[The folks at Haunted Temple Studios went from EA-sized teams to a four-man operation, and they talk to our own Chris Remo on the transition and what they've learned while making their turn-based strategy game Skulls of the Shogun.]

The members of Haunted Temple Studios spent years working together on massive teams at Electronic Arts' Los Angeles studio. Now, with their debut turn-based strategy game Skulls of the Shogun, the distributed studio's developers are relishing the greater individual input they have as part of a tight four-man team.

Targeted for release later this year on Xbox Live Arcade and PC, Skulls of the Shogun is influenced by classic 60s-era anime design and driven by a desire to push the turn-based tactical genre beyond its longtime Advance Wars touchstone.

Recently, we had a chance to sit down with three of Haunted Temple's four members -- programmers Borut Pfeifer and Ben Vance, and "founder of the studio, director, and only artist/art director" Jake Kazdal.

Topics discussed include the slow evolution of turn-based strategy on consoles, the technical challenges behind moving to a gridless design, settling on a visual style, and transitioning from massive development teams to a gang of four.

Turn-based strategy has a strong heritage on the PC, but this smaller scale take on the genre has been almost exclusive to portables lately. Why do you think there aren’t more games like this on consoles or PC?

Jake Kazdal: I don’t know. I don’t know why the genre hasn’t really evolved in a long time either. Fire Emblem or Advance Wars are practically the same as they were on the SNES. Really, nothing changed. The biggest leap forward recently was Valkyria Chronicles, which I thought was a brilliant game, and this borrows from that in certain places.

How did it influence you?

JK: It definitely got me thinking about turn-based strategy games without the grid. There’s definitely a big step towards that. That game is more about ranged combat, and this is more about close quarters, so there are a lot of differences, but it’s definitely an inspiration.

Have you run into any big design or tech challenges going off the grid?

[All three interviewees laugh.]

Okay!

Borut Pfeifer: We’ve played around with a number of ideas -- where characters will go organically to get out of your [controlled character’s] way to maintain a space, but it’s tricky. You don’t want to push dudes out of their position for gameplay purposes, and you don’t want to be able to push one of your guys even though his movement is used up.

You seem to have put some elasticity in there, with units spreading out a bit when they get bunched up.

BP: Right, but after a bunch of playtesting, that probably won’t quite work, and we have a few other ideas, like being able to do a judo move through people, to keep the fluidity of motion without getting you into bad collision or breaking game mechanics.

JK: I would say it’s been one of the greatest challenges, but also one of the most interesting challenges. We’re breaking new ground in this genre with a 2D game like this moving off the grid. I haven’t seen it done before in this manner.

My whole career, and a lot of this stuff we all worked on, has been very cutting-edge -- answering new questions and new problems as opposed to doing the same games over and over. We love breaking new ground. It’s easy to iterate at this team size. We talk all the time and just plug in new ideas and feel them out. If they work, they stay; if they don’t, we throw them away. It’s awesome; I’ve never had more fun making games than this project.

On that note, how are you structured? You all work remotely, right?

JK: Yeah. I work out of Seattle, and these guys are both out of L.A. Well, [Borut’s] in L.A.; [Ben is] kind of a nomad these days.

Yeah, you were saying you’re working from the road these days?

Ben Vance: Yeah. I’ve been based in L.A. for the last five years, working with the Boom Blox team, and our new project got cancelled, so they laid the team off. At that point, I got seriously involved in this project but, because of some personal reasons, I also wanted to get out of my apartment, and I’ve been on the road since then.

[For more on Vance’s unique game development odyssey to escape a “landlord from hell,” check out Gamasutra’s previous interview.]

JK: Actually, that’s one of the things I’m most proud of. I lived in Japan for a long time, and I’m really influenced by 60s anime -- classic anime with very sharp, simple character designs and very lush backgrounds. I’ve been looking at a lot of that stuff for this game. The [Legend of Zelda: The] Wind Waker art director was actually an art director from the films back in those days. I’ve been looking at a lot at that kind of stuff.

It doesn’t look as “extreme” as a lot of anime, at least to me.

JK: Well, the 60s stuff had a very different look than modern anime. It was before the whole pink hair and robots and stuff – closer to Astro Boy than to Gundam. I’m a huge fan of that stuff, and of vinyl character design like Kidrobot -- the little plastic collectible stuff. I love modern, urban character design out of Hong Kong, Tokyo, London, and lots of stuff in the United States.

I’m surrounded by that all the time, and I wanted to make something that’s fresh and stands on its own two legs, yet people would recognize it. I think it does have its own identity, and that’s my goal as an art director.

There’s a very specific vibe going on with the whole concept for this game, including the title and even the font the title is in, but I can’t quite put my finger on what it is. It reminds me of a mid-century tiki attraction or something. Does that make any sense?

JK: It is very reminiscent of a lot of the black and white, late 50s and early 60s Japanese anime. You see that sort of font and look with that 60s pop design. The animation and culture of that era was very innocent and different. It’s a bygone era, but it’s a great source of inspiration. And it sticks out against other games you’re going to see, because everything is brown and photorealistic and gritty. And I love those games, but for a small team I wanted to do something different.

Did you come into the project knowing what the aesthetic was going to be?

JK: No, but I wanted to do something that appealed to me as an artist, something I wanted to spend time getting better at. So I surrounded myself with old cartoons, went on a shopping trip to Japan, I went to [Tokyo retailer] Mandarake, and spent hundreds of dollars on old anime, comic books, and urban vinyl characters. I steeped in that pot and this came out.

Since you’re using XNA, you’re basically simultaneously developing on PC and Xbox 360. Are you going to develop separate interfaces for each—cursor-based for PC and direct-control interface for 360?

BV: Yeah. There’s a little bit of it on PC, but it’s not done yet. We’ll probably do a UI that’s a little more RTS inspired on PC. That’s our first inclination, but we haven’t gotten to that point yet.

JK: We’d like to do iPod, iPad, and Windows 7 Phone version, so we’re going to need to figure all that stuff out.

How did you decide on the initial two platforms? Was it just because you like working in XNA?

BP: Pretty much. I’ve been working in Visual Studio for ten years, and as I was thinking about new projects, I got a Mac Mini and started messing around with that, and it’s just a little too ingrained. Using [Apple’s Mac development suite] Xcode is like beating my head against something. So I decided to try XNA, and it’s just this wonderful, musical experience—hallelujahs in the background and everything. I mean, [Microsoft] knows how to make dev tools. Everything is so easy. The content build process is totally customizable. There are a couple things to be careful of, like C# and garbage collection, but it’s a really nice development environment. And like Jake says, even he can figure out how to put it on an Xbox.

JK: This is a big deal. I’m not a tech guy, to say the least.

At what point are you in development now?

JK: We’re getting close to alpha on our vertical slice. We know what the game is now. There’s still some tuning and tweaking to do, and the bulk of the work left is fleshing out the campaign, AI, and network code, tweaking the UI and some of the effects, and animations.

But the core of the gameplay is there, and it’ll be easier moving forward than it’s been getting to this point. We would like to finish this year. We’re not under any strict timelines, we don’t have a publisher yet, and we’re self-funded, but we would like to finish this year.

Have you learned any major lessons about developing with such a small team, after coming from big companies like EA?

JK: For me, it was having the concept of a vertical slice, where we go almost to completion with a small chunk of the game before spending any effort on designing a bunch of levels where we might have to go change a bunch of stuff later. We’ve got a very small map, a very big map, and a four-player map, and between those three maps we’re getting gameplay consistent across the board.

Banging out content is going to be a lot easier now that we have that template in place. The more successful big studios I’ve worked at definitely use that sort of process.

BP: Also, taking the time to work on the tools, like the custom 2D level editor, functionality that will speed up map building, and a custom animation tool that can do skeleton animation with keyframing and scaling. Spending the time on the tools took more than a month and a half of focused time, but it’s definitely paid off.

Is that level editor something you would consider releasing to the public?

BP: Potentially, yeah. The core of the engine, although it’s greatly modified, stems from AngelXNA, which in turn stems from Angel, which is an EALA prototyping engine. Angel is in C++ and AngelXNA is in C# and XNA. It would be cool, when things are polished and bug-free, to put it back up there.

What’s it like each being 25 percent of the team?

BP: My day-to-day at EA on teams like [canceled Steven Spielberg project] LMNO had a lot of interacting with other people. I was on AI, so I was working closely with designers, usually upwards of ten people, as opposed to one person really closely. So we’re able to iterate much faster, and it is less hectic in that sense that you’re able to focus on really perfecting something.

JK: I’ve had pretty much every position there doing art in video games, and being at once the artist, art director, and animator, there’s a lot less communication, because it’s all me. I’m with myself all day and I can do everything. The hardest part has been defining the vision, the look, and the style guides, but once that’s done, it’s a lot easier than going back and forth with a bunch of people to keep a single vision consistent.

I definitely prefer being able to do all of this. I missed being an animator, I missed doing character design, so it’s been a dream to be able to do all the stuff while making our own game. It’s awesome.

Your other team member [Sam Bird] is an audio guy, so you have no titled designers. Do you all share the design role?

BV: To a large extent, yeah. We were all a little bit designer in previous roles.

JK: None of us are dedicated designers. [Ben and Borut] are engineers, and I’m an artist, but we’re very passionate about the genre, and I take lead design roles and make some of the hard decisions, but I bounce everything off these guys. We come to a team conclusion before moving forward on most design issues.

BV: I think that’s one of the strengths of working with these guys. We’re able to collaborate, and all of us have done that in big industry jobs. Each of us has lots of skills -- I’m not just a programmer, Borut’s not just a programmer, Jake’s not just an artist.

It’s really effective to be able to bounce things off each other and make more producer-type decisions -- these roles would be whole other people in other projects. It’s been a really interesting process.

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 delights in this edition include a game that stars a turnip, a pair of browser-based puzzle platformers, more Action 52 game remakes, and a new experimental work from Stephen Lavelle.

Here's the highlights from the last seven days:

Game Pick: 'Action Turnip' (Raitendo, browser)
"In Action Turnip, the idea is to run, jump and double jump your way across quickly moving platforms, whilst shooting down pesky enemies that get in your way. There's also a Canabalt style mode for those who want to make the turnip run and rocket boost a lot."

Game Pick: 'Whale of Noise' (increpare, browser)
"In Whale of Noise, you control a whale which must use its haunting call to move through seemingly impassable rock formations. As the whale collects glowing gems, it is granted the ability to split itself in two, and can then move around rocks which were originally in the way."

Game Pick: 'Coma' (Thomas Brush, browser)
"In the puzzle platformer Coma you play as Pete, a friendly little creature who is on a search for his missing sister. During your adventure you'll meet other inhabitants of the outside world, some of them requiring your help before returning the favor with an item or a piece of advice."

Game Pick: 'Treasure Tower' (David Newton, browser)
"Treasure Tower is a WarioWare-style 2D platformer in which you have thirty-six seconds on the clock to climb to the top of a tower and acquire a rare treasure. This means going from room to room as quickly as you can, grabbing gems and food that'll add an extra few seconds to the clock."

Game Pick: 'Illuminator' (Logan Ames, freeware)
"Illuminator is a 2D action game which tells the story of a boy who has to rescue his kidnapped sister, captured by ghouls that travel from house to house by tearing through the fabric of space. Your objective here is to find the hole in each house, then kill enough monsters to weaken the stitches on the portal that prevent you from using it to travel to the next house."

Game Pick: 'Rocket Jockey' (Ben Pettengill, freeware)
"Rocket Jockey is a remake of an Action 52 game with the same name, where you play as a cow herder who owns a space ship in his backyard. One night all of his cattles were abducted while under his watch, so he sets off into space to retrieve them and exact revenge on the kidnappers who committed the crime in the first place."

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

Though I've never played a second of Millennium Kitchen's nostalgic Boku no Natsuyasumi (My Summer Vacation) games due to it being a text-heavy, Japan-only series, I love reading anything I can find on it, which is why I jumped at the chance to feature Eastern Mind's tour of Boku no Natsuyasumi 4 for the PSP here a few months ago.

Hardcore Gaming 101 is doing something similar with Boku no Natsuyasumi 3, which released for PS3 three years ago, posting daily entries as part of a month-long diary that follows a 10-year-old Japanese boy's summer vacation in August 1975. The journal's writer, Sketcz, hopes the diary will encourage more people to check out the series.

He says, "And although I don’t think big publishers read this blog (maybe they do?), I hope that it generates enough interest in the franchise so that someone emails someone else and maybe we someday see one of the series in the west, in English. Failing that, maybe the fan-translation community will tackle the PSP version."

HG101 has only posted six entries from the diary so far, but it's already filled with tales of ghosts, snakes, bug fights, and more. You can start reading the Boku no Natsuyasumi 3 diary, which features a lot of accompanying screenshots to accompany the mentioned events, with this first entry.

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

Spanish homebrew team Kralizec has delivered an awesome gift to gamers looking for a special way to celebrate the 25th anniversary of The Goonies release to theaters this year: a new MSX game based on the movie! The release is titled The Goonies 'R' Good Enough, named after the series' theme track sung by Cyndi Lauper.

This title isn't based on Konami's The Goonies MSX game released in 1986 or on Brain Games' PC remake of that title released in 2006. This four-year project is an original title that is meant to more closely follow the movie's plot, even offering digitized images from the film.

Kralizec is selling this fan production as a 4MB megarom cartridge that includes two versions, one for MSX and the other for MSX2 (with "special extra stuff" if you're using a MSX2+ or MSXtR). You can watch the MSX2 edition above, while a video for the MSX version is embedded after the break.

You can buy a copy of The Goonies 'R' Good Enough through MSX Cartridge Shop. The game comes boxed and shrinkwrapped, and includes a 16-page color manual. Expect to pay €35, or $45, before shipping/handling.

[Via MSX Resource Center]

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

In a plentiful week for new job postings, Gamasutra's jobs board plays host to roles across the world and in every major discipline, including opportunities at 38 Studios, Monolith Productions, and more.

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

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

Some of the notable jobs posted this week include:

38 Studios: Audio Engineer
"38 Studios, a media and entertainment company founded in 2006 by Curt Schilling, is in pre-production on an original fantasy IP driven by the creative and artistic visions of pop-culture icons R. A. Salvatore and Todd McFarlane. Entertainment products will include an immersive online entertainment experience that transcends the traditional MMO genre, novels, comics, toys, movies, TV, and more. Based in Maynard, Massachusetts, the studio is a fun, energetic place to work, where the company mantra, "How cool would it be if . . . ?" infuses the team with a commitment to passion, integrity, and innovation."

Monolith Productions: Senior Software Engineer, Gameplay
"Monolith Productions, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company, is located in Kirkland, Washington, and develops games for the PC and next-generation platforms.

Over the past 10 years, Monolith has risen to critical acclaim with products such as the FEAR franchise, the Condemned series, the No One Lives Forever franchise, Aliens vs. Predator 2; and Shogo: Mobile Armor Division. Monolith has focused primarily on first person action games with a strong emphasis on storytelling and atmosphere. In addition, Monolith has extensive internal expertise creating cutting edge tools and technology to support our products. The company’s number one goal is to create fun, compelling games to excite the imaginations of gamers everywhere.

