[Amid speculation that lawsuits and defections could shutter Infinity Ward, our own Kris Graft has been polling analysts, gamers and others on the effect the situation has on the Call of Duty series.]

Ever since Activision fired the two heads of its prized Modern Warfare creator Infinity Ward, video game websites and forums have gone into meltdown mode.

Here you have the world's biggest video game publisher axing Jason West and Vince Zampella, the two heads of a subsidiary that just made their parent over $1 billion with November's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Now, at least today in the media, Infinity Ward is associated with lawsuits, employee defections and general drama.

With Infinity Ward losing about a quarter of its employees following West and Zampella's firings, and a new lawsuit that has former and current staff suing Activision for unpaid royalties and bonuses, there's speculation that Activision could just opt to close Infinity Ward.

But at this point, would it even matter if Infinity Ward's name was laid to rest? What would that mean for the Call of Duty franchise, and does the average gamer -- or even average Call of Duty fan -- care about the dispute? We spoke with analysts, gamers, journalists and retail to find out.

A Dignified Death?

Janco Partners' Mike Hickey, the analyst who first publicly speculated that Infinity Ward could shutter amid the staff defection, said it may be in the best interest of Activision and remaining Infinity Ward employees to let the studio die a dignified death.

"We think that a more effective way to rebuild a studio’s mojo would be to take the remaining creative force and allow them to shape their own future and subsequent ego identification through a new studio, as opposed to always trying to relive past Infinity Ward glory," Hickey said.

"It would seem that the studio shock from massive employee defections has likely destroyed any remaining creative culture within Infinity Ward."

But not all industry watchers agree that Infinity Ward is at death's door. "There are a lot of unknowns out there right now, but so far we don’t believe [Infinity Ward] will be shut down," said Todd Greenwald with Signal Hill. "We think Activision will retain the studio -- even if is largely in name only -- assuming it still has brand equity."

Greenwald added, "If Infinity Ward winds up being a liability -- that is, a constant reminder of the ugly fallout post-Modern Warfare 2 -- then certainly Activision may just scrap the name and rebrand it."

The analyst said that he expects the widely-expected Modern Warfare 3, no matter who creates it, to "easily" sell more than 10 million units.

Wedbush's Michael Pachter called Hickey's speculation of a studio closure earlier this week "overly melodramatic," although he did say that he believes "this situation has escalated well beyond what [Activision] intended."

The dispute between Activision and Infinity Ward has had an impact on Activision stock in recent days as well. "It appears to me that investors believe that Activision has transformed itself from a relatively fair employer into the Evil Empire, with contentious dealings between the company and employees the norm," Pachter said.

Has The Dispute Tainted Call of Duty?

Infinity Ward has a large fanbase. Out of the millions of Call of Duty consumers, there is a core contingent that is aware of what's going on at Infinity Ward right now. They know that the studio created a Call of Duty game every other year with Treyarch, and they know that Infinity Ward is the series originator. This group is concerned about the future of the franchise and is disenchanted with the publisher of one of their favorite series.

"Honestly, after Activision fired Vince and Jason, I sold my copy of Modern Warfare 2 and bought [EA's] Bad Company 2 instead," said grad student John Vanderhoef of Milwaukee.

One Seattle-based gamer said, "Activision has reached Walmart status in my mind, in that I absolutely refuse to pay for another game [or] DLC from them." But the gamer is willing to make an exception, despite the concern. "If the game really is all sorts of awesome, I may be willing to buy it used."

David Eckelberry, lead gameplay designer with LucasArts, said that the debacle between Activision and Infinity Ward has had "no effect whatsoever" on his views of the current Call of Duty game and franchise.

However, of the future of Call of Duty, he remains "entirely skeptical." He said, "[There's] definite room to pause and consider the quality level of the next installment of Call of Duty. Though honestly, the masses will decide this -- if everyone on my 360 friends list is playing Modern Warfare 3 -- or whatever -- then I’m going to join the party."

Some gamers, like game journalist Jason Dobson, are taking a wait-and-see attitude. "I prefer to separate the art from the artist, and reserve judgment of where the next studio will take Call of Duty until I play the game."

Law student and Popmatters game critic L.B. Jeffries said that the fallout between the employees and Activision could well turn out to be a good thing. "Modern Warfare 2 was a bloated, misguided, and over-designed hubristic mess," Jeffries said. "The franchise needed new handlers and Infinity Ward needed a new project."

Jeff Cary, an employee at the independent Indiana-based video game retail chain McVan's, offered, "Most people won't care because they don't even understand that the Call of Duty games are developed by different studios. Video game developers only matter to people who like to nerd out on games, like myself. Other than that Activision just needs to put out a quality Call of Duty every year and the masses will be happy."

Analyst Greenwald agreed: "Who knows how much of this controversy will still be relevant 18 months from now," he said. "Furthermore, Call of Duty is such a mass-market brand with broad appeal way beyond the hard-core gamer, that the vast majority of Call of Duty buyers likely have no idea who Vince Zampella and Jason West are."

Lazard analyst Colin Sebastian added: "I don't think most consumers pay attention to which game studio develops a particular title."

Asked if the dispute between Activision and Infinity Ward tainted his perception of the franchise, gamer Tohon Mink summed up the thoughts of many Call of Duty fans by replying, "What dispute?"

Beyond The Fisaco

With or without Infinity Ward, it's clear that Activision is moving forward with the Call of Duty franchise in some shape or form. Beyond traditional retail releases, like Treyarch's next Call of Duty title, analyst Pachter forecast that Activision will transform the series into a subscription multiplayer game.

Activision CEO Bobby Kotick more than hinted at the prospect as early as 2008, when he said that a massively multiplayer online, monetized Call of Duty would be a "natural evolution" of the franchise.

Pachter said, "I think that the company is on the path to subscriptions, and that West and Zampella did not wish to work on that kind of game, leading to their termination. I think that over the next two years, Activision will introduce a subscription game, and think that annual Call of Duty revenues and profits will likely rise rather than decline."

Analyst Doug Creutz with Cowen and Company said, "Now that the franchise is 'established,' it becomes more a question of execution than innovation. Talent moves around in this business all the time. The key is managing your product around that."

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

[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 goodies in this edition include a new entry in the Hoshi Saga series, a two-player hotseat game, a Virtual On-style 3D combat game with an underwater theme, a pair of Mario-inspired platformers, and a puzzle game that deals with the consequences of time paradoxes.

Here's the highlights from the last seven days:

Game Pick: 'Neo Aquarium' (Nusso, freeware)
"Neo Aquarium (King of Crustacean) is a Virtual On-style versus combat game that features sea creatures fighting each other inside a closed underwater arena of death. The list of weapons at your disposal includes homing projectiles, melee attacks, grabs, short-range explosions, and even remote-controlled detachable limbs that can be commanded to fire at your enemies."

Game Pick: 'Sumouse' (Terry Cavanagh, freeware)
"Sumouse is a two-player fight-a-thon which may result in your computer being mouse-less. Both players control a small box on the screen via a single mouse. Each player holds down a mouse button, then frantically attempts to move the box into one of the outer boxes of their respective colour. Simple, destructive fun - you might want to plug in an old mouse, though."

Game Pick: 'Enough Plumbers' (Glen Forrester and Arthur Lee, browser)
"Enough Plumbers is an expansion on Glen Forrester's original Enough Marios. The plumber's goal is to grab the flag on each of the 25 levels, but there's a twist - grabbing coins will create a Mario clone who then becomes user-controlled. Initially the concept acts as a distraction, turning what is essentially simple platforming into a bit of a nightmare, with plumbers spawning and jumping all over the place."

Game Pick: 'Time Paradox' (free-jap, browser)
"Time Paradox is a clever puzzle game in which you have to use time machines to travel back in time and unlock the exit door that blocks your way out of each level. Your current self has only thirty seconds to act before time runs out, and once a time machine has been used it cannot be activated again until you lose a life."

Game Pick: 'Aftermath' (Yrr, freeware)
"Aftermath is a 2D platformer created by newcomer Yrr, in which you're stranded on a crater with a broken missile that needs repair for it to fly again. Thus begins your adventure into the caverns, in search of coins and rocket parts to complete your escape plan."

Game Pick: 'Hoshi Saga Ringoame' (Nekogames, browser)
"Already the fifth game in the series (and the second one to feature full colour), Hoshi Saga Ringoame is a collection of twenty-five puzzles from Yoshio Ishii in which the player has to find a star hidden somewhere in every stage. Perhaps the easiest game out of the five, the only challenge that players might have a problem with is when trying to line up objects properly while the in-game physics engine is at work."

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

Though many of years have passed since Eurocom founder and director Neil Baldwin composed the soundtracks to NES games like Magician and Hero Quest, he hasn't given up on creating music with the 8-bit hardware! In the past five months, he's worked on a project called NTRQ, which he says is "the world’s first native NES music tracker"!

By "native", he means that NTRQ "runs on an NES using battery-backed RAM to store your NTRQ song data." I don't really understand all the numbers and slots that make up the Song Editor, but you can watch a video of NTRQ from a January build after the break. Baldwin also created a site for the software, where you will find tips, a support forum, and notes on the application's continued development.

While the NTRQ ROM is available to download for free -- runs in an emulator or original hardware via flashcart -- Mute City is also selling NTRQ NES carts (with the developer's permission) for $40. For each purchase, $5 of that amount will go to Cancer Research UK. Baldwin, whose mother has battled cancer for the past three years, asks that musicians who download NTRQ make a donation to Cancer Research UK, too.

[Via TCTD]

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

Nippon Ichi Software's Second Novel: Summer Girlfriend 15 Minutes of Memory uses a common video game trope -- characters stricken with amnesia -- but its prelude and story are certainly unconventional: one of the game's stars, Ayano, jumps off her school's rooftop. As you can already tell, despite the title, this is nothing like Konami's dating sim LovePlus+!

Ayano survives her fall but can only recall the last fifteen minutes of the events leading up to her jump. The protagonist of this PSP game, a boy named Naoya, also attempted suicide before Ayano but doesn't remember anything. The game takes place five years after those events, as Naoyo meets Ayano and tries to learn more about what happened.

It's a really intriguing set up (in my opinion), and the game has players switching between past and present events to recover their memories. Nippon Ichi plans to release Summer Girlfriend 15 Minutes of Memory in Japan this May. Because it's a visual novel, I doubt it will see a North American release, but maybe someone will take pity on us and post impressions/screenshots from the import.

[Via Siliconera]

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

In an exciting week for new job postings, Gamasutra's jobs board plays host to roles across the world and in every major discipline, including opportunities at Bethesda, Playfish, and many 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:

Activision: Motion Capture Pipeline Supervisor
"Headquartered in Santa Monica, California, Activision is a leading worldwide developer, publisher and distributor of video games. Our company has created, licensed and acquired a group of highly recognizable brands that it markets to a growing variety of consumer demographics. We are seeking individuals who will participate and contribute to our growth, and who will enjoy our fun, dynamic and highly focused business environment. We are seeking an experienced Motion Capture Pipeline Supervisor to join our team at our studio in Playa Del Rey, CA."

Hansoft: User Interface Engineer
"We are looking for someone that takes pride in great user interface programming. You will be a member of a talented development team working on our non-compromising designs for interface, database technology and other unique Hansoft components. As user interface engineer you will maintain and develop the user interface of the client of the Hansoft solution."

Rockstar North: Physics Programmer
"Rockstar North is seeking an experienced highly talented physics programmer to help breathe life, realism and fun into our next-generation games. This is an exciting opportunity to develop cutting-edge physics and collision systems and use them in creative and novel ways, working together with other departments to solve physics, animation and AI problems. Interested applicants should possess excellent math skills, an eye for detail and a natural ability to communicate as part of a creative team."

Bungie: Senior Server Programmer
"Bungie was founded in 1991 with two goals: to develop games that combine brilliant technology, beautiful art, intelligent stories and deep gameplay, and then sell enough of those games to achieve our real goal of total world domination. NON FACETE NOBIS CALCITRARE VESTRVM PERINAEVM."

Gazillion Entertainment: Social Designer
"From the space combat MMOG, Jumpgate Evolution, to the highly anticipated LEGO Universe MMOG; our company’s passion for launching to new heights of creativity can be experienced in everything we do. If you want to join a fun environment where we play as hard as we work and think you have what it takes to be a part of one of the most innovative MMO development studios in the world; come be a part of NetDevil."

Ngmoco: Associate
"ngmoco :) is seeking an Associate who will participate and contribute to our growth, and who will enjoy our fun, dynamic and focused business environment."

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

[Here's the first content announcement from our German colleagues who run GDC Europe, and it's the rather successful BigPoint, who have a Battlestar Galactica MMO and a host of already-successful browser games - will be interesting to hear their recipe for the win.]

