In a talk he described as less a postmortem and more "an odd collection of memories," Maniac Mansion programmer Ron Gilbert recounted the creation of the revolutionary 1987 classic at GDC 2011 on Friday.

As Gilbert said, the game "Popularized the point and click interface," and moreover, he believes he "coined the word 'cutscene'," showing vintage source code that backs him up.

During play, the game cut away to non-interactive story sequences.

Gilbert describes Maniac Mansion as "My favorite game, and it's very personal to me -- not because it's a great game, but because it's a very flawed game, and those flaws make it special to me."

The mansion in Maniac Mansion was inspired by George Lucas' Skywalker Ranch, where then-LucasFilm Games was housed and the game was developed. Both the external house and internal details, such as the spiral staircase in the library, are taken from the ranch.

Once the team had settled on the characters and setting and come up with a general plot and some interesting gimmicks, they reached a creative block.

Says Gilbert, "We kinda figured the game would just kind of write itself after this. We didn't even know the genre -- it wasn't an adventure game at this point. It was an amorphous game where you just went around and did stuff... I tried to imagine the gameplay and it didn't make a lot of sense to me."

A Christmas trip home changed everything, however. "Watching my eight-year-old cousin playing King's Quest made Maniac Mansion fall into place."

Sierra's King's Quest, however, featured a text parser -- something Gilbert found extremely frustrating. The game forced players to identify items on screen to interact with them and then type text commands. "This was not gameplay; this was not fun. Why can't I just point at this thing? I can see it right there!"

Thus the inspiration for a point-and-click verb-based system arose. Players chose actions from an on-screen menu rather than fighting a text parser -- a key innovation for the genre.

The cast of seven characters allowed players to choose any three -- each of which had their own abilities and, consequently, puzzles, making the game open-ended and replayable. This was not a goal of the team, Gilbert admitted, but just a cool idea.

"Dave was loosely modeled after me," says Gilbert, especially the character's mode of dress. "Wendy was modeled after a real person, and she worked in LucasFilm and did the accounting. Razor was named after [artist] Gary [Winnick]'s girlfriend Ray."

However, he says, "This was a genius idea we would come to completely regret later on in the game." The complexity that arose from the character combinations hobbled development -- especially because there was no design document, just a paper map of the mansion with an acetate overlay to show items, and a list of the characters and their abilities.

"It was complicated, and it was an unintelligible mess," says Gilbert. "As the game was coming together, we realized we'd made a huge mistake." Seven characters with their own puzzles and endings "was a complete clusterfuck."

The team debated stripping the game down to three characters -- or even one. "There's this point where you're in so deep you just want to scream and there seems to be no way out," Gilbert says. But they persevered, and the game shipped with seven. "In retrospect I think it really was the right solution."

After trying to code the game in 6502 assembly on the Commodore 64, the team decided to create a scripting language, SCUMM -- or Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion.

SCUMM would go on to be used for the company's next game, Zak McKracken and many other titles into the 1990s.

"One of the innovation that Maniac Mansion had over the Sierra games were scrolling screens," says Gilbert. "This presented a big technical challenge for me. I spent months -- months! -- hand-tuning 6502 assembly to get that screen to scroll and now I could just do it in PowerPoint," he joked.

He also had to create a custom art tool which, over several iterations, crunched the hand-drawn backgrounds down to 256 colors "but still retained a lot of the charm of Gary's art."

SCUMM was truly multitasking system -- for example, the clock in the mansion's lobby was its own script and ran in its own process. Thinking about the game "as small independent chunks and objects became a mainstay of how you programmed in the SCUMM system," says Gilbert.

One famous line from the game's dialogue is "Bernard! Don't be a tuna head!" This peculiar quote is well known to fans -- but, says Gilbert, originally this was supposed to be "don't be a shit head!" Gilbert and Winnick got in a huge fight with management over the line, but were asked to only keep it in if they could think of a good reason.

They couldn't, and the line was changed. However, Gilbert says that he went with "tuna head" as a subtle form of protest -- something that would stand out. 


However, the team, over the two years of development, worked many seven day weeks, "late into the night for many months," with fundamental concerns. "Is this going to work? Is this a good game? Or are we just wasting our time?"

Gilbert talked about the famous "hamster in the microwave" sequence, in which some characters are willing to blow up the cute little critter. "We just completely laughed our asses off," says Gilbert. However, it also shows "the power of the SCUMM system -- it only took a few minutes to draw and script that game and it was fast and fun to put things into SCUMM games."

