[While most GSW folks are a bit traveled out to hit Penny Arcade Expo this weekend, we're thankful to have Mona Ibrahim filling in here and on Gamasutra -- and here's her write-up of a notable keynote speech from Warren Spector.]

Deus Ex and Disney Epic Mickey creator Warren Spector opened PAX Prime in Seattle, an empowering Gamasutra-attended keynote today, with a call for gamers to look beyond the celebration of geekdom so that the industry as a whole can move toward the mainstream.

After years of facing insecurity and rejection while striving for mainstream acceptance, Spector suggested that game culture has finally reached a 'Golden Age', noting: "Every medium that has lasted has gone through this. It’s gone through what we’re going through today.”

Not long ago, he suggested, game culture was largely a collection of adolescent males with a decidedly geeky tilt. Now we see people of all ages and walks of life, male and female, participating in this form of entertainment.

According to the Junction Point creative director, “now we don’t have a culture of gaming, we have many cultures.” Game culture is becoming a mainstream medium, and the resentment many core gamers feel about this growth is misplaced, Spector posited.

The belief that casual games and casual gamers destroy the game culture experience hurts the industry by limiting it; allowing the medium to grow has inspired developers to create new systems.

Specifically, he noted to a packed crowd of game aficionados in the Seattle Convention Center: "We have to embrace that the world is catching onto us. Once you open Pandora’s Box, you can’t close it again, and I’m fine with that. Now more than ever it’s a good thing that mainstream is happening."

Moving on, Spector made it clear that this isn’t simply important. This isn’t just the evolution of the industry. It is vital for gamers to embrace the belief that games are a mainstream medium if the industry is to survive with the same protections granted other art forms.

The veteran game designer also reminded us November 2nd marks the date when the Supreme Court will determine the constitutionality of California’s 2005 violent video game bill. This bill, which is designed to prohibit minors from purchasing ‘violent video games’, is the first to be granted certiori by the Supreme Court.

The fact that the Supreme Court has elected to review the lower court’s ruling (which found the legislation unconstitutional) is unsettling to the industry at large. There is a certain amount of fear that the Supreme Court will overturn the lower court’s decision, Spector noted, and “November 2nd could be the start of a timeline where we’re the first entertainment medium denied first amendment protection.” This is a threat that the games industry needs to protect itself against, he argued.

Historically all entertainment mediums, from literature and print media to film and music, have faced similar censorship threats from legislative and cultural bodies. However, it is unusual for legislation that clearly impinges on a medium’s right to create non-obscene content to make it to the Supreme Court.

Perhaps it is because of this that Spector believes now is the time for gamers to embrace the mainstream. By becoming mainstream, games are able to achieve social acceptance and will cease being a source of creative contention. Like the film industry, it will eventually become “an art form worthy of study.”

The Epic Mickey developer finished his keynote with a set of challenges for gamers and the entertainment industry in general. Gamers are asked to demand more from games and more from the gaming experience.

In turn, Developers are asked to “honor what makes us unique.” Games do not need to hold to the conventions of pen and paper role-playing. And publishers are asked to take chances and trust the great creative minds at their disposal.

Along the way, Spector challenged all of us to get over our inferiority complex. While the industry may be young and immature, it is a great industry worthy of respect, he concluded, declaring one simple fact: “Games are important.”

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 an intriguing Indiecade competition submission, a racing game featuring the Grim Reaper on a bicycle, a skiing game where the slopes and hills are drawn by the player, a Megaman-style 2D platformer, and an arcade shooter that supports cooperative play on the same keyboard.

Here's the highlights from the last seven days:

Game Pick: 'Sleep' (Asquared Games, freeware)
"Sleep begins with a car speeding down a country lane, and although we don't see it, it's safe to assume that the driver loses control and crashes. What follows is the protagonist trying to work out where they are and what has happened to them. Once the hero has pictured all the different memories, he's thrown into what appears to be a flashback."

Game Pick: 'Victorian BMX' (This is Pop!, browser)
"Victorian BMX: Death on Wheels is a bit like Joe Danger, except that it's 2D, set in Victorian times, completely in black and white and features the reaper collecting people's souls. So... not that much like Joe Danger, then."

Game Pick: 'Solipskier' (Mike Boxleiter and Greg Wohlwend, browser)
"Solipskier (pictured) is a 2D action game which puts you in control of a stick figure skier, racing down whatever slope or path you decide to draw for him using your mouse cursor. The objective here is to score points by skiing through gates and executing tricks in the air, but beware of areas where no slopes can be drawn for a short distance."

Game Pick: 'Warlock Bentspine' (Lazrool, freeware)
"Warlock Bentspine is a 2D platformer that features four stages to beat, each with a set of randomized stages for you to play in whichever direction you decide to tackle a level. Similar to the Megaman series, players will gain a new weapon to use once they've beaten a stage boss. Besides being able to shoot horizontally and vertically, Mr. Bentspine can also execute double jumps and dash for a short distance."

Game Pick: 'Not-So-Massive Action Game' (Ade, freeware)
"Not-So-Massive Action Game puts you in the heat of battle, ready to shoot down helicopters, pump enemies full of bullets and bomb exotic bases. It's a relatively simple 2D shooter, but it's also a great deal of fun."

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

Simutronics Corp., which created and continues to maintain my favorite MUD of all time (Gemstone III/IV), is currently working on something that seems like the complete opposite of the hardcore and wayyyy nerdy MUD genre: a social game for Facebook.

Fantasy University isn't meant to eschew Simutronics' traditional fanbase, though, as the game seeks to put "a new spin on the old-school MMOG with a 'social adventure' filled with grown-up humor and a plethora of pop-culture references."

GameLife describes the parody RPG as "like Mad Magazine's take on the fantasy videogame," mixing references to H.P. Lovecraft with LOLcat while featuring caricatures of celebrities like Johnny Depp and Billy Mays.

And underneath the game's whimsical tone and cartoonish visuals (black and white sketch stye by Lackadaisy's Tracy Butler), Fantasy University offers a lot of features that hardcore gamers will appreciate, like weapon-crafting, guild quests, and more.

Fantasy Universe is currently in its closed beta phase and will release to the public later this month.

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

Craftster BuildMyPaperHeart posted this impressive paper creation of John Marston from Rockstar San Diego's Red Dead series. Dressed in the Bollard Twins gang outfit (which the artist chose over the cowboy outfit because he likes the chaps), this paper Marston also has a removable hat and a pistol accessory.

I've added photos of the care BuildMyPaperHeart put into creating Marston's revolver and square hat after the break, as well as another neat project he created of a Helghast soldier from Killzone (armed with a cute paper "Stahl Arms Sta52 Assault Rifle").

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

[Continuing his regular GameSetWatch column, psychologist and gamer Jamie Madigan examines how research on jam reviews, of all things, might have surprising lessons for video game reviews.]

For every one of us, making decisions is part of hour daily human existence. Most of them are of little consequence –what to eat, what movie to see, what video game to buy– so we have developed an astonishing array of mental short-cuts to make these kinds of decisions comparatively quick, easy, and not too mentally taxing.

We may eat what we have eaten and enjoyed in the past, and by and large we use simple decision rules such as "I like this genre" or "I like this developer" to choose movies or games.

Other decisions, though, are either much more important or much more public and thus we put more work into it. Whom should we date? What college should we attend? Which house should I buy?

When faced with questions like these, many of us have probably drawn two columns on a piece of paper, labeling one "Pro" and one "Con" and then listing things in each column. When trying to decide whether to marry or stay a bachelor, famous biologist and five-time Counter-Strike world champion Charles Darwin did exactly that, producing the list below.

The list admittedly looks a bit sexist by today’s standards, but it illustrates the idea well. But is this sort of thing always a good idea? When video game reviewers ruminate over the merits of a particular title, they are often asked to consider standardized lists of features –graphics, sound, fun factor, multiplayer, value, extendability, controls, and so on. Should they always try to analyze decisions across every possible variable? Is that the right way to review a game?

Researchers Timothy Wilson and Jonathan Schooler probably wouldn’t think so, or at least they could imagine situations in which this type of approach could lead to poor evaluations. And here’s the best part: jam was involved. Delicious, strawberry jam.

In their study the duo were intrigued by a Consumer Reports ranking of 45 different brands of strawberry jam. Panelists in the study were trained sensory experts (i.e., professional food tasters) who sampled each of the condiments and rated them on 16 characteristics including sweetness, aroma, bitterness, spreadability, and others.

This is the kind of thing Consumer Reports does all the time, but Wilson and Schooler were curious about something. Some of their previous research had suggested than when asked to analyze their reasons for making decisions or ratings, people tend to screw things up. The theory goes that we are often aware of our preferences for products (or art, or whatever), but when asked to explain WHY, we often feel obligated to include the most salient (that is, apparent) and plausible explanations. Even if we would have otherwise ignored them.

So if asked to explain why you like Red Dead Redemption so much, you may think about what should be included in the checklist for evaluating an action game, come up with “the weapons,” and then feel compelled to award or take away points for how the game’s weapons feel and work. The problem is, the most salient and plausible factors may not be the ones that are really responsible for how much you enjoy the game. The weapons in Red Dead Redemption are largely unremarkable –the game’s appeal lies almost entirely in other areas and any weight given to how cool the weapons are is inappropriate at best.

So, thinking along these lines, Wilson and Schooler wondered what would happen if they asked normal people to recreate Consumer Report’s jam ratings. And what would happen if you asked them to ponder the reasons for their ratings the same way the Consumer Reports experts did?

So they fed some college students the 1st, 11tth, 24th, 32nd, and 44th best jams from the report to find out. Those in the control group were just asked to taste the treats and make their ratings. Those students actually did pretty well –their rankings were very close to the professional taste testers’ rankings. But the group that was asked to write down the reasons for their ratings did far worse. They may have favored the jams that the experts thought were gross and scrunched their noses up at the ones the experts thought were great.

Why? Because the subjects started focusing on factors that didn’t really matter. Smucker’s had more chunks of fruit in it, so it gets a higher rating. Wait, what? Is chunkiness really important for them? Doesn’t matter; it sounds plausible so it got factored in. When the XBLA shooter Monday Night Combat came out, some people lamented the small number of maps. Same thing –one could argue that because the gameplay requires a very specific setup, you don’t need –or even want– a lot of maps.

Puny humans are pretty bad at combining an array of weighted factors so as to arrive at a rating or decision –it’s just not how our minds were designed. Jelly or game review guidelines that require us to over analyze our decisions or check them off against a standardized list of factors (graphics, sound, etc.) can exacerbate this limitation and lead us to consider what should be irrelevant information when making our ratings. This corrupts the rating process and takes us farther from our “true” feelings or evaluations.

This is one reason why I prefer more organic, experience-based evaluations of games from message boards or podcasts rather than formal game reviews. I feel like I can listen to someone talk in an unstructured way about how much the enjoy a game and get a much better idea of how much I might like it. Just consider what’s important and ignore the rest.

Now, go get yourself some jam – whatever kind you think tastes good.

References:

Wilson, T. & Schooler, J. (1991). Thinking Too Much: Introspection Can Reduce the Qualities of Preference and Decisions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 60(2), 181-192

Strawberry Jams and Preserves (1985, August). Consumer Reports, 487-489

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

In a busy week for new job postings, Gamasutra's jobs board plays host to roles across the world and in every major discipline, including opportunities at Blizzard, Warner Bros. and many more.

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

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

Some of the notable jobs posted this week include:

Blizzard Entertainment: Senior Software Engineer, Engine, Starcraft II
"Blizzard Entertainment is seeking an experienced engine programmer to focus on core engine development forStarCraft II. This position will involve extending StarCraft II's animation and effects systems, as well as working with the team on other ongoing core engine and graphics technologies."

Raven Software: Lead Designer (Web and Platform Services)
"Raven Software, developer of numerous award winning games, including Singularity, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Wolfenstein and Marvel: Ultimate Alliance is seeking an experienced Design Director/Lead Game Designer."

Sony Computer Entertainment America: Manager, Game Design
"Be a part of the most exciting and innovating computer entertainment in North America. Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) markets the PlayStation family of products and develops, publishes, markets, and distributes software for the PS one console, the PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3 computer entertainment systems and the PlayStation Portable (PSP)."

Warner Bros. Games: Art Director
"WB Games Inc. seeks an Art Director to be responsible for collaborating on product position and design, for overseeing development of art concepts and visualizations, and for approvals of final content, working very closely with the Creative Director and Designers to develop and realize the vision of the game."

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

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 Leigh Alexander at 10:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Indie developer Netsu has sent out Trajectory, his take on Scorched Earth-style artillery game with a few interesting twists. Instead of turn-based tank battles atop cliffs, Trajectory takes place in space and in real-time, so players must fire shots while defending against incoming mines with flares simultaneously.

The other major point is that players are orbiting around planets and must take the gravitational pull of the planets into account when curving their shots (so players can hit each other even when they're hiding completely behind their planet. .

Netsu has posted free versions of Trajectory for both Windows and Linux. It was originally developed as a two-player versus game, but the game's latest update adds "a simple AI with three difficulty settings".

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

Adult Swim has put out another neat indie title on its Flash gaming portal, this time from noted game designer Mark 'Messhof' Essen (NIDHOGG, CreamWolf). The new release, Turbo Turbo Turbo, is a top-down racer in which you must constantly use your turbos to either zoom past dozens of other cars or run into them.

The real fun part comes if you accidentally wreck your car, as your angered coach gives you two options: crash an after-party at the bar, where you can start a bar-fight and disqualify all the other racers if you're the last man standing; or your coach breaks your thumbs. Seems like easy choice to me!

You can play Turbo Turbo Turbo for free at Adult Swim's site.

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

Two-man indie studio StarQuail Productions (Sky Puppy, Crystal Skies) announced the upcoming release of its next title, Astroman, for Xbox Live Indie Games. It might look like a basic 2D platformer in the first 30 seconds of this trailer, but you'll see some fun ideas/elements if you keep with it.

The portion that stands out from its traditional jumping/shooting/exploring segments is when you control the hero's ship -- throughout the game, you can collect upgrades and parts for the craft that allow it to travel farther and bring you to new worlds. Piloting the ship plays out as a sort of Asteroids-like shooter minigame.

Expect StarQuail to release Astroman to Xbox Live Indie Games this fall.

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

['Defying Design' is a bi-weekly GameSetWatch-exclusive column by Jeffrey Matulef analyzing gaming conventions and the pros and cons of breaking them. This week's column is about silent protagonists done right.]

"It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt." -Abraham Lincoln.

Dialogue for a videogame protagonist is a double-edged sword. Develop them into a three dimensional character and you'll risk alienating your audience who may not like them. A common workaround is to leave the protagonist silent so the player can impart their own identity unto their avatar.