GDC Europe organizers have announced the first keynote for the August event in Cologne, with Heiko Hubertz, CEO of dominant German online game firm BigPoint discussing elements likely to include the company's NBC backing, the Battlestar Galactica MMO, and pointers for business success.

BigPoint, which was founded in 2002, now employs 340 employees in Hamburg, Germany. Its runaway financial success in the browser game marketplace led to NBC taking a 35% stake in the firm in 2008.

As a result, the company recently opened a U.S. office, announcing a major partnership with engine firm Unity and an MMO based on NBC Universal's Battlestar Galactica property along the way.

Company founder Hubertz is likely to discuss the firm's history, trends in the industry, and tips to succeed in the competitive online game business as a major keynote for GDC Europe, which is ramping up announcements for its second event.

The conference, taking place Monday through Wednesday August 16-18, 2010 at the Cologne Congress Center East in Cologne, Germany, will once again run alongside the major GamesCom event to present the leading game industry event for developers, consumers, publishers and trade professionals.

By once again pairing GDC Europe with GamesCom, Europe's leading consumer and industry show, the conference can offer content to address the development community at a central location in the heart of Europe and command the critical mass of the European games sector. In 2009, its first year, GDC Europe saw more than 1,500 participants, including 130 international speakers, 40 exhibitors and 240 media representatives.

For more information on GDC Europe, including location and how to purchase passes -- for which registration is now open -- interested parties can visit the official Game Developers Conference Europe website.

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

Acclaimed pixelart group eBoy (Kai Vermehr, Steffen Sauerteig and Svend Smital), who we've featured a number of times here for its amazing and intricate isometric scenes, has a puzzle game featuring its work and coming to the iPhone (it would look wicked on the iPad, too) courtesy of a collaboration with developer Delicious Toys.

In eBoy FixPix, layers of the group's artwork are misaligned, and you'll need to tilt the iPhone to get the correct perspective and shift the slices into their proper place. There's a neat 3D/motion-tracking effect when you tilt the system, allowing you to see parts of the composition that you likely wouldn't even know about in the finished piece.

There's no word yet on when eBoy FixPix will hit the App Store, but CreativeApplications.Net previewed the game and says it has "about 100 different motives," as well as Facebook and Twitter integrations. In the meantime, you can see more of the group's pixelart work on their blog.

Posted by Eric Caoili at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

For his senior project at University of Florida, computer engineering undergraduate Mike Davenport created an instrument that's part arcade stick, part guitar. Instead of strings, the instrument features six buttons; it also uses a thumb slider joystick to adjust the pitch and "LFO Rate."

Davenport says he took inspiration for the project from arcade fighting games in which you can press two buttons (or a button and a direction) to perform a different move than you would pushing a single button. With his instrument, you can tap two buttons to play different "combos" (editable three-note chords, arpeggios).

He's also built in save banks, wave selection, and more into the instrument. You can read more technical details about the arcade guitar at Davenport's site. I've included a video after the break of him jamming with the device, too:

[Via Hack a Day]

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

With Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker's release in Japan this week, Konami has uploaded a series of humorous animated guides that help introduce the game to beginners by relating common features to real life situations.

In the above clip for example, viewers learn that "a heart massage is effective against a friend who's had his heart broken." Here, Tom and Dick vow to confess their love to their girlfriends but are rejected. Dick gives Tom a heart massage to revive him, and Tom says, "I was saved because of you." Dick responds, "I'm your friend, aren't I?"

In the other video I've embedded, Jeff helps his friend, Jane, get over her fears of passing a sleeping dog by teaching her the Snake Formation (automatically following a friend) and how to sneak by in a Love Pack Box with two people. "I'm not scared if I'm with you! And friendship level goes up too!?"

You can see more of the Peace Walker videos and explanations at Andriasang.com. I give the entire set of clips a score of 40 out of 40!

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

['Battle Klaxon' is a monthly GameSetWatch-exclusive column where traveling games journalist Quintin Smith fights to win a bit of glory for the beautiful, brave but overlooked games that people are missing in their lives. This month: scrappy vagabond simulator Way of the Samurai 3.]

'MISSION FAILED.'

Okay, now hang on--

'YOU LOSE.'

But I--

'GAME OVER.'

Is it?

'YES.'

Alright. Have you ever played any of the Way of the Samurai games?

'...NO.'

They're fascinating. I mean, they're also really bad, just unforgivably amateurish, but people should still be paying attention to what they try and do with narrative.

You spend these games wandering between various roads, villages, towns and castles, killing anybody, working for anybody, failing, ignoring or abandoning any mission, betraying anyone you like, and the game never stops you or tells you what to do. Not to be confused with other "free-form" games like GTA or Fable which in truth offer aimless freedom on the side like a bar might offer peanuts, Way of the Samurai titles are games about being free. There is no story except how you choose to spend your violent life, and I think that's really interesting.

'MMM-HMM.'

I'm serious! Not even the sprawling Morrowinds and Risens of the world shot for the degree of nonlinearity you see in Way of the Samurai. Listen to me!

Let's take the latest one, Way of the Samurai 3 for the 360 and PS3. It drops you like a bath bomb into a province of feudal Japan featuring a glut of medieval plot devices- one clan has just overthrown another, villagers are being oppressed by high taxes, a bandit clan is up to no good, the whole bit.

As an archetypal wandering samurai, you have no objectives. No quest for revenge, no search for an item, no pressing need to save the world. Rather, the world is simply yours to tinker with, and the 'story' is simply the events you discover and the choices you make. The game definitely doesn't end if you fail a mission or murder an important character. You're genuinely free.

'SO, IT'S AN RPG WHICH DOESN'T GIVE PLAYERS OBJECTIVES? BRILLIANT. NOT LIKE OBJECTIVES ARE NECESSARY TO PREVENT GAMERS FROM BECOMING DIRECTIONLESS AND BORED OR ANYTHING.'

That's garbage. Look at Animal Crossing. Simply existing in a world can be more than enough to hold anybody's interest if the world is crafted with love and intelligence.

Gamers only ever feel bored if the game doesn't present you with the tools you need to make your own fun. Moseying into a town as a badass samurai and cutting open anyone you don't like? That's fun. Arriving on the scene of an argument and using wisdom or bias to dish out justice? That's fun too.

But you musn't misunderstand me. These are games about being free, which is different from being aimless. Players are equally free to sell their sword to the ruling clan, bandit clan or villagers in an attempt to somehow give their life meaning, and in return get dealt a traditional series of missions to complete. But your unstoppable freedom will often rear its head again- nothing's stopping you from assasinating a clan leader and replacing them, or becoming seduced by the scheming Lady Macbeth that plots from the province's palace, or showing up for work at the wrong clan and introducing yourself as a double agent.

It's like this: Most freeform RPGs these days (Mass Effect 2, Fable 2, Fallout 3) create the illusion of freedom by placing a linear plot in a big world full of side quests. You're presented with a lot of decisions, but the consequences are usually minimal because from a design perspective you want those consequences to lock out as little content as possible.

The result is that these games play like very expensive editions of those crappy personality-determining multiple choice quizzes. The game will tell you whether you are (A) A good guy, (B) A bad guy, or (C) a jerk, and you're only "free" in so much as you can check the boxes in whatever order you like.

Way of the Samurai games are different. Their worlds are so small and interconnected that everything you do affects everyone else. Choices you make lock out whole swathes of side missions, and not only can you kill characters who might otherwise let you in on their schemes, you're often pressed to do so. The entire game branches outward like a tree in a way other RPGs could never, ever could, and on a given runthrough of WoTS 3 you're likely to see perhaps 15% of the game.

So, how is this possible? Let's move on to WoTS's other neat trick.

This immense quantity of branches can exist because WoTS games are designed to be replayed. Reaching one of the game's endings takes a maximum of five or six hours, and sequential samurai you make begin with all the combat abilities you unlocked in previous playthroughs (as well as any items or weapons you bundled into storage). You spend one game as the avaricious samurai, another as the tender-hearted lover, one as the people's champion, another as a bandit. You probe the game's freedom, and in doing so get your money's worth from a game that only takes a few hours to complete.

'WHAT'S ANY OF THIS GOT TO DO WITH ANYTHING.'

My point is that it's actually possible to design games which don't tell tiny variations on the same story every time. Games don't have to tug you down a set story like some oppressive digital father figure taking you for a walk, and they definitely don't need to reset themselves when you screw up an arbitrary task. I mean, what if you screwed up deliberately?

Every single time a game doesn't let you do something, or stops itself because you've 'failed' at something, that's really a failure on the part of our medium. And yet the Way of the Samurai games seem to be the only series that's actively trying to figure out a way around that. Isn't that a shame?

'KINDA.'

Really? You think so?

'YOU STILL CAN'T HAVE YOU GAME BACK.'

Okay. Well can you at least not upload my score to the online leaderboards? It's embarrassing.

'SORRY.'

Don't do it, man! I have a reputation! I'll pull your plug out!

'DARE YOU, TENDERLOIN. YOU DON'T HAVE THE BAL--'

[Quinns is a freelance journalist who has fun working for Eurogamer, contributing to Rock Paper Shotgun and reading Action Button. You can currently find him in the damp Irish city of Galway, as quinns108 on Twitter or at quintinsmithster at gmail dot com.]

Posted by Quintin Smith at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Online apparel shop Triumvir has opened preorders for its Super Street Fighter X collection, a new line of t-shirts complementing this week's release of Super Street Fighter IV for consoles. Unlike Triumvir's Psycho Brigade collection, which featured subtle nods and icons to M. Bison's Shadaloo crime syndicate, this line prominently features concept art from the series.

The black and white artwork comes from Kinu Nishimura and CRMK, and was originally created many years ago for the oft-forgotten 3DO version of Super Street Fighter II Turbo. "Trust me when I first pitched this idea to Capcom they almost had no recollection of this artwork, but I was able to hunt this down," explains Triumvir's Brandon Cheng.

He adds, "The main concept was to resurrect these magnificent sketches that have almost been forgotten and reintroduce them to the Street Fighter community. We simply wanted to add the color concept into the sketches by using a water-colored technique onto the graphics. These sketches took days, hours, and minutes for [us] to trace and apply the colors."

I've included shots of my favorite shirts below, but you can see the entire Super Street Fighter X collection and put in a preorder (first 100 orders over $50 receive a limited Shadaloo Boxing Glove keychain) at Triumvir's online shop.

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

Rockin' Android, the indie publisher dedicated to localizations for obscure PC doujin shoot'em-ups, announced a partnership with Sony Online Entertainment to release three titles on the PlayStation Network next month.

Regular readers will remember that Rockin' Android revealed this deal late last year, but this formal announcement specifies the planned PSN games slated to receive an HD edition, PSN Trophies support, and remote play capabilities: Gundemonium Recollection, GundeadliGne, and Hitogata Happa.

All three of the "bullet hell" titles are part of Platine Dispositif's Gundemonium Collection, which will also see a PC release in the U.S. (includes a DVD-Rom edition and a digital download version) on May 18th. You can watch player-uploaded gameplay videos for Gundemonium Recollection, GundeadliGne, and Hitogata Happa after the break.

"Our collaboration with game development powerhouse Sony Online Entertainment creates an incredibly unprecedented opportunity to expose many of Japan’s top indie video games to the worldwide online gaming community," says Rockin’ Android President Enrique Galvez. "This is truly an exciting time for both companies, the Japanese indie game industry and gaming consumers."

Gundemonium Recollection:

GundeadliGne:

Hitogata Happa:

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

[Charles Cecil, the adventure game legend behind the acclaimed Broken Sword and Beneath a Steel Sky, talks to GSW columnist Lewis Denby about his 30 years as a storyteller, his work on the new Doctor Who video game series, and how "point-and-click isn't broken."]

Charles Cecil's influence in the games industry as a storyteller is longstanding. He's the founder and managing director of UK-based Revolution Software, with credits that include Beneath a Steel Sky and the Broken Sword game series -- two highly admired and acclaimed properties in the adventure game genre.

He's also just announced that he's working with the BBC and Sumo Digital on a series of videogame adaptations of the TV series Doctor Who.

Cecil has been making games for 30 years, hugely acclaimed ones for 20. He's clearly confident in his abilities as a designer, and has a lot to be proud of -- but there are times when he sounds as if he can still barely believe he's actually doing this.

Here, we find out about his relationship with the adventure genre, as well as his new Doctor Who game series, the opportunities of independent development, and the Minesweeper-based game he revealed, then went silent about, last year.

