[In the latest of an occasional series of demoscene-related posts on GameSetWatch before, AteBit's Paul 'EvilPaul' Grenfell presents a multi-part retrospective on 2009's best demos - continuing with the top real-time rendered intros that fit into just 64kb or 4kb in size. Previously: best demos.]

Continuing our round up of 2009's demoscene offerings, this time we'll take at look at PC 64k and 4k intros. Intros follow roughly the same criteria as demos except for one major difference: size. 64k intros must fit all of their code and data into a measly 65536 bytes. 4K intros take this size limitation even further, and cram everything into just 4096 bytes.

For comparison, the logo on the front page of Google's site is over 8k in size, and just 0.4 seconds of CD quality audio would blow your entire 64k budget. Bear this in mind, then, as you look at what people with the right skills can do in such tiny amounts of space.

64K Intros

The 64k scene still hasn't found its feet after the highs of the early to mid noughties, when the likes of Conspiracy, Fairlight and Farbrausch fought for 1st place on a yearly basis. Since these guys stepped out of the limelight a few years ago there's been a bit of a power vacuum, with no-one really stepping up to the plate to take over the fight.

This year felt particularly empty, with few high quality releases, and even fewer of them particularly standing out from the crowd. As a result, I'm only including my top 5 picks from this category, and I found it incredibly difficult to put them into any order - I was even tempted not to put them into any order at all.

1st: Hotel Bar Heroes by Portal Process

A lovely rendering style and strong soundtrack in this intro from Portal Process. The group have been around since the late 90's but this is their first 64k intro.

2nd: Ephemera by Approximate

Technically excellent, this intro from the relatively new group, Approximate, packs a huge amount into 64k.

3rd: Transform by Ate Bit

Ate Bit's second ever 64k is a massive departure from their first, Pimp My Spectrum, and won the Assembly '09 64k intro competition. You could even say that it's something of a transformation for them.. [Disclaimer: I coded and designed this ;)]

4th: Scatterpillar by Inque

A simple scene, but I love the colors and atmosphere of this one.

5th: Proof of Concept by Evoflash

I have to admit that I'm a sucker for people who do things differently, so I love this really old-school style demo from Evoflash. The twist is that it's written in Flash, and managed to more than hold its own in Assembly 2009's 64k competition -- where it came in an impressive second place.

4K Intros

The 4k scene also wasn't quite as strong in 2009 as it has been in previous years so, again, I've limited this chart to just five places. That's not to say that there weren't some cracking intros this year - Elevated alone should put your jaw firmly on the floor, and Rudebox should keep it there. It's just that there weren't quite enough of them for a top ten.

One interesting thing to note about 4k intros is the amount of sharing that goes on between authors. For example, the synth created by Alcatraz is not only used in their own Rudebox intro but also in Dollop, while the extreme compression library Crinkler, which was jointly developed by members of TBC and Loonies, was used for at least four of our top five intros.

1st: Elevated by RGBA & TBC

A visually stunning 4k from RGBA and TBC, Elevated caused a sensation when it was released back in April. This intro tried and succeeded in doing something that no-one else seemed to be attempting - to render a realistic and believable world rather than one that could only exist inside the confines of a computer. And for an extra treat, you can download the author's presentation about the tech behind this demo.

2nd: Rudebox by Alcatraz

Another stunning 4k intro from Alcatraz. This one showcases multiple scenes and an impressive sounding synth. The final scene alone is more impressive than most other 4ks released this year.

3rd: Dollop by Sqny

Beautiful tune and design in this mostly abstract intro by Sqny (pronounced, I am informed, as "Sony with a Q")

4th: Sult by Loonies

Yet another excellent example of what you can do with modern GPU programming and a bit of voodoo.

5th: Paradistance by Titan

And finally, drink in the ambience of this Titan intro, captured as it was presented live at Evoke. (The winner from this year's 4k competiton at Evoke is also a gem.)

Posted by evilpaul at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

[Every week, IndieGames.com: The Weblog co-editor Tim W. will be summing up some of the top free-to-download and commercial indie games from the last seven days 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 an action game that redefines rocket jumps, a platformer that will test your patience and skills, a first-person roguelike game that lets you take control of nine party members at the same time, a 2D platform game that features cakes prominently, and a browser-based remake of the old arcade classic Qix.

Here's the highlights from the last seven days:

Game Pick: 'Lethal Application' (Daisessen, freeware)
"Lethal Application is a 2D action game that introduces a unique gameplay system for moving your character around each stage. Instead of a jump button that most players are accustomed to, we have here a weapon so strong that its recoil effect can propel the protagonist in the opposite of her shot direction."

Game Pick: 'Flood the Chamber' (Matt Scorah, freeware)
"In Flood the Chamber your job is to help the prisoner escape the chamber, reaching the top of the screen before the advancing water level reaches our agile rogue. A warning: you will not complete this on your first attempt. Or your second. Or your... well, let's put it another way - if you manage to complete the game, you have some serious skills."

Game Pick: 'ro9' (Justin Smith, freeware)
"ro9 is a turn-based role-playing game in which you get to control the actions of nine different characters at the same time, using only one set of controls for all. The objective here is to get all of your heroes down to the ninth and last level of the dungeon to loot the treasure, although you can still win if some of them succumb to their injuries before reaching the goal."

Game Pick: 'Paper Cakes' (HUSCK, browser)
"Paper Cakes is a clever puzzle platformer in which you play as a character who has a craving for cakes. The gimmick here is that each level is drawn on both sides of a paper, and to reach the cake you would have to fold the paper and form new platforms to walk on or make the geometrical-shaped creatures disappear."

Game Pick: 'Reclamation' (Zeke Brill, browser)
"Reclamation is a browser-based remake of the classic arcade game Qix, in which players have to claim a certain percentage of each level as their own to progress. This is achieved by drawing a closed shape around enemies while trying to avoid a collision with any of them. There are a couple of power-up items to collect, ranging from those that reward you with a boost ability, missiles, and even a shockwave weapon that eliminates just about all anthropods in close proximity."

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

Xseed has revealed that Korg DS-10 Plus, its music creation program for the Nintendo DS based on the Korg MS-10 synthesizer, will ship to U.S. stores on February 16th with a $30 price tag. As with the original Korg DS-10 released in 2008, the software is geared for both professional and aspiring musicians, giving them inexpensive access to emulated synthesizers and drum machines.

The program's new features include an expanded song mode with programmable track mute and realtime edit. Xseed notes that if you have a DSi, the software uses a "Dual DS-10" mode, in which the Analog Synth Simulator increases from 2 to 4, the Drum Machine increases from 1 to 2, and a 12 Track Sequencer becomes available (as opposed to the standard 6-Track Sequencer).

I've no idea how Xseed can justify bringing over the Korg DS-10 series to the States considering the software's niche audience here, but God bless them for doing so, especially since Nintendo DSi's region-locking prevents importers from running Japanese copies of Korg DS-10 Plus. Also, this time around, the publisher has arranged it so consumers can buy the software from retail locations and not just online shops.

For those of you that still don't understand how a simple DS application can help musicians, I've included three videos below of artists that have integrated Korg DS-10 Plus into their setups. Also, if you remember that odd but awesome chiptune performance by Omodaka, he was also using the original Korg DS-10 in his act.

Posted by Eric Caoili at 4:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

In our latest employment-specific 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 38 Studios, Vicarious Visions 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 this week include:

38 Studios: User Interface Engineer
"Would you like to become part of the team that includes the creative visionaries behind Drizzt Do’Urden and Spawn? 38 Studios is currently seeking a User Interface Engineer to join our Engineering department. This is a full-time position with competitive salary, full benefits and 401(k), and the chance to be part of online gaming history!"

Bungie: Gameplay Design Lead
"Do you love the challenge of designing great gameplay? Do you have 10 ideas on how to make Halo’s player interface better? Do you hate that moment in a game when you realize that you’ve found the ultimate powerful weapon, making all others pointless? Are you an experienced game designer looking to work on AAA games with talented and passionate people in a team environment? If so we have the job for you! Bungie Studios is looking for a passionate, creative and hard-working Gameplay Design Lead for our next project."

Krome Studios: Lead Designer
"Krome Studios is Australia’s largest game development studio and has come a long way since its humble beginning in 1999. Krome Studios now boasts 5 project teams, over 300 talented employees and an increasing presence in the worldwide game development industry.
To date, Krome Studios has created ten successful titles on multiple platforms and languages, including Ty the Tasmanian Tiger, Krome’s own IP and Platinum selling global videogame franchise."

Super Happy Fun Fun: Game Designer
"Design top-notch iPhone products! The Designer will be a skilled, creative and thorough craftsperson with proven experience in full product development lifecycle: concept generation to final tuning. The ideal candidate will have demonstrated ability to collaborate with creative professionals to develop and maintain a consistent level of high quality and execution."

Tencent Boston: QA Lead
"Tencent Boston is a premier game development studio led by industry veterans that are driving the creation of world class online games for a global audience. We are a division of Tencent Inc., one of the largest internet companies in China. For more than 400 million people Tencent is the internet encompassing portal, shopping, community and entertainment services. We are right in the middle of one of the most dynamic and fast growing game markets in the world and we are looking for outstanding individuals with passion, talent and a team focused mindset."

Vicarious Visions: Producer
"The Producer is primarily responsible for managing the product development team and supporting development from concept to submission. Responsibilities include scheduling, tracking development, and ensuring team deliverables are met in a timely manner at high quality. The Producer will manage and coordinate the relationship with external stakeholders and internal team resources to produce games for a variety of game platforms."

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 3:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This neat multi-touch table demonstration of 2D Boy's puzzle game World of Goo was hacked together at Berlin's 26th Chaos Communication Congress (26C3) last December. According to Youtube poster Inh2l, this setup uses the Linux edition of the game (which supports multiple mice) with the Vinput software suite to make World of Goo work on supported multi-touch devices.

This video reminded me that 2D Boy revealed plans to develop an iPhone version of World of Goo last October and actually managed to get it "running well" on the iPhone 3GS -- I hope they're still working on the project. Considering that the upcoming iPad will be able to play iPhone games, I imagine that World of Goo for iPad would look/play a lot like this!

[Via 2D Boy]

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

[In this piece, GamerBytes editor Ryan Langley analyzes performance data and sales for Xbox Live Indie Games in 2009 -- and concludes the Xbox 360 service is becoming a much more promising way for developers to reach console gamers with hobbyist titles.]

We've been keeping a close eye on the Xbox Live Indie Games scene for some time now, and while it had a bit of a rough beginning, we’ve seen numerous additions to the service: a ratings system, Avatar support, an entirely new name, and new pricing tiers. Finding the sweet spot for hobbyist and user-submitted indie games has been a long process, but there's definitely been some progress.

Major Nelson may have released the Top 20 XBL Indie games for 2009, but it’s thanks to the participants of the official XNA forums -- including many of the developers -- that we have sales data for their games over the year, and thus a much clearer picture.

The below graph shows the sales of the games, the amount of trial versions of the game that were downloaded, the conversion percentage from trial to sale, the price and the money made by the developer itself.

The money made by a developer on any XBLIG game is 70% of its selling price – Microsoft picks up 30% of each sale:

The Win Of ZOMBIES!

It’s not much of a surprise to see James Silva's GAM3 W1TH ZOMB1ES become the top selling game of the year. It’s an incredibly simple game, but also follows numerous traits of the top tier Indie games – a bizarre style, a weird song and an extremely low price. All of these points brought the game to the attention of gamers and game blogs everywhere – Kotaku, Joystiq, and many major news sutes mentioned it. And it had a personality, alongside being a pretty decent game.

The Rise Of The Application

One thing that has certainly gotten a lot of attention on Indie Games are applications. An application's not a game, per se, but something akin to iPhone's non-game Apps – simple programs that allow players to make use of their systems outside of gaming itself.

DrumKit allows players to take control of Rock Band or Guitar Hero drums without the official games. Aquarium HD and myFishTank turn Xbox 360s into habitats for digital fish, and Rumble Massage and A Perfect Massage let users go crazy with the controller’s rumble ability.

It may frustrate those who make “real” games to see these applications do so well, but it makes perfect sense, as many people are drawn to simple, alternative and inexpensive apps. Compare with the Fireplace DVDs, which cost 10 times as much money. Even the guy who made RC-Airsim has stated that any other simulation of remote control aeroplanes will ask for nearly $100 for it, so asking $2.50 for RC-AirSim is a bargain by comparison.

And ezmuze+, which is a pretty complex audio looping system, made it to the list even at the $10 asking price. People aren't afraid of spending big money on Xbox Indies - but developers have to give people a reason to buy it at asking price.

The Simple Game

Other games that have done well are usually simple but direct – Headshot and Headshot 2 are among the top sellers on the system, while Avatar Drop and The Impossible Game, being very simple concepts, have also made it into the Top 20. By proving they're worth their asking price, they have enticed the player to click that “Buy Now” button at the end of the trial.

Those That Missed Out

Other developers also appeared on the XNA.com forums to discuss their Xbox Live Indie Games sales, revealing their 2009 sales and trial downloads to get a better understanding of the full spectrum of XBLIG creators.

Some games that we’re big fans of, including Solar and Weapon Of Choice, did quite well for themselves. For some perspective, they’ve actually done better than some Xbox Live Arcade games (albeit XBLA games that will never make their development costs back) that we’ve been following in our sales data.

There have been some games that have not sold well, but there's usually a reason – poor marketing, dull premise or bad box artwork. There are plenty of issues out there that can damage sales, but the idea that weak sales are the fault of the service doesn’t hold as much water as it once did.

A Bit Of Perspective

The Xbox Live Indie Scene has been catching some flack lately over less-than-epic game sales, but let's put this into a bit of perspective.

Solar, which is one of the coolest Xbox Indie titles out there, has sold around 10,000 copies over its 9 months on the market. The Xbox 360 version of the game took around 4 months of work during the developer’s spare time. For the most part the game was sold at its original $2.50 price point, so overall it made a bit less than $17,500.

$17,500 for 4 months of work is good money. That’s over a grand per week for that game's development. Now, obviously, that wouldn't support a larger team working full time, but even something like Lacrosse 2010 has done well for itself, considering the small coterie who created it.

One of the main criticisms of the XBLIG space is also that people just aren’t looking at it. But the numbers are certainly increasing - 55,000 people downloaded the trial to Little Racers, 26,000 people have trialed Avatar Snowball fight, and NextWar had 30,000 people give it a go. People are looking at games, especially those in the top 20 lists, but it’s up to the developers to convince customers to make the purchase.

Just having them download the demo is a huge step – that means the premise has piqued their interest, or the box art has made the game look interesting, or that the developer has strong marketing skills.

But without good design underneath, the game won’t sell. That may be why a game like ZenHack only has a conversion rate of 3.5 percent while Groov has a rate of 25 percent, which is far higher than the usual rate you’d see on a trial-to-purchase.

Failure? Not Quite

To call Xbox Live Indie games a failure is short-sighted at this point. To expect the same top-line numbers as that of the iPhone’s App Store -- as some critics do -- is also ludicrous. The App Store is a different animal. Top games sell up to 30,000 copies a day, but often at bargain basement prices - and the vast majority of sell very few.

Other comparison points, such as indie PC games on Steam aren't necessarily appropriate either. However, the ecosystem in terms of release volume is partway between XBLA and the App Store, perhaps -- it's worth noting that, since there's only one or two Xbox Live Arcade games released weekly, developers are guaranteed at least a little prominence.

Yet for XBLIG titles, games can get lost in the shuffle quite swiftly after they disappear from the 'New Releases' page. After that, they can't do much to get back up - or at least, price cuts like those implemented in the App Store seem to have less of an effect. This leads to situations like a game that sold 21 units in the first month, when the larger, more professional developer needs 10,000 to break even, ouch.

Can there still be criticism of XBLIG? Sure, there are several things that Microsoft could be doing to increase awareness of the Indie Games section, as mentioned in a recent article by Boing Boing but they can’t do everything. Developers need to keep the awareness up. I’ll mention again an article I wrote some time ago – send out press releases to weblogs, create trailers, Twitter about it, get on NeoGAF, IndieGames.com and TIGSource and talk about your games. The more people you get to download your demo, the more purchases you ultimately get - simple, but the majority of developers aren't doing that.

And meanwhile, at least for mid and high-level performers, XBLIG is becoming a viable platform for hobbyists and single-man shops to make some cash and get their game seen - and for end users to pick up some genuinely interesting games.

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

[In the latest Road to the IGF interview with 2010 Independent Games Festival finalists, we speak with Sidhe Interactive's Mario Wynands about the PSN Game Shatter, nominated in the audio category.]

In its gameplay, concept, and audio, Sidhe Interactive's brick-breaking PlayStation Network game Shatter for PlayStation 3 is a nostalgic throwback, albeit injected with a thoroughly modern vibe.

