the UI Lead, Engineers, and Game Designers for our fantasy based MMO. The User Interface Artist will play a role in conceptualizing, designing, and creating art for interactive systems that enhances the overall aesthetic of the game. This position is excellent for those that love graphic design and video games."

Tencent Boston: Animator
"Tencent Boston is seeking an experienced game animator to bust out awesome high quality animation for our upcoming AAA online title targeted to the Asian market, and eventually a worldwide audience. This position will report to the Lead Animator and work with various design and art team members to create and implement animations into the game world."

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 11:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

With the help of Paris-based porting company DotEmu, Capcom and Gametap have converted Street Fighter II: Champion Edition to Flash so gamers can now play the 1992 arcade title in their browsers. The companies have released the game for free to promote the PC launch of Street Fighter IV.

Players can pick from twelve characters (the original eight fighters and the four bosses) and pull off all their special moves, except with a keyboard instead of an arcade stick or game pad. Unfortunately, I experienced noticeable lag when I tried out the game, but GameTap notes that the release is still in Beta, so hopefully it will fix that issue soon. Still, I was able to throw out fireballs and dragon punches using my keyboard's arrows without a problem.

Posted by Eric Caoili at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

[What are the real challenges behind providing meaningful moral choices in games? In a fresh look at one of the industry's biggest obstacles, Divide By Zero's James Portnow takes a pragmatic look from the designer's perspective.]

Moral choices in videogames... not really our finest hour. There seems to be a nagging issue, namely that we tend to deliver to our players all the exciting possibilities of either being Mother Theresa or being Hitler.

We see it all the time, even in the best of games. Infamous, Fable, BioShock, Mass Effect, even Fallout 3 (though Fallout did a better job and really upped the ante by letting you choose between being Mother Theresa, Hitler, and A Guy). The list goes on...

So why does it matter? Well, when faced with the question 'Do I kill this little girl and eat her soul to grow my unholy power or do I restore her lost innocence and return to her the childhood that was stolen from her by despicable men?', it’s just not something you’re going to spend all day pondering - which is a problem. Why? Because it’s not fun. What’s interesting about moral questions is how fuzzy they are, how utterly debatable they can be.

If you can ever get two players to actually debate a moral point in a game as vigorously they might debate a StarCraft build, you’ve won at life. You’ve built a great game complete with deep, meaningful, choices and exciting extrinsic social opportunities; moreover you’ve given your player an opportunity for introspection, which is something our medium should excel at and which, in my book, can only be seen as good.

So why is it so hard?

The Real Problem

How come we’ve failed at delivering on the promise of moral choices in games for so long? Well, that’s the question that got me writing this article in the first place. I’ve seen many people decry the state of writing in games and blame bad writing for the shallow choices we see in games, but I don’t think that’s it at all. I think comes down to something much simpler: money.

When most people think of deep moral choice, they think about a breadth of options. A broad set of options for a storyline decision usually means a divergent story, which means more content. More content of course means more development dollars... and those dollars are almost never there.

Let’s look at one of the more successful attempts at providing meaningful moral choice in a game that has been presented recently: Fallout 3 (yes, I gave it a hard time earlier, but honestly compared to the norm it’s pretty fantastic).

Why does Fallout 3 succeed? Because, given the vast, open world type of game they were making, the developers had the luxury of assuming a player would never see all of the game’s content, which meant that they were ok with developing content that a player might never encounter. This made delivering meaningful moral choices easier from an internal perspective as having the "I want to make area X that 75 percent of the players will never see" conversation must have been much easier than it is on most projects.

Think about BioShock for a moment. Consider how much more impact they could have given the moral decision in that game if they had built four more levels, two exclusively for people who saved the little sisters and two exclusively for people who didn’t…but of course that would never fly when the money could be spent to spruce up levels everyone would see.

So Are We Screwed?

So does this mean achieving the player debate described above is impossible without having the internal corporate fortitude to spend massive development dollars in this area? No. Remember, ambiguous moral choice is different than free moral choice, and ambiguous moral choice is all we have to be able to present in order to provide the player with the satisfying introspective moment we’re trying to deliver (this is something that’s often overlooked or muddled when talking about developing moral choices in games).

First let’s take a look at the game we just touted as having all the advantages required to deliver moral choice: Fallout 3. Why did Fallout fail even though it had excellent writing and a huge open world with effectively unlimited content? They tied choice to a progress bar. The Righteousometer (Karmometer?) kills any possibility for moral choice to be ambiguous. It forces all moral choices and all of their answers to share one plane…and then quantizes them.

Unfortunately almost every game that aspires to moral choice uses this mechanic. In order to get away from this paradigm we have to shift our thinking a bit. The first step is to back away from thinking of moral choice as a system and start considering individual moral choices. This mindset makes it easier to craft ambiguous moral choices because it lets us build scenarios that have no clear “good”. Ambiguity comes from tradeoffs; it comes from having to decide what is the most good in a situation that is mostly bad.

I’ll turn to Fallout one last time (thanks Levi Fleming for reminding me about this one) to illustrate this. In The Pitt expansion, you’re given the choice of kidnapping a child in order to help a group of slaves find a cure for a disease they are afflicted with or kill the leader of the slave revolt to protect the child from being taken from her parents. Neither of these are wholly righteous choices -- the player is forced to weigh the good of the many against the fate of an individual child.

It is this sort of choice that we must deliver. Now how do we give such choices meaning without creating a development burden?

Making it Meaningful and Cheap

It is easy to pepper a game with these types of choices without giving them any real impact on the game world and leave it up to the mind of the player to wonder what effect their choices had. But let’s assume this isn’t enough. What can we do to allow ambiguous moral choices to have real impact on a game without forcing us to create a great deal of new content?

The first and most obvious answer is “repurpose”, i.e. reconfigure old content to present it in new ways which better suit the player’s possible answers. There are a million different ways to do this (reuse locations while changing what spawns in them, alter non-voice acted dialogue, et cetera.)

But this is old hat to most of you (and really should be the subject of its own article) so I’ll leave off here because repurposing really answers the question, “How do we create more content cheaply” which helps here but is in no way specific to the question at hand.

Another answer is to limit ourselves to a singular question. An entire game can be made out of the questions “What makes a war just?” or “How do you balance the good of the many against the rights of the few?” A game centered around these questions need to be no more divergent than our current “Do you want to be good or evil” games but contain a great deal more depth in the decision making. Without even any divergence, Shadow of the Colossus was just such a game.

Next we can simply de-systematize these choices by rewarding each one on a case by case basis, providing ambiguous moral problems only in situations where there resolution doesn’t cost us much development.

Finally we can just present ambiguous moral choices using the same system that we use right now for unambiguous choice, but hide the statistical effects. That is to say: simply don’t show “+2 to paragon” every time the player does something nice. This lack of direct quantification may go against many of the things ingrained in us as game designers, but almost all of our training has been in presenting logical puzzles.

Ambiguous moral choices are non-logical, so we can’t simply reduce them to a logic puzzle. We must present these challenges as they are presented in life, without a right answer and without definitive metric to tell you how you did.

Possible Way to Execute Ambiguous Moral Choice as a Unified Mechanic:

But if you’re really dead set on working in a clear, overarching, player facing, metric for moral choice here are some brief thoughts:

We often talk about moral dilemmas in terms of shades and colors, which is why it seems so odd to me that we have chosen a very linear and numeric metaphor to represent a character’s moral state. Even something as simple as a wheel or a graph, where a character’s choices are weighed on independent axis, would give a much greater diversity to the moral dimensions of a character.

For example if a player’s moral characteristics were plotted with Discipline/Freedom on one axis and Good of the Many/Rights of the Individual on another axis, you could design choices which would force the player to balance the things they valued. Choices would no longer be black and white as a choice might raise a player’s Freedom but lower their Rights of the Individual or lower their Discipline but increase their Good of the Many.

More importantly, a player might be willing to trample on individual rights a little in order to follow the dictates of discipline, but just when they cross the line into rebellion is, in and of itself, an important, meaningful and ambiguous choice.

Perhaps the concept of factions is only explorable in the context of an MMO (I’m honestly not sure about this one), but I’ve been surprised at how little use has been made of this mechanic to explore moral systems and moral choice.

For a decade – since the 1999 launch of Everquest – ‘faction’ has been a firmly established game mechanic. For those of you unfamiliar the concept, faction is simply the idea of giving the player a numerical rating for how much they are liked by each of the different NPC groups in the game (for example you could have a faction of +20 with Wood Elves or -10 with Paladins) and how much any given NPC likes the player is determined by an aggregate of how much the groups it belong to likes the player’s character.

This does something amazing: it externalizes the morality of the game. Instead of being told that any given action is good or evil, the player is instead informed of how that action is perceived by different groups in the game.

This system can be used to explore many different moral schema - as any particular action might be seen as good by one group and evil by another - further removing us from the realm of absolute and allowing for truly debatable moral questions to be raised.

Difficulty

The only thing that makes absolute moral choices interesting is how difficult it often is to do the right thing. For example, I’d like to give each homeless person I see a dollar but at some point this becomes a hardship for me. Only when a homeless man comes up to me and I look in my wallet and see that all I have left is four dollars, exactly enough to pay for the burger I went out for in the first place, does the moral question become interesting to me.

At this juncture I have to overcome my own desires in order to do the right thing… and yet I often say to myself, “But if I don’t get something to eat I will not be able to work as hard and thus won’t earn as much money, meaning that I won’t have as much to distribute in the future.” This could be a rational argument towards the greater good, or it could simply be a justification, but as you can see, at this point we’ve gotten ourselves into an interesting moral quandary.

Doing good in games almost never brings us to this moral precipice. Doing good is usually no more difficult than doing ill, moreover when we do ask players to sacrifice the sacrifice is usually illusory (giving up a clip of ammo out of their stock of ten thousand). If we choose to deal with unambiguous moral choices we owe the player the enjoyment of having to choose when they get to do good rather than allowing them to mindlessly choose the option that gives them +1 to sanctimony.

By making it prohibitively expensive to do good all the time you make the choice to do unmitigated good interesting again.

Our Own Values

Rarely in life do we choose between good and evil, more often we simply must muddle through, choosing the options that we believe to be the best. Even then, when we at last come to believe that we have ascertained what is right, we are beset with different conceptions of the good. And then, in those rare cases that we can choose unmitigated good, it usually comes at great cost to us.

Morality is a complicated issue and deserves to be treated as such. Not only because doing so will create more compelling game experiences but also because it lets us stretch the medium and, dare I say, do some good. But in treating morality more seriously we face a great danger and we must be aware of the influence we have. So I will leave you with this simple thought about our medium…

It is our job to raise moral questions, not impose our own moral judgments. If we fail here we may well do worse than we would in never having tried at all.

[James Portnow is a game designer, formerly of Activision, and now at Divide by Zero Games, where he is also the founder and CCO. He received his master's degree in Entertainment Technology from Carnegie Mellon University. He can be contacted at jportnow@gmail.com or JamesPortnow on Twitter for comments on this article.]

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

If you were upset about not having a chance to play Octopounce at Indiecade's E3 booth or at the unfortunately brief ARTXGAME portion of Giant Robot's Game Over/Continue? show, you can put that depression aside as the multiplayer is now available to download for free.

Octopounce isn't much fun with only one player, and as previously discussed, it's designed for "big social events with lots of people", but even if you don't have regular parties to try the game out at, the serene background and chunky pixel octopodes (they nap and float in the sea while no one's play) make for a great art piece to leave on a display.

Designed by Anna "Auntie Pixelante" Anthropy (Mighty Jill Off, Calamity Annie) and artist Saelee Oh, this is the first out of five pieces released from the ARTXGAME collective, a group producing games that combine the talents of artists and independent game designers. According to Anthropy, ARTXGAME's organizers hoped to license the titles, but the people they pitched the idea to were "only interested in the games if they could be converted to advergames."

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.]