What is it that's attracted you to the adventure genre? Because you've basically built a whole career out of it…

Charles Cecil: I think that the whole idea of interactive narrative from a creative perspective, from a theoretical perspective, is actually fascinating. What we are doing is obviously pioneering a totally new form of entertainment, in the way that, if you think of other entertainment media -- television has a lot more to do with film, and obviously books and plays -- we have something quite extraordinary. And what I find fascinating is that while there are clearly huge opportunities, there are also great constraints.

The opportunities are clear. Well-written videogames are incredibly compelling. What I think is quite interesting is that there was a period at one point where it was felt that people from outside the industry could write much better stories than we could, and so scriptwriters were brought in, and actually what everybody failed to realize is that the medium inherently has constraints. Like the way that we build empathy with characters is much easier, because in a non-linear medium it's all about looking at a character, and building an emotional bond with them -- an empathetic bond -- and then experiencing their emotion through that character.

But clearly if you're controlling that character, then the relationship is different. Yes, there is an empathetic bond, but it's also much more associational. And that's why, certainly in our infancy as an industry, there's this sort of emphasis on licensed characters, because the great thing about a licensed character is you immediately inherit all the empathy that the character built in whatever medium it's come from.

But the thing that's quite interesting -- and this is what I try to play around with quite a lot -- is in a film, or in any linear medium, you would have a disconnect between the information given to the audience, and the protagonist, so you create tension. The example I rather like is that, in a slasher move, you know the slasher is sitting behind the tree waiting for the teenage girls who are skipping along. They're wandering around, they're thrilled because they're going about, y'know, whatever they're doing, and there's an incredible tension created in the audience because you know that there's something waiting for them, even if you don't quite know what.

In a game, obviously, you can't quite do that to the same extent, and so I think it's fascinating how you create the disconnect, and I think it's important to create that disconnect, because it allows a certain level of tension.

In terms of adventure games, obviously you've rebooted some of your IP on the iPhone, and also the Wii and the DS…

Slightly more than rebooted…

Of course, sure…

[Broken Sword:] Director's Cut has considerable additional content…

You're absolutely right. But in terms of working on different platforms on a genre that's traditionally associated with PC gaming, what sort of a future do you see in these other formats?

Oh, I think if you actually play it on the DS and on the iPhone, the tactility of it is absolutely wonderful. What we decided was that the point-and-click wasn't broken, so why change it? So fundamentally, a lot of it is very similar. But the ability to actually feel the screen and to play the game through the tactility of touching the screen with your finger or with the stylus -- I think it adds a lot. I think it's very exciting, and I had absolutely no idea it would work as well as I feel it has done.

Part of the reason, of course, is that we were very happy and very prepared to just throw everything out and start again with the interface. And, universally, people have said that the interface we've come up with is infinitely better than the one that Monkey Island did. And, I mean, I think that's a fact. It is.

And it's interesting, because Monkey Island was very ambitious, and very, very good, and I love what they've done with the art. But clearly that was a group of people who were probably scared to make brave decisions. They were happy to commission vast amounts of art so you could see what went before and what went now, but sometimes you just need somebody who's gonna sit there and say, "well, actually, it doesn't work very well, so let's throw it out and start again."

And I think if you look at companies like LucasArts, who I admire enormously, their attitude towards fans who wanted to do tributes to Monkey Island is very, very different to the way that we handle it. But again, it's because ultimately we are a very small group, and we make a decision, and I think probably time will prove that we were right to be very relaxed in the way that we allowed people to create products as long as they didn't commercially exploit them -- and that's a line that I've been very clear that cannot be crossed.

But beyond that, we see it as very flattering. Broken Sword 2.5 -- I mean, great! I really admire the guys that did that. We provided them some sprites and stuff, but the rest of it they did absolutely by themselves.

You mentioned that you don't think the point-and-click is broken. A lot of people have said it's a dying genre, and then people have argued back and said it's not… do you think it needs to make significant changes to stay relevant as it moves forwards?

Oh, yes, it does. Look at something like Professor Layton, which is very simplistic, but it's much easier to play. I think point-and-click in the old sense… I have to say, I think point-and-click on iPhone actually works really, really well. But what I was quite pleased about is that one of the criticisms people made of the [Broken Sword] Director's Cut is that the new material felt very contemporary but the old material felt a little bit old-school. A couple of people said that, and I was thrilled, because it means that, actually, according to these people, we've successfully reinvented the point-and-click to feel contemporary.

But I think as an interface it's perfectly relevant. I think obviously what people expect is different. In Broken Sword we had more close-up screens and more mini-games, and of course they were absolutely relevant to the gameplay, and I think they improved the overall feel of it. Part of what our next game is going to be is a partnership with [Watchmen co-creator and Broken Sword artist] Dave Gibbons, so it'll be very comic book orientated. And I think there's a lot you can do with comic books as well, particularly if you want to keep your memory footprint quite small so you can download stuff through Wi-Fi or mobile.

And this next project with Dave Gibbons, is this the Minesweeper-based one?

No, no … Absolutely nothing to do with that.

Okay… Because this kind of went off the radar for a while.

Yeah, I know, I need to get back on it. The reason I haven't done anything is that, over the last year, we finished Broken Sword: The Director's Cut on DS and Wii, we've done Beneath a Steel Sky on iPhone, we've done Broken Sword: The Director's Cut on iPhone, I consulted to Disney on a really nice little game based on A Christmas Carol, and obviously I've been working with the BBC on Doctor Who. So there just hasn't been time to do anything else.

And I'm a great fan of One Big Game [the charitable publisher responsible for Chime, and also involved in this project], and I started down that road, and then everything went crazy, and everything's still crazy. I will - at some point very soon - return to it. I think it's a great idea, and I'm really excited by it, but I just haven't had a moment spare, not one moment, as you can imagine. I mean, that's a lot of stuff going on, a lot of it in parallel.

And I suspect your work with the BBC on the Doctor Who games is your current priority, especially with the announcement.

Yes -- except that, actually, we've been working on that for a year. Over a year. So, you know, we're a long way down the road on that. I've got a few more months on that, but in the grand scheme of things we're definitely towards the end of that project.

Do you want to talk a bit about your involvement in that, and tell us about the games?

Yes, I will do. I'll have to be a little bit careful. I was approached by the BBC just over a year ago, and they were keen to reach an area of the audience - particularly males, younger males - who were not watching so much television. They feel that it's absolutely vital that they continue as the BBC to communicate with them. Their remit is to educate, to entertain and to inform.

And we came up with this idea - well, it was their desire to do a Doctor Who game - for an adventure game that was every bit of the top quality - I mean, it looks superb - that was highly accessible - so it had a simple interface - and that was true to the brand, in that you know the Doctor wouldn't go around shooting things, you know. We've been very, very sympathetic to the brand's values, because obviously it's a very powerful brand and very important to the BBC.

…That's all you can reveal?

That's probably all I should reveal. Otherwise I'll get shot.

Okay, in that case: Today's obviously been all about indie games, but it's primarily been about the business of indie games.

Yes, definitely.

In terms of the creative side, then, what do you find exciting about the indie scene?

Well, what I find exciting is that, like it was in the early 80s, you can have one boy or girl or two people sitting in a bedroom, and they can come up with something that really is amazing, and that they have passion about, and that could be hugely successful. We were getting to the stage where the barrier to entry and the risks were so high that, ultimately, there was no indie scene. Now there's a thriving indie scene, and it can only grow.

I've been working now on games for 30 years, and so I guess I'm seen as a safe pair of hands. Now, a 16, 17, 18-year-old with passion and talent can blow everything apart and come up with something amazing, and I think that's very refreshing, and I think it's great for the business.

[Lewis Denby is editor of Resolution Magazine and general freelance busybody for anyone that'll have him.]

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

If the Noby Noby Boy app doesn't completely satisfy your need to carry Keita Takahashi's bizarre game with you wherever you go, Namco Bandai has come up with another way for the stretchy figure to live in your iPhone/iPod Touch; it's released a digital-only (for now, at least) soundtrack for the game on iTunes!

The OST offers 34 tracks, so you'll probably want to spend $11.99 buying the entire album instead of purchasing each song for $0.99 cents each. Plus, if you buy the full album, you'll also receive an extra song ("Noby Noby Machine Acid Eutron #000"), a promotion movie, and a digital booklet.

[Via Nobuooo]

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

After more than five months of work on the project, the release of a development build last February, and a recent reboot for the game's art style (see above image), indie developer Flashhbang Studios announced that it's suspended development on the HD sequel to Off-Road Velociraptor Safari, with no plans to resume in the forseeable future.

Revealed in November 2009, Off-Road Velociraptor Safari HD was meant to include new modes and missions, an art overhaul that promised to "push the game into the next-gen category", and more. The studio altered its "HD" plans shortly after GDC, though, as it hoped to "create a look that relied less on raw production man-hours and more on style."

As for why the company is stepping away from the game after investing nearly half a year into it, founder Matthew Wegner offers several reasons, like the project feeling "muddy": "It isn’t blindingly obvious where to take it yet. I can blame this on tactical errors I have made, in terms of where I placed our priorities and where I spent my time, but the end result is still a lack of clarity."

"And finding that clarity is a very taxing job; we’re just too burnt out to make it happen," he adds. "When I imagine a year of Raptor Safari development, I feel drained, and when I image a year of something else I feel energized. The rest of the team feels the same way, so our choice was clear."

Wegner says there are also practical reasons for halting development on ORVS HD: "Much of Flashbang’s revenue stems from affiliate programs in the casual market. Many of these programs are either shuttering completely or have drastically altered their terms in punitive ways, probably as a result of the casual market itself being hurt by Facebook/web games."

"Regardless of why, our financial projections suddenly went from a year of smooth sailing to a runway of only a few months. I don’t want to give the impression that this is purely a financial decision, because it’s not. Impending poverty forced us to make some decision, but it wasn’t the source of our problems. I don’t think we would continue development at this point even if a sack of free money fell right into our laps."

The Flashbang founder notes that the studio's typical 8-week cycle style of development for its Blurst portal, which produced titles like Time Donkey and Crane Wars, didn't match up well with a bigger project like this one. "There more I blocked out development in terms of making one really good game, the more I realized we’re not ready for that kind of commitment yet," he says.

The company abandoned the 8-week cycle style of development as it took on ORVS HD with the hopes that its decision would "open some doors and provide ... more flexibility and opportunities." With the game now abandoned, Flashbang is currently looking to find contract work as a team, and is changing its model again.

"Longer-term, things will slowly diverge," says Wegner. "We’ve pulled the release valve and distributed company savings to individuals. This means Flashbang itself no longer has any salaried employees, but don’t worry! We’ll still be here. This is the same model we used for the first 5 of our 7 years as company. The office will morph into a shared workspace for individual projects and collaborations."

"Personally, I plan to spend time on Blurst features (particularly a pipeline to bring some of the 3rd-party submissions online). It’s hard to say what we’ll all be doing in four months. Perhaps new experiments will make their way onto Blurst as polished prototypes, or maybe we’ll try our hand at the roulette game of the App Store. There are a lot of possibilities in front of us!"

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

[Just a note for any GameSetWatch readers in the game biz who don't have their resume uploaded to our sister site Gamasutra - it's a fairly painless process, and you may now also get a Nintendo DSi out of it, as an ambient bonus. Info below...]

Gamasutra is announcing a new monthly competition for job-seekers, with a Nintendo DSi up for grabs to a randomly-chosen game creator who uploads their resume/CV into the site's market-leading resume database.

The leading site on the art and business of games already has hundred of advertised jobs monthly jobs in programming, art, design, production and more, from top industry companies.

But searching a database of video game job candidates -- already actively used on Gamasutra by major publishers and developers like Microsoft, Activision, Sony, Ubisoft, Gazillion, Blizzard, and THQ -- is becoming an equally way of finding new employees at top studios. becoming a much more popular way of finding new employees at top studios.

Now, any Gamasutra jobseeker who logs on to the Job Seeker part of Gamasutra's jobs section and fills in or updates a resume in the 'My Resume Manager' section will be eligible for a random drawing to be held monthly.

Starting on May 31st and occurring at the end of the calendar month thereafter, one random developer who has updated or uploaded their resume in either 'public to searchers' or 'anonymous' formats in the last competition period will win a new Nintendo DSi handheld, thanks to Gamasutra.

Along the way, entrants can sign up for a service that should significantly increase their chances of being called on by some of the game industry's leading companies.

[COMPETITION NOTES: One entry per person. Winner will be contacted privately via email. Monthly prize is one U.S.-purchased Nintendo DSi which will be sent to winner's location, whether inside or outside North America.]

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

Indie game designer Mark "messhof" Essen (Cream Wolf, Flywrench) last night revealed this trailer for Raging Hadron, a new two-player competitive game that "combines swashbuckling swordplay with 8-bit psychedelia".