The audio work for the downloadable PSN game, highlighted by an outstanding soundtrack by Jeramiah "Module" Ross, was enough to earn an audio nomination for the 2010 Independent Games Festival Awards.

Here, Mario Wynands, managing director for New Zealand-based Sidhe, offers some background behind the making of Shatter's audio, describes his excitement for the evolution of the indie game development scene, and why nostalgia isn't necessarily the "driving force" behind the popularity of retro-inspired games.

What kind of background do you have making games?

Sidhe has been around for over a decade now, and was personally my first foray into formal game development aside from a few stop-start efforts when growing up. Over that time the studio has developed a number of titles across many different platforms and genres.

In recent years, we have put much more focus onto creating new and original titles that we can self publish via digital distribution, which has generated titles such as GripShift and more recently, Shatter.

What development tools did you use?

The primary tools we used were Adobe Photoshop, Maya, and Visual Studio. We also built a custom level editor for the game.

How long had your team been working on Shatter?

Development of the game took around 18 months from start to finish, with a team size of around five for most of that time. We had originally planned development to be around a year, but we allowed the extra time to take meaningful advantage of some of the gameplay discoveries along the way and to apply as much polish as possible.

How did you come up with the concept for the game? Why explore the brick-breaking genre?

We were inspired by games like Geometry Wars and Pacman Championship Edition in the way those games had modernized retro games in ways people initially wouldn't have thought of. We actively sought a concept where we could attempt something similar, and looked to retro games that we played growing up that we were still playing in the studio.

Brick-breaking games were something that had stood the test of time but recent iterations had generally been hampered by legacy issues such as intermittent interaction, slow pacing, uninspired presentation and the "last brick" problem. It seemed like a great creative challenge to try to bring the genre into the modern era, and so Shatter was born.

What do you think is the appeal of retro-styled games--does it go beyond nostalgia?

The success of many retro style games is certainly contributed to by nostalgia. But if nostalgia were the driving force, then when wouldn't be seeing a younger audience responding to those types of games.

The core appeal of such games is a return to simplicity and unique presentation, which can be refreshing in the face of many complex modern titles which exist along a barely distinguishable continuum. When you have something that is elegantly simple, and package it in a compelling way, you have the opportunity to engage your audience with unique experiences.

The game was nominated for best audio. What rules did you try to stick with when designing the audio?

We wanted the audio to really gel with the gameplay and visuals of Shatter and be a seamless fit to the game. It had to be a significant part of the experience that helped draw the player in and immerse them in the world.

In particular we wanted it to add to the game at an emotional level and help carry a very light story element that was present in Shatter, from the BAT1138's initial escape, through to ultimate triumph over his captors. It had to bring up memories of classic arcade games and tip the hat to the retro roots that inspired Shatter. The artist, Jeramiah "Module" Ross, was the perfect fit for that approach and on board from day one.

We decided early on to take some risks and use style references that seemed completely over the top at the time. Long lead guitar solos, 80s electro build ups and tunes that were definitely not run of the mill, background game music. As a result we have tracks varying from three to almost nine minutes in length. We let the music guide how long it should be.

The music also benefited from having a very long period of development. From initial discussions and sketches through to gold master, the music and sound effects took over 12 months of semi-continuous work with the music taking inspiration from the game and vice versa. All in we created over 90 minutes of original music, and countless sound effects that were professionally mixed and mastered in post.

The audio has become a major part of the experience for a number of fans, and has been successful in its own right, with over 250,000 online streams of the soundtrack via http://sidhe.bandcamp.com. We've had a such a positive response to the music that we now have it available on iTunes and are working towards a physical release.

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

It is difficult to think of what we would change. The development of Shatter was a very organic process, and while we took some wrong turns along the way, it would have been very hard to plan from the start to get to the point where the game ended up.

We have certainly learned a lot along the way, and will apply those lessons to our process and future titles.

Have you played any of the other IGF finalists? Any games you particularly enjoyed?

I think the finalist I have most enjoyed is Rocketbirds: Revolution! The game is such a great all around package.

I have also been taunted by the Limbo video teaser for well over a year. The taste we have been given is very tantalizing, and I can't wait to try it out.

What do you think of the current state of the indie scene?

The massive growth in the indie scene in recent years has been a refreshing counter to the direction of the traditional retail-based industry. As a developer across multiple markets, it is inspiring to see the plethora of engaging ideas emerging from the indie community. The burst of indie spirit and content and the positive response and open-mindedness of gamers is really having an impact on shaping the future of the game industry right now.

One thing that is really great to see is indie developers actually able to capitalize on their art and make their development sustainable via new commercial opportunities beyond PC offered by iPhone, WiiWare, XBLA, PSN, and PSP. However, there are huge disparities between the ability of individual indies to reach larger audiences successfully. Everybody needs to get better at telling the world about our games.

[Previous 'Road To The IGF' interview subjects have included Enviro-Bear 2000 developer Justin Smith, Rocketbirds: Revolution's co-creators Sian Yue Tan and Teck Lee Tan, Vessel co-creator John Krajewski, Trauma creator Krystian Majewski, and Super Meat Boy co-creators Edmund McMillen and Tommy Refenes.]

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

Lazy 8 Studios's Cogs -- recently shortlisted for the 2010 Independent Games Festival's Excellence in Design category -- is now available on iPhonefor $.99 (11 levels, with four additional 10-stage downloadable packs at $.99 each).

As with the PC version (download a free demo here), Cogs for iPhone challenges players with a series of 2D and 3D puzzles in which you slide tiles containing gears, pipes, balloons, chimes, wheels, and more to build different contraptions. The game features three modes: the standard Inventor Mode; Time Challenge mode, for solving puzzles in 30 seconds, and Move Challenge, for finding 10-move solutions.

The iPhone edition also includes several social gaming features such as challenges, achievements, leaderboards, and integration with social networks, made possible with the integration of Chillingo's Crystal platform. You can see more screenshots of Cogs at publisher Chillingo's site.

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

Stuart Ashen, whom you might recognize from his Youtube reviews of (often awful) video game consoles and gadgets, is now putting together a show for BBC Comedy called Tech Dump, produced by Hat Trick Productions (Father Ted) and directed by Al Campbell (Screen Wipe, News Wipe). BBC Comedy even has a blog post detailing a day's worth of work creating the show!

In the episode above, after sharing a wise tech prediction, Ashen looks at several "forgotten" British video games from the '80s, such as SCAB, a short but cutting action title from the North Dereham Workers Liberation Party depicting "what life as a coal miner was like in [Margaret] Thatcher's Britain." Other games remembered: Prosaic Software's Realism Fighter and Soren Micros's Vinnie Vole's Existential Nightmare.

As you'll see in Ashen's playthroughs, it's impossible to win in any of the games.

[Via Born Under Punches]

Posted by Eric Caoili at 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Artist AzureeAlice has several video game-themed pieces of jewelry available through her Etsy shop, but the standout pieces in her collection are definitely this BioShock ring and bracelet, both decorated with the same image of a Big Daddy skipping along with a Little Sister in hand as she collects Adam.

The adjustable ring and bracelet are priced at $5 and $10 (before shipping), respectively, and AzureeAlice will also add the same image to a necklace if you'd like for $15. While these aren't the classiest items to wear at a fancy event (say a dance at Rapture's ballroom) they seem neat as everyday geeky jewelry?

[Via Wonderland]

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

[Gamasutra correspondent Patrick Dugan sits down for a wide-ranging interview with ThatGameCompany's Kellee Santiago alongside the studio's newest hire, Electronic Arts veteran Robin Hunicke (Boom Blox) on the indie space, the studio philosophy and more.]

After several years at Electronic Arts Los Angeles, Robin Hunicke has moved on to flOw and Flower house ThatGameCompany, a small studio founded by USC alumni Kellee Santiago and Jenova Chen.

In her time as a designer at EA, Hunicke saw three titles ship, most recently Boom Blox, and she's now working on an unannounced title with the team at the Los Angeles-area studio.

Gamasutra caught up with Hunicke and Santiago to learn what prompted the new collaboration and what fuels their vision of their studio, games and the evolution of the industry.

ThatGameCompany is right on the line between independent and not -- you get autonomy, but you also get funding, incubation services, office space, the works. Do you think we are going to see more structures like yours?

Kellee Santiago: I think there are some movements in publishers -- but especially in independent... or VC [-funded studios] -- towards a more project-oriented funding structure like you see in film.

Instead of the software company model where you would buy a piece of the company and maybe rights to the IP, there is some motion away from that, and at the start it will depend on whether those initial projects are successful or not.

So I'm really hoping that those investments go well and we do move towards that model, as it does permit a lot more creative freedom in a company. As with our arrangement with Sony, a big part of that was we got really lucky with the timing and people at Sony Santa Monica wanted to invest in a studio or a couple studios to let them loose on the Playstation Network and experiment with what you could do with digital distribution.

So that's how our deal came about, and you can see that with games like Everyday Shooter and Linger In Shadows. It really worked out for us that we found a publisher who was also somewhat creatively aligned with our goals, and I think that's important because no matter what you put in a contract, it ultimately comes down to the people you're working with day to day.

Robin Hunicke: I think Sony has been exceptionally supportive of ThatGameCompany. It was partly timing, but I have to Kellee some credit for convincing them and negotiating this deal. It's not just luck -- she's extremely passionate about the company and the projects, and it shows in the results that she has been able to generate for us. Sony believes in us because Kellee believes in us.

Was this part of the motivation for moving from EA to TGC?

RH: Absolutely. I knew Jenova and Kellee from when they were students at USC; I've always loved their work. I followed it, I actually tried to recruit Kellee once but she was like "no thanks, I've got my own thing."

You know, TGC games have that sort of fresh and intimate feeling. They're really handcrafted -- you can't help but love them when you play them. That's something that I think any developer notices immediately. It was clear to me that they are extremely concerned about the player experience -- and that's not something that's just lip-service, it's something that they think about every day.

Also accessibility -- that's something I've been really passionate about over the years. I worked on lot of games that were aimed at kids and families, and I wanted to go someplace where I could take that focus to the next level. So when she told me there was an opportunity to produce the next game, I just had to go for it.

So you're acting as producer rather than game designer?

RH: That's right. But at TGC we all contribute to the game design, and that is not just lip service. Everyone has an opportunity to contribute creatively to the project. The reason I enjoy my job is because I get to do what I'm great at, which is production and design.

How many people are you employing?

KS: Ten of us. We started on flOw with four people, and Flower with seven, and now we're at ten.

And your ranks swell during production, with contractors?

KS: At a certain point on Flower, we were at ten people for the last two months of production or so.

Just for the record, Flower and flOw made money, right?

KS: Yes, I can say that.

And by a decent margin, which is a relative term that gives you some leeway in saying "yes"?

KS: Sony did release their top 10 downloads for 2009 and Flower was number 9.

Three quarters of the development time involved was just prototyping -- just getting the feeling right, and the last fraction involved producing the actual game content?

KS: Yes, but to clarify -- we threw a lot of stuff away during prototyping, but we also kept a lot. It says something about our process that Flower took two years to develop, but we were in production for only six months of that. we had 18 months of our prototyping phase. That's more time prototyping than other development models would use, but I think Robin can speak to that.

RH: I think that one of the things the team does is work on what inspires them, and in Flower's case they followed it in several different directions. It was a dialogue with the publisher to try and figure out what this game was going to be, and that took 18 months.

That dialogue might take nine months on one project and 18 months on another. Flower was super-ambitious; it was a really out-of-the-box concept, and it took a lot of time to dialogue on how to get there.

Do you think a major problem with the game industry is that that kind of gameplay experimentation is prohibited by the cost and management models?

RH: I don't think it's a problem. A lot of successful, amazing games are made by picking a target, going for it and hitting that target. It's not uncommon for something amazing like Call of Duty 4 to come out; I mean, they know exactly where they're going when they start that project, and they nail it.

For us, trying to do stuff that's out-of-the-box, we've found a successful way to prototype and dialogue with our publisher. We're really glad we could establish that relationship with Sony and get these games out there, so it's not a problem - it's an opportunity.

You've proposed a solution here. Do you think there's a way for that to be widely adapted and made both feasible and scalable?

KS: Scalable is something that we hope to answer one day, as a company. We want to keep pushing the boundaries, and part of the exploration is developing a process for larger-scale experimentation.

Before you said "scalable," I was going to say that what's been really advantageous for us in the digital distribution space is that we're allowed to make games that are smaller than what you purchase on a disc. You have room for a $2 game, a $5 game, a $10 game, a $15 game, so you have room to think about what kind of product you're going to make, and the time involved in actually producing it can be relatively short. But I'm not sure if that could translate to a large disc-based title.

RH: Or to multiple projects at one time.

There's a size dimension and then there's this horizontal dimension of how many different niche titles can be fielded.

RH: Honestly, it's up to the marketplace. We have seen the maturing of the gaming market. We really believe that our players have rich lives, and that games are part of that rich life.

One of our core values is that their time should be respected. We want the time that people spend with ThatGameCompany games to be something they value and feel is appreciated by us. As that market matures, we have to continue to create content for them that can be enjoyed on their terms, in their time, in their lives.

The marketplace will support as much valuable, entertaining and supportive content as it can. It's up for developers to create that. It's a challenge for us to continue to find ways to thrill and create wonder and give new, fresh feelings, and if we can't do that there's no guarantee that the customer will respond. We have to respect them through our work.

How has the global economic downturn constrained the market's scope?

KS: Neither of us is an economist, so we can't really speak to that, but there's a demonstrable trend in people spending time online, for more people playing together and purchasing content online. We definitely see audiences moving towards digitally-distributed content, and also a desire to play with people in other places in the world.

Is that going to be console-centric or PC-centric? is that going to be in the study or the living room?

KS: That, I don't know.

RH: We know for sure that it's proliferating, so the general trend will be more opportunities to reach people in a variety of locations.

KS: There's also mobile in the mix now, especially with the tablet PCs, we're going to see developers exploring the opportunities in that space as well. That sort of motion towards online is part of what we're seeing as presenting new revenue opportunities through alternative payment and business models. I'm very much looking forward to GDC and hearing what people are doing playing around with these models.

How do you think the freeware side of things, typified by [indie designer] Cactus, for example, is going to affect commercial game development?

RH: I really liked the game Cactus submitted [video link] to Gamma 4, which is amazing and really fun, and also really mind-bending. Cactus is amazing, and experiments that developers like that are doing can be showcased in events like Gamma, which takes the potential for commercial success and plays with it, makes art out of it, pushes it in new directions and exposes it to new audiences.

When you play his one-button game, it's almost like you're at a rave. It's hard to categorize; that's just amazing. We'll definitely see more events like Gamma and IndieCade, showcasing these kinds of games, and I would hope the market would respond to that and publishers would want to engage that. Its about "does the developer want it" and do they have the will to take it there? If they want to just keep releasing these experiments for free, hey, I'll play 'em.

Being inside the walled garden of a console-download marketplace, you're still on the side of the line where you're making a product to sell. Freeware developers might make one game at a time, but it's looked at as a service to the community or their fans or their own muse. Do you think that can evolve, over the web, to a sort of touring band model instead of a sell-the-album model? Will we see as much innovation on the business model as the content side?

KS: I certainly hope so. I was going to comment on your delineation between being on the console versus us being in the wild -- I don't think that's what defines us as a business. Jenova and I created a business because we want to be doing this for the rest of our lives. Figuring out ways to make it profitable allows us to do that; that's why we have a business around it. I think it's absolutely possible to do that without selling out and compromising on your creative goals.

RH: You can also reach more people if you have a distribution platform that's successful. We want to be able to reach as many people as possible and give them that experience, and it helps if you have someone distributing your game. But if you can make that happen and that's all you want, then great.

KS: I think our goals are common to other developers, all our goals is to keep doing this and that will lead to more experimentation on the business model end. I think the creative experimentation and the business experimentation go hand in hand.

What do you think of LA as a "scene"? Is there a good community for game development or is everyone stuck in traffic on the freeway?

KS: No, we're definitely a community. I have to say I wasn't planning on staying in Los Angeles after graduating, but it's come to feel like such a home to us. We're in close proximity in Santa Monica to a bunch of developers that we have community with.

My general friends network has a lot of developers, as LA has the highest concentration of developers in the entire world, and it's also the entertainment capital of the world. There are a lot of people in other aspects of entertainment to meet and collaborate and share war stories with.

I'm in a group called "Nerd Poker" here, where we play online. XBLA and Playstation Network are seen as the "new poker" -- which was the "new golf". It's people in music and film and games getting together, and seeing that all our mediums are evolving for one reason or another -- so it's great to be able to tap onto each other for information and resources.

RH: It's not just gamers; you can hang out with people in film, with people doing really amazing street art, the weather is always gorgeous so you can go to the beach, grab lunch, hang out with somebody.

We're around the corner not just from Naughty Dog but also MTV, and there's a huge Yahoo! center where there are a bunch of entertainment businesses, where people have lunch, so it's very easy just by happenstance to be one or two jumps away from someone working on something amazing. Kellee and I are blessed with a lot of interesting friends, because LA is a really interesting city.