As we totter raggedly towards the weekend, time to spool out a bunch of GameSetLinks that are the result of some dedicated RSS-excavating from last week (luckily, they're the evergreen type, largely), starting out with another interesting Eurogamer feature - this one on roleplaying in MMOs.

Also in this set of links - more on the positive response for quirky British indie adventure game Time, Gentlemen, Please!, plus the Dragon Age tabletop RPG, the latest from Introversion, Clint Hocking on scary permadeath, usefulness vs. coolness in power-ups, and more besides.

Extended forecast:

Personality Crisis Article - MMO /// Eurogamer
'A subculture of a subculture - recently described in a University of Minnesota study as "psychologically much worse off than the average [MMO player]" - role-players (or "RPers", as they're often known) engage in many, if not all, of the same activities as the average MMO aficionado. But they do so with an interesting twist: they do it "in character".'

Never Balance Cool Against Useful « Double Buffered
'If you balance Utility against Coolness, what you end up with is a system where the people who want stats will pick the items with the best stats but no coolness, while the players who want variety will pick the items with bad stats but lots of cool things.'

Click Nothing: Live and Let Die
Far Cry 2 co-creator Clint Hocking: 'The reason I think people are paying attention to what Ben is doing is not because he is having a more emotionally engaging narrative experience. It is not because he is playing the game in a more serious way in order to experience more serious emotions.'

goviolet » scumm and villainy
"Another rave for (the pictured) 'Time Gentlemen, Please!', which Mike Rose loved over at IndieGames.com, and is ridiculously cheap to purchase. Yay."

Defcon :: View topic - Keeping IV from the Wolves
'In September last year I looked at a cash-flow that said that Introversion was out of money by Christmas and a plan for Darwinia+ that said that we wouldn’t be able to launch until June. It’s now ten months later and I’m looking at a project plan forecasting the launch for September / October and a cashflow that runs out around the same time.'

gameplaywright.net // Dragon Age: An Interview with Chris Pramas
'So as soon as I heard that Green Ronin and BioWare were teaming up to create a tabletop sibling for the forthcoming fantasy CRPG, Dragon Age: Origins, I pelted Green Ronin’s president and founder, Chris Pramas, with questions.'

Experience Points: Review: Blueberry Gardening
Another interesting review of a game that's... really quite difficult to talk about, I guess.

Confessions of an Aca/Fan: Documenting the Digital Generation
'The George Lucas Educational Foundation recently launched an exciting new website -- Digital Generation -- which offers a wealth of videos which will be relevant to anyone who wants to better understand the new media literacies, participatory culture, and young people's online lives, themes which recur here with great frequency.'

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

Psytronik Software has released Knight 'n' Grail, its original Metroidvania-style game for the Commodore 64. The title is available as a digital download (.D64 format) for £1.99/$1.62, and in two disk editions -- budget and premium -- shipping this week.

You can get a good sense of Knight 'n' Grail with the new gameplay video above (the music is sublime) and this short description of the title from Psytronik:

"This epic arcade adventure features a brave Knight on a quest to find the only thing that will release his beloved from a curse that has turned her into a dragon - the magical Grail.

Many dangers await you as you explore over 200 screens on your quest to find the Grail. You are not defenseless however. You will find various weaponry and armour upgrades during your travels and you will even discover new powers that allow you to reach previously inaccessible areas. Lead on adventurer, your quest awaits!"

Should you choose to purchase a disk copy, the budget version includes a C64 disk with a glossy label, a full-color glossy disk sleeve, and a glossy instruction sheet. The Premium Edition includes all that and a classic-style clear plastic case (modeled after the cases Ocean, Rainbow Arts, and System 3 used for their releases) with artwork by Håkon 'Archmage' Repstad. You can see a photo of the case past the break.

Early impressions indicate that the game is huge (and fun!) -- certainly, it will keep you entertained longer than that C64 Twitter client I recently posted about. You can download or order Knight 'n' Grail from the Binary Zone Interactive Retro Store.

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

[The 'Game Anthropologist' is Michael Walbridge's GameSetWatch-exclusive column about communities built around gaming. This week, he digs into Battlefield Heroes and how its pricing affects its playerbase.]

What to make of EA/DICE's Battlefield Heroes? Well, it looks like Team Fortress 2, and keeps the “team” part. Competition and stats like Quake Live. Leveling and revenue models are like Korean MMOs. These all have large differences, even if two of these titles are FPS games, yet Battlefield Heroes shares much in common with them all.

Before I get started on the community side of things, the actual game is pretty good. I find it impressive that I’ll never have to pay a cent for a game that’s 400-500 megabytes to download, has quality gameplay, and free servers with a decent ping.

I don’t know if it’s EA’s intent, but the community needs work. It’s strange to be in a team-based game that encourages players to go solo and be highflying hotshots, but that’s precisely what happens. This is likely due to the limited ability to communicate coupled with the grind of leveling.

Like its Korean inspirations, Battlefield Heroes requires no money, but plenty of time in order to level and gain new abilities. Spending money on battlefunds is more enticing than at first glance, due to how fun the game is and how long the ride to the top is.

Battlefunds generally don’t give the players an advantage over another except with two items that increase the amount of experience or valor points earned. Seeing really plain characters all over the place with the occasional stylish skilled sniper makes one consider upgrading the wardrobe, too. It’s a pain to tell who is who on your team.

And the kicker: if you’re doing really well, your outfit, which may be an old black Western hat and trenchcoat coupled with a mustache, gives a signature to your domination. As in Team Fortress 2, dead players get a zoom in on their killers, but instead of being humorous or entertaining, it only turns out be flaunting.

So that old urgent need to level, combined with the silly keeping up with the Joneses, combined with the fact that you cannot ever switch teams or classes without disconnecting from the server, makes for plenty of all-star play. Emotes, the last thing that you’d think would fail to work, cost valor points. Three are free, but other basic ones cost valor points.

And there’s no voice chat, which makes the only current way to have a team coordinate at any level against another is to pay money for a private server and have a private match, and rent a Ventrilo server as well.

But the point, which is free, casual play, becomes defeated by then; at that point, one could afford to pay for a higher quality game.

The game is free, so it’s reasonable to understand why Battlefield Heroes doesn’t include these features. Plus, voice chat could have been a bad thing for the server, considering what the player base is like. Language, taunting, team-blaming, uneducated accusations of cheating: these can certainly be found in other games, but they are much more abundant, in my opinion, in Battlefield Heroes.

This problem is only exacerbated by the fact that people can add you as a friend without your permission, and the fact that names don’t change and stats are permanent. The potential for hate or grudgery is a little stronger (though it’s a better tool for finding friends, too, at least).

If an old or cheap game isn’t played for elitist or expert reasons (i.e., an earlier version of a current game, such as Halo 2 over Halo 3), it’s played for the self-evident reasons that cheap games bring more casually oriented players who are more potentially willing to mess around in the service of having a good time.

It’s not ridiculous to think that the lower level of maturity and behavior on Battlefield Heroes is due to simple economic reasons. While Battlefield Heroes is an impressive offering as a piece of software and a good deal for the (lack of) money, the limitations in social interaction and offerings show that the rule still applies—you get what you pay for.

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

Shirt.Woot has another fantastic piece of apparel up for sale -- a black tee designed by Aled Lewis and commemorating the astronauts who gave their lives to save their shuttles from aimlessly floating vector asteroids. Make sure to read the site's entertaining back story behind this particular hero and the identity of the Second Man.

Like the Galaga shirt I featured last week (and like all the others featured on Shirt.Woot), this Asteroids tee sells for $10 with free shipping. This seems like the perfect shirt to throw on for when the Asteroids movie hits theaters.

[Via GoNintendo]

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

A team of homebrew coders has released Warhawk DS, a reimagining of Firebird's Commodore 64 shoot'em up from 1986. Developed over five months, the game is designed to retain the "old school feel of the original" game without seeming too difficult for modern players.

"It is not an easy ride to clear the 16 levels," explains the group, "though a concession has been made for the modern-day gamer in the addition of continues."

Warhawk DS features 16 normal levels, and another 16 "mental" stages after the first set is completed. Shooting through the second set of levels will unlock the true completion and credit sequence.

You can read the team's release notes and download the game (playable in an emulator or on the Nintendo DS with homebrew hardware) at Headsoft.

[Via DCEmu]

Posted by Eric Caoili at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

This comical Team Fortress 2 sniper rifle skin comes from Marc "BlightedArt" Johnston, Daniel "Ice" Bentz, Scott McNeebs, and unfortunate Scout who evidently suffered a headshot. The exit wound seems the perfect size for the rifle's scope, though. "That'll teach 'em for jumpin' around like a bloody idiot!" says Bentz.

The skin comes with both Red and Blue versions, so the skull's hat will change to match the opposing team's color. If you're wondering why the Australian sniper has a New Zealand flag on the scope, Johnston has an explanation for that: "I'm a [New Zealander]. Me and the modeler were just having a bit of fun stickin' it to the Aussies."

You can see an in-game shot of the rifle after the break, and download the skin here.

[Via PAF]

Posted by Eric Caoili at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

[Is it possible for games to deal with murder as a dramatic element, and not simply as part of charge-and-kill mechanics? In this editorial, our own Christian Nutt examines the deceptively complex issue.]

You can't do a murder game.

I'm not talking about making more games like Manhunt 2 -- a game that was widely decried and almost banned in its Wii incarnation, for inviting the player to physically mimic acts of sadistic violence.

I'm also not using the inflammatory term "murder simulator" -- even ironically -- to make any sort of point about the appropriateness of violence in games.

No, I'm thinking about other media, and how much murder -- be it police procedural, detective story, whodunit, or crime drama -- is an integral part of the medium.

If you look at the current TV ratings, shows like NCIS, CSI, and The Mentalist dominate the drama ratings. Action movies like Casino Royale manage to make death (okay, not murder) emotionally meaningful even when the main character is a walking killing machine.

Contrast that against the Treyarch-developed Quantum of Solace, which took in scenes from that film but pumped up the body count tremendously to fit the need for entertaining mayhem.

What got me thinking about this, though, is not film or television; it's the fact that the two best books I've read in the past couple of years both center on murder. Neither one is a mystery; in fact, both show their murders, early on, and then spend the rest of the books filling in the tantalizing psychological details of the characters and situations that surround them.

The two books are Donna Tartt's The Secret History and Natsuo Kirino's Out. Tartt's book is about a group of classics students at a secluded New England liberal arts college. The story revolves around the murder of one of them; in some ways, it eerily reflected my own college experience -- murder aside, thankfully. Out, on the other hand, is a gripping story of Japan's underclass, and how socioeconomic pressures in a fracturing society warp people's behavior.

Neither would make a very good game. I am of the belief that some stories probably aren't meant to be told -- or certainly can't as easily or effectively be told -- in video games. I'm not encouraging anyone to license Out or The Secret History (newsflash: that isn't going to happen anyway.)

But it did get me thinking about the power of murder as a plot device. In these books, the death of a single character has huge reverberations for the entire cast. In most games, death is a constant; it's ubiquitous. There have been effective attempts to humanize foes through clever ambient dialogue and plot twists, but these are clever exceptions to the rule, and don't fundamentally change the charge-forward-and-kill nature of so much of the medium.

Some story-based games take the death of single characters to the height of effective drama, but these often just serve to sharpen the contrast between the game's two states. Probably the most talked-about character death in gaming history is that of gentle flower-seller Aerith Gainsborough in Final Fantasy VII, run through with Sephiroth's sword in one of the game's many climaxes. But in this same game, you slaughter huge numbers of human enemies -- Shinra soldiers by the score, for example, in the company's HQ.

And as games get more and more realistic -- witness the characters in next year's Final Fantasy XIII, who look almost human, compared to the living dolls of 1997's FFVII -- the layers of abstraction that made this acceptable are less possible to maintain.