Since its inception, Monolith has been fortunate to have talented and dedicated team members who have helped it evolve into a company that not only builds great games but also strives to create a fun and interesting work environment for all employees."

NetherRealm Studio: World Artist
"NetherRealm Studios, wholly owned by Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group, is a leader in the development of interactive entertainment as the creator of the billion dollar Mortal Kombat franchise. Mortal Kombat has spawned two theatrical films, multiple television series, and has sold over 28 million games to date. Located in Chicago, Illinois the award-winning NetherRealm team has been working and creating games together since 1992. Additional information about NetherRealm Studios can be found at www.netherrealm.com"

Tencent Boston: Art Director
"Tencent Boston is a premier game development studio led by industry veterans that are driving the creation of world class online games for a global audience. We are a division of Tencent Inc., one of the largest internet companies in China. For nearly 500 million people Tencent is the internet offering portal, shopping, community and entertainment services. We are right in the middle of one of the most dynamic and rapidly growing game markets in the world and we are looking for outstanding individuals with passion, talent and a team focused mindset.

We are located in the Boston area and offer competitive salaries, superb benefits and profit sharing. If you’re an inspired, driven individual who is ready to take game development to the next level then Tencent Boston is your new home."

Thatgamecompany: Feel Engineer
"thatgamecompany designs and develops artistically crafted, broadly accessible video games that push the boundaries of interactive entertainment. We respect our players and want to contribute meaningful, enriching experiences that touch and inspire them. We seek talent that values integrity and personal growth within an environment of intense collaboration and experimentation."

Gameloft: 3D Graphics Programmer
"Gameloft is a leading international publisher and developer of downloadable video games. For 10 years, Gameloft has been established as one of the top innovators in its field. The company creates games for mobile phones, smartphones, iPhone,iPod touch and iPad. Gameloft games are also available to players on WiiWare, DSiWare, Microsoft Xbox LIVE Arcade and PlayStationNetwork.

Partnership agreements with leading licenses such as UNO, Ferrari, Shrek, CSI™, Spider-Man Iron Man, and Brothers in Arms allow Gameloft to form strong relationships with international brands. In addition to the partnerships, Gameloft owns and operates titles such as Real Football, Asphalt and Brain Challenge."

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 Chris Remo at 1:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

[Starting a new series of interviews with notable indie game developers for GameSetWatch, Mike Rose sits down with Rocket Bear Games' Alex Vostrov to talk about his acclaimed, quirky titles and his plans for the future.]

Alex Vostrov is the one man band behind Rocket Bear Games, previously known as Indiebird. His work has been featured on sister site IndieGames.com's blog numerous times, and with good reason - his games tend to be quirky and interesting, as well as solid fun. Notable releases include the likes of Attack of the Paper Zombies, Pandora's Gearbox and Swarm.

Alex recently made the decision to quit his day job and become a full-time indie developer. His first commercial release, Infested Planet, builds on the concept originally found in Attack of the Paper Zombies, and will be released later this year.

In this interview, Alex talks to us about his decision to go full-time developer, his gaming industry heroes and influences, and what we can expect from Infested Planet.

Who are you and what do you do?

My name is Alex Vostrov and I'm from Vancouver, Canada. When I'm not plotting world domination, I make independent games of various shapes and sizes.

You recently quit your day job to go full indie developer - what prompted you to make this move?

Would you believe that it was a YouTube video? I'm serious - it was a recording of Gary Vaynerchuk hopping around on stage like an excited squirrel on crack. He talks a lot about Web 2.0 stuff and making a living from your passion.

Before that moment, creating games full-time was a crazy dream. Then I started thinking about ways to make the dream happen. One thing led to another and here I am.

Does the idea of living off your own work worry you at all? What would you say to another indie developer considering the same path?

One part of me is scared out of its mind. I've heard the doom and gloom statistics about staying afloat - no rose-coloured glasses here. What changed my mind was the following thought. I knew that if I didn't give it a shot, I would regret it for the rest of my life. Some people try to climb Everest; I'm trying to start an indie game studio.

As for advice to other developers, I'd say two things.

1) Be really sure that this is what you want to do. You won't become Bill Gates making games. If I wanted to get rich, I'd keep writing financial software.
2) Have a war chest to get you through the hard times. How long would you last if the money stopped coming in?

Your past work includes the likes of Swarm, Pandora's Gearbox and the wonderful Attack of the Paper Zombies. Is there anyone in particular that you take inspiration from?

My game design hero turned his back on the game industry almost two decades ago. Here's a bit of trivia: GDC started in his living room. Some of the games that he created in the 80's are still more innovative than those made today. If you don't know who I'm talking about, you should look up Chris Crawford. I like to joke that he's the best game designer you've never heard of.

In general, I'm greatly inspired by the spirit of 80s game design. Here is a time when the game world was still young and dragons dwelled in the forest depths. The game designers of that decade laid the foundations for almost every genre that's around today. In some ways, it was a similar time to the indie explosion that we're experiencing now.

Infested Planet will be your first commercial product, and will build on the concept from Attack of the Paper Zombies. What can we expect come Fall 2010?

I like to think about AotPZ as the baby prototype for Infested Planet. Remember Chris Hecker's "Please Finish Your Game" GDC rant? I see Infested Planet as being the final and fullest expression of ideas that I started exploring in AotPZ.

One feature that I'm very excited about is the new campaign mode. It will add a set of missions, as you'd expect, but there's something more. One of AotPZ's strengths was how replayable the basic game was. What I'd like to do is to mix in random missions so that you're playing a quasi-dynamic campaign. It's been tried before, and a lot of developers have gotten it wrong. I have a couple of ideas of how to defeat the problems, though.

Is the idea of charging for your work daunting, given that your games up to now have all been freeware?

I regret that there's going to be more of a barrier between me and my audience now. On the other hand, that gives me the ability to make much better games. I'd rather make great games for a smaller audience than so-so games for everyone.

Of course, there's a third option to the dilemma. I've been eyeing the Flash game space for some time now. I like the fact that people can release free games and still make a living.

You say on your blog that you work on your game around 12 hours every day. How do you manage to stay focused throughout the day?

Well's that a bit of an overestimate. I try to work about 12 hours, but a lot of time things intrude on the schedule. I try to be fairly organized - I write out task lists each evening for the following day. One thing that helps is going for a run in the middle of the day.

All of that is details, though. What drives me is the idea that if I work harder, I can implement features that are on the cutting floor right now. You always have to balance creativity with reality when making games. Spending more time on the game allows me to indulge my creative side.

Is your plan to work on Infested Planet full-time, or do you have other games and concepts going at the same time?

Infested Planet occupies 100% of my attention right now. Sometimes that's a pity, because I miss interesting competitions, like the ones TIGSource holds. There are a lot of games that I want to create, like all designers, but most of them aren't even in prototype stage yet.

That's just a reality of wearing many hats. It's hard enough to ship one good game, doing several games at once would be almost impossible.

Posted by Michael Rose at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Last weekend's Catholic Bishops’ Conference in Manila, Philippines -- a trade show one wouldn't expect to hear many video game announcements from -- saw the launch of Paolo's Journey, a 3D game based on Pope Benedict XVI’s Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

Targeting a range of students from third grade to college, the game stars a young boy who's fallen into a well while searching for his lost kitten. He meets an angel in that well, who says he needs to collect three keys before he can escape, with each key taking him to a different level.

The 3D title has Paolo slaying creatures, collecting scrolls, and answering 45 questions about the catechism. The first level asks questions related to the Sacraments, the second level has questions about the Ten Commandments, and the third level asks about Christian values.

Paolo's Journey was developed over the last year by Fr. Maximo Villanueva Jr., formerly a computer animation student at the New York Film Academy and an intern at Nickelodeon, with some help from local animation group Secret 6, Inc.

Villanueva teamed up with the CBCP-Episcopal Commission on Catechesis and Catholic Education to release the game in five different languages -- English, Spanish, Tagalog, Portuguese, and Italian -- and produce 1,000 copies, giving those copies to bishops who will distribute them to public school catechists in their dioceses.

The CBCP, which also plans to sell the game in Catholic bookstores for P200 ($4.32), says the game is meant as a supplement to the traditional catechism taught in schools. "Catechism should first be heard... There is no substitute for the power of the Word. The video game is a complementary device to help our understanding," explains a CBCP representative.

Villanueva says he's already thinking of a follow-up to Paolo's Journey, according to a report from The Philippine Star. The sequel would feature the main character searching for his love interest, Marissa, while answering questions related to Bible parables.

Unfortunately, there isn't much media for the game online other than this photo of Villanueva playing the game on a laptop, originally posted by the CBCP.

[Via GamerTell]

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

Graphic designer Justin Russo, who you might recall from his minimalist posters of iconic video game characters, has a new limited edition, signed print catering to gamers, but this time you can buy it to support a charitable cause.

The 18" x 24" poster, titled "Everyone Can Game" is meant to show "the collective power and camaraderie of gamers around the world regardless of ability" as three proud gamers as "salute the world of video games holding a different controller in a pose of strength and unity".

You can purchase the print with a $55 or more donation to The AbleGamers Foundation, a public charity promoting accessibility in gaming so that all people, regardless of disability, can enjoy the medium. The organization plans to only print 350 posters and to begin shipping them out in the mid-August.

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

[Looking forward to GDC Europe next month in Germany, and my colleagues have announced they've snagged the Guerrilla folks for one of the keynotes -- kudos to them, details below.]

GDC Europe has revealed a keynote from Guerrilla Games' head Hermen Hulst, discussing the upcoming Killzone 3 and managing the Sony-owned studio to success, as the July 21st early registration deadline approaches for the pre-eminent European game business/design conference.

This keynote -- to be held on August 17th -- is the latest to be announced for the 2010 Game Developers Conference Europe event, which will take place August 16th-18th, and is located in Cologne, Germany alongside GamesCom, the leading European trade and consumer show.

Hulst's talk at GDC Europe will examine how the Amsterdam-headquartered studio -- one of the leading European game developers, and employing 140 developers from 20 countries -- has matured, and which obstacles had to be overcome along the way.

He'll also focus on the company's technical focus on best utilizing console hardware, and what some of the ingredients behind the success of the Killzone series are, illuminating some of Guerrilla's emerging work on the PlayStation 3-exclusive title Killzone 3, due out in early 2011.

The announcements come with just five days to go before the July 21st early registration deadline for the show, which is created by the UBM TechWeb Game Network, as is this website, and is now in its second year as the pre-eminent European game development event.

"We are excited to welcome to the GDC Europe stage such a prominent European developer and industry figure such as Hulst," said Frank Sliwka, GDC Europe Event Director. "The Killzone series and work produced from Guerrilla Games is exemplar of the ingenuity of European developers."

These latest announcements are part of a large GDC Europe line-up that includes a Rare-helmed lecture on Microsoft's Kinect, the BioWare co-founders on the Baldur's Gate franchise, a lecture from Another World creator Eric Chahi on his new title Project Dust, an ESA/G.A.M.E. panel on government intervention in games, and a Heavy Rain production talk.

Also added are lectures and panels from Remedy art director Saku Lehtinen on Alan Wake, Ensemble co-founder Bruce Shelley on creating a design proposal, a keynote from Chinese online game powerhouse Tencent, significant lectures from Quantic Dream's David Cage, InstantAction's Lou Castle, and the creators of Crysis 2, and other lectures and keynotes from Sony, Playdom, and German gaming powerhouse Bigpoint (Battlestar Galactica MMO).

The conference, taking place Monday through Wednesday August 16-18, 2010 at the Cologne Congress Center East in Cologne, Germany, aims to present the leading game industry event for developers, consumers, publishers and trade professionals. The event will run alongside the major GamesCom event, to which free access is available for non-student GDC Europe passholders.

With just five days to go until the early registration deadline, more information on GDC Europe, for which reduced price registration is in place until July 21st -- visit the official Game Developers Conference Europe website.

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

Having proven that it can deliver a brilliant shoot'em up port to iPhone with Espgaluda II, Cave is now looking to transplant another bullet hell title to the handset: DoDonPachi Daifukkatsu, its Japan-only arcade shmup released in 2008 and the fifth entry in the DonPachi series.

Cave hasn't announced much about the title other than it will release in both Japanese and English App Stores this summer. As with Espgaluda II, DoDonPachi Daifukkatsu will run only on iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPod Touch (third generation), and iPad (as an upscaled iPhone app) devices.

[Via Cave World, Andriasang]

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

[The Gaming Doctrine is a monthly GameSetWatch column by Richard Clark about the intersection of gaming, religion, spirituality, and morality. This month - a consideration of whether death in games can ever be treated with serious in light of a repetitive player death mechanic.]

Of those who consider video games a regular hobby, there is an experience that can be considered universal: dying, over and over again. Whether we find ourselves in an evil dungeon, space, or a desert, the primary gaming experience can be summed up by death.

At least, it can be summed up by a kind of death. Video game death stands apart from real death, not only because it's an artificial concept within the artificial construct of a video game world, but because it represents a fresh start rather than the end of the road. Within the video game, death is an opportunity for the player and an automatic reset button for the game world.

Is Video Game Death Destined to be Meaningless?

Because of this discrepancy, it's only natural to raise the question of whether death can ever be conveyed meaningfully within a game world. If so, how we might go about changing the typical death mechanic to reflect the horror and finality of death, as well as the dread that often leads up to it?

Throughout gaming's history, there have been attempts to make death seem appropriately final. Some games limit the number of deaths you are allowed, making death truly consequential but nonetheless more trivial than actual human death. Other games are even more lenient, giving the player unlimited death but imposing penalties for the failure, such as losing money or having a certain amount of in-game progress lost.

Nonetheless, these penalties don't come close to addressing a problem that becomes more prominent as games become more realistic and serious. Perhaps no genre draws more attention to this dilemma as the military shooter. In games like Call of Duty and Battlefield, death is a non-issue for the player. It comes suddenly, but is usually the result of a lack of strategic and skillful maneuvering. In other words, it makes perfect sense. The player gets a maximum of five seconds to consider an alternate way around the problem, and tries again.

More often than not, the player makes it further than they previously have before, dying again later on. They expect this death, and they expects it soon. They are not afraid of it, because they know it is par for the course, and they know that they will always come out of it unscathed, with full health and plenty of ammo.

Far Cry 2, on the other hand, makes a diligent attempt to resolve this issue by thoughtfully altering the mechanics to make death often seem sudden, chaotic, and often meaningless. There are countless times when the player feels that they have the perfect plan in place, only to be cut down before their time because of a random malaria attack, gun jam, or unpredictable enemy reaction. In addition to this, Far Cry 2’s save points are relegated to safe houses, often a good 15 to 20 minutes away from where the death occurred, making death assume a much more tragic nature than in other video games.

Recognizing that even this fell short of driving home the finality of death, Ben Abraham started a “Permanent Death” project, in which he allows himself only one life, after which the game truly is over. The experience turned out to be an insightful one, particularly because Abraham took the important step of analyzing and writing about every key moment.