The NYU Game Center commissioned Raging Hadron and will show it off, along with three other titles, at No Quarter, an upcoming exhibit featuring games that look to "explore the possibilities for social play in real-world environments" and "imagine a new arcade that generates complex, surprising, and playful interactions in the public setting of a gallery space".

No Quarter will kick off on May 6th with an opening reception, where attendees can play the commissioned games and meet their creators (and also partake in food/wine). The NYU Game center will leave the games on display in its Game Center lobby until June 4th.

Other projects to be featured at the exhibit include Deep Sea, an audio-only game about "the terrors of deep sea diving" by Robin Arnott; Recurse, a "manic game of twisting bodies, quick reactions, and physical feedback" by Matt Parker; and 16 tons, a four-player strategy and negotiation game by Eric Zimmerman and Nathalie Pozzi.

[Via @messhof]

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

[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 looks at the movie Kick Ass, those Tumblin' Monkeys, and MotorStorm's mud.]

First up, Daniel Floyd, he of the funny voice filter, presents part 8 of his video lecture series on games. This one is about ‘Video Games and Moral Choices’, apparently, and was co-written with game designer James Portnow.

Simon Cottee played a game of Sleep is Death. That in itself is not extraordinary, but he turned it into a short film called ‘Rule’, which is rather extraordinary.

BoingBoing ran a piece this week called ‘Chimerical Avatars and Other Identity Experiments from Prof. Fox Harrell’. The key point of the study being that, “Much more is at stake than just fun and games. Prejudice, bias, stereotyping, and stigma are built not only into many games, but other forms of identity representations in social networks, virtual worlds, and more. These have real world effects on how we see ourselves and each other.”

Elsewhere, Kirk Hamilton at Gamer Melodico wrote down some in-game quotes from Splinter Cell: Conviction this week and finds that quotes removed from their context can give one a very different impression of what kind of a game it is.

Tanner Higgin this week wrote about ‘Kick Ass and the Ethics of Gameplay’ for his blog Gaming the System: "This ethical confusion, wherein audiences misread a film by applying gamic logics to film, demonstrate the desperate need for better videogame literacies that teach viewers how to interpret and understand games."

Kate Simpson wrote a two-part series of posts about Dragon Age: Origins titled ‘Blood Vessels’, which she describes as ‘a look at how character origins contributed to narrative themes of blood and identity’.

Andrew at Little Bo Beep takes somewhat more of a contrarian viewpoint on the game this week, in a post entitled ‘Dragon Age is not the next Baldur’s Gate’.

In addition, Paste Magazine’s Jason Killingsworth writes about ‘The Daily Grind’ at the Start Press videogame blog: "During my Faxanadu level-grinding, the spectating part of me couldn't fathom how willingly I performed an identical set of actions for well over an hour just for the modest reward of a new shield or magical attack. Beyond simply abiding the exercise, I find it oddly relaxing and enjoyable—the feeling of slow-and-steady, incremental progress that culminates in someplace worth going, or something worth having."

Graduate students from the Georgia Tech Digital Media program have a new blog called ‘Rules of the Game’ and it’s an intriguing new approach to games writing. There’s some confusion about this piece by Simon Ferrari that calls itself “Analysis – Art Style Orbient” as it gives a score at the end, “based on how well the writer thinks the aspect in focus is designed.” Ferrari also writes this week about the time he spent in a MUD as a kid. As a young teen without internet better than dialup until I was about 16, I was intensely jealous of one particular friend who played a MUD called Dragon’s Gate. Intensely jealous.

Speaking of MUDs, Steven O’Dell at Raptured Reality asks if we’ve ‘Got mud?’ He’s not talking about Multi User Dungeons, however, but rather about the mud made from dirt and water and the game MotorStorm. O’Dell describes it as “...an amalgamation of genres that somehow seems to meld together quite effectively, but ultimately leaves the final product with a feeling that something is missing.”

The kids game ‘Tumblin Monkeys’ get more of a rise out of Chris Dahlen than God of War III. (Which could say more about Tumblin’ Monkeys than God of War, but I digress.) Dahlen sees a disconnect between the game’s slick controls and its protagonists rough and brutal demeanour.

Denis Farr writing for The Border House this week maintains a keen and sceptical eye about a story that emerged from the UK’s Daily Star, involving a woman receiving an injury falling from a Wii Balance Board and acquiring as a result “persistent sexual arousal syndrome.” Farr's post wouldn't be out of place in one of TWIVGC’s other favourite blogs, Gaming Watch.

Frequent contributor to TWIVGC Eric Swain has written about ‘Games as Structure’ this week, and it’s a long post discussing a host of games, concluding with the ponderous statement “the designer creates the story, but the player creates the plot. Just make sure you know which part you’re dabbling in.”

Matt West from the Australian videogame blog Armchair Diplomat wrote a piece called 'Heavy Rain: Squeezing the magic from the mundane', a criticism of the games slow pacing.

And lastly for the week, Justin Keverne has been running a short series of imagined quotes from various games this week; Betrayal; Fear; Love; Regret; and Isolation. I like that he’s doing something different here than just writing another essay about X or Y game (not that there’s anything wrong with that, but there’s scope in games criticism for so much more), so check it out and see if you like it too.

Posted by Ben Abraham at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Fans of both Street Fighter and popular Japanese manga/anime series Lucky Star can finally see their two loves combined in figure form with a new set of chibi Nendoroid toys for the comedy franchise, releasing this August courtesy of Good Smile Company (preorders already open at some import shops)

The set comes with four prepainted figures of the show's cast, each around 2-3 inches tall and represented with a Street Fighter outfit: Konata Izumi as Guile, Kagami Hiiragi as Ryu, Tsukasa Hiiragi as Ken, and Miyuki Takara Crimson Viper. All of the figures have some points of articulation that allow you to post them in special moves (e.g. Flash Kick, Dragon Punch)!

This might seem like a strange mix of brands to people unfamiliar with the show, but Lucky Star has a history with the fighting game. After the break, you can see an excerpt from the show about how two of the program's characters met, with a special cameo from a Street Fighter "foreigner":

[Via GamerTell]

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

When Midway closed its coin-op division back in 2001, the company cancelled several arcade projects it had in development, one of which was RIP Squad: Raids Against the Reich, an on-rails shooter with a 360 view and a mounted gun designed to simulate a .50 caliber machine gun.

While the game was far from complete -- needing 12-14 more months of development -- and mostly unknown to the general public, Arcade Heroes was able to shoot some footage of the last surviving RIP Squad prototype and interview former Midway Chicago employee Scott Pikulski (now at Play Mechanix) about his work on the arcade game.

He explains the RIP Squad's premise: "You are a member of RIP Squad. This was a small team of elite soldiers [whose] mission was to infiltrate the enemy and carry out specific missions. The weapon of choice was the 50 .cal machine gun. RIP squad stood for relentless independent and proud, it also meant these guys were on the edge with one foot in the grave."

You can watch more videos of the cancelled project and read excerpts from an interview with Pikulski at Arcade Heroes's site.

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

[Checking out student game and IGF Student Showcase winner The Devil's Tuning Fork, Andrew Vanden Bossche examines its unique echolocation mechanic in conversation with the development team.]

After seeing videos of The Devil's Tuning Fork, I was worried that the floor of PAX East would be too noisy to check out the game. Fortunately, they were as far from Rockstar's hip hop blaring booth as possible and provided headphones. It was the same sort of circumstances I had watched the video in, which allowed its slow pace and moody atmosphere showed through.

The Devil's Tuning Fork is a first person puzzle game, not unlike Portal in genre. Gameplay consists of standard puzzle-platformy type things combined with a core mechanic that revolves around the fact that the world is completely dark until illuminated with sound waves.

Clicking the mouse creates a pulse that travels through the surfaces of the game world and lights them up. The solitary tones, dark world, and creepy background voices create a very eerie experience.

Jason Pecho, the project and tech lead, told me the eerie themes of the story were "an emergent property of the way we decided to use the echolocation mechanic." They had started with the concept of shooting out a sound wave and it visualizing everything, and in the prototyping process put a creepy placeholder sound effect in. The playtester reaction to it was so strong that it came to define the direction of the project.

"They" is a team of 15 DePaul University students by their game designer in residence Alex Seropian, one of the initial founders of Bungie, to create a game to enter in the 2010 Independent Games Festival student showcase. The team was formed to function very much like its own company. Aside from project lead Jason Pecho, the project has a producer, three level designers, five artists, and five programmers.

Pecho told me that Seropian gave them guidance but let the team pick its own direction. "Alex Seropian was instrumental in the connecting phase," he said. "He asked us the right questions for us to realize what we needed to work on."

While the sound is a major theme, it's actually more of a game about sight. The mechanic of the player having to constantly reveal the landscape is both limiting and empowering to the player. "One of the things we wanted was to not show the player anything unless it has their input. A lot of times the screen is black, and it's up to the player to see," said Pecho.

A game like this, he said, is highly dependent on having interesting shapes for players to look at. In particular, the game has a lot of moving platforms, which makes for a very different scene each time the player emits a pulse. I found in my own experience that I had to constantly reorient myself at the start of each pulse, since the world had changed during the short period of darkness.

The game's story came only after the gameplay and atmosphere had been established. "We started with the mechanic. The first and most important thing is the game mechanics, and you want a story that enhances the game," said Pecho.

One of the things Jason Pecho said he found out from working in a team environment is you can't make everyone happy. The team couldn't get everyone to agree on a story, or even if there should be one, so Jason made up a story strike team to come up with an established story they could work with. "If you want to create an atmospheric story, there needs to be something narrative about that atmosphere," he said.

The story they came up with revolves around the protagonist wandering through a mansion while trying to save children whose souls are trapped in stuffed animals. The narrative is present are pervasive but indirect, which Pecho saw as a plus. "It's really interesting to see how the players interpret what's going on," he said. "We never let the villain be seen because we want the player to be in control. It's more immerse because it's their interpretation."

Right now, the team is in the process of adding new levels. Currently, the game takes about 40 minutes to an hour to complete, and Pecho would like it to be around four-five hours. In order for it to justify that sort of length, it needs new game mechanics which could take about three months to a year, depending on if a publisher picks it up or not.

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

New York City's indie games arcade Babycastles, whose opening we covered in our Blip Fest 2009 report last December, is throwing another must-attend event for indie gaming/chiptimes enthusiasts this Saturday with developer talks, playable games, and musical performances.

Ramiro Corbetta, lead designer at NYC-based developer Powerhead, will deliver a talk about DSiWare gem Glow Artisan, which you might remember won the Best Mobile Game Design award at this year's Independent Games Festival. Even after taking home that prize, this puzzler still isn't receiving the attention it deserves, so download a copy of it for your DSi and make plans to congratulate Corbetta on creating such a sweet game!

GameSetWatch contributor and ex-Ubisoft Matthew "Fort90" Hawkins is scheduled to give a presentation and will bring copies of Fort90Zine #3, the latest issue of his video games zine with a foreword by Life Meter's Dave Roman, a pin-up by Hilary Florido, an article about an odd non-game import from yours truly, and more. Hawkins is also bringing his classic and very NSFW game JizzMoppa for attendees to play.

Mark Denardo of Pixeljam (Mountain Maniac, Pizza City) will discuss his audio work on Adult Swim's Cream Wolf, a game that "explores the Pac-Man-like reality of being a pedophilic, ice cream truck driving werewolf." You'll be able to play Cream Wolf at Babycastles, too, whilst listening to Denardo and his chip music group Graffiti Monsters perform.

Other Babycastles highlights you can look forward to: a performance by "cyclops-sorta suited video game lecturer" Blue Leader and a "secret extra game" you can check out. I hear Gamasutra's Leigh Alexander might attend, too, so if you see her in the crowd, you can bug Leigh about bringing back her Aberrant Gamer column so we can fill our pages with more articles about h-games.

If you're wondering where to find this mystical indie games arcade, it's at the Silent Barn in Ridgewood (Queens), where it's open four to five nights a week and during the afternoon on Sundays. Babycastles throws a party for new games every month, offering fresh fruit smoothies, game developer talks, and opportunities to play indie games. You can RSVP for this weekend's event here.

[Via NYU Game Center]

Posted by Eric Caoili at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Nobody noticed it because it was hidden in a press release about Save The Turtles last month, but publisher Sabarasa announced that it will release two DSiWare titles from offbeat indie game developer Jason Rohrer (Sleep is Death). The two slates games are Primrose (a puzzler released for iPhone/PC last year), and a three-game collection titled Alt-Play: Jason Rohrer Anthology.

According to the ERSB, Alt-Play: Jason Rohrer Anthology will include three of the developer's best known games: Passage, Gravitation, and Between, the last of which won the Innovation (Nuovo) award at the 2009 Independent Games Festival. Like Sleep Is Death, Between is a multiplayer experience -- I wonder if this will support online multiplayer or just local?