We can (and the FFXIII demo does) throw helmet-faced storm troopers at the player endlessly. We know the player knows that these are pawns, not people. I think we accept that there is a layer on which all right-minded players understand the abstraction of the game-layer simulation, and that is what, in our minds, diffuses the game violence arguments. I wholly agree with this.

But maintaining that abstraction does work to rob us of one of the most crucially human, moving, intriguing storytelling elements we could be working with. If gaming is accused of having a limited palette to work with, adopting conventions that encourage that limitation is not an effective move.

Building a game that effectively tells the story of a murder -- makes it realistic and interesting -- works against many games' strengths in other ways. It requires extremely good writing, for one, with nuanced dialogue. I do believe many games have good writing right now. But I also don't think that this is frequently precisely a strength of even many that do have solid storytelling.

Of course, the obvious answer to this is that some games do deal with the subject well: adventure games. The detective story/police procedural tends to leak into games from this angle, when it does, and it has pretty much been thus since the medium was born. It is definitely related to audience issues, but it's also down to the medium. The Japanese call many of the games in this genre -- the ones that are largely just pictures and text -- "visual novels", and I think that sums why these games work well nicely. But it would be nice if we could see a murder-focused game that branches out beyond that.

Indigo Prophecy, and its developer Quantic Dream's new game, Heavy Rain, stand something in contrast to this problem: they make murder central to the story, not the gameplay, and eschew combat except as dramatic punctuation. Yet they're still of their generation, and not in any sense a visual novel. It's hard to think of other contemporary examples.

It's not as if the drama of murder can't be effective in a traditional framework. Sega's Yakuza games are poignantly dramatic tales of personal relationships marred by death. The games also see their thoughtful protagonist battle countless thugs on the Tokyo streets. This is acceptable because it's a hell of a lot of fun, and Japanese games tend to be comfortable with gameplay abstractions.

But I so often hear Western developers express the desire to reject abstraction; the ideal is a realistic world, with believable characters, compelling situations, and integrated gameplay and storytelling. In that context, will there be a way to tell the heartbreaking, or chilling, or disturbing tale of a murder and its effect on that world? It'll be quite a challenge for whatever developer approaches it head-on.

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

Will Christiansen, a Bungie contracted animator currently working on Halo: Reach, posted an animation reel sharing examples of his recent work, including clips of what many speculate are rough bits from the upcoming Halo: Combat Evolved prequel.

The relevant scenes in the video show a UNSC soldier introducing himself to an enemy Jackal, and another soldier taking a shot to the stomach. The reel shows off footage from other projects, too, such as Lair, which Christiansen helped animate during his time at Factor 5.

Bungie announced Halo: Reach at E3 but revealed very little for the game aside from its planned release in Fall 2010. Gamers who purchase this Fall's Halo 3: ODST, however, will receive an invitation to Reach's open multiplayer beta.

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.]

A little more GameSetLink-age for you good citizens of GSW-ville, then, and it's started out by a neat little deconstruction of Assassin's Creed and its odd plot from veteran developer Brett Douville.

Also in this round-up - more on gaming in libraries, Keith Boesky on that old chestnut, Hollywood and games, neat indie games, classic player types and Left 4 Dead, classic Japan-only games, and rather more things besides.

Grave torpedo:

Brett's Footnotes¹: Assassin's Creed's Functional Story
'Setting aside the believability of this sort of Lamarckian idea, I've found to my surprise that this story works for me in a purely functional way -- it solves specific game-related problems.'

auntie pixelante › gaming in libraries: the course
'recently, scott got funding to conduct an online course on running game events at libraries as a series of youtube videos (connected to discussion forums).'

8bitrocket:Time Warner Interactive & Midway: The Soul Of Atari Might Still Be Alive...
Awesome wishful thinking: 'With Time Warner Interactive now a "hot" company... is it too hard to believe that they could finish the job of reconnecting the orginal parts of Atari by purchasing the Infogrames assets now that they are in semi-distress and refocusing on the original I.P.?'

A Tree Falling in the Forest: Hollywood in Games 2.0: They're Baaaaack Edition
'I was confident we are headed for a wall again. Silly Hollywood, don’t you guys ever learn?'

July 2009 Best Indie Games by Game Tunnel
Some interesting titles in here - topped by the latest in the Aveyond series.

The Taxonomy of Left 4 Dead. « Groping The Elephant
'Playing Left 4 Dead recently it struck me that the characterisation of each of the four survivors seemed to conform to one of these four [Richard Bartle-suggested] player types.'

Hit Self-Destruct: Move Over Once
'If Rock Band is the future of music, what would that mean for the future? That kids' first exposure to rock music will be in the form of a Rock Band challenge, rather than on the Ed Sullivan show or in English dance halls or whatever?'

1UP's Most Wanted Games From Japan from 1UP.com
Lots of spot-on obscure gems.

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

This weekend, the Santa Clara Convention Center will host California Extreme, an annual show where attendees can play over 400 new and classic pinball/video games brought by collectors for free after paying an admission fee ($35 for Saturday, $30 for Sunday, and $60 for the entire weekend).

Now in its 13th year, CAX will host three pinball tournaments -- one each for modern, solid state, and electromechanical machines -- with each tournament's prize pool expected to exceed $1,500. The show will also have side events like pinball tournaments for kids and casual players, as well as a time challenge called The Gauntlet.

CAX will also feature a new sponsored attraction, the Guitar Hero Arcade World Championship, in which the grand prize winner will take home a Wii console, a full bank kit, and four Guitar Hero games (Smash Hits, World Tour, Aerosmith, Guitar Hero III). The competition's top 15 players will all win prizes such as wireless drum and guitar kits.

Over a dozen speakers are scheduled to deliver presentations, such as pinball design legend Steve Ritchie and other Atari vets like Allan Alcorn, Owen Rubin, and Mike Hally. The Rock-afire Explosion, the 2008 documentary about the Showbiz Pizza Place's animatronic robot band and its fans looking to revive the group, will also have a special screening on Saturday night. You can read the full speaker/presentation schedule here.

As for the 400+ pinball and video games, CAX has a page listing all of those, too. Some of the show's rarities include Nolan Bushnell's Computer Space, one of the first arcade games in history; and Cinematronics’ Warrior, recognized by many as the first one-on-one fighting game.

Several prototypes will also be on the show floor, such as Atari's shooter Akka Arrh, which was market tested but deemed too complex for average players; Exidy's super rare fixed shooter (only one cabinet ever produced) Teeter Torture; and Atari's unreleased and unfinished Beavis and Butt-Head game (pictured).

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

['The Magic Resolution' is a bi-weekly GameSetWatch column by UK-based writer Lewis Denby, examining all facets of the experience of playing video games. This time: Art galleries, history, and the diversity of people interested in gaming.]

I've mentioned Videogame Nation already, but only in passing. Launched in May, it's a summer-long exhibit at Manchester's Urbis Centre, showcasing the history of video games and the big issues surrounding them.

A few weeks since my visit, during which I had the pleasure of dining with Introversion, the significance of the event is starting to hit home.

Actually, that's a lie. It started to hit home before I'd even arrived. On the journey, I found myself pondering Videogame Nation, and wondering why it felt quite so significant for our little hobby. Then, with the proverbial light bulb flashing on above my head, it clicked.

Because, well, what is the Urbis Centre?

It's an art gallery.

Painting A Picture

That's certainly a heady victory for the games-as-art brigade, of which I'd probably have to consider myself a member. I won't pretend to have researched the history of video games being displayed in art galleries, but I can't imagine it will have been a huge one, and I'd be surprised if any other gallery has made the courageous move of dedicating an entire floor to them.

But that's what Videogame Nation is: a shameless - nay, proud - exhibit; extensive, thorough and respectful. In the hour I spent exploring, I fear I barely saw half of it.

There's a lot of history here. The exhibit documents the story of the video game from its inception to its modern form, with insightful commentary from various members of the industry and community scattered around the walls. (The walls are worth mentioning, actually. It's an entirely linear path through the exhibit, with free exploration prohibited. Whether this is a witty remark about the nature of the medium or just a happy coincidence, it made me smile.)

Big news stories, important breakthroughs, legal battles, health worries and more - they're all here, and all discussed with refreshing frankness and impartiality.

Initially, I considered this the main strength of Videogame Nation. I'd been worried that the exhibit would fail to go further than being a straightforward 'Hall of Games', but it seemed the numerous playable games from across the ages were merely a tactic to draw people in, and a quick opportunity to put the commentary in context. Yet the more I think about it, the more I become convinced that their role here is absolutely key.

Going Global

The first thing I saw at Videogame Nation was a Chinese family who spoke in broken English and evidently knew nothing about video games. They hovered around the entrance for a while, then paid five pounds each to enter.

"40% of gamers are thought to be female," one wall-quote informs the public. My estimate would be that, on this particular day, 60% of Videogame Nation attendees were of the fairer sex.

Children. Adults. The elderly. People from all walks of life, from all over the globe, were drawn in by the accessibility and intrigue of the exhibit. Superficially, Videogame Nation is about video games. Really, it's about the people who play them.

The presence of these playable games makes this so. Sure, it's a hook, but it's one that's absolutely delightful to experience. A few moments stood out. A middle-aged couple entered cynically with their teenage son. While he wandered off on his own to explore the exhibit, his parents tried their hand at one of the two-player games. They begansuspiciously. When I looked back a few minutes later, they were engaged in a ferocious battle for victory.

Another young man, who had just spent a few minutes wreaking havoc in Grand Theft Auto IV, walked up to Darwinia. To begin with, he looked confused and lost in its unfamiliar, budget-restricted world. A couple of minutes later, I heard him remark, "this is actually really interesting."

The most stirring sight was that of a young couple sitting in front of LittleBigPlanet. They played a level in co-op mode, carefully hopping across fiery pits and working together to solve the puzzle sections. At the end, as Sackboy and Sackgirl jumped for joy, their real-world counterparts shared a celebratory hug and kiss.

I haven't seen an event bring people together this magically for a long time. That it would be a collection of video games to do this is simply marvellous.

Jump In

It says a lot about the nature of both games and humanity that Videogame Nation gels so well with such a diverse range of people. Interaction is what keeps our society ticking over, and the interaction inherent to videogames - the way in which we are forced to engage with another reality for a given amount of time - seems to spark some passionate reactions. It's a wonderful thing to see.

So my worry that Videogame Nation would simply be a room full of video games was kind of founded. At heart, despite all the peripheral stuff, that's what it's about. But that's by no means a criticism. It's simply the only logical way to present the exhibit.

Playful but intelligent, walled but inclusive, it completely encapsulates what makes games such fascinating things in the first place. You can read into it as much as you like, searching for your desired depth of story - but for those who just want to grab a controller and jump into the pool of fun, there are few better ways to do so.

[Lewis Denby is general editor of Resolution Magazine and general freelance busybody for anyone that'll have him. Wander over to his website for more information and contact details.]

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

Following up his diary exploring Zettai Zetsumei Toshi 3's disaster-stricken streets, CoreGamers' Bruno de Figueiredo has posted a tour through Millenium Kitchen's latest Boku No Natsuyasumi (My Summer Holiday) PSP game, Seitouchi Shounen Tanteidan, Boku to Himitsu no Chizu, or Boy’s Inland Detective Club: Me and the Secret Map.

The nostalgia-tinged series, which follows a young boy's adventures sometime in the 1980s during a month-long vacation in rural Japan, has unfortunately never made it to the States, but you can read import impressions on what made the previous releases so special at Crunk Games. Ray Barnholt, who runs the site, described the first PSP Boku No Natsuyasumi (a remake of the original PS1 game) as "the best game about playing outside".

Back to the walkthrough of the new PSP title, de Figueiredo has posted direct-feed shots of the beautiful settings from the game's introduction, like the scenic train ride to the summer home, and the cluttered bedroom overlooking the beach.