Later, he says, the team were able to crate Monkey Island "in an almost an improv fashion," thanks to SCUMM.

However, since "You could use any object with any other object and if it made sense we let [players] do it -- wire up and let them screw themselves." It's possible in many, many instances in the game to use unique items at the wrong spot and lose them, or never pick up items and lose access to them. In short, it's very simple to get into an unwinnable situation in Maniac Mansion.

Says Gilbert, "It's not that we were trying to be cruel or vindictive, it's just that we were being naive. It was so easy to wire this stuff up we didn't think through the implications."

Moreover, LucasFilm Games had one tester who "would play the game and jot down notes."

This was the first game LucasFilm Games (later LucasArts) published itself, and the entire game fit into 320 kilobytes. Unfortunately, a few weeks after it went on sale, Toys R Us pulled it from shelves because the word "lust" was printed on the back of the box and a patron complained to the company -- necessitating a reworking of the copy.

The game was also ported to the NES, where the original credits included a line for the designers of the "NES SCUMM system." Nintendo misunderstood and objected to this phrase - "Why would we insult their console machine like that?" Gilbert recalled Nintendo asking. Lucas was unable to explain the true meaning to Nintendo and "in the end we just shook our heads and removed it," along with a number of suggestive images.

"It's really easy to look back at games like Maniac Mansion through this lens of nostalgia, and look at what they came and make assumptions about what they were before they became anything, but for us, Maniac Mansion was just a game," Gilbert concluded.

"We loved it, and we hated it, and our only dream for it was that it wouldn't run the company out of business.

"We had a bunch of fun ideas but we didn't have a vision for the future. We just wanted to make a game and not get fired.

"We had no idea what we were doing, none whatsoever, and I think that's an important lesson, because sometimes you just need to do things, and sometimes thinking too much and knowing too much can hurt more than it can help."

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

[Every week, IndieGames.com: The Weblog co-editor Tim W. will be summing up some of the top free-to-download and commercial indie games from the last seven days on his sister 'state of indie' weblog.]

This week on 'Best Of Indie Games', we take a look at some of the top independent PC Flash/downloadable titles released over this last week.

The goodies in this edition include a casual trading game with historical elements, a zombie survival game set inside a well-stocked building, an iOS game from Castle Crashers developer The Behemoth, and an educational tower defense game that teaches about climate changes.

Here's the highlights from the last seven days:

Game Pick: 'High Tea' (Wellcome Collection, browser)
"High Tea is a casual trading game where you play as a smuggler trying to meet Britain's demands for a rare commodity during the early 19th century: tea. There is an abundance of tea in China, but the only goods that the Chinese are interested in trading with is opium."

Game Pick: 'Survivor: The Living Dead' (Radical Endeavors, freeware)
"Survivor: The Living Dead is essentially the story of a curvaceous young woman named Amber Chaplin and the adversity she faces after her brother is eaten alive by a zombie. She finds herself making a last stand in a two-storey building filled with, for some reason, a fair number of random guns."

Game Pick: 'Super Soviet Missile Mastar' (The Behemoth, freeware)
"Super Soviet Missile Mastar for the iDevices is a mini-game which originated from the console release of Alien Hominid HD. Your objective here is basically to help guide a Soviet rocket towards a floating map of America flying high in the skies, all the while trying to avoid copters, planes and even birds that'll bring your missile down quicker than you can say Tetris."

Game Pick: 'Cube Droid' (DevilishGames, browser)
"Cube Droid Saves the Galaxy is a block-pushing puzzle game that plays rather similarly to Sokoban, but with a few new surprise additions like laser towers, cannons and roaming enemy droids best categorized as 'unfriendly'."

Game Pick: 'RIZK' (Playerthree, browser)
"RIZK is a 2D tower defense-like game that requires you to nurture and safeguard an alien plant that serves as your only means of escaping to the next level. In order to accomplish this, you'll have to carefully budget a somewhat meagre stash of coins in order to create your strangely ameobic-like minions."

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

In 2010, Deadly Premonition was a surprise hit among players searching for a deep narrative single player game, and went on to win over a dozen end of the year awards from a variety of media outlets (including Gamasutra).

At GDC 2011, Deadly Premonition director Hidetaka “Swery” Suehiro, revealed his seven tactics for creating a memorably story that will inspire a strong fan reaction.

Point 1: Make gamers think about your game when they aren’t playing it.