KS: Despite the fact that California has some of the highest business taxes, it still happens to be filled with entrepreneurs, so that's good.

Robin, you're earning a PhD, and Kellee, you have a MA in Interactive Media. Can you speak to how the perceived value of those kind of advanced degrees has improved, and what doors they opened for you? For people considering pursuing such degrees, do you think that will give them an edge in their career?

KS: Definitely.

RH: If it weren't for the research I did on AI and gaming, I wouldn't have become a game developer. When I started at Northwestern University, I had no idea that I was going to become a developer, and at that time education programs were just getting started.

When I volunteered at the first IGDA Education Summit, people from the ETC were handing out announcement fliers for their program, and the USC people were there just getting ready to start their program. That was only ten years ago, and if you think about it, ThatGameCompany is primarily comprised of people who have graduated from these programs, and look at the impact that has had to our industry.

The most creative independent games that are being developed out there, they have ties to these programs. That impact is what generates the respect for the programs. It comes from the results.

And your company is one of the early beachheads of that?

RH: Yeah.

KS: When we were going around pitching to publishers in 2006, one of the common responses was "we really love what you're doing and we love your ideas, but you've never worked in the professional game industry and what are we supposed to do with that?" Now you can see a huge shift in that.

The attention put on the IGF and the Student Showcase there, we're seeing a lot more students going and starting their own studios. It's amazing how that happened so quickly.

RH: Yeah, it really is.

Let's talk a little bit about gender -- this is kind of too obvious, but it does deserve some words. There's traditionally been a very extreme skew in the gender ratios. Looking at GDC attendance since when I started going, and looking at some studios I've seen, I get the impression that the ratio is becoming closer to even. Do you think a shift has taken place, and how has the industry been influenced?

KS: Hmmm, the "women in the workplace" issue, there are just so many contributing factors its really hard to narrow it down to just one. It's not just about diversity in the workforce, it's about wanting diversity of thought within your team.

You can achieve that by hiring a wide range of types of people, or by hiring different personalities. One of the common impressions people have of ThatGameCompany is that we're all female, we're all Asian, and we're all on drugs.

RH: None of which are true.

KS: None of which are true, it's just that the team we've assembled takes influences from a wide variety of places, and there is such a diverse range of thought on the team. I'm seeing more conscious effort in other companies of growing out the teams in an organic way.

RH: The other thing is, to relate it to your last question, the development of educational programs that focus on interactive entertainment and gaming allow the industry to reach out to new people. 10 years ago it wouldn't be common for a young woman or a foreign student to be able to express their interests in gaming through a degree program, or even a class.

Now that trail has been blazed, and the opportunity is there for a lot of people. Lots of programs have started as one or two classes, and now they're in full enrollment, they're looking for professors. I get tons of e-mails from people looking to hire professors.

We've been able to broaden the scope of our recruiting efforts as an industry by exposing more people to the wonder that is video game production. It's not easy work but it's fascinating work, and it's challenging. No two days are alike, and who wouldn't want to work in that industry. We kept it a secret for a while but now the secret is out. Hopefully that means we'll get more diverse people in the work force, and as Kellee said, more diverse games.

It's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy because the more diffuse the barriers to entry become, and the more diverse the people involved become, generally the better the quality of the workplace.

RH: Exactly.

There's a spectrum between the dark cubicle factory with the long-haired guys who've got the anime figurines, and an bright art gallery where people have Van Gogh on the wall.

RH: Hey dude, I've got a lot of anime statues, so...

Which characters do you have?

RH: Actually, I have a bunch of characters from Neon Genesis Evangelion on my desk right now.

That's an exception. Evangelion, that's its own thing.

RH: See, that's what they say...

KS: That's acceptable.

RH: They actually all come from the same place. I've got some classic '60s anime on my desk. It's a pretty anime desk right now.

Are you all still in the Sony BMG office?

KS: No we're actually in our own office now.

I bet the rent is a monster.

KS: We had the good fortune of having the economy crash right before we moved, so we managed to find a decent bargain.

You get these cycles, it all kind of balances out over time.

KS: Right, yeah we just kind of lucked out in that regard.

Can you two speak to how your craft of game design has evolved since ThatGameCompany began?

KS: With ThatGameCompany, the main thing, for me, has been figuring out how to make a better process for guiding teams through all the different possible directions that we could take a game. There's a really fine line between everyone's idea of what they want the game to be tearing the project apart and people being willing to compromise and bring it all together. What we are about as a company is that process, that way of negotiating and navigating through that space.

RH: For me, what it comes down to is being really honest with the people you're working with and being ready to fail. Being open to feedback is the most important thing and the most difficult thing for a game designer.

When I started, I used to take it as criticism, but what I've learned is there's no solution in that. You've got to want feedback, and don't be biased by your own ideas of what the prototype is supposed to mean. The truth is in the player. If you open your mind and you open your heart, you're going to make much better games.

The game is just a nexus for the manifestation of love.

RH: Right! That's what you've got to be open to, exactly.

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

When virtual spaces developer Veemee released London Pub to PlayStation Home in Europe last month, I assumed the digital tavern was an across-the-Atlantic exclusive, but the company has brought the watering hole to the U.S. Stateside PS3 owners can now log into online world and purchase their own London Pub for $5.99 (which Veemee notes is "less than the price of a round of drinks").

Along with comedy beer pumps, the space offers an open fire, a multiplayer darts game, phones for making crank phone calls, and "virtual hand dryers that don't really dry your hands". Owners can invite their friends over to introduce them to the experience of hanging out at a bar "situated on the banks of the river Thames overlooking The Houses of Parliament".

"It's always nice to inject a bit of humor into the games industry," says Veemee's creative director Kirk Ewing. "In a virtual pub you can get all the banter but obviously none of the booze. In The London Pub in Home we always encourage people to 'Think Responsibly'!"

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

To celebrate the 10-year anniversary of Maxis's The Sims franchise, publisher Electronic Arts partnered with art-funding social platform Society6 to create a collection of works inspired by the popular video games. Society6 curated 10 artists from around the world like eBoy and Aurélie Grand for the collection and has posted their pieces online.

For a limited time, Society6 is selling their artwork as prints (reasonably priced, surprisingly!), laptop skins, iPhone/iPod skins, and T-shirts. I've included my favorites below, but you can see the full collection and read background information on all of the contributing artists at the platform's official site.

[Via @brandonnn]

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

[‘Design Diversions’ is a biweekly 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. This time -- a look at VVVVVV and the ups and downs of environment focused design.]

I've been playing VVVVVV so much I've started fearing my column will flip upside-down ever time I make a carriage return. Even editing this column was a traumatic experience, as rows of spikes greeted me at every turn. The game’s unpronounceable title is evocative of its number one cause of death, but there's more to VVVVVV than spikes, spikes, and more spikes.

Terry Cavanagh's puzzle platformer is a compelling argument for simplicity in games. There are only three gameplay-relevant keys in VVVVVV: left, right, and flip. Cavanagh describes VVVVVV as focusing on "one single gameplay mechanic and exploring it in detail." It's a sly way of stating it, since VVVVVV has much more to it than a single mechanic. There are rooms that loop on themselves, conveyor belts, companions to herd about, and many more complications that result in an experience that is far from simple.

VVVVVV's simplicity is a clever lie. The game delivers with its promise of not gating player progress and stilll providing variety and challenge by powering up the environment instead of the player. In VVVVVV the environment and enemies become increasing complex, taking the role of the player-oriented upgrades. In fact, those power-ups are an even bigger lie. Under the pretense of upgrading, they actually exist to introduce players to newer or more complex puzzles, a premise VVVVVV turns upside-down.

Every Step is Up a Steeper Slope

These power-ups are deceptive because they actually makes the game harder while giving the illusion that it is an enhancement. Take Metroid's Ice Beam. It's a powerful weapon, but once you get it the game starts demanding you use it climb by jumping from frozen enemy to frozen enemy. The game suddenly becomes more complicated, and now there's another element for players to keep track of and master.

The ability may feel empowering at first, but they actually make the game harder because there is a new element to keep track of when solving new puzzles. It's possible to even say this about pure upgrades like health tanks. Although they make the player objectively more powerful, as the game progresses the player will encounter more damaging enemies and environments. This forces players to go out of their way to find and acquire the extra health.

This is a good thing. When upgrades do make life easier, it can be a serious problem, since it means the beginning will be the hardest part of the game. This inverted difficulty curve turns off new players and bores hardcore ones. Games must remain challenging to remain interesting.

Player Oriented Design

Braid, in contrast to VVVVVV, has a combination of variety through level design and variety through player ability. In Braid, there are objects that behave differently in respect to time, and levels in which time moves in unusual ways. But there are also two worlds that grant special abilities, a time shadow that repeats your action and the power to create a bubble of slowed time.

However, VVVVVV and Braid have similar design because both strictly monitor player capacity relative to the challenges and puzzles. The special skills in Braid are only usable in the worlds that revolve around the mechanic, so players cannot use the skills to skip or trivialize other puzzles.

This is really the key lesson of VVVVVV's design. It keeps things simple for the player and designer. The challenges are all clear: the game promises the player that all the puzzles can be solved with what they have. The player will never skip content or become frustrated with it because of their ability set.

How to Make Us Have Fun

We can already see how much more complicated design becomes when players are powered up. Controlling players is much easier without granting them new abilities.
VVVVVV throws everything including the kitchen sink at the player, and the gameplay is literally as simple as how much you press left or right after flipping. VVVVVV asks, "how hard can we possibly make this task?" and the answer is "really hard, I lost 150 lives on Edge Games."

It's not just, as stated earlier, that the variability in game elements is located in VVVVVV's level design. VVVVVV hits players with a concept, then keeps hitting them with it in harder forms and multiple variations and then adds on some other stuff that you've seen before but not in that context and then throws it all together for the grand finale. The game takes about three hours to finish but it fleshes out every element of design in detail.

VVVVVV doesn't run its potential into the ground. It doesn't have filler, and part of the reason that it can deliver this is because the player cannot subvert challenges. Players still feel satisfied and accomplished even when there's just one solution.

The Player as Level Designer

The contrast to this is the more sandbox approach taken by games like Bioshock. The first problem that games like Bioshock encounter, and Bioshock thankfully overcomes, is having enough content for the player to play around in. Metal Gear Solid 4 suffers from having a huge number of tools for the player but not enough situations to use them all.

Bioshock is long enough for players to get their plasmid's worth out of it, but the levels do not have a tremendous amount of variety. This is not a case of bad design. In Bioshock's case especially, it isn't necessary to have the variety of VVVVVVV. The player will be constantly growing in power, and while the challenges become greater and enemies become more powerful the level design is not actually much different. This isn't a problem because Bioshock counts on the player to find new ways to play with the environment.

Bioshock is in a separate category from games like metroid, which provide more complex abilities for more complex situations. Bioshock comes close to placing the player in the role of game designer, while there are still limits like ammo, health, and cash also have the effect of forcing the player into scenarios where they have to fall back on alternate methods to solve problems.

Beating the Game Before It Ends

The issue with this design is that it doesn't take much for one solution to be superior to another. A game that will only accept a certain specific solution to a puzzle limits the player, but it ensures that the player experiences a distinct and unique challenge every time. Bioshock expects more from players, but provides a different kind of fun, more akin to the joy of creation than of solution. In VVVVVV, the player tries and tries until figuring out the solution. In Bioshock, the player crafts the solutions themselves.

Once players craft solutions, the game becomes much less complex. One of my personal solutions was to locate and freeze the nearest turret and hack it before doing anything else. I tried other solutions, but the freeze made the turrets easier to hack as well and the defensive position gave me a huge advantage. Since hacking paused the game, this was actually even easier than killing it.

The consequence is that once I figured this out, I never approached a turret any other way. Essentially, I beat the turret game of Bioshock. Let me tell you, there are a lot of turrets in that game. To oversimplify, it would be like a single room from VVVVVV repeating intermittently throughout the game. VVVVVV repeats themes and challenges, but always in new contexts and in more complicated ways. It knows players won't have any fun solving a puzzle they've already answered.

VVVVVV is far from simple. If anything the only person it's simple for is the designer. In turn, VVVVVV creates a very compelling pact with the player: you can solve everything in this game with three buttons. It will not allow you to experience the joy of tricking solutions out of the game. All you can do is figure out what you need to do and do it right. Freedom, on the other hand, is much harder to make fun.

[Andrew Vanden Bossche is a freelance writer and student. He has a blog called Mammon Machine, which is updated less often than this message, and can be reached at AndrewVandenB@gmail.com]

Posted by Andrew Vanden Bossche at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

While Tokyo parties with Fami-Mode this weekend, New York City will hold its own special 8-bit music event at The Tank's monthly chiptune show Pulsewave. This Saturday's Pulsewave features the TCTD Awards Gala, the second annual award show hosted by True Chip Till Death, a site dedicated to chip music and related disciplines.

The gala will give out awards for 2009's best record label, live visualist, oldschool demo production, track, artist, etc. The albums nominated for "Best Release" include Bud Melvin's Popular Music, Bondage Fairies's Cheap Italian Wine, Alex Mauer's Vegavox2, C-jeff's Electric, and compilation CD Blip Festival 2008: 32 Live Recordings.

Several headline acts are scheduled to play at the event: Animal Style and American Elf author James Kochalka Superstar. Glomag, Oxygenstar, and visual artist No Carrier will perform at Pulsewave, too, as will special guests Trash Can Man (nominated for "Best Live Performer), Mark Denardo of Graffiti Monsters, and Peter Berkman of Anamanaguchi.

You can watch a Bad Dudes NES Rom flyer for this weekend's Pulsewave after the break! True Chip Til Death has a list and accompanying media for all the awards categories and nominees at its site.

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

Terry Cavanagh's VVVVVV and its C64-esque graphics already seemed like a low fidelity experience, but Markus Persson has created an even more stripped down version of the game as part of the Java4K 2010 Competition, a contest to create games in Java sized under 4KB.

Cutely titled VVV, this de-make tribute was written with Cavanagh's permission. The game carries over a lot of features and elements from the original platformer -- you're still saving stranded crew members, and can even open a mini-map by hitting "M". You can play VVV and the competition's other entries for free at the Java4k site.

As IndieGames.com's Michael Rose points out, playing VVVVVV's musics in the background as you flip your way through VVV is great. Composer Magnus "Souleye" Pålsson has released the full soundtrack (titled PPPPPP), so you can do just that!

Posted by Eric Caoili at 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

[Another 2010 Game Developers Choice Awards announcement, and I think the Penny Arcade folks are well deserving of accolades, especially given their great work with Child's Play and their genuine, infectious love of gaming in all its forms.]

The 2010 Game Developers Choice Awards have announced that the key figures behind popular webcomic Penny Arcade, the Child’s Play Charity and the Penny Arcade Expo events -- writer Jerry Holkins, artist Mike Krahulik and business guru Robert Khoo -- will be awarded the prestigious Ambassador Award.

The Special Award honors an individual or individuals who have "helped the game industry advance to a better place, either through facilitating a better game community from within, or by reaching outside the industry to be an advocate for video games and help further our art."

It is chosen by the elite Choice Awards Advisory Committee, part of the highest honors in game development acknowledging excellence in game creation, which includes game industry notables such as Ben Cousins (EA DICE), Harvey Smith (Arkane), Raph Koster (Metaplace), John Vechey (PopCap), Ray Muzyka (BioWare), Clint Hocking (Ubisoft), and many others.

Holkins, Krahulik and Khoo will receive their award for their genuine, gamer-friendly empire they've built over the past decade, lovingly skewering video game culture and developers while building up a following, events and an industry-leading video game charity that help epitomize the positive elements of 'gamer spirit'.

Penny Arcade itself began in 1998 when high school friends and life-long gamers Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik began to pen the webcomic, which featured two semi-autobiographical gamers who joked, argued and swooned over all things video gaming. The website soon grew in popularity as gamers spread their favorite comic strips to friends, and the comic garnered a loyal following of like-minded game fans.

After years of financial difficulties, the comic duo met Robert Khoo, who quickly became the team’s business manager, and helped to create a burgeoning empire centered around the comic, which now includes the Penny Arcade Expo (PAX), a huge bi-annual gathering of gamers that hosts tabletop, console and PC games while celebrating gaming culture.

As well as drawing over 100,000 game-positive geeks to the events in Seattle, Washington and now Boston, Massachusetts every year, the team created the Child’s Play Charity in 2003, leveraging their large fanbase to help support children’s hospitals with games, toys and money. In 2009 alone, the charity raised $1.78 million dollars in donations from gamers and a host of game development and publishing studios. For these community and philanthropic successes, the Penny Arcade team is jointly receiving the Ambassador Award.

