[Another IGDA Leadership Forum talk write-up, with Christian Nutt covering game industry veteran Don Daglow's lecture on how to properly target your game in a landscape of platform and business model variety and volatility.]

After 20 years in operation, Don Daglow's Stormfront Studios ceased operations in 2008, having lost a $20 million contract for a game before it could rise to meet the challenges of the new business models that have dominated the discussion of the present day.

"This is the most exciting era of game development yet," said Daglow, a 40-year game industry veteran whose work has spanned 1971's Baseball through Lord Of The Rings console titles, at an IGDA Leadership Forum talk in San Francisco on Thursday.

"Our world today has changed so much even in the last two years." Daglow compared the '80s console wars -- Atari, Intellivision -- to the prior generation. PC gaming sat to the side as a separate business.

As console games got bigger and bigger over the years, developers would "start to complain more and more: it's a big business, only big companies can do it, only big teams."

But now, there are more platforms, and more opportunities. "Suddenly it's a much more confusing world. But it's also a world that is very much more exciting because there are more ways to publish games."

"When we think of publishing, we think of billion-dollar huge corporations." While that has rapidly changed, Daglow still sees publishing as encompassing five vital elements: financing, development, test, distribution, marketing.

And he warns -- "the minute test fells off the highest functions, very bad things happen."

And while today's competitive marketplace has led people to really scrutinize the business of their game up front, "I think that before that before you get to the analysis, the 'Oh, yeah, we could make 3.2% more money if we did this game over that game' ... Before we get to that stage, we need to say 'Why the heck am I building that game in the first place?'"

"The minute the financial process, the minute the rest of these freakin' slides, make you forget what you love to do and why you do it, it all goes pathetically wrong," says Daglow. "When we think about these things, it's the means to an end -- it's a way to take the game we're passionate about to our audience."


Story is becoming a big part of pitches, and while it's essential, Daglow thinks it's overemphasized these days. "Here's the problem I keep hearing: a significant percentage of ideas that get pitched to me... 15 pages into the pitch you get into game mechanics."

It's a big problem if "you don't know what people do that's actually fun."

"I believe that characters, story, setting... At the end of the day are passengers in a game... And once you have gameplay --whatever it is that's fun, whatever draws people back to your game."

To select your platform, says Daglow, is a logical process. "Let's have the brain and heart start a dialogue here."

When looking at platform, ask these questions:

"How many hits has it had this year? This is where the heart and the head have some difficult conversations -- how many hits have come out of the platform this year."

"Can my team compete? Realistically, what's the team I've got? Do the platform and my team align? It seems obvious, but out in the world I encounter cases of great dreams... But the team is just not there."

"Hits from my genre? A cow will not do well in a horse race. If this genre hasn't produced a hit, is there anything that will lead me to believe that it will produce a hit?"

"And then of course we have to come to the issue of money. Money can come from different places. Money is merely the way to still have food in your belly when you finish the game." And when it comes down to it, he says, "How much money can I lose and still be okay?" is also an important question. 


However, only thinking about money in discussions of loss is limiting, he says. "You have to have that question be in terms of money, time, focus... and relationships. I've been married 34 years and marriage is a continual process of work and commitment. Every person's answers will be different, but the only way to get the answers is to be honest with yourself and have the dialogue."

He analogizes it to many people's approach to casinos: they go into a casino knowing they have a certain budget of money to lose before stopping gambling. The same is true of game development.

The Gatekeepers

Current platforms, from the open web, to portals like Kongregate, to Apple's App Store, to the Xbox 360's retail discs involve certain degrees and types of gatekeeping.

"If we can think about our gatekeepers, we can start to build a table where we start to think about the money part. If we look at the gatekeepers we can see some patterns in how the world works."

"As you strip away gatekeeping, you strip away some hassles," says Daglow, in reference to things like the high cost and stringent requirements for developing console retail software.

However, there are downsides. "If you think about how [Apple] promote[s] games, it's like an old McDonald's sign. If you have one of 20,000 items, what is the implied value of that game?"

"if you have one box that plays 20,000 games, the box must be of incalculable value. But one game -- I may have poured a year of my life and my soul and my heart and being into -- I'm afraid it's only one of 20,000. That's the downside of the way that Apple and BigFish market games. The implied disposability."


And some platforms dictate behaviors. On the iPhone, it's becoming more common to update a game frequently. On consoles, it's rarer. "Where do you feel comfortable, what feels right to you?"

He also notes: "Less gatekeeping is more profit per unit... Except less gatekeeping means prices are lower so there's less money per unit. And there's less marketing because there's nobody to pay for that."

Once you figure this all out, refer to those five questions from before, "and now you can really fill in the blanks and see how you're going to do this. What you're looking for here is a business model."

"Different models have more upside, different models have more risk," he cautions.

A big retail game promises players a rich and rewarding experience -- a fantasy. But "with virtual goods it's not about the promise, it's the reality." Players decide to make a purchase based on the reality of the game they're playing right now. "Marketing regular games is selling a fantasy, marketing virtual goods is leveraging reality," says Daglow.

"This is not good and bad. This is a matter of saying, 'For my game this is right.'"

The Problem

"With all of that logic, there is one problem," says Daglow. "As long as you are being purely logical, and playing by the rules, and following that perfect chart, which allows for your passions and allows for players and their feelings -- but it's still a chart -- there are things you miss."

"It's important to remember what happens when we color outside the lines."

Daglow says that some recent innovations can be illustrative of how rulebreaking is important.

"The Wii has a lot of problems now, but when it was introduced, [Nintendo] scrambled everybody's brain by becoming the best selling console." Rules people expected (like "best graphics win the generation" or "challenge in games is necessary" or "precision controls are necessary") didn't turn out to be true, or were at least arguable.

Guitar Hero was another spoiler. Daglow points out that prior to its entrance to the market, conventional wisdom was that you could not sell thing in a nonstandard box size, and that peripherals were impossible to sell -- and that price points for a title could not break $59.99.

For World of Warcraft, says Daglow, a key insight was "we have to have a great initial experience because if we chase away players, we can't grow." The game also didn't push machines -- it ran on lower spec computers than its contemporaries.

, meanwhile, proved that "little kid graphics won't work in a game for adults" was not a rule. Also: "if you can't fail it's not a game" was out the window.

Stay Inspired

"If I pick one thing people have said to me, -- by very famous game designers, highly respected people -- [it's] 'I have to stop beating myself up about ideas that don't work', or 'I have to stop talking myself out of good ideas'," says Daglow.

He has heard many people say "I'm having internal dialogue with myself and I'm talking myself out of stuff."


Says Daglow, "It's so easy to have a self-defeating dialogue. Deeply respected game designers whose names are famous are having these same conversations."


"Freeing the mad scientist in you is when you get the good moment that is not on the chart. That's when you get the Guitar Heros, the WoWs, that change the rules."

"If I were to leave you with no other thing than this one thing -- when all of this logic brings you to an obstacle, that is not the moment to be stopped by logic, that is the moment to be seized by inspiration," says Daglow.

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

[Our own Chris Morris looks at the factors that will dictate Kinect's market prospects at launch and down the line, opining that Microsoft's holiday season looks secured -- but that it "might have screwed some of its partners in the process."]

Two months ago, when Sony’s PlayStation Move hit shelves, I wondered whether Sony had lost its mind. The device, I mentioned, wasn’t intuitive and had some alarming aesthetic issues – a combination that could hurt its chances with the mainstream audience.

Now Kinect has arrived – and while it has just as many problems as Move, it seems poised to thoroughly trounce its competitor this holiday season.

Let’s be clear: Kinect might not have that unfortunate “is it a game controller or sex toy” design, but it’s far from perfect. The lag time is frustrating, to both core and casual players.

With only one or two exceptions, the launch lineup is mediocre – and certainly not tailored to the typical hardcore/early adopter audience. It requires a significant amount of room to play. And the price is $50 higher than publisher partners were asking for.

But, you know what? None of that is going to matter.

Kinect is … good enough for now. For the mass market (which is considerably less demanding than the core gamer), the novelty of the device and the ability to give verbal orders to your electronics – in true Star Trek fashion – will be enough.

More importantly, while Microsoft might not know how to advertise its Windows software all that well, it has been nearly flawless in its marketing of the Xbox 360 and its first-party products. And with Kinect, it’s pushing things into overdrive.

A massive takeover of New York’s Times Square for the midnight launch. A partnership with Burger King that will give away a Kinect to patrons every 15 minutes for the next three weeks. An on-air endorsement (and giveaway) from Oprah Winfrey. Oprah, people!

It’s no wonder that Microsoft boosted its 2010 sales estimates from 3 million to 5 million. Or did it?

Before E3, some partners working on Kinect titles quietly mentioned that Microsoft had told them its target was 5 million. So when the 3 million figure was initially announced, it seemed low. Could Microsoft intentionally have low-balled the initial number, giving it the opportunity to grab another news cycle expressing solid faith in the device right before it went on sale? I wouldn’t put it beyond the company –- and if, in fact, they did, it’s another testament to Microsoft’s marketing savvy.

Holiday sellouts are a virtual certainty, which will earn even more free press and will likely drive demand into the first part of 2011, at least. But despite all of this, don’t expect Kinect to close the gap between Microsoft and Nintendo. The Wii has sold over 71 million units worldwide – and while it has shown signs of saturation this year, it’s a system that traditionally does quite well during the holidays (and will probably do so again this year).

What this is likely to do, though, is give Microsoft guidance on what its next step will be. If Kinect meets or exceed targets –- and developers (both internal and external) figure out what sort of software works best on it -– it could lead to a larger footprint for the device, perhaps even into consumer technology beyond the Xbox 360.

“It’s key for their entertainment and device division,” says Lazard Capital Markets analyst Colin Sebastian. “Over time, they’ll integrate other services to the platform.”

In the meantime, while Microsoft has seemingly secured itself a fruitful holiday season with Kinect’s marketing and release, it might have screwed some of its partners in the process.

Since the economy is still on shaky ground, consumers are expected to spend less on gifts this year. Gaming equipment will remain popular, but as Kinect becomes the “must have” gift, shoppers might forego buying other titles (beyond obvious blockbusters like Call of Duty: Black Ops and Halo: Reach) to get a Kinect – even if that means hitting eBay (where, yes, bids are already topping the retail price even though there are no real shortages yet).

“The purchaser of a … Kinect peripheral will have … $150 less to spend on software,” says Michael Pachter of Wedbush Securities.

What’s really going to be interesting to watch with Kinect is the tie ratio (software sold divided by installed base). The system comes with a game included. And Dance Central has already assumed the “if you buy just one Kinect game, buy this one” role. Beyond that, will consumers feel the need to expand their catalog?

Tie ratios are down across the board in the gaming industry – with Nintendo particularly taking it on the chin in the past year (dropping from 4.41 to 2.27). Will Kinect … well, connect … enough with the mass market to re-ignite software sales for that demographic? Or will it be a holiday flash in the pan that has people wondering a year from today why they fought so hard to get one in the first place?

I suspect Microsoft’s marketing team is already working on a plan, just in case.

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

You might have seen our Game Mag Weaseling column recently point out that GameSide, the retro game-focused Japanese gaming mag that shuttered a few months ago, recently came back to life in a way with an issue all about shoot'em-ups, featuring previews, strategies, developer interviews, retro items -- the works!

Though it's a Japan-only publication, import shop NCSX now has Shooting Gameside Vol. 01 in stock for you to order. It's priced at $25.90, but it does come packed with a coverage of Battle Garegga, Darius Burst Another Chronicle, Senko no Ronde DUO, Space Invaders Infinity Gene, and many, many other titles.

It also has a "a feature on Soukyugurentai, a pictorial for Muchi-Muchi Pork!, and a 8-page spread on developer Treasure which looks back at their games and enthralls readers with information on the development of Radiant Silvergun and Ikaruga."

You can check out photos of Shooting Gameside Vol. 01 and its awesome layout, which were shot by Shmups Forum's Rancor, after the break:

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

Developed by French indie developer Anima Games (Heirs of Olympus), Chrono Rage is an upcoming arena shooter for PCs that has players piloting a ship that seems ripped from Galaga, blasting swarms of Space Invaders-esque pixel aliens.

Chrono Rage isn't all about stealing elements from classic arcade games, though, as it adds some modern touches like the ability to stop time and its giant, beam-shooting enemies, which look really fun to fight against while dodging incoming bullets.

The final game will feature 20 time trial challenges, a survival mode, two bonus mode, 14 enemies, 21 achievements, and support for the Xbox controller and double analog gamepads. A free demo for Chrono Rage will be available soon.

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

[At the IGDA Leadership Forum, where our own Christian Nutt is in attendance, a fascinating talk by PopCap co-founder John Vechey recounts when the company turned down a $60 million buyout offer in 2004, and how it's a bad idea to try to "out-Zynga Zynga."]

As casual gaming powerhouse PopCap (Bejeweled, Plants Vs. Zombies, Peggle) enters its 10th year, co-founder John Vechey sees the company profoundly changing as the industry itself goes through seismic changes in platforms and business models.

Speaking as part of the International Game Developers Association Leadership Forum in San Francisco, Vechey delivered a keynote on the evolving nature of the industry.

Recapping the company's history, he said that in late 2004, the company got a 60 million dollar offer to sell -- that the founders walked away from. It helped them realize why they founded the company in the first place. "This was pretty crazy because we didn't make PopCap to make millions of dollars. We made PopCap to make games."

"We turned it down because we didn't think it was a very good offer in terms of how they valued what we created and how they thought about our IP in terms of games. When you walk away from an offer like that... you really have to look at 'Why are we doing that?'"

"We needed to stay independent, we needed to grow, we needed to change." This was the first huge change for the company -- the founders hired a CEO, and enriched the business side of the organization, allowing tremendous growth.

And at this point, said Vechey, "We have over 375 employees, which is kind of obscene and grotesque on one hand and awesome on the other. We get to control our destiny."

"We could have lost our ideals through that transition... We could have possibly even lost some founders who got frustrated," he reflects. But "Without those changes, Peggle would not have existed. Peggle would not have been able to be worked on as long as we did. Neither would Plants vs Zombies."

The Next Big Change

"Now, I think we're at another large transition point. At the first one, I didn't realize the company was changing. But this time I was thinking... We're in the middle of a gigantic change."

In last two years, said Vechey, "everything has changed for PopCap and everything is changing for other companies, whether you're casual or hardcore."

Though they were once the cornerstone of the company's business, "Downloadable [PC] games are irrelevant. We only work on them because they work well to go to other platforms."

"iPhone didn't exist two years ago. There was no App Store. There was no Facebook platform. We need to look at new games and make them in different ways. And what makes one of our games 'one of our games' is really changing."

And though the company has already begun to change fundamentally in its thinking and structure, he says, "I think PopCap soon -- in two or three years -- is going to be very different" yet again.