Relate actions in the game to actions players take in real life. “Gamers who smoke have said this a lot – when they see York smoke in the game, they want to light up in their living room,” said Suehiro. “Sleeping, Hunger, and Shaving, wanting to stay clean. Though these things seem unnecessary at first glance, they help with the cause and effect.” The goal is to link memories of Deadly Premonition with the player’s actions real world.

Suehiro says he likes to put daily human needs in the game, because they help affect the player outside the screen. “Playful elements” like predictions in the coffee, discussing movies lead to players identifying with the characters. “They’ve also told us they’ve rented one of the movies York talked about in the car,” he said. These things linger in your mind.

Point 2: Make gamers actively “want” to play through your meticulously scripted story.

Being forced to play through a tightly-bound storyline is a chore. “Those rails make the player feel like they’re being forced to do something. How do we alleviate that?” he asks. “How do you make them want to play through it?”

There are two pre-existing methods; multiple endings, and side quests. DP used a third method – freedom of timing – allowing for a “change of heart” from the player. They can stop whatever quest they’re on at any time, and take another path. It creates the illusion of freedom. “Once they’re comfortable, they’re more willing to get involved in the story,” he says.

In other games, including his previous game Spy Fiction, you get scolded for failure. In Deadly Premonition they wanted the main character, York, to go along with the player when he changes his mind. “That’s exactly what I was thinking,” is the feeling York gives the player when he or she goes off the rails of the story to pursue their own path. In fact, an important character within the story itself tells the player that timing is what’s important, not speed.

The goal is to earn the player’s cooperation with the story and suspension of disbelief. To do this, you’ve got to allow for a retry at any time, support the player’s actions 100%, and modify the story to allow for a player’s change of heart. Player feels empowered due to decision being allowed.

Point 3: Creating a storyline for a free-roaming open world game.

“We need to make a universe and characters in our game that are unique,” he says. Vague characters never stick in anyone’s mind.

When creating a storyline, it’s not uncommon that you’d figure out the map of the game world, and character details after the script for the main plot is complete. In DP they created the high level synopsis, then the map and character details, then made a 24 hour action table for each character’s daily life. Only then did they finalize the plot.

“The universe, the environment, and the characters are just as important as the storyline,” he says, especially for a free roaming open world game. “When we started making this game many years ago, there weren’t many games with free-roaming storylines that we could refer to,” said Suehiro, and this was the solution they came up with.

Point 4: Prevent players from quitting the game at the result screen.

Any game that prioritizes getting the player to finish the game over getting the player to want to learn more of the story is already dead. Every pause in a game, such as a results screen or chapter end, is a place a player might choose to quit.

“We inserted a glimpse of the next challenge before the results screen, making them want to know what happens next,” Suehiro said, though he did not address the idea of making a game where results screens and stages aren’t necessary, such as in larger open world games like the Fallout series.

Point 5: Make appealing characters.

“If you can’t remember any of the names of the characters, then that game is crappy,” said Suehiro. Note down everything you can possibly think of about a character, to really develop them so that they’ll stick in players’ minds. “You need to spend a lot of time to make deep characters,” he says. “It really helps to generate a resume for every character you make.”

He creates a mind map for each character, including habits, hobbies, the character’s first love, and so forth. Signature phrases and poses are also important, he says, because they’re easy for fans to recall. “It’s important that your fans can copy the poses and use the phrases,” he says. “You want your characters to have these elements that are copyable and mimic-able.”

“It could be a lot more natural though,” he said, acknowledging that his own poses and phrases for his main characters were a little extreme. The most important point is that the characters have good and bad points. “They say every rose has its thorn,” he says. York, for instance, is a good looking agent, but he’s an otaku and inconsiderate. Each character has a main overlying good quality, but some weaknesses built in.

“It takes courage as a game designer to add a bad side to your character,” he says. “Of course you want everyone to love your characters.” But putting flaws in them makes players actually identify with them more.

Point 6: Direct voice recording sessions.

Characters should speak in a memorable way. How did he voice direct without knowing English? He referred to music and thematic ideas when dealing with the actors. Agent York’s manner of speech is inspired by the Liverpool sound and the British Invasion. “I focused on the how of the lines being spoken,” he said, focusing on rhythm and “musically, how they work in the scene. You need to make sure you have your own set of rules when you go to a voice recording.”

Point 7: Use your ideas whenever and wherever you can.