The Alt-Play label suggests that Sabarasa has more indie games in mind for DSiWare, which would be really cool if true (and even more cool if gamers don't ignore their release). Of course, those of you with just a plain Nintendo DS and not a DSi can still play a Jason Rohrer game on your portable when Diamond Trust of London releases in a few months.

[Via Joystiq]

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

Though you'd never guess it from their intimidating size and heavy firepower, mechas (and their pilots) aren't always so serious and sometimes like to blow off steam like the rest of us, chillin' out with buds, shooting volleys of missiles just to see where they fly, and fist pumping to some dance music.

A Japanese group of Armored Core: For Answer players shot 18 hours of footage to produce this video of mechas just kickin' it, showing off formation flybys, missile tornadoes, smoke trails, and other fireworks. It's an impressive performance, and as Mecha Damashii points out, it "shows how versatile and functionally thorough the game is".

The music in the video, in case you're interested, is "Starry Sky" by MK and R.Cena. You can listen to the full track (and host your own mecha dance party with all the Gundam kits on your desk) at this Youtube video -- the striped pantsu-filled image is a little NSFW, though.

[Via NicoVideo]

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

[Gods at Play is a new, regular GameSetWatch column from Troy Goodfellow about design issues and gamer experiences in strategy games. How can strategy games help us understand the nature of play and the minds of players? This week, Troy looks at how two different games approach the problem of AI advisors.]

Though not the dominant genre it once was, strategy designers still beat at the same problems that faced Bunten, Meier and Tiller in the genre's heyday. At their best, these are games about planning and understanding systems, not simply reacting to the newest thing on your screen.

As the title of this column series implies, strategy gamers love to pretend that they are gods, and not distant Deistic gods simply setting things in motion. Strategy games give you worlds to build and worlds to destroy. Many of them make you believe you can do whatever you want, but the control freak tendencies are sometimes constrained by information overload. Most of us can only process so many connections, possibilities and events.

For example, classic empire building games (often dubbed "4x" for their emphasis on exploration, expansion, exploitation and extermination) often run into the same problems that real empires do. Once you have built an empire over a certain size, the management of that empire becomes more cumbersome.

You might have a large army scattered across more fronts than you want to manage. You might have too many colonies that you don't really care about nagging you for new orders. If the game is really complex, you might not even be comfortable with how everything fits together so some decisions you make just feel like crap shoots.

Enter the virtual viceroys – the AI controlled advisors, governors or generals that you can call on to either advise on or manage the things you don't want to care about right now.

Lots of games have used these 'virtual viceroys' at a basic level. You could set planets or cities to produce structures or units on their own (games in the Civilization and Master of Orion series, for example.) The global political sim Supreme Ruler has cabinet ministers with their own personalities to whom you can assign priorities; you can always set them to follow your concerns, though, so the personality thing never really comes into play.

But designing to give the player confidence in the virtual viceroys is harder than it looks. You have to overcome the strategy gamer's instinct to control everything and, most importantly, navigate Meier's Maxim; if a game is a series of interesting decisions, won't a player want to make them all?

Distant Worlds

Code Force's recent science fiction 4x real time strategy game Distant Worlds is all about making the player comfortable in ceding control to the AI and does it better than many larger budget games. You can cede control of just about anything to AI control and on its default starting setup almost everything is automated – colony taxation, fleet management, and various other imperial duties.

By starting you off with a lot of automation, Distant Worlds is the inverse of most 4x design. It doesn't ask you whether you want to cede control; it asks you whether you want to take it.

And one major component of your imperial economy – commercial trade – can not be controlled at all. These are private enterprise beyond the reach of your throne. The capitalists decide which resources to exploit, and all you can do is make sure their fleets don't get raided.

This little bit of reverse psychology proves to be integral to making the illusion of the effective AI governor work. It's kind of a sleight of hand. You see things working well enough in most cases that it might take a while before you realize that the fleet construction advisor is forgetting to suggest fuel supply ships or that fleet management isn't working as smoothly as it should.

But until that moment, you see the ships moving around and doing their thing and you can convince yourself that you can wait a while before you take over that job.

At which point the game even asks you whether you really want to take over. Distant Worlds' core assumption is that empire management is a difficult thing and that you can't really be bothered to take your mind off the big picture stuff. You can slowly work your way up to mastering every task but there's no need to.

Hearts of Iron 3

Compare this to the design philosophy of last year's Hearts of Iron 3. This giant World War 2 game from Paradox is often only manageable because of how many ways it lets you give up control. You can decide at the outset to give up some decision making power, but the default understanding is that you won't until you feel you need to.

You can set general objectives on each front and your AI commanders will move the troops to get there. You can ask the AI for recommendations on what to build and it will give you a long list of armaments you are lacking. Almost any system can be transferred to computer control, from diplomacy to research - both of which require a deep faith that the AI's plans are kind of like yours.

Once you've let go, it's hard to break yourself of the mindset that you could be doing it better. It's one thing to give up the boring duty of finishing off Denmark's army, but do you really want to blindly follow the AI prescriptions on what units to build? How does it know what I plan on doing?

Hearts of Iron 3 is a much more complicated and complex game than Distant Worlds and even when you understand everything you never feel like you have precise enough control. It is easy to simply pass the busy work onto the computer and hope for the best, but there is always that desire to reassert control.

All told, it's not really clear if Distant Worlds' virtual viceroys are any better than those in Hearts of Iron 3. The construction advisors in both games have major blind spots insofar as recommending what your war effort needs right now. Both games had recent patches focused on the AI's military management, and problems with AI opponents are often reflected in the effectiveness of AI advisors.

Designing Backwards

The differences in game structure, however, lead to very different initial responses from me. If you play Distant Worlds, you have to volunteer to take control of a new job. If you play Hearts of Iron 3, you have to choose which job you can trust to an iffy AI. The former asks you to make a choice to control, the latter asks you to make a choice to trust. So the general community response for each has been radically different – Distant Worlds users seem more likely to praise the option to only do what they want to do as they learn the system and Hearts of Iron 3 users are more likely to worry about what they are losing.

The solution to the problem of accepting virtual viceroys, it seems then, is to change the terms of the conversation. Instead of starting with the gamer as Grand Poo-bah, in charge of every office the empire has to give, the mechanic is more palatable if you start with more discreet responsibilities. Strategy games are about learning systems, for the most part, so by letting the player choose which systems to learn in which order, you can give the player greater control over his/her play experience.

Future columns will return to this issue, because the question of control is central to strategy games in general. But the virtual viceroy problem points to the challenges in encouraging player engagement with the world that designers create as well as only forcing them to engage with the 'fun bits', however the player defines them.

[Troy Goodfellow is a freelance writer based in Maryland who blogs about strategy and war games at Flash of Steel. He also hosts Three Moves Ahead, a weekly podcast about strategy gaming.]

Posted by Troy Goodfellow at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (10)

Former Maxis artist Shannon Galvin not only contributed an art resource pack to Jason Rohrer's two-player storytelling game Sleep Is Death; he produced this wonderful "Are We Home?" tale currently featured on the front page of Sleep Is Death's official site.

Galvin also created a slideshow tutorial for the game called "Worldbuilding 101", which explains how he came up with the art style and perspective he used for "Are We Home?" and his resource pack, and also shares some room building and shading tricks you can use with the game's editor to make rooms seem more three dimensional.

"I dunno if people will like it, but I figured that if I wanted people to be able to use the style I created, they could use some tips," he explains. "I should say the style of this is based on Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics (and its two sequels). I've been a fan of it since I saw a preview of the book in the back of a copy of Cerebus."

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

One last Mega64 video from this year's Game Developers Conference! (If you haven't yet seen them, make sure to watch the previous three GDC clips we featured of Batman: Arkham Asylum, Indie Man, and Beatles: Rock Band.)

In this video shown during the Independent Games Festival awards shows, the comedy skit group created several movie trailers for 2010 IGF finalists like Shank, Limbo, Star Guard, A Slow Year, and Rocketbirds: Revolution! Enviro-Bear 2000 even stars Zach Braff and features a soundtrack that will change your life.

Most of the videos have more to do with the game titles than the gameplay themselves, but they're still great. Also, while I know these trailers for experimental, low budget films are meant to be jokes, they all look way less boring to watch than the upcoming Prince of Persia movie!

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

[In the latest of an occasional series of demoscene-related posts on GameSetWatch, AteBit's Paul 'EvilPaul' Grenfell checks out the results of the historical final Breakpoint demo party in Germany, presenting a plethora of great demos and intros.]

This year's Breakpoint demoparty took place between April 2nd and 5th in the sleepy town of Bingen, Germany. Started back in 2003, Breakpoint has been the scene of some amazing parties and the birth place of many truly memorable demos and competitions. It's also witnessed more than its fair share of general drunken antics, performed by the hundreds of demosceners that descend on the town each year.

With almost 300 works being released at the party this year, it's going to be hard to cover all areas. The competition categories ranged from Freestyle Graphics to the PC Demo competition, and touched on pretty much everything else inbetween.

Here, I'm going to focus on the main demo categories and show you some of my favorites from the party. If you are interested, then I encourage you to visit Pouet where you can now get hold of most of the other competition entries.

And, as always, I'd thoroughly recommend that you try and download a few of your own favorites and run them natively on the original PC or other computer (as opposed to just viewing a video) to experience them as they were intended.

PC Demo

Breakpoint's main demo competition didn't disappoint this year, with an impressive 23 entries in the category. The winner from Fairlight and CNCD is an absolute stunner:

Agenda Circling Forth by Fairlight & Carillon & Cyberiad

Everything you see in this demo is created by particles running on the GPU. You can read a detailed description of how it was put together on a blog post from one of the authors.

The rest of the competition entries were more standard fare, but included some nice work from the likes of Farbrausch and United Force & Digital Dynamite. Two of my favorites sat further down the results though, in sixth and tenth place respectively:

Vokawardoai by Satori

Satori have been around since 1995 but have been quiet for the past few years. This trippy software rendered demo (yes, that's right, software, not GPU rendering) is their first demoscene release since 2007.

Shiny New Plastic by Holon

Stylish music and visuals in this Java demo from Holon. This is only their second ever demoscene release.

PC 64k

Once again, the PC 64k competition suffers from a lack of great entries - in fact there were only 8 entries in the category in total. There were certainly a few good releases though, including the winner from TGGC, CodingCat and BluFlame:

Imagine by TGGC & CodingCat & BluFlame

I also like the third placed entry from Floppy, which comes wrapped in a classic "early noughties 64k" style package:

Bremen by Floppy

PC 4k

It used to be that 64k demos were some of the most impressive things released each year, while the 4k category got very little love. With the introduction of more powerful GPU shader languages, though, 4k is fast becoming the new 64k. Demogroups now seem to be much more interested in making these tiny demos (or moving straight up to the main demo category) and bypassing the mid-sized 64k category altogether.

This year at Breakpoint there were 18 entries in the 4k competition. There does seem to be a glut of similar styled 4k demos however, with reflective blue and gold organic shapes almost de rigueur over the past year or two. Thankfully, then, there was a bit of variety present at Breakpoint.

Darwinism by Archee

The competition winner, Darwinism, shows another interesting way of packing content into such a small space by using genetic algorithms to evolve a creature as the demo runs.

Terminal Fuckup by Loonies

Loonies give us a stylish 4k with great music and sync in this 6th placed entry. This is one of my favourites from the competition, mainly because it looks so different to all the others. I also like the Amiga and slightly oldschool stylings of the graphics.

Nasa by Still

Also looking different to everything else, and also placing low in the rankings is this beautiful work from Still.

Another release worth mentioning here is the winner of the "4k Procedural Graphics" competition. In this category the author must write a program no bigger than 4k which, when run, generates a single image on the screen. Like the 4k demo category, procedural graphics have also come to prominance recently thanks to advances in GPU shader technology.

Burj Babil by Loonies

Loonies winning entry, Buri Babil, is a stunning interpretation of "Construction of the Tower of Babel" by the Belgian painter Hendrick van Cleve III.

Amiga Demo

Breakpoint has been a stronghold for Commodore Amiga demogroups since it began back in 2003, with several groundbreaking demos being released there over the years. This year, then, it was great to see strong support from the Amiga community and at least a couple of groups who have been quiet for some time returned to the fold for this last hurrah.

We Come in Peace by Elude

Elude came in peace with this AGA powered 3D demo and walked away with 1st place. The style of this one is a classic example of what modern Amiga demos look and sound like.

Prototype 1 by Haujobb

Haujobb have been a force to be reckoned with since the mid 90's, but this is their first demo since 2007. They took 3rd place.