"The Penny Arcade crew might be some of the most flippant, adorable game fans out there," says Meggan Scavio, Event Director for GDC. "So obviously, we’re delighted to recognize their efforts in providing a genuine voice and event for gamers, and working with both fans and developers in the Child's Play Charity to raise millions of dollars for a great cause."

The trio will be present to collect the Ambassador Award at this year's Game Developer's Choice Awards ceremony, held immediately following the Independent Games Festival Awards on Thursday, March 11, during GDC 2010 at San Francisco's Moscone Convention Center.

Choice Awards organizers have also recently confirmed Valve co-founder Gabe Newell as the recipient of the Pioneer Award, as well as debuting 2010 regular awards finalists led by Naughty Dog's Uncharted 2 and Thatgamecompany's Flower.

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

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

Unlike the Street Fighter IV mini-arcade sticks, Namco Bandai's new Musou Controller keychains don't just play audio clips from the game; it lets you play full Street Fighter II matches! The small pad lets you select a character, input different moves, and even win a round without needing a display.

Depending on which of the three SFII controllers you purchase, you can play as Ryu, Blanka, Sagat, Ken, E. Honda, Guile, Chun-Li, Dhalsim, or Vega. And though I'm not sure how it works, if you have a friend with his own controller, you can apparently battle each other a versus match.

Namco Bandai also produced Musou controllers for shoot'em up Xevious and for Pro Baseball Family Stadium. Again, I've no idea how these work -- I assume the sound effects/game outcomes are chosen randomly? Either that, or there are miniature people inside the controllers acting out your directions and yelling out sound effects.

The Musou Controller line will release in Japan on March 20th for around ¥888, or around $9.83. Expect these to show up on import shops like NCSX, Play-Asia, and Strapya.

[Via Eastern Mind, Mecha Damashii]

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

[We're partnering with game criticism site Critical Distance to present some of the week's most inspiring writing about the art and design of video games from commentators worldwide. This week, Ben Abraham examines the future of digital distribution and Portal's female protagonist.]

Jenn Frank of Infinite Lives writes one of the best explications of the importance of feminist readings of videogames in ‘Videogame feminist of the decade; or, when “You” is a girl’.

It’s a hard one to sum up in the short blurb I usually do for these sorts of pieces, so here’s a big chunk that hopefully illustrates some of its more critical points. Frank is talking about Portal here, and the moment in which the player first observes their player-character through a portal.

“And so now you say to yourself—maybe not aloud, maybe internally instead—“I wonder what I look like.” So you backtrack, trying to get a better look at yourself. And ever so carefully, you edge into your own line-of-sight. Surprise! You are a chick. THAT IS UNSETTLING. It’s unsettling even if you really are a chick, but probably also if you are a dude.

Because, when you spatially align yourself so that you can observe your own avatar, she is staring off to her right or left through a space/time vortex, ostensibly gazing right back at you. And (this is the horrific part), you and she are standing in exactly the same spot and moment in space and time, eyeing each other. I don’t think there’s a stranger existential moment in the history of gaming.”

Evan Stubbs writes at Red Kings Dream about ‘the future of digital distribution’. It’s a theme we’ve seen a couple of times this month, first turning up in LB Jeffries piece on the irresistible lure of steam sales, and then several times elsewhere.

In related news, Rock Paper Shotgun also noted this week the coming of a possible ‘second hand market for downloaded games’. That would be interesting, wouldn’t it?

Elsewhere, Latoya Peterson, writing for The Borderhouse this week, noted that ‘The Patriarchy Hurts Gamer Guys Too: The Rockstar Labor Controversy, Game Developer Wives and Work/Life Balance’. The most important idea being that while poor managerial practices (such as crunch) hurt everyone, men included; it doesn’t affect everyone equally and can have a worse detrimental impact on women in the game development workforce. Quotes from Erin Hoffman and Brenda Brathwaite appear in the article and both make appearances in the comments.

In another notable blog post, Daniel Bullard-Bates writes about Final Fantasy IV in a post titled ‘Real Sacrifice’, noting: "Personal sacrifice for the sake of others has been a source of fascination and praise for humanity" - even in Square Enix RPGs.

Paul Bauman writes in to let us know about a piece he wrote on immersion and risk over at Destructoid, in a new post called ‘The Future: Thrown to the Wolves.’

Matt Gallant helpfully points us in direction of a piece by Jonathan Morin of Ubisoft Montreal about the importance of context in game design. He uses a touching story of the context around losing a baby and the insights it gave him, and moves onto context in sports games. It’s a very different, very intimate kind of post, but worth reading nonetheless.

Aaron Sexton lets us know that he has written about Bayonetta’s plot, which he feels has been overlooked in favour of discussion around the sexualized imagery in the game. Sexton unfavourably compares the game to the King Kong movie game tie in.

We mentioned Gaming Watch in last weeks post, and this week they discuss ‘A Slow News Day’, in which the enthusiast press echo chamber uncritically re-posts dubious polls from a UK website.

Loyal readers of TWIVGB may remember a post from the Lesbian Gamers website that discussed the nature of the Halo 3: ODST character of Dare, with the argument that the game presented a rather sexist depiction of her character. More recently, the author of the original post came across an alternative reading of the Dare character in an entry on the Halo wikia page called “Examination of Female Characters” and praised it for its thoughtful disagreement with the Lesbian Gamers original. My Xbox 360 is currently dead, so I’m still waiting to play ODST, which is a real shame.

Rock Paper Shotgun’s Kieron Gillen and Quintin Smith have been playing the hex-grid turn-based indie game Solium Inferium, by the same solo developer who did the well received Armageddon Empires. This week saw the completion of a truly stunning series of running game diary posts that describe the game in all its glorious backstabbery and intrigue. It’s one of the best things RPS have done and a highly entertaining read.

Other readers that have gotten in touch this week to point us towards this piece by James Dilks at No Added Sugar asking 'Do We Need Criticism?' -- to which my own response would be a resounding 'Yes!'

Stephen Locker is producing a series of video essays on 'Games Worth Remembering'. If you're at all familiar with the explosion of video essays issuing forth from the multitudes of film critics on the net then you'll know the format. This piece on the PS3 game Flower combines video, music and voice-over in what is the first truly solid attempt (that I've encountered at least) at this format of games criticism. Ever since I encountered one about a horror film I've since forgotten, I've been waiting now for the first video essay about games to turn up. The first in this very promising series can also be found here.

Did we really get to the end without mentioning Dragon Age: Origins? Better fix that by linking to this piece by Dan Bruno - ‘Morrigan Disapproves’. The DA:O pool is safe for another week.

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

Inspired by The Who's rock opera album and musical film Tommy, online shop Mondo released a poster design themed around the titular character's pinball exploits. The store has wo attractive versions of the artwork, one dominated by greens and blues, and another printed with metallic inks. Well, it had two versions, but because it only printed 75 of the posters, they're now both sold out.

Designer Jesse Phillips created the original illustration for a performance of the movie last year at the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin, TX. You can see early versions of the artwork and more different colored versions of the piece on his Flickr set. I've included the two main variants Mondo had on sale below, too.

[Via Superpunch]]

Posted by Eric Caoili at 4:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

[In this in-depth analysis, Gamasutra's Christian Nutt, fresh from Apple's high-profile iPad unveiling in San Francisco, takes time to ponder the future of the versatile tablet device as a gaming platform.]

In San Francisco this morning, I attended the unveiling of Apple's iPad device. It's funny. Eavesdropping on the crowd and conversing with other journalists led me to believe that everybody who wasn't excessively excited about the announcement before it even came was already a bit bored with the idea of an Apple tablet. The hype cycle with which everybody in the video game industry is already very familiar was demonstrated perfectly by 9:30 AM.

During the presentation, Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO, made great hay of the fact that Apple is now primarily a mobile devices company. "By revenue, Apple is the largest mobile devices company in the world. Apple is a mobile devices company. That's what we do," he said. Most of the computers it sells are laptops, the iPhone is tremendously popular, and the iPod is a continuing success for the company.

He boasted that the company is now a bigger mobile devices company than Sony, Samsung, or Nokia. And the iPad slots into Apple's continuing emphasis on this transformation of the marketplace -- and may even help drive it.

The iPad, to oversimplify, is an extremely large iPod Touch, equipped with a 9.7-inch screen at 1024x768 resolution. It seems easy to believe that it will be a great web device and a nice e-book reader -- two of its primary functions -- and do well with photos and video. Like all of Apple's devices, it feels nice in your hands and looks nice in a shop window.

The Games Question

But how will it be for games? Well, there are two angles to consider here.

One is the platform's capabilities. The Apple A4 processor in the device runs at 1 GHz, up from the reported 600 MHz processor in the iPod 3GS, the fastest device in Apple's mobile device family until now. It has a big, beautiful screen, which is also a multitouch surface. And although Apple's official specs page simply lists "accelerometer," an Apple representative at the event told me the device's accelerometer will be able to detect tilting on both the X and Y axes, unlike the iPhone, unlocking true 3D control as a possibility, but this capability was not demonstrated.

There is no question that this will be a more satisfying and possibly much more capable device for gaming than the iPhone and iPod Touch. You can see much more, and with a bigger multitouch window and increased accelerometer capabilities, you can control it much more easily. As demoed by Gameloft, which showed off a work-in-progress iPad version of its shooter N.O.V.A., the increased screen size will allow for increased configurability. Gameloft has added a mini-map to its game, and the position of on-screen controls was configurable in a way that likely wouldn't be worth the bother on iPhone.

The other angle, of course, is that the iPad is as closed a platform as the iPhone is. Inevitable jailbreaking aside -- and what developer benefits from that? -- it's worth remembering that you'll be limited to Apple's SDK and iTunes delivery mechanism, as with its other mobile devices. A touch-based Mac this is not. In this sense, it really is a big iPod.

This seems peculiar on a device that's so close to an actual computer -- Apple demoed iWork, including its Pages word processing software, on the device this morning. You can output to a monitor or hook up a keyboard. But the user ultimately doesn't have control over his or her device in the same way he or she would with a laptop, and everything will flow through iTunes when it comes to syncing with a PC or Mac.

So now you know where you stand, developers: the same place you already were, more or less. As always, Apple is the gatekeeper.

What Will Happen with the Software Market?

It's obvious that, at least at launch, most developers are going to worry about making iPad-native versions of existing apps. Sure, "most" iPhone apps are compatible with the device out of the box, but while they're totally playable, they don't benefit much from being blown up to two times their native resolution. The benefit here is that the Apple fanatics who buy this thing at launch will already have access to their existing software libraries on their new device, which may reassure some purchase decisions.

But the retrofit mania will happen mostly because it won't make sense for many developers, particularly cash-strapped indies, to pour resources into iPad-native games when its future is less obviously bright than the iPhone's was. And indies won't be the only ones doing this. After demoing a version of iPhone Need for Speed Shift, quickly retrofitted for iPad, EA's Travis Boatman said, "We're going to be able to bring all of our other EA games from the App Store to this device in no time."

Much more so than at the original App Store launch, it's going to be exceedingly difficult to stand out from day one -- unless you can come up with a tremendously original idea, execute on it well, and market it aggressively.

If you do come up with that great new idea, "we're going to put it front and center" on the App Store, promises Apple's SVP of iPhone software, Scott Forstall. That's a promise you can rely on. Apple routinely features strong software on the App Store and, more importantly, makes the choices itself, based on quality, without ad buys coming into the picture.

But the slots are so limited and the process so opaque that you can't rely on it happening to you. The iPad will be as big a crap shoot for developers as the iPhone is. Forstall promised "another goldrush" when the iPad launches. But that promise, rather than exciting them, might make most developers a little queasy.

Who's Going to Be There?

Jobs calls iPad "a truly magical and revolutionary product." The realists, or the cynical, call it an overgrown iPod Touch. Whatever it is, the audience -- its size and its makeup -- will be integral to its appeal as a game platform. The capabilities are obviously there, and with such a big screen that's so easy to control, the ability to deliver rich and robust game experiences becomes immediately obvious. There's Unity and even Unreal Engine for the device, let's not forget, among other technologies that can help deliver high-quality experiences.

But will those who buy the iPad do so to read the New York Times during their frequent business trips -- people who want a Kindle, but better? Or will they be the same kind of diverse crowd that has the iPhone?

There seems to be a possibility that this is a device that can simplify computing, making it less confusing, more accessible, and more appealing to a wide audience. It's certainly going to be a great device for browsing Facebook, particularly as it's hard to imagine that the company won't launch a custom iPad app day one. (Still, Facebook games might not benefit -- the demo device, like iPhone, didn't do Flash.)

If that happens, this might appeal to entirely new consumers: people who just want the web and a bit more, delivered in the most convenient way possible. Who can't stand a soft keyboard for only 140 characters? After all, it's been reported that the iPhone is already gaining traction as a primary internet device for many, as surprising as that might sound to anyone who's seated in front of a PC right now.

Thanks to the iPhone and iPod Touch, says Jobs, "There are over 75 million people that already know how to use the iPad." That may be true, but will they want to use the iPad? Can they afford the iPad? For many, gaming is still incidental to the primary telephony and browsing functions of the iPhone. What's the primary function of the iPad? When that gets defined -- and marketing is part of that, so Apple's got to take point here -- that will help us know whether gaming will have a big place on this new device.

It's hard to suggest to developers to take a "wait and see" approach when the clock is always ticking on time and money, particularly for indies. There's no doubt that there's a killer app to be made, and a ton of competition out there who will be trying to make it.

At the same time, the device's future seems a lot murkier than the iPhone or iPod. The iPhone made smartphones essential to a huge number of people, and gaming came along for the ride -- and got so compelling Apple realized it would help drive the device into more hands. It's hard to think of the iPad as "essential" to anybody right now. But there's a chance it may catch the wave of a new audience that doesn't want a full-fledged PC. If ever a device had that chance, it may be this one. And those people, like any, will certainly want a chance to play games.

Posted by Simon Carless at 3:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

One-man studio Spyn Doctor Games (Johannes Hubert) announced Your Doodles Are Bugged, a playful puzzle game coming to Xbox Live Indie Games next month for just 80 Microsoft Points, or $1. It revolves around "cute and squeaky bugs, which apparently have been hexed into the magic doodles of Doodleus the Master Doodler."

To help these hundreds of bugs trapped in Doodleus's colorful sketches, you'll use a magic pen to draw paths, bridges, and stairways to guide them across each stage and into a pot of magic honey (seems like an idea that would work great on Nintendo DS, too!). The game features unspecified unlockable content, as well as local and global speedrun record lists to compare your times against others.

You can see several more screenshots after the break, but you make sure you watch the trailer, too; the "Korobeiniki" soundtrack (a Russian folk tune that should immediately recognize from Tetris) in the clip is great!

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

[Dylan Cuthbert and the folks at Q-Games continue to make interesting audiovisual choices for their PixelJunk series of downloadable PlayStation 3 games, and here, Jeriaska catches up with The Orb's Alex Paterson and collaborator Dom Beken, the folks behind the soundtrack to PixelJunk Shooter as High Frequency Bandwidth.]

The fourth title in the PixelJunk series by developer Q-Games features a soundtrack by UK electronic music team High Frequency Bandwidth.

Comprised of Alex Paterson and Dom Beken, the two have previously contributed to The Orb and Transit Kings music groups. Together they have overseen Q-Games' process of transforming six of their licensed music tracks into interactive audio files that reflect the on-screen action of PixelJunk Shooter.

High Frequency Bandwidth follows Kyoto musicians Otograph of PixelJunk Monsters and Baiyon of PixelJunk Eden in providing music for the downloadable game series. Music found in PixelJunk Shooter will be released in a series of EPs beginning April 12 on Malicious Damage Records.

In this interview on the subject of the game, we hear about the process behind the score for the Playstation 3 downloadable title and High Frequency Bandwidth's plans for the future.

Dom Beken and Alex Paterson

Q-Games president Dylan Cuthbert has mentioned that he's followed The Orb and Transit Kings for years. When did the idea of collaborating on PixelJunk Shooter first come up?

High Frequency Bandwidth: We happened to have known Dylan from Club Karma in Osaka, from many blue moons ago. What happened was, when Dylan first came to us he asked if we had anything he could use for Shooter. We sent in around fifteen demos we were working on for High Frequency Bandwidth and he just loved it.

We ended up settling on six pieces of music. The follow on from that was, I was worried that if someone got stuck on a level they'd just keep hearing the same track over and over and end up muting the sound, which wouldn't help the game at all. We then came up with the idea of doing versions that acted dynamically with the game.

How did you go about adapting the sketches shown to Q-Games for PixelJunk Shooter?

It was a matter of taking the tracks and stripping them back to their individual elements so that as different things happen in the game, different elements of the music tracks are triggered. In that respect, every time you play the game you are hearing a new version of the music.

Were you dealing with any unique constraints during this process?

One concern was keeping it within the confines of a download game: the more music you want people to download, the bigger the files are going to be. The music ends up being a big part of the file that you download for this game.

How is High Frequency Bandwidth related to your previous band Transit Kings?