“What’s most important are your ideas,” he says. You should use all your ideas while you can use them! Even if you feel people may not see everything you’ve put into the game, unnoticed ideas explode when they do get noticed, he says. “You should use your ideas when you can. Don’t hold on to them until a rainy day.” As an example, he showed the fact that the town of Greenvale where the game takes place, is actually an outline of the Dalmatian in the game.

In the end, Suehiro closed with the thought that that, “If I get the chance, I’d like to make another game that makes larger leaps for a world-wide audience.”

Posted by Simon Carless at 6:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

It's not as close to the Game Developers Conference as the other parties we've featured for this week, but if you can make it to Los Angeles, art gallery and store Nucleus is hosting a "Southern California Classic Collectors" get-together tomorrow from 12 noon to 12 midnight.

Along with more than 30 classic arcade cabinets, the party will have dozens of vintage home consoles, a video game trading room, and musical performances from chip musicians like Virt (Contra 4, Shantae), 8-Bit Weapon, ComputeHer, Mr. Spastic, and Wizwars.

You can find more information on the Southern California Classic Collectors party and knock $5 off the cover charge on this site.

[Via @AttractMode]

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

If you were disappointed by the blurry, low contrast photo of Spelunky's new Xbox Live Arcade multiplayer mode that we shared earlier this week, here's a high-resolution, direct screen version of the image (click for full-size screenshot) that Derek Yu and friends shared at their GDC session.

Thankfully, it looks like the other players here are more than just different colored versions of the original adventurer, Also, the screenshot serves a reminder of how gorgeous the game is going to look, thanks to new visual style, high definition presentations, and graphical effects.

There's no release date for Spelunky's XBLA remake, but you can still play the free PC version (without the fancy graphical touches, new music, extra modes, achievements, or four-player mode that the XBLA edition will have).

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

In a busy week for new job postings, Gamasutra's jobs board plays host to roles across the world and in every major discipline, including opportunities at Turtle Rock Studios, CCP, Relic Entertainment, 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:

- Turtle Rock Studios: Prop Modeler, Writer:
"Turtle Rock Studios Inc. is an independent game developer based in Southern California. The team at Turtle Rock is best known for its work with Valve Corporation on Counter-Strike: Condition Zero and Counter-Strike: Source, and for revolutionizing cooperative gaming with the award-winning Left 4 Dead. The core team has extensive experience in the gaming industry, with over 80 collective years in the business. With a track record of innovation and success, Turtle Rock has attracted key contributors from such titles as: Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2; Command & Conquer: Generals; Neverwinter Nights 2 and more."

- CCP - Iceland: Technical Director - Core Cluster:
"Each of our four studios have unique environments, while working with cutting edge technology and freedom to innovate across the globe. Awesome benefits include things free meals, childcare support, health/recreation supplements and company trips to exotic locations like Morocco and a team spirit that is so unique you just have to visit us to believe it! We have employees from over 30 countries, representing a truly international community and we are growing in 2010."

- Relic Entertainment: Lead Animator:
"Relic Entertainment is a leading worldwide developer of video game entertainment and a subsidiary of THQ publishing. Founded in 1997 Relic has behind some of most innovative and well respect video game titles of the last 10 years. Pioneering the Dawn of War, Homeworld and the Company of Heroes series of title and is currently developing the highly anticipated Warhammer 40,000 Space Marine title."

- Bigpoint: Senior Network Programmer:
"Bigpoint.com is the largest German gaming portal and one of the top 3 gaming portals worldwide. As the #1 in online games, Bigpoint.com offers a wide variety of high-quality online games. We develop and operate browser games - and as a publisher, content provider and developer we set new standards with each game in terms of technology, gameplay and entertainment fun."

- LOLapps: Lead Game Designer:
"Lolapps, a high profile social game company who is pushing the boundaries of web based social games is looking for a top Lead Game Designer with proven game experience shipping multiple hit titles. We are looking for some who is excited about iterating quickly and deploying our games to millions of users within a short span of time."

To browse hundreds of similar jobs, and for more information on searching, responding to, or posting game industry-relevant jobs to the top source for jobs in the business, please visit Gamasutra's job board now.

Posted by Eric Caoili at 1:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Photographer and digital editor Ron Guyatt posted this striking shot of a Little Sister from the Bioshock series, aging and saturating it with purple to give the image this ghostly look. The red glowing from the syringe, marking her face, and touching her fingers tranforms its feel from supernatural to sinister.