The problem here is often one-sided conversations feel awkward. Just look at Gordon Freeman, silent hero of the Half-Life series for example. Gordon never speaks, but other characters talk to him and it feels disingenuous when he doesn't respond. The idea is that by making him silent the character is supposed to be the player.

So when cute, spunky, ass-kicking scientist pal, Alyx Vance flirts with the silent hero it feels pandering and false because, let's face it, she says that to all the guys. However, there is hope for this approach. I'd like to take a look at some of the best examples of silent protagonists that manage to make us care about them and their relationships with others without seeming at odds with the fiction.

The example that comes to mind first for me is Amaterasu, heroine of Clover's 2006 cult-hit, Okami. Ametarasu (Ammy for short) is a wolf. Actually, she's a wolf goddess of the sun. The player can see her celestial blood-stained tattoo-like marks and otherworldly weapons adorning her back, but to everyone else she just looks like a regular wolf. Everyone that is save one bite-sized "wandering artist" named Issun, represented by a bouncy green ball hopping on her nose. It makes sense that Ammy can't talk, what with being a wolf and all, so her interactions with villagers seem far less awkward than those of her spiritual predecessor, Link from the Zelda series.

With Link there's no excuse. He's human (or elf) and others of his kind talk to him- he even has what seems to be a girlfriend in Ocarina of Time- yet he can only respond in pantomime. Ammy's reactions make sense given her species, but that doesn't explain why others talk to her as they do.

That responsibility lies with Issun who does all the talking. He's kind of annoying at first, but grows into a more lovable character as the game draws on. More importantly, he's allowed a distinct personality because he's still technically an NPC. Just one that happens to be parasitic.

Together, the two of them form a symbiotic relationship creating a silent noble goddess and a street smart (well wannabe street-smart anyway) wayfarer. Accompanying them on their quest creates a stronger bond than either of them would have been capable of on their own.

Similar to Ammy and Issun a recent game that takes this symbiosis to its extreme is Deadly Premonition. Protagonist, FBI Agent Francis York Morgan does talk. Quite a lot and often to himself. Or does he? See, York (it's what everyone calls him) has a split personality. He can often be found conversing with his alter ego, Zach. Watch closely, however, and you'll see that Zach is meant to be the player.

Thus you control York's movement, but aren't actually playing as him. You're playing as Zach just as in Okami you played as Ammy, and York fills the same roll as Issun- the half of the party the game world can see. Nobody addresses Zach except York and it doesn't feel unbelievable when Zach doesn't respond as York is presumably talking to himself.

The result is that York feels at least one degree away from the player's control, so we're meant to remain a bemused detachment to York's more ridiculous antics (such as when he tells a story of his previous case over dinner and how the culprit both peed and drank from his victim's skulls. Incredibly, York is quick to point out, he used the same skulls).

On the other end of the spectrum there's Bioshock 2. I'll get this out of the way right now; I liked Bioshock, but the silent protagonist thing bugged me. If you're playing as a regular Joe who happens to discover a ruined underwater city and some guy starts yapping to you over a two-way radio, wouldn't ya know, want to ask him questions about what the hell's going on?

Bioshock 2 fixes that. This time around you play as Subject Delta, a Big Daddy (a brainwashed Frankenstein's monster like beast in scuba gear). Big Daddy's can't talk so this explains the silent protagonist thing well. Characters even respond to your silent treatment.

The first time you encounter a non-hostile NPC she thinks you're there to murder her. You can, but I chose not to (much to her surprise). Big Daddies are assigned to protect mutated little girls called Little Sisters and your Little Sister, Eleanor is in danger and needs rescuing. Since you're already a monster of sorts you have little to live for, saving Eleanor is your sole goal. It's hard not to empathize with such a determined powerful beast and that's all we need to know about him.

Simply by integrating a characters silence into the fiction isn't a sure-fire success. In Deadly Creatures you play as a tarantula and scorpion, but unlike their cartoon counterparts these ones don't talk. They have no motive beyond killing and eating creatures, so there's really no reason for them to be going along the game's prescribed path.

There is a story about a couple unsavory prospectors that is overheard by the playable arachnids, but they have no reason to be involved since it's not like they'd be able to understand what people are saying. While the deadly creatures of the title are tied to this story thematically in their harsh, dog-eat-dog struggle for survival, they play a passive role and it's hard to care about them. Simply coming up with an excuse for a characters silence isn't enough if there's no motivation to go along with it.

What all of these successful silent protagonists have in common is that they're a). Explained in the fiction why they can't talk back to others. And b). All have clear, sympathetic motivations. Ammy is a wolf goddess more aware of what's at stake than she can let on to others. Zach is trying to aide York in solving a murder. And Subject Delta only exists to protect, so his fatherly instincts take over.

Silent protagonists can work wonders when the barrier between them and the game world is properly explained. Not being able to communicate is a scary, Kafka-esque nightmare but it only takes a keen understanding of the systems at work to turn said nightmare into a lucid dream.

[Jeffrey Matulef is a freelance writer for G4TV.com, blogs about games at JumpingMoustache.com and is a regular on the Big Red Potion podcast. You can contact him at jmatulef at gmail dot com.]

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

Organizers for IndieCade, an annual international festival devoted to independent games, has revealed 32 finalists for its awards, including titles like Limbo and VVVVVV.

Now in its fourth year, the IndieCade festival aims to provide exhibitions, conferences, and curated attractions that "encourage, publicize, and cultivate, innovation and artistry in interactive media", as it strives to "create a public perception of games as rich, diverse, artistic, and culturally significant."

In this year's IndieCade awards. all finalists are eligible to for each of the 12 categories: Jury Award, Aesthetics, Fun/Compelling, Gameplay Innovation, Technical Innovation, World/Story, Vanguard, Sublime Experience, Wildcard, Documentary, Sound, The IndieCade 2010 Honorary Trailblazer Award for Lifetime Achievement.

The 32 announced finalists -- including descriptions, links to developer/game sites, and countries of origin -- follow:

1066 - The Game (Preloaded / Channel 4, United Kingdom): A historical game commissioned by Channel 4 (UK) to accompany its two part documentary series on the War of 1066 and the battle for Middle Earth. A simple, fun strategy game that leverages causal gameplay elements and beautiful design while providing its audience with interesting information and knowledge about the War of 1066. 1066 – The Game was created by Preloaded, the developers behind Super Me and other social change game projects.

A Slow Year (Ian Bogost, USA): A Slow Year is a collection of four game “poems” for the Atari Video Computer System, one for each season, about the experience of observation and awareness. A Slow Year stakes out a deep and interesting design problem, searching for engaging and meaningful interactivity outside the traditional reaches of modern gameplay and typical genre design. Ian Bogot is a professor at Georgia Tech, and co-founder of Persuasive Games, creator of Airport Insecurity and a series of news games for the New York Times. Ian is also co-creator of IndieCade featured Cruel2BKind. A Slow Year was featured in the 2010’s Independent Game Festival (IGF) at the Game Developers Conference.

Auditorium (Cipher Prime, USA): Auditorium is an audio puzzle game where you convert light into sound, creating an explosion of orchestral music. Its addictively simple mechanic consists of manipulating icons to deflect light into a target on each level to generate bursts of music. The game has a flexible design, allowing for a range of solutions to each puzzle. Available for PC and Mac, and now iPhone, Auditorium was created by Philadelphia-based Cipher Prime.

B.U.T.T.O.N. (Brutally Unfair Tactics Totally OK Now) (Copenhagen Game Collective, Denmark): B.U.T.T.O.N. is a four-player, one-button party game played with Xbox controllers on the PC. The game has a WarioWare style mechanic consisting of short mini games in which players must stand back and rush the controllers to press the “right” button, although which button that is not always clear! Created by Copenhagen Game Collective, winner of the Most Fun Game at IndieCade 2008, B.U.T.T.O.N. was a hit at Gamma IV and at IndieCade’s E3 Showcase.

Bit.Trip Runner (Gaijin Games, USA): The fourth Bit.Trip game developed by Gaijin Games for WiiWare, Bit.Trip Runner features music from Anamanaguchi driving an energetic and exciting rhythm action platforming game. The game features awesome Boss Battles inside 50 challenging levels, and provides a visually impressive experience and auditory treat. Bit.Trip Runner provides addictive and fun, while exploring interesting interaction and puzzle spaces inside the realm of synaesthesia.

Blue Lacuna (Aaron Reed, USA): Blue Lacuna is among the largest text-based interactive stories ever produced, a full-length novel and adventure game in one. Blue Lacuna is rich with deep, beautiful writing, and a vast story world with emotional depth and meaningful player choice. Blue Lacuna is a triumph in prose-based interactivity from Aaron Reed, the writer and designer of Whom The Telling Changed, and a PhD candidate at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Cargo Delivery (Cat in the Sky, Brazil): Cargo Delivery is a skill-based puzzle game revolving around the adventures of Rufus. To achieve his goal of having a nice sailboat to call home, Rufus must sail a freighter with loads of cargo. The churning seas, which cause cargo to topple overboard, and numerous obstacles along the way, must be overcome for Rufus to earn enough money to realize his dream. The delightfully quirky graphics combine well with the cartoon physics, and make this an adventure worth taking. Created by Santo Andre, Brazil based Cat in the Sky.

Castle Vox (Sillysoft, Canada): Castle Vox is a new turn-based strategy game from SillySoft, developers of Lux and American History Lux. Castle Vox brings the engaging multiplayer social play and strategy of Diplomacy and Axis and Allies to the digital realm of turn based strategy. A fully realized digital board game, Castle Vox takes advantage of the computer medium to ease and finesse many of the mechanics of classic social strategy board games, and wraps them into a well designed, approachable and entertaining package.

Continuity (Ragtime Games, Sweden): A well-designed and mechanically clever mashup of a simple platformer with classic sliding puzzle gameplay. Continuity has a strong aesthetic design, and simple, refined, and well-balanced gameplay. Top notch attention to design details such as audio allow the simple pleasures of the mechanic to be presented at the forefront of the IGF-winning, addictive and entertaining game developed by Elias Holmlid, Dmitri Kurteanu, Guy Lima Jr., and Stefan Mikaelsson, aka Ragtime Games, a student team at Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg.

Creaky Old Memory (DADIU, Denmark): Creaky Old Memory puts players in the role of Tatiana, an elderly Russian lady who must journey through the nooks and crannies of her self-fabricated house in order to reveal the truth about her own past. The game cleverly blends multiple modes of gameplay as you first must collect different paintings to assemble a picture of Tatiana’s life, and then must search these paintings for hidden clues to unlock the deeper mysteries of the story. Created by a team at the National Academy of Digital Interactive Entertainment in Copenhagen, Creaky Old Memories’ deftly designed aesthetics are well integrated into the story and mood of the game, and help bring genuine meaning to the puzzle-based interactivity.

Every Day The Same Dream (Molleindustria, Italy): Made for the experimental gameplay project themed "Art game", Every Day The Same Dream is an attempt to translate a well known narrative about daily routine and white collar alienation into a playable form. Only by finding subtle deviations from the repetitive, looping levels can the player free the character from a meaningless eternal present. Designed by progressive game design collective Molleindustria, Every Day the Same Dream is a short, intellectually engaging experience that brilliantly captures the feel and tone of modern art film and art games, while cutting these recognizable ideas to their core concepts. This is Molleindustria’s first game to be selected for IndieCade.

Faraway (Steph Thirion, USA): Created by Steph Thirion for the Gamma IV showcase, Faraway is a one-button game where you swing your way through space, finding and connecting star clusters to create the most complex constellations you can. Faraway’s simple but lovely and iconic visual design lets the tightly designed interactions and gameplay take forefront. Steph Thirion is the creator of Eliss, winner of the Auteur Award at IndieCade 2009.

Fatale (Tale of Tales, Belgium): Fatale is an interactive vignette in real-time 3D inspired by the biblical story of Salome and the play about her by Oscar Wilde. Developed by Tale of Tales, the creators of IndieCade 2009 finalist The Path, and 2008 finalist The Graveyard, Fatale is a living tableau that allows you to freely explore many poetic, historical and literary references to the ancient legend, while bringing it relevance to a contemporary audience.

feelforit (Chris DeLeon, USA): feelforit, developed by “Game-A-Day” virtuoso Chris DeLeon, is a small art toy for iPad, iPod Touch and iPhone that exploits the affordances of the device’s accelerometer to create an abstract, spatialized metaphor for how we navigate our lives. By rotating the phone, you manipulate an interactive sculpture whose characteristic properties and rule sets are revealed to you as you play with it. This is the IndieCade debut of Chris DeLeon, a Carnegie-Mellon grad who is currently a master’s student in Georgia Tech’s Digital Media program.

Fractal (Cipher Prime, USA): Go over the top with this new audio puzzle game. Listen as the game reacts to your decisions, taking easy-to-learn, hard-to-master gameplay to new extremes. Fractal is played on a hex grid, and leverages simple, engaging puzzles to generate beautiful procedural audio. Created by Philadelphia-based Cipher Prime, Fractal is a rewarding and compelling auditory experience.

Gentleman of the South Sandwiche Islands (Taylor & Gray, USA): Created by a team of students in USC’s Interactive Media program, the Gentlemen of the South Sandwiche Islands is a lovingly-crafted board game in which gentlemen callers compete for the attentions of Lady Ashley by strategically crossing bridges to get her alone on of a series of small islands. A comedy of manners translated into a board game, the story, the surreal, Victorian art-style and its questionable 200-year history provide a backdrop for a devilish and highly entertaining game of absurd logic. Funded by Jim Taylor through Kickstarter, Gentleman of the South Sandwiche Islands is a great indie design story.

Groping in the Dark (Team Arex, South Korea): Groping in the Dark is a lyrical interactive narrative that tells the story of a kidnapped girl’s decision and attempt to escape her captors. The player progresses through the narrative by manipulating phrases of Korean text to unravel the story. The kinetic typography creates an almost mystical experience, turning letters into images and images into meanings. With its alternative to traditional visual representation in games, Groping in the Dark transforms a game into interactive poetry. Created by Seoul-based Team Arex.

Humans vs. Zombies (Gnarwhal Studios, USA): Humans vs. Zombies is a moderated game of tag where all but one player begin as humans, wearing bandanas on their arms and able to defend themselves with socks from the zombie horde. The horde is generated by the randomly-selected “Original Zombie,” who can tag human players and turn them into zombies, who wear bandanas on their heads. Humans will need to rely on cunning and teamwork to survive the zombie apocalypse and complete challenging missions organized by the game moderators. Created by Gnarwhal Studios, Humans vs. Zombies is a played in neighborhoods, military bases, and over 600 colleges and universities around the world and was featured at this summer’s Come Out and Play. It is part of IndieCade’s Outdoor and Pervasive Games track.