The reason we got together is going back we had been working on The Orb, and we had the idea of putting together a band with Guy Pratt and Jimmy Cauty. That was Transit Kings. We decided to carry it on with a new name and new direction, and that was High Frequency Bandwidth.

Did all the music in some form predate joining the game's production, including the theremin intro piece and the boss battle track?

All of the tracks existed in one form or another. "Hill Film Blues" is a full length track and will be on the album, longer than the short intro piece as the game starts up which has got a theremin in it. "Hellfire and Brimsone" is the one with the heavy guitar on it. We've done a lot or work on scores for films, TV and ads, which works for set pieces like the opening, but presents an interesting challenge for gameplay when the player controls the action.

The basic tracks came from the project we've been writing for our album and EPs. Choosing a direction for them really came out of going back and forward on Skype and e-mail with Dylan, Rhod and Kentaro [Yoshida]. We started looking at some Quicktime movies and in the first instance literally started working to the movies exactly as if they were a film.

Who was responsible for the sound effects?

Q have their own effects designer and he's done a great job making something sympathetic to the music. Some of the SFX required a slightly more musical approach, so we also designed some bits and sent them over.

There’s an instrumental version of “Hundred Forty Billion” on your website, but how does it differ from the track on the EP?

We have an amazing guest vocalist on that track from the Zulu Nation Rhyme Syndicate named Dynamax. The Indian vocalist on "Happy Fucking Birthday," which Sony had cleaned up as Happy "Funky" Birthday for the game, is Aadesh Shrivastava. Aadesh is a prolific Bollywood composer and artist who also loves hip hop.

Where did the samples featured on “Hundred Forty Billion" originate from?

It would help if I could remember. We use tiny snippets of license-free sound sources, which are the basis for the granular synthesis we use to create something new. If you were to come into the studio, you would see us knee deep in records from all over the world, scouring every kind of video holding site on the planet, and every other form of audio we can get our hands on.

When did you first get acquainted with hip-hop as a musical form?

I first got into it in the mid 1990’s when instrumental hip-hop was blowing up in the UK in Bristol. I got interested in all kinds of breakbeat music, and that became the form that I liked writing the best. I went to university in Liverpool and stayed on for about four years afterwards, working at Parr Street Studios.

I was living around the Sefton Park area then. Liverpool at that time still had a great underground black music scene, mostly in illegal parties in the basements of the huge (former slave-traders) houses in Toxteth. There I met artists like Lloyd Massett who introduced me to Jalal from the Last Poets.

London has a certain perception of the musical history of Liverpool for bands like the Beatles, but actually Liverpool has the oldest black population in the country and has a vibrant hip-hop scene. It’s been a passion of mine and I’ve been looking for an outlet to write something that is hip-hop influenced. High Frequency Bandwidth is the first project I’ve had to really do that.

Do you feel that you have more focus now, as opposed to being part of a larger ensemble?

Definitely. Hip-hop is a genre predominantly made by a DJ and a musician. It’s made things infinitely easier.

How do you plan for the EPs and album to differ from the interactive music in the game?

You’ll find the tracks are every bit as dynamic to listen to, but in Shooter the player controls how the tracks go. If you start to get attacked in the game, you’ll hear more threatening elements of the track coming in. When you stop fighting, the track will automatically strip back to the atmospheric and ambient electronic music. On the EP you will get the tracks as we wanted them to sound as pieces of music, as opposed to what is happening in reaction to what is on the screen.

When can we expect to see the music from the game released?

Very soon the first EPs will be coming out in the UK. "Hundred Forty Billion" will be on EP#2, "Hill Film Blues" and "Happy Fucking Birthday" will be on EP#3, "Hidden Foto Banks" and "Hell Fire and Brimstone" will be on the album of the same title to follow. There are no plans to release "High Flying Birds" at the moment, but it might feature on the goodies list on our website. The first EP comes out on iTunes and most other download sites on April 12th or thereabouts.

From here, what are you looking to accomplish in the future for High Frequency Bandwidth?

We would like to be playing some kind of new media outlet, more interactive music and providing scores for films. Of course this year we are looking to play some festivals and do a tour of our own. Generally, we are looking to go beyond just making records in the studio to get our music out there.

[For more information on High Frequency Bandwidth, visit the official website. Images courtesy of Q-Games and Malicious Damage Records.]

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

If you're too impatient to wait for Nicalis's WiiWare game NightSky -- formerly Night Game -- you can play a game that looks an awful lot like it for free on iPhone (with downloadable level packs planned). Mobile Bros. just released Trundle, a puzzle platformer using tilt and touchscreen controls to navigate a ball through a series of obstacles.

Of course, it's possible for an indie studio to design a game around silhouetted levels and gradient backgrounds without ever having seen the Nicklas "Nifflas" Nygren-designed NightSky, but the similarities in stage props, ambience, and mechanics are suspicious. You can compare trailers for both Trundle and NightSky after the break.

Mobile Bros. has acknowledged the "rip-off" accusations many gamers have made on forums and blogs, and says it took inspiration from a number of titles with silhouette styles and/or ball-based puzzle platforming, including Limbo, Feist, Red Ball, and Rolando.

"We’ve seen that many have been comparing Trundle with the up and coming Night Sky game for the Wii," says Mobile Bros.'s Robert Blackwood. "Although, similar in artistic style, these are two very different games with no affiliation with each other…. I have to add though that Night Sky looks purely awesome."

[Via TIGForums]

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

Unfazed by the rejection of its last promotional video for the 2010 Game Developers Conference, the Mega64 crew quickly went to work to produce this revised commercial, focusing less on the trade show's rave parties (mostly because there won't be any) and more on its geekier aspects.

Unfortunately, organizers for the event felt this video doesn't quite capture the spirit of GDC 2010 either. While they conceded that a panel devoted to cake-themed Portal jokes might be possible, coordinators feared that promoting game/music piracy and instating a "20-buckle minimum" on boot-wearing attendees might drive away sponsors and publishers.

Hopefully, the next take will get it right; it's starting to get expensive repairing the video camera every time Rocco kicks the lens to make his point.

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

[As the early deadline approaches, here's this year's Game Developers Conference keynote confirmed, plus some other major talks and the Game Design Challenge for this year revealed by my colleagues.]

Organizers of Game Developers Conference 2010 have announced that Sid Meier, the Director of Creative Development and co-founder of Firaxis Games, will speak from his 25 years of experience in game design in the keynote address at GDC 2010 this March.

Best known for his work designing the genre-defining Civilization strategy game franchise, Sid Meier will present a keynote entitled "The Psychology of Game Design (Everything You Know Is Wrong)."

In this rare address, Meier will describe how real-world, historical and mathematical facts cannot form the foundation of a successful game design. Instead, Meier will argue, the driving force of a game's design should be the psychology of the player.

Along the way, the seminal game designer will draw illustrative examples from his canon to illustrate how the complexities of human psychology can inform game design more than the laws of logic, physics, or algebra. In this development model, egomania, paranoia and delusion become part of the designer's toolkit, as the player's perception becomes the real reality, connecting gameplay to the player's psychological experience.

The keynote address will take place Friday, March 12 at Game Developers Conference, which runs from March 9-13 at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco. Meier is a recipient of multiple video game awards, including the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2008 Game Developers Choice Awards and entry into the Academy of Interactive Arts and Science's Hall of Fame.

His resume includes a plethora of pioneering and genre-defining titles, including 1991's Civilization, which challenged gamers to balance city-planning, economics, education, military strategy and global diplomacy, as well as the critically acclaimed 2008 follow-up Civilization Revolution. His other titles have included Pirates!, a unique blend of action, roleplaying, and strategy, as well as Railroad Tycoon, one of the first 'god' games.

Alongside the Meier keynote announcement, GDC organizers are also revealing multiple other major new lectures and panels, including the following highlights:

- Ubisoft Montreal lead designer Patrick Plourde will speak on 'Designing Assassin's Creed 2', discussing how "the design team faced the challenges of an enormous scope, one of the biggest development teams ever assembled and a limited time frame" for the critically acclaimed, Renaissance Italy-set action game.

- In a lecture entitled 'Get Your Game Out Of My Movie! Interactive Storytelling in Mass Effect 2', BioWare's Armando Troisi "will focus on the narrative design fundamentals used at BioWare and how they evolved for Mass Effect 2, explaining components of the just-debuted game's story design, problems encountered during implementation, and design choices made for the long-awaited franchise sequel.

- The always popular Game Design Challenge returns this year with a unique theme - the designers "must conceive a game that somehow incorporates the actual death of a real person." The contestants for the 'Real-World Permadeath' challenge, MC-ed by Eric Zimmerman, are last year's Challenge winners Heather Kelley (Kokoromi) and Erin Robinson (Puzzle Bots), facing off against Thatgamecompany co-founder Jenova Chen (Flow, Flower) and Airtight Games' Kim Swift (Portal).

Also newly debuted from among the almost 300 already-confirmed GDC 2010 lectures are talks on shader techniques in Valve's Left 4 Dead 2, audio in Turn 10's Forza Motorsport 3, character customization in Realtime Worlds' APB, and a host of Summit talks spanning social gaming, iPhone games, independent games and beyond.

"It's an honor to have Sid Meier, a true pioneer in game development, share his decades worth of insight at the 2010 Game Developers Conference," says Meggan Scavio, GDC Event Director, "We're also delighted to welcome so many other high quality lectures from the industry's leading developers."

Early Bird rate registration for Game Developers Conference 2010 ends on next Thursday, February 4, 2010 -- for more information about GDC 2010, interested parties can visit the official GDC website.

Posted by Simon Carless at 7:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Developed by PigalleGame Family Entertainment Machines, a Hungary-based company that specializes in boxing and arm-wrestling games, Box4Sex challenges you to "Show you[r] lust is at maximum power, and prove yourself for the lady of your choice - with a sexy gift!"

Box4Sex offers a speed bag that you hit once as hard as possible. Depending on the strength of your punch, the machine will spit out (through a hole decorated with squiggly sperm cells) a capsule that rewards you with rings, thong underwear, and condoms! And if you beat the high score, you can play a free bonus game to win another pair of panties.

The machine is cluttered with text; I counted seven instances of the phrase "Play 4 A Sexy Gift". The middle circle has a particularly embarrassing message: "I'm Horny Let Me Play." There's also at least one section that shows a subtle variation of the title: "Box 4 Safe Sex".

You can watch a video of the Box4Sex machine in action after the break:

[Via Arcade Heroes]

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

[GameSetLinks is GameSetWatch's semi-regular 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.]

Blasting a new set of rather esoteric links, was interesting to start out with a piece (albeit a little old) from Brian 'Psychochild' Green discussing how the closure of his company Near Death Studios was handled in some of the larger blogs -- suggesting that flippant posts are easy, but they may not always be the right thing to do.

Also in this set of links - cyberpunk games discussed, pics for a Nintendo graphic novel, the Dead Rising live action movie weirdness, discussion of 'the spatially driven story', a rather sweet 'New Entertainment Manifesto', and more things besides.

Woot-ola:

Psychochild’s Blog » Game Journalism Fail
That there's some unnecessarily lazy writing, I agree.

selectbutton :: View topic - The New Entertainment Manifesto
Love this. Don't care if it's ironic.

The case for cyberpunk « schlaghund’s playground
'...Why aren’t there more cyberpunk games out there? There are a few I can think of, which I’ll mention later in this post, but really, it doesn’t get anywhere close to the number of fantasy games, outer-space sci-fi games, or historically set games.'

Important moments (and people!) in Nintendo... - Tiny Cartridge - Nintendo DS & DSi News, Media, Videos, Imports, Homebrew, & Retro Junk
Super cute illustrations for a possible Nintendo history graphic novel...

Storyboard: Duke Nukem Forever’s Spectacular Failure | Wired Magazine
Interesting, a podcast about a Wired story....

First Trailer for Capcom's Live-Action 'Dead Rising' Movie Emerges - Horror Squad
Wow, oddness in a made for Xbox 360 live-action Japanese thing: "The (non-English) trailer kicks off with a simple brothers-on-the-run story, but fret not as it soon starts exploding heads left and right before culminating in a zombie-destroying wheelchair that makes the spikey ride from A Nightmare on Elm Street: Dream Warriors look like a kids toy."

The Anti-Aliasing Effect | DigitalFoundry
Nobody else online explains graphical tech issues in this consumer-friendly level of detail - bravo.

Plush Apocalypse: The Spatially Driven Story
'In games we certainly suffer from the lack of character driven writing, but have our own unique form of failure in writing – the spatially driven story. In this, the characters exist solely to provide rationale to place gameplay in interesting locales (either visually interesting, mechanically interesting, or both).'

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

Toronto's indie games advocacy group The Hand Eye Society will show off two previously unseen projects during a get-together next Thursday on February 11th at Unit Bar hosted by Nathan Vella, president of indie studio Capy (Critter Crunch, Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes). The presentations will being around 8PM and will last for about a half-hour total.

Craig "Superbrothers" Adams will debut IGF Mobile finalist Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP, a collaborative iPhone/iPod Touch project between himself, Capy, and singer-songwriter Jim Guthrie. The game's concept is described as follows:

"With regards to the intended meaning of the project name, the following is presented for your consideration: SUPERBROTHERS = a safe and reliable cure for the eyes; SWORD & SWORCERY = a fantasy subgenre characterized by swashbuckling heroes; EP = aka Extended Play, a vinyl record or digital download containing up to 37 minutes of music."

Capy's creative director Kris Piotrowski will also demonstrate the developer's WiiWare project Heartbeat and also share lessons from the downloadable game's design process. Though the studio has never shown Heartbeat to the public, we do know it's meant to be an "experience of growing sound", and we have these details from its IGF submission:

"Players begin with an empty, ambient whisper that they can develop to form a pulsating wall of music while exploring an ever-evolving space. Heartbeat offers players the opportunity to explore the creation of music in an innovative way through the use of the Nintendo Wii-Mote. By controlling a heart-shaped cursor, players can trigger sounds, activate objects and keep the beat alive and growing.

Heartbeat is divided up into phases; each phase is a different single-screen space populated with musical objects that have their own behaviors, unique sounds and interactions, with both the player and other objects. The goal of each phase is to help the sound grow by following the rhythm and solving the interaction. Players can do this through the exploration of space, behavior and object play.

Objects evolve when a phase is complete and the sound they created is added to the overall music generated by the game. This evolution signals the start of a new phase, with new interactions to solve and new music to grow."

The entire Heartbeat & Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP teams, as well as Jim Guthrie, will be available after the presentations to chat with attendees. You can find more details on the event at the Hand Eye Society's site.

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

[In the latest Road to the IGF interview with 2010 Independent Games Festival finalists, we speak with Krystian Majewski, the indie behind the triple-nominated adventure game Trauma]

Krystian Majewski's goal with his photographic adventure game Trauma was to be nominated for the Independent Games Festival. He reached his goal three times over, as Trauma has been nominated for Excellence in Visual Art, Excellence in Audio, and the coveted Seamus McNally Grand Prize in IGF 2010.

In the creation of intriguingly-navigated adventure title Trauma, Majewski analyzed the adventure game genre closely, paying attention to its trends over the years, finding out where they fall flat, and experimenting with new ideas.

In this interview, Majewski offers a bit of his personal background, how Trauma came to be, and why he thinks "big budget titles maneuvered themselves into a dead end" on a creative level.

What kind of background do you have making games?

I've been making computer games since I was 10 or so. The oldest game I still have is from 1993. I was 12 back then. It is a pretty unique 4X space colonization game made in Visual Basic.

After high school, I briefly worked for Neon Studios in Frankfurt but went on studying design very soon. During my studies, I realized that triple-A game production really isn't very promising to me right now. Instead I looked into other possibilities like Flash games and independent games.

What development tools did you use?

For Trauma, I used Flash. The game is built upon the Papervision 3D engine and includes the ByteArray mouse gesture recognition library.

As for the content, I used an old Sony DSC-F717 camera I got from Ebay. For some reason, it makes the most excellent photos. It might be because of it's extraordinary lens. Plus, the camera itself looks quite futuristic too.

The photos where then manipulated in lots of different ways using all sorts of tools and techniques. Each effect was a unique challenge and it would take too long to list them all. Let's just say I "photoshopped" them.

How long has your team been working on Trauma?

Trauma was created as a project for my final thesis. I wrote the first abstract in winter 2007. I began really working on in in spring 2008. I got Martin Straka - my musician - on board pretty early. By the late summer 2008 I had the first level going, presented is for my final exam and was even considering submitting it for IGF 2009. However, due to some personal problems, the development got stuck and I decided to wait.

The following year was difficult but we've managed to do some work for it on and off. Everything came together by the late summer 2009. This is also when I also did the voice recording. So all in all, I'd say one-and-a-half years so far. It's still not quite finished.

How did you come up with the concept for the game? It's quite unique.