He also posts about some of the game's thoughtful details, like the fold-out table brought out for guests:

Says de Figueiredo, "I liked the fact that when the family began eating, the room was lit by the sunset light and once it is finished they already have the lights on. This is what I call a naturalist detail..."

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

Years before Project Runway made fashion design cool and brought the process to the mainstream (and some time before DS game developers began pumping out similar games), a Japanese studio named Watermarks Ltd. planned to create Style Laboratory, a fashion design simulation game for the original Xbox.

The title was never released, though, likely due to the Microsoft console's poor sales in Japan, and it doesn't look like the company is around anymore. As far as I know, the only game it ever put out was The Book of the Watermarks for the PS1 in Japan.

Style Laboratory was initially shown at Tokyo Game Show 2001 (in English) and enabled players to take on the role of a young fashion designer hoping to stake his or her claim in the industry, dressing up models according to season. You can see screenshots showing more of the game's models walking down the catwalk at Unseen 64.

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

If you aren't worn out from playing a dozen other versions of Peggle, you can now download a free standalone version of the addictive puzzler with 10 World of Warcraft-themed levels. PopCap and Blizzard Entertainment collaborated on the project, likely spurred by the success of Peggle's mini-game debut in the MMORPG last April.

The game features Peggles Masters characters such as Splork and Bjorn the Unicorn, and also includes Warcraft villains with names like “Too Soon, Executus” and “The Traitor King”. This Peggle edition also includes challenges with playful titles like "Phat Lewtz" and "Pwnyxia." You can download Peggle World of Warcraft Edition here.

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

[Talking to big sister site Gamasutra as part of a wider article on publishing Japanese games in the West, GaijinWorks' quixotic Victor Ireland has been getting specific on advance amounts and his plans to return to game publishing - always interesting to hear what he's planning.]

After 17 years as president of Working Designs, a localization house for niche Japanese games, Victor Ireland launched Redding, CA-based GaijinWorks in 2006.

These last three years, the company has functioned as a "localization developer," most recently on Hudson's Miami Law, according to Ireland, who is the company's president. But he intends to begin publishing "eventually, perhaps in the next 18 months to two years," he says, focusing -- like XSeed and Atlus -- on RPGs.

These days the niche he intends to join is a much more crowded one than when he headed up his former company, "but there is still a huge amount of software in Japan that doesn't get licensed. So, yes, it's more competitive, but if you really know where to look, there's a wealth of titles available."

To be successful, Ireland explains, it takes the tenacity to play through the games to make sure you know what you're getting up front, it takes the ability to speak Japanese, and it takes a confidence in your ability to pick a good game. "If you have all three, the risk is low," he says.

Ireland isn't as reluctant as his competitors when it comes to discussing the cost of licensing Japanese games.

"For an A or B+ title -- not an AAA title -- it can go anywhere from $100,000 to as high as $800,000 depending on the game," he reports. "That's the minimum guarantee. If the title is a hit, you could wind up paying an additional two to four million dollars in royalties."

"But if you're doing the developer's first game, if they are a small company, if they are hungry to license, then the cost could be less. And there are different kinds of deals -- revenue-sharing or upfront deals; there are a million ways to slice it. It really depends on your negotiating skills."

It also depends on how much the developer trusts the licensee and whether this is the first time they are working together or it is an old relationship. Or the relationship could be with another company that is close to the licensor.

"There are really too many small developers in Japan for you to be tight with all of them," says Ireland. "But if you know the right people, you can get the 'golden introduction,' which is almost the same thing. If you can get a good introduction from someone who has the trust of the developer you're pursuing, then 'bam' -- you're instantly up on the relationship meter."

"So we have relationships with well-established companies that are willing to introduce us to the licensors. In Japan that goes a long way, and is certainly better than cold-calling. If you think you can cold call, you're really fighting a tough battle."

It's a challenging sector to join, the pros agree. It takes experience, lots of connections, and at least a half-million dollars or more just to get your feet wet, says Ireland.

You can now read the full Gamasutra feature on the subject, including further comments from Atlus and XSeed executives on the state of the publishing market for Japanese games in the West.

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

[Time to announce the Independent Games Festival again for 2010. Here's the major submission dates -- and if you click on the new IGF 'signature image' (Blueberry Garden creator Erik Svedang) in this post, you'll even get a 'variant version'.]

Think Services, organizer of the industry-leading Game Developers Conference (GDC) events, is pleased to announce that submissions are now open for the 2010 Independent Games Festival. Entries to the 12th annual festival are due in both Main and Student Showcase categories by November 2009, with Main Competition finalists to be announced January 4, 2010.

Games selected as finalists will be available in playable form on the GDC show floor and will compete for nearly $50,000 in prizes, including awards for Excellence in Design, Art, the Audience Award and the coveted $20,000 Seumas McNally Grand Prize. Winners will be announced on stage at the prestigious Independent Games Festival Awards on Thursday, March 11, 2010, at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.

The Independent Games Festival Awards are held alongside the Game Developers Choice Awards and both award shows are part of the 2010 Game Developers Conference. GDC 2010 also includes the 2010 Independent Games Summit, which is entering its fourth year and offers two days of inspiration and practical lectures and rants from the top minds in the independent games world.

Over the years, the Independent Games Festival has recognized the best and brightest indie game developers and their games. As the indie game mindshare continues to grow, thanks to the rise of digital distribution and a compelling aesthetic, the Independent Games Festival has played a key role in putting a well-deserved spotlight on these games. Notable former IGF winners include Everyday Shooter, Audiosurf, World of Goo, Blueberry Garden, Darwinia, Castle Crashers, and many more.

Notable evolutions to this year's Festival include a substantial increase in the number of hand-picked IGF judges - chosen, as always, from notables practicing both mainstream and indie game development, as well as discerning indie-minded games journalists.

The judging pool has more than doubled over last year's event, allowing each individual game entry to be played in much greater depth. The IGF is also adding compulsory (previously optional) written judge feedback alongside scores, an important part of deriving value and takeaway from entering the Festival, even for non-finalists.

Simon Carless, Chairman of the IGF, commented of this year's event: “We're delighted to return for our twelfth year of the Independent Games Festival, and we're really looking forward to see what the independent game community comes up with this time around. Good luck to all entrants!”

Submissions to the competition are now open to all independent game developers; important dates for IGF 2010 are as follows:

July 1st, 2009 - Submissions are Open
November 1st, 2009 - Submission Deadline, Main Competition
November 15th, 2009 - Submission Deadline, Student Competition
January 4th, 2010 - Finalists Announced, Main Competition
January 11th, 2010 - Finalists Announced, Student Competition
March 9th-13th, 2010 - Game Developer's Conference 2010
March 9th-10th, 2010 - Indie Games Summit @ GDC
March 11-13th, 2010 - IGF Pavilion @ GDC
March 11th, 2010 - IGF Awards Ceremony (Winners Announced!)

Sponsors already confirmed for the 2010 Independent Games Festival include Official Download Partner Direct2Drive and Platinum Student Showcase sponsor DigiPen Institute Of Technology. For a complete list of IGF 2010 event information, please visit the official IGF website.

Posted by Simon Carless at 7:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The July/August issue of French gaming mag IG Magazine features an adorable cover with close to a dozen familiar female game characters, all drawn Cooking Mama-style. Magweasel's Kevin Gifford could probably correct or confirm this, but I don't think I've ever seen Mama as the centerpiece for a magazine's cover.

Her prominence is appropriate considering that Majesco just announced another DS entry (Cooking Mama 3) to her successful casual franchise yesterday. I imagine some will take issue with the cover, though, construing it as sexist for seemingly suggesting that these female characters belong in the kitchen.

Soulcalibur's Ivy, crossing her arms in the background, realizes what's going on and will have no part of it. You can see a larger version of the cover after the break, and read about the forthcoming 270-page issue's articles (in French) here.

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

[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.]

Continuing with the GameSetLinks goodness as this week speeds on, this set of links is headed by Richard Cobbett looking at one of those curiosities - a PC adventure game that seems to have almost been forgotten by fandom, partly thanks to backwards compatibility issues around PC games, I suspect. Or maybe I'm just projecting...

Anyhow, quite apart from that, other highlights include a look at the making of the computer game version of Aliens (quite spooky it was, too!), as well as Aspyr's Treasure World, more on the Textfyre commercial IF, Bob Blauschild getting back to Leigh, NinjaBee releasing a total conversion (!) for an Xbox Live Arcade game, and lots more.

Def con one:

Traffic Department 2192 | Narrative Flood
'Traffic Department 2192 was a shareware game from 1994, originally published by Safari Software, and one that has a bit of a cult following amongst people who could get past the terrible title.'

NinjaBee Dance: Band of Bugs gets Avatar support and all-new DLC
I didn't realize that Tales Of Kaloki is a total conversion for Band Of Bugs with a completely different theme - really interesting idea.

The ISG Top 25 Facebook Games for July 2009
Really interesting to track which of these microtransaction-funded social games are popular - ignore at yr peril.

The Making Of Aliens: The Computer Game | NowGamer
'Having failed miserably to bring Back To The Future to life on home computers, no one was expecting great things when Electric Dreams announced that it was working on Aliens: The Computer Game. And yet the result was one of the finest film licences of the Eighties.'

Is it just me? Fighting Games: Behind the Times « the other castle
'I know how utterly and completely ancillary story is to a game about beating the snot out of your friends. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t room to try, and it doesn’t mean that there isn’t massive potential.'

Post Position » Jack Toresal and The Secret Letter Released
Some much better detail on Textfyre's commercial IF title that we mentioned the other week.

Sexy Videogameland: Bob Blauschild Responds To My Open Letter!
'You may recall I recently wrote an open letter to the designer of a couple obscure adventure games that used to make me pound my little fist against the Apple IIe's keyboard in frustration in my childhood, at the same time they formed my earliest and best nostalgic memories of gaming. Thanks to the magic of the internet, my letter reached former Sirius Software designer Bob Blauschild, who's given me permission to publish his response in its unedited entirety.'

The War-driver's delight: WiFi treasure hunting in Aspyr's Treasure World | Offworld
I didn't even know this had been released - and it's fascinating use of DS tech.

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

Only slightly more ridiculous than Sony's PS3 prototype boomerang controller, this Wu-Tang pad was released alongside the Wu-Tang: Shaolin Style (subtitled Taste the Pain in PAL territories) 3D fighter for the PS1 in 1999.

Most people who've played the game will tell you it's crap, but I have fond memories of rocking my cousins' faces off with Gza's liquid sword.

I wasn't aware of the Wu-Tang controller back then, but knowing about it now, it saddens me that I wasn't able to do it all with a huge and likely unwieldy W in my grip.

[Via Good Game Get]

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

[In this design analysis, first published in the March 2009 issue of Game Developer magazine, Maxis designer Soren Johnson (Spore, Civilization IV) addresses the potential of asynchronous multiplayer gaming.]

One of the first things that separated video games from board, card, and parlor games was real-time interaction. The computer could handle all the details and challenges inherent in allowing two (or more) people to play the same game at the same time.

Indeed, despite the name, the first multi-player video games may have had their roots more in sports than in games. Pong, after all, was inspired by table tennis. These early experiences were inherently synchronous, meaning that the players experienced the game together, at the same time, on the same machine.

Since then, the synchronous format has been the default model for multi-player video games, and - with the arrival of online gaming - this same experience could be enjoyed even by people who were not necessarily in the same location.

The synchronous model is so deeply embedded in the standards and traditions of the industry - think Doom, StarCraft, Madden, EverQuest, and so on - that few designers consciously consider that synchronous play is simply a design choice. Another option exists - asynchronous play, meaning multi-player games that can be experienced in bite-sized chunks at different times for each player.

The board-game world provides examples of games which can be played using this format, such as play-by-mail chess or wargames. The most successful game for this format is clearly Diplomacy, the classic game of back-stabbing, which rewards secret negotiations and hidden pacts difficult to achieve in a synchronous format. Indeed, with the appearance of the Web, a number of unofficial sites have sprung up giving players a moderated, asynchronous Diplomacy experience online.