The first major change is, of course, the rise of social gaming. While the era of "cheap, free, easy traffic" is gone, the item-buy business model was "first really accepted in a broad way in Western markets" thanks to Facebook. And the Social Graph, "the ease of interacting with your friends" is tremendously relevant.

"If you take advantage of the Social Graph, then every single game will be made better," says Vechey. Take, for example, Minecraft, he says. "It may be one of the most important games of the decade. Minecraft would be better if it had the Social Graph inside of it. I don't fault them for not doing this, they're indies. World of Warcraft would be better with the Social Graph from Facebook."

That's because interacting with your friends through games makes them more fun. Vechey recounted how he didn't realize his friend was playing League of Legends for months because of the lack of Social Graph interaction, and when he did, he felt cheated out of fun experiences playing together he could have had.

"Peggle would be better with the Social Graph, even if you play through the single player experience, to see your friends' best shots, their best scores," says Vechey.

"We have Bejeweled Blitz on Facebook... But we're looking at all of our other games across all of our platforms and they could made better with social relevance. And it's not that every game would be FarmVille. I'd probably kill myself and stop playing games."

Another major change, says Vechey, is games being connected persistently to the internet. "Online games and MMOs have been living in this world a lot more. The fact that it's easier to update the game on two of the major platforms, the web and Apple platforms... It is a lot easier to have an ongoing relationship with your customer."

In Vechey's eyes, in fact, it's not the ease of updating alone -- it's how you interact with your customer in the context of it. For this, he loves Steam, but everybody on PC does not use it. However, he says, "There will be technology that gets easier and cheaper."


"If you look at the successful [iPhone] developers they are constantly updating their games," he says, calling out titles Angry Birds and Doodle Jump. "A lot of [that updating] is how they interact with their customers."


The Meaning Of "Connected"

And that kind of relationship is set to evolve to the next plateau. "Take that to the next extension of what connected means... I know who that customer is, if you go from the iPhone to the PC, it saved my game for me... Or unlocked a special plant for me" in Plants Versus Zombies, theoretically, he says. And it will get even more complex. "The Bejeweled player can get a high score and unlock something in Plants Versus Zombies."

"You can do some cool things, but I don't know how we're going to do it. I can wave my hands and describe this cool world, but it's harder from a technology standpoint, user interface, game design, but it's important. And the companies that figure it out will be more successful," he says.

The model is "whenever you're interacting with a PopCap game it's like an MMO... Constantly being rewarded for the investment you make over the long haul."

And of course, the next seismic change is microtransactions. Vechey is a big fan of this model. "Generally speaking, it's a better business model... than $60 downloads, than $20 downloads. It's a good business model."

He notes that he's "probably spent about $400 on League of Legends."

"How do we get the right customer to spend the money? It's better to say 'customer, I respect you enough to let you play the game for free,'" says Vechey. Buying a game for $60, particularly at retail, is "no fun", he says. But when you add microtransactions, "you can make purchasing your game fun. You can make it part of the game."

And this is broadly relevant -- even though designers are resisting it. "There are some art games and I respect them and I'm glad they exist, but 99 percent of the people in this room are in business. It's a fusion of art and business"


While he admits that Bejeweled Blitz is a retrofit for the model, Zuma Blitz, which is soon to enter beta, "is super cool" in its integration of the business model. "There are all these extra ways people can consume the game, and pay us as developers, and it's more fun. It's more fun for the free players and more fun for the paying players."

And though PopCap has always been strong on supporting multiple platforms, the nature of multiplatform development and the explosion of varied platforms is another huge change for the industry, Vechey argues.

"Mindbogglingly Complicated"

"You really have to step back and say that it's a whole new challenge," he says, in the context of this new world of social interaction and monetization. "It's just mindbogglingly complicated. ... I have yet to see a technology problem that hasn't been solved by smart engineers, but from a design standpoint, how we make our games, it's now complicated," he says.

At PopCap developers used to be siloed by their target platform. "Let's say there's some theoretical world in which we're working on PVZ2, and in that world we are working on a PVZ social game. How are we supposed to keep them both great games, and worked on by the same designers, and that they exist on a number of platforms, connected to each other, and are somehow related? It's not easy."

And it's a challenge driven by player desires. "As we keep making games, I as a consumer want to interact with Halo on my iPhone as I do on my Xbox," says Vechey. "These changes that we're going through now, we're in the middle. Some of them are further along than others, but they're all-encompassing to PopCap. Our organizational structure has changed. The amount of money we spend on games has changed."

And in the future, he says, "in some ways PopCap is going to be unrecognizable."

Suddenly, he says, "Jason [Kapalka, PopCap cofounder and creative director] is thinking about, does he need to learn about backend server technology? That's a waste of his time, but yet [he might need to.] We need different types of people who speak different languages in the company." 


"I do believe that all of these changes will affect the whole game industry to some extent. And they will make it better. It will make it harder to make games on one hand, but it will make the end result better," said Vechey.

And these changes do not mean that the fundamental direction of the company needs to change. Social games do not have to be bad games. "We are all about fun and it will be part of our process," he says, to launch a fun social game.

Out-Zynga Zynga

"I often talk to people who are doing social games, and they do really derivative social games, and I tell them, they're not going to out-Zynga Zynga. They're very good at what they do," he says.

"I've felt empathy for my friends in the company who just don't understand [these changes] or whose lives have become more complicated... At the same time I look at the millions of people who play Bejewled Blitz... And I look at how Zuma Blitz uses the social context," he says. Change is inevitable and rewarding.

And while these new platforms do offer demographic challenges, and offer a lot more audiences access across different types of players, the company hasn't considered that too actively, he says. "For PopCap, we've never made games for demographics. Plants vs. Zombies is an extremely broad range of people."

"I do see more blurring of demographics, though. FarmVille's great for this room. It has got a huge number of people who did not play games, and didn't know they could play games, to play a game. Games should be as big as movies. 100 percent of the population should have a favorite game. The idea of making a game for a demographic will become less important."

And though some developers just don't get social gaming yet, he doesn't see a need to cast them aside in this revolution. They'll learn by example. "At PopCap we have a really patient attitude with people. Step one is being really honest." The management shows them why it's relevant to the company and how it will still let the game be fun -- and people will get it.

"As we do a game like Zuma Blitz, we can prove that the only game that's going to succeed is not Mafia Wars, or a farming game. We'll prove that it's not the only way to succeed. And people like George [Fan], the Plants vs. Zombies creator" -- who dislikes social games at present -- "will see the way to go is social," says Vechey.

Even if some developers never come on board, he says, "we'll never say no to really great games, and they'll continue to make games with limited audience and limited revenue potential. And it'll be cool."

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

In the latest postings over the last seven days, Gamasutra's jobs board plays host to roles across the world and in every major discipline, including opportunities at Raven Software, Relic Entertainment, Rockstar, and more.

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

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

Some of the notable jobs posted this week include:

Black Rock Studio: Senior Games Designer:
"When a company the size of Disney steps into European development, it's pretty big news. Disney employs over 100,000 staff. It’s one of the biggest Entertainment companies in the world and it's getting serious about original games. We're a strong studio of around 140 people, based at the heart of beautiful and cosmopolitan Brighton, UK. Just a quick train ride away from London in an office where pretty much everyone gets a sea view. The atmosphere is relaxed and friendly but focused and our role is to create original racing game franchises.”

Gearbox Software: PS3 Platform Specialist:
"Looking for a new, exciting opportunity? Gearbox Software is an award winning studio that strives to create a work culture and environment that is conducive to creating the best video games in the industry. Gearbox Software’s objectives are to create the best game, using the latest technologies while fostering a happy and creative work environment. If you want to work with some of the most creative and talented minds in the industry then we want to hear from you."

Irrational Games: Systems Designer:
"Irrational Games is an award winning video game developer located in Quincy, MA and founded in 1997 by Ken Levine, Jonathan Chey and Robert Fermier. The team made its name with the much loved first person shooter System Shock 2. This was followed by two Freedom Force games, SWAT 4 and Tribes: Vengeance. In 2005 Irrational Games was acquired by Take-Two Interactive. The team was renamed 2K Boston in 2007, just in time to coincide with the release of the critically acclaimed BioShock, which went on to win over 50 awards including Best Game from BAFTA. In 2010 the team returned to its roots by reclaiming the Irrational Games moniker."

Vicarious Visions: Senior Producer:
"Vicarious Visions has gained critical acclaim with hit titles for top brands such as Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, Spider-Man, and Star Wars. VV games are known for pushing technical boundaries to deliver addictive gameplay and immersive art that bring favorite characters and worlds to life for portable, console, and PC gamers. VV offers a competitive compensation and benefits package including fully paid health benefits, bonus plan, flexible PTO plan, and 401K with match."

ArenaNet: Tools/Engine Programmer:
"ArenaNet, creator of Guild Wars, is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Korea-based NCsoft Corporation. The studio was formed in the spring of 2000 and is currently developing Guild Wars 2, continuing to support Guild Wars with additional content such as the upcoming Bonus Mission Pack, holiday events, community contests, monthly championships, and soon-to-be-released merchandise. We are looking for engaging personalities to join our team, and help take Guild Wars to the next level!"

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 Tom Curtis at 11:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Giant Robot uploaded this short trailer for Pixel Pushers, its upcoming "an exploration of 8-bit digital media" that will run from November 17 to December 11 at Scion Installation L.A. in Culver City.

As teased om the video, attendees will see works from Jude Buffum, Daniel Rehn, Shawn Smith, Matt Furie, Zach Gage, and Kohei Yamashita, as well as Chevy Ray Johnston/Matt Furie/Nullsleep's odd shoot'em up Return of the Quack.

Visitors will be able to sit in a Famicom-inspired custom Scion, which was designed by Len Higa and Giant Robot's Eric Nakamura, and play Return of the Quack as it's projected from the art car's headlights!

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

Promoting this week's release of God Of War: Ghost of Sparta for PSP and God of War Collection for PSN, Sony is giving fans a look at one of big parts that was cut from God of War II. While Atlantis is featured prominently in Ghost of Sparta, the lost continent made its first God of War appearance in the series' second game.

According to SCE Santa Monica Studio senior level designer Jonathan Hawkins, his team spent three to four months on the section back in 2005, but the developer eventually abandoned the idea after some changes in the game's directions. You can see some of the puzzles you missed in the video after the break, at least!

[Via PlayStation Blog]

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

The organizers of the 13th Annual Independent Games Festival -- the longest-running and largest festival relating to independent games worldwide -- are proud to announce another year of record entry numbers for IGF 2011's Student Competition, following its submission deadline this week.

In total, this year's Student Competition took in more than 280 game entries across all platforms -- PC, console and mobile -- from a wide diversity of the most prestigious universities and games programs from around the world.

While 2010's content saw an impressive 193 entries, this year sees that number increase another 47% to 283 total games, making the Student IGF one of the world's largest showcases of student talent.

Together with the record Main Competition entries, this year's IGF has taken in roughly 650 total entries -- the largest number in the festival's history across the Main and Student competitions.

This year's Student Competition includes a number of entries from students tackling intimate personal issues through the medium of games, including Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab's Elude, a game which mirrors "the rising tide of depression, and the search for a path to happiness".

Also in this vein is the University of Portsmouth team's self-reflective portrait of a single man in Dinner Date, which looks at "his desires and doubts to reflections on his friends and his place in the world" as he waits alone for a would-be romantic evening.

Other titles entered include Kunsthochschule Kassel university student Lea Schonfelder's Ute, a frank, tongue-in-cheek game of sexual self-discovery from the creator of IGF 2010 Student Showcase finalist Ulitsa Dimitrova; the Myst-like adventure game Fract, from the University of Montreal, which takes place in "an abstract world built on sound and structures inspired by electronic music"; and Q.U.B.E., an austere first-person puzzle game from the University of Newport which is already garnering positive press and comparisons to Valve's Portal.

Finally, this year's Student IGF competition includes two games -- Bo and Everything Can Draw -- from Shahid Ejei High School student Mahdi Bahrami, who has recently been gaining international attention through venues like Tokyo Game Show 2010’s Sense of Wonder Night for his struggles to gain a foothold in the games community despite the political and economic difficulties of doing business from Iran.

The above are just a small selection of the games now available for browsing via IGF.com, where you'll find more information, screenshots and video for each of the IGF Student Competition entries.

Now in its ninth year as a part of the larger Independent Games Festival, the Student Showcase highlights up-and-coming talent from worldwide university programs, and has served as the venue which first premiered numerous now-widely-recognized names including DigiPen's Narbacular Drop and Tag: The Power of Paint, which would evolve first into Valve's acclaimed Portal, with the latter brought on-board for the upcoming Portal 2.

Others include USC's The Misadventures Of P.B. Winterbottom (later released by 2K Games for XBLA); Hogeschool van de Kunsten's The Blob (later becoming one of THQ's flagship mobile/console franchises as De Blob); and early USC/ThatGameCompany title Cloud, from the studio that would go on to develop PlayStation 3 arthouse mainstays like Flow, Flower, and their forthcoming Journey.

"With each successive year, the IGF's Student Competition has steadily become an ever-more important part of highlighting ideas and talent you don't find elsewhere in the industry at large," said festival chairman Brandon Boyer.

"The submissions we get from students around the world are anything but 'amateur', and represent some of the strongest and most original voices you'll find in games. I'm happy to see the IGF showcase become an important milestone in student life, and look forward to playing through this year's record number entries!"

This year's Student IGF entries will be checked and distributed to a host of notable industry judges for evaluation, before finalists are announced in January 2011, and winners awarded at the IGF ceremony during the Game Developers Conference 2011 -- part of the UBM TechWeb Game Network, as is this website -- in San Francisco next February/March.

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

A group of independent filmmakers posted this trailer for Beyond Back Mesa, a two-year production inspired by Valve's Half-Life series. The short action film centers around "Adrian Shephard and a band of resistance fighters struggling to get out a warning about the impending invasion."

Even with only a $1,200 budget to pay for equipment, costumes/props, and music, the crew managed to put together an impressive movie, at least judging by this teaser, that sports some neat shoot-outs and special effects.

There's no word yet on when the general public will be able to watch Beyond Back Mesa in its entirety, but the movie is currently being showed at film festivals. You can follow news for the short film at its Facebook page.

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

[This week, our partnership with game criticism site Critical Distance brings us picks from Ben Abraham, from imaginary Pac-Man anniversaries through Super Meat Boy and Kirby's Epic Yarn analysis.]

This week we have a plethora of interesting writing, gathered from the furthest ends of the video game blogosphere. Let’s start with the stuff that got lost in the editors' inbox for a few weeks:

Matthew Gallant writes in to suggest we take a look at Nav Alang’s piece at his blog Scrawled in Wax. ‘A date with the Taliban’: Dating Sim, meet contemporary global conflict, you’ll be fast friends.

Erik Germani at Weapons-Grade Ennui also looked at Medal of Honor a few weeks back, synthesizing quotes and positions from many of the people who wrote about the furore at the time.