Nonetheless, this is not the normative experience for the average gamer. Typically, the gamer chooses to use every life available (normally an infinite amount) and often attempts to do whatever it takes to lose as little progress as possible. The truth is this: the more finality that the gamer experiences with death, the less fun they have and the more frustrated they get.

Coming to Terms with the Inevitable Problem of Death

It may be more helpful, then, to come to terms with player “death” as an inevitable part of the game medium itself: a tool in service of the narrative or experience rather than a part of the narrative or experience itself. When a player “dies,” he is merely not living up to the pre-ordained story in which his character is the lead. He fails to carry it out in the way it happened.

This is illustrated more literally in a game like Assassin’s Creed. A player must start over because the person being controlled never died that way. In other words, the game is saying to the player, “No, you’re messing it up, try again,” rather than, “You have died and that’s where the story ends.” This is not an ideal solution, and it won’t apply to some games, but it’s serviceable and it works with most.

So, the question becomes, yet again, in a video game, does death have meaning at all? Is death cheap? Are video games unable to convey the true weight of death if player death is not actually death at all? These questions can be answered if one considers the known experience of first person death as opposed to the known experience of having someone we know or care about die.

While our own death, as far as we can know, has no real effect on our experience beyond the act of arriving at that state, the death of others is what really affects us. After all, it’s often said that the suicide victim isn’t the one who has to live with his decision. It’s his loved ones, those that were a part of his life that are wracked with grief and guilt and faced with the finality of his decision that are truly impacted.

The Most Powerful Death is Not Our Own

What if, as a player, we were forced to come to terms with these implications when those characters around us were to die? What if we had to wonder to ourselves if the death of a character was our fault? What if we were given the time to meditate on that death, rather than being forced by the game itself to forget the whole thing and just have fun fighting more monsters? What if we were encouraged to notice the particular absence of the recently deceased? What if we had gotten to know and love the character so much that we actually missed them after they were gone?

Games are getting there, slowly but surely. For instance, in Mass Effect 2, I lost about 3 people in the final act, but wasn’t sure why or whether it was my fault or a scripted result. Should I have been guilty? Was it my fault or was it just their time to die? In Left 4 Dead, the experience of arriving in the safe room without every member of your group, with the dead player berating you for leaving them to die has the potential to be both memorable and affecting, driving home both the feeling of someone's inescapable absence as well as feeling responsible for a person's death.

These in-game experiences obviously pale in comparison to real-life experiences with death, but so do films, books, television shows, and paintings. What video games can do, though, is give us a safe place to tackle the experiences head on and learn from our own reactions to those experiences. They can affect our character and ability to demonstrate empathy in very real ways. They can, most striking of all, make us into slightly different people.

Do games inherently trivialize death, with their meaningless death mechanic and their tendency to encourage gameplay that's violent in nature? No. But the danger is more prevalent in this medium, where death has the tendency to become commonplace at best and trivial at worst. It makes sense that violence be so prevalent in the medium, but it also makes sense to try and balance that tendency.

Games can short-circuit the trigger-happy nature of their game in a thoughtful way by questioning the nature of video game death, giving the player time to acknowledge it, and refusing to make death the end, in and of itself.

[Richard Clark is the editor-in-chief of Christ and Pop Culture, where he often writes about video games. He and his wife live in Louisville, KY. He can be reached at deadyetliving at gmail dot com or followed on twitter (@christandpc).]

Posted by Richard Clark at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Creating a setup reminiscent of Sony's PlayStation Eye-based title The Eye of Judgment, Kain Celstoire has brought the Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game to life with this proof of concept augmented reality project, made possible with a webcam, Unity Pro (with an AR plug-in), and some AR markers.

He admits that this is just a rough draft completed for a university paper and it doesn't offer much in the way of special effects or scene composition, but he says he's managed to get all of the card game's mechanics working through augmented reality.

"This isn't the ideal gaming platform," says Celstoire. "The way I envisioned it is to have head mounted displays (or contact lenses in the near future) and to have a mobile GPS-based system (e.g iPhone) so you can duel others on the streets."

He also says that one could modify the game to play it without AR markers: "It's not a major technological leap to switch it to an image-based recognition system and have it actually picking up the real playing cards."

Get on it, Konami!

[Via Kain; Thanks, Tim!]

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

Press Start, the Montreal art show dedicated to "the most popular video games from our childhood", kicked off a couple weeks ago at Headquarters Galerie & Boutique, and photos of the exhibit's impressive pieces are popping up online.

In fact, there's now an online shop where you can buy prints, paintings, and the other artwork on display -- some as cheap as $20, others more expensive at $500-$1,000 -- the excellent "Haunted Arcade" piece by Scott Ferry that you see above is selling for $250.

You can also buy a shirt Press Start t-shirt designed by Johnny Crap from the store. And if you're to broke to purchase anything, the gallery is holding a simple contest giving away the shirt, a Uranium necklace, a book by PO!, a print by Meka, and another print by 123 Klan.

If you're in the Montreal area, though, you should still stop by Headquarters Galerie & Boutique to see the artwork in person -- the show will run until the end of the month. You can see more artwork from Press Start after the break:

[Thanks, Jonathan!]

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

[Zombie Studios' John Williamson talks to our own Brandon Sheffield on video game violence, using psychology in games, and the benefits of a military contracting background in the game industry, as filtered through discussion of the company's upcoming Saw II.]

Saw II: Flesh and Blood is the latest project from Seattle-based Zombie Studios. This is the second in the third person survival horror series, soon launching on PS3 and Xbox 360, to coincide with the theatrical release of Saw VII.

The original Saw game received mixed reviews, but did well enough to warrant a sequel, with Konami as the publisher, likely thanks to the horror series' following among genre fans, and despite the extremely violent content in both movies and game.

Gamasutra talked to John Williamson, president of Zombie Studios, and producer and designer of the Saw franchise, discussing the application of psychology in games, the benefits of a military contracting background in games, violence in video games, and the ups and downs of the Unreal Engine.

Violence

Let's discuss Saw. With the backlash against violent video games, can you actually release a game like this in Germany, or Australia for example?

John Williamson: Much to my surprise, the original Saw was released in Germany and Australia. When I was told they were going to submit it, I thought, just based on everything I always read online, that it would never get through, but it went through on the first pass.

Wow. I know lately they've been pretty draconian about it. Why do you think it got through?

JW: I think the rating process is different for every country, and I think they reviewed the game based on everything that was in it, not just on a couple of minutes of it, just like the Saw movies themselves aren't really pure torture porn.

If you pay attention, there's actually usually a big twist in them. It's not quite Memento, but it has some more intellectual elements in it that you don't see coming, and that's why the franchise has gone on for so long. If it were just purely torture porn, it would've died after the first one or two installments, but the fact that the universe is so big, the characters are so elaborate, is what keeps it going. We did the same thing in the game.

Also, for some reason, the correlation that video games cause violence always only seems to go one way, but yet if you look at all the data, the crime against and from teenage youth has actually gone down every year since the invention of the first-person shooter. So if nothing else, if you're going to follow correlations, you should actually encourage everybody to play first-person shooters.

Right, and violent games are banned in countries like Venezuela, where the games are hardly the biggest problem..

JW: Yeah that's the other issue. It’s a cheap thing for politicians to latch on to try to get some votes, because unfortunately gamers traditionally just are too young to vote – rather, they're over 18 but they're still too young, people usually don't vote until they get into their 40s or 50s in large blocks, which is kind of a shame. But it's just like rap music before it. It's another medium that is unfairly grouped into something that's bad. There are far worse problems society must deal with and gaming isn't even in the top 50.

Psychological Influences

In terms of reference for this, obviously there's the Saw film, but have you also watched other films in the genre, like Baron Blood by Mario Bava and 's 101 Nights of Sodom?

JW: Yeah, I've watched a couple of those. We also went back and, for the first game in particular, we watched a lot of the institutional psychiatric care ones, everything from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest to-- I'm blanking on the name of it, but the film that was actually banned… It was a documentary that was banned because it supposedly violated the patients' rights, but in reality the reason it was banned was because it showed the horrific treatment that the patients were going under then.

My background and all my degrees are in psychology, so I spend a lot of time looking into that and using that to help out with the games. But we also watched, of course, the Hostel series and No Vacancy. Then we played a lot of the games, and having Konami's legacy and their experience helps us in that as well. So it's not just a pure bloody game, there's actually a lot of suspense and a lot of drama, only it's not supernatural in this case, it’s a serial killer.

Psychology plays really heavily into game design because you're trying to lead someone toward a conclusion or a solution without telling them overtly. Have you found direct application of that?

JW: A lot of my work was on perceptual psychology-- how we perceive the world. In particular, all my research was on the human perception of stereoscopic computer graphics and how we can do that. So the Air Force actually funded most of my graduate work and I found that that has come into play, how you perceive an environment, what draws you to go one way versus another. We try to take advantage of that research that's been done in the past and leverage that into some of the design elements in the game.

Were other people from your studio from a similar background? I know that Angel studios in San Diego came from a military contracting background, for instance.

JW: Well, we have done a lot of military series games, we've done a lot of work on America's Army, and we've done some other series work for some other military contractors, and the two founders of the company, Mark Long and Joanna Alexander, both come from military research backgrounds, so we did come out that way, and then we branched into virtual reality, and then that instantly led into gaming, and now we're branching out into trans-media with Blacklight productions, which is a trans-media film/graphic-novel/game company.

Games And Discipline

I've found that companies that have that kind of military contracting background or at least experience have a certain feel to them? I don’t know if it's a precision or something like that, but--

JW: Well I think the thing I'm most proud of in my 15-year game career is the fact that I've never had a game canceled by a publisher. I've had publishers go out of business, but even then with the exception of one [game] I've been able to sell that to somebody else. And so I think part of that comes from that precision, the mix between the art and the science, and the reality that this is a business and you need to make some decisions in order to be able to ship.

I mean, one of my favorite quotes in game design is "There are two types of games: There are perfect games, and there are games that ship," and part of the trick to maintaining viability is to be able to ship a game. The other thing that I'm most proud of in my career is that over 60 percent of the games that I've worked on have been successful enough to go on to warrant a sequel or multiple sequels.

I feel like Saw was slightly stealth in that regard. It did relatively well but it wasn't like everybody was talking about it.

JW: Yeah. It came out, I think a lot of it caught people by surprise because they just weren't expecting it to be as good as it was. They thought it would be a very literal translation of the Saw universe; hit A to cut off your foot. And they were surprised by it. One of my favorite reviews was in The Escapist, and she started out by saying she goes to E3 looking for a game to make fun of, and she thought it was going to be Saw, and instead she wrote a very glowing preview of the game on how different it was from what she expected.

Right. I feel like in our industry, if you can show a game-- this goes back to the precision element-- if you can showcase a game that's not broken at E3, where you can't break it, that gets you pretty far along there in terms of getting someone to actually take you seriously.

JW: Yeah that is always the problem. I'm really proud of the team, of the fact that we've always been able to have a demo, and that's probably one of the reasons why I like the Unreal Engine is the fact that it lets me demo a prototype of a new game experience within 30-60 days at the most. And that's really powerful because then it's not just me with my sock puppets acting out. Now, if I think a game mechanic is going to work I can give the controller to the publisher and there it is, and we can explain it. And then they can actually play it rather than have me explain it, and it works out really well.

I feel like sometimes Unreal is like a double edged sword, because it's great to prototype fast and demonstrate something, but then sometimes you get into this trap of getting into your familiar corridors and stuff and people start to feel like "Oh I think I've seen this before," because there's certain things that it does really well, and it's really easy to fall into that, you know what I mean?

JW: Yeah. Well, that's one of the reasons why we wanted to use it for the Saw games; you want to take advantage of its strengths, and one of its strengths are the corridors. I mean, it can be used to do other things, you know the Lucha Libre guys over here are using it for a fighting game, and it can be used for lots of different things, but using its strengths I think is a good thing to do, try to play to it. If I was designing a completely different game, I might've wanted to do a different engine, but it's so flexible that I might not have.

For example, I think this is my sixth or seventh Unreal title, and I have used other engines in the past: I've used the Lithtech Engine, I've used Renderware for middleware, I've written my own game engines from scratch, and I'm pretty experienced with all of them. That ability to have a prototype working out of the box quickly makes the publishers very happy and it raises that confidence bar really quickly and it's really a good thing to have.

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

[Every week, we sum up sister iPhone and iPad 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 Monkey Island 2: Special Edition and Villain LLC's online multiplayer FPS Archetype, along with an update for Taito's popular shooter Space Invaders Infinity Gene.

Also within are the lists for top-grossing, most-downloaded free and paid Apps from Apple's store, as well as reviews for LandFormer and Pro Zombie Soccer.

Here are the top stories from the last seven days:

- Multiplayer First-Person Shooter Archetype Debuts in App Store
"App Store newcomer Villain LLC has launched Archetype, a multiplayer-only first-person shooter featuring a variety of gameplay modes, including online five-on-five team deathmatches."

- Top-Grossing Game Apps: Doodle God, Archetype Sell Big on iPhone
"JoyBits' puzzler Doodle God and Villain LLC's Archetype make strong impressions in this week's iPhone sales chart, though neither title can match the continuing success of Clickgamer's reigning chart leader Angry Birds."

- Review: LandFormer
"The game is best when it's played one level at a time when you have a few minutes to kill, but for those few minutes, you can turn down the volume on everything else and consider the landscape in front of you."

- New on iPad: Wallace & Gromit, Osmos
"Telltale Games brings its point-and-click adventure title Wallace & Gromit: The Last Resort to the iPad this week, while Hemisphere debuts in the App Store with its acclaimed puzzler Osmos.

- LucasArts Launches Monkey Island 2: Special Edition for iPhone and iPad
"The Special Edition of Monkey Island 2 features an overhauled control scheme to make the experience more intuitive. Another optional feature highlights items and background details that serve as points of interaction."

- Top iPhone Game Apps: Doodle God Ranks High in Debut Week
"JoyBits' element-combining puzzler Doodle God debuts as the App Store's second-best selling iPhone game this week, overtaking Doodle Jump and rivaling reigning chart champ Angry Birds."

- Review: Pro Zombie Soccer
"It's the occasional touch of absurdity that, in the end, swings my opinion of Pro Zombie Soccer from meh to Yeah. It evokes just enough curiosity in the workmanlike mechanics to keep them from becoming day-by-day."

- Fruit Ninja Sells One Million, Halfbrick Announces iPad Version
"Australia-based developer Halfbrick Studios announced that its hit iPhone title Fruit Ninja has now sold more than one million copies worldwide. The company also revealed that an iPad version is in the works."

- Top iPad Game Apps: 99-Cent Gameloft Titles Unseat Angry Birds
"Gameloft steals the top chart spot away from Clickgamer's Angry Birds HD with its price-dropped brain training title Brain Challenge HD, as the company's sports sims Real Soccer 2010 HD and NFL 2010 HD also see chart success."

- Next Space Invaders Infinity Gene Update Features Horizontal Mode, DLC Theme Packs
"Taito has released its next Space Invaders Infinity Gene update, introducing a horizontal gameplay option and a number of downloadable theme packs featuring ships borrowed from classic Taito arcade games."