One of the reasons Diplomacy works so well as an asynchronous game is that the turns are executed simultaneously. In other words, unlike sequential games like chess, in which players take turns performing actions, all moves in Diplomacy are done at the same time. Players submit their orders secretly to a gamemaster who then handles all interactions and conflicts according to the carefully crafted rules.

This format is ideal for an asynchronous experience because all players get to make a decision every single turn. More traditional board games, from Risk and Monopoly to Carcassonne and Ticket to Ride, would slow down to a painful crawl in asynchronous play because the vast majority of turns are spent waiting for other players to make their moves. Thus, asynchronous play favors a specific style of game mechanics, ones which minimize waiting and keep players involved as much as possible.

Games for Real People

Asynchronous games hold a number of advantages over their synchronous counterparts. To begin, the time pressure of a standard turn-based game is eliminated. No more are 4 or 5 other gamers sitting around a table, waiting for the slow player to make up his mind. Instead, a player could take an hour deciding what to do without negatively impacting the flow of the game.

Furthermore, asynchronous play allows multi-player gaming - still the richest, most engaging experience available - to fit the schedule of regular people with busy lives and unpredictable free time, across multiple time zones.

Few adults can afford the total devotion required to participate in a five-hour, 40-man MMO raid. In contrast, an asynchronous game can allow a large group of friends to play together as long as each player can find 15 minutes per day to check the game. In Diplomacy, the English player can submit her moves in the morning, and the French can do it at night - or vice-versa - whatever works best for each one.

Indeed, the ideal online asynchronous game goes a step further than Diplomacy, which can still hang if one player neglects to send in a turn, by moving to a real-time format in which the game progresses regardless of an individual player’s specific actions. In fact, fantasy sports games follow exactly this model.

Once a league is initiated, scores are tabulated each day of the season whether players log-on or not. However, the players are all full participants in their league whether they check their teams once every other week or hit the waiver wire multiple times per day.

The strength of this model can clearly be seen by the astounding popularity of online fantasy leagues, with at least 30 million North American players in 2007, according to a study by the Fantasy Sports Trade Association. (In fact, a case could be made that fantasy sports are the most popular form of multi-player gaming in the world.)

Players with different commitment levels can play together and still enjoy the experience - a statement which definitely cannot be made about your typical RTS.

Looking to the Web

Few good examples of asynchronous gaming exist for AAA retail video games, besides some play-by-email modes for older strategy games. For Civilization IV, we created a PitBoss (”Persistent Turn-Based Server”) option which allowed large games of up to 32 players in which players could log-on at any time to execute their turns. Combined with simultaneous movement and a 24-hour turn timer, epic games of Civilization were finally manageable thanks to the asynchronous format.

One could also say that World of Warcraft’s focus on solo content is a form of asynchronous play, in that players could finally participate in a traditional MMO without needing to juggle the logistics of managing a raid schedule or looking for a pick-up group.

Furthermore, Leaderboards and Achievements are also a form of asynchronous interaction layered on top of traditional single-player or synchronous multi-player games, enabling a extra level of socialization for gamers across multiple sessions.

However, most of the innovative asynchronous games exist on the Web, a platform already built upon asynchronous interactions. Many Facebook games, like Wordscraper (nee Scrabulous), manage the persistence of simple turn-based games while using the social networking aspects of Facebook to make it easier to challenge one’s friends.

Games can be played between two friends over a few hours or a few months - whatever matches their level of commitment. Asynchronous MMOs exist as well, such as Mob Wars and Knighthood on Facebook or Nile Online and Travian on their own sites.

All of these games allow players to grow and develop some entity within a larger world, for prestige or challenge or the simple pleasures of leveling. In Nile Online, for example, players control a city on the banks of the Nile, each one with a unique resource, such as cedar, gold, or oil.

As the cities grow, they begin trading with nearby players to acquire the resources they need - perhaps bronze for sculptures or emeralds for jewelry - or to sell their own excess goods for a profit. Eventually, players can see their cities rise in the global rankings or create great Monuments for further renown.

Meaningful Interaction?

The challenge with these asynchronous MMOs is that, while they do have some of the advantages of a multi-player environment, they tend to feel more like a less predictable single-player game. Player interaction is fairly light as most of mechanics focus simply on developing one’s own domain, without much concern for the neighbors.

Allowing meaningful interaction between players is a challenge because, by definition, the system can only assume one player is logged-on at a time. If one player could wipe out another player’s city, what if the latter player is asleep? Would it be fun to wake up and discover all of one’s hard-earned progress destroyed without a chance to counter the attack?

Thus, most of the games include options to lessen the impact of other players’ actions. In Travian, for example, a player can build a Cranny which automatically protect her resources when another player ransacks the town.

However, these mechanics are ultimately self-defeating; player interaction is either meaningful or it is not. If zero-sum mechanics, like resource raids, are too powerful and negate the advantages of asynchronous play - the ability to set one’s own play schedule - then the developers should focus on the parallel competition mechanics of the game instead, building a Wonder first or achieving economic dominance.

One asynchronous web-based game which tries to solves this problem while keeping meaningful zero-sum mechanics is Duels, a fantasy-themed MMO in which characters level up by fighting one another.

The system is asynchronous because players do not actually need to be online when their characters fight. Instead, a warrior might challenge a wizard to a duel, which is only played out when the wizard actually accepts the challenge later that same day.

The advantage is that while the conflict and interaction is meaningful, the players themselves can still play the game at whatever pace they prefer without worrying about looking for games in the lobby or rage-quitters spoiling the battles.

However, the problem is that, because players can be offline when combat occurs, no meaningful decisions actually occur during the duel itself. Thus, combat is a “black box” which takes in two characters and spits out a result. If a good game should be a series of interesting decisions, Duels paints itself into a corner by taking control away from the player.

Native Asynchronous Play

Truth to be told, asynchronous games are still in their infancy from a design perspective. Their future is promising as the potential audience for asynchronous multi-player games is much great than the potential audience for synchronous ones - although anyone who can find time for synchronous games can find time for asynchronous ones, the opposite is not true.

The challenge is, instead of aping mechanics from established synchronous games, finding game mechanics native to the format itself, ones which make sense only in an asynchronous world.

The best example of such a game is Parking Wars, a Facebook game in which players earn money by parking for an extended period of time on another player’s street. The trick is that if a car is parked illegally, then the owner of that street can steal all the money the car had earned by handing out a parking ticket.

Thus, the best strategy is knowing what times one’s friends are less likely to be checking their streets for illegally parked cars and using that knowledge to earn money. The counter-strategy, of course, is to check one’s own street at unexpected times to catch one’s friends trying to do the same. Thus, the game cleverly uses the actual time players are off-line as the game’s content.

Unlike the mechanics of the other asynchronous games mentioned previously, the rules behind Parking Wars could not work at all in a synchronous environment. Designers of future asynchronous games should follow this precedent -- the time has come to stop retrofitting synchronous mechanics into an asynchronous shell and to find the format’s native voice.

Posted by Simon Carless at 4:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Animation studio Production I.G. revealed it is working with Film Roman (The Simpsons, King of the Hill) on Electronic Arts' direct-to-DVD anime for Dante's Infeno game. This project follows EA's deal with Film Roman's parent Starz Entertainment on the Dead Space: Downfall movie.

While Production I.G. is known for its work on movies and TV shows such as Ghost in the Shell and Kill Bill's animated sequence, the studio has a history of creating cutscenes for video games such as the Professor Layton, Star Ocean, and Tales series.

The company also worked Sega on the Sands of Destruction anime used to cross-promote the DS game in Japan (both are coming to the U.S. next year), and on the online "webisodes" for Infinite Space, which are beginning to appear on the spacefaring RPG's North American site.

Production I.G. will join directors Yasuomi Umetsu (Kite, Mezzo Forte) Shuko Murase (Witch Hunter Robin, Ergo Proxy) on the anthology project, which is expected to feature six unique segments from different Japanese and Korean animation studios.

Film Roman and Production I.G plan to provide more details on the Dante's Inferno anime and show a preview at Comic-Con International in San Diego on July 23, according to a report from the Anime News Network.

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

I didn't know much about PSP brawler Kenka Bancho 3: Zenkoku Seiha before Atlus announced today that it's localizing the game, but after seeing this trailer paired with its rambunctious music ("Train Train" by Blue Hearts), count me in on whatever this series is all about.

Developed (and published in Japan) by Spike, the Kenka Bancho series has you commanding a Kunio/River City Ransom-esque high school gang trying to out-macho the other banchos (bancho meaning "someone who's in charge because he's the meanest, toughest, strongest dude around").

This third game -- the previous two having appeared on PS2 -- follows a class's trip to a historic Japanese city. Your group takes on rival gangs, exchanging unpleasant words before trading punches. After your fights, you can chat up girls and pretend like you're the Japanese Fonz, except instead of walking into a room and being like, "Heyyyyy", you'll be like, "Oyyyyyy".

The game features 47 bancho rivals, an open world setting, two-player co-op, a variety of weapons and fighting styles, and customizable clothing, hair, and and more.

While a 3D brawler might seem like an odd choice for Atlus to bring over considering its usual slate of niche RPGs and surgery games, keep in mind that the company has a history of publishing portable beat'em ups with Double Dragon EX, River City Ransom EX, and most recently Tokyo Beat Down.

The publisher is having trouble coming up with a title for the North American version, though, and has put out a survey inviting gamers to vote on its name. A few of the choices aren't that bad (Badass Rumble, Bancho Royale), but some of them are so terrible that I want to run my head into a wall (Turf Wars).

Atlus expects to ship Kenka Bancho 3 in the States in early 2010.

Posted by Eric Caoili at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

[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 authors Louise Yang and Jonathan Glover.]

This week, FingerGaming highlights notable titles like ngmoco's Rolando 2, id Software's Doom: Resurrection, and EpicTilt's TapStar, as part of the regular round-up into major news and announcements on the system.

Here's the top stories in the space from the last seven days:

- ngmoco's Rolando 2: Quest for the Golden Orchid Debuts in App Store
"Players can expect several new gameplay elements in Rolando 2, as the Rolando characters can now fly, float, and command a number of vehicles. Rolando 2 features 45 levels of platforming action, and sports a new 2.5D look that adds greater depth to its tropical environments."

- Top Free Game App Downloads for the Week
"I-Play's recently released free version of Fast & Furious The Game nearly tops the App Store's free charts this week, but comes up short against last week's winner Wild West Pinball. The firing range simulator Target Practice moves up to third place this week, as Paper Toss drops to fourth."

- id Software's Doom: Resurrection Premieres in App Store
"Using elements from id's 2004 console and PC FPS Doom 3 as a base, Doom: Resurrection crafts a guided first-person experience that automatically controls player movement and perspective."

- Review: Must.Eat.Birds.
"Must.Eat.Birds. is frantic, silly, and just plain fun. Players are tasked with defending their spread of delicious picnic sweets against hungry birds parachuting down from the sky."

- Nickelodeon's AddictingGames Announces Upcoming iPhone Lineup
"Nickelodeon announced today that its AddictingGames brand will debut in the iTunes App Store later this month. The move will bring several popular Flash games from the AddictingGames free online games portal to the iPhone and the iPod Touch."

- TapStar: Rhythm Action with Sony's Music Catalog
"After recently securing a unique licensing agreement from Sony Music Entertainment, iPhone developer EpicTilt has released TapStar, a Dance Dance Revolution-like rhythm game that features a growing library of downloadable music from a number of popular Sony artists."

- Cuttlefish Engine Bridges Development for iPhone, Android, BlackBerry
"Using Cuttlefish's visual designer and editor functionality, developers will be able to build a complete mobile game and instantly view its simulated performance on any of the three supported devices."