Elsewhere, Benjamin Garratt wrote in recently to let us know about his blog-mate Erik Lockaby’s excerpts from his novel ‘Kickaround Nixon’ which Lockaby describes as “…a fictional account of the 1983 U.S. National Video Game Tournament, with a focus on a few members of the team and their attempts to pass the 256th screen of Pac-Man.”

It’s weird and intriguing stuff, consisting of largely assembled quotes about Pac-Man. Here’s part 1 of Kickaround Nixon and there’s a part 2 here but I’m not sure what (if anything) the latter has to do with video games.

Jamey Stevenson lets us know that he’s written about Hidden Agenda, which by the sounds of it is a game well worth playing, and with friends: "From a design perspective, it is notable for providing a complex and nuanced political simulation that expertly leverages the inherent strengths of interactive systems to engage players in a deep exploration of its subject matter."

Radek Koncewicz of the Significant Bits blog has been playing Final Fantasy IV and has found that its design has held up well over the years: “FFIV is a relatively simple RPG by today’s standards, but its overall structure still holds up. In fact, I prefer its setup to most current entries in the genre"

And Zachary Alexander at the Hailing from the Edge blog has been playing Super Meat Boy (along with the rest of the world apparently) and writes this week about ‘Super Meat Boy and Signalling’.

Michael Abbott of The Brainy Gamer blog continues the SMB love-fest by riffing on the idea of the platformer as videogames own version of Jazz – something original, based on standards, and performable in a myriad number of ways. And speaking of platformers, Sara M. Grimes at the Gamine Expedition blog looks at the Arts & Crafts aesthetic in Kirby’s Epic Yarn.

Adam Ruch at Flickering Colours talks about ‘The Great Undiscovered of Minecraft’, dissecting the appeal of the game by breaking it down into two primary feelings: The first ‘is akin to being a small God in a simple universe’ and the second is ‘a strong feeling of presence. Tele-presence one might call it in the parlance of the late 90s game scholarship.’ I do love me some late 90’s game scholarship.

Alex at Batrock explains ‘Mass Effect: The Road to Shepardition’ and why a Mass Effect film would miss the point: “That every Shepard belongs to the player means that there is no single Mass Effect canon. Different Shepards created different universes, and to watch a movie that asserts that something you know in your heart is blatantly wrong is to bring pain upon oneself. The movie removes power and agency from the hands of those most dedicated to the subject matter: the players.“

Michael Clarkson at Discount Thoughts believes we’re witnessing the emergence of a new videogame genre, and documents the ‘Values and Characteristics of the Cinematic Action Game’. The CAG could catch on, I reckon.

Ben Medler at Tread Digital looks at ‘Why Mirror’s Edge is Modernist and Assassin’s Creed is Postmodernist’. I’m not entirely sold on this idea, as modernism/postmodernism are both more pernicious ideas than the article seems to portray; that said, it’s certainly well worth a read. Plus, remember Chris Green’s post at Chronoludic about Demon’s Souls as Epic Poetry last week? Well, here’s the follow-up.

For GameSetWatch, Andrew Vanden Bossche opines: ‘The Games as Art Debate is Dead, Long Live the Games as Art Debate’, which is about how I feel. And this week Kotaku thought they might look at the state of PC gaming, and in this video Mike Fahey examines at the ‘Many, many deaths of PC gaming’. I think the general rule of thumb is, whenever anyone says something is ‘dead’ we can in all likelihood say it’s actually alive and well.

Robert Yang completes his fourth-and-final part on The Philosophy of Game Design for The Escapist magazine. This has been one of the must-read series in recent memory, in my opinion. Catch up on parts one, two and three.

Point-Counterpoint: still at The Escapist, the Extra Credits video series looks at ‘Symbolism’ and horror for Halloween. While at the Seeking Avalon blog, the author of a post looking at the Extra Credits video is suitably horrified (har har) at the video own lack of self-awareness or criticality about its own use of Symbolism: “…in choosing symbolism, they talk about horror symbolism and 'The Self', 'The Uncanny' and 'The Other' and apparently no one involved thought about the symbolism and unconscious message in the episode's art.”

Case in point: “There's no little stick people of colour in this episode, not even when they bring up the concept of 'bigotry'. So when they're talking about 'expectations of the self' and 'things that are just a little bit off', there's no darker than pale-beige image associated with what's right and normal.”

At PopMatters, G Christopher Williams examines ‘Fallout: the scrounging simulator’, for what its teaching kids and adults alike about the benefits of frugality in these tough economic times. Staying with the PopMatters crew for the moment, and Fallout: New Vegas, Rick Dakan looks at ‘Sex Workers and Sex Slavery in Fallout: New Vegas’: “For all its bugginess and slightly outdated graphics and stiff animations, this is the area where Fallout: New Vegas shines most brightly, presenting you with compelling moral quandaries and letting you make decisions.“

And then to round off the PopMatters trio, here’s Nick Dinicola talking about (what else for the week of Halloween) the sadistic horror of the kids in survival horror game Rule of the Rose.

At The Border House blog, Quinnae Moongazer has a very lengthy post examining a Pen and Paper RPG called Eclipse Phase. Here’s its brilliant and intriguing introduction: “When we’re children we’re often taught that great ideas are the product of great minds; blessed ideas that spring forth from the creator’s cranium like Athena from Zeus, fully formed and miraculous. But the truth is that ideas of the most compelling sort have no one source, and can come from the most intriguing of places assembled from seemingly dissociated bits and pieces.”

At Bitmob this week, Adam Corando looks at the sexist visual imagery in Test Drive Unlimited and concludes that ‘Sexism in Games Is More than Skin Deep’. I’m just going to quote the editor's note in full: “Portrayals of women in this medium need serious examination. While some defensive gamers like to tout traditional gender constructs of men as evidence that we don't have a problem, this dismissive attitude fails to recognize the inherent differences between the stereotypes in question. We wonder why so few women seem interested in games development; the industry has embraced a "boys club" mentality for far too long, and Adam makes the case that Test Drive Unlimited is a prime example."

Whether inspired by Corando’s piece or just the result of a happy accident, Darry Huskey writes that for ‘Women in Games: It's About Strength, Not Sex’ which views the issue through the lens of Miranda from Mass Effect 2.

And that’s it for the week. Thanks also to Eric Swain doing much of the hard work in collecting all these links.

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

Das Cube, that simple physics-based puzzle game from Mark Johns (Space Barnacle), Infinite Ammo's Alec Holowka (IGF 2007 grand prize winner Aquaria), and composer Danny Branowsky (Super Meat Boy), has been discounted to the low, low price of free for a limited time!

In Das Cube, players use the touschcreen to "smash the glowing blocks into glorious explosions for massive combos", and shake their handset for a screen-clearing explosion. They can also post their scores to Twitter from the game. Grab it from the App Store now before it jumps back to the unaffordable price of $1.99!

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

As part of his PSP promotions in recent months, Marcus Rivers (played by Bobb'e J. Thompson of Role Models fame) has made sure to attack the smartphone games that have been eating into the handheld market, spotlighting fake games meant to represent some of the mobile platform's more vapid apps.

Be-Rad Entertainment, a new indie studio founded by former Crystal Dynamics programmer Bradley Johnson, actually took one of those parody games and turned it into a playable thing! Built on Unity, Lame Castle is available to play for free on your browser, and is also on Android (iPhone version coming soon).

It's actually a fun Canabalt/Robot Unicorn Attack-style title in which you control a knight on horseback, jumping over pits, boosting through haystacks, and attacking chickens/treasure boxes until you destroy "the evil wizard's lame castle" at the end of each stage.

You can play Lame Castle for free here. Make sure to also check out our sister site Gamasutra for an interview with Johnson about the game's development and decision to set up Be-Rad Entertainment.

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

['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 explores games that misdirect players from their goal.]

A vast majority of games are very straight-forward: you're given a goal (save the princess, save the world, kill the bad guy) and a step-by-step guide how to achieve said goal. Usually this involves going through a series of levels until you beat a boss. Sometimes you make choices that effect the story, but your overall goal and how you get there typically remains very predictable.

For example, there's a scene in Deadly Premonition where the player character briefs the town on their serial killer situation. Before attempting to unravel the mystery on your own, you're unable to progress until interrogating every main cast member.

Afterwards people will go about their daily routines and you can intercept them at any time to discover new information. Unfortunately, doing so won't help you solve the case any faster.

If anything it'll slow you down, since if you want to discover the mystery behind the killings you'll have to go down a clearly prescribed set of missions. By knowing how to go about achieving our goal, we're not really solving anything but rather going through the motions.

Recently I've played a couple free browser based games that defy this, by using our knowledge of handholding game design against us. Both Gregory Weir's The Day and Jorgnsn's Get Home seem very straight-forward initially, yet use clever misdirection to hide their true nature.

Both games are less than 10 minutes long, so I'd recommended playing them before reading on as this will be very spoiler heavy.

The Day thrusts you into an bleak village. As a child celebrating her birthday you're given a trading card and tasked with playing a simple card game with other children until you have a deck powerful enough to make you the best player in the camp. The cards escalate in ranks from citizen, soldier, tank, to a centipede-like monster, to the highest ranking card, a missile silo. Beating the card game accomplishes nothing (you just go home to eat cake, a possible reference to Portal) and is but a fool's errands to distract the child from the horror of her situation.

Spend some time talking to the adults, however, and you'll realize your uncle is missing and presumed dead, your dad's spent his whole life here, and everyone's afraid of the guards that roam outside the camp just beyond an inconspicuous path in the trees. If you go down this path it becomes apparent that the guards have abandoned their post long ago, your uncle died as a result of a security protocol while hacking a terminal, and upon entering the outside world you discover a skeleton of a giant centipede-like creature. The war has ended, the colony is alone, and the cards were telling the story of the war.

I wonder how many people discovered the outside ending first. There's certainly no barrier stopping you, but in my case I didn't want to leave until I was the top card player. It's our Pavlovian reaction as gamers to level up and leave no stone unturned. As such, it was brilliant misdirection leading us down the path of a game when just as romantic comedies have taught us time and time again, the answer was right in front of us the whole time.

Get Home has a different concept, but follows a similar design. The premise is you're late getting home and must rush there before the song playing on the soundtrack (Weathervanes & Chemicals by Team Me) ends.

This journey takes you through the suburbs, sewers, and eventually the skies as you collect potions that allow you to jump higher and eventually fly. So it will probably come as a shock when upon bursting through the skies you end up tumbling down in front of your front stoop with your girlfriend/wife/mom scolding you for your chemical abuse and not allowing you in.

You're then tasked with an impossible sounding mandate, "get home without using any chemicals!" But how? You can't jump high enough to get past even the first set of obstacles. It's only upon closer examination that you'll run into the ultimate "facepalm" moment -- the very first set of steps in the game can be bypassed entirely and you can simply keep going right until you get home.

I'm usually pretty good at finding secrets in games, but I missed this one. Had there been no impending time limit I might have poked around to see what was over there but I panicked as the song marched on.

If there's one failure in the game, it's blocking the drug free path with a "road closed" sign if you're sharp enough to discover this your first time through. As such you don't have as much agency as the surprise ending will have lead you to believe. Still, the game succeeded for me by distracting from the obvious with tried and true platforming challenges.

This sense of misdirection isn't new, though. At one time the world's top selling PC game, Myst, awed the gaming world with its ambiguous structure that refused to outline your goal.

Early on you discover two books, one red, one blue, each containing a man trapped within it. The men are brothers and each tells you to bring them the corresponding pages missing from their respective book to free them. Both men warn you against each other, claiming that it was their brother that resigned them to this cruel fate. Figuring out who to trust is a game in itself.

Surprisingly, both brothers are evil and the correct solution lies elsewhere. There's a note torn in half that if found and assembled will unlock the key to a hidden entrance taking you to the men's father, a grave man who laments having to lock up his wicked offspring.

So in essence, half the game didn't need to be completed to find the two note halves and come to this conclusion. But that thought never crossed my mind at the time. There are five islands in the game, each with their own set of puzzles and mysteries to uncover. Why would they be completely superfluous?

The answer is they're not. Much like The Day's card game and Get Home's psychedelic journey, these adventures are both fun in their own right and fulfill a necessary role as a red herring. These games succeed by easing us into a familiar rhythm only to pull the curtain back and reveal how conditioned we've been by years of games telling us what to do.

[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 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

Along with the Attractmode X Babycastles gala in NYC, the other video game event you need to attend tonight if you're in the area is 8-Bit Calavera, an NES cartridge/Dia De Los Muertos art show installation put on by the Autumn Society at Portland's Ground Kontrol bar/arcade.

8-Bit Calavera features 40 NES cartridges painted with skull designs by dozens of talented artists. Each of the carts will come together and act as pixels for a larger skull design. I'm not sure how long the installation will be on display, but it premieres tonight at Ground Kontrol!

You can check out my favorites of the NES skulls after the break. The above is by Julianna Lose, who decorated a The Adventures of Bayou Billy cartridge for her work.

Collin David:

Paul Palcko:

Jim Bradshaw:

Nick Jennings:

Glen Brogan:

Evan Lopez:

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

Taito has updated its acclaimed iOS shoot'em up Space Invaders Infinity Gene with a new version that offers a new Survival mode, universal app and retina display support, compatibility with Game Center and OpenFeint 3.7.4, and more achievements.

Survival mode allows players to take multiple Extra and Chimera stages in sequence. It also features Darius-style branching stages and multiple endings. Players can unlock new stages in Survival mode through the Evolution Gauge.

The update is free if you already have Space Invaders Infinity Gene on your iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad. And if you don't have the game yet, you really should grab it -- it's only $4.99 on the App Store!

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

Phoenix-based indie Retro Affect has debuted its first trailer of Snapshot since the puzzle-platformer first appeared two years ago as a finalist for the 2009 Independent Games Festival's Excellence in Design award. Since then, the game's received a new camera-robot hero (Pic), visual style, sound track, and more.

In the game, Pic can absorb objects into photographs, removing them, moving them, and even copying them. In the trailer above, you'll see the robot demonstrating this ability by photographing boxes, keys, and even itself. Snapshot features five unique worlds, over a hundred objects to photograph, and a new physics engine.

Retro Affect hasn't announced a released date for Snapshot yet, but it's revealed that the game will come out for Windows.

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

[As God of War: Ghost of Sparta launches for PSP, our own Tom Curtis talks to Ready at Dawn's Dana Jan on the essential design elements of action titles, and why the team returned to the storied franchise.]

California-based independent developer Ready at Dawn's second God of War title on the PlayStation Portable -- God of War: Ghost of Sparta, out this week -- hopes to recreate the essential elements of the brutal action series on the PSP and present an adventure that stands alongside its console counterparts in terms of presentation and mechanics.