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

There seems to be no shortage of cute platformers with 8-bit-style graphics and music lately, but if you aren't bored of them yet, here are two more that have popped up! The video you see above is for Dooder, a sidescroller with charming pastel graphics from Matthew Thomas Seely.

Seely just released a Windows demo for Dooder, which has you controlling the game's titular hero as he collects power-ups, fights monsters called "Dooms" with his light sword, and flies around looking cute.

The other title we wanted to feature, spotted by our sister site IndieGames.com, is Nikki and the Robots, an indie title from Joyride Laboratories that "homage to the classical platform games of the eighties and nineties".

In the game, you control Nikki, a catgirl that doesn't actually get to use any weapons or equipment but can hack into super villain Dr. Lacroix robots, taking control over them to solve puzzles, overcome obstacles, and complete any other level tasks.

Nikki and the Robots will release for Windows/Max/Linux later this year. You can watch a trailer for that, as well as another Dooder video, below:

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

Keeping the meme alive, iam8bit and Gerald de Jesus (the same talented artist that created Mega Man 10's wicked promotional art) have re-imagined the famous Three Wolf Moon shirt with the white wolves and the sun from Capcom's PS2/Wii/DS series Okami.

Capcom plans to give away tees with this design as an "ultra exclusive" for San Diego Comic Con next week; attendees hoping to acquire this rad Okami shirt will need to enter the company's raffle at the convention. If you're unsure of its quality, you can read a glowing customer review about the design at Capcom Unity!

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

One more video from last weekend's Evo Championship Series at Las Vegas! While we've already shared highlights from the Super Street Fighter IV tournament and some Maj's awesome combo/fireball clips debuted at the event, 1UP's Richard Li posted this excellently excellently shot and edited short movie showing what it was like to actually be at Cesar's Palace during Evo 2010.

Li's video captures the atmosphere you take in while sitting around the ballroom or waiting for your turn to play -- watching matches while holding onto your arcade stick, hanging out with friends you've only chatted with online, and Daigo signing his autograph on girls' chests -- all while Neil Diamond's "Heart of Gold" plays in your head.

Make sure to watch it until the end to see someone getting crazy hyped after a close match!

[Via iPLAYWINNER]

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

[We're partnering with game criticism site Critical Distance to present some of the week's most inspiring writing about the art and design of video games from commentators worldwide. This week, Ben Abraham looks at what hidden meanings are behind RPG reticules, 'theft and recreation' in games, and game design lessons for NASA.]

Greg J. Smith at Serial Consign usually blogs about architecture, and occasionally, we are blessed with an essay like this one where he “consider[s] two broad themes in examining the delineation of urban space by architects and game designers. These themes are a top-down, consideration of the city as a system and the charged notion of "play" in urban space.”

Smith notes: “Advances in computer graphics and a need for increasingly sophisticated in-game navigation and informational systems have made gaming an R&D lab for exploring methods of representation derived from not only architecture, but interface design, cinematography, cartography and data visualization.”

Michael Clarkson looks at ‘The Dunning-Kruger reticule’ which is a deceptive kind of reticule occasionally employed by RPGs that belies the fact there are hidden calculations behind the shot that determine where it’s going: “The steady reticule that doesn't really represent where the bullets are going to hit isn't a very satisfying representation of the character's lack of skill. Indeed, it isn't a representation of this at all. This is a problem because the visual language of games, and specifically the visual language most frequently experienced by the audience these games are meant to attract, attaches a certain meaning to the reticule, which the probabilistic calculations of an RPG violate.”

Elsewhere, Michael Abbott of the Brainy Gamer says kids are a ‘tough crowd’. And Nick LaLone at Before Game Design tries his hand at defining the term ‘video game’.

Chris Green at the RRoD blog is attempting to render Dostoevsky’s classic ‘Crime and Punishment’ using only the game-cum-story-machine Sleep is Death. He writes about some of the things he’s learnt from the exercise in a blog post entitled ‘Playing Monomania: A protagonist in the throes of madness’. What’s monomania, you ask? Says Green: “Monomania bares a resemblance to Paranoia because of its tendency to make the sufferer believe that their reality is the real one, that others are wrong and are plotting against him/her.” I swear I’ve had that at least once.

Ian Cheong says that he “played Uncharted 1 & 2 in the span of a week. It may have been the shortest amount of time I’ve taken to play two games and it’s because I never wanted to leave” and he’s been enjoying discovering the quality of the series. He says it mostly comes down to smart and believable character writing: “Dude Raider he is not. Unlike Lara Croft, Nathan Drake is a multidimensional character–one full of personality.”

The big story this week was the blow up around Activision/Blizzard’s RealID, but the only piece on it we’re going to mention here is from the Pensive Harpy blog. The author of this post says that the abortive move to force players to use real names on the World of Warcraft forums shows that, in the eyes of the company, ‘We are not the customer any more’.

He claims, perhaps rather emotively: “I think for many of us, this change from 'small tight-knit company to mega giant' is a sad one, especially if you've been in MMOs a long time and remember when things were smaller and more personal.... I think we've finally crossed that line in the MMORPG sphere. Sure, it means bigger budgets, flashier graphics, bigger expansions and tie ins, and more prestige. But I think the MMORPG as a genre has lost a part of its soul; a part that had originally appealed to many players in the first place.”

Jason Young at the Beeps and Boops blog writes about ‘Videogames as Propaganda’, starting with the BP Oil Spill situation and the prescient “BP Offshore Oil Strike” board game, and moving onto others including the intriguing Redistricting Game and the eponymous America’s Army.

Julian at LittleBoBeep on ‘How Board Games Explain Everything – Pt 4, Utopia, Sex, Art’ and for the sake of completion, here’s part 3 which I don’t think we linked to at the time: ‘How différance can be understood in terms of games, play and Calvinball’.

Angelo at the Bergsonian Critique blog writes about ‘Understanding the Narrative of Final Fantasy XIII’. I’ll leave it to you to determine whether that’s mean disparagingly or not. It’s probably a neat companion piece to Simon Ferrari’s analysis of the FFXIII combat system. It’s certainly about as lengthy.

Brendan Keogh at the Critical Damage blog has a post this week called “Understanding My Allergy To BioWare Games” and it looks at the old bugbear of telling versus experiencing story.

Mashup, remix, pastiche, borrowing – whatever you want to call it – should only be a good thing for games, or so says Jorge Albor at the Experience Points blog in a post titled ‘Theft and Recreation’ - "The normative game mechanics we love, and love to hate, spread invisibly but persistently. Any game with a cover mechanic exists because of games like Kill.Switch, Gears of War, and Metal Gear Solid."

After mentioning Leigh Alexander’s excellent Jeremiad ‘Who Cheers for War?’ last week a number of writers have come out with responses to the piece. First is Roger Travis at the Living Epic blog who being a Classics professor has, “...a very long view of the question "Should we be worried that so many video games are about armed conflict?" In fact, that long view makes me like to ask the question somewhat differently: Why is traditional epic always about warriors? Why are so many of the most popular video games about soldiers, super-soldiers, and super-duper-soldiers?”

Which are probably better questions to be asking in the larger scheme of things. The full piece is ‘Games of Armed Conflict: a question of narrative technology’ and I strongly encourage you to go read it.

Similarly introspective and interrogative is Nick Dinicola who muses on “Why do I cheer for war?” and realises that “It’s not something that I’ve ever specifically thought about, but I now ask myself—why do I love shooters?” Which, if nothing else, is an endorsement of Alexander’s call to think about the subject a bit more critically and more often.

In a similar vein, Michael Thomsen at IGN makes the case that games should be even more violent, including a deeply disturbing and visceral description of the experience of cutting the throat of a chicken, illuminating quite powerfully (and perhaps upsettingly – reader discretion is advised!) how devoid of bloody reality games almost invariably are:

“It's been six years since I did all that and I can still remember the small details and the irresolvable emotions I felt in deciding my will should trump the right to life of another being. Making that judgment of another human, even in the safely authored realm of fiction, ought to provoke at least as much emotional conflict and self-doubt. Likewise, if killing a chicken is so complicated, it's safe to assume killing a human being might require more than a melee attack or a few quick button presses.”

At community site Bitmob, Jon Porter writes about backtracking in Metroidvania style games. I’m awarding bonus points for working a screenshot from Futurama into the article.

Laura Michet at the Second Person Shooter blog ‘failed to restore oxygen to the moonbase' and thinks NASA needs to take some game design lessons from the commercial sector. The problem? “I was convinced, throughout the whole playthrough, that the astronauts would die, that they would suffocate to death if I didn’t save them. Dead astronauts are the creepiest things modernity has offered us in the past fifty years.”

And instead, all that happened was a minor setback, a day of productivity mysteriously ‘lost’. Almost sounds like Michet is looking for a Permadeath mode.

Touché Bitches has a nice illustrative post called ‘Beautiful Games’ drawing our attention to the beauty in a number of games and their art.

If you’re like me you’ve probably heard Johan Huizinga’s “Homo Ludens” referenced in just about any and every journal article about games ever written and yet somehow neglected to read it yourself. Well, now you don’t have to as LB Jeffries is here and he’s gone and made us a Cliff's Notes version.

Chris Lepine of The Artful Gamer blog writes about ‘The Changing Nature of Gaming Interfaces’ this week. And on a more sombre note, the Press Pause to Reflect blog is, well, pressing pause to reflect for an extended, even indefinite period. Thanks for the all great work over the years, Daniel and CT. Enjoy the break.

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

Kill Screen, the new gaming mag from ex-Wall Street Journal reporter Jamin Brophy-Warren and collaborators like Chris Dahlen, is preparing to ship out its second issue within a couple weeks, and it's offering 96 pages of articles, nearly double its pagecount for the first issue.

This "No Fun" issue features several interviews with notable indie game designers like Mark "messhof" Essen (Cream Wolf, Flywrench), Anna "Auntie Pixelante" Anthropy (Redder, Mighty Jill Off), and Krystian Majewski (2010 IGF multi-award finalist Trauma), and Jess Chavez.

It also offers promising articles like "the incredible story of New York City’s 30-year ban on pinball" by John Teti, a pick for the video game feminist of the decade by GSW guest editor Jenn Frank, and "the most disgusting puzzle in interactive fiction history" by Zack Handlen.

You can see the full contents of Kill Screen #1 and order the issue online for $20 at the magazine's site.

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

Selected as a finalist for the 2009 Independent Games Festival's student category, Where Is My Heart? is "a simple video game about the complication of family life" from a small Copenhagen-based indie game/art studio named Die Gute Fabrik (The Good Factory).

An early PC version of the game is available to download for free, but Die Gute Fabrik revealed that it's also releasing Where Is My Heart for PSP Minis, so you should be able to play a more fleshed out version of it on your PSP or PS3, soon!

The game's creator Bernie Schulenburg provided this description of Where Is My Heart? last year:

"Players embody a family of monsters, whose interactions produce pink hearts of love which can lead the family home, and dark green hearts of bitterness, which damage the family and throw it off course. Where is My Heart? is an engaging and touching exploration of familial relationships through the metaphors of exploration and collection."

The Danish studio put out four new mini-trailers giving you an idea of what to expect from the game's unconventional platforming, colorful graphics, and mellow music. You can follow its development at Where Is My Heart?'s official site.

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

[Phantom Fingers is a new GameSetWatch-exclusive column on 'the growth and curious development of that relationship between the gameworld and the player' by writer and game theorist Eric-Jon Rössel Tairne [aka Eric-Jon Waugh]. Following looks at Pong, Breakout and Space Invaders, we now examine the all-time Namco classic Pac-Man.]

To bring you up to speed, in 1976 Breakout came along to refocus Pong as a single-player experience, to redefine the videogame in terms of the player’s relationship with the gameworld, and to inject a remedial sense of narrative.

This had profound effects technologically, in terms of design theory, and in terms of the narrative application of videogames. Three threads would arise: the home PC, and two distinct schools of design; one focused more on the the pure theory, and one more on the storytelling potential of the form.

Two years later, Space Invaders reinvented Breakout as a tense battle between the lonely individual and inevitable doom from above. Suddenly players could reach out and touch the targets, and it mattered if they did. Add in a high score table, and a cultural phenomenon was born. Arcades were established just to fill with this one game. The videogame had become a summer blockbuster, its audience’s emotions and impulses carefully orchestrated for word-of-mouth and return visits.

Yet all was not well. Just as Pong had enjoyed several years as the generic videogame, overnight Space Invaders became the only game in town. Every game on the market, from Galaxian to Radar Scope, was an Invaders clone. And yet its appeal was not universal. Somehow, as the young Toru Iwatani observed, those dingy, smoke-filled arcades were filled entirely with socially-inept males. Furthermore, the game’s bleak tone and the mental state it aroused through constant repetition was a bit worrisome.

Clearly there was something wrong with this picture, and Iwatani set to figuring it out.

Pac-Man (1980)

Toru Iwatani’s first love was always pinball. When he joined Namco, it was under the misapprehension that they produced pinball games. Crestfallen, he set himself to producing Breakout clones, organized to play a bit more like pinball. After three unsuccessful ventures, he had his epiphany about videogames and their audience.

Where were the women, he wondered, and why were videogames so stigmatized? Were the two somehow related, and if so what was the common factor? Iwatani decided the theme and tone were largely to blame. Although the games were addictive, there was this constant theme of death and violence. Muted and abstracted, to be sure, but it was there. The only contact you have with the world is through shooting; anything that can really touch you brings you harm.

Okay, so what would appeal to women? What motivates women in life? Iwatani settled on fashion and eating.

Yes, well. Give the man a little credit.

So what Iwatani basically did was construct a pinball table (or, if you will, a Breakout board) where you directly control the ball around to eat all the cookies. (Over here we just know them as dots.) Eat all the food (that is, break all the bricks/shoot all the Invaders) to move on to the next board. If a random bit of food, such as a piece of fruit -- pops onto the screen, all the better. There’s your bonus, in place of Space Invaders’ UFO. Nice and nonviolent.

To give the game some pressure, he took a note from Space Invaders and scattered the board with colorful monsters, intent on hemming in the player’s avatar. Eating them isn’t the point; it’s just a defense. And the monsters, he stresses, never actually die. When eaten, their spirits return to their nest to be reborn.

When Iwatani showed the game to his boss, his boss told him to make all the monsters red. The player would be confused by all the colors, the man argued. Iwatani argued back that the colors were the whole point; they gave the monsters identities, and made the game pretty to look at -- all the better to attract a female audience.

Along with color came characterization. The protagonist was basically a giant mouth, which fit the premise and was expressive in a sort of Saul Bass mod graphic design sense. The monsters were all multicolored ghosts with googly eyes, each with its own behavioral patterns. In the intro they were assigned names, and between levels (against more protest) Iwatani insisted on adding cutscenes to develop the characters. The more empathy the player felt, he said, the better.