- Top-Selling Paid Game Apps for the Week
"Gameloft's Hero of Sparta surges to the top of this week's App Store sales chart, boosted by a drop in price to 99 cents. Sally's Spa remains a popular pick at second place, as StoneLoops! of Jurassica moves up a spot to take third."

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

I'm not when Craigslist began rolling this out, but many are reporting that their local version of the online classifieds network has given "Video Gaming" its own category on the site's "For Sale" section.

Previously, users hoping to unload their crusty copies of M&Ms: Shell Shocked or find a deal on somebody's bedazzled Nintendo DS were forced to browse through the "Toys & Games" category. I suppose Craigslist's administrators decided that the amount of game activity in that broad department warranted its own separate category.

If your city's game sellers are anything like those in Cincinnati (my stomping grounds), though, they haven't noticed the category and are still listing their games in the more familiar "Toys & Games" area, mixing Mario Power Tennis listings with cornhole offers.

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

['Chewing Pixels' is a semi-regular GameSetWatch-exclusive column written by British games journalist and Flash game producer, Simon Parkin. Today, a look at a satirical game that reveals much about the state of game design.]

The evidence that videogames may yet emerge from their period of extended adolescence comes not from the dizzying realism of the next Forza, nor from the unrivaled spectacle of the forthcoming God of War, nor even the news that Lara’s improbable cleavage is scheduled for a sober reduction in the next Tomb Raider.

Rather, it's in the emergence of a new breed of satirical web-game, one most famously exemplified by last year's Achievement Unlocked, which poked fun at gamers' obsessional pursuit of Xbox Achievement points and PlayStation trophies.

These snappy experiences parody not the grim clichés of gaming’s stories, settings or visuals but rather the more subtle underlying systems that drive them or, in the case of Achievement Unlocked, surround them. They compel us to play via the very same hooks that big budget titles employ, but their exaggerated presentation and irreverent context encourage us to evaluate the worth of these mechanics and, in doing so, question the very reasons why we find them so irresistible.

Upgrade Complete is the latest such satirical game in this vein. It begins by presenting players with the bare bones of a shoot ‘em up; a blocky, silent retro game whose music, graphics, menus and even developer logos must be bought and upgraded one by one with in-game currency.

At first glance Upgrade Complete appears to be making fun of downloadable content, those upgrades - new costumes, weapons, characters and levels - released by a developer for a modest fee after their game’s initial release. After all, until you purchase a humble loading bar you can't even start this game (the developer 'lends' you $1000 to make this initial purchase).

But as you play on, the game’s target is revealed to be a more substantial and pervasive one: that of the in-game upgrades that furnish our characters with better weapons and abilities, a feature found in almost all contemporary videogames from Fallout 3 to Call of Duty 4.

In Upgrade Complete, your slow-moving ship starts out with a single front-mounted gun. But as you shoot down enemy ships and collect the coins they drop, you can pay to upgrade and 'customise' its manoeuvrability, weapons and effectiveness, revealing, piece by piece, the final, ideal iteration of the ship originally designed by the game’s creator.

This mechanic originated in traditional RPGs, where defeating monsters earns experience points and coins used to improve your character’s abilities and purchase new spells, armour and weapons. The system is compelling because it offers a clear way in which your time spent with a game results in demonstrable progress, while also strengthening the idea of your character undergoing a journey through which they're growing and developing. But it’s also a fiercely linear sort of progression: the more you play, the more your character realises its predestined potential, one that has little to do with your own choices or successes.

In recent years more diverse games have begun to adopt this unlock trajectory, using it as a way to hook their player in and to artificially pace the game’s progression. Recent open-world titles inFamous and Prototype both feature characters who start off as pale reflections of the avatars they eventually become, the pacing of each game set by the character abilities that unlock in a steady trickle.

So it is with Upgrade Complete, a game that only begins to resemble its final, finished state as you play and invest in it. It’s compelling because the economy of cause and effect is immediate, overt and frequent. But it is also cheap trick that highlights a fundamental change in the way designers are constructing their games.

In the beginning, non-RPGs rarely employed this kind of system. In Pacman, for example, players enjoy the full range of their avatar’s abilities right from the off. The focus isn’t on playing the game for a long time to develop (or, more accurately, complete) their character, but on perfecting one’s technique with a defined, immovable skill set. The better you are at Pacman, the further into the game you are able to progress, its rewards structured around perfecting skill rather than merely investing time.

Likewise, the full breadth of Street Fighter IV’s content is unlocked very quickly. And yet tens of thousands of players are still heavily invested in the game, not because there is more content to ‘purchase’, or better moves with which to upgrade Ryu and Chun-Li, but rather because they are on a quest to play the game more effectively and beautifully, to perfect their technique and to better manipulate its systems.

There is no in-game reward structure in Street Fighter IV for a player who invests more time than another player, other than the probability that they will grow to become better at the game. As such the pay-off for the player is in learning and improving a skill, not in purchasing and accruing in-game items or upgrades, a crucial distinction that bucks against current consumer-based gaming systems.

In part the use of sequential character upgrades in games is a by-product of the pursuit of linear narratives. If a game is telling the story of a character's journey, then one of the easiest ways to communicate a sense of that journey through the game system is by adding to the character's abilities. But this approach, while effective, encourages sloppy design. Imagine if Super Mario's jump distance extended as you worked through Super Mario World (as it does in Prototype). The need to craft thoughtful levels and puzzles and construct a balanced difficulty curve through them would diminish as the pacing of the game is instead dictated by withholding abilities, not finding ever more inventive ways of challenging a player to apply what they've always had.

Good games encourage players to literally better themselves, rather than simply toiling away to unlock game features or character upgrades that should have been present from the start. And yet, this most simple of reward schemes can prove irresistible, locking us in to patterns of play that distract without enriching.

We should be glad of satirical games such as Upgrade Complete which challenge us to identify what it is we find attractive about a particular game, and, as with choosing a partner, discern whether that attraction will be good for us in the long run. Therein lies maturity.

Click here to read the previous Chewing Pixels columns.

Posted by Simon Parkin at 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Given Brazil's infatuation with the Mega Drive (a love that's still strong today thanks to licensed system clones from Tectoy), it's no surprise that the country is remembering recently departed Michael Jackson with Moonwalker pixel art like this piece, spotted in São Paulo.

Local artists Bruno Pugens, Rafael Aguiar, and Jeng also printed out and put up a few Moonwalker posters of their own, which you can see below. They've also posted photos of the posters being put together.

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.]

Since we're not starting GameSetLinks for the week until first thing Tuesday, we'll going to ratchet up the output a little - eight links per post, instead of the conventional six, starting out with Oddbob's look at the XNA Indie Games title (via Microsoft Research) Kodu, which he's concerned will get neglected.

I have to admit I haven't grabbed it yet - but now I feel chastened. Also in this set of links - Japanese arcade charts, Dan Hsu on Bitmob, some Noby Noby and Blueberry comparisons worth checking out, and quite a few more things besides.

Fully articulated:

Kodu Game Lab: XNPlay
Excellent overview by OddBob: 'The potential for Kodu to be buried is stupidly high and it doesn’t deserve that. So, folks, readers, parents and chums – I’m going to end this piece with a bit of a request. Try Kodu.'

TRUE CHIP TILL DEATH » Goto80 interview pt 2
Really great interview with the Swedish chiptune musician (who previously released on my net.label Monotonik, way back, actually).

Versus City » Blog Archive » Arcadia August - Top 10 + Magazine Summary
Lots of Mobile Suit Gundam near the top of the charts, neat.

VideoGamePriceCharts: 'Moonwalker Prices Rise To Heaven With Michael Jackson'
'Michael Jackson died on June 25th 2009 at the age of 50. Within minutes of his death, prices for Michael Jackson's Moonwalker increased almost 600%.' Graphs within.

Press Pass: Dan "Shoe" Hsu Takes on the Bitmob > Kyle Orland > 7/2/2009 1:20 PM | Crispy Gamer
Another top-quality interview, I fear - in that it's interesting to get meta. Monetization is still the issue here, of course - can publishers be persuaded that Bitmob needs that higher CPM ad buy?

Revolutionary Daymares of a Submachine – Interview with Mateusz Skutnik « a hardy developer's journal
Nice interview with a neat indie artist-designer.

Tumblr: Stop it, video game PR
Grumpy fictionality but kinda fun, anyhow.

Indie | A Boy and his Blueberry | Resolution | Diverse commentary on videogames
An interesting comparison of Noby Noby Boy, Blueberry Garden, and their pastoral attitude to gameplay.

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

Every other week, Greyscale Gorilla challenges motion designers to create something cool for their animation portfolios (that isn't time consuming) and experiment with new techniques by producing a five-second animation around a theme. The most recent Five Second Projects' theme: old video games.

GSG asked its readers to "remember the good old days when Mario ruled the world and first person shooters weren't around." The site is accepting submissions until July 13th, but it already has almost 30 entries that you can now watch online.

Many of the videos are mashups of classic titles like Dave Frank's video above ("A Little Help From My Old Friend"), but there are also shorts filled with game glitches and reimagined mechanics. Since the clips are so short, I've embedded a bunch of my favorites below. The Rainbow Island one in particular is aces.

"Old Video Games" by Deborah Anderson:

"Jump Man vs. Jump Man TM" by William Mc'Bergen-O-Shay:

"Asteroids" by Joey Korenman:

"5sec |: ...of old games :O)" by Bubunya:

"Rainbow Islands" by Stephen E.:

"Hogan's Love" by Jason Schevchuk:

"Over9000!!!" by Mat Cinque:

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

[In the latest in the 'Sound Current' series for GameSetWatch, Jeriaska sits down with the folks behind intriguing PlayStation Network title Trash Panic to discuss how they made the title's unique soundtrack.]

Trash Panic (GOMIBAKO in Japan) recently debuted in Western territories for the Playstation 3's Playstation Network. The addictive refuse-themed puzzler was previously featured alongside PixelJunk Eden at last year's Sense of Wonder Night at the Tokyo Game Show.

A product of Playstation CAMP, a training ground for independent game creators in Japan, the title strikes a balance between high production values and modest ambitions. The benefits of the decidedly compact downloadable title are in its affordable cost and the instant accessibility of "smashin' stuff"-based gameplay.

The score to Trash Panic is by Fujikado Taro and Tomoyuki Kato of Mega-Alpha Inc. The Tokyo-based music studio, headed by composer Noriyuki Asakura, has participated in writing music for the Tenchu and Way of the Samurai game series, along with animated films and television series.

In this interview with the composers of the soundtrack, the musicians discuss how they re-used, re-cycled and re-sampled audio for the green-themed puzzle game. The conversation offers a glimpse into how Mega-Alpha scavenged found audio objects from sound sample libraries for an upbeat mix of dance music and orchestral, supplemented by live recordings by Tokyo-based musicians:

Fujikado-san, thank you for joining us for this discussion of the music of Trash Panic. Playstation CAMP was created with the purpose of getting innovative game ideas developed for the PSN. Do you have an idea of how this initiative first got underway?

Taro Fujikado: There was an event in 2000 where Sony Computer Entertainment gathered the independent game creators of Japan to celebrate the turn of the millennium together. Playstation CAMP kind of emerged out of this. Trash Panic is a good example of the aims of the project, but there will be other more innovative games to come in the near future.

How was the work on the score divided between you and your co-workers at Mega-Alpha, and what were some of the software tools you were using on the soundtrack?

I wrote about 60% of the soundtrack for Trash Panic. There is a total of about thirty minutes of music. While I wrote the dance tracks, my partner Kato wrote the orchestral style songs. I was using the host sequencer Digital Performer by Mark of the Unicorn, Reason by Propellerhead Software and Ableton Live. I spent a lot of time working on the bass for the music, and for that I was using the program Trilogy from Spectra Sonic.

Did you receive any guidelines from the developers in setting out to write the soundtrack to the puzzle game?