After returning its PSP dev kits to Sony when God of War: Chains of Olympus launched, Ready at Dawn chose to take up arms again, returning to the franchise to build upon the precedent set by the first title.

Rather than attempt to reimagine the God of War series for the PSP, Ready at Dawn worked to push against the hardware's limitations to once again create a traditional God of War title for the handheld platform.

Ghost of Sparta, like Chains of Olympus, emulates the mechanics used in the console titles, and stays true to the franchise's established formula, while hoping to build upon the combat systems by introducing new scenarios and abilities for the player.

We spoke with Ready at Dawn's Dana Jan, game director of God of War: Ghost of Sparta, to discuss how the series has evolved on the PSP, the essential design elements of action titles, and the considerations the studio made when working with an established franchise:

You guys ended up sending your dev kits back to Sony after finishing Chains of Olympus, right? What drove you guys back to the PSP and the God of War franchise?

DJ: Yeah, one of the things that happened was that we were looking at what projects we were going to work on next, and when we finished working on Chains of Olympus, we weren't thinking of working on the PSP anymore and we were looking at Xbox [360] and PlayStation [3]. At the time, Sony wasn't pushing for a sequel, because Chains of Olympus was the first one, and while they were hoping it would do well, they weren't sure.

It focus tested really well, but they didn't anticipate what sort of reaction they would get on a handheld. Next thing you know, we are in talks again, and Sony is saying, "It's doing really well, people love the game, do you want to make another one?" We talked about it, and all the pieces fell together. We like working with Sony, and we know the PSP hardware probably more than anyone else.

Another part of it are those "what ifs." What if we could do it all again, what would we fix? When you get the opportunity to do it again, sometimes you should just go for it. We took it on, thinking, "Who better to come back and do God of War on the PSP than us?

I imagine someone else would have done it if we hadn't. Some days I wish I could have seen what this game would have been if someone else had made it. It might be a bit of an ego stroker, but I don't think anyone else could have done it the way we did.

What sort of lessons did you take from the first game?

DJ: Just learning how to take God of War apart, and figuring out what makes Kratos who he is, was a huge undertaking. After that we said, "We know God of War is a good game" -- because we were working on Chains of Olympus before God of War 2 came out. "It's a good game, but we feel like we can improve on a lot of this stuff."

I think we got a bit ahead of ourselves, when thinking about how we were going to change the game and what we were going to do better than what Sony had already done, but we kind of lost sight of the fact that God of War is a really complex game when you look at it from a combat perspective, or even from a character persona.

Kratos, at face value, looks very one-dimensional, he just seems like a rage-filled badass, but he has an interesting backstory and has a lot of layers to him. Some horrible things have happened to this guy, but at the same time, we root for him throughout his journey.

When working with a character that has a lot of depth, you have to make sure that every bit of your game and storytelling pays off all the hard work that the team did. We realized about seven months into Chains of Olympus that this was going to be a bear of a project.

Once we felt like we had figured out what God of War was all about, it made much more sense on Ghost of Sparta. Things like minigames when you kill creatures have a certain logic to them when it comes to the timing, the camera moves, the way you pay off a kill, they are all based on certain principles about Kratos that are under the hood, but you don't really think about. Now we know what to look for and how to build them, and on a second chance, you can really do them justice.

How much freedom do you guys get when working on this franchise? Do you communicate frequently with Sony Santa Monica?

DJ: That's one of the surprising things. I think most people would think that they just hand you a design document and a story and say, "Go!" But it's a really cool, collaborative process. We have a lot of freedom. I won't say that we can just do whatever we want, because it's not like that.

Sony supports us when it comes to making these games. We sat down, and we worked on the story, and Sony was involved, because of course the game has to fit into the overall franchise. We would work on the script, pass it to them, there would be a lot of notes back and forth. Stig Asmussen, the director of God of War III, was involved.

The game script is really this big document; it's not just the lines of dialogue, it dictates all the settings, and outlines all the gameplay you are going to have over the course of the game, and it's a couple hundred pages long. From that, everyone on both sides has a good idea of what kind of game you are going to be making.

It was funny; we sat down with some of the Sony Santa Monica guys and showed them the script and they were like, "This is really ambitious. You guys are really going to make this game?" That's when it set in, when they told us that they thought it was going to be a challenge to make. But they never said don't do it, or told us we couldn't, so it was on us to prove that we could do it. So we set out to make something that we would be proud of and that our fans would be proud of.

It's pretty free; it's really cool working with people that can trust you, and they can see the end when you are just beginning and they trust you to bring it all together in the end.

We also have people from Sony Santa Monica play the game. Sony Santa Monica's external design manager works directly with us when we have issues with things, or when we want to kick ideas back and forth, or when they see something that isn't working. We certainly have moments where the two studios meet up to talk about stuff. They are a resource for us, really, and it's helpful to have access to them if we have a tech or design question, or if there's an animation from God of War III we want to have a look at.

Since you are developing for a handheld, what sort of things do you guys keep in mind? The game is similar to its console counterparts, but what do you do to make sure the game works well on the PSP, keeping in mind how players play handhelds versus console games?

DJ: Your first inclination is to think that the game is similar to its big brothers on consoles, and that's because it is. One of the things we thought about when creating the game was "How do we have to change this game so it becomes viable on a handheld?" As we got into it, we found that we don't have to change it that much.

We make sure the camera works better for the small screen, and there is some technological stuff that we do here and there to make texture quality look like it's as good as PS2 and PS3, and there are full-screen effects to help the game look like it is more like a console game.

But to answer the question, we really don't change the game at all. We think that's one of its strengths. We don't want it to be a watered-down version of God of War; it is God of War, because we do everything the same way we would have done it if the game were on PS3.

Since the game is on handhelds, which people often play during commutes or lunch breaks, do you alter the pacing to accommodate players who only play for short stretches?

DJ: We do take some of that into consideration, and we make sure to put save spots all over the game at logical break points, but you can also just put the PSP on sleep mode and stick it right back into your pocket.

As far as pacing of the game goes, we don't change it too much, but we do make sure that, for the person that will play the same in short sittings, there will be a lot of story-based reminders to tell players what your current objective is, what you just did, and you need to be doing next.

For someone who puts the game down for a while and forgets what they were doing, this game has tons of reminders. I think this is a really good thing because God of War has a really big story, there are a lot of events going on around this character, and it can get confusing. There are a lot of overlapping plot points, so having those snippets bread-crumbing you along to your end goal is a huge benefit regardless of what platform the game is on.

We also did a lot more in-game storytelling in this game. In the first game, we used a lot of pre-rendered cinematics that were rendered using the game assets, but this time we have a lot of stuff running in-game. You might be finishing up a battle and the camera will pan over and show you some characters that are talking, or boss intros and things like that.

They are all done in real time, they aren't pre-rendered, and they seamlessly segue back and forth in the game. That was a big leap for us, because the PSP doesn't have a lot of memory. Everything you see is fitting within 10MB of memory, and that's not a lot of space. All the art, characters, music, animations, all have to fit within 10MB. To go into a moment where we have characters talking and using custom animations is very expensive, so we had to figure out some tricks to shuffle memory.

Did working with the PSP hardware lead to other technical constraints?

DJ: Yeah, we tried to do things like specularity to make things look shiny, we have rain effects, and other effects that hardware doesn't inherently support. We feel like the effects you see on consoles are tools that help make games feel current, and we don't want this game to feel like something you might have played years ago. We want people to say, "Wow, this looks like God of War 3." We want it to look new and fresh, and finding ways to do that can be a big headache because it's not something that is supported by the system.

In terms of making the game resemble its console versions, did you take any steps to diverge from the precedent set by the console games? You mentioned keeping the essentials of the game intact, but are there any specific changes you had to make?

DJ: We tried changing a lot of stuff, actually. There was a period during Chains of Olympus where we tried to change all of Kratos' moves. This is a lesson we learned early on that goes back even to the previous game. It turns out that you can change things for the sake of change, but if they aren't any better, there's no reason to. There are certain moves that Kratos has that you just shouldn't change because they are the best they can be.

Everything in God of War is very functional; this game is super mathematic, like games such as Devil May Cry but more accessible. Everything has a frame count and hitbox window that is very specific and in tune with the way the enemy AI acts and stuff like that, so when you make changes, they have sweeping ramifications with the way the game has to be balanced and the way the action feels. When it came to combat, we made sure that everything we added or changed was absolutely better, rather than just different.

Outside of combat, we made sure that the camera was able to move around so we can reveal secrets or show players where a platform will lead them, so you need a certain amount of camera space for that. We also have these boss fights with large monsters, so we pull the camera back so you can see the scope. But there are also some characters we get involved with, especially human characters that have wronged the player, that engage in back and forth dialogue, and there's a personal connection. When Kratos gets pissed off, I want to get almost into his point of view and feel that.

For a couple parts of the game, we pull the camera way up close, so you can see characters' expressions, with their eyes bugging out and everything.

There are a few sections where we brought the action really close and big on the screen so you can really feel it. I don't think many games do that; they don't get personal enough. We made sure to push that in this game, and I think the payoff is amazing. We had to re-model Kratos from the last game, so when we got the camera up close he would hold up, and he has a new facial rig so he can make all these expressions during his animations. It's worth the effort and the tech heartaches to bring that stuff to life.

In a general sense, there are a lot of other third person action games out there right now, from the new Castlevania to things like Bayonetta or Dante's Inferno. What do you guys believe are the key elements to make an action game stand out from the crowd?

DJ: I think it's a matter of making sure that your action is meaningful, first and foremost. If you're playing a game where you enter the same scenarios over and over again, but you never get any big pay off, you'll get tired of it. It's important to give the action a purpose, as is presentation.

A lot of games that do third person action don't know how to make it very satisfying. You should go and do stuff like showcase when you rip something's heart out; make it worthwhile for the player to fight the characters. And another thing is, it's not just a pacing thing, but a balancing act; make sure that all the elements of the game, like storytelling, puzzles, exploration, combat feel compelling, even during downtime between large events. A lot of times that stuff can feel like filler that's just there to make things longer.

It's also important to integrate the game's elements. The various elements of the game don't have to be separate. There are parts in the game where you have to navigate an environment or solve a puzzle while fighting, for example.

When it comes to combat, specifically, what sort of elements do you think are most important to creating a solid combat system?

DJ: Everything is built around Kratos and how he works, so we try to find a deficiency he has. What is something an enemy can do that would put him in a tricky spot? We like to call it "the trick." When we design a character to fight against, we like to give them a trick. For example, the Gorgon's trick is that she can stare at you and freeze you, and you'll die in one hit if you get frozen.

We know people like to wail at creatures, but if all of a sudden that creature doesn't take hit reactions because she's doing that big gaze, then you have to switch up your game and start rolling around. We want to figure out ways that will change the player's normal, comfortable way of playing that isn't cheesy or annoying.

We want it to be satisfying to figure out a specific character's trick, and then after that you get a really sweet kill moment, where you pull its head off and blood sprays everywhere. When you look at it that way, it just makes sense.

Obviously, the trick is that you need a lot of different characters, and the list of characters for this game is pretty big, and all of them need some type of trick that makes them different than the last guy. Keeping them different and varied is important when you populate the world and design your encounters around that.

We also mix and match characters a lot; we have a lot of test bed fight areas where we go, "What if I threw in this character with the minotaur? Do they work well together? Does His trick work with the other one?" One of my favorite ones is the fire harpies in this game, that fly off-screen and when they come back down they explode. Sure, it's a bit annoying by itself, but when you throw in a Gorgon that freezes you, you can die if one hits you while you are frozen, creating an elevated level of difficulty.

You also have to take the space into consideration. Your fight area has a lot to do with the way your encounter plays out.

Yeah, I imagine level design becomes a very big concern, especially because you have an automatic camera that zooms and pans on its own. What sort of challenges does that present when you design the environments?

DJ: One thing we do early on is give our camera designer a really quick and dirty version of a level, with the kind of gameplay that will be in it. He'll go in and put in a rudimentary set of cameras, and then we play it, so we can see what the camera shows us when we go into a certain area. We'll then go in and figure out if it's okay to alter the environment; we have to make sure it won't ruin an encounter if a certain wall is moved around -- you don't want an area to be too big or too small.

It might seem like having no camera control might be a problem, but it actually helps you focus on what you should be doing. For a game like this, we want to make sure you see what we want you to see, like if you need to go up a ladder, the camera will pan over towards it and it has lighting that draws your eye.

We never want you to be lost; we'll show you. This gives us opportunities to show off nice vistas where we can frame the character properly and everything; it's very cinematic. Every once in a while we run into places where it's hard to figure out how to set stuff like this up, but I think those days are the most fun.

One things that I've always found interesting with the God of War series is that the games often make sure to include a lot of behind the scenes content on the game disk, which most developers don't do—Valve and other Sony studios are some other exceptions. Do you guys plan to do this with Ghost of Sparta, and what is the motivation for going through the extra effort to include this content?

DJ: In our case, it's largely thanks to the marking team. Eric Williams was one of the combat designers on every God of War title, including ours. He worked with us as a contractor and always talked about it. He's friends with Cory [Barlog] and Dave [Jaffe], and wanted to get a sort of designers' panel set up. One day we got a call from marketing and we found out we were going to do it, and I always thought it was just something we joked about, and it became a reality.

Yeah, so few companies decide to talk about their development process in a public way, so it's always interesting to get a glimpse at it through commentaries or videos or what have you.

DJ: Yeah, I always wonder if it's because people are just protective of the way they do something, because they don't want their secrets to get out. I think it's very unfortunate, because honestly, with the way we, or anyone for that matter, makes games, there's no real secret.

All these games are made by people, and they all come from somewhere else; there's no studio that's completely homegrown where no one has ever worked somewhere else. They always bring their stories and experiences and you learn how to incorporate certain things or how not to do stuff. As a gamer, I want companies to make better games.

It just seems to make sense; why do we need to keep this so secret? If I show you how to do something, and you use it or one-up it, it's only going to inspire me to do something even better next time. I think there's no sense in hiding anything.

It's also nice for the players to have access to, if they happen to be interested in that kind of thing.

DJ: Yeah, I think with the advent of DVD, certainly there are a lot of behind the scenes commentaries that get into filmmaking. And if you're a gamer who is interested in getting into development some day, these games that show you what goes into them will give you a better appreciation for games or how to make them.

I think it's surprising for those outside the industry to find out what goes into these games. We always hear things like, "Oh, you just play games all day!" But of course, that couldn't be further from the truth. It's not a cakewalk.

Going back to the game itself-- there are some alternate weapons in the game, and while they seem to have different properties, the combat often tends toward sweeping area attacks that fill up a large portion of the screen. Why do you design the player's core combat abilities in this way?

DJ The weapons certainly have their own properties, like a shield and spear that can send out a flurry of stabs in one direction, or allow you to throw spears as a projectile. But yeah, God of War 3 was one of the ones where all the weapons felt like they were sweeping, chain weapons.