Another key element was in the maze walls; conscious of the sense of claustrophobia and stress brought on by solid lines, he chose to open up the psychological space of the board by leaving the walls as simple outlines. The point was to open up videogame spaces -- such as those dingy arcades -- and make them inviting.

In design terms Iwatani’s real innovation is in the “super cookie” (or power pellet): a token that turned the tables and allowed the player to be “it” in the game’s perpetual game of tag. The concept of a power-up may have existed before, but this was a turning point. The entire idea of Pac-Man is to eat or be eaten. Most of the time the player is defenseless, and must concentrate on the primary goal -- clear the board, to move on.

The player does this through bodily scouring every inch of the playfield, touching everything there is to touch. Generally the game is warm and encouraging to explore; the only thing there is to fear is the small collection of monsters. Add in that magic talisman, and the player need not even fear the monsters. Fair’s fair, nothing is dangerous all the time, and one way or another everything can be eaten.

The thematic unity to the game, both in terms of linking everything to a single mechanism or concept, and in terms of psychologically freeing the game through exploration of that mechanism, made the game a smash hit. Iwatani’s projections were on-target; women and children flocked to Pac-Man, turning the game’s characters into videogaming’s first icons. Players identified with the characters, enjoyed freely exploring the game’s world, and enjoyed the game’s sense of back-and-forth fairness brought on by the power pellets. There were cartoons, breakfast cereals, pop singles. Pac-Man was the first videogame celebrity. Finally here was a game you could play in mixed company.

In place of the imposing threat of Space Invaders, Pac-Man presents a sort of a closed ecosystem. There is a sort of mild violence, but it’s fair and understandable. Everyone in that system has a role and a purpose, and playing is just a matter of immersing one’s self in that logic. As with Space Invaders, the act of playing does trace out a simple story -- although now movie segments jump in between levels to support and inform the play narrative.

So now we have a sense of the cutting edge of Japanese design: distinct characters (Pac and the ghosts); a predefined story that emerges partially through play and more substantially outside of the player’s control; a confined world, open for the player to explore; a design based almost entirely around a single mechanic (in this case eating), that serves to illuminate some practical ideal; power-ups to even the odds; and collectible trinkets to give a sense of progress.

Now take all that, flip it on its side, and stretch it out really far. Say, over eight worlds and thirty-two levels.

Next time on Phantom Fingers: The Series: Super Mario Bros.

[Eric-Jon Rössel Tairne is a writer most recently hailing from Brooklyn, New York. When he manages to detach his brain from his keyboard, he spends his hours concocting bagels and exploring the deep places of the Earth. You can sponge up more of his work at gloaming.aderack.com. ]

Posted by Eric-Jon Waugh at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

In case you missed the announcement at last month's E3, Echochrome, Sony's awesome but underappreciated PSP puzzler, will receive a shadow-based sequel this September for PlayStation 3/Move (trailer after the break), and talented composer Hideki Sakamoto is returning to record the game's string quartet and piano soundtrack.

As a neat treat for fans, Sakamoto is livestreaming his recording sessions, giving gamers some insight on the process. I've embedded one of the videos from sessions above, but you can watch them all over on the composer's UStream page. He plans to hold his next livestream session this afternoon around 1PM EST.

From what I've heard so far, Echochrome II's soundtrack sounds just as great as the first! Make sure to check out our many previous interviews with Sakamoto for his previous projects, such as Diamond and the Sound of a Gunshot, Yakuza Kensan, and Castlevania Judgment.

[Via Eastern Mind]

Posted by Eric Caoili at 8:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Luxury cabinet/luggage/bag maker Pinel & Pinel has added an Arcade 80s Trunk on wheels to its collection, each custom machine packed with around 60 classic titles like Pac-Man, Space Invaders, and 1942. It comes in two editions, two: a normal cabinet and a GT version with painted stripes.

Pinel & Pinel haven't listed an online price for the machines, but judging from its construction, it's quite expensive. Each one feature a chrome-plated control panel, an LCD 1080P screen, and a composite fabrics frame dressed in glue and stitched leather (custom calfskin 51 colors, crocodile and shagreen skins available on request).

It even features a "very high definition sound system" and an iPod/iPhone station! Thanks to the wheels, you can push this thing around your house as a portable stereo! You can check out more photos of the Arcade 80s Trunk at Pinel & Pinel's site.

[Via Rampaged Reality]

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

Following up their successful Game Night launch last month with Gaijin Games (Bit.Trip series), indie/gaming culture shop Attract Mode and Giant Robot Los Angeles are hosting a second party themed around Bryan Lee O'Malley's comic book/film/video game Scott Pilgrim.

O'Malley will appear at the August 21st event and will sign copies of Scott Pilgrim Vol. 6 around 5-7 PM. Afterward, he'll play Ubisoft Montreal's four-player brawler Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game with attendees (the game should be out for PSN by August 10, and will release on XBLA sometime after then).

Why can't all cities -- like the boring one I'm currently inhabiting, Cincinnati -- have Game Night events like this?!

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

['Homer in Silicon' is a biweekly GameSetWatch-exclusive column by Emily Short. It looks at storytelling and narrative in games of all flavors, including the casual, indie, and obscurely hobbyist. This week she looks at Nevosoft's PC casual title Farmcraft 2: Global Vegetable Crisis.]

Most time management/tycoon games work on the assumption the plucky entrepreneur was born for business. Flo and all her spiritual successors are just more patient, more thorough, and better at running off their feet than all the competition, and that is, of course, what matters. A strong work ethic leads simply and inevitably to business growth and material well-being.

Farmcraft 2: Global Vegetable Crisis goes a different way with this. From the beginning, its level design is less mechanical and more thoughtful: less about grinding and more about playing through a complex sequence of situations. The protagonist, Ginger, still isn't heavily characterized beyond her courage and willingness to work hard, but she's given a little more scope for development, with cartoon cut scenes framing every level.

Gamezebo comes down hard on the game for its inconsistent level design. Their reviewer is right, in the sense that Farmcraft 2's levels are not (and are not intended to be) of equal lengths.

This is a little annoying if you're trying to play the game during lunch breaks at work (as I was), because you never know whether the level you're about to start is going to take five minutes or ninety. I was willing to forgive, though, because this variety is in the cause of storytelling richness. (Warning: from here on, there are some spoilers.)

There's one especially effective passage late in the game, which is much like a regular level, but colored entirely sepia, representing a dream about Ginger's adolescence. Normal gameplay rules, by this time ingrained in the player's muscle memory by many hours of exercise, are suspended. Irrigating plants doesn't work, because the ground dries again instantly. Watering pots speak. Tomato seeds bring up weeds.

Elsewhere, even the ordinary mechanics of farming, hiring laborers, and setting up factories are rendered narratively more effective through changes of goal. More than once, some story event in the middle of a level wipes out an asset or requires Ginger to make a new plan of attack. Occasionally these interludes are frustrating, but for the most part I liked the effect: no two levels of Farmcraft 2 are alike.

The designers also had the kindness to give the player a real gameplay victory lap. The final farming level of the game is the most difficult but also vastly the most satisfying: instead of starting out with a farm partly preconfigured and already in progress, the player has a huge empty space to build up from nothing. It's a chance for the player to demonstrate mastery of all the different tools and techniques that have been taught up to that point, in the most sandboxy environment so far. But there is also a touch of bittersweetness about the process, because we know from the beginning of the level that this is Ginger's last stand: she is building up this farm to pass on to her successor.

Not all of the levels are even about farming: some of the shorter ones are more concerned with puzzles and exploration.

The most common mechanic other than farming and farm management has to do with lighting. Light and darkness are a recurring feature in the game: some levels include day/night cycles in which Ginger has to install generators and lighting in order to be able to see her own crops (and her hired workers won't harvest or tend any plants they can't see). In others, she has to sneak through the dark patches of a competitor's farm in order to collect secrets; find objects that are lost in large dark spaces; or meet up with conspirators who are hiding away.

Thematically, this works extremely well. Ginger's story is part mystery, part success story: some of the time she's working diligently against difficult odds to bolster the people who depend on her, and the rest of the time she's trying to figure out what is going on in the world's agricultural markets.

In the end, that means rejecting the lifestyle and game structure that has brought us this far. The bad guys sort of win -- that is, they get rich at the expense of others, and they also save the world from disaster (one which they engineered in the first place). Ginger gives up farming and joins a monastery in Tibet, where she spends the rest of her life looking for inner truth. This is the happy ending.

The search for better ways to grow carrots (which has been occupying us for most of the game, really) is recognized as meaningless or, at worst, actively damaging. The urge towards relentless business expansion has driven down prices to unsustainable levels and brought the world agriculture market to the verge of collapse.

This final transition away from farming and the whole capitalist rat race is framed in terms of the desire for enlightenment and discovery... with a side of mind-altering chemicals, as Ginger has to collect 12 mushrooms in order to gain insight into her life. When she overcomes the darkness, she understands what her life is truly about, and the path she's destined to follow.

From a narrative point of view, it's the light gameplay that wins out over the tycoon and management gameplay.

It's unfortunate, then, that I kind of hated the light-based levels. I've disliked light components in time management games ever since I ran into them in Diner Dash: Flo on the Go, where Flo is serving food on a cruise ship (or something like that) and the lights go out. The player is left sweeping the mouse cursor across the screen, aiming the "flashlight" and trying desperately to figure out where to click next. It's a miserable mechanic that completely disrupts the zen-like flow that time management games produce when they're working at their best.

They're still annoying in Farmcraft 2. Granted, not all of the light puzzles involve sweeping the flashlight across the screen while trying to meet urgent deadlines. Some of them instead involve sweeping the flashlight across the screen while trying to identify small objects that might be anywhere in a vast sea of black. A few involve figuring out where to place lamps for optimum effectiveness on your farm. Those last ones, I'm sort of willing to forgive. The others, however, are more irritation than game. They reward patience and thoroughness rather than planning and invention.

And that stacks up so badly against the farming levels, because the farming levels are by and large extremely good.

As the Gamezebo review notes, it's occasionally possible to get into a situation where you can just sit back and let your workers farm for you, if you've done well enough. But I could usually still find some useful things to do even when my farm was doing well; and up to that point, there were a variety of interesting choices to be made about layout, crop selection, choice of workers, and building upgrades.

So I respect Farmcraft 2 for being a little more sophisticated about the capitalist/work-hard-get-rich ideology presented so unproblematically in most of its genre. I liked the gameplay. I found the pacing occasionally a bit awkward, but for the most part, I liked the variety in the levels more than I disliked not knowing how long the next level was going to play. I think the light puzzles were probably a good choice for the themes they were introducing -- about looking more carefully at situations, about understanding the consequences of one's actions more completely.

All the same, I felt unsatisfied with where it all went. I was told, rather than convinced by the gameplay, that Ginger's farming practices were contributing to an unhealthy outcome for the world at large. I was also told, and not convinced by the gameplay, that a search for enlightenment was more satisfying to Ginger than further farming work ever could be.

Honestly, she didn't seem like the sort for a contemplative life, and I wasn't crazy about crawling back and forth through darkened fields looking for the Mystical Mushrooms of Enlightenment.

If it were left up to me, Ginger would still be picking carrots. I bet she could go organic.

(Disclosure: I played a copy of this work that I purchased at full price. I have had no commercial affiliations with the publisher at the time of writing.)

[Emily Short is an interactive fiction author and part of the team behind Inform 7, a language for IF creation. She also maintains a blog on interactive fiction and related topics. She also contracts for story and design work with game developers from time to time, and will disclose conflicts with story subjects if any exist. She can be reached at emshort AT mindspring DOT com.]

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

Continuing where "Pixels" -- Patrick Jean's impressive video that saw retro games invading Manhattan -- left off, skate and snow film production company Knife Show has uploaded "Gnarcade", which has retro games (and Portal) invading High Cascade and Hood.

The four-minute video was directed by Mike Benson (who also helps produce video segments for G4TV's X-Play) and features talented snowboarders/skaters like Scott Stevens, Micah Hollinger, Chris Beresford, Tim Eddy, Ben Bogart, and Casey Wrightsman.

Along with its sprites from Super Mario Bros., Frogger, Pac-Man, and Space Invaders, which have been brought to life to serve as obstacles for skaters and snowboarders, the video has a great hip-hop soundtrack from Philadelphia group Ground Up Sounds.

[Via Wired]

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

If you're a fan of indie game designer Kenta Cho and his shoot'em ups, run out (or pick up your iPhone) and grab rRootage Online from the App Store, a new, improved and free adaptation of 2003 PC shmup rRootage, ported by Miko Wohlgemuth.

Developer Lazrhog put out his own iPhone port of rRootage in October 2008, but Wohlgemuth's version adds online leaderboards, music, sound effects, full iOS4 compatibility, and more. Lazrhog liked this new version so much, he actually took down his port from the App Store!

rRootage Online also features four gameplay modes, three of which are inspired by shoot'em up classics like Psyvariar, Giga Wing, and Ikaruga -- you can read more details about those after the break.

Normal mode

• This is the standard game mode.
• Your ship becomes slow while holding the laser key.
• Special -> Bomb - The bomb wipes enemies' bullets. The number of bombs are displayed at the right-down corner.

PSY mode

• As your ship grazes a bullet, the graze meter(displayed at the right-down corner) increases.
• When the graze meter becomes full, the ship becomes invincible for a while.
• Special -> Rolling - This movement widen the range that the ship can graze. While holding this key, the ship becomes slow.
• If you want to move faster, tap this key.

IKA mode

• Your ship has two attributes, white and black.
• All bullets also have these attributes, and your ship can absorb bullets that has the same attribute.
• Absorbed bullets are changed into lasers automatically.
• Special -> Attribution change - Change your ship's attribute.

GW mode

• Your ship can use the reflector.
• The reflector reflects bullets around your ship.
• Special -> Reflector - To use the reflector, you have to hold this key until the reflector meter(displayed at the right-down corner) becomes empty. You can use the reflector only if the reflector meter displays 'OK'.

[Via FingerGaming]

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

[With the 25th anniversary of Game Developers Conference just a few months away, my colleagues just opened submissions and announced some neat new board members -- including good indie/social additions -- for next Feb/March's show in San Francisco.]

Game Developers Conference organizers have announced the opening of the call for submissions for the show, to be held in San Francisco on February 28th to March 4th 2011. The call for submissions to present lectures, roundtables and panel sessions for the 2011 Game GDC -- the historic 25th anniversary show -- is now open through Wednesday, August 25th.

The main GDC advisory board is looking for submissions in the following game-related areas/tracks: Audio, Business and Management, Game Design, Production, Programming and Visual Arts, to be showcased on the prestigious Wednesday to Friday main conference of Game Developers Conference 2011. (Submissions for the GDC Summits will open later in the year.)

A talk abstract is required alongside a more detailed description and speaker information, and the GDC Call For Papers page has multiple annotated examples of previous submissions, giving detailed, precise instructions on speaker criteria and the selection process.

Alongside this year's call for submissions, the GDC 2011 advisory board has been expanded, adding several leading industry figures in the social and independent gaming spaces.