Sony sent us some suggestions to refer to, and they were in the style of dance music. You might think dance tracks would be wholly instrumental, but I included numerous vocal samples. I assembled these various sounds, looking for patterns that would fit together, so that the finished result sounded coherent.

Were you at all interested in the themes of the game being reflected in the way in which the songs were constructed?

That's right. The game is titled "Trash Panic," so I wanted the music to have a certain quality of messiness to it. It doesn't sound completely clean, you know? The dance tracks are sprinkled with sounds. They are not pure, but have lots of sound fragments mixed in. If you listen closely you might find them interesting. Try using headphones and see if you can pick them out.

How about musical influences that inspired the score? Is there any sound styles that you were emulating in your approach to the background music?

There's a French group called Justice, and I love their music. I had their sound in my mind when I was working on the game. It's too bad that most game players rely on their TV speakers, because it does not do much service to the bass track.

In terms of the actual gameplay, what stands out to you about the title's disposal-based puzzles?

One thing that is interesting about the game is that you are not likely to clear it with a rating of "Eco" the first time through. If you clear the stage of trash without using dynamite, it's more ecological and less egotistical. You receive points for that. I'm not that good, so I always get the "Ego" rating.

What do you feel are some of the advantages to developing games on the Playstation 3’s downloadable service?

There is not a difference in terms of the quality of sound between retail and downloadable titles. They both feature 16bit, 44.1khz sound. My feeling is that download services will only expand more over time, the same way the music industry has been shifting toward digital media.

Kuniyoshi Ohmura of Playstation CAMP and Hidehito Kojima of Sony Computer Entertainment at the Tokyo Game Show

How did it come about that you began working at Mega-Alpha?

All during my twenties I performed in a rock band, then starting around the time I turned thirty I began thinking more about music as a profession. I wrote a song for a Bridgestone commercial called "We'll be there for you," which premiered both in Japan and Europe. I also wrote several tracks for the Xbox 360 title Zegapain XOR.

At that point I began looking beyond freelance work and decided to join a production studio. That was when I met Noriyuki Asakura. I made a video called "Tokyo Swing," featuring jazz music. Asakura liked it and invited me to join Mega-Alpha.

How did Mega-Alpha become involved in the GOMIBAKO project?

Asakura-san worked with Yamamoto-san of Sony Computer Entertainment on the original Tenchu. He was the one that introduced us to Kojima-san on Trash Panic.

What would you say are some of the defining features of Mega-Alpha as a sound design studio?

One major benefit to working here is Asakura-san's unique personality. He has his own outlook on life, which is reflected in his music for Ruroni Kenshin and the Tenchu series. To samurai action he brings western musical styles and creates his own fusion of influences. I admire his savvy as a musician and businessman, and his professional mentality is easy to learn from. He has a concern for the musicians he works with, like me and Kato. Mega-Alpha also receives offers for anime and game projects, allowing for the chance to work with a variety of talented musicians.

What would you say have been important steps in Mega-Alpha's having developed an international focus for its music projects?

Mr. Asakura previously lived in the States during his three-year contract with Sony/ATV. Back then he was looking to write Hollywood music. He had gotten to know John Woo during that time.

For Ruroni Kenshin we receive fan emails from all over: North and South America, even from Russia. There is also an animated short that I worked on which was submitted to the New York International Independent Film & Video Festival, called CannibAlien. It won the award for best animation and best international horror.

Kato-san, what would you say have been some of the major positive aspects of your joining Mega-Alpha?

Tomoyuki Kato: In terms of the benefits, working with talented musicians is always a plus. For instance, for the soundtrack to Trash Panic we were joined by keyboardist Yoshihiro Tomonari, guitarist Kiyotsugu Amano and violinist Gen Ittetsu. A number of talented musicians participated.

In your approach to the orchestral side of the score, what features were you looking to bring to the soundtrack?

Naturally in my approach to the sound design I was taking into consideration the title and the impact of the theme of "Trash Panic." The producer suggested orchestral style sounds, which were selected from the Quantum Leap sample series. In addition to the samples we included, Gen Ittetsu can be heard on the violin adding a layer of timbre to the soundtrack.

Are there any specific details of the soundtrack game players might want to pay special attention to?

The music in the opening scene, staff roll and ending revolve around a shared motif. They include the same melody but the arrangement is different. You have to finish the game on Main Dish in order to hear the ending theme, so please try your best.

Do you both have a favorite type of trash that appears in the game?

Fujikado: I'm a guitarist so my favorite is the guitar. Naturally it feels a little weird destroying a musical instrument, but I'm sure every guitarist has the urge every so often. It burns well too.

Kato: One of my favorite types of garbage is dynamite, when it comes along. There are a lot of humorous elements to the game. Just watching the array of refuse fall from the sky is a simple pleasure. By now I have completed the game on easy. You don't have to smash the bosses, so it's not too difficult. The fifth stage boss is particularly tough.

Fujikado: Main Dish is brutal.

Kato: On Sweets mode, though, you cannot see the ending. There's not a 6th stage either. If you want to hear the music for Stage 6, you are going to have to give it your all.

Fujikado: Was there anything you had in mind when arranging the melody found in the main theme?

Kato: Kojima-san suggested expansive orchestral sounds to give the ending a wide open feel. That's me on the piano, too. How did you go about writing your Staff Roll track?

Fujikado: It's got kind of a 1980's Miami Vice vibe to it, almost like a classic Sega game ending. There are still a lot of people out there who aren't really on board with the idea of download games. I hope that for those who are new to the service, Trash Panic might be just the kind of game that helps popularize digital downloads.

[Interview conducted by Jeriaska. Translation by Ryojiro Sato. This article is available in Japanese at Game Design Current and in Italian on Gamesource.it. Images courtesy of Sony Computer Entertainment. Photos by Jeriaska]

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

Instead of posting a traditional text or video review for Majesco's Mad Dog McCree Gunslinger Pack, Destructoid produced a creative and amusing interactive breakdown of the Wii collection with its own full motion video-based game.

Using Youtube's annotation and video-linking feature, the review lulls you with an analysis of the title before sending out a surprise gunslinger to shoot you down. If you don't click on the attacker quick enough, you're treated to an old man who insults your poor playthrough, just like in the original Mad Dog McCree games! Except more vulgar.

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

The team behind Half Life 2 source mod NeoTokyo, a first-person shooter heavily influenced by the works of Masamune Shirow (Appleseed, Ghost in the Shell) and Katsuhiro Otomo (Akira), released the game over the holiday weekend for free through various sites.

Taking place 30-40 years from now in a Japan racked with social/political crises, NeoTokyo has players taking on the role of either soldiers in the Interior Ministry's National Security Forces or in the military's special forces group staging a coup.

This first public release features 10 Capture the Ghost maps and three classes -- Recon, Assault, and Support -- each with different armor, equipment, and movement speeds. The game empasizes stealth and detecting enemies, providing two of the three classes with thermal-optic camouflage, and offering countermeasures such as night vision, motion detection, and thermal imaging.

Even if you decide not to download NeoTokyo, you should really listen to its superb official soundtrack composed by Ed Harrison -- it's a shame that you don't hear much of it in the actual game!

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

Designed specifically for video game art show I Am 8-Bit, this unauthorized Mega Man demo for the Atari 2600 was shown off two years ago but never released until now. David Galloway, who worked on the game's code and art, released a BIN file that interested gamers can download and play in an emulator.

"It was done on a tight deadline and uses modified batari basic, there's quite a bit of straight assembly code and it runs on a Super Chip because I needed the extra RAM," explains Galloway. "And it's a 32K banswitched cart because of all of the art."

He also says that he spent more time developing the game's art than its code. Having played through the five-screen demo (that's my embarrassing playthrough in the above clip), I must admit how surprisingly accurate the game feels, taking the system's limitations into account of course -- it controls and feels just like the Mega Man games on NES!

[Via @retronauts]

Posted by Eric Caoili at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Well, we haven't run a competition on GameSetWatch for frickin' ages -- mainly because we're a little picky about what we show off to our readers. This is particularly true because it's pretty much stealth marketing when lovely PR folks offer us giveaways, anyhow.

But every now and again, the coolness factor does overwhelm any other impulses, and I fear it's true with this new GameSetCompetition, hurray.

Therefore, we're giving away, in association with Pepsi and Harmonix, a limited edition, numbered Xbox 360 Rock Band guitar designed by Matt Moore of MWM Graphics.

Apparently, this is part of a special Pepsi/Rock Band co-promotion which includes song codes in bottlecaps and some kind of special performance video competition - so they're sending some guitar to bloggers as part of the whole shenanigans, neat.

Anyhow, you might want to answer a question in order to win this fine fake guitar, which is sitting in my office at work right now, and here's what I decided as the magic Q:

Name one Rock Band song which appears in the game in a different language version to its original recording?

One entry per person, deadline is Sunday, July 12th at midnight PST, submit entries to editors@gamesetwatch.com, winner will be randomly picked from all correct entries, and good luck to all.

Finally, if you'd like to see more pictures of the guitar, looks like they have a gallery over at NotCot.com, so knock yourself out.

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

Czech studio Amanita Design (Samorost series) is now accepting preorders for its forthcoming hand-drawn adventure game, Machinarium, releasing October 2009. The PC and Mac title, which took home the Excellence In Visual Art award at IGF 2009, is the studio's first full-length project.

To entice gamers to preorder, Amanita is offering a $3 discount ($17 insgtead of $20) and a free copy of Machinarium's soundtrack. Those who reserve Machinarium will also immediately receive a "Preorder Pack" with five high resolution picture and five MP3 tracks from the soundtrack.

You can read our interview with Amanita's founder and designer Jakub Dvorský, which delves into the developer's animation techniques, unused ideas, and similarities to Wall-E.

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

Finishing up the last seven days, it's time to recap the top full-length features of the past week on Gamasutra, plus extra features and Game Design Challenge goodness from sister edu site GameCareerGuide.

Some particular neatness in here includes interviews with CyberConnect2's boss, EA's Frank Gibeau, as well as John Harris' epic top 20 RPGs article, an extract from Mark Haigh-Hutchinson's real-time cameras book, Ian Bogost on a unique board game and its tangibility, plus rather more things besides.

Slingshot around Neptune:

The Formation And Evolution of CyberConnect2
"Japanese independent developer and .hack creator CyberConnect2 has made an enduring company and franchise, even while adhering to much stricter 'quality of life' than many Japanese developers. In a rare, personal interview, companypresident Hiroshi Matsuyama explains the firm's founding and how work/life balance became so important to him."

Game Design Essentials: 20 RPGs
"In the latest in his popular Game Design Essentials series, writer John Harris examines 10 games from the Western computer RPG (CRPG) tradition and 10 from the Japanese console RPG (JRPG) tradition, to figure out what exactly makes them tick -- and why you should care."

Real-Time Cameras - Navigation and Occlusion
"Gamasutra is proud to present an excerpt from the book Real-Time Cameras by Mark Haigh-Hutchinson, a veteran Retro Studios staffer who was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2008 and passed away in 2009."

Persuasive Games: Gestures as Meaning
"In his latest 'Persuasive Games' column, game designer and writer Ian Bogost examines both Natal-like gesture control devices and Brenda Brathwaite's experimental board game Train, suggesting: "Perhaps the souls of our games are not to be found in ever-better accelerometers... but in the way they invite players to respond to them.""

A Different Track: Frank Gibeau Talks Strategy
"President of EA's Games Label, which oversees 'core games', Frank Gibeau oversees franchises like Need For Speed and Dead Space, and talks in-depth to Gamasutra about original IP, Wii growth, and the company's changed attitudes."

Game Design Challenge: DS Platforming Innovation
"Ready to innovative in touch-screen platforming? Our latest challenge aims to bring new life to the genre on the Nintendo DS, asking for a stylus-only platformer design using an all-new mechanic."

Results from Game Design Challenge: Creating Fun Communication
"Can nonverbal communication create a satisfying play experience? That's the question our latest Game Design Challenge sought to answer, as people take a crack at a new system for talking without words."