Limbo (Playdead, Denmark): Limbo is a hauntingly beautiful black and white “horror” platform puzzler, released to widespread acclaim this summer on the Xbox Live Arcade. The game is set among the rooftops of a mesmerizing macabre world that draws you into its dark narrative. The narrative, the story of a young boy trying to find his lost sister, is reinforced by a tightly designed film noir style that also expands the interesting, well implemented 2D platforming puzzle challenges. Created by Denmark’s Playdead, Limbo is a stunning example of the quality and experience that can be created out of careful attention to detail and delicate integration of the many different elements that make up a game.

Miegakure (Marc ten Bosch, USA): Miegakure is a platform game where you solve puzzles by exploring the fourth dimension. An inventive approach to spatial puzzle design and problem solving from Marc ten Bosch, Miegakure creates engaging and maddening puzzles from the mathematics and theory of a fourth spatial dimension. Miegakure was featured at the IGF, and at IndieCade’s E3 showcase, and is a stunning technical and design achievement, which educates and explores fourth dimension mathematical theory without requiring a PhD in math or physics.

Monsters (Probably) Stole My Princess! (Mediatonic, United Kingdom): Monsters (Probably) Stole my Princess! is a vertical platformer which you take control of the super sexy aristocratic demon known only as "The Duke" in a fantastical world where chasing down giant yet adorable monsters is the business at hand. The game borrows from classic platformer mechanics, embellished with frantic gameplay, novel power-ups, strategic moves, and delightful macabre-cartoon aesthetic. Created by the UK’s Mediatonic as a PSP and PS3 Mini, the game is also now available on Xbox Live.

Recurse (Matt Parker, USA): An installation commissioned by the NYU Game Center for its “No Quarter” art game exhibition, Recurse has a simple, embodied mechanic: a video camera transforms the player’s body into a giant cursor. Crystals grow where the body intersects with objects on the screen. Players must grow Crystals in green zones while avoiding growing them in red zones. The zones shift intermittently to create new challenges. A digital game about movement in physical space, the Recurse’s distorted “funhouse mirror” encourages players to forget themselves as they twist and stretch their bodies in order to get a high score and effect the game’s abstract world. Created by New York-based artist/developer Matt Parker.

Retro/Grade (24 Caret Games, USA): Retro/Grade is an innovative PS3 game that fuses the white-knuckle thrills and over the top visuals of a shooter with the broad appeal of a rhythm game. The developers at 24 Caret Games have deeply explored their central idea of a time-reversed space battle through tight game mechanics and polished UI and user feedback. Retro/Grade is visually engaging, attractive, and leverages its aesthetic and auditory beauty to craft an addictive and entertaining user experience.

Sixteen Tons (Nathalie Pozzi and Eric Zimmerman, USA): Sixteen Tons, inspired by a folk song about a mining company town, is a gallery installation in which four players move heavy sections of steel pipe on a colorful grid. This simple gameplay is complicated by the social interaction of a mechanic in which players bid to hire other players (using real cash) to move their pieces, enacting the game’s central themes of debt bondage and forced labor. Created by architect Nathalie Pozzi and independent game designer Eric Zimmerman, Sixteen Tons was originally commissioned by the Art History of Games conference in Atlanta (February 2010). Its presentation at IndieCade is sponsored by the NYU Game Center.

Socks, Inc. (Jim Babb/Data Played, USA): Socks, Inc. is a family-oriented alternate reality that combines web 2.0 co-creation and adventure within an imaginary world entirely populated with sock puppets. Dubbed by its creator “World of Sockcraft,” players socialize within an imaginary Willy-Wonka-style factory, role-playing the story of their sock puppet. A player completes missions by creating storytelling content with their puppet and distributing it via video and still images. As a part of IndieCade, Socks, Inc. will host a sock puppet creation workshop, where participants can create an avatar, an account, and play through the first missions. Socks, Inc., created by New School Master’s Student Jim Babb/Data Played, debuted at ARGfest 2010 in Atlanta, and is part of IndieCade’s Outdoor and Pervasive Games track.

Solace (One Man Down, USA): Solace is an interactive aesthetic experience utilizing dynamic audio and “bullet hell” overtones to provide a unique perspective on the five stages of grief. One Man Down, a design team from Digipen Institute of Technology, has produced impressive visuals and audio to build a fully realized mood space for the game. Solace does not settle on traditional gameplay inside this environment, but explores “bullet hell” mechanics to reinforce the mood and message of the game.

Spirits (Spaces of Play, Germany): Spirits is an action-puzzle game for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad with a Lemmings-style mechanic in which players manipulate the wind to guide name-giving Spirits towards each level of the game world. The wind, which is both helpful and uncontrollable, can serve as the player’s friend and enemy at the same time. The game’s unique atmosphere is created by a combination of beautifully hand-drawn graphics and a music track comprised completely of orchestral musical instruments. Created by Berlin-based Spaces of Play.

Tic-Tac-Totum (Jesse Fuchs, USA): Tic-Tac-Totem is an “open source” tabletop game that uses the traditional game elements of dice and poker chips in clever and novel ways. The game rules, which consist of mini-games that determine the outcome of a Tic-Tac-Toe game, are presented and constantly modified via wiki. This is the IndieCade debut of developer Jesse Fuchs.

The Cat And The Coup (Peter Brinson, USA): The Cat and the Coup is a documentary game in which you play the cat of Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh, the first democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran. You observe and coax Mossadegh through the events of the coup as the cat, knocking over objects on the Prime Minister’s desk and scratching him. With its striking visual style and engaging mechanic, The Cat and The Coup brings a completely original novel ach to documentary gameplay. Developer Peter Brinson is the creator of IndieCade exhibited Meanwhile and a member of the team that created Waco Resurrection.

The Games of Nonchalance (Nonchalance, USA): An epic, immersive, poly-media, real-world adventure. Four episodes of interactive content lead participants on a journey through the fabric of San Francisco and discover the threads of a narrative woven into the city's past and present. Currently running in San Francisco, The Games of Nonchalance received the "Best of the Bay" SFBG 2009 award. Nonchalance’s Scoop!, a live pirate radio news game, was featured at Come Out and Play 2010. This is their debut game as part of IndieCade’s Outdoor and Pervasive Games track.

Trauma (Krystian Majewski, Germany): Trauma takes you into the subconscious of a young woman who survives a car accident as you explore her dreams and memories. The game has a compelling aesthetic and interaction design that involves navigating 3D photographs using a novel, gesture-based interface, drawing you intuitively into its narrative dreamspace. Trauma is a quintessential next-generation adventure game, an emerging genre among indie developers. Created by Polish-born, Cologne-based design student Krystian Majewski.

VVVVVV (Terry Cavanagh, Ireland): In VVVVVV, you play as the fearless leader of a team of dimension-exploring scientists who are separated after inadvertently crashing their ship. A high energy, cleverly designed platforming experience from Terry Cavanaugh, creator of Don’t Look Back and Self Destruct, VVVVVV deeply explores its central gravity-reversing mechanic through smart, interesting puzzles and a strong world and environment, supported by simple but compelling visual design and awesome music.

All 32 games, which were picked from over 350 submissions by 160 international jurors, will be available for the public to play at various locations during the festival.

"Indie developers continue to expand their range and depth, from offering casual games featuring sock puppets to fresh experiences where you voyage through the stars as a comet," says IndieCade's Stephanie Barish.

Barish adds, "The spirit of independent game creation burns brightly this year, and we are thrilled to be able to bring these games to professionals interested in cutting-edge digital media, game developers, artists, publishers, and enthusiasts of all ages."

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

Taking a break from working on DeathSpank: Thongs of Virtue, Vancouver-based independent developer/publisher Hothead Games has put out a second developer diary video, and it makes about as much sense as the first Three's Company-filled entry.

Here, the studio's lead designer Darren Evenson imagines a historical film that tours the Hothead Games office and examines the effects of the developer's titles on the human mind. Apparently, those games are effective at combating communism!

The cold war might be over here in the States, but it rages on in Canada!

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

['@ Play' is a monthly column by John Harris which discusses the history, present and future of the Roguelike dungeon exploring genre. This time, John uses this column to introduce his first-ever game project, Mayflight, which uses Roguelike concepts in a platform game.]

NOTE: I've fixed a few bugs and created a new version. The one on YoYoGames' site, linked below, is currently locked at v1.01. A more recent version is available here. Details are given below, behind the fold.

It's been a while since the last @Play column! Sorry for the long delay. I was working very hard on a personal game project. I bring it up because, as luck would have it, that project is the subject of this column....

The months I was MIA I spent working on a personal game development project, called Mayflight. (It's available for download from here. I've put most of a demo playthrough up on YouTube in this playlist.) And in its construction, I ended up using a good number of roguelike design concepts to make a game that no one would mistake for a roguelike.

I'm still recovering from the development process so I need to get back into the swing of things concerning roguelikes (Dungeon Crawl had another major release while I was gone!), but considering that Mayflight uses random area generation and more than a few roguelike design principles, it might be useful and interesting to go over some aspects of the game's design, especially since the game, itself, is not a roguelike, not even in the style of Spelunky, which prizes object interactions.

Glimpses of infinity

Some years ago I had an idea for a randomly-generated platformer game. The concept was what we might call non-traditional: there were no enemies, there was no explicit goal, and there was no real purpose to the game.

What was there was a few ideas as to how to create random terrain algorithmically, and the hope that this would be interesting enough by itself. Really, I think it isn't. (I actually think that it can be, but we aren't there yet. I may say more on this later.)

Some time back I registered a copy of YoYoGames' beginners' game development kit Game Maker 8. After poking around with it, I found that it was actually much more powerful than I had expected. One can jettison the annoying "drag an drop" scripting system and use C-like code almost exclusively.

It also maintains the DirectX commands for you, and generally lets you get on with the work of constructing your vision instead of wrestling so much with APIs. I will not say that it is perfect. If you prove the edges of the system you sometimes unexpected problem cases, such as if you try to generate random numbers within a very large range.

It also has real problems concerning keeping code to yourself; as it stands, anyone can take any published Game Maker game and fairly easily get the scripts and resources out of it. However, "real" games have been made with it before, most notably to my mind two games we've mentioned here in the past, Spelunky and Desktop Dungeons.

Around the time I installed Game Maker on a new system, a news post opened up on its greeting screen about a game development contest YoYoGames was sponsoring, "Competition06."

I gathered from the text that they were working on a Game Maker runtime that would be runnable on Playstation Network systems, most notably the PSP. Because of that, the requirements for the contest were fairly restrictive, and geared towards producing games that could run on the PSP. There was some prize money offered, and the theme of the contest was discovery....

Discovery. That got me to thinking about my old random platformer idea, and wondering if it could be adapted. I decided to give it a good, solid attempt. That was the middle of May. The deadline, as I write these words, was six hours ago. After three-and-a-half months of near-obsessive work, the game that I submitted to the contest was Mayflight.

Postponing mortality two seconds at a time

Your character in Mayflight is a fairy named Aurora. She exists in what is almost an infinite world: the game terrain is created algorithmically as you enter rooms. It uses pseudorandom number generator seeding creatively to make its terrain consistent.

Although the structure and graphical look of each room is overwritten in memory the moment you leave it, if you were to return to it in backtracking it can recreate the area just as you had first seen it. The game does store some data on which items you collected in a room and which enemies you killed, so the state of vacated rooms are preserved to a degree.

If it were just Aurora running and flying around a bunch of terrain, even if the graphics were fairly interesting (I think they are; judge for yourself from the screenshots on this article), it still wouldn't be a very interesting game. This isn't a roguelike lesson; it is obvious.

Strong roguelike game designs have one essential element that drives the play, some danger or process that forces the player to keep exploring territory instead of staying in an easily-controllable area and grinding. In many roguelikes this is provided by the food requirement. In Mayflight, this is provided by a harsh time limit. Aurora's species of fairy has a ludicrously short lifespan: she only can survive ten seconds on her own.

To overcome this dire predicament, Aurora can collect "sparks," spinning balls of light that are scattered everywhere in the world with the ubiquity of Mario's coins. Each grants her from 0.5 to two seconds of continued existence. (The amount varies according to time remaining; the more time you have, the less you get.)

Although the collection mechanism is a lot more pressing than having to find a food ration every two or three levels, it is the same idea at heart: to force the player to explore ever more terrain to find time extenders, and in the process stay alive.

However, in Mayflight, the further you explore from the start the rarer sparks become, decreasing the player's time income. Eventually equilibrium will be reached between time gained and time lost, and after that the player will go on a slow march towards oblivion. The player's skill in maneuvering determines where exactly that equilibrium is reached. Too, other dangers will often intercede before that, taking tolls of time both directly and in navigation hazards.

A factor that works in the player's favor is that some places naturally have more sparks than others. In the center of each "area" there is a shrine that always has several sparks, rooms with only a single exit will tend to have more sparks than well-connected rooms as a compensation for hitting a dead-end in the maze, and the rare one-screen-size rooms that are rarely generated always contain lots of sparks, and other powerup items besides.

Maps that may be randomly found in the game give the player an overview of a local area of the maze, and thus allow him to devise strategy about which rooms to visit. The maze generator is purposely imperfect; there are biases in the area structures it creates, and a canny player may take advantage of those to find these special areas with slightly greater frequency. This may be viewed as analogous to the usefully-predictable maze builder in Rogue.

Morbo says your quest is doomed. DOOOOMED!

Randomly-placed goal rooms were originally planned for the game, but time drew short before I could implement them and the other game features that would make them useful to the design. (Work may continue on the game into the future, at a reduced pace, and these things will probably be an early addition.) So the focus of the game is another roguelike borrowing, one that they themselves borrowed from arcade games: the game is played for two types of score, and a high-score table is tracked for each.

One is raw distance from the starting screen, measured in "meters," and the other is a general score that takes into account a few different kinds of accomplishments. I am not actually sure if the score-based design is compelling enough for sustained play; when you're working full-tilt on an idiosyncratic personal project up against a strict deadline, things like this don't always get tested for. It was interesting enough for me to continue play-testing it, at least, enough so that my best distance score is over 1,700 meters, which took about an hour to achieve.

There are not a large number of monster types in the game, although their behaviors vary depending on the difficulty of the current area. In truth, the real challenge of the game is in keeping Aurora alive by collecting sparks, but that isn't varied enough to make a generally-accessible game.

Holding down the Z key allows Aurora to throw "darts" at the monsters, and pressing different arrow keys hurls them at different angles. She can also stomp them, which does a bit more damage but carries with it the risk of getting hit. Later on the monstrous opposition ramps up considerably; in the demo playthrough video given you'll notice times in the later levels where Aurora is swarmed with monsters.

There is a rudimentary physics simulation that both Aurora and the monsters follow. It's not particularly detailed (this is one of the things that I had to wrestle with Game Maker in getting to work), but works for the game. Unfortunately, this is the closest the game comes at the moment to providing a roguelike cause-and-effect system.