It was a longer process. I did a lot of experiments. I did a thorough analysis of the history of adventure games. I took a close look at a lot of current spin-offs like the escape-the-room genre or hidden object games. I tried to identify advantages as well as problems and distill a new kind of an adventure game.

What about the presentation? What inspired the slideshow feel?

One of the few things I decided early on was using photos. I loved the look of Samorost. It made me notice that for some odd reason games rarely use photographs. I've seen Photosynth and I was a huge inspiration. But I kept my mind open and tried all sorts of ways of using photographs. I went around at night and made a lot of different experiments. I've even built a robotic camera tripod out of LEGO that could shoot spherical panoramas automatically. It worked but I ended up not using it during production. In the end, after comparing the results of my experiments, the Photosyth-like approach was the most promising one.

Why did you feel that a gesture-based system would work best?

At the time where I was still experimenting, there was a lot of talk about the Wii, DS and the iPhone. I had some opportunities to show the game at exhibitions. So I tried a gesture-based interface and I was quite happy with the results. The deal was sealed when I came up with the lightpainting effect for visualization. It was a perfect fit for the photographic nature of project.

You say that you wanted to focus on a "rich experience rather than an elaborate puzzle challenge." What's the reasoning behind that?

If you look back at the history of games and especially at the history of adventure games, you might see that they all got less challenging with time. The early text adventures were these insane punishing puzzles where you could die or get stuck at every corner. As games matured, they got less and less punishing. One great example is how the LucasArts adventures eliminated death from adventure games. This doesn't mean that the games got boring. They just focused more on different values.

Even back in the 90s, developers of adventure games realized that many players played the games not because of the puzzles but simply because they enjoyed the mood and the environment. Cyan, the studio that made Myst, called them "Tourists". You can see similar ideas in many modern games like Shadow of the Colossus and certainly in indie titles like Knytt.

In many ways, Trauma embraces that philosophy. There are puzzles but they are simple and pretty straight-forward. And if you miss something, the game will spell them out for you. The entire game is over very soon. If you stay longer it's because you are interested, not because you got stuck.

This doesn't mean that I think every game should be easy to solve. Challenge can be a very powerful way to engage and captivate a player. It's just one of many different ways to create interactive experiences and I wanted to explore an alternative.

What are the next steps with the development of Trauma, and what is the ultimate goal of the project?

Being nominated for IGF was the main goal for me. Yet, I still can't quite believe that I actually made it. The competition is daunting and everybody has clearly put so much heart into their games.

I've been sitting on this for such a long time. At this point my only goal is to get it done and get it out there for people to play. Hearing from others what they think of it is a tremendously exciting experience. In a weird way, It is now when even I myself finally discover what the game is about.

Have you played any of the other IGF finalists? Any games you particularly enjoyed?

I've played Super Meat Boy, Shatter, Enviro-Bear 2000 and Today I Die. I love all of them. I must admit that I didn't quite understand Meat Boy. But I'm looking forward to meet [Team Meat's] Edmund McMillen, maybe he can explain.

What do you think of the current state of the indie scene?

I'm very excited about the explosive growth of the scene in the last years. Independent games are now an alternative to big budget titles and certainly show the way in terms of creativity. It seems to me like big budget titles maneuvered themselves into a dead end there, which is one of the reasons why didn't pursue a career in the industry.

If I could make one wish, I would wish for more indie developers concentrating on meaning rather than experimenting with gameplay mechanics. So far the scene seems to be saturated with re-makes of established genres with a few new twists or funky graphics. I have nothing against yet another retro 2D platformer but I would also like to see at least as many efforts to create titles that have something to say. I believe this is the reason why Trauma stands out.

Finding out ways on how games can relate to topics we deal with in everyday lives is one of the hardest challenges. It is also a challenge with the biggest payoff in terms of evolving the medium. It is a challenge that I believe only indies can properly take upon.

[Previous 'Road To The IGF' interview subjects have included Enviro-Bear 2000 developer Justin Smith, Rocketbirds: Revolution's co-creators Sian Yue Tan and Teck Lee Tan, Vessel co-creator John Krajewski, and Super Meat Boy co-creators Edmund McMillen and Tommy Refenes.]

Posted by Simon Carless at 3:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

While not as big as New York City's Blip Fest, Tokyo's Fami-Mode is still a must-attend event for micromusic fans in the area, as it gathers some of the country's top chip talent for a big concert and dance party that kicks off at midnight and doesn't end until 5AM.

Organized by Satoshi Sakagami, owner of retro gaming and culture shop Meteor, Fami-Mode 2010 will return to the Star Pine's Cafe in Kichijouji, Tokyo this Saturday. The scheduled chip acts include several artists we've featured here before: Omodaka, Kplecraft, Consumers, and Sexy-Synthesizer.

In between each live performance, several DJs are slated to spin a set: DJ Smallest, DJ Sakagami (Satoshi), DJ PMKFA, and DJ Masskutt Daitouryou. There will also be some sort of Famicom competition and shops (e.g. The King Of Games, Takara Tomy Arts) trying to separate attendees from their money.

The above video shows clips of performances from last year's Fami-Mode performances. After the break, I've included another video with more highlights from Fami-Mode 2009 as well as Fami-Mode 2010's show poster:

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

['Diamond In The Rough' is a regularly scheduled GameSetWatch opinion column by Tom Cross focusing game narratives and the ways that play, gaming, and narrative mix. This week, Tom examines the pitfalls of an industry dominated by Modern Warfare.]

Infinity Ward's Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has come and gone, although it isn't really gone: it lives on, unstoppable, powered by XBL and the PSN. The game's release may have been highly lucrative (750 million dollars, the last time I checked), but it was also fraught with controversy. Most notable among them were the “F.A.G.S.” scandal (and Infinity Ward's response to such criticisms), the lack of dedicated servers, and, of course, the “No Russian” level.

As Michael Abbott points out, while a small slice of the hardcore demographic and gaming press took offense, a large portion of the game's potential customers were either unaware of or unmoved by any of those issues. For them, the game lives and dies by its multiplayer.

We may natter on about FPS narrative conceits, forced participation, and issues of player agency, but this game doesn't care. It doesn't need to. It's built as a multiplayer juggernaut, and its single player is like some kind of vestigial malformed appendage: it sticks around almost out of habit.

It's an old joke by now that IW moves Modern Warfare 2's multiplayer closer and closer to MMO status with each release. Playing Modern Warfare 2, you can see the changes and signs. Aside from the genre (FPS), this is more and more a pure RPG leveling experience. One wonders when IW will drop all the pretense and just release a multiplayer-only game.

Infinity Ward themselves seem to be doggedly resisting this change. To play this game (and to listen to its developers discuss the single and multiplayer) is to witness the work of people who honestly believe the characters and story they've created are deserving of further installments. It shouldn't be surprising that people think this kind of storytelling is important (we've lapped up neo-fascist drivel like this for decades in video games, movies, and books), but it’s surprising that the unfortunate disconnect between gameplay, setting and writing is explained away, excused, and sometimes lauded.

The plot, writing, and characters of Modern Warfare 2 are all wretched. There are other ways to put this, but none of them communicate my full disgust with the separate parts of this product, and its heft and intention as a whole entity. Infinity Ward has mastered the art of pretentious (not because it is in any way intelligent, but because it thinks it is saying anything of worth or import) military drama, just as it has mastered the art of the contemporary linear military shooter.

As an “entertaining” piece of jingoistic military schlock, Modern Warfare 2 hits a few good notes here and there. The idea of a massive invasion blasting apart and disfiguring everyday America is a potent one, although as I'll explain later, IW's execution of this interesting situation leaves much to be desired. Likewise, its depiction of a long firefight through a capital in ruins is tense, desperate, and perfectly paced. Even a problematic trip to Brazil (opening with a hugely annoying mission) salvages itself somewhat, delivering a tense, alarming firefight through a crowded market where sight lines are crap and the enemies are plentiful.

Oscar Mike!

Even these deft touches, though, are undermined by the company's unsteady, encroaching sense of dramatic timing and exposition.

The dialogue is obtuse in the extreme, moving from topic to topic with alacrity, refusing to acknowledge that its language and execution obscure all but the simplest epithets and declarations. Everyone talks using the caricature of a caricature of a caricature of military slang and shop talk. Everyone everywhere is always "oscar mike," or every single enemy is “danger close.” This isn't to say that military jargon, shop talk, and slang don't have a place in dramatic fiction. They surely do.

The problem is that in Infinity Ward’s almost erotic fixation with military procedure and lingo (taken from military sources, probably, but also from pop culture like “Generation Kill”), Infinity Ward forgot to put more than a word or two of human dialogue into anybody's mouth. It's utterly incomprehensible, and every single person in the game speaks like this. When people do speak as the average person does, its only in the most hackneyed, tired of action movie clichés, with “those hostages won't rescue themselves” being my favorite by far.

I was surprised and delighted to find that while most of the game was populated by comically-accented murderers from the British Isles, Keith David (as your commanding officer, when you play as an American Army Ranger) and Lance Henriksen (as the main general in charge) play large parts in the game. Say what you will about the two, but their instantly recognizable voices and professional delivery do a lot to allay my hatred for the words they speak in this game (although Keith David is apparently "oscar mike" everywhere, from the toilet to his death bed. A dedicated man, to be sure).

Beard Guy and Mohawk Guy!

I'm not sure who at Infinity Ward thought that we, as players, were in love with Mustache Guy (Captain Price, who is, wouldn't you guess it, alive) and Mohawk Guy (Soap, slightly less annoying than his old commander). Apparently, fans loved these two so much, we have to listen to them growl about tangos, hostiles, ACS's, and how amazingly badass they are for much of the game. Their dialogue ranges from the aforementioned movie clichés to the aforementioned meaningless jargon. It’s constant, forgettable, and often intrusive.

You might think that the sections of the game that feature good voice actors would be bright spots. Instead, we are forced to endure Keith David's game performance as Sergeant Foley, the American soldier who must Oscar Mike everything he sees or hears. The two plots' heroes are forced to defend America when we are invaded by Russians. One thread revolves around “Roach,” a Special Forces agent who is part of a secret task force ordered to halt the rise of a dangerous power, the other revolves around Foley's squad and its missions in the USA.

The task force hangs out in exciting foreign locales and kills foreigners (something the Modern Warfare series, and Call of Duty, delight in), while Foley and his crew protect America from a ludicrous, Boris and Natasha invasion comprised of husky Russians. Shepard spends his time mumbling about war, destiny, absolute power, and how that power never changes. He sounds like a college kid who just read Hobbes for the first time and took the wrong message away from it. All he needs to complete his look are a Bob Marley and some PBR, and maybe a few pretentious comments about human frailty.

Anything not having to do with Foley and DC is shrouded in bad writing, conservative military alarmism, and bad gameplay-story integration. I'm not saying that I didn't expect this kind of foolishness. Modern Warfare may have tried to sell itself as authentic, but it was still a kind of science fiction, it was still operating in some weird version of our universe. This new game is like James Bond mixed with Jack Bauer. Every new mission includes super-x-ray, night vision, invisible, frog men assault squads (actually, those are basically in the game, but they’re tame compared to some of the “modern” stuff). It’s all just as incomprehensible as the dialogue.

War, Um, Never Changes ?

The two main pontificates are Captain Price and General Shepherd, and their speeches are long and offensive, for their smirking avowal of brutal, inhumane tactics, their mindless regurgitation of action movie tropes that were boring in the 80s, and for their continuous camp and stupidity (although that shouldn't fool you into thinking that the "good" guys in his story are anything other than war criminals and morons). I'm surprised the actors could read these lines out loud.

Again, it's not as if I was expecting something even mildly introspective, self-aware, or intelligent. This isn't Indigenes, the The Hurt Locker, hell, this isn't even Three Kings. It's everything bad and wrong about the glorification of American military power, and it's sloppy, lazy storytelling, from start to finish. You’d think that an action game would at least master the art of economical storytelling and exhibition, but the game’s incoherent writing and level continuity make even that low hanging branch inaccessible. It reflects well on no one but the people who designed the gameplay and world upon which these terrible trappings were hung: they know what they're doing, there's no doubt about it.

Still, the level designers and levels aren’t without fault. The missions set around Washington DC are lessons in how not to represent the familiar. This was an opportunity to take various things that the viewer took for granted and upend them. Even the misguided airport level does better, in this area. The point of these DC missions should have been to introduce the alarming abnormal into the presumably normal. I can only imagine that an invaded, ruined suburb that actually resembled those found on the East Coast might have struck a chord with people who lived there, and with people who only knew of such places because of a shared cultural experience.

Taking that kind of safe, welcoming environment and turning it dark and threatening is a time-tested method of unsettling the audience. Not so here. Instead, the locations feel wooden and fake (I’ve never seen suburbs, let alone malls, like these). Each burger joint is separated from the next by inexplicable swaths of parking lot, and the houses and white picket fences feel tiny and squat, especially when overflowing with Russians. It’s as if, in the night, someone came and made all of DC 7/8 size.

The missions are also badly held together, and badly paced. The siege on Capitol Hill is well-made (especially after the awfully, incomprehensible nuclear detonation over DC), but every other Foley mission (and all but one of the covert ops missions lead by “Roach,” your other inexplicably named avatar) is a long, long exploration of botched decisions. Even when the developers are truly flexing their FPS skills and creating something unique (the on-foot escape in Brazil is the best thing the game has to offer), you can sense something bad coming. It comes in the form of laughably serious scripted first person “non” cutscenes, which are, as ever, awkward, transparent, and equally as game-breaking as the cinematics they replace. You’ll watch as your character is murdered several times, since apparently the writers at Infinity Ward love this trick as much as they love the phrase “oscar mike.”

Please, Please, No Russian!

The disconnect between gameplay and narrative is almost perfectly reproduced in the “No Russian” level.

This level, like the rest of the game, disappointed me. As a quick, effective play upon the fears swimming around the consciousnesses and sub-consciousnesses of many people around the world, this scene is no doubt effective and timely. Even if it is badly implemented and badly framed, it still is more relevant to the vast majority of gamers and non-gamers than any meditation on Ayn Rand (underwater!) ever could be. It's use of the "oh look, you are playing a game, we know it, you know it, we know that it creeps you out that we know, and we know that it surprises you that we force you to face your own game playing as a constructed, not natural, occurrence" tactic is capable enough.

Playing “No Russian,” I felt like someone had crystallized everything substandard in Modern Warfare 2 into one level. the writing within "No Russian" itself is bad. It isn’t up to the task of presenting and handling - well - an event with this kind of widespread public emotional impact. From Makarov’s nonsense monologue at the end, to the level’s stupid jokes (all of the flights suddenly switch to “delayed”), to the complete inability on the part of the game as a whole to deliver upon or contextualize this event, the writing and plotting fails “No Russian.” It's the instigator of the Russian invasion of America, the game's single most stupid plot development (even worse than Price's inexplicable missile launching act). Likewise, the game doesn't know what to do with this level from a continuity standpoint; it's shoehorned in between an intense Die Hard 2-esque snowmobile chase, and an assault on America that's straight out of bad Tom Clancy.

It's tonally out of place, and plot-wise, its villain (Makarov) disappears after this mission. It's like they forgot about him, and then gave him five lines of dialog in the second-to-last mission to make up for their forgetfulness. Likewise, the game lets you break the simulation by allowing you to fire on Makarov, who is invincible, and then instantly forces you to restart. If you're going to make me face the artificiality of the game I’m playing, and my own “complicity” in the act of play and the ruse enacted by the developers, actually do that: don't half-ass it, and in so doing, allow me to accidentally (I was trying to shoot a guard) punish me for it. Let me kill Makarov, or run away and make him come find me, or something. If the seams in your game show before I've even tried to find them, you've failed.

In short, regardless of the scene's supposed realism, emotional potency, or immersiveness, it's an especially disappointing part of a bad (single player) product. It only served to reinforce my distaste for the game in general, and the kind of decision-making that lead to this kind of overblown, egotistic junk, even if it was only for one mission.

The game’s science fiction storyline, bad writing, and spotty pacing are enough to tarnish it in my memory, but it commits many more errors within the mechanics of the game itself. Still, the multiplayer is incredible: Infinity Ward is so close to creating an incredibly addictive MMOFPS; another development cycle or two should do it. What’s alarming about Modern Warfare 2 is that Infinity Ward seems dead set on inflicting their bad brand of single player FPS upon us for years to come. If they moved on to a different franchise and genre (as they may be doing), they’ll take their overblown sense of drama, amazing design experience, and broken sense of gameplay narrative and pacing, and slip it into another game. They make single player (portions of) games that “push the envelope” of design in only the most superficial of ways, and they set the standard for the rest of the industry.

[Tom Cross writes for Gamers' Temple and Popmatters, is the Associate Editor at Sleeper Hit, and blogs about games at Delayed Responsibility. You can contact him at romain47 at gmail dot com.]