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

[New Zealand-based developer Sidhe (Gripshift, Speed Racer) is trying to transition its business model, and MD Mario Wynands spoke to Leigh Alexander about why it's a "crazy time to be trying to run a work-for-hire studio", and how the firm is attempting to evolve - an interesting tale.]

It may be the largest game developer in New Zealand, but as a studio that's primarily thrived on work for hire in the past, Sidhe Interactive is facing the same challenges as many small studios around the world alongside the shifting economic environment.

Although it's done an IP of its own, Gripshift, the company mostly develops projects for publishers -- over 20 in its 12-year lifespan. These have mainly been licenses like Speed Racer for Warner Bros and the recently-announced Hot Wheels: Battle Force 5 for Activision.

But managing director Mario Wynands tells us that Sidhe's long wanted to do more internal projects, and has put a plan in place to make it happen. The company's working on five titles right now, and one of them is its own original IP, Shatter.

"I guess we started like a lot of typical game developers started -- with wild ideas, thinking that we were going to take on the world with that first game," Wynands recalls. "That was about 12 years ago. As it turned out, we didn't actually know what we were doing at the time, like a lot of novice developers."

"I guess you could argue that we still don't know what we're doing," he laughs, "but at least we know it now, so there's been some growth there."

The Need For Change

But the desire to shift to more internal development and self-publishing is born from more than a wish for self-actualization -- it's actually becoming an economic necessity, says Wynands, who suspects many other work-for-hire studios will have to make the same transition.

"It's definitely a tough kind of marketplace right now," he says. "It's just a very crowded space, publishers are very conservative right now, budgets are coming down."

And as bigger studios thin their herds, many laid-off developers form their own new studios, which spells increased competition.

"It's a crazy time to be trying to run a work-for-hire studio," says Wynands. And while he says "we didn't necessarily see the credit crunch coming," he says Sidhe has seen the changes in the retail landscape on the horizon for some time.

"About two years ago, we sort of thought to ourselves, well, we see this crowding happening in the marketplace, we see what's happening with used games, and commercial outlets like GameStop. There's othing more annoying than mystery-shopping your own video game in somewhere like a GameStop, and having someone talk you into trying to buy a used copy," says Wynands.

"It's happened more than once, it's very persistent. We saw a lot of this, and were thinking, 'what is it that we're trying to do, and how can we position ourselves to survive this upcoming industry transition and thrive?'"

Investing In Evolution

Sidhe decided to move from what Wynands calls a "factory" mentality in terms of structure and philosophy to a more franchise-focused model that incorporates both development and self-publishing infrastructures.

The company's invested more in its pre-production and concepting functions, built up its internal QA, marketing and PR teams. in addition to investigating the downloadable space and emerging platforms like iPhone, it's also invested "quite heavily" in technology that Wynands says is geared specifically at downloadable games.

In particular, the company's downloadable development framework is intended to streamline the process -- and associated expense -- of compliance with platform-holders and decrease risk, and the New Zealand government has awarded the company two grants since October 2008 to support these initiatives.

"This is a time when the underlying strategy is [to be] exposed to the rest of the world right now," says Wynands. "We're working on our first IP under this new structure, and we'll start talking about new projects." The company's shored up its website and is making a revamp to its public face to be more marketing-conscious, too.

"Actually, we're in a position now where we're approaching IP holders and license holders to actually license content directly, and it's been quite successful," says Wynands. "It's all happening right now."

Challenges For All

This doesn't mean Sidhe plans to leave work-for-hire behind. "We've had some great relationships with publishers like Warner Bros. and Activision, and certainly we envisage doing that for some time," Wynands says.

He sees a polarization happening in the games space that makes evolutions like these especially necessary. "Long-term, I think it's something that a lot of Western developers in particular will struggle with," he says.

"There's such pressure, because there are kind of two types of gaming: you have your top-tier, AAA stuff which publishers are willing to throw whatever budget at they want, because they feel they need to make the investment to get the returns."

"But the majority of work-for-hire projects out there are very, very value-dollar conscious, and it just becomes harder and harder for your traditional studio, without a lot of outsourcing and without having a lot of your production work coming out of China or Eastern Europe, to compete."

Wynands says that to survive, developers must do more to embrace outsourcing or work with partners in less-expensive regions. "But ultimately, we're looking beyond that, and saying it's not just about making margin on the work that we're doing."

Mastering One's Own Fate

"We also want to experience creative control, and ultimately have more of our destiny in our own hands." says Wynands.

Control is essential given the risky environment -- Wynands points to the collapse of Brash Entertainment as a prime example. "We have this publisher who was only briefly on this planet, and they came in and talked fairly big and they were throwing a lot of money around, and a lot of developers kind of bought into that," he says. "And unfortunately, when Brash disappeared, they've taken quite a few developers with them."

"Because of somebody else's mistakes or somebody else's decisions, you can lose your studio, and that can be completely outside of your control," he says.

"Things are definitely changing right now," Wynands concludes. "I think everybody has to evolve in order to be successful in the kind of marketplace we're in right now."

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

['Tokyo Beat' is a new, bi-weekly GameSetWatch-exclusive column by writer Ryan Winterhalter, focusing on expressions of game culture in Japan]

A small white sign marks the entrance to Super Deluxe, a bar in Tokyo’s party center, Roppongi. It’s easy to miss, but it catches my eye just as I pass. I enter the building, and make my way downstairs. I arrive in time to find a table, but not early enough to score a place to sit. The venue is packed.

Over two hundred and fifty people mill around drinking, chatting, and waiting for the event to start. The crowd is diverse, mostly comprised of expatriates from one country or another. English and Japanese seem to be the languages of choice, but occasionally I hear a bit of German or French. Finally, the lights dim and Pecha-Kucha Night begins.

Pecha-Kucha Night is simple. A presenter comes on stage with a slide show prepared. He or she has twenty slides and twenty seconds for each one, for a total of six minutes and forty seconds. The first presenter is a photographer, John Sypal, who discusses his photography featuring foreigners in Japan. The next is a German student discussing political statements through “guerilla gardening.”

Some presentations are hits, like the Wai Wai Steel Drum Band’s performance. Others are so boring that most of the audience treats it like an intermission, a time to use the restroom and grab another beer. In 2003, Pecha-Kucha Night started in Tokyo as a place for architects to discuss their work, but its size and scope has expanded greatly since then. Participants can give presentations about anything, including games.

Pecha-Kucha and Game Culture in Tokyo

The Pecha-Kucha format is growing in popularity. Organizations and events are using it outside of Pech-Kucha Night itself. The University of California San Diego used it in their “SoftWhere 2008” conference; where Georgia Tech professor, Ian Bogost, gave a presentation on platform studies and the Atari 2600.

In Tokyo’s Pecha-Kucha number 62, Mark Cooke, a freelance consultant and game developer gave his presentation, “10 Games in 10 Hours,” in which he tried to develop ten different games over the course of ten hours. The result was ten games and one knockout presentation.

Games ranged from a simple rhythm game, to a tile based, architecture themed puzzle game, even a game with a bit of social commentary about the homeless in Tokyo. Tonight, in Pecha-Kucha number 63, Patrick W. Galbraith, author of the Otaku Encyclopedia, gives a presentation about Japanese anime, game, and geek culture.

Two hours in: the audience is getting restless. Presentations have been going on for a while now, but when Galbraith, a PhD candidate at Tokyo University, is called on stage, people take notice. He is, after all, dressed like Goku, a character from the popular manga Dragon Ball. Accompanying him is a girl dressed as a French maid, Ayakawa Yunmao. She is head of the Maid Cooperative, a professional organization for the hundreds of maids who work in Tokyo’s geek Mecca, Akihabara.

These women work at maid cafes where customers come to relax, hang out, and occasionally pay for a maid to accompany them while the shop for video games and comic books. Together, they teach the audience about Japanese Otaku (geeks) and Akihabara. This isn’t Galbraith’s first time presenting. He says he always receives feedback from his Pecha-Kucha presentations. “I use a lot of props. Give 'em the old razzle dazzle.” People respond to that.

The Advantages Of Cross-Media Communication

Pecha-Kucha Nights provide a forum for game enthusiasts, academics like Galbraith, and creators like Cooke to express their ideas to a large number of people and get personal, face to face feedback immediately. Cooke says, “I have to admit, it was a bit nerve-wracking to get up to present some silly game ideas in front of hundreds of people, but after hearing the crowd laugh, it took the weight off my chest. After the presentation I had the opportunity to speak to a lot of the attendees, many of which said they enjoyed it and looked forward to playing their favorite game of the ones I presented.”

Two things that make game related presentations at Pecha-Kucha important are: one, while Pecha-Kucha originated in Tokyo, it is now a worldwide event. There are Pecha-Kucha Nights, on at least a quarterly basis, in over two-hundred cities all over the world. Two, anyone can present. At the last presentation in Tokyo, musicians, photographers, gardeners, artists, writers, and architects gave diverse performances. Games are a creative field, and there is no reason they should not be represented as well.

If you’re involved in the game industry and want to talk with different groups of people, check out your local Pecha-Kucha Night. Get involved and see what people are looking for. You will hear responses to your ideas that you will not hear at game biz conferences, at work, or on the internet. Presentations can lead to unexpected networking or creative opportunities.

Cooke offers an example, “One of the games from the presentation, Architris (a blue print, layout, puzzle game), spurred conversation with a Tokyo based architect that has been really interesting. We have been brainstorming the rules for how the game will work, while trying to give it some architectural basis in reality.”

Pairings like these don’t usually happen at video game industry-only networking events. Cooke continues, “It has been great to be able to connect to creative people outside of the game industry. Having the opportunity to experience new ideas and learn from people from many backgrounds has been very valuable for me.”

Conclusion: Game Culture On The Rise

Japan is filled with expressions of game culture outside of games themselves. Game themed Pecha-Kucha presentations only serve as an example. Important media tend to develop a culture around them that extends beyond the media itself. Books, for example, have an academic tradition going back thousands of years along with neighborhood book clubs.

The culture surrounding motion pictures includes amateur film makers, movie clubs, and also, a young academic tradition. Games are still new on the scene, and gaming culture is just starting to take root outside of the internet. Right now the best place in the world to watch gaming culture bloom in the real world is Tokyo.

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

In big sister site Gamasutra's weekly Best of Expert Blogs column, they 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.

In this week's top Expert Blog stories, industry veterans write in depth about good game story, weapon balancing, and why frustration in games can be good:

This Week's Standout Expert Blogs

What Is A Good Game Story?
(Jeff Spock)

In this relatively brief post, writer Jeff Spock wonders what really makes a great story -- and a great video game story. He chooses not to propose any answers just yet, but the post's real value comes in the extensive comment thread that results, with many Gamasutra Blogs regulars (and Spock himself) tackling the issue at length.

Weapon Balancing Based On Gameplay Situations (Part One)
(Daniel Helbig)

In what promises to be a useful and practical design materal, designer Daniel Helbig tackles weapon balance, first citing other useful resources then delving into part one of a step by step guide, with part two forthcoming.

It's OK To Feel Frustrated
(Gabriel Lievano)

The general trend in game design over the last decade or more has almost inarguably gone towards attempting to reduce frustration for the player, in lieu of more accessible experiences. Gabriel Lievano argues that some degree of frustration in games may in fact be desirable.

Crowdsourcing Game Audio: Lessons Learnt
(Kes Thygesen)

Mexican indie studio Inovaz took a clever approach to audio design for its upcoming iPhone game Aztec Odyssey: it opened up composition to anyone who cared to try, then bought the best music for inclusion in the game. Here, Inovaz's Kes Thygesen shares how it went. (It went well.)

What Does It Cost To Play For Free?
(Neil Gower)

Free-to-play is all the rage these days. Programmer Neil Gower inquires into the real cost -- not financial, but in terms of design attitude and player experience.

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