We wanted to be different than that. If we were going to have a secondary weapon, it should be fairly different, but it has to have familiarity. You have to be able to do go-- square, square, triangle. People have to know certain things are there so if they get panicked they can rely on some of the knowledge they built up from the other weapons.

I imagine you guys probably had to tackle this issue with the first game, but how has the button layout of the PSP affected the way you tackled the game's controls and new abilities? On the PSP you no longer have a second analog stick or the two extra triggers.

DJ: It's funny, the thing on PSP that I wish we had was a second analog stick. Definitely the most difficult thing about our control scheme is the L and R plus analog stick to roll. Other than that though, when it came to God of War, I found that having four shoulder buttons, for most average users, is the most confusing. Trying to remember what R1 versus R2 is can be a bit confusing.

We asked ourselves, "What can we strip away from some of these buttons?" We moved some actions to the face buttons, because those are the easiest to remember. For example, we changed the action button to circle because when you aren't in combat, it doesn't need to do anything else.

We also moved magic activation to the D-pad, so you can quickly hit it, it activates, and then you can go right back to the analog stick; you don't have to worry about some crazy combination of buttons like we did in Chains of Olympus. We also designed new magics that worked with that scheme so it wasn't something difficult.

We thought about it, and we decided to make magics that would just go when you hit the button, so you don't have to worry about the complication around it. You design around it, you know? You built a hierarchy and figure out what you need at your fingertips and what can go a layer deeper.

One thing that's always stood out to me in previous God of War titles is that Kratos is often a very despicable, cruel character. What is your studio's take on the character and the way he is presented? How do you make the player relate to or sympathize with someone that commits atrocities throughout the game?

DJ: Well, you don't want to hate him, right? He's the hero of this story, but he's not squeaky clean. He has a dark past and he's a tainted individual, but you have to root for him though despite the fact that he's ruthless and he'll stop at nothing to get to his goal. What ends up doing some things for the betterment of others, even though at its core it's a very self-centered quest. He's the guy you love to hate.

When you do things in this game, we need to make sure there's something personal to it that you can attach to and understand. This story is about his brother ho he thought he lost. If you've ever felt horrible guilt because of something you've done to a family member, and now you have a chance to right that wrong, most people would be like, "I can get behind that. That's an emotion that I can understand."

All the hyper-real stuff he's doing outside of that--sure, you and I won't have that experience, but saving a long-lost family member is something that is easier to relate to. I think that makes the action and storytelling a lot more powerful and lets you get inside of a character that is doing things that might be morally questionable.

For a handheld title, it's interesting that the game has no real segmentation; you always seem to be making forward progress without stopping the player between levels.

DJ: It's funny because it's one of those things where, internally, we think of the design in terms of levels, but once we start putting it together we try to do away with that notion. It helps us keep track of everything obviously.

It's a seamless world; there's no loading, and the character moves through a world that is all connected. It helps the player feel connected. They think, "I'm there because I ran there, I flew there, I rode a giant creature there." It makes the journey feel big. If you cover every inch of it on foot, you totally feel like when you get to your destination, it's a big deal.

Another cool thing is that when you are in a certain place in the world, we can show you where you are going to go. You might see a storm out on the horizon that ends up being where your journey is going. It's cool that we can use the camera that we have complete control over to show players that really pretty vista. It helps make the world feel real.

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

The family of noted PC game developer and M.U.L.E. creator Dan/Dani Bunton (1949—1998) has donated a variety of materials documenting the industry pioneer's life and career to the International Center for the History of Electronic Games (ICHEG) at Rochester, NY's the Strong National Museum of Play.

The donated artifacts include copies of landmark multiplayer game M.U.L.E., Wheeler Dealers (one of the first boxed computer games, of which only 50-100 were sold), Robot Rascals, Heart of Africa, Cartels & Cutthroats, Cyber Masters, and Computer Quarterback.

Also included in the collection are personal papers related to Bunten's game industry career, game concept documents, game descriptions, press, clippings, business papers, photographs, and personal records.

ICHEG, which is dedicated to collecting, studying, and interpreting video/electronic games, plans to showcase some of the developer's materials at eGameRevolution, an upcoming interactive exhibit on the history of electronic games, which will open on November 20.

The 5,000-square-foot show will feature a re-created, old fashioned video arcade, stations for playing classic titles like Oregon Trail and Super Mario 64, a gigantic game of Tetris, video games displayed on an LED Lightspace dance floor, and more.

"The Bunten artifacts and the Dan Bunten (Dani Bunten Berry) Papers donated by the Bunten family represent a significant addition to the center’s archival repository of electronic game history," says ICHEG director Jon-Paul Dyson.

Dyson continues, "[The Bunton materials] take an important place alongside other major ICHEG holdings, among them, collections from such luminaries as Ralph Baer, Don Daglow, and Will Wright."

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

Kill Screen, the indie magazine that seeks to be the video game equivalent of "what early Rolling Stone was to rock n’ roll or Wired was to tech", has published Issue 2: Back to School, examining what/how/why do games teach?

Here's what you can look forward to in the issue, which has a limited run of 2,000 copies:

"... We explored the Australian outback with Ben Abraham. We took a trip to the Smithsonian with Brian Taylor and Laura Michet walked the surface of the moon with NASA. Former Microsoft VP Ed Fries explained how beauty comes from constraint and Colbert Report writer Rob Dubbin interrogated a day trader about the connections between finance and StarCraft.

Videogame academic Mitu Khandaker questioned her own existence as a videogame academic and David Wolinsky interrogated the chief historian for Assassin’s Creed 2. We’ve even got a comic from cartoonist James Kolchalka and some incredible artwork from Emanuele Sferruzza Moszkowicz (such as our cover and a lovely dream portrait of the president of Thatgamecompany, who made Flower.)"

Something else you can look forward to is reduced pricing for the magazine. You can now pick up a single issue for $15, $5 less than before. You can also grab an issue and T-shirt combo for $25, a four-issue subscription for $50, and a four-issue subscription and T-shirt pack for $60.

You can check out the new Kill Screen issue and other items from the magazine's shop here.

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

[Our own Simon Parkin attended Nottingham, UK's GameCity, and weighs in on the fest's top moments, from high level game design with Jonathan Blow to a tea party held for Mario's 25th birthday.]

"As the games industry has globalized, it has failed to develop a human face. The point of the festival is to illustrate that games are made by people."

For its director Iain Simons, the UK’s annual video game festival, GameCity, now in its fifth year, exists to humanize a medium that can very often be mechanical and individualistic.

This year, for example, the festival celebrated Mario’s 25th anniversary, not with a marquee filled with NES consoles playing Super Mario Bros. on loop all day, but with a tea party in which attendees were encouraged to wear paper mustaches cut out from the festival’s program.

In stark contrast to E3 or the Tokyo Game Show, which plunge gamers into virtual reality after virtual reality, the only human contact to be enjoyed while queuing ahead of the main attractions, GameCity is less about the games than the people.

It's as much about creating stories as it is about experiencing those offered by game developers and, for that reason, can be one of the most, or least, useful events on the industry's calendar depending on your mindset in approaching it, and how much you are willing to put in.

A main tent is erected in the town square, a focal point in which passers-by can drop in and take part in an aerobics session set to EA's forthcoming Kinect sports game, or play 20-player student-made interpretations of Capcom’s 1943, Hudson's Bomberman or Taito's Bubble Bobble. But otherwise, the festival’s various events squat in the city’s pubs, clubs and municipal buildings, giving a local, messy feel to what is already a willfully idiosyncratic event.

This is perhaps the only games festival to invite local children to drop their ideas, spelled out in crayons and scrawls, into a bucket. And then to fly Canabalt creator Adam Saltzman over from Texas to attempt to knit them together into a game in front of them, a widescreen display monitor proudly displaying his lines of code to any watchers, while video game-themed singer songwriter Rebecca Mayes works on the soundtrack behind him.

Before the event was finished, the pair had published a build of the game, drawn from 95 of the ideas submitted by Nottingham's youngsters. For an industry that draws almost exclusively from adult anxieties in forming its scenarios -- cultural fears that translate to so many brown post-apocalyptic scenarios and zombie thrillers -- it was one of the few times someone has bothered to ask children which conflict they think might make for an interesting video game premise. The result? A game about a lost child who must find its way home.

With a game-themed stand-up comedy event curated by the team behind One Life Left, the UK’s only gaming-related radio show, GameCity can, at times, feel like the industry’s own Edinburgh Festival, its joyful celebration of games culture more in keeping with the spirit of Britain’s leading arts festival than the EIF has ever been.

The show's three presenters each made their stand-up debut alongside three professional comedians, the kind of melding of enthusiast and professional that typifies the festival's approach.

Its strength is in this diversity. The four day event managed to bring together a ‘Theremin Hero’ event, in which a pair of theremin musicians played along to game music such as the theme from Metal Gear Solid, and Portal’s Still Alive, with an in-depth creative postmortem of Braid, delivered in person by creator Jonathan Blow.

This combination of in-depth keynotes on professional development with whimsy creates a curious, typically British ambiance, that while scattershot and sometimes lacking consistency, manages to embody the playful, childlike wonder of gaming far better than its heavyweight sponsored rivals around the world.

The festival’s wider sense of creativity filters into the talks themselves. After Chris Hecker spent 45 minutes explaining his journey in creating Spy Party to date, he then played the entire audience at the game, arguing that it was the only way anyone in the room had a chance to beat him.

Likewise, Denmark’s Playdead’s ‘Listening to Limbo’ offered insight into the creation of a soundtrack most notable for its relative absence in the game. These unusual presentations don’t fit well with the churn of event coverage in the mainstream games press, but for attendees offer something memorable and affecting.

Nevertheless, some of the more traditional features of video games festivals were present. In the main square marquee, attendees had chance to play with Lego Universe, while a Friday night Crysis 2 multiplayer tournament offered the most orthodox kind of game-related activity of the week.

But at GameCity, games play a supporting role to a wider celebration of the medium. Straight after the Crysis 2 event, attendees headed to a local nightclub to listen to a set from Baiyon, the Japanese creative artist who provided the soundtrack for PixelJunk Eden.

The next morning, those who weren't nursing headaches headed into the city for some live action Pac Man. So popular was this event that many players missed director Iain Simons' keynote address in which he outlined the event's mandate to provide that "human face to games".

Regardless, one doubts he minded very much that people missed his talk because they were out having fun, even if, dressed as Inky, Binky, Pinky and Clyde, they were more accurately offering the ghostly face of games.

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

Augmented reality specialist Vertigore Games recently showed off Star Wars Arcade: Falcon Gunner, a neat little shooter for iPhone 3GS/4 and iPod Touch 4th Gen that lets you shoot down TIE Fighters superimposed over the real world environment around you.

In this video posted by tech site Gizmodo above, you can see the player blasting ships over a city skyline from one of the Millenium Falcon's gun turrets whilst music, sound effects from the Star Wars films play.

Falcon Gunner will also feature iconic Star Wars moments like the Battle of Hoth and the escape from the Death Star, along with the option to switch to rendered backgrounds instead of augmented reality scenes using the iPhone's camera.

Vertigore expects to release Star Wars Arcade: Falcon Gunner later this month.

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

Organizers of the second annual Independent Games Festival China have revealed finalists for both the Main and Student competitions, including over 10 stand-out indie games from across Asia.

High-quality submissions for the second iteration of the event -- a newly formed sister competition to the main yearly Independent Games Festival in San Francisco -- were received from multiple Chinese provinces, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Iran, India and beyond.

Finalists were chosen by a panel of distinguished local judges, including representatives from Shanda Games, Tencent, IGDA Shanghai, TipCat Interactive and more.

IGF China finalists are invited to Shanghai for the Game Developers Conference China event from December 5th to 7th, where they will be showing their games at a special Pavilion on the Expo Floor, open to all GDC China attendees.

In addition, finalists are eligible to win up to RMB61,000 ($9,100) in cash prizes, as well as specially created awards and All Access Passes to GDC San Francisco 2011 worth thousands of dollars.

The Main Competition finalists for the 2010 Independent Games Festival China are:

Sugar Cube (Turtle Cream, South Korea)
Hazard: The Journey Of Life (Alexander Bruce, Australia)
Train Conductor 2 (The Voxel Agents, Australia)
Cut & Paste (Turtle Cream, South Korea)
Skillz: The DJ Game (Playpen Studios, Hong Kong)
ButaVX: Justice Fighter (Nekomura Games, Singapore)
Crossout (Coconut Island Studio, China)

The Student Competition finalists for this year's IGF China event are as follows:

Zonelink (Huazhong University Of Science And Technology, China)
Dead Steel (Media Design School, Auckland, New Zealand)
Afterland (Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab, Singapore)
The White Laboratory (Huazhong University of Science & Technology, China)
Ponlai (National Yunlin University of Science and Technology, Taiwan)

The winners of IGF China in categories including Best Game, Mobile Best Game, Excellence in Art Direction, Excellence in Visual Arts, Technical Excellence, and Student awards will be announced during the 2010 Game Developers Conference China at a special IGF Awards ceremony.

The Independent Games Festival's outreach into Asia is part of GDC China -- part of the UBM TechWeb Game Network, as is this website. GDC China returns to the Shanghai International Convention Center on December 5-7th, and early registration is open until November 5th. Further information on IGF China can be found at the event's official website.

Posted by Simon Carless at 9:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Indie developer Capybara (Critter Crunch, Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes) posted several beautiful iPad-size screenshots for Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP, its collaboration iOS project with pixelartist/animator Craig "Superbrothers" Adams and singer-songwriter Jim Guthrie.

I've featured Sword & Sworcery a bunch here already, but I really can't wait to see this adventure/action game finally released. Capybara describes it as "a 21st century update to the pioneering works of Miyamoto, Mechner & Chahi", offering a nod to the creators of The Legend of Zelda, Prince of Persia, and Out of This World.

In case you missed it last month, Craig Adams shared a lot of new footage and music for Sword & Sworcery in his "Intoxication of Mythology" talk at Austin's Fantastic Arcade, which you can watch here.

Posted by Eric Caoili at 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Bless Xseed for bringing Ys: The Oath in Felghana to North America, as well as Ys Seven and the upcoming Ys I & II Chronicles -- actually, they'd probably appreciate you buying their game more than your blessings. It should hit stores near you this week!

Developed by Nihon Falcom and originally released for PCs in 2005, The Oath in Felghana is a remake of the series' third entry, Ys III: Wanderers from Ys, revamping the gameplay in the style of Ys: The Ark of Napishtim.

That probably sounds confusing to Ys newcomers, but all you need to know is that this is a fun action RPG now available for the PSP, and this is also the first time the remake has received an English localization.

The Oath in Felghana is available as a $30 standard edition and a $40 limited edition, the latter coming packed with a 20+ song soundtrack and a 4" x 6" desktop calendar featuring artwork from the game.