The original idea was to provide physics-based traps and tools that could be used against the monsters if triggered creatively, but I couldn't get a more-complete physics system going than this without things getting stuck in walls, clipping weirdly and shooting off towards the stratosphere randomly on contact with each other, despite expending several development days on it.

Engineering an arms race that does something other than escalate

As it is, there is still some of it in place. If Aurora's speed is over a certain level, she becomes invincible. This is shown in the game as a fireball aura that surrounds her. There are several ways to build up enough speed to reach this state. At the start of a game falling from a height is the only thing that will even come close. Once wing strength has been powered up a bit, there come brief flashes of fire from flapping that can immediately slaughter a monster only if timed and aimed exactly right.

As wings continue to get stronger these flashes become longer, and eventually almost continual. Once run speed and jump strength have been improved a bit, jumps made while running at a good clip will produce a streak of fire that will tear through monsters. Eventually just running will provide enough speed to destroy monsters, but the game is balanced that this happens only when max run speed is near or at the top level.

To counter the player's increased avenues for invulnerability, monsters gain much more health towards their most powerful levels, so much that Aurora's stomp and dart attacks become much less useful. The idea is not to provide a linear increase in power on the player and monster's parts so that they are evenly matched through the game.

This may seem to be sensible game design, and certainly a lot of MMORPGs subscribe to this school of design, but it's actually fairly uninteresting. If the opposition is always matched to your level in power, then the game feels exactly the same as you progress, promoting boredom.

At its worst, this thinking has given us RPGs in which the monsters are artificially scaled to the player's level, which I consider to be a grave sign of design decadence. The two approaches are the result of design philosophies that are different at the root: the idea that the game is a set challenge that the player must overcome, and the idea that the game is an interesting experience for the player to have.

Neither is good or bad in itself, but currently the prevailing trend in experience gaming is towards trying to cook the game's challenges in order to always just be slightly beneath the player's ability to overcome, through techniques like level scaling and dynamic difficulty adjustment. I hereby go on record: this is a bad trend. It is treating the player like a pet, trying to induce him to feel powerful through largely artificial means.

To return to Mayflight, the game gives the player more frequent and longer moments of invincibility, but makes monsters much stronger in the elite levels of play so he has to rely on them. This helps Mayflight to feel like its play changes in the later phases of a long game. The roguelike this is most like is Rogue itself, where the monsters get stronger faster than the player so that ultimately he must rely on his accumulated consumable equipment, and sometimes just plain-out running away, to survive.

EDIT: Changes to version 1.02 (Warning: I haven't had a chance to test it yet):
- Empty Zones (which occur when you return to a zone some time after leaving it) now shouldn't slow down the machine and bring it to a halt. Problem (if I understand it right) was caused by overzealous message displaying.
- In highly advanced games (I encountered the problem around 3km) a problem existed in which it was possible for enemies outside the normal difficulty range to be generated. The problem hasn't been found, but it shouldn't be a problem anymore.
- In extremely advanced games, high-powered players can subside entirely on a diet of monster kills. This should still be possible, but has been made slightly more difficult. (Monsters are generally worth a third of a second less bonus time.)

There is so much to talk about concerning Mayflight that I'm splitting it up into two columns. This has been the overview and introduction column. The next one will concern design details, the nitty-gritty of how its levels are constructed, the thinking that went into object placement, and how the backgrounds were constructed.

Most of these things were deeply inspired by roguelikes. After that I should be recovered enough to start up talking about other peoples' games again, and I expect we'll be covering either Baroque for the Wii, the newest version of Dungeon Crawl, or Crawl's special game mode Dungeon Sprint. See you soon!

Posted by John Harris at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (22)

The Alamo Drafthouse has posted this neat promotional clip for Fantastic Arcade, the upcoming indie game spin-off of annual genre film festival Fantastic Fest, taking place at Austin's Highball and Alamo South Lamar from September 23rd to the 26th.

Featured in the video are some of the 29 principal indie titles that will appear at the event, like Justin Smith's Enviro-Bear 2000, Mark 'Messhof' Essen's Nidhogg, Jonatan 'Cactus' Söderström's Norrland.

You can purchase tickets for Fantastic Fest and find more information on the event at its official site.

[Via @brandonnn]

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

French cartoonist Bastien Vivès has been posting a killer series of illustrations titled "No Love For Street Fighters", depicting several World Warrior couples in various states of melancholy and heartbreak. There's even one of Maki desperate and on her knees, banging her tonfa on a window.

I've featured here four out of the six pieces Vivès has uploaded -- you can heck out the rest on his personal blog. My favorite is definitely the one of Makoto quietly consoling Blanka as he weeps into his giant green hands. I imagine his is the song playing during the scene.

[Via Electric Ant Zine,, mossmouth]]

Posted by Eric Caoili at 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Gaijin Games (Bit.Trip series) has posted a new website and trailer for its next release, a WiiWare port of Different Cloth's "rhythmical racing" iPhone gem and 2010 Mobile IGF's "Audio Excellence" award winner Lilt Line.

The WiiWare game features a "filthy" dubstep soundtrack by 16bit, 15 levels of music racing, and motion controls with the Wii Remote. This seems like a perfect fit for Gaijin Games, as the developer tends to release titles with minimalist graphics, simple but fun/addictive mechanics, and a really strong music component.

Lilt Line for WiiWare is scheduled to release this fall, but if you're attending PAX, you can try it out there! You can also download the original iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad game from the App Store for just $2.99.

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

[The Spoony Bard is a new biweekly GameSetWatch column by writer James Bishop that probes the depths of the characters, dialogue and writing in video games. This week's column deliberates on the popularity of the female protagonist in Mass Effect.]

Mass Effect is a game I powered through on the 360 because I was on a bender, having just acquired my first Xbox ever. When it came time to put the controller away, I had finished the first game and its sequel in less than a week. Truthfully, I only played the original because the sequel was coming out. I figured that understanding the story so far is important in this kind of game.

What I did not expect was my sudden attachment to the female incarnation of Commander Shepard—fondly referred to as FemShep around the web—during the first game and my continued connection in the second. It’s not that I’m opposed to BroShep/ManShep but something about the female version drew me in and made my gameplay that much more meaningful.

I’m not alone in my adoration, either. There have been numerous polls, hundreds of votes cast and countless discussions about FemShep and her alluring nature. It isn’t a stretch to say that BioWare has managed to, seemingly unintentionally, create a female protagonist that has attracted the attentions of hundreds if not thousands of people.

This seeming preference of the female Commander Shepard, as opposed to the standard male one, even extends to some of the products associated with the game. Specifically, the hardcover Collector’s Edition guide has screenshots that walk the player through the game section by section. All pertinent quests, places to go and people to shoot often have an associated picture of the Commander.

And they’re all of a blonde FemShep that the person making the guide decided to play.

That is to say, the person who had to explore every edifice, speak with every NPC and generally scour the game for tidbits willingly chose to play as FemShep. Mind you, blonde isn’t the default hair color either, so it was a conscious choice on the part of the person taking all of the screenshots.

What, You Can Play As A Female?

The weird thing about the popularity of the female option is that there has been absolutely no marketing for FemShep. Commander Shepard, as evidenced by posters, box art, promotional videos and television advertisements, is male. He is voiced by Mark Meer and the character is modeled after Mark Vanderloo. In some ways, he might as well be Mark Shepard.

Any casual observer may be entirely unaware that playing a female protagonist is even an option in Mass Effect or Mass Effect 2. So why is FemShep so popular? Any standard textbook on marketing will lay down some laws about brand and name recognition. Icons, figureheads and mascots tend to be very clearly defined for just this reason. Imagining a completely unadvertised female version of Kratos is, while sort of sexy, mind-boggling.

There are two main reasons as to why this has occurred. The first and admittedly less academic of the two reasons is pretty simple to explain: female gamers may jump at the chance to play female characters. (Not to mention that anyone wanting to romance Jacob, Thane or Garrus has to play as FemShep.) That isn’t to say that females can’t play as Mr. Commander Shepard but simply that, given the rare option, it seems like women would be prone to trying to play their own gender.

With the more general hypothesis out of the way, the second is that people play as the female version precisely because Commander Shepard is male in all other ways. The lines, the character animations and various other tidbits are male-oriented in a way that makes FemShep more than your stereotypical RPG female protagonist. For one, she wears practical armor. Well, mostly, but it is science fiction after all; we can accept floating visors and the like.

Mass Effect is a bit of an odd franchise because while all the official materials that relate to marketing and the like showcase a man, leading many to assume that the canonical Shepard is one, the story within makes every effort to avoid such insinuations. Pronouns are used sparingly and often tend to be gender neutral at best and at worst the “he/she” conversion is integrated smoothly into the dialogue. Even in the Mass Effect: Redemption comic series, they refrain from referring to the Commander as one or the other, going so far as to say that it’s difficult to discern gender from the remains they found.

Dude Looks Like A Lady Only Vice-Versa

But even with these intentionally neutral mechanics, many of the other male characteristics seep into the FemShep gameplay. For example, you can choose to dance at the clubs present in the game, be it Afterlife or the Eternity Bar or what-have-you. Because the option was there and I happened to notice it, I figured I’d go ahead and dance a bit. Never know, right? Dancing could, theoretically, be an important part of the game.

And it was.

But that wasn’t because some quest triggered or an NPC wandered up to offer me a job. This was an important moment in my gameplay because Commander Shepard, my FemShep, was doing the standard animation that all the NPC male dancers perform. She swayed to and fro while the other females cut a proverbial rug.

Speaking from anecdotal experience alone, it looks as if many of the character animations were used for both models. As another obvious point of animation-borrowing from ManShep to FemShep, there is a scene when speaking to Miranda where FemShep is sitting in an almost undeniably male position: slouched over in her chair, hands between her legs with said legs pushed out in a v-shape.

The borrowing only becomes obvious when wearing the party dress from the Kasumi's Stolen Memory DLC while talking to Miranda in the previously mentioned scene. Shepard’s hands are through the fabric, for one, and you can see up the dress. There is, in fact, a reason that girls sit as they do in skirts and dresses.

It goes beyond just the aesthetic, though. Shepard presents the same set of lines regardless of gender. Whether you’re telling off the Illusive Man, saving a disease-stricken batarian or pushing some Blue Suns thug out a window, the actions and dialogue are the exact same. None of this proves to be a hindrance to FemShep, nor is she popular in spite of it.

In fact, FemShep is so wildly popular because of it.

The moment that FemShep prepares to take on the threat to the universe, she inevitably will give an impassioned speech as to why they must do what they are preparing to do. This is true for both games in Mass Effect and many other franchises. The oddity is that it’s an empowered female doing the speaking.

If we wanted to see yet another righteous man bolstering his troops, we’d watch Braveheart, play Halo or just roll up a ManShep. Watching FemShep, and hearing Jennifer Hale, doing this bolstering is almost unsettling. It shifts our expectations and moves us to the edge of our seats. And we love her for it.

[James Bishop is a freelance writer for various outlets, holds a Bachelor of Arts in English from Indiana University Southeast and is not fond of the Oxford comma. He can be reached at jamesrollinbishop at gmail dot com.]

Posted by James Bishop at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (17)

Earlier this week, we mentioned the Experimental Gameplay Project's "Zero Button" challenge when we featured Nicolai Troshinsky's excellent UFO On Tape, but now organizers have posted all 40 submissions from the monthly competition for you to play for free.

Though there are a few titles that broke the theme's rules and used one or two buttons, most of the others came up with creative ways for users to play with just the mouse, a microphone, or camera. All of the games were developed by just one person in seven days.

If you're looking for a good place to start while checking out the list, the games at the top of the list -- Capz Machinery, Jitter, and Avoidal -- are worth a few minutes of your time. Tiejo Mursu's Movie Theater is also pretty clever, though it doesn't have much replay value.

Don't forget that with the new month, there's a new Experimental Gameplay Project challenge, which asks developers to create a "neverending" game.

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

Indie developer and 2009 IGF award finalist Ratloop (Mightier, Rocketbirds Revolution!) has released a second free update to its fun iPhone puzzler Helsing's Fire. The first update -- which tweaked difficulty/performance and added an Absurd difficulty mode -- was generous, this new release is massive!

Helsing's Fire 1.2 introduces a new "Shocking Mire" campaign starring the Splodin Toad, new twists to its light-based puzzle system, a new character, a journal allowing you to replay old levels, the ability to compete against others online by collecting bounties for tough stages, and updates to the colorblind mode.

You can grab all that for free if you already have a copy of Helsing's Fire, or buy the game with the updates for just $0.99!

[Via Pocket Gamer]

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

GDC Online organizers are reminding potential attendees that today is the last day to save up to 40% on passes to the October 5th-8th event in Austin, TX, fully detailing the comprehensive exhibit floor, Summits, keynotes, a PlayStation Home developer day and more.

The Austin, Texas based GDC Online conference -- formerly known as GDC Austin -- is mainly focused on the development of online games, including free-to-play titles, social network games, and traditional MMOs, with a veteran online game industry advisory board evaluating and selecting the lectures.

There are now more than 120 panels, lectures and tutorials currently scheduled for the event -- including the recently announced keynote from Civilization II designer and now Zynga chief game designer Brian Reynolds (FrontierVille), and just-debuted track keynotes from Blizzard on Battle.net, Raph Koster on social design trends, and European browser game giant BigPoint on its rise to success.

These lectures join a full set of highlighted lectures including Main Conference talks on October 6th-8th from Relic, Sony Online, Carbine, KingsIsle, IMVU, Disney, Playdom, BioWare Austin, Hangout Industries, Broken Bulb Studios, CCP, Gaia Online, Playfish, InstantAction, Ubisoft and a host of other notable companies at the leading worldwide online game-specific conference.

One of the other major advantages of attending GDC Online is the comprehensive list of nearly 90 exhibitors with whom attendees are able to get product demonstrations, meet, and interact on the vibrant GDC Online Expo Floor. These include major firms like Epic, Rackspace, Gaikai, Offerpal, Vindicia, Trinigy, ARIN, Versant, Rixty, Softlayer, and many other notable companies in the space.

Vendor-led sessions will also provide notable takeaway for many attendees, with a just-confirmed PlayStation Home developer day -- presented by Sony and giving full information on the console-based online world platform. Also confirmed are sessions by Playspan, Offerpal, Hi5, Autodesk and a host of other firms in the process of being scheduled and announced on the website.

Finally, the four Summits taking place at GDC Online on October 5th and 6th cover some major emerging areas in the video game space, with an iPhone Summit, iPad Summit, 3D Stereoscopic Gaming Summit and the Game Narrative Summit all presenting major speakers, themes, and takeaway relevant to both those making online games and devotees of these particular submarkets.

GDC Online is operated by the UBM TechWeb Game Network, as is this website, and will take place October 5-8, 2010 at the Austin Convention Center in Austin, Texas. To learn more about lectures across all tracks and summits for the event, for which reduced-rated registration is only open until the end of Wednesday, September 1st, please visit the GDC Online's official website.