Guyatt created the image with help from model/syringe designer Gabby DaRienzo and make-up artist Lawren Moore for a cosplay piece in upcoming magazine Girl Gaming Culture (which his girlfriend Indy Lytle is designing). Hopefully we'll see more outfits/photos from the piece pop up online.

And just in case you haven't seen them yet, you should check out some of Guyatt's video game posters -- I'm particularly fond of his Sim City and Dead Space prints.

[Via Gamefreaks]

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

The Independent Propeller Awards, an indie game development competition organized by South by Southwest and Zoo Entertainment's IndiePub community, announced its seven finalists competing for $150,000 in prizes.

After reviewing around 150 entries submitted between December 2010 through mid-February 2011, the competition's organizers have selected several finalists to present their projects at SXSW Screenburn, the video game segment of SXSW's Interactive festival running from March 11-15 in Austin, TX.

The shortlisted titles, their developers, and game descriptions follow:

• The Uncanny Fish Hunt by Uncanny Games – "An adventure game where players take on the role of Siméon, to fight an unleashed ocean."
• Skinny by Thomas Brush – "An exploration and adventure game where players help Skinny, a skinny freak, save the apocalyptic world from their minds."
• Chewy by Happy Candy Co. –" A 2D platformer in which players control Chewy, a sticky piece of gum."
• CREO by Peter Angstadt – "A physics puzzle game in which players must create and experiment to succeed by helping Creo and his friends home from school each day."
• Deep Sea by Robin Arnott – "An audio-only game, where players lose their vision and hearing and are plunged into a world of blackness occupied only by the sound of their own breathing and the rumbles made by unseen terrors."
• Tiny and Big: Grandpa’s Leftovers by Black Pants Game Studio – "A story of a thief who had stolen our hero's most valued possession - a pair of underpants."
• GLiD by noVer – "A single player ambient exploration game where a small robot is tasked with exploring and restoring an abandoned world."

The competition's grand-prize winner will take home $50,000 while the sub-category winners will win $25,000. The finalists also have an opportunity to receive a potential publishing deal with Zoo Entertainment.

"We are thrilled to be able to provide this group of talented indie game developers the opportunity to exhibit and compete through our SXSW Interactive partnership," says Zoo Entertainment CEO Mark Seremet.

Seremet adds, "Indie gaming has evolved and grown into its own thriving, vibrant community, and we are dedicated to fostering these artists by offering them the resources they need to create and share their original games."

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

It can be difficult to tell one Bangai-O trailer from the next, as countless waves of missiles seem to fill the screen and block out any other elements most of the time, but this new Bangai-O HD: Missile Fury has a notable addition you can't miss -- an extra player for the game's co-op mutiplayer mode!

You'll also see lots of fruit collecting, soccer balls, and some interesting stage/puzzle designs in the trailer. Treasure and D3 Publisher expect to release Bangai-O HD to Xbox Live Arcade with more than 100 stages, a level editor, leaerboards, and more this spring.

[Via Remember Citadel]

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 Eric Swain, on topics including Bulletstorm drama, disturbing imagery in Dead Space 2, and how our brains understand violent game mechanics.]

Last year, I took over the reins of TWIVGB when Ben went gallivanting off to GDC; now a year later (holy shit it’s been a year), I’m doing the same. So here’s This Week in Videogame Blogging.

Before leaving us, Ben Abraham wrote a post entitled "Cahiers du multijoueur," a pun on the famous French film criticism magazine, where he talks about the lack of multiplayer criticism, why that is, and how he believes he can rectify that fact.

Later in the week he gave us his first attempt to try and convey the experience of Battlefield: Bad Company 2.

Rock Paper Shotgun continues its ongoing battle with Fox News over a piece that contends that Bulletstorm will lead to a rise in rapes, when Fox News fires back at Rock, Paper Shotgun, calling their attempts "so-called journalism."

Then Jerry Weichman, the one person other than the Fox News reporter that RPS hadn’t been able to reach, contacted them to clarify his position regarding his quote.

Scott Juster talks in PopMatters about his frustration with the recent multiplayer Nintendo platforms and the intent of their designers. Here are a few more thoughts from Scott on his own blog Experience Points.

Also over at PopMatters, Nick Dinicola looks at the most recent Medal of Honor as an apolitical, slice of life game, where the slice of life happens to be of a soldier. He concludes, "There aren’t many games that can relate a theme without a story, but the campaign in Medal of Honor pulls it off."