Posted by Thomas Cross at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Though he's also busy designing a children's playground, Katamari Damacy creator Keita Takahashi hasn't abandoned his game projects! Here, you can see the imaginative creative director demonstrating his team's progress on Noby Noby Boy's iPhone game at the Apple Store in Tokyo's Ginza shopping district.

Takahashi's presentation is entirely in Japanese, but he shows bits of the game prove that this mobile version will be just as weird as the PSN release and even stranger than initial screenshots indicated. He drops a variety of objects into space to bounce Boy off of (even shaking the handheld to rattle the on-screen objects), types messages on Boy's body, and superimposes Boy over some sort of map application.

You can see more videos from Takahashi's demonstration on Youtube user Noby829's profile.

[Via TUAW]

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

Unsatisfied with hardware sales in Japan, Microsoft searched for a spokesman that could convert gamers into Xbox 360 fans and found itself a perfect mascot: Mr. Sanrokumaru (which translates as 3-6-0), a man with an X for a head. He joins two other salarymen from Microsoft's Xbox Mission Department in the company's latest commercials.

As Kotaku points out, the ads are reminiscent of Sega Dreamcast's self-deprecating Hidekazu Yukawa (Mr. Sega) commercials, which I'm totally alright with. In the above clip, the Mission Department members demonstrate that they're willing to risk life and limb to secure marquee titles for the Xbox 360.

The commercial after the break shows Mr. Sanrokumaru trying to convince a representative from Capcom's Monster Hunter Frontier to sign a contract, which evidently worked! Now I really want to see the Xbox 360 succeed in Japan, just so it will give the company enough reason go produce more of these ads.

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

Indie game composer Daniel "dannyB" Baranowsky has put out a downloadable soundtrack for Adam Atomic's break-out hit Canabalt, collecting every song he created for the game -- all two of them. Gamers that sent money to the project months ago might already have the "Run" track that was given to donators, but you can still buy "Daring Escape" (and any other individual song) for just $1.

The entire album sells for $3 and also includes ringtone versions of both themes, as well as an 8-minute megamix from another game DannyB and AdamAtomic collaborated on, Fathom. You can grab the songs or stream them all for free on the composer's Bandcamp page.

[Via Noobuooo]

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

The 2010 Independent Games Festival Mobile, an event that celebrates excellence in games for Apple's iPhone, other cellphone and smartphone operating systems (OS), Nintendo DS, Sony PlayStation Portable, and other handheld devices, has named the finalists for its third annual competition, with a host of outstanding portable titles showcased this year.

This year's IGF Mobile marks a record number of entries with 170 titles submitted for the competition, up nearly 65 percent from last year's total, which itself was double over the previous year. The finalists for IGF Mobile will compete for $5,000 in prizes, including specialized awards for art, design, audio, technical prowess, and iPhone game creation, as well as the IGF Mobile Best Game award.

Some of the notable titles nominated for this year's IGF Mobile Awards include iPhone games such as double nominee, Tiger Style's Spider: The Secret Of Bryce Manor, downloadable games for Nintendo's DSi including Powerhead Games' Glow Artisan, and promising titles from a host of worldwide indie developers, from England's Studio FungFung through Finland's Secret Exit and beyond.

This year, overall winners in each category will be announced on Feb. 8, 2010, with the category winners receiving $500 in prizes, a place as an overall IGF Mobile Best Game finalist, and the opportunity to showcase their mobile game at the IGF Pavilion during Game Developers Conference 2010 in San Francisco this March.

In addition, all finalists for 2010's IGF Mobile competition -- whether category winners or not -- will receive one All-Access pass to attend GDC 2010 and attend the multiple mobile-specific Summits there, including the GDC Mobile/Handheld Summit and the iPhone Games Summit. (The IGF Mobile judges have also named three games in each category as 'honorable mentions' which - while not quite making it to become a finalist this year - are commended as some of the most intriguing and high quality independent mobile games of the year.)

The full list of finalists and honorable mentions for the 2010 IGF Mobile competition are:

Best Mobile Game Design:
MiniSquadron (Studio FungFung, iPhone/iPod Touch)
Glow Artisan (Powerhead Games, DSi)
Spider: The Secret Of Bryce Manor (Tiger Style, iPhone/iPod Touch)
Honorable mentions: Ancient Frog (Ancient Workshop, iPhone/iPod Touch), Globulos Party (Globz, DS), Mind Wall (Robinson Technologies, iPhone/iPod Touch).

Achievement In Art
Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP (superbrothers + capy + jim guthrie, iPhone/iPod Touch)
Guerrilla Bob (Angry Mob Games, iPhone/iPod Touch)
Zombie Pizza (Appy Entertainment, iPhone/iPod Touch)
Honorable mentions: Tilt: An Adventure In 1.5 Dimensions (XEODesign, iPhone/iPod Touch), Ancient Frog (Ancient Workshop, iPhone/iPod Touch, Minigore (Mountain Sheep, iPhone/iPod Touch).

Technical Achievement
Stair Dismount (Secret Exit, iPhone/iPod Touch)
SCVNGR (SCVNGR, iPhone/iPod Touch)
Tumbledrop (Starfruit Games, iPhone/iPod Touch)
Honorable mentions: Dawn Of Heroes (Wicked Studos, DS), Aera (ichromo, iPhone/iPod Touch), iPixel (Hecticus Software, iPhone/iPod Touch)

Audio Achievement
Lilt Line (different cloth, iPhone/iPod Touch)
MuBlip (para9, iPhone/iPod Touch)
Zombie Pizza (Appy Entertainment, iPhone/iPod Touch)
Honorable mentions: MelodyBloxx (Beatshapers, PSP Minis), Earth Dragon (levitylab, iPhone/iPod Touch), iBlast Moki (Godzilab, iPhone/iPod Touch)

Best iPhone Game
Spider: The Secret Of Bryce Manor (Tiger Style, iPhone/iPod Touch)
Drop7 (Area/Code, iPhone/iPod Touch)
Hook Champ (Rocketcat Games, iPhone/iPod Touch)
Honorable mentions: Minigore (Mountain Sheep, iPhone/iPod Touch). Pocket God (Bolt Creative, iPhone/iPod Touch), Doodle Jump (Lima Sky, iPhone/iPod Touch).

IGF Mobile Best Game
Finalists will comprise the winners of the five above categories, to be announced on Monday, February 8th.

Beyond the awards and cash prizes for the IGF Mobile winners, previous finalists have also been showcased prominently on Apple's App Store. A special store section highlighted the IGF-nominated iPhone games from 2009's IGF Mobile Competition, which included acclaimed titles such as Fieldrunners, Real Racing, Zen Bound and Galcon. Previous year's winners are now finding success on console platforms, including 2009's IGF Mobile "Next Great Mobile Game" winner, Reflection, which has been signed by Konami to be distributed on Nintendo's DSi.

"With the explosive growth in the mobile games market, and the exciting prospects for emerging mobile platforms and smartphone OSes, it's great to see this year's IGF Mobile finalists revealed," said Simon Carless, chairman of the IGF. "With smartphone platforms rapidly maturing, we're going to see a plethora of high quality independent creations over the next few years, and we sincerely hope that IGF Mobile has become one of the best venues to check out these inspiring titles."

The Independent Games Festival itself was established in 1998 to recognize the best independent game developers, much the way that the Sundance Film Festival honors the independent film community. The creation of IGF Mobile in 2007 was the direct response to the maturing of the mobile game industry and the desire to similarly recognize and reward those driving the advancement of the space.

For more information on the Independent Games Festival Mobile finalists, visit the official IGF Mobile website; and to register for GDC, please visit the official Game Developers Conference 2010 website.

Posted by Simon Carless at 3:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

[GameSetLinks is GameSetWatch's semi-regular 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.]

So, while GameSetLinks isn't quite as ubiquitous as it used to be. (Can you believe we used to post it daily?) But there's still some good RSS-trawling results here, starting out with Games Can Teach taking a look at some of those lyrical titles like Daniel Benmergui's that use words and gameplay in intriguing ways.

Also in this round-up, David Edery on where Facebook currently is on the hype and reward curve, as well as Digital Foundry taking another look at OnLive, Emily Short on 'storytelling via roller coaster', and a number of other neat things besides.

Super vision:

Games as Poetry | Games Can Teach
'What do these games have to do with education? Each one is using gameplay, text and visuals to tell a story that has an emotional impact... Creating an interactive experience that sticks with a player should be the goal of any educational game designer.'

Game Tycoon»Blog Archive » Facebook’s Early Glory and Inevitable Misery
'All of these are classic signs that Facebook gaming’s “early glory” phase is in full swing. You may therefore conclude, with 99% certainty, that Facebook as a games platform is likely within a single year’s reach of the “inevitable misery” phase of its lifecycle.'

In Theory: Is this how OnLive works? | DigitalFoundry - Eurogamer
As some commenters note, there is some SLIGHT backtracking here in comments and article on OnLive's feasibility. It's still a tough sell, of course.

Critical Distance | EarthBound
'5 years later most of what is written about EarthBound comes from the same Gen Y, now adults. Their declarations of love often appear in forum threads, comments on blog posts, and other secondary channels.'

Storytelling via roller coaster « Emily Short's Interactive Storytelling
'There are people who review theme park rides. Did you know this? I didn’t, until a recent trip to Universal Studios.'

Eurogamer 2009 Scores Analysis
Wow, a third-party did this, and it's got gorgeous graphs all over it.

Fire Hose Games » Words of Wisdom: Mia Consalvo on Western Otaku Culture
'In this talk Mia Consalvo, noted game academic and all around kick-ass individual, delves into why we love Japan when it comes to games.'

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

For last weekend's Mini Ludum 15 competition (theme: clones of favorite video games), indie developer Mike Meyer created Monkey Kong, an homage not to classic arcade game Donkey Kong but to the portable cult favorite Game Boy Donkey Kong (a.k.a. Donkey Kong '94).

As with the original Game Boy release, Monkey Kong plays within an arcade cabinet border. Other than that, there aren't many similarities between the two. Meyer's Flash game has you controlling a small monkey collecting bananas. There are no enemies to avoid or kidnapped damsels to rescue, and you can beat each stage ("half-stage" might be the more appropriate phrase) in 10-15 seconds.

After a minute or two, the half-stages cycle, so it's a brief diversion. I found, though, that the real fun in this simple game is mastering the back-flip and trying to collect bananas by pulling off as many back-flips as possible. Maybe I'm just easily amused! Anyway, you can watch a timelapse video of Meyers creating all of Monkey Kong's assets and programming the game after the break.

[Via IndieGames.com]

Posted by Eric Caoili at 4:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Studio Kinglux's Gameface photo project is similar to a few other galleries we've seen before of gamer expressions -- Robbie Cooper's Immersion, Sony's Play Face campaign in Japan, and Phillip Toledano's "Gamers" images -- but this one shares its portraits in a well-put-together photobook.

"These are the expressions of people locked into digital combat, unleashing pixellated sorcery, and solving abstract, geometric puzzles," the book's introduction reads. "They are the facial postures when the mind is consumed with split second decisions that result in (virtual) life and death outcomes on a constant basis."

The book points out a common thread in several of the photographs: PC gamers absentmindedly touching their face while playing. Studio Kinglux has several theories why they -- and probably you, when you're not even thinking about it -- feel the need to feel their own fingers against their lips:

"Is it a subconscious need to touch something real, when the other hand is directing an avatar through an electronic reality? Could it just be a simple -- yet private - personal touch, inadvertently made public? Is it the result of the mind, deep in digital illusion, fooled into feeling alone in a crowded space?"

You can flip through the Gameface photobook online at Issuu and even request a copy from Studio Kinglux at the firm's site.

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

[In a brand new column for GameSetWatch examining of the fascinating intersection of gaming and psychology, writer Jamie Madigan considers how small tweaks to the way a message is framed can lead to big changes in what gamers are willing to pay for.]

How could publishers get way more people to buy an Xbox Live Arcade or Playstation Network game after trying the trial version? And how can MMOs get wayward customers to resubscribe? Let me glue on my goatee and practice my maniacal laugh a few times and then I’ll tell you my ideas.

Zombie Outbreaks and Loss Aversion

But first, let me ask you a couple of hypothetical questions made famous in certain circles by two guys named Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman:

"Imagine that the U.S. is preparing for a zombie outbreak, which is expected to kill 600 people. Two alternative programs to combat the outbreak have been proposed. Assume that the exact scientific estimate of the consequences of the programs are as follows:

Which of the two programs would you favor?"

Okay, so Tversky and Kahneman actually phrased the question in terms of an Asian flu and not a zombie outbreak, but I figure we would stick to territory more familiar to gamers. That said, which of the two programs would you pick: Program A or Program B? The researchers found that most people they asked chose Program A: 72% versus the 28% who chose B.

So then the researchers presented the same hypothetical situation but with the following options:

"If Program C is adopted 400 people will die.

Which of the two programs would you favor?"

Which of these new options would you pick? This time most of the experimental subjects picked Program D by a wide margin — 78% versus the 22% for Program C.

The thing is, both sets of choices are identical. Look closely. Programs A and C both result in 400 of the 600 people dying and 200 living. Programs B and D both have a 1/3 chance of saving everyone and a 2/3 chance of killing everyone.

The only difference is that Programs A and B are phrased in terms of lives saved and Programs C and D are described in terms of lives lost. People were made much more willing to gamble with the lives of 600 people simply by having the dilemma framed in terms of losses. Why?

Tversky and Kahnaman said this points to "loss aversion," which is one my favorite kinks in the human brain. In short, loss aversion is our willingness to go to great lengths to avoid losses –much farther than we’ll go to get an equivalent gain. In other words, losing $10 is more painful than gaining $10 is pleasurable, or "losses loom larger than gains."

Simple Changes to Framing Mean Big Changes in Attitudes

Consider another quick question and suppose that a company were offering two subscription plans for an online MMORPG.

- Option A gives you a $5 credit
- Option B lets you avoid a $5 monthly surcharge

Assuming both options were otherwise identical, which do you think would be more popular? In all likelihood it would be Option B, since people prefer not losing $5 to gaining a $5 discount. This despite the fact that the monthly costs would be identical. This is also one of the reasons you’ll more often see "$10 late registration fee" advertised instead of "$10 discount for early registrations" for events where the organizers want you to register early.

Here, Take This. Now Pay for it or Lose It

So what does this have to do with getting people to buy a Xbox Live Arcade or Playstation Network game after they play the trial version? Right now, it’s not uncommon for such trials to pop up a message saying something to the effect of "You would have just gotten an achievement/trophy just now! Buy the full game to get it!"

And that’s pretty good. Pretty sneaky. Pretty psychological. Because we obviously like getting things we value, and a lot of us value achievements and trophies. But the phenomenon of loss aversion suggests a way to be better, more sneaky, more psychological.

Instead of saying that you will get the achievement or trophy if you buy the game, actually give it to them and then say you’re going to take it away if they DON’T buy the game. And I mean really give it to them – have it show up in their gamer score and on their achievement/trophy list. Just take it away if they exit the trial version of the game without buying the full thing, and make sure they know it.

I guarantee that your conversion rate would go up if you tried something like this. because while people like the promise of getting something, they hate the promise of losing it way more. Hey, I know that there's logistical issues and maybe Microsoft or Sony place restrictions on how these things are handled. But I'm the idea man here; I'm sure some of you guys can figure out how to put in place.

But just in case you were wondering, there are other ways to make use of loss aversion, as Funcom and everyone's favorite barbarian recently showed us.

Conan the Loss Averse Barbarian

Many players who had unsubscribed from the Age of Conan massively multiplayer online game recently got an e-mail from the publisher stating, in part:

"Dear customer,

As part of our maintenance your account is now flagged to have your characters below level 20 deleted as part of maintenance. Please re-activate your account now to ensure that your characters progress and names stay intact."

In other words, "come back or your low level alt (not to mention your bank and your mule characters) gets taken out back and shot."

I'd be fascinated to see what this did to Age of Conan's resubscription rate. If I were in charge of these things at Funcom, I would have randomly separated that mailing list into two groups and sent the above e-mail to the first half. The second half would have gotten something along the lines of:

"Dear customer,

As part of our maintenance your account is now flagged to have your characters below level 20 saved as part of maintenance if you resubscribe. Please re-activate your account now to ensure that your characters progress and names stay intact."

And then I would have looked at the differences in resubscription rates between those whose message was phrased in terms of losing their character and those whose message talked about saving it. Which of those two messages would you, as a MMO player, respond to more strongly? My guess would be the former, especially if you weren't the handsome and well educated person you are on account of reading about loss aversion here.

[Jamie Madigan, Ph.D. is a psychologist and gamer who explores why players and developers do what they do by studying the overlap between psychology and video games at The Psychology Of Games website. He can be reached at jamie@psychologyofgames.com.]

Posted by Jamie Madigan at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

[We round up the top news and interviews of the last week from console digital download site GamerBytes, speaking to Capy, Arkedo, and more about their work in 2009.]