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

['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 Passionfruit Games' PC casual game Tiger Eye: Curse of the Riddle Box.]

Tiger Eye: Curse of the Riddle Box is a casual game adaptation of Marjorie M. Liu's novel. The script is all written by the original author, and this shows. It does feel like a romance novel.

The characters are implausibly self-aware and spend a long time dwelling on their own feelings, and they partake of a certain Mary-Sue perfection. The hero has infeasibly broad shoulders. The heroine is the favorite person of practically every non-evil person she meets. The things that are silly genre features of romance novels continue to be silly.

And did I mention that the hero is also a shapeshifting were-tiger who just happens not to be able to shapeshift right now because the villain stole his pelt?

On the other hand, revelations about the plot are reasonably paced throughout the game, and there's vastly more storytelling complexity than in most casual games. The story ends with a moderate cliff-hanger -- "Curse of the Riddle Box" is only part one of at least two -- but within that time we've already gotten several important personal revelations, multiple competing enemies on our trail, and a selection of ancient legends. It feels like someone thought about story pacing, not just level design.

As a collection of light puzzle gameplay, it's also decent in its line. I don't love hidden object games, but Tiger Eye mixes up the hidden object searches with a variety of mini-games. There are ciphers. There are jigsaw puzzles. There are magic square puzzles. There are spacial manipulation puzzles and pipe puzzles and word puzzles. None of these elements are very hard, but some of them manage to be clever despite being on the easy side.

Add to that a generous hint system -- but with a pretty good mechanic to reward not using the hints -- and you have a game that holds the attention without repeating itself too much.

So I wish that the interface between story and game had been stronger.

It's not terrible. Many of the mini-games are presented as things that the heroine reasonably has to do anyway. Instead of her searching her room for bugs or bombs, you search it for her. You have to reassemble torn papers that she needs to read, or puzzle out the significance of ciphers she finds.

Some of these games are less successful abstractions. I enjoyed the puzzle content of the mini-game that activated the heroine's psychic abilities, but I found the fiction of it hard to take seriously -- that I was laying out the protagonist's neurons in such a way that they would fire properly. This is not something that she ever consciously does herself, and neither does anyone else. It's an activity for me-the-player.

This artificiality is a bit distancing. I don't mind -- indeed, I welcome -- the fact that the heroine is a defined person with her own preferences and personal history. I don't need to project myself into her persona in order to be interested in her story. But the gameplay here is not about learning to see things from her perspective or conquer the challenges she faces. It's about earning plot tokens.

So not all the gameplay applies to the plot. Conversely, not all of the plot is interactive. The majority of the real narrative content happens in cut scenes. You can activate the psychic powers, but you can't choose what she does with them. You can't control happens in the conversations, or indeed do much of anything to contribute to them. And some of those scenes are fairly long. It didn't help me that the art for the cut-scenes is a different style from the art in other parts of the game, and that I found myself distracted by issues like improbable anatomy for the characters.

I found myself quite often comparing it with another romance-oriented hidden object game I played recently, Love and Death: Bitten. Bitten has a shallow story and implausible characters -- much more implausible and generic than the ones in Tiger Eye, though I think we could be looking for better still. On the other hand, it's more effective at unfolding the plot and characterization through the hidden object sections, and making the gameplay relevant to the story.

I'm kind of hoping the designers for the two franchises will take a good look at one another's work, and take notes.

(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 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Though no publisher has been kind enough to bring over last year's Disaster Report 3 (PSP, pictured) to the States yet, I won't let that stop me from posting about its sequel -- and expect more articles on the topic until someone starts localizing these games again.

Irem revealed that its latest entry to the Disaster Report/Zettai Zetsumei Toshi/SOS: The Final Escape/Raw Danger series is coming to the PlayStation 3 this winter and will feature support for both 3D, Move, and 5.1 surround sound.

In Disaster Report 4: Summer Memories, players once again find themselves in the aftermath of a major disaster (earthquake), struggling to escape a ruined city full of collapsed buildings, panicking people, and lots of obstacles.

Some of the game's new features include the ability to enter collapsed building (where players can find survivors and additions escape routes), a "cleanliness" feature that raises characters' stress as they become more dirty, and toilets/bathrooms that increase characters' cleanliness.

Disaster Report 4 will also have new items, like crutches for when players injure their legs. The game has character customization options, too, allowing players to pick their gender/face/hair at the beginning and find over 100 clothing items while playing.

[Via Andriasang.com, Image via Eastern Mind]

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

Treasure's cult favorite 2D shooter series Bangai-O is headed to Xbox Live Arcade this fall with Bangai-O HD: Missile Fury, a new game promising "a sensory overload of thousands of missiles" and lots of fruit rewards (for refilling your health meter).

Priced at 800 MS points, the game will have more than 100 levels, level editor, the ability to save your custom stages online (unfortunately without the awesome "Sound Load" feature in the DS game that transferred data via audio files), leaderboards, and more.

IGN has posted a preview for Bangai-O HD: Missile Fury with several screenshots from an early alpha build of the game, and the number of on-screen projectiles and explosions already looks inssaaaaaneeee.

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

Two years after its release on Xbox Live Arcade (and more than a year after the port's announcement), The Behemoth's acclaimed four-player beat'em up Castle Crashers is finally available on PlayStation Network, priced at $14.99.

Along with its hand-drawn artwork by Dan Paladin and 2D sidescrolling gameplay, the PSN edition has several new features: local join-in-progress, an "Insane Store" (with items designed to help players take on the game's Insane Mode), two new trophies, and an Arena Mode offering team-based or free-for-all deathmatches.

Castle Crashers also has a new volleyball mode, which has optional AI opponents and allows for up to 8-player matches. You get all that, plus 20 levels in the normal campaign, more than 40 weapons, 20 unlockable characters, and online/local multiplayer!

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

[In the latest in a series of demoscene-related posts on GameSetWatch, AteBit's Paul 'EvilPaul' Grenfell documents his trip to Assembly 2010 in Finland in August, starting with an examination of the amazing PC demo entries for one of the pre-eminent demo parties of the year.]

Earlier in August I visited the 19th edition of Assembly, the demoscene and gamer party in Helsinki, Finland. The four day event attracts over 5000 visitors and takes place inside the massive Hartwall ice-hockey arena that sits on the outskirts of the city.

This year’s event was so full of demoscene goodness that I'm going to split my write-up into a few parts. First off, I'll concentrate on the main event of the PC demo competition, and I'll try to cover everything else in future pieces.

The PC demo competition was always going to be an interesting one this year. ASD's coder, Navis, has been talking about the creation of his Assembly demo for quite some time now on his blog. When the author of "the 5th best demo of all time” (as voted by Pouet's users) says he's working on something big, you expect something amazing.

Closer to the event, rumors started drifting out that Fairlight were up to something too. They won the demo competition last year with the amazing Frameranger so, again, you expect something amazing. Both groups were also booked to present seminars this year and, yes, both talks gave us tiny previews of the demos that we were to see premiered later on.

The actual competition then, shown in the early hours of Sunday morning, was an exhilarating experience. At most demoscene parties, a panel of judges pre-selects the best demos for each competition. This not only weeds out any truly awful, offensive, non-working or otherwise rule-breaking demos, but the jury’s comments and ratings also help to set the running order for the competition.

Simply put, the competitions usually start by showing the not-so-good demos first, and then work their way through to finish on the best. By the time that ASD and Fairlight's demos were announced, the crowd's anticipation had reached feverish levels.

The two demos were both stunning, and each in different ways. Both groups played to their strengths: ASD using their trademark combination of a story driven demo linked by mesmerising transitions while Fairlight continued with their recent trend of eschewing traditional polygon driven effects completely and instead presented another showcase of their particle engine.

The result was hard to call but it was clear to everyone that, as we all knew before we even saw them, these two would be fighting for first and second place (click on the demo names to get to real-time downloadable versions at Pouet.net):

Happiness is Around the Bend by ASD

Ceasefire (all falls down..) by Fairlight and CNCD

The rest of the competition was also impressive and, like pretty much all of Assembly's competitions this year, there were no poor entries. Highlights for me included Satori's completely non-traditional, completely software rendered demo, Koiban, and Devolution by Kewlers.

Koiban by Satori

Devolution by Kewlers

We had to wait until Sunday afternoon to hear the results at the main prize-giving ceremony. I think the placing (voted for by the party’s visitors) is about right - ASD took first place and Fairlight second. The demoscene is a very small and friendly place, and we could clearly see the mutual respect between Navis and Smash (the UK-based coders from ASD and Fairlight respectively) as they approached the stage together to collect their prizes.

Both groups are clearly at the top of their game, and both are clearly pouring their hearts into their demos. The prize? Apart from the huge admiration and respect? Well, the winning PC demo collected a 7000 Euros cash prize this year, but with a project that took a small team X months of their spare time to produce, only they could tell us how that translates to an hourly wage.

Works like these compete with the productions of professional motion graphics companies and threaten to cross-over to more mainstream media channels. However, it is still very clear that demos are still a labor of love for all involved in their creation.

Next time, I'll be looking at the other main competitions - 4k, 64k, oldschool, shortfilm and wild - as well as touching on the game development, graphics and music entries. In the meantime, you can check out the releases yourself over at Pouet.

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

Apple accessory manufacturer Griffin has unveiled PartyDock, a new peripheral that allows up to four users to play games on a single iPad or iPhone 4 with their own wireless controllers. It's also designed as a media dock for video/photos/music and can connect to an external monitor (composite/component connections).

Griffin hasn't announced pricing or a release date for PartyDock yet, but it says it will release a PartyDock app with three free minigames (Midway Motors, Fishing Frenzy, and Flippin' Frogs) and support a Wits & Wagers Family app. Some product shots of the dock show off a Battle of the Sexes port, too.

The company says it will release more PartyDock-compatible games in the future, which consumers will be able to find by searching for "Griffin Publishing" in the App Store.

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

Hudson Entertainment wants to do some good while marketing its shadow-based puzzle platformer Lost In Shadow, so the company is running a campaign on Facebook where every time someone 'Likes' the game's page on the social network, it will donate 10 cents to the Child's Play charity.

10 cents might not seem like a lot, but if enough people take a few seconds to give the page a thumbs up, they could potentially raise thousands. Hudson says it will also donate $1 to Child's Play for anyone who likes the page and changes their profile picture to a picture of a shadow (any shadow).

The publisher plans to count up all the 'Likes' and Shadow Profile Pictures at its Lost in Shadow Facebook page on September 7th. Lost in Shadow, which you can learn more about here, releases for Wii on January 4th, 2011.

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

['Diamond In The Rough' is a regularly scheduled GameSetWatch opinion column by Tom Cross focusing on the best bits of less-than-excellent games. This week, Tom loads up Stalker: Clear Sky and thinks of Defense of the Ancients.]

Uber Entertainment's new XBLA title Monday Night Combat is set to introduce the shooter to the Defense of The Ancients-inspired Tower Defense genre in a big way. The former is a new, exciting genre, whose early successes have been mostly relegated to the realm of RTS’s, from League of Legends to Demigod.

Here and there, mods and lesser-known indie games pop up that attempt to do what Monday Night Combat is doing. What no one seems to realize is that while MNC may be the flashiest entry to the first and third person action shooter tower defense genre (an impermanent name, I hope), it has a strange, unsuccessful predecessor in the form of GSC Game World's Stalker: Clear Sky.

Stalker certainly isn’t a franchise that screams “tower defense.” The original Stalker game, Shadow of Chernobyl, is an open-world “immersive” sim. It’s set in the ruins of Chernobyl (as are the other games in the series, Clear Sky and Call of Pripyat), where mysterious anomalies, mutated horrors, and scavengers (called “Stalkers”) fight for breathing space and primacy.

My first playthrough of SOC remains one of the more frightening, unique experiences I’ve had in a game. The open valleys, ragged settlements, and deadly horrifying tunnels and warrens of The Zone (as the blasted area is called in-game) are home to deadly, dark, and meticulously realized encounters with murderous forces.

SOC is also an unforgiving military simulator. Your Stalker collects weapons, food, armor, and artifacts, and cobbles together a small arsenal over the course of the game. By the game’s end death isn’t quite as immediate as it is during one’s first minutes in-Zone, but it’s still an old, dangerous companion. Everything in SOC has weight and significance. Every trip underground found me overburdened, forced to leave behind precious supplies and ammunition to get out alive.

It’s a first person survival horror game that’s happy to mix in upgrade mechanics (for guns and armor) and an open-world quest system that feels like it stepped out of the original Fallout (many quests have unforgiving time limits). It’s not for the faint of heart, much like the third game in the series, Call of Pripyat, which did its best to improve on its forbearer, even as it moved the action to area surrounding Pipyat.

Clear Sky is a strange beast. It shares the world (in fact, its Zone is identical, architecturally, to the Zone seen in SOC), enemies and basic gameplay of SOC. Clear Sky does add a more fully-realized upgrade mechanic (that would only truly become a fully-functioning set of mechanics in Pripyat), but that’s not what sets it apart from its brothers, and not what’s earned this middle child so much animosity from Stalker’s loyal fanbase.

In Clear Sky, different factions (of Stalkers) vie for control of the Zone. Freedom, Duty, the Clear Sky faction, the Renegades, and others all fight for territory. Players can ally themselves with whichever faction they choose, and there are several moments throughout the game when the player will begin working for a new faction out of necessity. Faction wars occur all across the massive zone, from the swamps, to science stations, to military facilities.

In general, an area will have several key locations, places that factions can occupy. In the swamp, burnt out villages, an old church, and a run-down machine yard all serve as faction emplacements. The acquisition of these unassuming targets takes a lot of time and effort: I’ve spent at least half of my time ingame fighting for these strategic locations. I didn’t fight alone, however.

Once I’d allied myself with the Clear Sky faction (as one must, when starting the game), I was tasked with joining Clear Sky troops on the front, fighting back against Raider incursions. From time to time, I could accept a mission (to assault an enemy location) and take as my backup a group of stalkers. This happens rarely. Most stalker squads are there to buy and sell stuff, and go about their business: assaulting other stalkers.

No matter what players do, there is a constant push and pull along the front lines of the various faction wars in Clear Sky. I spent too much time resting and repairing my weapons in camp, on one occasion. Upon returning to the Zone, I found that my faction had lost one strategic location, but had acquired another. Likewise, the final enemy base in the first swamp zone was taken without me, but only because I had lead the charges that had captured the church, machine yard, and farmstead hours before.

Factions in Clear Sky aren’t that powerful. They regularly send squads out into the Zone to kill and capture, but these moving units (represented by a slightly different shade of dot on the strategic map) don’t always succeed at capturing their targets. For assured victory, they need the Player Character. It’s almost a given that if I lend my shotgun to the cause of the Clear Sky faction, they will win every battle I’m a part of, save for the more than likely occurrence of my untimely death.