Fetish 2 by Ozone

Another old favourite, Ozone (authors of Smoke Bomb, one of my favourite Amiga demos ever) last released a demo in 1999! Here they took 5th place with their slightly risque demo, Fetish 2.

The Ventures of Prince Dakkar and his Pilgrimage to The Abyss by Tulou

I also have to mention this super-cute demo from Tulou, which took 6th place in the competition.

Amiga 4k

Only three entries in this competition, and only one that counts - the second and third placed entries were what are known as compofillers. Competition organizers usually require at least three demos to be entered or else the competition will be canceled. Compofillers are demos quickly hacked together to provide enough entries to make the competition happen. Without these two extra demos (both by the same group, Focus Design) we might not have got to have seen the winner:

Ikadalawampu by Loonies

C64 Demo

Some serious effects in this 12 minute winning demo from Glance:

Snapshot by Glance

This is a demo in two parts. The second half can be found here on YouTube.

C64 4k

The winner of the C64 4k competition was actually a 1k demo from PwP.
Dramatic Pixels by PwP

The author, Viznut, has written about this demo on his blog.

Animation

Animation competitions, like wilds, are often a bit odd to say the least. Their entries usually encompass a huge range of styles, subject matter and quality and it's one of the categories where you often have no idea what the voters at the party were thinking (or drinking!) when they made their choices. The winner is usually the entry that got the biggest laugh or included mention of enough current memes. I'll be ignoring most of the entries then, and delving down to third place for my winner:

hbc-00008: How to use Blender by ½-bit Cheese

½-bit Cheese have released nothing but high quality animations with a big side order of humour since they first hit the scene in 2008. This time they've very kindly decided to school us in how to use the free, open source 3D package, Blender - It's certainly got me interested enough to download it and give it a try! This animation only placed third in the competition, but is my favourite by far.

Console/Real Wild

Probably the most interesting competition this year was the wild category. In the top ten alone we have demos released on Dreamcast, Vectrex, Vic 20 and an obscure expanded RAM variant of the C64 as well as two demos published on homebuilt hardware from LFT and Darklite. All are worth watching but the winner for me has to be this love letter written on the TI-89 calculator:

High School Love by Adinpsz

The demo itself is cute enough but it's the crowd's reaction and participation (faithfully captured in the YouTube video) that make it so unforgettable.

That's all folks!

And there we have it, the end of Breakpoint 2010. The end of Breakpoint. The end of an era. With a keen demand from the demoscene for an Easter party to take place again next year, it remains to be seen what will happen. Will the Norwegian party The Gathering, which is also held over the Easter weekend, step up and fill the shoes of its younger but more famous brother? Or will a new team take the party to a new country? Only time will tell!

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

[Every week, we sum up sister iPhone site FingerGaming's top news and reviews for Apple's nascent -- and increasingly exciting -- portable games platform, as written by editor in chief Danny Cowan and authors Tucker Dean, Jason Johnson, Ryan Hibbeler, and Mike Rose.]

This week, FingerGaming covers Gameloft's Blokus and a port of Sega's 16-bit classic platformer Sonic the Hedgehog 2.

Also within are the lists for top-grossing, most-downloaded free and paid Apps from Apple's store, as well as reviews for Tractor Beam, Ozone, and Saving Private Sheep.

Here are the top stories from the last seven days:

- Top-Grossing Game Apps: Chaos Rings Leads in Debut Week
"Square Enix's iPhone-exclusive RPG Chaos Rings leads the App Store's sales charts in its second day of release, and finishes as this week's highest-grossing application across all categories."

- Impressions: Square Enix's Chaos Rings
"Chaos Rings resembles a PlayStation-era RPG in the vein of Final Fantasy VII, VII, and IX, and sets the bar pretty high for the quality of 3D graphics on the iPhone.

- Review: Ozone
"Many of the Ozone's mechanics -- and all of its presentation -- seem designed to create a mellow game that can be explored at the player's own pace, but its hazard and level designs demand quick reflexes and skillful navigation."

- Sega Brings Sonic the Hedgehog 2 to App Store
"As with the original Sonic the Hedgehog, the App Store's Sonic 2 is an emulated version of Sega's classic 16-bit platformer. Players speed through a series of colorful levels as supersonic hedgehog Sonic and his flying fox friend Tails."

- Top iPhone Game Apps: ZombieSmash Outsells Doodle Jump
"Newcomer ZombieSmash beats last week's chart champion Doodle Jump in today's iPhone sales rankings, as Skee-Ball rises up to third place after previously taking fifth."

- Review: Saving Private Sheep
"Saving Private Sheep is puzzle game similar to Tumbledrop and many other physics based puzzlers released over the past few years, but with one key difference: it's made by people who obviously love classic animation."

- Gameloft Brings Officially Licensed Blokus to App Store
"The popular strategy board game Blokus has been cloned many times over in unlicensed App Store adaptations, but Gameloft has at last brought an official version to the iPhone and iPod Touch."

- Top iPad Game Apps: The Pinball HD Overtakes Real Racing HD
"Gameprom's The Pinball HD earns the iPad's top sales spot this week, while Bad Weasel's Big Bad Sudoku Book rises to the top of the free charts during a limited-time free download promotion."

- Review: Qbism
"Qbism takes the sliding block puzzle into the third dimension. Given a 3D outline, your job is to flick all the surrounding cubes into the appropriate shape, which can be spun 360 degrees."

- Acclaimed Sega Saturn Pinball Sim Last Gladiators Gets App Store Release
"Developer KAZe's 1995 pinball compilation Last Gladiators has been ported to the iPhone and iPod Touch, with additional tables available as somewhat pricy in-app purchases at $4.99 each."

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

Limited edition shirt shop Tee Fury has a new rad design by illustrator Ian Leino featuring a slew of memorable video game weapons: a Katamari ball, a fire flower, an energy sword, a lancer, an I block, a blue shell, and many others.

While the tee is priced to sell at $9 (before shipping), as with all Tee Fury deals, this black "Choose Your Weapon" shirt is only available today. You only have 10 hours to grab one before it disappears from the shop forever! Buy one now if you're interested at all, lest you end up like one of these commenters.

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

Remember that painting of a potential Little Red Riding Hood game from American McGee and his Shanghai studio Spicy horse? It turns out the artwork and game concept received "huge interest" from publishers at last month's GDC, so we might see yet another game based on the fairy tale character!

Also, Spicy Horse has started up an online shop where it's now selling 17.7x10.2-inch prints of the Little Red Riding Hood art (no prints yet for the other concept piece, though). The same shop has more non-game related prints from Spicy Horse artists Ken Wong and Luis Melo, too. See/buy them all here!

[Via Super Punch]

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

Erik Svedäng, winner of the 2009 Independent Games Festival's grand prize for Blueberry Garden, revealed a new project coming soon to iPhone/iPod Touch: Kometen (or Comet). His friend, Niklas Åkerblad, worked on the watercolor visuals and music, while Svedäng handled the programming and game design.

In the game, players explore outer space as a one-eyed comet, using planets as slingshots (similar to Orbital/Orbient and Faraway), collecting art along the way. Instead of using a scoring system or letting players lose, Kometen is "all about self improvement and judging your own performance."

Svedäng and Åkerblad are wrapping up development on the game and says its release to the App Store "shouldn't take too long.

[Via @PHIL_FISH]

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

[The game industry tends to be so obsessed with latching onto the next big innovation that it fails to flesh out -- or improve -- existing game concepts and ideas that are still viable, says Gamasutra's Kris Graft in this new editorial.]

I remember a review back in 2007 that said something to the effect that Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare was the best take yet on archaic gameplay.

It was a backhanded compliment that basically said "Yeah, this is a great game, but it's so linear, so minus one point." Grand Theft Auto taught us that open world is good, so if open world means good, linearity means bad, right?

When Modern Warfare came out, I think people were kind of confused -- "Why do I love this game so much? It's so linear!" Linear was supposed to be old hat, but look, someone did something amazing in a heavily scripted game.

What Modern Warfare did was avoid a pervasive tendency in the games industry to jump onto the next innovation bandwagon, a habit that sees game makers skimping on fleshing out existing concepts, ideas or gameplay styles that still have plenty of life left in them.

It wasn't too long ago when game companies seemed to believe that in order to make an older franchise relevant, they had to make the next installment an open world game.

A lot of these open world games just ended up with a lot of empty space for you to drive, skate or run around in between doing things that were actually fun. So it annoyed me slightly when Tony Hawk and Burnout, for example, got all sandbox on me instead of really focusing on expanding and improving the fun core gameplay. Thanks a lot, GTA.

But this tendency goes beyond linearity. Look at 2D, for instance. New 3D console technology came about and for a while it seemed like the format was on its deathbed. Now, thanks in part to digital distribution, we can see that 2D will probably never die, but continue to evolve.

Dragon Age, StarCraft II, Braid, VVVVVV, Demon's Souls, Gears of War and even Forza 3 are specific examples of games where the designers didn't shy away from established conventions, but actually embraced those conventions and improved or expanded upon them meaningfully.

I'm not suggesting that game makers should slap some new paint on old crap and let me be nostalgic. I'm saying look at what you've got available to you, whether it's a gameplay mechanic, a story premise, a piece of hardware, etc., and ask yourself honestly if the work is done there.

Most great games aren't based on brand new, ground-breaking ideas. More typically, great games come from someone who has skillfully identified where existing ideas need improvement or further attention, and can execute on those observations.

In a blog post from a few years ago, Warren Spector said there are some innovators who are the "clean slate" guys who come up with these borderline crazy yet ingenious new game concepts that nobody has ever heard of before. Not only can they come up with the ideas, but they're also able execute on those ideas by creating a game that’s truly compelling.

But Spector said that he considers himself more of a "reactive" guy -- he plays existing games, gets annoyed with their shortcomings, and comes up with his own game that fixes the problems that he identifies. (Deus Ex, he said, was a response to Thief.) I'd argue that a really good "reactive" guy is at least as important as a really good "clean slate" guy.

I see support for the music genre declining, for instance, and I hope somebody as "reactive" as Spector gets annoyed about that and does something. Right now, people equate the "music genre" with dots that move across the screen.

Fewer people like playing games that have dots moving across the screen, so hey, I guess people don’t want music games anymore, right? That seems to be the logic going around. But someone out there will be able to take the current ideas in music games and make them appealing again.

Game creators should still absolutely take risks and pursue innovation. After all, without someone taking that initial risk in technology or game design, we wouldn't have the very conventions that I'm saying creators should continue to explore.

One can innovate in measured doses, though, and expand and improve upon existing ideas and concepts -- stand on the shoulders of giants (there, I said it). It's not simply about appealing to gamers' nostalgic tendencies or slapping a coat of new paint onto a tired idea.

There are just so many great ideas that have come before, it'd be a shame if the talented game makers of today didn't look at those conventions and take them to the next level.

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

Released only in Taiwan in 1995 by Funtech Entertainment Corp, the Super A'can is an obscure 16-bit console that looked very much like a Super NES/Famicom clone but featured its small selection of original titles (the most well known of which is Panda Software's Sango Fighter, a fighting game set during China's Three Kingdoms period, now available to download as a free PC and English release).

While playing one of the A'can's few games, an RPG titled Son of Evil, ASSEMblergames forumer Bramsworth stumbled on a neat Easter Egg that allows players to walk around the offices of Funtech Entertainment, talk to employees, and even learn about projects the team was developing at the time -- three of which never released!

The Easter Egg area shares preview screenshots, some details, and a single music track for each game. The four revealed projects include Journey to the Laugh/C.U.G. (the only game out of the group that made it to stores), a firefighting title called City Escape, a strategy title called Dinosaur Wars (pictured), and a mysterious, cartoonish project called Quick Fighting Attack.

This is one of the coolest video game Easter Eggs I've ever heard about! You can see screenshots for the games described above in this ASSEMblergames forum thread.

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

If driving a tow truck in Grand Theft Auto left you wishing for a full tow truck game experience in an open 3D world, there's no need to use up your wish the next time you blow out your birthday cake candles; Astragon, the same German developer behind classic titles like Crane Simulator and Forklift Truck Simulator, has created Tow Truck Simulator 2010.

In Tow Truck Simulator 2010, you drive around the city in four different tow trucks, taking away improperly parked cars, abandoned vehicles, and automobiles damaged in accidents. In addition to offering a dynamic mission generator and a "modding-friendly" structure, the game allows you to play missions in Driving Simulator's world if you have a copy of that Astragon release.

While the game is already available in Europe (coming to the UK at the end of the month courtesy of Excalibur Publishing), no North American publisher has announced plans to bring the game Stateside. So, maybe you'll have to use that birthday wish after all.