"It’s strange to say that it succeeds because it lacks so many staples of a normal narrative, but it’s true. It’s just a slice of wartime life and that’s a refreshing change of pace from all the other bombastic, macho, over the top shooters."

Meanwhile, G. Christopher Williams again looks at Dead Space 2 and how he misses the details of the game, because of the game itself. His wife, as a spectator, sees the disturbing imagery all too well: "For some performances to work, for some aesthetics to be appreciated, the player does need to shift into the role of spectator, at times."

"Maybe I should know that I’m playing a game full of copious amounts of monstrous vaginas. Maybe that actually means something or maybe it would mean something to my sense of what Dead Space really concerns itself with if I just had a moment to look," he writes.

George Collazo at Unwinnable decided to follow Tea Party doctrine in Civilization V and see if he could survive. See how it went in two parts. Monica Potts at The American Prospect wrote "Moral Combat: Why do liberals play computer games like conservatives?" It is an interesting piece that talks about the inherent authorial nature of rule systems in simulation games. Though not in those terms, because most people don’t know them.

Adam Ruch at his blog flickeringcolours v2 goes over a number of words whose use in Game Studies has become so broad and undefined they lose meaning and their descriptive power to inform another person. Tadhg Kelly at What Games Are writes about the difference in purpose and execution between simulations and simulacra.

Jay Barnson, a.k.a. Rampant Coyote, explains to everyone, but especially indie game makers, what a Game Producer/Manager/Leader actually does, and their vital importance to a project’s success. Johnathan Holmes at Destructoid looks at the portrayal of women in games using the old dichotomy of the whore/evil girl and nun/good girl with Bayonetta and Peach as the examples.

At Gamers with Jobs, Colleen Hannon describes an average evening of gaming at her house to explain to a friend how she is able to enjoy what to many are dull and overwrought games. Most importantly it introduces a way others may experience their games in a manner that differs from what is considered the standard by designers and players:

"He made me think. I’m not sure I’m ready to draw any conclusions from this. But I do know a lot of people who play games his way-mono-focused and in the mancave-and I do wonder about the barrier created by game design, or even criticism, that only considers his way of playing."

Courtney Stanton at her blog Here’s a Thing, decides to answer the question designers keep asking, ‘what women want in games,’ with the novel idea of asking them. Jason Killingsworth examines relationships and their portrayal in Ico and Enslaved. Mike Dunbar at Chronoludic writes his interpretation of the videogame version of The Prisoner and the play space known as the Village.

Zach Alexander pauses to discuss "a moment of violence." He writes, "Again, this post isn’t a conversation about right/wrong/good/bad. As a rule, performative violence-the not-so-subtle idea that violence can be metaphorical[1]-is a concept our brains can probably handle quite comfortably in games, movies, TV, and everyday language...it’s probably a part of us at the basest level, and we embrace the performance while simultaneously denying its literalness. We pretend that shooting people in the face and carving up Necromorphs is just a mechanic."

Max Lieberman at Boom Culture writes down his first impressions of Alan Wake, which is more like a close reading of the first few hours without any knowledge of what comes later. Jonathan Gourlay writes "Fear and Gaming: Being and Nothingness and ‘Minecraft’: an existentialist account of loss, loneliness, and life all through the eyes of a minecrafter and a father. Tiffany Nevin goes undercover at GameCrush for Gaming Angels and finds out what its pay-to-play service is all about.

Maggie Greene is back. On her own blog she explains videogame piracy in China, how it revolves around the concept of "price is still king," the translations issue, and why the result is worthy of study.

And finally the people at Extra Credits made "An Open Letter to EA Marketing." The video has gotten some serious legs this week, passing around the game community with a determined effort (and succeeding last I heard) to get it to the executives at EA.

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

At the end of his 'retro postmortem' presentation at Game Developers Conference 2011, Another World creator Eric Chahi said his classic game, known as Out of this World in North America, will be coming to Apple’s iPhone and iPad.

French video game studio DotEmu is developing the game for iOS, and fellow French game company BulkyPix will be publishing the new version, due later this year.

Another World debuted in 1991 and has since appeared on over a dozen platforms. Chahi said in a statement, "I'm very pleased to work with my developer friends from DotEmu and their partner BulkyPix. The first prototype looks beautiful on iPad, they are doing a great job on it."

DotEmu founder Xavier Liard added that his company has ported a number of classic games to iOS such as the shooter R-Type.