For the first 10 or so hours of play, the battles that rage back and forth across the Zone are brutal and exciting. By the time I’d helped Clear Sky faction regain control of the swamp zone, I’d made a generous amount of money, upgraded my pitiful starting arsenal to something slightly less pitiful, and collected a few useful artifacts. I felt reasonably competent, powerful, and sure of myself. True to form, Clear Sky changes things up as it unlocks new zones to explore.

Stalkers and mercenaries populate the next zone, and an army base guards the only path to safety from the passage between zones. It’s a cruel, relentless sprint from the entry point to safety among the Stalker faction, the military hounding you every step of the way. I died many times here, cut down by a heavy machine gun I couldn’t see. Immediately following my escape, I was enlisted by the Stalkers to help them take several enemy locations. Again, the new weapons and increased numbers of my foes lead to my death, again and again.

It’s in these situations that Clear Sky looks to be a brilliant mixture of tower defense and classic Stalker survival horror shooter. Locations borrowed from the first game are chock-full of deadly new enemies. New items and weapons are no match for the ever-ready forces of the zone, but if I help the Stalkers kill enough military units and mutants, I might be able to buy new items, weapons, and armor. Maybe then I’ll be able to join up with Freedom or Duty, make some real money, and participate in the huge battles that are the highlights of the late game in Clear Sky.

So, Clear Sky is a tower defense game set in a giant, sometimes frightening open world, though at every turn it undercuts this interesting new take on this interesting new genre. It’s impossible to upgrade or enhance factions: the Stalkers who join your battles cannot be outfitted with new weapons. Factions feel divorced from the player, as do the mechanics in place to facilitate player-faction interaction. The only way to effect ingame events is to help Stalkers kill other Stalkers.

Many of the tower defense elements that are in the game are broken. In the late game, I helped Duty attack and capture a large enemy outpost. Delighted, I returned to base (across the Zone in Duty territory) to replenish my supplies and prepare for the next phase of Duty’s assault. Maybe this time we’d drive Freedom out of the Zone entirely. Instead, when I looked at my map, I saw that the Freedom base I’d just cleared out was now repopulated with Freedom troops. Worse, aside from a cash bonus, nothing about the Zone had changed. Freedom and Duty continued to send their forces against each other, and no doubt I’d be tasked with leading another base assault in the near future.

There’s no permanence to the faction warfare in Clear Sky. The first swamp zone can be fully conquered (aside from a few pockets of resistance), but it’s impossible to completely destroy or capture an enemy faction. I might as well have spent all of my time killing mutants and pursuing side quests: they’re just as rewarding from a financial standpoint, and it’s easier to kill dogs and snorks than it is to kill men with guns.

Stalker has always been an incredibly unforgiving game, no matter the iteration. Clear Sky may be the worst of the bunch. Soldiers can drop grenades on me with unerring accuracy. Whole squads will attack me at once. It’s the kind of merciless, deadly play that leads to two things: cheap, sneaky tactics (I’m quite the master of sniping stalkers from various positions), and reload screens. Unfortunately, when I load back into the Zone, often my mission objectives have changed.

More often than not, the various enemy and friendly squads nearby have disappeared or relocated. Unless I quick save in the middle of a firefight, it is entirely possible that a battle I heard across the swamps no longer exists. This happened every time I quick-loaded a game, or loaded an older save. The game is completely incapable of recording what was taking place in the Zone at the save game point. There might as well not be a quicksave (or regular save) option. Checkpoints would be just as helpful for recording ingame activity and minute-to-minute occurrences.

This makes the punishment for death more than just a tax on my time. There’s nothing more galling than getting this close to successfully helping my squad take a key point, on orders, only to reload and have that objective disappear. In Clear Sky, your superiors will only pay you in items and money if you attack designated targets on the map. It’s pointless to attack enemy emplacements at random. I won’t get paid for my troubles, and I’ll probably die.

It’s incredibly frustrating to realize that I can’t actually treat these stalkers as enemies, or take objectives as I please. It’s even more frustrating to realize that unless I’m extremely careful, I’ll lose all of my progress (or money, or my squad) thanks to a simple glitch.

Clear Sky is a broken game, like its predecessor. It also never fully commits to its tower defense pretensions, which is a shame. The RPG mechanics of the Stalker games (where your guns are your stats), the unforgiving and frightening Zone, and the basics of tower defense make for surprisingly entertaining play when combined. It’s unclear whether GSC Gameworld will reintroduce the faction warfare mechanic to the recently announced Stalker sequel.

These elements were completely excised for Pripyat, the series’ third outing, and it was the better Stalker game (if not a better tower defense game) for it. I sincerely hope someone pursues this line of design. The mix of RPG, open-world shooter, and tower defense is one that doesn’t really exist right now, outside of Clear Sky. It’s an exciting genre that deserves better than this.

Clear Sky is quite the opposite of the original DotA and the newer Monday Night Combat. Clear Sky applied the tower defense genre to a persistent, frightening game world. It’s an application that makes victories and losses feel like more than just “one more round.” It’s too bad the game can’t even remember these (non) persistent advances and retreats, because conquering the Zone faction by faction would be a unique, rewarding experience.

[Tom Cross is a managing editor at Rules of the Game, writes for Popmatters, and blogs about games at Delayed Responsibility. You can contact him at romain47 at gmail dot com.]

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

[This is the final pre-early deadline heads up for GDC Online, which I'll be attending in a few weeks in Austin, and there's some big names in the final track keynotes announcement, including the folks at Blizzard on Battle.net and online design legend Raph Koster.]

A day before the GDC Online early deadline, the major October 5th-8th Austin-based event has added track keynotes from Blizzard's Greg Canessa (on Battle.net), Playdom's Raph Koster (on social mechanics), and Bigpoint's Heiko Hubertz (on the rise of Europe in online gaming).

The Austin, Texas based GDC Online conference -- formerly known as GDC Austin -- is sharply focused on the development of online games, including free-to-play titles, social network games, and traditional MMOs, with a veteran online game industry advisory board evaluating and selecting the lectures.

There are now more than 120 panels, lectures and tutorials currently scheduled for the October 5th-8th event -- and following the announcement of a keynote from Civilization II designer and now Zynga chief game designer Brian Reynolds (FrontierVille), three track keynotes are debuting.

The brand-new track keynotes across the GDC Online Main Conference, which takes place from Wednesday October 6th to Friday October 8th, and for which majorly discounted passes are only available until Wednesday, are:

- In a production track keynote called 'Battle.net: A Postmortem', Blizzard's Battle.net project director Greg Canessa and technical director Matt Versluys will present an extremely rare lecture from the World Of Warcraft and Starcraft II creators, "sharing lessons learned from building and launching the new iteration of an online game service that connects and powers all Blizzard titles."

- Playdom's VP of creative design Raph Koster -- a stalwart of online game design from Ultima Online through Star Wars Galaxies to his current work in social games -- presents a design track keynote, 'Classic Social Mechanics: The Engines Behind Everything Multiplayer'. He explains: "Many lessons are available to us from both anthropology and the history of games that demonstrate that sometimes, social mechanics are just old wine in new bottles", looking at underlying mechanics and principles that drive sociable gameplay in everything from Facebook games to sports.

- Major online game firm Bigpoint's CEO and founder Heiko Hubertz will discuss 'Europe: The Next Big Thing in Gaming' in his business track keynote. Hubertz, whose firm is working on the Battlestar Galactica MMO and has already built up a powerhouse European presence through browser games, outside of the 'hot' social network game market, explains how Europe "offers lucrative opportunities to global-minded... studios looking to significantly broaden their communities of players, particularly for those developing browser-based games outside Facebook."

These lectures join just-debuted talks with lessons from APB, Habbo and even Cow Clicker, with a full set of highlighted lectures including talks from Relic, Sony Online, Carbine, KingsIsle, IMVU, Disney, Playdom, BioWare Austin, Hangout Industries, Broken Bulb Studios, CCP, Gaia Online, Playfish, InstantAction, Ubisoft and a host of other notable companies at the leading worldwide online game-specific conference.

GDC Online is operated by the UBM TechWeb Game Network, as is this website, and will take place October 5-8, 2010 at the Austin Convention Center in Austin, Texas. To learn more about lectures across all tracks and summits for the event, for which reduced-rated registration is only open until Wednesday, September 1st, please visit the GDC Online's official website.

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

NG:Dev.Team, the indie German crew that put out Last Hope for Neo Geo AES/CD and Dreamcast a few years ago, plans to release a Dreamcast version of its new and original Neo Geo MVS shoot'em-up Fast Striker this winter.

Fast Striker features three game modes/difficulties (each with different scoring systems), six stages, more than 40 animated enemy types, over six animated bosses, 3D scrolling backgrounds, a 17-song soundtrack, internet rankings via code, and more.

You can put in a preorder now for the region-free game, with either a standard edition for €33/$42 or a limited edition copy that includes a soundtrack CD and an alternate insert for €46/$58. You can also buy a Fast Striker Double Bundle that includes both versions for €69/$88.

Posted by Eric Caoili at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

MolleIndustria, makers of Oiligarchy and Every Day The Same Dream, have put out another thought-provoking game called Memory Reloaded: The Downfall, a quick experience similar to the card-matching game we've all played but updated for "these unstable times". You can play it for free online here.

You might remember that Molleindustria released a similar Memory Reloaded game in Italian a few years, which also tested how players remembered history, but this new version looks at the "semantic shifts, revisions, and manipulations" of current events like universal/socialized health care, ruthless/needy bankers, etc.

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

Ahead of its appearance at PAX later this week, 24 Caret Games has posted a new trailer for its time-bending shooter/rhythm game hybrid Retro/Grade, which was a finalist in both the Design and Audio categories at the 2009 Independent Games Festival awards.

That initial IGF prototype has changed a lot in the past two years, and this video shows off the game's new visuals, new perspective, new music, and more, building on an already awesome concept: play a shoot'em up in reverse, dodging enemy shots bullets behind you while catching your own shots, manipulating time to undo your mistakes.

24 Caret Games will show off Retro/Grade at PAX booth 3008, giving out posters, info cards, and even a shirt if you can beat a specific challenge. It's also running a contest in which the gamers with the top five scores using a guitar controller and the top five score using a DualShock 3 will receive their name in the credits.

Retro/Grade will release on PSN some time in 2011. You can find more information on the title at its official site.

[Via PlayStation Blog]

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

[Pixels On Stage is a new not-so-regular GameSetWatch column by Matt 'Fort90' Hawkins that will highlight the ever-increasing convergence of video games and performance art. This first entry takes a look at a unique 8-bit specific stage production that has just wrapped up its first run in New York City, called The Dudleys!]

Reaching the end of its very first limited engagement run in Manhattan later this evening is the off-Broadway play The Dudleys! Subtitled "A Family Game", The Dudleys! is the brainchild of Leegrid Stevens and has been described as a look at the adolescent memories of a young man through a glitchy 8-bit game.

In fact, before the play even begins, Stevens inserts a cartridge into the NES that's placed at the foot of the stage, to "start" the proceedings. And the memories in question are centered around the death of devoted husband and father Tom Dudley, along with the effect it has on the rest of the family.

First we have the two Dudley boys: Derek, who suffers from a classic case of youngest child syndrome, and Vic, the eldest son whose memories fuel the game. There's also middle sister Sylvia, who has the most promising future but is accident prone. And rounding out the immediate family is Clara, Tom's wife and mother of the aforementioned children, who ends up exhibiting the most pronounced aftereffect of her husband's death.

The entire family was devoted to the Mormon faith, but Tom's passing causes her to look for spiritual fulfillment elsewhere, specifically Judaism. A decision that sends shockwaves throughout the rest of the clan.

Derek ends up taking it the hardest, since he was forced to become a missionary in South America. Something that his other siblings also had to engage in, but his stint in particular ended prematurely due to an injury. And his inability to fulfill the obligation, despite the circumstances surrounding it, is something his mother constantly gave him grief about, so for her to nonchalantly give up the faith is practically the straw that breaks the camel's back. Which manifests itself as acts of vandalism. Not doing much better is Sylvia, who is willingly involved with an abusive boyfriend, despite the fact that she is adamant about women's issues and exhibiting other traits are that are "not typical" to battered women according to Vic. All due to the fear of losing someone else in her life. As for Vic, even after his father's death, he must contend to what a disappointment his father was. In addition to being "too soft", he was also extremely gullible.

Case in point: it's revealed that the real reason why there was no money to send Derek to college, despite the other kids being able to attend school, was due to because the set-aside funds was squandered on a failed business venture. One that everyone but Tom could have seen was fraud miles away. Hence Tom's sister, Aunt Meg's theory that the family practically wanted their head of the household to perish, due to embarrassment and shame. She tried curing Tom of his cancer via non-traditional means, at the makeshift clinic at her home where she looks after others with similar life-threatening ailments, via the power of positive thinking. Which obviously did not work, and the blame once again is placed on the family for impending her efforts, by "poisoning" Tom's mind, leading to even more family drama. Meg also has a daughter, Onna, who is also angry at mother, but for completely different reasons.

To a certain extent, The Dudleys is your typical family melodrama, one that deals with familiar territory: along with the aforementioned crisis of faith are ones relating to identity, unfulfilled expectations, as well as misguided ones, coping with the ugly truth, and loss of course. The key difference here being that everything is wrapped in a NES-like package. Every scene is presented as a different level of a game, with game-like elements liberally applied (much of it iconic; there's random flashing boxes with question marks, a la Super Mario Bros, littered about).

These environments on stage are actual 8-bit graphics, projected behind the actors. For the most part they simply help set-up the action; before each scene we get a notification ("Level 4-2: Dinner World") along with a score and life count. Yet they are somewhat interactive, such as when Derek and Onna ride around town, smashing mailboxes; when Derek's real bat swings around, when it makes "contact" with a pixilated mailbox, we get a little explosion.

Virtually every one of these elements are called up on the spot, according to the actors’ performances and not the other way around (which among other things, could have been a disaster). They also help to punctuate the dance numbers, which are primarily driven by an original soundtrack composed via a Game Boy, Commodore 64, and NES.

For the most part, all the game-like elements are original, with the exception of the aforementioned references, though actual NES games play a minor role as well, such as the original Final Fantasy and Mike Tyson's Punch Out. Often because that's what Derek and Vic are playing at the time of some pivotal moment of their lives. Though we are regularly reminded that we are watching a game being played and which the participants are somewhat controlling the action.

At one point, in order to spare themselves yet another boring dissertation from their mother, the guys erroneously use the Konami code to grant her 30 lives, which she loses spiritually during the course of the play. Again, the game we are watching is supposed to be out of whack; at another point, the action becomes so glitchy up that the director is forced to interrupt the action and blow air into the cartridge before hitting restart. Ultimately, the video game motif is somewhat unclear and inconsistent, but never to an offensive degree. In fact, my biggest fear, that it being just a simple story with video games needlessly overlaid is not the case here, thankfully.