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

[Big sister site Gamasutra's editor-at-large Chris Morris offers in-person analysis and highlights of Tuesday's U.S. Supreme Court hearing over the California violent game bill, explaining why it's "still much too early to start celebrating."]

The video game industry might be able to release some of that deep breath it has been holding since the Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments in Schwarzenegger v. EMA - but it's still much too early to start celebrating.

While Justices did seem to side with the video game industry in their questions, by no means did they give EMA attorney Paul Smith a free pass - peppering him with questions about the harmful effects of video game violence and scolding the industry for seemingly shrugging off reports from organizations that indicate there is an effect on children.

They were even less impressed with the parental controls the industry touts, with Chief Justice John Roberts noting "any 13-year-old can bypass parental controls in about 5 minutes."

That said, it was California that took the brunt of the hard questions at the Gamasutra-attended U.S. Supreme Court hearing in Washington D.C. on Tuesday - which seemed to disorient California's supervising deputy attorney general Zackery Morazzini.

Among the highlights:

"Would you get rid of rap music? Have you heard some of the lyrics of some of the rap music, some of the original violent songs that have been sung about killing people and about other violence directed to them? Why isn't that obscene in the sense that you're using the word - or deviant?" - Justice Sonia Sotomayor

"What's next after violence? Drinking? Smoking? Will movies that feature scenes of smoking affect children? ... Movies that show smoking can't be shown to children? Will that affect them? Of course, I suppose it will. But are we to sit day by day to decide what else will be made an exception from the First Amendment? Why is this particular exception okay, but the other ones that I just suggested are not okay?" - Justice Antonin Scalia

"If you are supposing a category of violent materials dangerous to children, then how do you cut it off at video games? What about films? What about comic books? Grimm's fairy tales? Why are video games special?" - Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg

"For generations, there has been a societal consensus about sexual material. Sex and violence have both been around a long time, but there is a societal consensus about what's offensive for sexual material and there are judicial discussions on it. ... But you are asking us to go into an entirely new area where there is no consensus, no judicial opinions." - Justice Anthony Kennedy

"What's a deviant - a deviant, violent video game? As opposed to what? A normal violent video game?" - Justice Scalia

(Morazzini, incidentally, answered yes to this question, clarifying that deviant would be departing from the social norms. Scalia quickly asked "There are established norms of violence!? ... Some of the Grimm's fairy tales are quite grim, to tell you the truth. Are they ok, are you going to ban them too?")

"One of the studies ... says that the effect of violence is the same for a Bugs Bunny episode as it is for a violent video [game]. So can the legislature now, because it has that study, say we can outlaw Bugs Bunny?" - Justice Sotomayor

The list goes on, but the point's pretty clear.

Focus On... Running With Scissors?

What was interesting from my standpoint was the focus. California was successful in making Postal 2 the centerpiece of its argument. Justices repeatedly referred to the game and some of its more infamous scenes - such as setting people on fire, then urinating on them to put them out - in their questioning. Other titles, no matter how violent or controversial, were largely ignored - though MadWorld did get name-checked.

(That's curious, given how much attention the "No Russian" level in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 received last year, though given the late date of that game, California might not have been able to add video footage of it to its filing.)

EMA attorney Paul Smith didn't bring up other titles either, though since attorneys rarely have a chance to complete a sentence before the justices lob another hardball question at them, that's not too surprising.

One thing that no one was expecting from this hearing was the amount of joking that came from the Justices. While they certainly took the matter seriously and offered some very hard questions, they weren't a monolithic group of nine that didn't have some fun with the proceedings.

After Justice Scalia raised the question above about what was next after violence, Justice Samuel Alito quipped "Well, I think what Justice Scalia wants to know is what James Madison thought about video games."

Even Scalia himself was tossing off one-liners, such as "Juries are not controllable. That's the wonderful thing about juries, also the worst thing about juries."

And Justice Elana Kagan, the youngest member of the Court, showed more awareness of the industry than most people were expecting, temporarily ignoring Postal 2 and asking Morazzini about "Mortal Kombat," a question he didn't seem at all prepared for.

"You think Mortal Kombat is prohibited by this statute?," she asked out of the blue. "I believe it's a candidate Your Honor, but I haven't played the game and been exposed to it sufficiently to judge for myself," Morazzini replied after a short pause.

"It's a candidate," she quickly followed up, "meaning, yes, a reasonable jury could find that Mortal Kombat, which is an iconic game, which I am sure half of the clerks who work for us spend considerable amounts of time in their adolescence playing..." ("I don't know what she's talking about," quipped Scalia - who by that point could have been entertaining offers to open at the Improv.)

First Impressions... Deceiving?

While Justices seemed to favor the video game industry's case in the oral arguments, it's worth keeping in mind that that can be misleading. Often Justices will aggressively question counsel for the side they're inclined to rule in favor of, hoping those attorneys can make convincing arguments that might sway other members of the Court.

Also, the current lineup of Justices leans conservatively, which is always a concern for the entertainment industry.

"It's got to be (worrisome)," says Miles Feldman, an entertainment litigator with Raines Feldman, LLP in Beverly Hills tells Gamasutra. "It can cut both ways. By and large, I think the ideological nature of the court is they're not going to be to friendly to the concept of violent video games. The justices aren't computers that adhere to precedent and spit out opinions. They have their own feelings that affect decisions."

"The reaction to whether this applies to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is 'of course it doesn't!' But there's something about video games, because of how interactive and how graphic they are, that could be allowing this type of regulation."

In other words, judging by today's arguments, the industry seems to be headed in the right directions, but it's still a long way from being out of the woods.

[You can now read the full transcript of this morning's arguments on the Supreme Court's website as a PDF.]

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

Daniel Benmergui's Today I Die, one of several finalists for the Independent Games Festival's Nuovo award this year, has been ported from Flash and experienced a "complete revisioning" for iOS systems by Atakama Labs.

The studio adapted the somber puzzle/art game by giving it a complete rewrite and "exploring the concept a bit further". As with the original, players must choose from a selection of words to change lines from a poem, and their choices affect the scene and ending.

Our sister site IndieGames.com says that once players complete the game, they can also build their own short poem using the available words, then post their work on Twitter. You can download the revamped game, Today I Die Again, for $0.99.

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

Showing off some of his new artwork recently, Rodney Greenblat, who was responsible for the distinct visual style of NanaOn-Sha music games like PaRappa the Rapper and UmJammer Lammy, debuted several Buddhism-inspired pieces at Manhattan's Village Zendo.

Though they've little relation to video games other than some small cameos, the new art (which includes a "Wow Temple" painting and two painted wooden shrines titled "Dragon Key" and "Joshu's Dog") definitely has the same colorful and charming look of Greenblat's PlayStation contributions.

GSW contributor Matthew "Fort90" Hawkins, who has more photos from the Village Zendo show, points out that Greenblat will bring these pieces and more to a solo show at Hudson, NY's BCB Gallery. That exhibit will run from November 13th to December 19th, so definitely check it out if you're in the area!

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

[Talking to our own Simon Parkin, eccentric Katamari Damacy creator Keita Takahashi discusses leaving Namco, possible collaboration with the Killzone team and the unlikely origin of his new company’s name, "Uvula."]

What a difference a year makes. At the 2009 Nottingham GameCity festival, Keita Takahashi, creator of the joyful Katamari Damacy and Noby Noby Boy, seemed lost.

In a damp house on the outskirts of Nottingham, he worked with balls of plasticine, lengths of string and piles of bended paperclips in search of the design for a playground -- a commission by the city brokered through the GameCity event organizers.

But more than that, he seemed to be in search of his place in the world. Disillusioned with the mainstream games industry and still sore at having being pressured into creating sequels for his games which he always intended to stand alone, Takahashi's relationship with video games appeared to have soured.

"I'm frustrated with the industry," he said at the time. "The things I find interesting and enjoyable just aren't reflected in the popular games of today and, I feel like there's not much room for my voice because of that."

Twelve months on, and Takahashi is no longer an employee at Namco. In past few months he's set up a new company, Uvula, with his wife, launching a website that plainly offers his services in art, music and video games.

Freed from the shackles of corporate life, Takahashi is now free to express his voice separate from worrying about financial targets, key demographics and the pressure of having to turn every idea into a franchise.

But these benefits come with setbacks. Namco's suits may have made demands on Takahashi that he was uncomfortable with, but they also provided the funding, staff, platform and marketing that amplified his voice and made his games accessible around the world. This new liberty has come at the cost of power. With that in mind, is he happier than a year ago?

"For me now," he tells us, "I find [that] happiness and worry seem to be two sides of the same coin right now. I have mixed feelings. I'm concerned for my future. But then, even if I'd stayed at Namco, I just would have had a different set of worries, right?"

It is the early days for Takahashi's new venture, Uvula. "To be honest, it's not really a 'company' yet," he says. "But when I went freelance, I needed a platform of expression, so I bought the domain."

I ask him where the unusual name came from. "I was going through the dictionary app on my phone and came across the word randomly. It jumped out at me. I didn't know the word before but it seemed so beautiful to me."

"In Japanese, if you translate our word for that part of the body back into English it comes out as something like 'throat penis', something really ugly. So I like the contrast of this beautiful word in English with the weird, ugly word in Japanese."

Takahashi reveals that he's working on two projects at Uvula at the moment, neither of which is video game related. The first is the CD artwork for his musician wife's next album. Then there's a development of a new social networking website, although he won't say who he's partnering with on this, or what it is about for fear of upsetting them.

But that's not to say Takahashi's turned his back on video games. He mentions that he's had some very early conversations with LittleBigPlanet developers Media Molecule, although nothing firm has come about from that yet.

Asked if there are any games he's eager to make. "I have a really loose idea for a music game," he says. "But I don't think it would sell very many copies. Also, I had an idea for a first-person at IndieCade. It's something that I'd actually really like to make with [Guerrilla's] Killzone team."

The idea is rather incongruous to Takahashi's previous work. "I'd like to make an FPS in which, every time you shoot an enemy, your character grows larger, and every time you're shot, you grow smaller."

"It would be interesting if the player got carried away by the fact that they grow and shrink so that, in the end, they forget the original purpose of shooting enemies. It would be beneficial to work with a company that specializes in that kind of game, and the Killzone team seemed like a good fit. That kind of strange mix appeals."

It's this kind of innovative, simple brilliance that as always marked Takahashi's work. But that's not to say there aren't recurring themes. A lot of Takahashi's games are about the player character growing and shrinking, that the idea of a player's sense of progress is measured by the size of their avatar.

"It's not intentional," he says, before adding, with characteristic self-depreciation: "Maybe my sources of inspiration is very limited, which is why the results are so similar."

Switching from introspection for a moment, I ask Takahashi if there are any game design trends in the industry that frustrate him, that he thinks we'd be better off without. "I especially dislike celebrity games," he says.

He's talking about games about the celebrities, like Tiger Woods golf, for example, as well as games in which celebrities do the voices for the characters. "It puts all of the focus on surface elements in order to attract customers, rather than prizing their real strength and appeal. This just misses the point of what games are about for me."

What is that point then, I ask? "To let players experience something that they can only experience through playing games," he says, immediately.

Which games have done that for him in the past year, I wonder.

He pauses. "I play with the dictionary app on my phone a lot," he says with a grin.

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

Great news for fans of shoot'em ups featuring sword-wielding crafts (e.g. Radiant Silvergun, Bangai-O): here's a new shoot'em up featuring a sword-wielding mecha! Seisou Kouki Strania is the latest from G.rev, the Japanese developer behind other shmups like Senko no Ronde and Border Down.

The game will offer two-player support both online and offline. Along with the ability to switch between three weapons, players' robots will be able to take advantage of an "Over Dose" feature that gives them limited invulnerability for a short time and multiplies their score.

According to Mecha Damashii, G.rev plans to release Seisou Kouki Strania to Xbox Live Arcade in Japan late next year. It hasn't yet announced any plans to localize the game for other regions. You can check out screenshots of the title from 4Gamer after the break:

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

The editors of Game Developer magazine, a sister publication to this website and the leading worldwide magazine for game creators, have named the finalists for the 2010 Front Line Awards, its 13th annual evaluation of the year’s best game-making tools -- adding that voting on winners is now open.

Each year, Game Developer looks at the powerful lineup of new products and new releases of favorite tools, from networking tools to middleware and engines, and selects the top five products in each category.

Front Line Award finalists represent the most innovative, user-friendly, and useful products from behind the scenes of the world’s best video games -- whether they be for AAA console titles, smartphone games or social network games.

The diversity of 2010 FLA finalists reflects the continuing expansion and shift of the video game industry into new areas.

They span key open-source tools such as Box2D through smartphone and tablet networking add-ons like OpenFeint and Plus+, to vital larger-scale game tools such as 3ds Max and Scaleform GFx.

The finalists for the 2010 Game Developer Front Line Awards by category are as follows:

Networking

Facebook SDK (Facebook)
GameSpy Technology (GameSpy Industries)
OpenFeint 2.6 (Aurora Feint)
Plus+ (ngmoco)
RightScale Cloud Management Platform (RightScale)

Middleware:

Box2D 2.1.0 (Box2D)
Havok Physics 2010.1.0 (Havok)
Scaleform GFx 3.2 (Scaleform)
Simplygon 2.9 (Donya Labs)
XaitControl 3.1 (Xaitment)

Art:

Photoshop CS5 (Adobe)
3ds Max 2011 (Autodesk)
Substance Designer 1 (Allegorithmic)
Softimage 2011 (Autodesk)
ZBrush 4.0 (Pixologic)

Game Engine:

CryEngine 3 (Crytek)
Gamebryo Lightspeed 3.1.1 (Emergent Game Technologies)
Unity 3 (Unity Technologies)
Unreal Engine 3 Build 58xx (Epic Games)
Vision Engine 8 (Trinigy)

Programming and Production:

FlashDevelop 3.2.2 RTM (FlashDevelop Project)
Graphics Performance Analyzers 3.0 (Intel)
Hansoft 6.1 (Hansoft)
Perforce 2010.1 (Perforce Software)
XNA Game Studio 4 (Microsoft)

Audio:

FMOD Designer 4.32 (Firelight Technologies)
Miles Sound System 8 (RAD Game Tools)
ProRemote 2.0.1 (Far Out Labs)
ProTools 8.0.4 (Avid Technology)
Wwise 2010.1.2 (Audiokinetic)

Game Developer’s mission for more than fifteen years has been to provide game creators with information, tutorials, and articles that pertain directly to them. The Front Line Awards are an official way of recognizing one specific aspect of the industry: the tools that all game creators need to do their jobs.

For this year’s Front Line Awards, both Game Developer magazine subscribers and Gamasutra.com community members were surveyed to nominate the best game development-related products. Following consultation with Game Developer's advisory board and editors, finalists were selected based on criteria such as utility, innovation, value, and ease of use.