"Another World is one of the most daring games ever created and we’re proud to be part of the team that will bring this terrific title to the iPhone and iPad platforms," BulkyPix marketing director Vincent Dondaine.

A full write-up of Chahi's classic game postmortem is available at our sister-site Gamasutra.

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

While we wait to hear the fate of Chinatown Fair -- the beloved, decades-old Chinatown arcade that closed last Sunday and is rumored to be relocating -- let us remember the famous game center with more than just the photos of its cabinets and crowds that we've shared here lately.

This "Ode To Chinatown Fair" posted by Frame Advantage features clips from the arcade's actual fans discussing their histories with Chinatown Fair, and the fighting game scene and sense of community it engendered.

GameSetWatch contributor Matthew Hawkins also wrote up some kind words remembering the arcade:

"Looking back, I regret not giving Super GT (Scud Race here in America) one last spin. I’ll miss that dirty/dingy little corner of Manhattan, even if it was a reminder of a bygone era whose time had obviously come and gone. Yet which still managed to pack the house every single night. It may not have been hallowed ground to myself, but it sure as hell was to countless others."

[Via Arcade Heroes]

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

At the Game Developers Choice Awards show last night, Double Fine revealed its third downloadable title (following Costume Quest and Stacking), Trenched, which looks like it mixes third-person multiplayer mecha action -- the twist for these customizable mechas being a hybridization of "mobile firepower and stationary defenses."

As this is being published by Microsoft, this is releasing for just Xbox Live Arcade -- sorry, PS3 owners! Double Fine, which is also currently working on an Xbox 360 Kinect game based on Sesame Street, hasn't announced a release date or expected pricing for Trenched yet.

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

Swedish developer Mojang's acclaimed 3D world-building sandbox title, Minecraft was a big winner at the 13th Annual Independent Games Festival tonight at Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, earning the Seumas McNally Grand Prize for Best Independent Game, as well as the community-voted Audience Award.

In a diverse set of award-winners, other Independent Games Festival award recipients included Frictional Games' psychological horror game Amnesia: The Dark Descent, which took home awards for Technical Excellence and Excellence in Audio, as well as the sponsor-supported Direct2Drive Vision Award.

Elsewhere, noted independent developer Messhof received the $5,000 Nuovo Award – which honors abstract, shortform, and unconventional game development which "advances the medium and the way we think about games" – for his two-player art game, Nidhogg.

In addition, QCF Design's short playtime dungeon crawl adventure Desktop Dungeons earned the award for Excellence in Design, and the Excellence in Visual Art award was won by Gaijin Games' retro-psychedelic BIT.TRIP RUNNER.

Finally, the award for the Best Student Game went to the Myst-like abstract adventure game FRACT, from the University of Montreal, and Best Mobile Game was awarded to Ratloop's unique 'line of sight' puzzler Helsing's Fire.

All of this year's IGF winners and finalists are playable at Game Developers Conference at the IGF Pavilion on the GDC Expo Floor, which is open Wednesday, March 2nd through Friday, March 4th.

Previous breakout Independent Games Festival award-winners include titles such as Braid, Limbo, Audiosurf, Castle Crashers, and World of Goo, and this year's awards saw more than 650 total competition entries from all over the world.

The Independent Games Festival – which also includes a two-day Independent Games Summit on Monday, February 28th and Tuesday, March 1st as part of GDC – was established in 1998 by UBM TechWeb Game Network to encourage the rise of independent game development and to recognize the best independent game titles, in the same way that the Sundance Film Festival has honored the independent film community.

Organizers would like to thank this year's kind supporters of the IGF, including Crytek (Platinum Sponsor), Microsoft (Gold Sponsor), LucasArts (Gold Sponsor), Direct2Drive (Distribution Partner), OnLive (Hardware Platform Sponsor), Transgaming (Platform Sponsor), DigiPen (Student Showcase Platinum Sponsor), ENJMIN (Student Showcase Gold Sponsor), and Westwood College (Student Showcase Gold Sponsor). The IGF offers finalists both global exposure and over $50,000 in cash prizes to each year's winners.

"This year's record number of entrants were of some of the highest quality we've yet seen in the festival," said IGF Chairman Brandon Boyer. "Congratulations to all the winners, who continue to raise the bar for what independent games can achieve. We're all excited to continue showcasing the best in independent games, at the games industry's highest-profile annual event."