Another relief is that the story is never preachy or heavy-handed, despite the topics touched upon being so. I literally breathed a sigh of relief when the show was over with and I was spared the clichéd examination of what the Mormon faith was all about; we get only bits and pieces that matter, at least for someone in the middle of the events portrayed. Though what makes the play so enjoyable is the stellar cast; everyone, primarily the core family members, do a wonderful job of breathing life into their characters.

Stand outs include Brandon Bales as Derek, who demonstrates the kind of frustrations that is universally relatable, Dianna Ruppe as Sylvia, whose goofy demeanor is impossible not to fall in love with, and Erin Treadway who delivers the most touching performance of all as a wife who tried her best to stand by her undeniably flawed man till the very end. Eric Slater, who is credited as Dead Tom deserves a special note; for the most part he's constantly hovering each scene, as an undead soul, and acting appropriately ghoulish. Which makes the latter moments of the play, in comes alive (literally) as the world's nicest guy and seemingly the perfect father all the more poignant.

Overall, the production is exceptionally tight; the 8-bit aesthetic is utilized sensibly, to the point of become an effective method of addressing a primary issue consistent with all off-Broadway productions, that being the usual strained resources as it relates to sets in general. Certain elements could have been pushed further, but they would have been too distracting perhaps. I suppose it's also worth mentioning that I originally saw The Dudleys! late last year, during a dress rehearsal.

And over that time, the play has been clearly workshopped and streamlined, though to a fault in certain aspects. Perhaps my memory serves me wrong, but I recall events being even more out of order. In the end, the current iteration makes the action easier to process, but my attitude is, if you're going to have something be out of order, go for the gusto. Though this is hardly a concern for anyone seeing the Dudleys! for the first time.

Yet, there is still room for some improvements: the aforementioned occasional dance numbers were cute and all, but still a tad bit too long and too in love with the form, and could definitely be either shortened or simply featured stronger choreography. A somewhat related issue is how Meg's inability to cure her patients nets zombies, that she must constantly blow away with a shotgun in most scenes she’s in. The symbolism is cute (i.e. constantly being reminded of and tormented by her failures) and certainly fits within the narrative structure, but the joke eventually wears out its welcome.

With the burgeoning intersecting between the world of performance art and video games (hence the reason why this column has been established in the first place), I can easily see traditional theater goers going ga-ga over this easy to swallow and easy to process introduction to the world of game culture (there's even a section on the homepage that explains chiptunes).

But will gamers be enthralled? Yes, provided it’s the same ones who are open to new forms of expression and interpretations of what they love. And as evidenced by the ever increasingly popularity of chiptunes and the much heralded (well, at least my some, not everyone) Scott Pilgrim movie, I'm willing to bet that we're going to see more and more examples of video game theater, with The Dudleys! going down as one the first best examples.

(The Dudleys! was playing at the Theater for the New City in New York, as part of the Dream Up Festival. Check out the play's official website for more information on it and any subsequent plans for it.)

[Matt Hawkins is a New York-based freelance journalist and Gamasutra contributor. He also designs games, makes comics, and does assorted “other things.” To find out more, check out Fort90.com.]

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

[We're totally stoked to add multiple distinguished new contributors to Gamasutra, including some of our 'must-get' writers from both the U.S. and Europe, just as traffic hits an all-time high - see below for the full info.]

As Gamasutra reaches the milestone of one million unique monthly readers and nearly 450,000 registered users, the leading video game art and business site is announcing notable new contributors including Simon Parkin, Chris Morris and Kyle Orland.

Cementing its position as the largest, most-trafficked website in the game development and business space, internal Omniture traffic numbers for July 2010 revealed over 3.3 million page views from more than 1 million unique readers for Gamasutra.com alone -- with hundreds of thousands of others reading related sites such as GameCareerGuide.com and IndieGames.com.

In addition, following the departure of editor at large Chris Remo to become Community Manager at Irrational Games (BioShock Infinite), the site has added multiple new contributors to bolster its cutting-edge coverage of all facets of the video game business.

Joining existing core staff -- including news director Leigh Alexander, senior news editor Kris Graft and features director Christian Nutt -- will be Simon Parkin as the site's European editor, providing UK-timed news and original reporting for the site.

Based in the UK, Parkin is a veteran journalist and video game producer who has contributed to -- or is currently writing extensively for -- outlets including Edge magazine and Eurogamer. He was nominated for Best Writer in both the 2009 and 2010 British Game Media Awards.

Also joining Gamasutra as an editor at large, and contributing multiple weekly interviews, trend and analysis pieces is Chris Morris. Chris has covered consumer technology and the video game industry since 1996, including CNNMoney's well-known 'Game Over' commentary column. He also currently writes for Variety, Official Xbox Magazine, CNBC.com, Yahoo! Games and more.

Finally, being added to other Gamasutra contributors such as Colette Bennett, Tom Curtis and Game Developer magazine EIC Brandon Sheffield is Kyle Orland, who joins Gamasutra as a contributing news editor. Orland is a veteran freelancer who has previously written for outlets including Electronic Gaming Monthly, National Public Radio, GameSpot, Joystiq, and The Escapist.

These new journalists are significantly additive to Gamasutra's extensive developer-written content, with featured columnists including Ian Bogost and Ernest Adams, and regular high-profile technical, design articles and postmortems from leading companies in the space, from Naughty Dog through CCP to 2K Games and beyond.

The Gamasutra blogs section, which any readers are welcome to submit to, also includes user-created posts from professionals and Expert Bloggers such as Adam Saltsman (Canabalt), Scott MacMillan (All Heroes Die), Arinn Dembo (Sword Of The Stars II) and Andy Satterthwaite (Shatter).

In addition, Gamasutra continues to receive highlights and crossposted content from Gamasutra sister submarket site editors such as Eric Caoili (running online game business-centric site WorldsInMotion.biz, plus alt.game weblog GameSetWatch), Christian Nutt (for game education-related site GameCareerGuide.com), Danny Cowan (for iPhone/iPad game-specific site FingerGaming), Ryan Langley (for console digital download site GamerBytes), and Tim W. and Mike Rose (for independent game site IndieGames.com).

"These impressive new statistics show that Gamasutra continues to be the most-read outlet for game industry news and inspiration", said Simon Carless, global brand director of the UBM TechWeb Game Network. "We're also delighted to welcome our new contributors, as we continue to provide the highest quality writing about the art and business of games -- from both journalists and game creators -- to a worldwide audience."

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

Indie developer Nicolai Troshinsky has created a neat little experience for the Experimental Gameplay Project's "Zero Button" challenge this month. In UFO on Tape, players have spotted an alien craft from their car, and must use their mouse to keep the camcorder trained on the ship -- if you lose the UFO, your camera's battery runs out and the game ends.

It's a simple title, even more so than Orisinal's similar UFO game The Truth Is Up There released nine years ago, but the grainy graphics, distant buildings, out of focus elements, and sound effects (e.g. cars driving by, turn signals) really capture the feel of those amateur videos you often see in documentaries about aliens. You can download UFO on Tape for free from Game Jolt.

[Via IndieGames.com]

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

Sense of Wonder Night 2010's organizers revealed their list of nine innovative indie games from around the world to be presented at next month's Tokyo Game Show presentation and on the TGS show floor.

Running for three years now, SOWN is an annual event aiming to discover new and unconventional game concepts that "catch people by surprise and give them a Sense of Wonder -- a sense that something will change in their world -- right at the instant of seeing or hearing the concept."

The Japanese groups behind SOWN, CESA and Nikkei Business Publications, hope to give the developers of these titles an opportunity to share their ideas and prototypes with their peers.

Previous notable games that have also been Sense Of Wonder Night exhibitors include Shadow Physics, PixelJunk Eden, The Misadventures Of P.B. Winterbottom, and Moon Stories.

The selected finalists for SOWN 2010 are as follows:

- Anosonokonomichan by Gamecenter (Japan)
- Everything Can Draw! by Mahdi Bahrami (Iran)
- Infinite Blank by Evan Balster (USA)
- Love press++: Massage for your truelove by Shirai Laboratory (Japan)
- MusicMineSweeper by Game Developers Community in Sapporo (Japan)
- Orfeo: a Game in Music by Roberto Dillon (Singapore)
- Record Tripping by Bell Brothers (USA)
- Ulitsa Dimitrova by Lea Schonfelder and Gerard Delmas (Germany)
- Spirits by Spaces of Play (Germany)

SOWN's presentations are based on the Game Developers Conference's Experimental Gameplay Workshop format, allowing each developer to take the stage, demonstrate and explain the project, and answer questions for around ten minutes. The games will also be showcased at a special SOWN Pavilion on the show floor for the two Business Days of Tokyo Game Show (Sept. 16th-17th.)

SOWN's screening committee includes dojin developer Kenta Cho (Blast Works), Enterbrain producer Kenji Sugiuchi (Maker Series), Noby Noby Boy/Katamari Damacy creator Keita Takahashi, Vector's Takashi Katayama, games journalist and IGDA Japan head Kiyoshi Shin, and Zener Works CTO Onitama.

The SOWN 2010 official presentations will take place on September 17th, from 6:30 to 8:50 PM at the International Conference Hall in Makuhari Messe. You can find more information on the event at the Tokyo Game Show 2009 site.

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

[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.]

Summer is over, but the games keep on coming. WIth Shank, Scott Pilgrim, PixelJunk Racers 2nd Lap, and And Yet It Moves, this is possibly one of the best weeks across all console digital download platforms in a while.

Also this week, we released our long-delayed analysis of the PlayStation Network for July -- not much to say, but DeathSpank did quite well over there. Check it out!

XBLA Update - Scott Pilgrim, Shank, Snoopy DLC, Game Room Update
NA PSN Store Update - Shank, PixelJunk Racers 2nd Lap, Motorstorn 3D Rift And Morere
EU PSN Store Update - Shank, PixelJunk Racers 2nd Lap
NA Nintendo Update - And Yet It Moves, Uforia: The Saga, Rytmik, G.G Ninja And More
EU Nintendo Update - And Yet It Moves, Tales of Elastic Boy, Where's Wally? Travel Pack 1 And More

GamerBytes Originals

In-Depth: PlayStation Network Sales Analysis, July 2010

Top Stories

Namco's Next XBLA Re-Imagining Is Metro Cross? (XBLA)
A remake of an obscure 1985 title?

Xbox Indies - Monsters (Probably) Stole My Princess (XBLIG)
Oh crap, it's the duke.

Xbox Indies - Gravitron 360 (Dark Castle Software) (XBLIG)
Steam favorite comes to XBLIG.

I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES Expands To Rock Band And... Hot Topic? (XBLIG)
Made a T-Shirt with Zombies on it.

Torchlight Possibly Coming To Consoles (XBLA / PSN)
Diablo-Light headed our way?

DeathSpank: Thongs of Virtue Revealed, Out In September (XBLA / PSN)
Quick sequel to July's big title.

Dungeon Defenders Announced For XBLA, PSN (XBLA / PSN)
Wizaaaaard.

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

Just a week after debuting videos and details about Serial Killer, his unsettling but intriguing roguelike project/murder simulator somewhat based on Showtime's Dexter series, Crimson King has revealed that the entire thing was a hoax!

I'm sure some will believe this is for the best, as the concept was definitely disturbing: an open world in which you play as a custom or real serial killer (e.g. Jeffrey Dahmer), stalk/kill/torture/mutilate victims, and evade the police.

Almost as interesting as the game is Crimson King's excuses for creating the hoax. At first, he claimed it was a university project studying the responses and Youtube accounts/forum profiles of people interested in the game. He then revised that explanation and said he posted the videos to "troll" gamers.

Temple of the Roguelike also has several plausible theories on why the developer created the hoax or cancelled the project. Though Crimson King has since deleted the demonstration videos he posted of Serial Killer's gameplay, Temple of Roguelike has preserved the original forum thread in which he announced the game.

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

Though a number of music applications have released for Nintendo DS/DSiWare, the Korg DS-10 series remains the most popular software for artists wanting to compose tracks on the dual screen portable. DS musicians will be happy to hear that the creators of the Korg DS-10 releases have formed a new studio (jumping from Cavia/AQ Interactive) called Detune and are working on Korg M01.

As its title suggests, the software is based on electronic musical instrument maker Korg's popular M1 music workstation. Korg M01 features "a wide variety of music", an 8-track sequencer, and more than 300 sounds. The application is designed so "anyone can generate musical notes, chords, and drums by [using the] touch screen without music knowledge".

The gentleman you'll see demonstrating Korg M01 in the video above is celebrated composer Yasunori Mitsuda Nobuyoshi Sano of Ridge Racer and Tekken fame, how heading Detune. Yasunori Mitsuda (Chrono Trigger), who produced the previous Korg DS-10 releases with his company Procyon Studio, is likely also working on the project.

The software is scheduled to release this December in Japan, published by Korg and Detune.

[Via Joystiq]

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

Inspired by the haiku minigames in PS3's Japan-only summer holiday sim Boku no Natsuyasumi 3 (My Summer Vacation 3), John Szczepaniak of Hardcore Gaming 101 developed his own PC title called Haiku Quest, a JRPG in which players try to compose "the five perfect haiku".

It's a curious concept, but the bullet point feature that will likely stand out to most people is that the indie game features some voice work from actor renown Christopher Walken:

"... On a whim which I never expected to work, I emailed Christopher’s agent and, intrigued by the idea of a non-profit independent game based on Japanese poetry, he took five minutes from his schedule to record the lines on someone’s laptop and emailed me a giant WAV file to cut up.

If his voice sounds a little off, it’s because he was pressed for time (he apologises) and it wasn’t done in any kind of sound booth. I did my best to clean it up though.

The poems are generally free-form, but I tried to adhere to most of the rules for writing English haiku. Since only fellow game players are likely to take an interest, all the poems were based on well-known videogames. I suppose the great failing of this endeavour is that you need a background in games to understand them. Christopher mentioned he only got a couple of the references."

You can download Haiku Quest for free here. Along with Walken's contributions, the game features "a large overworld to explore" various villages/NPCs/stores, an "instant-time" battle system, five different monsters, an inventory system, 125 differrent poems to compose, and a "special hidden secret" from the haiku gods.

[Update: This turned out to be a hoax, as far Christopher Walken contributing to the game. Please accept our apologies for being gullible enough to believe this!]

Posted by Eric Caoili at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

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

We're continuing our new format that simply has basic links to the Gamasutra and GameCareerGuide features, but also points out the articles rounding up our Member Blogs and Expert Blogs sections on Gamasutra.