In particular, new board members include Media Molecule studio director Siobhan Reddy (LittleBigPlanet 2), EA2D designer/programmer Soren Johnson (Civilization IV, Spore), independent developer Adam Saltsman (Canabalt, Flixel), and Playfish San Francisco GM Dan Fiden. Also added for their art and audio expertise respectively are Undead Labs' Steve Theodore and Microsoft's Scott Selfon.

These new members join industry veterans such as Julien Merceron (Square Enix), Mark Cerny (Cerny Games), Rob Pardo (Blizzard Entertainment), Chris Hecker (Spy Party), Chris Butcher (Bungie), Mike Capps (Epic), Laura Fryer (Warner Bros.), Lou Castle (InstantAction), Clint Hocking, and Dave Perry (Gaikai) on the active advisory board. The Board as a whole consists of leading industry notables who rate and discuss every submitted lecture for the show, and participate in multiple in-person meetings regarding the content.

"We pride ourselves on providing best practices for game developers of all genres and GDC 2011 will continue this tradition as the gaming space grows and adapts to the evolving market," said Meggan Scavio, director, Game Developers Conference.

"We’re excited to welcome our newest advisory board members and expect them to bring a healthy balance of their past experiences along with a fresh approach to the conference program. The forward-facing content, inspired sessions, and especially the insightful advisory board are what has kept the event thriving for 25 years, and will sustain it for the next 25."

Organized by the UBM TechWeb Game Network, which also runs this website, GDC 2011 marks the quarter-century anniversary of the game industry’s most comprehensive professionals-only event -- where game developers converge for a week of learning, networking and inspiration.

As well as its flagship San Francisco event, the GDC series of conferences also now include GDC Europe (August 16th-18th, Cologne), GDC Online (October 5th-8th, Austin), and GDC China (December 5th-7th, Shanghai) in the remainder of 2010.

For more information on the call for papers for GDC 2011 in San Francisco, please visit the official GDC website.

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

[Now that Blizzard has retracted its controversial Real ID forum policy, our own Kris Graft speaks with experts to examine why gamers were so willing to vociferously defend anonymity -- and it wasn't just trolls doing the shouting.]

Anonymity can be a great form of protection. It's the reason why things like voice modulators, ski-masks and internet aliases exist (okay, maybe not the sole reason). All of these things can let you act with less inhibition. They allow you to do things that maybe you wouldn't do if people knew your real identity.

World of Warcraft and StarCraft 2 creator Blizzard Entertainment caused a bit of a gamer meltdown last Tuesday when it said it would be taking away some of that anonymity from its forum users with the implementation of Real ID, which would require posters to use their real-life names on Blizzard message boards -- no aliases allowed.

Responses from Blizzard forum posters ranged from "this is a HORRIBLE IDEA BLIZZARD!" and "We shouldn't have to fear that we will attract stalkers," to "I love it. I have no problem with people knowing who I am based on my posts."

And after tens of thousands of replies to the measure -- the vast majority of which were opposed to the decision -- Blizzard three days later jettisoned the policy almost as abruptly as it announced it, snuffing out the experiment before it even started.

Now we'll never know if "removing the veil of anonymity" -- as Blizzard put it -- would create a "more positive forum environment" on the company’s extensive forum network. But instead we can examine why there was such furor over the proposal in the first place. In many ways, even though Blizzard's experiment never got off the ground, it revealed certain core online gamer values.

"I think the U-turn is a fascinating development. It is a political event, really, the equivalent of a government policy being overturned because of public outcry," said Edward Castronova, associate professor in the department of telecommunications at Indiana University.

Castronova, who also authored the book Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games, said he was "surprised" by Blizzard’s retraction. "It is also surprising that anonymity has been so vociferously defended. Perhaps there is some strength to the view that fantasy lives are important for many people, even those who don't consider themselves roleplayers and fantasists."

Blizzard’s real name requirement was only going to apply to forum names -- in-game, players wouldn’t have to identify themselves if they didn’t want to. But to Castronova, who considers himself a "deeply immersed roleplayer," even being required to use his real name on an MMO's forums could shatter the overall role-playing experience.

"What I think [happened] here is when people go on forums, it's kind of a sub-game of World of Warcraft," he explained. "It's like a community that's somewhat tied to your in-game play; it's a place that's been part of the gameplay."

He added, "Any time you redefine boundaries after people are already invested in a certain way of doing things, that's going to be problematic."

"People Weird Out When They Find Out Who I Am"

A Real ID policy could put dedicated players MMORPG players on the outside of the role-playing community by their own choice. "I'm actually playing Lord of the Rings Online now, and if [real forum names were required] with LOTRO, I just wouldn't post on the forums. I'm a person who really likes to be in the game without people knowing who I am," he said.

In other words, such a policy might root out trolls and spammers, but also legitimate users, some of whom expressed that Blizzard was punishing good users along with the bad. The fact is, many of the complaints weren't rooted in some sense of entitlement, but valid concerns.

"People [online] weird out when they find out who I am, because there's this chance that they might know me from my writings and everything. Then I don't feel as free to goof around and to enjoy the game like a little kid," Castronova said.

Richard Harris, professor of psychology at Kansas State University added, "I suspect this reaction [to Real ID] … reflects that the anonymity can make some timid people 'braver,' willing to act in their fantasy life in ways they never would choose to -- or have nerve to -- in real life, hiding behind their avatar, so to speak. They experience this as empowering and feel threatened if someone tries to take that power away.”

At the root of many of the complaints about Real ID’s forum implementation was the issue of privacy, in terms of personal preference and even from a legal standpoint.

I Came From Azeroth To Punch You In The Face

Real ID wasn't going to expose social security numbers, credit card information or even email addresses to the internet or other Real ID users, and Blizzard has a privacy policy that says "access to all personal information is strictly controlled."

But what some users expressed concern about was that unsavory and exploitative webgoers could use Real ID names as a starting point to find out more information about Blizzard forum posters, such as their places of business or home addresses. This group wasn’t worried about losing the sense of role-playing and immersion, but about issues that could carry over from Azeroth to the real world.

It's not illegal to Google someone's name, or to look them up in an online phone directory or address book. What can be illegal is what people do with that information. If an angry player who got his ass handed to him in StarCraft II took revenge by showing up at an online rival's front door and punched him in the face, that's assault -- but that seems well out of Blizzard's jurisdiction.

"Blizzard does of course have a privacy policy in place and has emphasized the need to protect customers' personal information," said Jas Purewal, a London-based lawyer and writer of games law blog Gamer/Law. "Ultimately, the legal position will depend on the laws of each country, some of which have stricter legal regimes than others. It's also worth bearing in mind in that regard that online privacy matters have come increasingly under the spotlight recently, particularly in Europe."

Griefing 12-Year-Olds

Just prior to Blizzard’s retraction of the policy, the studio's public relations manager Bob Colayco said, "Real ID is a new and different concept for Blizzard gamers -- and for us as well -- and our goal is to create a social-gaming service that players want to use.”

The intentions were good -- to foster a more friendly forum environment. Maybe Blizzard looked at the millions of connected FarmVille players who don't seem to mind that the game is connected directly to their real-life names on Facebook -- transparency seems to work there, so why not try something similar with the world’s top MMORPG?

While he wasn't completely in support of the Real ID forum policy, Castronova thought that it could have made World of Warcraft "a bit more like Facebook and a bit less like LambdaMOO." He added, "People who are not anonymous behave better. I have known grownups who would joyfully grief a 12-year-old online but would never pick on a 12-year-old at the mall. Anonymity explains a lot of it."

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

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

This past week we've had a good amount of releases on console digital formats -- for starters, it looks like both Monkey Island 2 and Blacklight: Tango Down have been roaring successes.

We've also seen some good news -- the possibility of NBA Jam coming to other consoles, as well as a new Dead Space downloadable game. Here's a lot of the notable news, plus the store updates made over the previous seven days.

Store Updates

XBLA Update - Blacklight: Tango Down, Monkey Island 2, Game Room and Worms 2 DLC
NA PSN Store Update - Monkey Island 2, Family Feud, 5-in-1 Arcade Hits And More
EU PSN Store Update - Monkey Island 2, Groovin’ Blocks And more
NA Nintendo Update - Soul Of Darkness, SteamWorld Tower Defense, Pearl Harbor Trilogy And More
EU Nintendo Update - Toribash, SteamWorld: Tower Defense, Shadow of the Ninja And More

Top Stories

Xbox Indies - Crossfire (Radian Games) (XBLIG)
"Radian Games surprised a couple of months ago with their Xbox Live Indie game Joy Joy, now they've one-upped themselves with their next sweet retro action title Crossfire."

NBA Jam Coming To Xbox 360 And PS3 (XBLA / PSN)
"The German USK rating system has revealed that NBA Jam is coming to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 [likely in digital download form], courtesy of EA."

Plain Sight Coming To PSN (PSN)
"Back in September 2008 we had a chat with Beatnik Games about Plain Sight [which was] being developed with XNA and Xbox Live Arcade in mind. Now a year and a half later and with the PC version released on Steam, Beatnik haven't lost sight of a console release -- but now it's coming to the PS3."

Free Ilomilo Music, Trailer (XBLA)
"Indie developer Southend Interactive has posted five playful songs from the soundtrack of Ilomilo, its forthcoming XBLA 3D puzzle-platformer."

Dead Space Puzzler To XBLA, PSN (XBLA / PSN)
"Dead Space Ignition is coming this fall to XBLA and PSN. The game will contain 3 hacking mini-games; Hardware Crack, Trace Route and System Override, all strung together with an interactive comic book storyline with the ability to "choose-your-own-adventure" throughout the game."

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

Even if Man Enough didn't look like a fun game, we would probably have to feature it here anyway on the strength of its catchy soundtrack alone. Swedish developers Daniel Remar (Iji, Hero Core) and Erik Sjöstrand created this crazy experience as part of last weekend's No More Sweden game jam.

In Man Enough, you're tasked with playing four minigames at the same time -- Space Face, shoot'em up; Bromancing Saga, a dating sim with a surprise ending when you answer the questions correctly; High Horses, a platformer in which a horse collects coins while avoiding saws; and Super Shirtless Platform Idiot Hunt For Golden Petri.

You control all of the games simultaneously with the spacebar and left/right arrows, each button performing a different action in the different games ("use the spacebar to fire and talk"). You can download Man Enough and other No More Sweden games at the game jam's official site.

[Via IndieGames.com]

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

Blip Festival Europe, which held its inaugural event last year, will return to art and technology venue Platform4 in Aalborg, Denmark this year, except this time, the two-day chip music event is going under the name Blip Festival Scandinavia! Also, it doesn't kick off until September 17 -- compared to late July last year.

Manhattan arts organization The Tank and chiptune collective 8bitpeople, which organize all the domestic and international BlipFests, haven't announced the lineup or much other details for the Scandinavian show, but it's sure to feature a range of artists from around the world just like previous incarnations.

Blip Festival is still slated to make its debut in Tokyo this September 4-5 with artists like Hip Tanaka, YMCK, Starpause, Nullsleep, Portalenz, and many others. You can learn more about that event here. Presumably, the flagship Blip Festival show in New York City will return this December, too.

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

Combo video specialist Maj premiered two new productions at Evo 2010 last weekend, one of which was this Super Fireball Battle video, a collection of creative ranged attacks from dozens of fighting games, from Street Fighter IV to Tekken 3. I love that Kim vs. Terry bit at 01:04!

He also debuted "Style Exhibition V.One", which features seven minutes of clips of extended combos -- some knocking away a full life bar. You can watch that video, which includes an awesome Dungeons & Dragons comb (around the 5:50 mark), after the break.

Maj notes that while these are tool-assisted gameplay exhibition, no cheats, hacks, or game-altering devices were used for the sequences. You can watch the second video after the break!

[Via Capcom Unity]

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

['The Magic Resolution' is a regular GameSetWatch column by UK-based writer Lewis Denby, examining all facets of the experience of playing video games. This time: sequels, the problem so many of them face, and a game to keep the idea of brilliant follow-ups alive.]

Do you know what was a dismally unexciting game for me? I do. It was BioShock 2. BioShock, for all its quirks, was for me the greatest first-person shooter of the last decade (and I’m not including RPGs with shooty bits in that category, since Deus Ex was clearly better). Its sequel? I keep having to remind myself there even was one.

Yet in a great many ways, if you want to be all silly and “objective” about it, BioShock 2 was the better game of the pair. Its world was crafted with just as much meticulous detail as its predecessor, the script and voice work were equally wonderful, it didn’t get confused and start narratively flailing two-thirds of the way through, and the combat was most certainly tighter. In contrast with the games’ fiction, if BioShock was the prototype Big Daddy, BioShock 2 was the real metal deal.

But - and go on, be honest here - it was basically rubbish, wasn’t it?

This happens. It happened with F.E.A.R. 2 fairly recently as well. In that game’s case, its being technically better than its predecessor is perhaps debatable: not much had changed, except that in the second game it’s harder to trigger a flying kick to the enemies’ unmentionables. But it definitely wasn’t horrifically worse than Monolith’s then-spectacular 2005 shooter - and a few years isn’t enough for a game to date that badly.

No: the cause of these symptoms is, of course, Sequel Syndrome.

I have no interest in sequels. In fact, on some occasions, it makes me genuinely upset that one is being made. This isn’t because of some ludicrous sense of entitlement to originality; nor is it anything to do with a misguided notion that the first in a series is always the best. It is, instead, based on hard, empirical evidence (I did a survey of one person, who just happened to be myself), and the results are clear: sequels may be more refined, but they are almost exclusively less interesting.

Expect the Expected

And it’s obvious when you think about it. When we first took shelter in that curious lighthouse in the middle of the ocean, swimming past the fiery wreckage of the plane and clambering up those slippery steps, it wasn’t just Jack who was discovering a world for the first time: we too were entering Rapture with minimal expectations, and little understanding of the world we were about to enter. Video games provide us with a chance to explore the unknown. Setting your sequel in the same place as the original game destroys this opportunity in one swift smack.

But what about games that don’t? I still vastly prefer Half-Life to Half-Life 2, and that was about as big a setting change as you could imagine. The Call of Duty franchise has flown all over the place, yet got progressively more tedious as time’s gone on, and as for Quake... well, that Gothic underworld might have been decidedly brown, but it shone more brightly than Stroggos ever will.

Is this because the original settings were simply better than what they morphed into? I’m not so sure. Few would argue that City 17 was not a marvellous creation, for example. And id Software did things with its crushingly competent Quake 4 that the first game’s level designers simply could not have done with the original id Tech.

Either way, last week something strange happened. I’m still not sure how I feel about it - a straight-up mix of childlike giddiness and gut-wrenching shame, I think. Last week, I saw a load of Portal 2 footage, and quickly realised I had never been so tremendously excited about a game before - let alone a sequel.

So what on Earth is going on?

Here’s what I think.

Doors Wide Open

Portal was wonderful. Exquisite. One of my favourite games in recent memory. It took a basic idea and crafted around it a game that, while only two or three hours long, felt fuller than almost anything else that springs to mind.

But, crucially, it also left a whole amount of room for improvement. Here was a game that was so fresh, so extraordinary, so exciting and so new, that a whole billion ideas must have ballooned up in the Valve hivemind. “This is beyond wonderful,” I imagine them internally boasting. “...but what if...?”