Here's a funny clip of a towing mission gone wrong in the game:

Posted by Eric Caoili at 2:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

[A near-final reminder to our friends in Canada that our colleagues' GDC Canada event is going off really rather soon now, if you want to go check it out - sounds like fun for the parties alone, actually.]

As GDC Canada nears, organizers have added key lectures for the May 6th-7th Vancouver event, including a BioWare duo on Dragon Age and former EA exec and current VC Glenn Entis on funding for game developers.

These confirmations come on the heels of already-announced emerging market lectures from Zynga and Diner Dash creator Nick Fortugno, and other recently debuted talks from Obsidian, Blizzard, Telltale, and Blue Castle Games execs and creators.

The new set of lectures round out a major program of events at the Vancouver, Canada-based show which include lectures on console and emerging markets. Some of the top new talks include:

- 'Bringing Dragon Age to Life - Digital Actors in an Epic RPG' features BioWare's lead animator Clove Roy and lead character artist Shane Hawco who will "provide an in-depth look in how to tell a huge complex story through an interactive narrative, complete with hundreds of emotionally engaging digital actors" for the Canadian-developed hit title Dragon Age: Origins.

- In 'Funding for Game Developers - Do's and Don'ts', Vanedge Capital co-founder Glenn Entis, formerly CTO of Electronic Arts and now running a game-focused VC fund, will give "an overview of what it takes to fund a young company or game development studio."

- Other notable GDC Canada lectures that have just debuted details include updates of high-rated GDC 2010 talks, including Bungie's Brian Sharp on 'Concrete Practices to be a Better Leader', and Critical Thought's David Whatley on 'Striking it Rich with iPhone Games: The geoDefense Example' -- plus Disney's Howard Donaldson debuting a talk on tax credits and game development.

GDC Canada tracks will also focus on hot game industry topics including digital distribution, social games, and iPhone games, with a full schedule of announced lectures now available.

The show, presented by Reboot Communications and this website's parent the UBM Techweb Game Network, will also host newly confirmed evening parties and networking events, as well as an expo hall. In addition, the debut of the Canadian Videogame Awards will occur the night before the show starts.

More information on the 2010 GDC Canada event, including pricing specifics, a full list of lectures and registration deadlines are available on the official GDC Canada website.

Posted by Simon Carless at 1:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

[In this interview for GameSetWatch conducted by Andrew Vanden Bossche, we talk to Loren Schmidt to satisfy our curiosity on his beautifully constructed, pixel-heavy PC/Mac freeware action game Star Guard, finding out just how its 1982-era lookalike retro charm was birthed.]

Loren Schmidt (Sparky) is the creator of Star Guard, an indie retro-style platformer for PC and Mac. It was released for freeware download in October 2009, and was a finalist for the 2010 Independent Games Festival in the category of Excellence In Design.

He is currently working on a turn based dungeon crawler called Tiny Crawl and a lighthearted side project called Tin Can Knight. In this interview, we caught up with Schmidt and quizzed him about the design and story of Star Guard, his future projects, and his childhood doodling monsters.

Tell us a little about your background and how you got into game design.

Let's see... I never had any consoles as a child, and my family didn't get a computer until I was 9 or so. Even then, my exposure to video games was limited. I spent much of my childhood making up board games. I also loved mazes. I remember that once in first grade my friends and I made a giant maze together. We taped together big sheets of butcher paper, and spent days' worth of recess in the library, filling them with little squiggly lines and drawing monsters in the dead ends.

You aren't allowed to back out of a dead end once you get there, you have to let the monster eat you :)

How did the idea for Star Guard come about?

Oh, actually that's rather embarrassing. You see, when I had the idea I was in the middle of another project that wasn't going well, so I told myself I'd make a tiny side project. It wouldn't distract me from my main project at all. It would only take a couple of days at most...

I started by writing out a little thumbnail description of the game. I had this feeling that the game already existed somewhere. I also simultaneously knew that it didn't exist. It was a strange dual feeling--I spent several days searching for the game, looking everywhere I could think of. But I couldn't find it anywhere.

Star Guard has a Eugene Jarvis-vibe to it, both in its visual design and story. Is that era of videogames a big influence on your own design?

Personally, I like to think that a game's quality is how well it does within its constraints, not how high fidelity it is. I get a lot of enjoyment out of older games as well as new games. The games that most strongly influenced this one were Another World, The Pit, Flywrench, Lode Runner, and Shotgun Ninja.

The story in Star Guard is very striking in the way it's almost seamlessly integrated with gameplay. Can you tell us how you came upon that method of storytelling, and why you decided to put in the story at all?

From the beginning, it seemed like a good fit for the story's delivery to be non-interruptive. The story is there for people who want to read it, and if people are replaying the game or are simply not interested, then they aren't forced to wade through it. It seemed, in this particular game, that there was nothing to be gained by having cut scenes or other heavy-handed forms of storytelling.

Originally the bits of dialog were printed right on the screen, and they stayed there for a while then disappeared of their own accord. There were a few problems with that. Later in development the dialog was placed on the walls, largely because this allows people to read it at their own pace.

Tell us more about the friendly soldiers that populate the early levels and why you put them in the game.

They have other roles too, but this is probably their most important contribution: they help make it feel like there's a whole world out there, and that it doesn't revolve around the player's actions. There are other things in the game that are intended to help reinforce this feeling, such as the incoming messages and the corpses strewn throughout the levels.

On a side note, originally the game was going to be set in a space station under attack by hostile forces, and there were going to be other allied units as well, such as turrets. The allied soldiers are the only remnant of that.

There is quite a leap in challenge from normal to hard in this game. Can you tell us a bit about the relationship between these two difficulties?

Personally, I like the tension of having limited lives. I always play on hard mode. During development, I periodically debated removing normal mode altogether- but that would have made the game unplayable for a lot of people.

Originally unlimited life mode was the only way to play. The idea is that it's scalable- people can die and not get penalized for it, so it works for players with a variety of skill levels. Respawning is instant and the level doesn't reset. I wanted to keep the pace up and reduce the frustration of attempting to complete the same part over and over. The hope was that people would gradually get better at the game, and they'd rely on the free respawns less and less.

This system seems to have worked for most people, but it broke the game for some. A couple of people have told me that they cleared the entire game through brute force- blindly charging and mashing the fire button while dying over and over. I don't know that this is true of everyone, but the people I've talked to who had this experience told me that they really didn't enjoy playing this way, but that the game seemed to be rewarding it. I regret that the game encouraged this style of play in some cases.

What were some of the challenges you encountered while designing this game?

I have a lot to learn about how to plan and structure my time well. My game development habits were really inconsistent while making Star Guard- sometimes I'd get a great deal done, and other times I'd just barely be plodding along. During development, I had some trouble with depression and some of the other classic morale issues that people run into when doing this sort of project. It's discouraging not to see progress!

I'm really trying to improve my habits in this area right now. I love making games, and I'm trying to tailor my habits so that I can avoid the kind of vicious cycle that happens when things aren't going smoothly.

Do you have a favorite part?

I think level 5 appeals to me the most. Some of my favorite challenges are there, such as the trap rooms involving exploding platforms over lava. I also feel that the delivery of dialog is best in level 5.

Another part I like is the final room in level 7, which has drop mines and two large charging aliens in it.

Is there anything you wish you could have put in but couldn't?

There are some things that I implemented and removed because they didn't fit the game. Oh, I'm also sorry that the boss doesn't have fun animations for transitioning between the phases. That would make me happy.

Could you tell us a bit about your general design philosophy, and maybe sum it up for us in a sentence?

I don't really think there's any one correct way to make games, but I'll try to describe what I'm trying to do with Star Guard.

One of the central goals is for the game be playable on a number of different levels. It's intended to work well during an initial playthrough when we're still learning. It's also intended to work well once we've already learned the ropes. Getting through the levels with limited loss of life or maximum score should be a different, equally interesting experience.

Another thing I'm trying to do here is offer a variety of different kinds of gameplay. The game is divided roughly into two halves- traps and combat. Over the course of a level, the game alternates between the two. I tended to reorder areas and change the way they flow into each other quite a bit in order to improve the pacing and get them to work well with one another.

I gradually introduce new aliens and hazards throughout the game, but keep the total number of elements in each level fairly constant so it doesn't feel too cluttered.

What games are you playing right now?

Flywrench, the Doom Roguelike, and Captain Successor.

Have you found anything that you found particularly striking in those games that made you reflect on your own design?

The rapid respawning in Flywrench definitely affected Star Guard. I really like the way death doesn't interrupt play at all. I'd always wanted to see that in a game, and seeing it work so well in Flywrench was encouraging.

What can you tell us about Tin Can Knight?

Tin Can Knight is a smaller game than Star Guard. It's a lighthearted medieval themed obstacle course game that plays similarly to Moon Patrol.

Do you have an idea of when it will be ready?

It's really close to done... but I'm putting off completing it. Honestly, this is my first sponsored Flash release and I'm pretty nervous.

Are there any other projects you're working on right now?

I'm making a stripped down RPG called Tiny Crawl. It's a fast paced, room-based game with generated dungeons. I'm using a very small list of ingredients, so in some ways it feels a bit like a board game or a card game. I made an early playable version for the Assemblee Competition over at TIGSource.

It's not very complete feeling yet, but should give some idea of how the finished game will play. The finished game will have better tuning, a lot more content, and entirely new art and sound.

Also, instead of saying "Ominous message 9" there will be actual bits and pieces of story :)

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

[We round up the week's top news and interviews from sister console digital download site GamerBytes, featuring new information about Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network, WiiWare, DSiWare and PSN Minis.]

It's been a week of announcements and leaks here -- Bionic Commando Rearmed 2 and Unbound Saga are now coming to digital platforms, plus we also got our first under the radar looks at Crazy Taxi and Sonic Adventure coming to the Xbox Live Arcade.

We also released our monthly analysis of the PlayStation Network in North America -- we check the PSN Leaderboards to see what's selling and what's not catching on. It's more limited than our XBLA analysis, but it's the best we can do to help upcoming developers understand the platform, given available data.

GamerBytes Originals

In-Depth: North American Playstation Network Sales, March 2010

Store Updates

XBLA Update - After Burner: Climax, Puzzle Chronicles
NA PSN Store Update - Monkey Island SE, After Burner Climax, Puzzle Chronicles And More
EU PSN Store Update - Lead & Gold, After Burner Climax, Monsters (Probably) Stole My Princess! And More
NA Nintendo Update - Mega Man 4, Game & Watch Games And More
EU Nintendo Update - Earthworm Jim DSiWare, Flipper, Indiana Jones' Greatest Adventures And More

Microsoft (Xbox Live Arcade, XBL Indies)

Leaked Footage - Sonic Adventure DX (Sega)
Watch out! You're gonna crash! Ahh!

Crazy Taxi Coming To XBLA?
Yo yo yo, you need a ride?

Xbox Indies: Olu (Red Button Games)
If you're a fan of Rez, you might want to check this out.

Giant Bomb Quick Look - Zeno Clash
What to expect from this bizarre first person brawler.

Screenshots: Islands Of Wakfu (Ankama Group)
We get a new look at this beautiful action RPG.

Sony (PlayStation Network, PSN Minis)

Trailer: Bionic Commando Rearmed 2 (Capcom / Fatshark)
You can jump now! This changes everything.

Footage: Blade Kitten (Krome Studios)
More footage from the Australian developer's side-scrolling platformer.

Nintendo (WiiWare, DSiWare)

Trailer: Jett Rocket (Shin'en)
A 3D platformer on WiiWare that looks better than some HD console attempts.

Trailer: Robox (Dream Box Games)
A new sideways-scrolling platformer coming to WiiWare.

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

Here's an unexpected but awesome use of WarioWare D.I.Y.'s create-your-own-microgame toolset: demoscene-style presentations! Anna "Auntie Pixelante" Anthropy (Redder, Mighty Jill Off), created this demo text scroll, complete with gradients, bouncing words, and a segmented snake as a shout-out to Klik of the Month Klub organizer Glorious Trainwrecks.

As for what other indie developers are doing with WarioWare D.I.Y., Team Meat's Edmund McMillen (Super Meat Boy) and Gaijin Games's Alex Neuse (Bit.Trip series) have both created microgames for the downloadable "Big Name Games" section, just like the D.I.Y. projects posted by Daisuke "Pixel" Amaya and 2D Boy's Ron Carmel. You can see the two microgames below:

[Via NintenDaan]

Posted by Eric Caoili at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Australian artist Kode Abdo created these slick "Take The Fight To The Street" concept ads for the iPhone edition of Street Fighter IV -- I wish he created versions for the fighting game's entire cast and not just for Ryu and Akuma!

The simple presentation of these pieces are very different from the busy ads Capcom used for Super Street Fighter IV, but something like this to promote the App Store release would have been great.