Here's the rundown for the last seven days:

- The last week of notable Gamasutra features include an interview with American McGee and RJ Berg on the new Alice game, discussion on handling gaming's top controversies, plus Ernest Adams on 'sandbox storytelling' and a agile development book extract, plus Jack Emmert on Cryptic and Neverwinter.

- The highlights from Gamasutra's Expert Blogs sees industry notables write on the debate over 3D stereoscopic games, compensating for players' reaction times, and the new breed of rhythm games.

- In highlights from Gamasutra's Member Blogs, our bloggers write about diverse topics, including the value of "winning" versus "not losing," the importance of interaction, and more.

- Educational site GameCareerGuide's latest features include the winners of the LCD game design challenge, plus a new design conundrum around MMOs and a piece on lessons from Christopher Nolan's Inception.

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

[In this editorial, our own Christian Nutt looks at the way games use interaction and escapism -- with real-world parallels -- to see what actions can be meaningful, and what kinds drill down to meaningless button-presses.]

I just got back from Ikea.

I hate going to Ikea. I hate it because the store's design is intentionally obstructive to navigation, and because, inevitably, it's very crowded.

I'm going to assume that the majority of readers, no matter what country they hail from, have been in an Ikea. It's a European chain that's huge in the U.S., and there's one right outside Tokyo.

If not, the short of it is this. Most Ikea stores have two floors. The top floor, through which you enter the store, is a maze-like furniture showroom. Finish the first level and you can descend to the next floor, in which you have to wend your way through a dizzying array of household items.

If you make it through that maze, you're rewarded with the self-serve furniture warehouse and the checkouts -- and the exit of the dungeon.

I'm not the only person who has thought about Ikea this way, it turns out. Thinking about Ikea like a video game is not just a fun thought exercise -- it's a practical strategy for dealing with it.

Like any video game, Ikea has its secrets. The first secret you'll learn is that the designers have put in shortcuts that allow you to -- changing genres here -- skip whole worlds. When recently shopping for a mattress, I took a Warp Zone and skipped straight to bedding -- avoiding both Sofa World (1-2) and Coffee Table World (1-3).

The most important secret you will ever learn from playing Ikea is that you can subvert the entire game by taking some advice from Prince: walk in through the out door. That, along with skillful use of Warp Zones, and the recent addition of some needed player agency -- self-service checkouts -- is how I got in and out of the store in 20 minutes, a Gosa Syren pillow in hand.

I think about Ikea this way because I've been playing video games since I was a small child. I also think this mindset is dangerous.

People as Obstacles

Like anybody who plays video games, including many artists, programmers, producers, and executives, I'm an amateur game designer.

Some time ago, I had a thought. What if Ikea really were a game? What if we put those CPUs and GPUs to work on a simulation of the retail experience? If you had to navigate from entrance to exit of the store without touching another individual or knocking over a display, would that be a game?

No.

What if I embellish it with some story -- you're a bored and harried Ikea worker, and you're trying desperately to clock out without being asked any more questions by customers, while also avoiding your boss? (In case you can't tell from this paragraph, I've worked retail.)

Maybe.

Turn the Ikea worker into an Italian assassin, and you have the slip-through-the-crowd of Assassin's Creed II. Turn the worker into an acrobatic courier, and you have the dodge-and-duck of Mirror's Edge.

Why does that make it work? Because -- right now, anyway -- video games are about escapism. At the beginning of this piece I said, "I hate going to Ikea." Why would I spend $60 to go back there -- or even to a thinly-veiled parody of it?

Renaissance Venice is an acceptable setting for a game. A pretty-on-top, ugly-underneath futurescape is an acceptable setting for a game. The mall? Not an acceptable setting -- unless maybe it's been taken over by zombies.

Like I said, it's because games are about escapism. And that's dangerous, too, and I'll get back to that later as well.

Into the Inferno

I think the deficiencies of Visceral Games' Dante's Inferno are fairly obvious. That I didn't discuss them more pains me a bit because I had the perfect opportunity to do so, and squandered it.

Of course, reviewers frequently wrote about how Dante's Inferno is a God of War clone... that isn't as good as the five-year-old game it's cloning. That's typical of game criticism.

Less often discussed is the fact that it has the same premise as Super Mario Bros.

The story is a very clumsy adaptation of a classic poem, and is tawdry and cheap, with cartoon sex and ridiculous violence. It's set against a backdrop of the Crusades that doesn't, as far as I saw, engage that at all (which, given the current state of world politics, seems particularly tone deaf).

And then there's the whole thing where you encounter a famous sinner from history and are invited, after reading a brief paragraph about them, to "Push X to Save, Push Y to Damn". Are you fucking kidding me?

Upon the game's release, I remember reading Gus Mastrapa's review, and finding it strange that he barely acknowledged its sins against literature and history. He did have this to say, however, and it caught my eye:

"The Old Testament morality of Dante's Inferno got into my head after hours of sin and punishment. By the time I made it to the final circle, where traitors, liars, and politicians suffer, I made a mental note to do my best to be nice to others. After centuries, fire and brimstone still do the trick."

My reaction to playing Dante's Inferno was a shrug. His was to perceive hell as a place -- and with that insight, my dismissal of Dante's Inferno is rendered moot. Because the game, at that moment, metamorphosed into art -- for at least one man.

I don't know Mastrapa's religious beliefs. He may believe in hell as an eternal destination, meaning he comes equipped with the mindset to find the creative team's vision chilling. Without getting too deep into mine, let's just say that I don't.

In all the ways that the some at Visceral Games made creative decisions that to my mind actively opposed meaning, it seems that somehow, this game was in fact elevated by others' talents.

For the right audience, meaning bloomed in a desert for ideas.

Parched

Nobody's been writing articles in defense of Heavy Rain. There's been plenty of criticism, but I think that a mixture of commercial success, positive reviews, and personal satisfaction with the game has kept those of us who like it quiet.

But, fuck it -- that ends now.

Of course Heavy Rain has problems -- lots of them. There are concerns with the game and its content, and conversing with really smart people and reading analyses of it have convinced me that they are not trivial.

And, of course, there's Press X To Jason, the satire of the game's climactic mall sequence, in which protagonist Ethan Mars makes a fatal error.

It's apt, of course, if you're not taking the game seriously -- and I've been told by some that it's not possible to take the game seriously. I didn't have that problem. But if you are taking the game seriously...

If you are taking the game seriously, then wait a sec. Didn't Quantic Dream just turn Ikea into a game? They added drama through narrative -- a lost child -- and they did it.

Pull up your chair. Here's what makes Heavy Rain a profoundly important piece of game design.

Yes. Game design.

The game's interface, through which any action can be accomplished using the same controls -- firing a gun, driving a car, tucking in a child, kissing a woman -- makes every game action equally important.

Think about this. Most games that try to sprinkle some sentiment or levity by adding child-tucking-in or woman-kissing hack it in. You push a button. An animation plays. You're not doing those things. You're just tapping X.

And in contrast, what you're usually doing, in those games -- with a tremendous amount of depth and nuance -- is killing things.

No, shooting a gun in Heavy Rain isn't as satisfying as shooting a gun in Gears of War. No, driving a car in Heavy Rain isn't as satisfying as driving one in Gran Turismo. But, in Heavy Rain, kissing a woman or tucking in a child is as satisfying as shooting a gun or driving a car.

This elevation of all actions to the same plane is essential to what makes the game a success from a design standpoint. It is vital in terms of the game's core interactivity; it is also absolutely essential to the way the game tells its story. Each moment -- whether you're making an omelet or fighting a killer -- is truly capable of the same interactive, and thus narrative, relevance.

It's also crucial to the game's accessibility, which -- let's face it -- if we want to sell games that aren't just about killing things, is something we need to worry about. That may be, in fact, part of why the game has sold four times what the developer and the publisher estimated it would.

Of course, there's one more thing I love about Heavy Rain. And that is that it's about real life. Sure, serial killers aren't very real life, but fathers and sons and death -- meaningful death -- and neurotic journalists are. (Trust me on the last one.) This is how a trip to the mall was turned into a game, after all.

And that is so very refreshing to me, because I am, as of this writing, 33 years old.

Here Comes Cathy

Last week, Atlus, developer of the Persona series, debuted the trailer for its latest game, Catherine. Based on this teaser, the game looks confusing and dreamlike, filled with bizarre imagery. It's the kind of thing I like, generally.

But what I like so much about the trailer is not merely its style.

No, what makes Catherine matter happens at the very end of the trailer. The main character, Vincent, sits at a table with his wife, whom he's cheated on. She shouts "There's just no way I can forgive you!"

This is not one line in a storm of scrolling text. This is the sound of a woman betrayed. When's the last time you saw a game do that?

For that matter, when was the last time a publisher had the courage to release a game with a woman's name as its title?

This is the sound of a trailer becoming my trailer of 2010.

Per the official site, the game's an "action adventure". Since the trailer is gameplay-free, who knows if the bulk of it is taken up by Vincent running through surreal dreamscapes eviscerating sheep-men with a beam katana, ala No More Heroes? We can hope not -- because what made the Persona games so good is how they integrated the minds and hearts of their characters to the gameplay and world.

But the fact that it's about a guy who cheated on his wife instantly makes it a hell of a lot more interesting. This year, I went through a horrific breakup. This year, the closest I came to navigating a dungeon was buying a pillow at Ikea.

Back to the Store

When I navigate Ikea, in real life, I think about it like a game, as I've confessed. I see the furniture as obstacles.

I see the other shoppers as obstacles, too.

Whatever some politicians might suggest, this doesn't mean that I've lost touch with reality and will soon shoot up an Ikea because I can't get to the checkouts fast enough.

But here's what is dangerous: gamelike thinking may make it easy for me to navigate Ikea much faster than the average shopper. If games have failed to erode my morals in any meaningful way, which I assert is true, they may have still permanently changed the way I look at the world -- in a very weird way.

And here's what else is dangerous: the more our games concentrate entirely on escapism, the more impossible it is to put any sense of reality into them. Not because you can't have meaningful characters embedded in fantasies, of course. But because, in their attempts to so forcefully escape the bounds of the real world, they deliberately avoid meaning.

But you can't avoid what you're mired in. And therefore, so often, they are simply beautiful -- but boring -- trips to Ikea. We can't leave the world behind; we just clumsily obscure it.

We do not need to lay these empty fantasies on so thick. Look at Heavy Rain! It's not realistic, say its critics. Yes, it isn't. The Origami Killer stuff gets silly. But it's no less realistic than Lost or Inception, and it's more realistic, in many ways, than the average episode of CSI -- which, of these examples, it most resembles.

Where Heavy Rain succeeds is because of the relationship between Ethan Mars and Shaun Mars, the relationship between Shaun Mars and Scott Shelby, the relationship between Madison Paige and Ethan Mars.

Heavy Rain's story was derided for being a toolbox full of blunt tools, and it is -- and it's good that we recognize that, so we can do better. But these emotional tools are the fundamental tools of storytelling. We fundamentally can't throw them out just because it's easier to set a game in outer space and pay the merest lip service to the idea that people there there could be fathers, sons, or lovers.

And maybe its gameplay is also one blunt tool -- but if it's a limited instrument, it's also a versatile one. By mapping gameplay meaningfully onto all in-world interactions rather than just one, meaning comes along for the whole ride.

A friend told me a funny story. When he was playing Dragon Age: Origins, he was, coincidentally, in a very bad frame of mind. At the time he was also going on a lot of dates. He looked at these dates, he says, much like NPC interactions in the game.

When I was going out on dates I wasn't thinking "What do I want to know about this girl?" and "Are the two of us compatible?" or even "Do I WANT to go out with this girl?"

Instead, I started perceiving every first date as an "interaction", and the things I said and she said as obstacles on the way to improving her attitude towards me.

Is it warped that he thinks this way? Yes. Is it bad that playing Dragon Age is like going on a series of bad dates? That's worth thinking about too.

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

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

   

It's the worst of the summer doldrums right now in lovely East Texas, and so I'm curling up with some of the computer magazines I had in my youth in hopes that the nostalgia will keep me in reverie until wintertime.

Chief among them at the moment is Compute!, a magazine that ran from 1979 to 1994 and, alongside Creative Computing, was one of the first really big multiplatform personal computer titles. As I've written before, much of Compute!'s charm has been necessarily lost to time -- it's from an era where programming the hardware, not simply using software written by someone else, was something all PC owners were expected to do; it was part of the whole fun of the computer hobby.

To hobbyists like that, Compute!'s in-depth programming discussions were gold in their mailbox every month. A modern-day college student, meanwhile, will likely look at the page after page of machine code printed in most mid-1980s editions and wonder why anyone paid money simply for the right to spend hours typing in programs. And I can't blame them. It was simpler times back then, we worked 13 hours in the coal mines and begged for the chance to play text-mode clones of Pac-Man, etc.

I had dropped off my readership of Compute! in the late 1980s, like I suppose a lot of people had. PCs were shifting from hobbyist toys to honestly useful things for normal consumers, and Compute! was slow to adjust. The magazine ceased publication in the summer of 1990, but started up again after a shirt hiatus when the title was purchased by Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione's General Media.

I started reading Compute (minus the !) again in 1992, just before I finally convinced my parents to upgrade from a Commodore 64 to an honest-to-goodness PC clone. The magazine had changed a lot from how I remembered it, and to me -- just as it does today -- it seemed like a mag trying and failing to find an audience.

On the one hand you had very dry and utilitarian reviews of business software that the nerds wouldn't be interested in; on the other, you have listings for DOS-based "utility programs," either batch files or machine code you use DEBUG.EXE to type in, that didn't have much utility for anyone besides the submittor.

Plus, as you can see in these two scans from the March 1993 issue, Compute's parent company occasionally tried to tie the magazine in with their other products in very odd ways. Penthouse Online is like a lot of proprietary online services available at the time, charging $5.95 a month plus 20 cents per minute of usage -- a pretty hefty amount to spend for a few pornographic pics, even if there was "NO 9600 BPS SURCHARGE!"

And speaking of which, one wonders how dedicated to nude women you have to be to think that purchasing a Penthouse-branded modem like the one pictured below would be a good idea. Imagine going to a garage sale today and seeing that pop up. How would the seller explain it? ("Well, I was going through this extremely randy period in the early '90s, and I wanted to show off my brand loyalty, so...")

Compute's fate was one shared by a lot of other computer magazines around this time: the name was bought by Ziff Davis, who promptly closed the mag and started sending Computer Life or Family PC (both beginner-oriented PC mags) to the subscriber base. Compute had a circ of around 248,000 by that time -- compare that to the 1.2 million Ziff's PC Magazine was boasting -- and the purchase was made for an estimated $250,000, according to Folio magazine.

That's pretty darn cheap, which makes me wonder if General Media's thought process was "OK, the times have changed, nobody wants a mag like this anymore, let's get what we can out of it and run." It's speculation on my part, of course, but I think I'm right. At least they produced a kick-ass modem before they folded, though.

[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 (0)