"This year’s finalists represent a healthy mix of industry standards and intriguing new approaches, along with technologies of particular interest to social game developers," said Jeffrey Fleming, production editor for Game Developer. "The editors of Game Developer extend our congratulations to all of this year's Front Line Award finalists!"

The 2010 FLA finalists will be featured in December 2010's issue of Game Developer magazine, and video game professionals are now invited to vote for the winners, with one randomly picked voter receiving an all-access pass to Game Developers Conference 2011 in San Francisco. Voting is open until Monday, November 8th.

The final winners for the prestigious awards, plus one inductee to the Front Line Awards Hall of Fame chosen for its outstanding contribution to the game development industry for five years or more, will be announced in the January 2011 issue of Game Developer magazine, available to subscribers in early January.

Posted by Simon Carless at 9:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Bit.Trip Beat, the first game from Gaijin Games' chiptune-rocking rhythm/action Bit.Trip series, has jumped to yet another platform and will be available for Windows/Mac via Steam with a bunch of new features this afternoon.

This PC release includes online leaderboards, achievements, the ability to post scores to Facebook and Twitter, an Easy mode (the series is infamous for its difficult titles), high definition visuals, and more. It also has the original blend of Pong gameplay and rhythm elements.

If you're not already tired of playing this game on WiiWare or iOS devices, you can grab Bit.Trip Beat on Steam right now for just $8.99 (after November 9th, the price will rise to $9.99). Perhaps if this sells well, the other five Bit.Trip titles will eventually make it to Windows/Mac.

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

Trilobyte, the defunct developer behind puzzle games like The 7th Guest and The 11th Hour, has re-emerged as Trilobyte Games under the guidance of Rob Landeros, one of the original studio's co-founders. Better yet, the company announced its opening by revealing an upcoming iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad port for PC classic The 7th Guest.

The original CD-ROM game debuted in 1993, moving more than 2 million copies -- which Trilobyte says was an industry record at the time. Set to release early next month, the App Store edition will feature "pretty much" all the original full-motion video that was in the original, touchscreen controls, and a $3.99 price tag.

Trilobyte says it will use the money it makes from 7th Guest to fund a similar port for its sequel, The 11th Hour. It also hopes to create mobile versions of games like "Psych, Let’s Do Diddley, POV, and a new version of TLC."

"I’m excited to bring this ground-breaking classic title to new platforms and a new generation of gamers," says Rob Landeros. "The port has been seamless, and our team has optimized the code for a full-range of mobile devices. Props to Trilobyte co-founder Graeme Devine for supporting our efforts and working with us to make this happen."

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

[In a return for regular GSW columnist Mister Raroo, he looks at this year’s three Castlevania games, reflecting upon how they differ from other games in the series. He then explores possible directions for the series to head into. If you thought Konami had already experimented with Castlevania, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet! Mister Raroo somehow brings such elements as custodial work, dating simulations, bullet hell, and DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince into the mix. Well, okay!]

Alternate Routes

Castlevania has had an interesting year, to say the least. Konami seems intent on shaking things up with the franchise and released three very different games this past year, all of which stray from the usual Castlevania experiences fans have come to expect. Castlevania is my favorite game series, so I was very anxious to get my hands on the games, even if I knew they would be a bit unusual.

Though I hold Castlevania so dear to my heart, I’m not averse to Konami trying new things with the series. Heck, I even enjoyed Castlevania: Judgment, the Wii-exclusive fighting game that received fairly negative reviews from professional outlets, not to mention a lukewarm or even negative response from fans. So, it didn’t bother me to know this year’s Castlevania releases would be something out of the ordinary, and I approached each game with an open mind and little in the way of expectations.

First out of the gates was July’s iPhone release, Castlevania Puzzle: Encore of the Night, which weaves Symphony of the Night music and visuals along with RPG elements into a fairly solid puzzle game formula. To be honest, though, I found the game a little boring and while I applaud the developer’s efforts of adding a neat castle exploration motif to the game’s progression, the actual game itself failed to do much more than make me wish there was a “real” Castlevania game for iPhone.

On the flipside, August’s Castlevania: Harmony of Despair did anything but disappoint, and it is possibly even vying for the coveted title of “Mister Raroo’s Game of the Year” at this point. The game brilliantly makes use of recycled assets from previous games and creates a completely fresh experience with them. It is definitely something special.

Essentially a loot game, Harmony of Despair entices players to replay the game’s stages in order to obtain better weapons and gear, in many ways echoing the same types of addictive qualities that made me love the Dreamcast’s Phantasy Star Online a decade ago. Playing Harmony of Despair is like traversing a giant Castlevania dollhouse, and I adore just how bizarre and creative the level designs are. Nice work, Konami!

Finally, last month Konami released Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, a game which has garnered positive reviews and praise from professionals and fans alike, yet much debate has existed as to whether or not it retains the qualities of a “true” Castlevania game. That is, many people have expressed their enjoyment, but feel the game simply has a Castlevania skin slapped onto it. Personally, I felt that way at first, but the deeper I progressed in the game, the more I grew to appreciate it and notice how it captures many of the right qualities to make it feel like an actual Castlevania release.

The game is very lengthy and I’m still whittling away at reaching the end, but I’m taking my time and enjoying the beautiful level of detail that went into crafting so many elements of the game. Most importantly, I’m having fun playing it, though not without moments of frustration. Also, I miss the catchy melodies of the previous Castlevania games’ soundtracks, though I do suppose the musical score Lords of Shadow possesses is fitting of its overall tone.

Breathing new ideas into a game series definitely isn’t a bad thing, and if it means Castlevania receives more fresh entries like Harmony of Despair, then I’ll welcome it. In fact, I thought it would be fun to put my (ahem) game design expertise to the test and give Konami a hand by thinking up a selection of other possibilities for the Castlevania series. So sit back and relax, Konami, because when it comes to new Castlevania game ideas, Mister Raroo’s got you covered!

Castlevania: Stanza of Sanitation

Upon waking after a few hundred years’ slumber, Dracula discovers his home is an absolute mess. Not only is every square inch of his castle covered with cobwebs, but all manner of ghoul and ghost has decided to make Drac’s home their own. To make matters worse, Dracula is expecting a lady friend over in the evening, and the chances of “knockin’ coffins” will be significantly reduced if she’s disgusted by his lack of upkeep.

Drac flips through his Transylvanian Yellow Pages and discovers just who to call. “Hello, Belmont Housekeeping Agency. We’ll get your home clean with a crack of a whip!” Yes, that’s right. The Belmonts have hung up their whips and replaced them with brooms and mops. With Dracula slumbering for the past few centuries, the famous vampire hunting family has needed to find another way to make ends meet, and before long their work ethic has made them the top housekeeping company in all of Transylvania.

For a job as big as this, only one individual can handle the task: Master custodian Simon Belmont. In an ironic twist of fate, Simon now finds himself helping his family’s long-time foe. Can Simon rid the castle of its unwanted houseguests and leave every room sparkling clean before Dracula’s date arrives? Or is Dracula doomed to spend another long, lonely night in his coffin of love? Brooms will sweep and detergent will spray in what is sure to be the best-smelling game of the year!

Alucard’s Dodge ‘n Drive

Okay, now here’s the situation: Drac’s hibernating for a long duration and… he left the keys to his brand new ride. Would he mind? Hmm, well, of course not! Alucard will just take it for a little spin, and maybe show it off to a couple of friends. He’ll just drive around the neighborhood. Maybe he shouldn’t… Yeah, of course he should!

Guide Alucard safely back to his dad’s castle while taking on as little damage to the Coffin Cruiser as possible. You’ll journey through the Foggy Graveyard, the Spooky Forest, the Murky Cave, the Haunted Library, the Crumbling Ruins, and many more locations during your quest to return home. However, be careful, because the denizens of these areas don’t like Alucard’s reckless driving through their neighborhoods, and they’ll do anything in their power to stop him. Navigate curtains of projectiles fired by angry residents to get Alucard home before the sun goes down!

If Alucard succeeds, his dad will have no idea of the havoc his rascally son wreaked upon the surrounding area. If he fails, Alucard will end up on restriction, no doubt missing out on Transylvania High School’s upcoming prom, not to mention what is sure to be the best post-prom party ever at Grant DaNasty’s house. Sure, Alucard could do his best to explain he made a mistake and ask for forgiveness, but there’s no need to argue… parents just don’t understand.

Dare to Date Dracula

Let’s face it: Being Dracula can be kind of a drag. Spending lonely nights in one’s chamber, sipping wine and weighing such thoughts as how a man is little more than a miserable pile of secrets can get old quick. Dracula craves companionship, but convincing the ladies he wants to do more than drink their blood is difficult. That’s not to say Dracula doesn’t want to drink their blood, but perhaps he’d like to enjoy a nice dinner and meaningful conversation first. He is a complex and conflicted individual, to be sure!

Daring to Date Dracula is a dating simulation in which players help Drac impress the objects of his affection in hopes of sparking a romance and winning their hearts. True, any affair with Dracula is sure to end with a bite on the neck and a few missing pints of blood, but that’s not to say Dracula lacks sincerity! Show the ladies just how caring and charming Dracula can truly be by navigating a complex series of dialogue trees over the course of numerous romantic evenings together.

There are over a dozen possible love interests for Dracula to pursue, and dates can take place at a wide variety of locations, including local restaurants, amusement parks, dance clubs, and more. Successful romantic interactions yield “heart points,” which Drac can spend to buy gifts for the ladies, bolster his conversational skills, or purchase cologne, hair gel, and other grooming products to make himself more attractive. Nobody likes a stinky vampire, after all.

The challenge lies in finding the right balance between wooing Dracula’s dates without having him become too attached for them. Should Drac fall too head-over-heels for his lady companions, he may end up lacking the ability to enjoy the taste of their blood, instead sending them home without even a small nip at their necks. Dracula craves both romance and nourishment, but success will not come easy, and unskilled players will wind up with a lonely vampire climbing into an empty coffin nursing a heavy heart and rumbling tummy.

[Mister Raroo is a happy husband, proud father, full-time public library employee, and active gamer. He currently lives in El Cajon, CA with his family and pets. You may reach Mister Raroo at mister.raroo@gmail.com Full Disclosure Time With Mister Raroo: Konami provided copies of the three Castlevania games mentioned in this article free of charge.]

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

After helping put on a number of marvelous gaming events in California -- Game Nights with Giant Robot, ArtXGame shows, and more -- video game culture shop Attract Mode has traveled across the country to team up with NYC's indie game arcade Baby Castles for a special show this Thursday.

Attract Mode's Adam Robezzoli and GSW contributor Matthew "Fort90" Hawkins have curated a "Heavenly Symphony" show featuring music by chiptune artists Nullsleep, George & Jonathan, and Zen Albatross, as well as art by Cory Schmitz (EXP, Controller), Mare Odomo (Letters To An Absent Father), and others.

Heavenly Symphony will also have several ArtXGame collaboration projects available to play from Hellen Jo and Derek Yu (Spelunky), Saelee Oh and Anna Anthropy (Mighty Jill Off), Souther Salazar and Petri Purho (Crayon Physics), Deth P. Sun and Cactus (Norrland), and J. Otto Siebold and Kyle Pulver (Snapshot).

The event will take place on November 4th at Babycastles' Manhattan location (Showpaper 42nd St Gallery, 217 E. 42nd St.). You can see the full flyer for Heavenly Symphony after the break.

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

After writing text adventure games for fifteen years now, Andrew Plotkin (The Dreamhold) is finally executing his "mad plan to become full-time interactive fiction designer", quitting his job at the end of December to work on several commercial and community projects.

He also intends to create a full-length adventure game for iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad (possibly for Android and Kindle in the future, too) called Hadean Lands. Plotkin hopes to inject "old-school puzzles, a modern-era storyline, [and] cutting-edge game design" into the $4.99 title.

His description for the planned "interactive alchemical interplanetary thriller":

"You're a half-trained alchemist, and your starship has just crashed. The ship's Dragons are offline; your air is leaking away into the void. Something's wrong with space, and maybe Time, and you don't know any alchemical rituals to fix *those*. You can barely light a phlogistical lantern. But you're going to have to make do."

To make this all happen, though, Plotkin would first like to raise at least $8,000 by December 6th. He's already breezed past his initial goal, and he's offering incentives like Hadean Lands copies, game credits, beta testing/source code access, and more to contributors.

You can learn more about Hadean Lands (play a teaser scene here), Plotkin's planned community projects, his previously released text adventures, and more at the developer's Kickstarter page.

Posted by Eric Caoili at 2:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

['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.]

Normally this week would be a Mag Roundup where I cover all the magazines that I've received in the past little while. The situation's a little unique this time, though -- I've been traveling around for most of the past two weeks and still am right now, so I haven't actually gotten to my mailbox lately. (That, and I think I may've forgotten to renew my assorted Future subscriptions. Oops.)

So Mag Roundup will come back next week, probably. In its place, a few quick tidbits:

   

- As mentioned last week, I picked up the latest issue of Dengeki Games in Japan and rather liked it. I also found something else which isn't quite a magazine, but is nonetheless a neat piece of game-related print merchandise.

Solo RPG gamebooks, like the Fighting Fantasy series and so forth, were all the rage in Japan during the mid-1980s, much as they were in Europe and (later on) the US. Most of the gamebooks released in Japan were translated versions of Fighting Fantasy or other game series, but one or two home-grown titles popped up here and there -- and as I discovered during this trip, a guy named Naoto Suzuki wrote three books based on The Tower of Druaga, one of my favorite retro arcade games ever. (The one on the left is an original from 1986; the other one's a larger-sized reprint put out in 2008.)

These three books -- Spellbound By the Demon, Heroes of the Magic Labyrinth and Fall of the Dark Empire -- together tell the complete story of Gil's journey up the tower. Each book covers 20 floors out of the 60 the tower's comprised of. The game system used is a tad more complex than Fighting Fantasy's, as Gil has both battle, weapon, and defense stats for you to juggle during battle, and mapmaking is pretty much a must if you expect to get anywhere without cheating.

I'm not sure I'll ever read these without cheating, speaking of, but they're neat souvenirs nonetheless. The publisher, Tokyo Sogensha, also did a gamebook for Xevious of all things.

- I was alerted, via Simon, via Twitter, that the publishers of GameSide (the recently deceased magazine in Japan that covered all manner of retro games) has been resurrected, in a way. It's called Shooting Gameside and it's now devoted completely to shooting games -- strategies, previews, dev interviews, and retro coverage. It looks neat, and I don't know how I missed it while I was over in Japan. Ah well.

   

- Finally, I want to thank Mr. Ashley Day for sending me a couple of the latest GamesTM issues after I lamented about how long I have to wait for them over here. It was a very kind gesture and one I wouldn't normally accept, but since this is a UK mag I'll make an exception.

I've only thumbed through the issues as of yet, but so far they seem to confirm what I saw when i covered their 100th issue -- it's high on dev interviews, in-depth articles, and pretty low on extraneous fluff, or a lot lower than it used to be at least. Well done, gentlemen.