Portal 2 is looking so exceptional not just because it does smart things with the stupidly beautiful environment, cleverly subverting the cold clinicalism of the original; and not just because it’s introducing new mechanics that sit tightly within the format; and not even just because it’s shaping up to be a longer game.

It’s looking remarkable because of all of these things, and how they combine to present something which is aiming for bigger and better in a very real sense, as opposed to the “bigger and better” sequel mentality that usually, if PR were to take a dab of truth serum, would equate to “better graphics and more guns.”

And really, of course it would be Valve to make a sequel like this (Left 4 Dead 2? Never heard of it.) I mentioned earlier that I prefer the original Half-Life to its follow-up, but while that’s true, it wasn’t really a fair one to mention. Half-Life 2 - though somewhat overrated to my mind, and certainly feeling more dated than the first game - absolutely exemplifies what I wish, truly wish, all sequels would aspire to be.

BioShock 2 was inexcusable. 2K created in BioShock an astonishing, constantly surprising, breathtakingly vivid and genuinely affecting video game. What followed was more of the same, but better: and that’s about as far away from the BioShock aesthetic as it’s possible to get.

[Lewis Denby is the Executive Editor of BeefJack.com and general freelance busybody for anyone that'll have him. If he ever has a child, he's going to call him Lewis Denby 2: The Awakening.]

Posted by Lewis Denby at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

As if those Pac-Man Zippos weren't a compelling enough reason for gamers to take up smoking, Tengen actually produced cigarettes featuring a recognizable, block-stacking video game brand, Klax (more photos after the break!).

According to Incredibly Strange Games and Klax designer Dave Akers, Tengen gave out these re-branded packs of Mild Sevens at a Japanese arcade show. It even features an anti-drug message on its side, right where you'd typically see a health warning from the U.S. surgeon general: "Klaxers don't need drugs."

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

If you're in need of a creative puzzler with hand-drawn art and original music for your iPhone/iPod Touch, look to Helsing's Fire, the latest from Ratloop, the indie team behind 2009 and 2010 Independent Games Festival awards finalists Mightier and Rocketbirds : Revolution!

In Helsing's Fire, you use your touchscreen to guide and place a torch to destroy Dracula's monsters in 90 levels with randomly generated puzzles scattered across three different worlds. The game features 13 monster types with their own individual logic, three bosses, a survival mode in addition to the story campaign, achievements, and more.

You can buy and download Helsing's Fire now for $0.99 at the App Store.

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

[Former IGDA steward and Perimeter Partners founder Jason Della Rocca talks to Mathew Kumar on the perhaps under-discussed -- and intriguing -- area of game developer tax breaks, questioning "whale hunting" over-investment and pointing to the issue's deceptive complexity.]

Well-known within the industry from his stewardship of the International Game Developers Association, Jason Della Rocca has since been working closely with governments and industry bodies in his position as the founder of Perimeter Partners, a consultancy focused on developing game industry clusters around the world.

We recently caught up with Della Rocca to talk about his opinions on the direction international governments are taking towards growing their games industries, the Canadian industry and emerging markets.

Della Rocca questions, in particular, governments attraction to going "whale hunting" noting that in Toronto, "No disrespect to Ubisoft … but [if I were in government] I wouldn't necessarily have invested in them so heavily."

Do you think tax breaks are as valuable as most governments seem to think?

If you already have an established industry, you want to do something that's more about sustaining it. In that case a tax break may be the most suitable thing. One of the challenges of a tax break is that it comes "post spend." Developers have to make the game, spend all their money, and at the end of the year when they file their taxes they get a relief.

That doesn't help if you don't have an industry and you're trying to get start-up companies to come together. If you and I decided to make a game the fact we could get a tax break in a year isn't going to help us.

There, what you want to do is have an incubator model or a prototype fund model, where you're actually giving a grant or preferred loan so companies can get going. But then, that's a riskier proposition; now you're making investment decisions as opposed to saying "you spend all your money, do all your stuff, we'll help you at the back-end."

But, you know, it depends on what your goals are and what kind of region you're operating in.

Why do you think governments get so fixated on offering tax breaks?

It's hard to say. It's certainly more attractive to go "whale hunting." If you score a whale, oh my goodness, you've got it made; the press release is going to be wonderful. But many regions will struggle year after year just trying to get a meeting with EA or whoever, and it goes nowhere.

Instead of spending five years chasing the whale, during those five years they could have been building an incubator, setting up prototype funds, working with the schools. They could have been doing real stuff in the span of five years, and assuming they weren't idiots, that would have produced results, even just in terms of attracting bigger companies to the region.

I have noticed that there are many American states announcing tax breaks for game developers, but nothing else.

People kind of oversimplify; they say, "Oh, Canada! Canada has so much success, why? Oh, because of tax breaks!" so they create a tax break and think their job is done. They don't take the time to understand that maybe yes, Canada has tax breaks, but it also has Telefilm, which does pre-production funding, it has schools with links between training and academia, R&D credits… there's all this other stuff, plus there's an overall critical mass of the existing companies that draws others in; there's all these other ingredients in the ecosystem.

You can't reduce any massively complex system down to one part of it. It's like saying the earth's ecosystem works because there's rain…. In many of those U.S. states that have tax breaks there has really not been any progress at all.

Do you think Canada's in a good place?

Yeah, kind of in a good place. I mean, it was recently announced it was third in terms of production. But it's definitely at risk that perhaps as a region we're overly emphasized on the console and old school retail model.

We're maybe not doing enough as a country to make sure that we're diverse enough to be able to adapt, so that when that crossover does occur, you know, we saw it coming, and we've got enough folks creating content and working iPhone, Facebook and other social networks. I look at Montreal; to me, Montreal is over-weighted in the console triple-A space. They're having success there, but if tomorrow the meteor drops, all those dinosaurs are going to die.

Well, I don't mean to call them dinosaurs; they're doing awesomely creative work, but these are the things that if you don't pay attention to them, there's a shift and all of a sudden, "Damn, where did it all go?" The problem is that the government buys into it. The nature of Quebec is to overly focus on "how do we get THQ to set up, Warner Bros, how do we keep Ubisoft and EA?" If the ecosystem shifts, and the whales are not as relevant as they were, then…

It's interesting because even within Canada there's so much competition between the provinces, with communities of smaller companies in places like Prince Edward Island.

Yeah. I like the indie thing that Ontario, Toronto put together. If I was the Ontario government, I would be doing a lot more to foster that. No disrespect to Ubisoft, I'm sure they're going to come here and do wonderful things, but I wouldn't necessarily have invested in them so heavily. I imagine someone in the government was probably compelled to score a whale. They just worked their butts off to get Ubisoft in town.

And that'll probably be fine, because Ubisoft is a good company. But if it were me, I would have set up an incubator with that money. I would have done stuff to more seed indie development; set up a program to provide a business mentorship to all the indies and start-ups, and really leverage that reputation Toronto has for being more this arty, indie hotbed.

But isn't a straight up promise of 800 jobs in ten years a much easier sell within government?

The issue is there's no understanding that you could instead end up with that 800 across a hundred companies making hundreds of products. But to some extent, betting on Ubisoft is a sure bet. It's a less risky move. I'm saying "let's take a risk, set up incubators where we grow indie talent and leverage some of the emerging market, and over time this might create a vibrant ecosystem of indie studios collaborating."

That might make a similar amount of jobs in a similar time span, but there's no way to validate that; there's no way to make that seem less risky. Yet it's all taking bets; it's a numbers game. What I think correlates most highly with success is quantity, when betting quantity equals quality. So what you want to do is make as many bets as possible. So how do you set up a system which will allow you to place as many bets as possible? Well, putting all your money behind a big company in the end might be a good move, there's not a lot of risk but it's only one bet.

How do I create a system where I am happy to place a hundred bets, knowing that by default nine out of ten bets are going to fail, but can accept those fails so I can find the ones that succeed? Especially knowing that ahead of time I could have no idea which 10 of the hundred are going to succeed.

No one in government is ever going to give you $200 million for an incubator where 90 percent of what you create is going to bomb. I mean, I'm just guessing because of the way numbers work that 10 percent or so is going to be a success, but there could be a real margin there with the successes. Maybe not the next Facebook, but the next "something" that's going to be explosive. You can only get that if you place all those bets.

Do you think the "big bets" like Ubisoft or EA might ever be at risk of leaving Canada?

You could definitely see that happen; we're seeing it happen in other countries. When you have these big shops like EA in Vancouver and Ubisoft in Montreal, you don't know if it's going to be so compelling for them to ship the labor elsewhere.

But this is really why you want to have that vibrant ecosystem, because if Ubisoft or EA start to shrink rather than grow, then you have enough different kind of companies in different markets doing different types of games that people have the ability to shift within the ecosystem. But if you only have one big company, and it goes down… then what happens?

Well, you're from Montreal, and I can only think of one small indie there, and that's Polytron. There's A2M, but they're four-hundred strong or so.

Well, there's Trap Door, they're working on games for iPhone, and are about 20 guys or so.
But it's not like Phil Fish (Polytron) is going to hire 500 ex-Ubisoft guys if they were immediately let go. It's about how we foster more of the indie shops that can grow to a few dozen and offer more ability to shift between those studios.

It's a perspective thing, and people just don't want to be bothered with it, because it looks like just peanuts. It's like venture capitalists. VCs only want to do big deals because it costs them the same in overhead to do a small deal as a big deal, so might as well wait for the big deal.

But those little deals add up, and you don't know which "little deal" is going to blow up into the next Google or whatever.

Are the emerging markets more open to these ideas?

Yes and no. In the real emerging markets, they have no incumbent industry, and as they're literally starting from a clean plate you try to get them to understand chasing big companies is not going to service their market. So to some extent you do have an easier time trying to get them to jump ahead and look at Facebook, look at the App Store, on-line casual as a starting point, as they really have no other choice.

But it's still tough for them, they would still love a triple-A shop in their neck of the woods.

Isn't also hard for them to create content that could cross cultural barriers?

Some of the work I've done with the emerging markets is to teach them they first have to learn how to be successful in their own borders. For example, in South America some of the countries are like "Well, we've got no market within our borders."

But there are these cultural sensibilities that make it difficult for them to export, plus the fact they're trying to compete on a global scale. And they have their own country of millions of people they could serve. And the thing is you don't serve that market with Halo, you service it with something more culturally relevant to them. And then they ask "how do we deal with piracy?" and I think you look at the Korean model. Ten years ago it was 100 percent black market, but they innovated on the business side.

Once you succeed in your own market, well, you've built up your experience, built up your talent, resources, funding. You might be fine with that. But if you feel you've capped the market you can also start to look at exporting.

I don't have hard numbers to back this up, it's just a gut feeling I have; if you want to be successful, succeed in your own backyard before you start looking globally.

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

Sabarasa has released Primrose, the serene puzzler from art game designer and 2009 IGF Innovation award winner Jason Rohrer (Between, Sleep Is Death), for DSiWare today. Previously released for iPhone, Primrose is now available through the Nintendo DSi's download service for just 200 Points ($2).

The simple game features "no time limits, no levels, no arbitrary objectives, and no constraints". Sabarasa explains Primrose's concept:

Just place pairs of tiles on a game grid and attempt to corral groups of tiles with pieces of a different color. Surrounded tiles disappear and surrounding tiles change colors, allowing chain effects to trigger combos for massive points. You can play long matches and try to keep up with increasing levels of difficulty, or just go all out on a huge single-move combo for millions of points.

The Argentinian studio also plans to release a three-game collection of Rohrer's indie titles on DSiWare, titled Alt-Play: Jason Rohrer Anthology, which will include Passage, Gravitation, and Between.

Speaking of DS games designed by Rohrer, whatever happened to Diamond Trust of London, the board game-style strategy title that Majesco was slated to publish this Summer? You would think the company would have shown it off at E3...

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

Akira Yamaoka, formerly the sound director and producer of Konami's Silent Hill series before jumping to Grasshopper Manufacture last year, recently took some time to talk about his favorite songs that he didn't compose, giving fans some insight on the music that's influenced the composer's work.

He also had a special request in regards to one of his favorite tunes, Ennio Morricone's "Ecstasy Of Gold" (stream it with the embedded player above), from the soundtrack of Spaghetti Western film The Good, the Bad and the Ugly:

"Please play this song at my funeral. Seriously, please make sure this song is played. Ennio Morricone brings a very simple, yet deep and melodic orchestration into existence without wasting a single note. The stout melody line, combined with the strings’ line, creates a tenacious sound that always thrusts somewhere in my heart.

While there’s sorrow in the song, there’s also a certain resolve that offers the listener the strength to shake off that sadness. This makes it different from just a typical “tearjerker,” which is why I really enjoy it."

You can listen to Yamaoka's other four favorite songs and read his reasons for why he loves them so much at Nintendo Life.

[Via Nobuooo]

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

Japan's Daigo "The Beast" Umehara, winner of Evolution 2009's Street Fighter IV competition, is also the winner of this year's Super Street Fighter IV tournament at the Evo Championship series, besting Ricky Ortiz last night in an exciting match between his Ryu and Ortiz's Rufus -- you can watch a video of the match above.

Justin Wong, one of North America's finest Street Fighter players and Umehara's rival at Evo's grand finals last year, was nowhere to be seen in the final eight group after his Rufus received a surprise early knock-out from the competition by Taiwanese Adon player Gamerbee -- that exhilarating match is after the break.

Last night also saw the announcement of Evolution Japan, an upcoming collaboration event in Tokyo organized by the staff of Evolution and Japanese Street Fighter tournament GodsGarden, held on September 11 and 12 the weekend before the Tokyo Game Show and Super Battle Opera.

You can see the Top 8 results for all of the Evo 2010 featured games -- Super Street Fighter IV, Tekken 6, Super Street Fighter II HD Remix, Tatsunoko vs. Capcom, Marvel vs. Capcom 2, and Melty Blood -- after the break.

Super Street Fighter IV — Top 8
1. Daigo Umehara (Ryu)
2. EG.Ricky Ortiz (Rufus, Chun-Li)
3. Infiltration (Akuma)
4. Mike Ross (E. Honda)
5. Bruce “GamerBee” Hsiang (Adon)
5. Vance “Vangief” Wu (Zangief)
7. Henry Cen (E. Honda, Dhalsim)
7. Shizza (Chun-Li)

Tekken 6 — Top 8
1. Nin
2. Rip
3. Mr. Naps
4. Devil Jim
5. jfj
5. Tokido
7. Crow
7. GMMA Kor

Super Street FIghter II HD Remix — Top 8
1. Snake Eyes
2. DGV
3. Afrolegends
4. Daigo
5. Afro Cole
5. Tokido
7. Alex Valle
7. Ryry

Super SF4 Women’s Invitational — Top 4
1. AAA Kayane
2. Burnyourbra
3. Yellow Gal
4. Lina

Tatsunoko vs. Capcom — Top 8
1. EG Marn
2. KBeast
3. EG Justin Wong
4. Kurasa
5. Psychochronic
5. Royal Flush
7. skisonic
7. Keits

Marvel vs. Capcom 2 — Top 8
1. EG Justin Wong
2. EMP Santhrax
3. Clockw0rk
4. EMP Yipes
5. Neo
5. Crizzle
7. Chaos Nightwolf
7. Regency Rob

Melty Blood — Top 8
1. Yoichiro “Garu” Aruga
2. Stephen “Lord Knight” Barthelemy
3. Antonio “Kusanagi” Medrano
4. Byron “HF Blade” Barzabal
5. Brandon “Brandino” Lee
5. Yuji “Yat” Tanaka
7. James Xie
7. Eric “Numakie” Gutierrez

[Via Evo Championship Series]

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

Looking at the feature-length stories from 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.