This week's big push for us was our sales analysis for Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network - December 2009 was good for some, bad for others, but we also take a look at the top selling games of the year, and see where the downloadable space has come in the last few years.

But we also continued our tracking of developers and their reflection on 2009, chatting to developers of Xbox Live Indie Games, Xbox Live Arcade, WiiWare and DSiWare to see what they've learned over the last year.

And there's also our regular news on fresh announcement and games for each of the console systems - here are the top stories for the past seven days:

Originals: Sales Analysis

In-Depth: Xbox Live Arcade Sales Analysis, December 2009

In-Depth: PlayStation Network Sales Analysis, December 2009

Originals: Developer Reflections

2009 Developer Reflections: Mommy's Best Games
2009 Developer Reflections: Gaijin Games
2009 Developer Reflections: Twisted Pixel
2009 Developer Reflections: Nnooo

Store Updates

XBLA Update - Vandal Hearts: Flames Of Judgment, Death By Cube
NA PSN Store Update - Vandal Hearts, Championship Bass, Weekly Deals
EU PSN Store Update - VectorTD And Deals Aplenty
NA Nintendo Update - Dark Void Zero, StarShip Defense, Muscle March And More
EU Nintendo Update - Max & The Magic Marker Electroplankton And More

Microsoft (Xbox Live Arcade, Xbox Indies)

Monday Night Combat Announced - Team Fortress Meets Horde Mode Meets Smash TV?
XBLA's shooter library continues to grow.

Slide Your Lazy Raider Around On Xbox Live Arcade
Your brain will be sliding around in circles with this puzzle platformer.

Sony (PlayStation Network, PSN Minis)

After Burner Climax Screenshots Leaked
The beautiful arcade title is coming down to XBLA and PSN.

Nintendo (WiiWare, DSiWare)

Trailer: Legends Of Exidia (Gameloft)
Gameloft creates new Action RPG for DSiWare.

Maestro! Green Groove Coming To DSiWare
Pasta Games' DS title goes downloadable.

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

This demonstration video starts off interesting enough, showing an ARToolKit modified to display a Virtual On-type HUD and measure distance from objects you point the device at, but it gets really neat toward the end, when the cameraman approaches the HBV-502-H8 Raiden standing on his desk and actually dodges a shot from the model toy.

Though it's just a technical demo video, I'd love to see turned into a full experience, similar to Total Immersion's Ghost Busters-esque augmented reality haunted house, Paranormal Activity. If I had the know-how and technology to set something like this up myself, I'd position Exosquad figures around the shelves of my office and hang them from the ceiling, playing "shoot the toy mechs" all day.

[Via MechaDamashii]

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

Australian graphic artist Robert Penney must have enjoyed all the attention from his "Cartridge Video System 2600" project, a collection of video game boxarts advertising "retro games with modern themes" for movies like Avatar, Cloverfield, and Snakes On A Plane.

He's created three more packaging designs for imagined 8-bit games based on popular film and TV show licenses: Lost (as an adventure game, of course!), Wall-E (Tetris!), and The Dark Knight (a Christmas gift, apparently). Note that the Lost game only covers the series' first season, so there's bound to be many more of these in the future!

[Via .tiff]

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

Montreal’s Kokoromi collective is reminding possible entrants on the January 31st deadline for Gamma 4, with game makers challenged to make "innovative, experimental new games played with just one button" to be showcased at GDC 2010 in San Francisco.

As recently announced, Kokoromi is partnering with Think Services' Game Developers Conference to bring the fourth edition of its renowned Gamma game showcase to GDC 2010 next March.

Comparable to a longer-form, targeted version of the 'indie game jam' concept, previous years’ themes have included Gamma 01: Audio Feed (games driven by live audio), gamma 256 (games with extremely small pixel dimensions), and GAMMA 3D (games using red-blue stereoscopic 3D). Standout games like Passage, Paper Moon, and Super HYPERCUBE resulted.

This time around, the Gamma organizers have framed the competition as follows: "Gestural controls, multi-touch surfaces, musical instruments, voice recognition—even brain control. Games are moving beyond the iconic hand-held controller, and into the future. But is the secret to good games found in high-tech interface hardware? Kokoromi proposes that game developers can still find beauty in absolute simplicity."

A number of intriguing entries have already started development for Gamma 4, with our sister site IndieGames.com highlighting videos of contestants in a recent post, and a special messageboard at independent site TIGSource to showcase and discuss entries.

Taking place on the evening of Wednesday March 10th, 2010, the Gamma 4 kickoff event bridges the end of the Independent Games Summit and the start of the main GDC. The playable games will be revealed at the Mezzanine, a venue housed in a historic two-story warehouse near Mint Plaza, in the heart of San Francisco’s SoMa district. The curated games will be featured on large projections, and accompanied by live DJs.

Following the opening event, all the games will be playable for all in a dedicated booth on the Game Developers Conference Expo floor from Thursday, March 11th to Saturday, March 13th. In addition, game creators who are selected for presentation at Gamma 4 will also be awarded GDC 2010 All-Access passes.

Game makers around the world now have only until January 31st 2010 at midnight Pacific time to complete and submit their single-input creations. Full submission rules and guidelines are available at the official Gamma 4 web page.

Posted by Simon Carless at 7:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Taking advantage of the game's merchandising opportunities, Square Enix put out a line of Final Fantasy XIII Play Arts Kai action figures for the RPG's heroes. Of course, the set includes toys for main characters Lightning, Oerba, ans Snow, the real highlights are the transformable and very expensive summons.

The Shiva Sisters figures, true to their in-game versions (priced around $220, they better be), combine to form the "Gestalt Mode" motorcycle, a perfect accessory for your Snow Snow Villiers toy. Odin has a figure, too, also $220, which transforms into a giant horse that Lightning can ride.

Both Eidolons and the rest of the Play Arts Kai collection are available to preorder for their March release in Japan at Play Asia. You can see more photos of the import figures after the break:

[Via Sankaku Complex (NSFW)]

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

Continuing our trawl through 2010's video game munificence, let's examine the top full-length features of the past week on big sister 'art and business of gaming' site Gamasutra, plus our GameCareerGuide features for the week.

This time, we've got some rather neat interviews (a fascinating chat with Shanghai-based veteran American McGee, and a rare talk with Nintendo of Korea's preseident), analysis pieces (Matt Matthews looking back on U.S. retail sales for December and all of 2009, with lots of gorgeous graphs), and rather more alluring design, business and programming articles besides.

Here's the top stories of the week:

American In China: McGee On Making It Work In Shanghai
"The ex-id and EA employee speaks out on how developing games in his Shanghai-based studio Spicy Horse has given him a new perspective on development process and teamwork, and whether or not those insights could work in Western studios."

Nintendo: Sticking With Korea - NOK President Mineo Koda Speaks
"Nintendo of Korea was just formed in July 2006, but in a short period of time, it's been able to find success in a market notoriously difficult for non-PC platforms. NOK head Mineo Koda explains how."

Designing Fast Cross-Platform SIMD Vector Libraries
"Performance is key in games -- here, experienced games programmer Gustavo Oliveira delivers a comparison of libraries that should increase your performance and cut down on code bloat, and contrasts different compilers."

Meet Your New Fans: Promoting Your Indie Game At Live Events
"Getting your game in front of fans is both increasingly possible thanks to the events springing up around the globe -- but should even indie developers run real-life promotions? UK indie developer Mode 7 Games details a real-life example."

NPD: Behind the Numbers, December 2009
"Gamasutra's in-depth analysis takes a look at what brought 2009 U.S. video game revenues down from 2008, including contracting Wii revenues, rapidly sinking PlayStation 2, and an Xbox 360 that kept getting cheaper."

GCG: Student Postmortem: Sultans of Scratch
"A full postmortem of the student-created music game, including discussions of working with outside talent and keeping the project running amidst production problems."

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[In this editorial, originally printed in Game Developer magazine's January 2010 issue, editor-in-chief Brandon Sheffield looks at the increasingly crowded motion control battleground as we head into this year -- asking whether Microsoft and Sony even have a chance.]

The year 2010 is upon us. It should prove to be a time of iterative improvements, rather than major hardware shifts, and the area in which this is most apparent is peripherals.

Within this year, or so it is said, there will be three home systems with motion or gesture control—the Wii of course, the PlayStation 3 with its motion wands, and the 360’s Project Natal.

Everyone’s chasing the motion and gesture train, after the success of the Nintendo DS, the iPhone, and the Wii. But is motion really the reason these consoles are successful? Partially, sure -- but that’s not the whole story.

You Look Familiar

Motion controls have been around for a long time. Light gun games in arcades and at home are primitive motion controllers, and they’ve been around since games began. One of Ralph Baer’s first prototypes before the legendary Brown Box was a light gun that worked with a television.

Touch controls, likewise, have been around for quite a while. The Nintendo DS brought it to the masses and the iPhone hammered it home, but PDAs have had touch control for years now, and have played host to games with major industry backing to boot (remember the Tapwave Zodiac?).

I would submit that aside from outstanding games like Wii Sports or Boom Blox, much of what’s done on the Wii with motion control could be done with a normal controller if a few design issues were solved. The thought struck me as I was playing New Super Mario Bros. Wii and tilting the controller to raise the end of a platform so that Mario could access a higher area. This could easily be done with shoulder buttons.

My point is not to trivialize the Wii remote, but rather to point out that what Nintendo did when it released the DS and the Wii was not to revolutionize control. There were subtle upgrades, certainly. The DS’ two screens and the Wii’s gyroscope and accelerometer were a step beyond what had been done previously, and the iPhone’s multitouch interface hadn’t really been done before with games in mind.

But the innovations were subtle. What was really disruptive, as Nintendo might say, was the marketing.

Yes, These Are Your Mom's Video Games

Nintendo told us its systems were new and disruptive, but what they told moms, grandmothers, and grandfathers was that this device was fun for everyone. They could say that this was brand new, and just for them, and mostly be right in saying it.

Nintendo took out ads in parenting and women’s magazines and blazed a trail of accessible television marketing that placed its consoles far away from the others, which were, at least in terms of marketing, very clearly for 17-year-old boys from the early days.

Nintendo reminded people that it was the company that made Mario -- and they all remembered Mario, right? That was probably the only game the target market had ever played, besides Tetris. Nintendo knew the market it was going for and targeted it perfectly -- parents, grandparents, and most importantly, families.

Now, Sony and Microsoft are releasing motion control expansions, each with the express intention of broadening its console’s markets. But can they do it from where they are now? These companies don’t have the benefit of a completely new launch with which to brand themselves, and they have spent most of their consoles’ lifetimes marketing to the hardcore.

(Let’s face it -- Nintendo, aside from perhaps a brief stint in the 90s, never targeted the hardcore very directly, always choosing to go after the youthful and light players with the bulk of its marketing bucks.)

Sony and Microsoft most likely have to rely on that 17- to 34-year-old male to bring the console into the home. Sony may have it easier here, with its Blu-ray player, but the jury’s still out on that. Both companies must market the peripherals as something they can plug into their existing system. Microsoft is rumored to be preparing an effective relaunch of Xbox 360 console with Natal, likely responding to the predicament I’m describing.

Quite simply, my question is, no matter how nice the motion controls and cameras themselves may be, will these companies be able to rebrand themselves properly for the family set while continuing to push the blockbusters that have been their bread and butter? Right now, the Xbox 360’s best selling game is Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. It's far from a family game, that one, and it's a market Microsoft is not likely to abandon.

Catch Me If You Can

Sony and Microsoft have a long way to go before they can steal Nintendo’s thunder. Sure, the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 have the edge in terms of game-to-hardware tie ratio, but that goes hand in hand with the hardcore market. The Wii was purchased by a lot of people who only wanted Wii Sports and maybe one other Nintendo game every year thereafter.

My concern is that Sony and Microsoft have a stigma to overcome before they can get the moms and grandmas involved in their console. They’ve both spent a lot of time promoting their machines as homes of blockbusters, and unlike in Hollywood, game blockbusters only appeal to a certain set of people.

This will be a very interesting year, with battles fought between Sony and Microsoft for dominance of the hardcore set, and between all parties for the “emerging market” set. As that demographic increasingly turns to social network games and the iPhone, it will be a battle that's hard won.

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

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

It's January! And, largely, that means the game industry is still recovering from Christmas and hasn't built up the steam to start beating the E3 drums quite yet.

I'm taking advantage of this lull to go on vacation. By the time you read this, I'll be the guy depicted above, dodging trees and scoring all kinds of 1000-point bonuses over in the Sierras. Until I return, magazines will be the furthest thing from my mind!

That's then, however. This is now, of course, and I have a big stack of magazines to recap:

Game Informer January 2010

Cover: Halo: Reach

A very solid issue that goes a further distance toward making GI into the Edge-ish "industry journal" it seems to be angling to become. There's a very good interview with Activision's Bobby Kotick that successfully makes him seem like a decent, intelligent executive instead of the evil overlord some parts of game-dom see him as. The Halo: Reach piece is standard for GI cover pieces, but the bit that follows it -- an overview of Irrational Games -- is straight-on challenging Edge at their own game, and I think they made a decent success of it.

A best-of-'09 roundup isn't quite as enthralling as the 200th-issue spectacular two issues ago, but the vast amount of space given to The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom (5 pages out of 100!) is extremely well-used.

It seems to me that GI has changed their paper stock to something a bit flimsier and less glossy starting with this issue. If it's true (and not my imagination playing tricks on me), they likely did it to lighten the mag and thus save on postage. They wouldn't be the first publisher to do this, either -- Future prints the subscriber editions of the mags in lighter stock than the newsstand versions, and I remember there being all sorts of pressure along similar lines back during my GamePro days. Has anyone else noticed this, or am I hallucinating?

Edge January 2010

Cover: The best of 2000-2009

The cover was washed out a fair bit by my scanner; apologies about that. It touts an internal feature that should've been just another boring game roundup, but shines a fair bit thanks to its choices (World of Warcraft winning "game of the decade") and to the industry folks they tapped for their opinions.

The other main features, including a preview of Metro 2033 (a bit more in-depth over GamePro's last month) and a look at motion-capture tech that's basically a slightly friendlier take on a Game Developer article, are solid if not blockbuster.

It being January, this month's Edge comes with a massive 2010 calendar poster, this year themed around Zelda: Spirit Tracks -- timely, because there's a long interview with Eiji Aonuma between the pages too.

Nintendo Power February 2010

Cover: NBA Jam

64 pages of this issue are devoted to previews of 2010's Wii and DS games. Is NBA Jam the hottest game to lead with? Well, I think so, but then again I was squarely in the target audience for the original arcade game, so nostalgia's undoubtedly having an effect on me there. The coverage is all great in the feature, remarkably enough, and even includes a cameo visit from Ken as portrayed in the NES title Street Fighter 2010 (timely!).

Folks who can't stand preview roundups like this one may be a bit disappointed by the issue, but don't blame NP -- they've got only four non-downloadable games in the review well this month, requiring them to do stuff like give a full page to The Glory of Heracles.

Official Xbox Magazine February 2010

Cover: Mass Effect 2

It's a slow review month in Xbox-land, too, and OXM makes up for it by devoting 13 pages to coverage of Mass Effect 2 and BioWare -- stuff you'll eat up if you're a fan. The following piece, a speculative article on what Halo 4 may be like, reminds me quite a bit (in a good way) of the way, way early Halo 2 cover EGM did a long time ago.

Otherwise, much of the mag is previews, along with a "2009 game awards" piece that doesn't jump out at me quite as much as Edge's similar feature.

Play January 2010

Cover: Mass Effect 2

Best part of the issue, bar none, is the three-page art spread of old video-game platform mascots, further expanded from what they did in the November edition. In my opinion, anyway. Apologies to Doug Perry, who wrote 10 pages on Mass Effect 2 that goes into a great deal more depth on the machinations of the game than OXM did (although it's not a review).

Retro Gamer Issue 72

Cover: Gradius

I did not realize that the ZX Spectrum port of Gradius was "infamous" -- I thought "bad" would've been a more appropriate term for it. However, Gradius's flyer art makes for a pretty awesome cover, and the full-on look at the arcade game inside is pretty well worth reading. (To answer my question: Among other things, the coders based their port on the MSX version for some reason.)

Beckett Massive Online Gamer March/April 2010

Cover: World of Warcraft

MOG has more pages than Play this month, as much as that fills me with chagrin. I can't argue with success, however (or survival anyway), and this issue has all the usual in-depth coverage of what seems like a million MMOs. And a poster!

Game Developer January 2010

Cover: Aion

Speaking of which, here's a postmortem on an MMO now! The Aion piece is up to GD's usual level of enthrallment, filled with neat details and tales of woe ("development was part soap opera, part meatgrinder").

[Kevin Gifford breeds ferrets and runs Magweasel, a really cool weblog about games and Japan and "the industry" and things. In his spare time he does writing and translation for lots and lots of publishers and game companies.]

Posted by Kevin Gifford at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)