Abdo has a lot of other great artwork of Street Fighter IV characters like Sagat, Juri, and Crimson Viper in his online portfolio, which I've included after the break:

[Via Rampaged Reality]

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

Knytt developer Nicklas "Nifflas" Nygren revealed his next project over the weekend: FiNCK (Fire Nuclear Crocodile Killer), a 2D PC platformer inspired by Super Mario Bros. 2, Nintendo's peculiar redesign of Doki Doki Panic for the West. Nifflas says he loved the odd game as a child.

"Developed as an antithesis to all my previous ambitious projects that [means] a lot to me, FiNCK was developed quickly, contains no story, even its title makes no sense," explains Nifflas. "FiNCK was basically meant to be really fun to develop, as well as really fun to play."

He plans to release FiNCK on May 12th and an online level database about a month afterward. The database will allow gamers to upload levels for Knytt Stories, The Mushroom Engine, Saira, and FiNCK, as well as stages for his future titles.

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

Putting together stories from the rest of the Gamasutra network, here's the top full-length features of the past week on big sister 'art and business of gaming' site Gamasutra, plus the new GameCareerGuide pieces that debuted last week.

There's a couple of neat interviews in here, including a rare chat to Metroid creator Yoshio Sakamoto and a look at progress on Deus Ex 3 with its art director, plus a smart design piece by Lara Croft creator Toby Gard, discussion on tutorials for social games, our regular in-depth NPD analysis, plus some new education-specific pieces.

Here we go:

The Elegance Of Metroid: Yoshio Sakamoto Speaks
"Nintendo's main man behind the Metroid series talks about what he feels is the core of its enduring popularity, the collaboration with Team Ninja on Other M, and how storytelling plays a role in games."

From Research To Games: Interacting With 3D Space
"While 3D interfaces are just taking off for consumers, years of research have been poured into the field. Dr. Joe LaViola of the University of Central Florida shares detailed academic findings about building useful and fun ways to interact with games."

First Five Minutes: How Tutorials Make or Break Your Social Game
"Digital Chocolate's lead social designer discusses the complexities of attracting social gamers with little patience -- and still teaching them to play your game both effectively and appealingly."

Action Adventure Level Design, Part 1
"The experienced designer and Lara Croft creator here outlines a process for designing action/adventure gameplay that will satisfy the needs of both your player and your game's story, in the first installment of a multi-part series."

NPD: Behind the Numbers, March 2010
"Gamasutra analyst Matt Matthews looks at the U.S. console game industry's return to growth in March's NPD results -- are the declines behind us, and where do we go from here?"

Past And Future Tension: The Visual Design Of Deus Ex: Human Revolution
"Eidos Montreal art director Jonathan Jacques Belletete on delivering a believable Cyber-Renaissance -- complicated by setting it before the first game in the Deus Ex series but ten years later in the real world."

3 Overlooked Keys to Making Outstanding Games
"TheGameProdigy.com's Brice Morrison shares three top-level secrets of making games that help "dramatically increase the chances" of success when followed."

GCG: Developing the Art of Games
"Physics student and game enthusiast Anand Chotai synthesizes his coursework and philosophy into another look at the thorny discussion of games as art."

Posted by Simon Carless at 12:00 AM | 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, he discusses Square Enix's Final Fantasy XIII and how he believes its odd evolution actually occurred.]

When fans and media alike began to complain about how linear Square Enix's Final Fantasy XIII was, I began to wonder if we talking about the same series. The shock horror with which the gaming public greeted the first revealed maps of the games made me wonder if it's been so long since the last Final Fantasy that we forgot how long it took to get off the training wheels (or out of Midgar).

The series, not to mention genre, is notorious for its ceaseless hand-holding, so if anything this design decision should be as unobtrusive as the removal of a vestigial limb.

So then why does the game stumble like it had one of its feet cut off?

It's easy to see why, in a series that has always valued the cinematic above everything else (including gameplay), how a linear design is a move that has been a long time coming. And frankly, that's Square Enix's choice to make, even if it's an unconventional one. Producer Yoshinori Kitase even went as far as to say in an interview with 1UP that Final Fantasy XIII would be an RPG only by coincidence, if at all, even going as far to say that it would be more like an FPS than an RPG. Criticism should focus on what the game is, not what we think it should or shouldn't be.

However, FFXIII should have taken a few more notes from the FPS book if they wanted a linear game. If it was an FPS, it would be is 60 hours of single player horde mode. That Final Fantasy XIII has one of the most strategic and involved combat systems in the history of the series is a testiment to how vital pacing is for a long-term single player game. Even the best combat becomes tedious if there isn't action and variety to break it up, and there is no replacement for the pacing lost in the switch to linear design. Where Final Fantasy used to have sidequests and exploration, it now has nothing.

I Heard You Like Games, So We Put A Game In Your Game So You Can Play While You Play

In Tim Rogers' initial impressions of FFXIII on Kotaku, he talks about how disappointed he is about not riding on bikes: "You approach the motorcycles. A cut-scene starts. Your dudes get on and then fly away. They look like they're having a lot of fun! Too bad we can't have that fun!" This is doubly ironic since the playable bike chase is one of the most memorable moments of the beginning of FFVII. I've already warned about criticizing things that aren't there, but it's telling that six games ago, players could do exactly what they couldn't in this one.

FFVII presented a world full of casinos, snowboarding, road-rash style motorcycle combat, virtual pet breeding, and RTS held together by truly random encounters with equally random monsters and a series of press X to advance dialogue and FMV. Sebsequent Final Fantasy games have had a variety of this, from card games to fictional sports.

Minigame is commonly a derogatory term, but almost all video games, especially AAA ones, are composed of many smaller games. Fighting itself is made up of discovering weakness, buffing and debuffing appropriately, and deciding wether pure damage or chaining is the right move. Then there's also the decision of how to level up the characters, and how to level up items.This is sort of the point of nonlinear gameplay--it lets players more or less choose their pacing by giving them a lot of options if they're bored with advancing the plot.

It's not that minigames or aimless wandering are necessarily fun (because they can often be quite the opposite), but that even games focused almost entirely on combat break up the action have lulls to let the player breathe and alternate gameplay modes and areas to keep things interesting. FFXIII has some of the most fun and interesting combat in the series, but there's a reason even our most brutal shooters are constructed of more than just a continuous fight. At a certain point, fighting becomes exhausting and boring and being out of combat, which is positively uninvolved, is even worse.

What It Has

In Final Fantasy XIII, the player is still following a very direct path (matching the narrative). Themetically, the linear gameplay is evocative. Final Fantasy XIII is a game about destiny, after all, and even when they're utterly lost the characters are compelled by their Focus to move forward. The way party members wander about and make small talk is actually very well done, one of the few times it feels like real interaction and not just the game beating the player over the head with what they need to do next.

However, the areas of the game are flat, boring, and non-interactive, to the point where wandering around outside of combat feels even more pointless than previous games. FFXIII doesn't just streamline the act of walking around, it removes all gameplay from it. The only things you can do are wander off to very short branches to find items, or try to sneak up on enemies in a very poorly implemented and frustratingly random surprise attack system.

The fact is, wandering around looking for something actually was gameplay. This was never the greatest strength of the series, but it was there for a reason. The passages lead to traps or treasure, it's true, and they do in FFXIII as well. As constrained as these areas were, they lent the player a real sense of exploration. This is the act of exploration, and it's a powerful force in games. What matters more than that FFXIII is linear is that it feels linear. Towns and exploration were how previous FF games were paced.

There's a problem when walking on catwalks miles above the sky while storming a floating airship feels no different from walking through a cave or city street. These pathways are gorgeously rendered but utterly stilted. It doesn't involve the player at all. In contrast, Uncharted 2 makes climbing so involved that it's almost more important than fighting. This really lets the player experience the environment as if it was a living thing, which FFXIII's automated jumps don't.

Pacing fighting with other kinds of action is common in the most successful single player action games. Half-Life 2 goes from creepy sewer puzzles with ceiling tentacle monsters to urban firefights. Uncharted 2 has tense climbing alongside urban firefights. Bayonetta has timing puzzles and boulder chases alongside urban swordfights. Despite the fact that these games involve clobbering someone with something, all of those games also make players do a lot more. The fighting in these games stays fresh because it's balanced with other forms of action.

The Path Set Out For Them

While Square Enix has continuously inserted cinema into Final Fantasy, they have not necessarily made a more cinematic game. It seems clear by this point that the philosophy behind Final Fantasy is to bring their world to life with FMV and graphics rather than gameplay. As game technology advances, Final Fantasy seems intent on removing the game.

I do not believe that Square Enix is totally ignorant of the flaws in its game. Rather, Final Fantasy has a different blueprint. When Advent Children was released, Square Enix made it clear what they thought FFVII's lasting legacy was, and it was not the minigame, but the cutscene. They saw the RPG as a way to unfold a cinematic drama.

This is actually a very progressive decision, but it makes me wonder why Square Enix still seems to be under the impression that gameplay and narrative are at odds, or why if they're so willing to make drastic changes, walking around in the overworld in FFXIII is literally as gameplay intensive as it was in FFI. Gameplay is more than capable of creating narrative and emotion, so it's a little depressing to see a game that touts that as its focus seems so afraid of mixing the two. It's strange how the game plays, in many ways, like an archaic game.

[Andrew Vanden Bossche is a freelance writer and student. He has a blog called Mammon Machine, where dinosaur vampires cry out for blood, and can be reached at AndrewVandenB@gmail.com]

Posted by Andrew Vanden Bossche at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

['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.]

Everyone could use a break, especially after finishing up a big project or two for my day job -- and not my "day job" of chasing ferrets around, either. And so this week's column is being broadcast to you from lovely Austin, TX, as crows fly around and my dog chases after them.

Magazines may not be my primary focus at this exact moment, but that's all right, because things are relatively slow in the game industry -- not too many big games coming out, things in that post-E3 lull in terms of preview coverage. Regardless, here's what the magazines of the past fortnight have provided to us:

Game Informer May 2010

Cover: Bulletstorm

Coverage-wise, this is a bit of an interesting one. There are four features inside -- Bulletstorm, Avalanche's Toy Story 3 licensed game, Dead Rising 2's co-op mode, and F.E.A.R. 3 -- and while none of them are absolutely mind-blowing in terms of original content, all four are very lovingly designed and written. It belies a renewed effort at GI, I suppose, to get into the stories behind games instead of relying on really flashy cover stories...at least, it seems that way from my external perspective. Then again, maybe it's just Pre-E3 Syndrome afoot.

The Toy Story one, in particular, is interesting because it takes a look behind an endeavor, the merchandising-license game, that is even more fraught with risk than traditional game development -- after reading it, I almost felt sympathy for the developers willing to take up such a seemingly thankless challenge.

Edge May 2010

Cover: PlayStation Move

GI gave just a bit of coverage up front to the Move and other revelations from the Game Developers Conference, but Edge takes a more proactive approach this month, putting the Move on the cover and talking with folks like Shuhei Yoshida about what makes the thing important and why it's not just another me-too move from Sony.

More interesting in my eyes, though, is the Resident Evil 4 feature hinted at in the cover. Edge has a bit of history with this game, having written one of the best preview features I'd seen about it back in 2004, and their post-post-partum look back on it this month -- fueled with lots of commentary from Shinji Mikami -- is quite a sight.

PC Zone May 2010

Cover: Just Cause 2

Like a ninja in the night or a stray cat in the morning, PC Zone has apparently returned to Texan store shelves. I'm happy for it, because this issue features the usual humorous slant on the field it covers, including a piece on Dungeon Keeper 3 and other famously-cancelled titles of the past.

This is the first issue released since the Audit Bureau to Circulations revealed the magazine's average circulation in 2009 to be 11,357, which is pretty dang low even by British standards. The editors comment on this in a tiny paragraph in a corner of the contents section: "Are you there, readers? Is this thing on? Why are you leaving us, in your thousands? Is it something we said? Because we can change, readers. We'll be whatever you want us to be. Please just tell us, just talk to us. We love you, you fickle bastards." Awww.

Nintendo Power May 2010

Cover: Super Mario Galaxy 2

It's not the most exciting time of the year for the Wii, the review well constituting a whopping four games this month -- Monster Hunter 3 gets a four-page review as a result, although it's not an undeserved one. The previews and features take center stage in May as a result, with SMG2 leading, Shantae and Arc Rise Fantasia following, and even a couple pages devoted to a developer look back at Zelda: Spirit Tracks, a game that came out a third of a year ago.

I can't complain, but man, I can't help but be reminded of the sorta things we had to do to fill up pages in Newtype on months when nobody released any new (legal) anime into the market. Hang in there, gentlemen!

[Kevin Gifford breeds ferrets and runs Magweasel, a 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 (0)