[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 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Axel Pfaender, the talented graphic designer whose game controller posters we've featured here before, has a new piece available paying tribute to Keita Takahashi and Namco Bandai's oddball PS3/iPhone game Noby Noby Boy.

This attractive artwork is available on a poster in sizes ranging from 17"x23" to 28"x38" ($23.50 to $46.90), or on 13"x19" and 17"x24" stretched canvas ($85 and $95) from digital print shop Society6.

Pfaender is also selling a 5"x7" screenprint for $19.50 -- this option comes in orange/purple or red/purple variations, and is part of a numbered limited edition of 40 prints sold through the artist's own online store.

[Via Gamefreaks]

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

It's a day late, but Electronic Arts and Grasshopper Manufacture put out a Halloween trailer for Shadows of the Damned, their upcoming PS3 and Xbox 360 which brings together the talents of superstar developer Goichi Suda, Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikami, and Silent Hill composer/producer Akira Yamaoka for the first time.

Here, you'll see the game's Garcia Hotspur facing off against red-eyed wraiths, spiky monsters, and some strange armored thing with its tongue hanging out, wielding some kind of skull-shotgun. Though Shadows of the Damned doesn't yet look as over-the-top as Grasshopper's No More Heroes, it's getting there!

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

Final Fantasy publisher Square Enix has just released Voice Fantasy, a new microphone-based game for iPhone (3G and newer), iPod Touch (fourth gen and newer, separate mic required), and iPad, priced at $2.99.

In the game, players record their voice, and Voice Fantasy summons characters with different vocations, abilities, and personalities based on that recording for RPG-style combat. The battles can be played out on one device and are fully automated.

Voice Fantasy features three modes in which summoned characters can show off their abilities and skills: Single Match for one-on-one combat, Tag Match for two-on-two battles, and Demon King for fighting monsters. Users' recordings are also converted as the characters' voices during battles.

Square Enix adds that it plans to add "a series of famous characters from the most popular and highly-regarded Square Enix titles" -- presumably this include figures from the publisher's Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, and other series releases.

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

Examining the feature-length stories from the Gamasutra network, here's the top full-length features and blogs of the past two weeks (after once again skipping a week!) on big sister 'art and business of gaming' site Gamasutra, plus the new pieces from educational site GameCareerGuide that debuted of recent.

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 fourteen days:

- The last two weeks of notable Gamasutra features includes an Ernest Adams piece on joy in games, a Hydro Thunder Hurricane postmortem, interviews with El Shaddai's co-creator and Red Faction: Armageddon's art director, plus a piece on Forza 3 and 'predictable development'.

Also featured is Margaret Robertson on '5 Minutes Of Minecraft', as well as a detailed Team Ninja interview and Blitz on 'why your studio needs an R&D team, plus Aki Jarvinen on 'the state of social' in games, and NPD's September results.

- In the two most recent Gamasutra Expert Blogs round-ups, one focuses on the psychological factors in social games, 'value maximization' in games, and why music games have wide casual appeal -- and the other covers why StarCraft is like cooking, the implications of an international virtual currency, and successful game secrets.

- The latest two Gamasutra Member Blogs focus on firstly the cultural relevance of games, pre-release downloadable content, and an analysis of PC piracy - and secondly on cruelty in sandbox games, cinematic structure, and why the 'EA louse' is a symptom of miscommunication.

- Educational site GameCareerGuide's latest features include a narrative review of The Neverhoodlatest Game Design Challenge results and a new 'joy'-based Challenge, as well as a feature on episodic games and Killzone 2 narrative analysis.

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

[Our own Brandon Sheffield speaks with Patapon 3 director Hiroyuki Kotani to discuss how the team tried to avoid overly complex design, the game's visual evolution, and how music can help attract a worldwide audience.]

The next entry in the eccentric Patapon franchise for the PlayStation Portable hopes to retain the franchise's casual appeal while adding new features to expand on its simple mechanics.

The Sony published Patapon series allows players to control a squad of creatures using rhythm based commands. Well-timed inputs reward the player with bonuses, while incorrect ones confuse the player's troops and throw battles into disarray.

Patapon 3 -- due out in early 2011 in the West -- will introduce new Superhero Patapon units, which build off of the Hero units from the previous title, which posses special abilities and level up to gain more power. While these units add depth to the game's simple mechanics, Patapon 3 director Hiroyuki Kotani aims to retain the franchise's accessibility for players of all types.

We spoke with Kotani to discuss how the team tried to avoid overly complex design, the game's visual evolution, and how music can help attract a worldwide audience.

Since the first Patapon came out, there have been a lot more games that take that kind of simple visual style. Do you have any opinion on why this might have gotten more popular recently?

Hiroyuki Kotani: You think it has changed?

I do. It's not that Patapon itself is a different game; it just seems like consumers have taken to this more simple look, compared to previously. And so other games have taken up that simple style. Or maybe you disagree?

HK: Well, I'm very glad to hear people say such things about the game, first off. When we first started development work on Patapon, we figured it'd appeal to a very refined, high-sense kind of market. However, between the release of Patapon 1 and Patapon 2, I later realized that I was inherently limiting the potential audience for the game before.

The game did have a pretty big audience, but there was a wide range of people that basically never had a chance to even hear about the game. Patapon looks like a very casual game on the surface, but try it and you'll find it's actually a quite deep and full-featured game. The audience for it really liked it, but a lot of people never even heard of it.

I wanted to expand the audience, and the fans we did attract felt the same way, so for Patapon 3, we shifted the focus a bit more toward the Hero Patapon and made the game more instantly attractive toward so-called "gamers." It's quite a transformation, I think.

I feel like Patapon doesn't have a huge fanbase, but it's a dedicated fanbase. I don't think it's necessarily bad to have some dedicated fans versus a whole lot of casual fans. I worry that sometimes small games are made into bigger ones just for the sake of an audience. Sometimes that can be good, but other times it may change the game too much from what it was meant to be originally. How do you balance that?

HK: I certainly love this franchise we've made, and of course I want to approach any new thing we do with it very carefully. The Hero Patapon's design, for example; I spent a good six months working on that. Maybe more, even. We felt we needed something with real impact, and so we spent a lot of time thinking about how to make the character truly memorable to players, how to have them naturally accept the hero as they play.

We did a lot of focus test sessions, and getting things the way we wanted them really took up the first year of development all by itself. So that's what we're hoping for with this game -- that new and old fans are impressed and attracted to what's new, not turned off by it.

How did you come up with these ways to extend gameplay from a simple core in Patapon 1, in a way that would still feel right for you? What was your thought process or design process?

HK: The original concept, certainly, was to create a simple game, and that hasn't really changed. Normally when you make a second or third game, there's a tendency for things to get complex and unfocused, and that's something we deliberately set out to avoid.

Instead of needless complexity, we set out to search for new methods of play, for ways to expand the world while keeping it simple to play. The multiplayer mode is a good example of the variation we're after.

It seems like you can continue to have a simple core and add layers that don't affect the basic play style, but make it a more deep game. The RPG layer is above the main gameplay, for example, so you can continue to add without adding complication.

HK: Certainly. One of the main themes of this project was to take the multiplayer we experimented with in Patapon 2 and make it an integral part of the whole game. So instead of making the Hero Patapon and his friends more complex to deal with and play as, we allow you to play as more types of heroes. We give players more choices of what they can play as, and that makes things more fun. We haven't revealed all the heroes yet, but I think people will find what we have in store for them to be pretty neat.

Comparing the role of music and sound in this game to the role of graphics, what do you think is giving the most feedback to players? It seems like the rhythm and sound is extremely important in this game, more than others. It almost feels like a game you could play with no graphics at all. Did you design with this sort of thing in mind? Or, perhaps, do you feel it's the sound or the graphics that more heavily drive the gameplay?

HK: It's certainly true that music plays an important role in the whole thing, although it's not the entire game. Music is something that's very much "alive" in the world of Patapon, and I've thought at times about making a new franchise that emphasizes that part of it, but really, the game is not about the individual aspects so much as grabbing the hearts of players, doing what's necessary to achieve that. It'd be something interesting to explore, though.

Did you do anything like go to festivals and such for research? It has that Japanese festival feeling to it.

HK: The music package came about because we wanted it to be clear when you were pushing the buttons correctly and when you were doing it wrong. So we stuck with simplicity, basing them off children's folk songs, in Japan and elsewhere; songs with fun and happy rhythms -- songs where the rhythm is the main thing, not the message.

I think that, when you get down to it, the messages that a song's rhythm can communicate work with people all around the world, regardless of race or nationality. If a song sounds fun, it'll sound fun to everyone; likewise if it sounds scary. That was the assumption we worked with during development, and I think that idea turned out to be correct in the end.

The game's really borderless in that way; that's something I really felt strongly about. A lot of Japanese devs are scratching their heads right now, wondering what they have to do to make games that appeal to the overseas markets. I think what Patapon's music proves is that as long as you concentrate on keeping things fun and interesting, you'll be surprised at how easily people from all walks of life will find it similarly fun.

The music certainly has a universal appeal. When you're creating these heroes, what was the base for these characters? Patapon has a very distinct style, almost like tribal tattoos or something. What was the basis for the way these heroes are portrayed graphically?

HK: Well, my internal test department -- well, my son, and some of the women in my family -- they're fans of Patapon, and what they told me was that they wanted Patapon that "looked cooler" to play as, Patapon that looked a little tougher than the norm. This put me in a bind, because they were originally designed to be these cute little guys, of course.

So I made a doodle of a Patapon riding this mythical dragon-like horse. The kids in my family loved it, but I just didn't feel like it was Patapon-like enough. Once we started on this project, though, the consensus among us was "Maybe it's not Patapon, but let's put it in and see if gamers get a charge out of it." That's how Patapon 3 really got its start -- that's how I remember it, at least. This would just a bit after Patapon 2 came out in Japan.

That's a cute story. When you were going through all these ideas, did you have to throw many of them out?

HK: Well, to be honest, I can't remember a lot of the older ideas any longer! The way I remember it, it was just a constant adding process -- we didn't really throw out much of anything. We did wind up cutting infrastructure-mode support from the first one, although it came back in Patapon 2. With this project, it's a bit trickier, because we're running into that issue I talked about earlier -- how to expand the game world without adding needless complexity. So we'll see.

Do you feel that the series should continue forward past Patapon 3, or do you feel there's a point where you've finished everything?

HK: Well, when the first Patapon was completed, my thoughts were "I'd like to make a second one, but we probably shouldn't, really, because I don't want to create this big, complex thing and I'd probably have to." So it's really up in the air right now.

I thought Patapon 1 and Patapon 2 were both going to be the last ones, so it's hard to say yet. I'm willing to bet, though, that once I start chatting with my family around the New Year holidays, I'll probably start thinking up more ideas again.

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

[In this analysis, our own Chris Morris discusses the potential resurgence of 'edutainment' games, talking to Southpeak and examining Warner Bros' moves into the relatively neglected category.]

There is, I will admit up front, absolutely nothing sexy about edutainment titles. Hell, even the name is dull – and sounds like it belongs in a boardroom, alongside words like ”synergy” and “paradigm”.

Core gamers won’t look at ‘em. Kids like ‘em fine until someone spills the beans about them being educational. And, since so many are targeted at toddlers and young kids (a very niche audience), they’re not exactly barnburners when it comes to a publisher’s bottom line.

So it makes sense that the industry has basically moved away from them, right?

Wrong.

Despite their dorky name, edutainment games (particularly those made for toddlers) are gateways into the game industry. They’re an investment in the future, of sorts.

For years, they were a rather unnecessary one, since kids were likely to gravitate towards handhelds and consoles anyway, as there weren’t many other choices.

But as the industry evolves, they could become more critical to long-term growth.

At my house, for example, my three-year old has begun to show an interest in electronic gaming over the past six months or so.

But as I’ve watched her play, I’ve noticed something. She has virtually no interest in the Xbox 360. She only cared about the PlayStation 3 when I was testing EyePet – and even then, it was marginal. And she won’t even pick up the Nintendo DS. But put an iPhone or iPad in front of that kid – and she’s off to the races.

The reasons are pretty simple. The interface on iDevices is significantly more intuitive – but it really comes down to the fact that the app store has a ton of games and apps that are built specifically for young children – and they’re hot downloads.

The growing number of kids who spend their formative years playing on their parents’ iPhone and iPad (or perhaps even their own previous generation iPod Touch), are, in fact, the next generation of gamers. And the tastes they are currently developing are for snacky, bite-sized games that don’t come from traditional publishers.

At least two companies seem to realize this – and are taking steps to win back young players.

Warner Bros. recently launched a pair of Sesame Street-themed titles – Elmo’s A-to-Zoo Adventure for the Wii and Cookie’s Counting Carnival for the DS– while SouthPeak Games announced plans Wednesday to introduce a new line of interactive education games. (The first, for the Nintendo DS, is due out in November.)

“People have abandoned the category and there’s a great opportunity there,” Leslie House, vice president of product development for SouthPeak tells Gamasutra. “Parents still believe their children should learn as much as possible - and the use of these mobile units has really changed the way kids can play and learn.”

Edutainment was actually a fairly big category when the PC was king of the gaming hill. But as the industry’s interest shifted to consoles, publishers followed the money and focused more and more on AAA titles. The category basically became the sole domain of Leapfrog - which focuses solely on learning aids disguised as games.

As mobile gaming has become a more powerful category over the last several years – with both the launch of the DS and iPhone – younger players have migrated in that direction - something SouthPeak hopes to exploit.

While the company’s first game, Tap and Teach: The Story of Noah’s Ark, is on the DS, it has big plans for iDevices as well. The common thread? Touchscreens.

“Kids, at a very young age, understand the interface of something they can touch – where they’re not separated from the screen by a mouse (or controller),” says House. “We think there’s an opportunity there - where playing and learning become a lifestyle.”

There has been plenty of debate on the impact of Apple’s devices on the gaming industry – with revenues vs. time spent generally being the two sides people take. But initial gaming loyalties can run deep – just ask lifelong Nintendo fans, many of whom got their start on the Game Boy.

Sure, it was content that captured them, not the device. But the never-ending stream of games to the app store is starting to produce some classics of its own. Could Angry Birds be the next generation’s Mario? It seems ludicrous to current gamers, but for many kids, that’s a go-to franchise for fun.

It’s too early to say with any certainty whether today’s young iPhone and iPad users will continue to remain loyal to Apple devices, of course. But it’s a threat the industry can’t ignore long-term.

And, to be fair, Microsoft, at least, doesn’t appear to be. Kinect might look like just another variation on motion control to a lot of people – but it’s also a new interface style that just might be distracting enough to woo young gamers. And, as with Apple, that could pay off significantly down the road.

“The research we’ve seen shows that kids start to form alliances to brands very early,” says House.

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