Some of the neat things in here might include a piece on iPad vs. iPhone SKUs for games, the point and click adventure re-imagined, plus the regular NPD analysis, Eric-Jon Waugh on Castlevania III, and more GCG neatness ahoy.

Poing poing poing:

Going Inside The 3DS
"Griptonite Games studio head JC Connors discusses his experiences with the Nintendo 3DS hardware as one of the first external developers to work with it, and how the new handheld is best served from technological, design, and art perspectives."

Game Strategies: iPad vs. iPhone
"With the iPad newly-established as a gaming platform, should iPhone developers be creating 'universal' builds for the same price or making brand-new HD versions of their games? Developers such Semi Secret (Canabalt) and Firemint (Flight Control) weigh in."

State Of The Point-and-Click Art
"The graphical adventure genre has some life in it yet, and here experienced contemporary developer Andrew Goulding turns his experiences with PlayFirst's Avenue Flo and Emerald City Confidential, as well as his own Jolly Rover, into salient design rules."

NPD: Behind the Numbers, May 2010
"In his latest in-depth analysis of the NPD U.S. video game console retail charts for May 2010, Matt Matthews examines "the idea that the retail-focused game industry is not simply in a lull but truly contracting", using exclusive data to probe the state of tjhe market."

No Truth In Game Design: An Argument For Idolatry
"Writer Jason Johnson ruminates on the application of religious symbolism to game design -- and issues a call to understand the essential forms that underpin design, rather than the surface appearances that are much more easily discussed and replicated."

GCG: Good Games, Bad Design - Episode 1: What's at Stake
"In the first part of a new series, Eric-Jon Rössel Tairne analyzes a good game that doesn't quite hit the mark in terms of its overall design -- starting with the NES classic Castlevania III."

GCG: Five Common Mistakes In Choosing Masters Programs For Video Games
"In this analysis, David McClure looks at university Masters programs in general - and video game programs in particular - to look at what could go right or wrong in your choice of further education around games."

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

[Continuing a series of articles on Hideo Kojima's Metal Gear game franchise, following the release of Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, writer Zoran Iovanovici examines the third title in the rebooted franchise, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, looking at the acclaimed title's focus on deception and "the struggle to gain understanding in the sea of messages which may or may not be truth or reality".]

Having already explored some of the complex themes of the original Metal Gear Solid and its sequel Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, we now turn our attention to Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater.

Considered by many to be the highpoint of the series, Snake Eater is more playful in its delivery of political and historical criticism than its predecessors. What sets Snake Eater apart is that it’s set over thirty years prior to the events of the first two games, allowing for somewhat of a clean-slate approach to story, setting, and character.

With Snake Eater there seems to be just as much emphasis on how the story is told as there is on what is told in the story. This is achieved through the use of ‘hyperreality’ as a narrative technique – blending history and fiction in a way that makes it extremely difficult for the player to separate the two while playing the game. In fact, hyperreality is used so heavily and effectively in Snake Eater that the game is eventually able to pass off pure fantasy as genuine historical fact with remarkable consistency.

Series creator Hideo Kojima is known to inject real world politics, people, science, and technology into the MGS series and using real world crises and events is somewhat of a staple for Kojima, evidenced even by his earliest Metal Gear title released in 1987 for the MSX video game system which uses the oil crisis of the 1970’s as a backdrop. It is especially helpful that Snake Eater is set in the past, as it is unlikely that players experiencing the game were alive in 1964. It would not be presumptuous to conclude that a great majority of the game’s target audience are relatively unlearned about many of the minute historical details concerning the long period of the Cold War.

"Half of what I'd been told was a complete and utter lie... The other half was a conveniently constructed lie. Where's the truth then? It's hidden in the lies." (Eva)

While Snake Eater is set in the past, it is still very much a product of today. In current information societies where the game is marketed and sold, the majority of the population forms their conception of the world based on the flood of media images that approach and flood from nearly every angle. This is applicable whether the information is received through television, cinema, radio, the internet, or in this case, video games. The flow of media and information is sometimes so intense that fact and fiction sometimes become indistinguishable. This very phenomenon has been coined ‘hyperreality’ by postmodern theorist Jean Baudrillard in Simulacra and Simulations:

"In the postmodern world the boundary between simulation and reality implodes, and with this the very experience and ground of ‘the real’ disappears. It becomes the hyperreal."

Nowadays it’s quite common to see fiction (whether it be in the form of book, film, or video game) have the appearance of documentary reality as a style of storytelling, treating history and science on the same level as fantasy and science fiction within the same narrative. While it’s fully possible that many players will approach Snake Eater simply as a work of fiction, few can deny the historical facts that are presented in the game. Whether it is the Cuban missile crisis, the assassination of John F. Kennedy, or the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, players are constantly presented with historical data in the form of text, photos, and video footage.

Referencing so many real life events consequently allows Kojima to intermingle and pass off fictional information as genuine real-world fact. Fictional information in Snake Eater is presented by the characters with the same amount of conviction as historical fact and the two are often so interwoven that any effort in unraveling them becomes a considerable task. It is much easier and much more likely for gamers to accept the holistic experience of the game rather than deny the information contained therein.

It’s not at all surprising for players to have a difficult time discerning where reality ends and fantasy begins as the two merge seamlessly into each other. Early on in the game, for example, the protagonist Snake is likened to Alan Shepard when he becomes the first person to be deployed in an experimental military aircraft. Even if the name Alan Shepard does not hold immediate significance, anyone willing to perform a quick internet search will quickly understand why Snake is referenced to the first American to reach outer space.

Shortly afterward, when the fictional weapons development scientist Sokolov explains the ultimate mobile nuclear weapon Shagohod that threatens the world, the game makes reference to Emerson Heinrich, who supposedly wrote an essay concerning the development of such a weapon. With Sokolov and Emerson the likening is between two fictional figures, but the clever comparison, reminiscent of the one made moments earlier in the game between Snake (fictional character) and Shepard (historical figure), may easily lead some to simply assume that Emerson was a historical figure much like Alan Shepard.

Snake Eater features countless examples where the historical and fictional intermingle in a similar fashion. Hearing Major Zero mention Nikolai Sokolov’s missile development at the OKB-754 Design Bureau and Yuri Gagarin’s first manned space flight in the Vostok Rocket in the same breath highlights the use of hyperreality at its best by mixing people, events, and technology all in one indistinguishable package. The entire script of Snake Eater is littered with these comparisons, showcasing the consistency in which the thread of hyperreality is used throughout the game.

By the time the game introduces various military developments such as miniature nuclear shells can be launched from a portable device or vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft that individual soldiers can utilize to traverse over mountains, it is so late in the game experience that many players will likely have stopped questioning some of the game’s more fantastical representations. That it takes hours of historical and scientific research simply to discern which details in the game are historically accurate is perhaps the greatest proof of Kojima’s mastery of the postmodern narrative and the use of hyperreality.

In fact, this experiment in hyperreality can be experienced even before playing the game itself. The Snake Eater instruction book includes, along with directions on how to navigate and operate the game, a three page timeline spanning an era from 1939 to 1964. The timeline includes a clever mixture of historical events and in-game events that are integral to the plot, revealing Kojima’s attempt to create a strong context in which the game can be located historically.

The manual also possesses a presentational style similar to military survival manuals, with information on field weapons and equipment, how to cure and heal wounds and perform emergency medical treatment, as well as information on how to effectively use camouflage, procure food in the wilderness, and effectively engage in close quarters combat. Even before the playing the game, then, the player is made aware that the events and actions in the game are very much in league with those of true survival missions experienced by real life soldiers.

"It’s funny how we get so absorbed into things even when we know they aren’t real." (Paramedic)

Further enhancing the hyperreal gameplay experience are the wealthy number of optional conversations that the player can strike up over codec communication with various members of the supporting Fox Unit. Some of the most compelling of these are the conversations with Paramedic. It’s not surprising that Kojima would place particular emphasis on conversations with Paramedic since players must call her if they wish to save their progress in the game before ending their gaming session. Moreover, as she can provide Snake with information on jungle survival with knowledge of the plants and animals of the area along with medical advice, Paramedic becomes the most frequently contacted character in the game.

As much as speaking with the paramedic is one of functionality and necessity, it is yet another creative attempt to locate the game historically and play with hyperreality. An avid fan of films, Paramedic brings to life the context and era in which the game takes place by constantly citing the films of the time. Whether she is citing 1960’s film technology or describing scenes from her favorite movies, she becomes a fountain of information about the world during the Cold War era. Most of her commentary is based on real world fact, but with the seed of hyperreality already planted so firmly within the narrative, how is the player to discern the small bits of fiction sprinkled in?

More importantly, all of the films she references have relevance to the plot of Snake Eater, such as the exploration of nuclear Armageddon in the Japanese post-apocalyptic film The Last War. It can even be said that Paramedic’s commentary on the value and power of cinema can be seen as indirect commentary on Snake Eater itself as the focus of Paramedic’s fascination is not simply to express admiration for the films, but also to explore how they resonate and leave a lasting impression on viewers. She often throws out statements such as: “suspend your disbelief, that’s the whole point of movies,” that are directed not only to Snake but to players themselves.

“There are no certainties in espionage, only calculated guesses." (Major Zero)

Despite the heavy focus on hyperreality, Kojima does not completely abandon postmodern political, economic, and social themes in Snake Eater. To highlight the tension and complexity of the Cold War, Kojima refrains from siding with Eastern or Western political and social ideology in the game’s plot. Neither the U.S.A. nor the U.S.S.R. are made to seem favorable, making the conflict between both governments seem questionable. There is no outright mention of the superiority of democracy, no brandishing of the hardships typically associated with communist dictatorships, no allegiance to either side, making the sides of good and evil even more hazy.

This is especially important considering the amount of conflict in the game: East vs. West; U.S.A. vs. U.S.S.R.; capitalism vs. communism. Kojima presents them all on equal terms, as though all are equally valid and equally flawed. While Snake Eater doesn’t turn away completely from political grand narratives, it focuses on an even more important conflict: fact vs. fiction.

The blurred line between fantasy and reality can also be interpreted as a clever form of political criticism, where it is nearly impossible for the average individual to discern the truth regarding covert operations approved and initiated by political leaders and committees. In so doing, the game suggests that politics during the Cold War, or even the present time, are too convoluted and difficult to be disseminated by the average individual and that the game of politics is itself embedded in hyperreality. That which is presented to the general public as fact by political parties may actually be fiction while certain events that are shrugged off by national governments as mere fiction may indeed be fact. This element of the unknown is hyperreal in itself.

As real-world espionage and Special Forces operations are largely concealed from the public, writer Hideo Kojima can take great liberties in delivering a dynamic plot. After all, espionage, properly executed, is the engagement in covert activities that are never revealed the general public. Espionage is linked to hyperreality in that both result in the struggle to gain understanding in the sea of messages which may or may not be truth or reality. A spy thrives on blurring reality, on manipulating truth, on living a series of lies – mirroring hyperreality by blending fantasy and reality in an indistinguishable amalgam.

As is characteristic of Kojima’s work, Snake Eater begs the question as to whether games are just escapist entertainment or active forms of engagement with the potential to say something significant. Kojima seems to be pushing for the latter in Snake Eater by employing hyperreality as a narrative technique to play with player perceptions.

Everything from the characters, the setting, the dialogue, and even the newly introduced gameplay emphasis on camouflage can be considered an extension of this focus on deception. The result is that it often becomes too difficult to discern what elements of fantasy the player will take out of the experience and interpret as real-world fact. And that, perhaps, is true testament to the masterful execution of hyperreality in Snake Eater.

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

['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.]

   

Some sad news, at least for me -- I learned the other day that Japanese mag GameSide is closing up shop with its August '10 issue, which went on sale a couple of days back. Devoted largely to Retro Gamer-style coverage of older games and interviews with game designers of the past, the mag had survived two name changes and about 14 years of constant publication before finally giving up the ghost.

GameSide began life in 1996 under the title Used Games, an A6-size (105mm x 148mm) mag that was published on a seasonal basis. It was part of a small wave of A6 game titles that debuted in Japan during the mid-'90s, spearheaded by editors from Kadokawa Shoten and other large publishers who wanted to write about games without suffering under the advertiser and reader demands of a mainstream outfit.

Chief among these new mags was Game Hihyou (Game Criticism), which launched in 1994 and devoted most of its pages to longform, in-depth reviews of console games. Like Computer Gaming World until the early '90s, Game Hihyou had a policy of only reviewing boxed retail copies of games, which made their reviews late but gave them a well-researched sense of authority that was appreciated by its fans far more than the 60-word blurbs that Famitsu published in their cross-review section. (The mag was also famous for its fairly obvious anti-Square bias, as well as for refusing all advertising from game companies, a policy that remained in effect for all but the final two issues.)

Used Games' beat wasn't strictly retro stuff; it was a bit more nuanced than that. Its editors were more interested in simply finding obscure, fun old releases, the sort of games that fell through the cracks of mainstream media coverage, and giving them the push they deserved. It was written for the kind of guy who liked spending afternoons going up and down the game-shop aisles, thumbing through CD cases and trying their luck with something they hadn't heard of before -- the thrill-of-the-hunt sort of gamer.

That was exactly who I was when I lived in Japan 12 years ago (I devoted most of my Sunday mornings to touring Tokyo flea markets for Famicom and MSX games), so when I discovered Used Games, it was like I had found a magazine written exclusively for myself.

This approach continued with remarkably little change through the years, as Used Games changed names to YuGe and finally GameSide in 2006. The mag held regular yearly events in Akihabara that attracted pretty big crowds; it was the focal point of a retro scene in Japan that was remarkably large in size, especially considering that it existed before the Internet was a household item. The mag really felt like something new, and I was always a little sad that it had no ready counterpart in the US or elsewhere. (Retro Gamer is close these days, certainly.)

GameSide was pretty much the last of the A6 game mags to survive in Japan. Game Hihyou closed in 2006; Continue (a mag I've written a little about in the past) is still around but has been reinvented as an anime/subculture mag with very little game content. The GameSide name will live on, at least -- the publisher has promised that paperback compilations of old issues, which apparently do a pretty brisk business in Japanese bookstores, will remain in print.

[Kevin Gifford used to breed ferrets, but now he's busy running Magweasel, a really cool weblog about games and Japan and "the industry" and things. In his spare time he does writing and translation for lots of publishers and game companies.]

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