The IGF awarded the following games as winners of the 13th Annual Awards:

Seumas McNally Grand Prize ($20,000)
Minecraft, by Mojang

Nuovo Award ($5,000)
Nidhogg, by Messhof

Excellence in Visual Art ($2,500)
BIT.TRIP RUNNER, by Gaijin Games

Excellence in Audio ($2,500)
Amnesia: The Dark Descent, by Frictional Games

Excellence in Design ($2,500)
Desktop Dungeons, by QCF Design

Best Student Game ($2,500)
FRACT, by University of Montreal

Technical Excellence ($2,500)
Amnesia: The Dark Descent, by Frictional Games

Best Mobile Game ($2,500)
Helsing's Fire, Ratloop

Audience Award ($2,500)
Minecraft, by Mojang

Direct2Drive Vision Award ($10,000)
Amnesia: The Dark Descent, by Frictional Games

For more information about the IGF, and its finalists and winners, please visit the official Independent Games Festival website.

Posted by Simon Carless at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Rockstar San Diego's critically-acclaimed Wild West adventure title Red Dead Redemption was the big winner at the 11th Annual Game Developers Choice Awards in San Francisco yesterday evening.

The awards were presented at a ceremony at UBM TechWeb Game Network's historic 25th Game Developers Conference at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, with Red Dead Redemption receiving a total of four awards, including Best Game Design and the coveted Game of the Year award.

Another award stand-out, Swedish developer Mojang's 3D sandbox title Minecraft, received awards for Best Debut Game, Best Downloadable Game, and the Innovation Award. The game was also awarded the Seumas McNally Grand Prize earlier in the evening at the 11th Annual Independent Games Festival Awards, making this the first year a game has been recognized by both the GDCA and the IGF during the same year.

Other Choice Awards winners include BioWare's emotionally-charged science fiction adventure Mass Effect 2, which won the award for Best Writing, and ZeptoLab's iOS hit Cut the Rope, which took home the prize for Best Handheld Game.

Finally, the Best Visual Arts Award went to indie developer Playdead's Xbox Live Arcade hit Limbo. The evocative monochrome puzzle platformer won last year's Independent Game Festival Awards for Visual Art and Technical Excellence.

The Game Developers Choice Awards, which honor the very best games of the year, was created for and voted on by developers. The finalists were chosen via a combination of open game industry nominations and the votes of the leading creators in the Choice Awards Advisory Committee.

Winners for this year's awards were selected by the Game Developers Choice Awards-specific International Choice Awards Network (ICAN), which is an invitation-only group comprised of 500 leading game creators from all facets of the video game industry.

In addition to the game-specific awards, Peter Molyneux, co-founder of Bullfrog Studios and founder of Lionhead Studios, was presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award for his more than 30 years of contributions to the art and science of games, creating genre classics like Populous, Black & White and the Fable franchise along the way.

The Game Developers Choice Awards also honored community veterans Tim Brengle and Ian MacKenzie, the managers behind the Game Developers Conference Associates (CA) program, with the Ambassador Award. The award recognizes the duo's work on early CGDC and GDC shows, and their combined 20-plus years of devotion to creating and fostering a community of volunteers who aspire to better the game development community.

Finally, the 2011 Pioneer Award was presented to Sega veteran and Japanese game design legend Yu Suzuki for his amazing work over the last three decades, having invented entire game genres and created seminal titles spanning Hang On through Virtua Fighter, to OutRun, After Burner, Shenmue - and beyond.

The recipients of the 11th Annual Game Developers Choice Awards are:

Game of the Year
Red Dead Redemption (Rockstar San Diego)

Best Writing
Mass Effect 2 (BioWare)

Best Game Design
Red Dead Redemption (Rockstar San Diego)

Best Debut Game
Minecraft (Mojang)

Best Handheld Game
Cut the Rope (ZeptoLab)

Best Technology
Red Dead Redemption (Rockstar San Diego)

Innovation Award
Minecraft (Mojang)

Best Audio
Red Dead Redemption (Rockstar San Diego)

Best Visual Arts
Limbo (Playdead)

Best Downloadable Game
Minecraft (Mojang)

Recipients for the evening's special awards were:

Lifetime Achievement Award
Peter Molyneux

Pioneer Award
Yu Suzuki

Ambassador Award
Tim Brengle and Ian MacKenzie

"There was no shortage of groundbreaking titles across platforms and genres this year. From big-budget blockbusters like Red Dead Redemption and Mass Effect 2, to indie darlings such as Minecraft and Limbo, 2010 was truly an incredible year for games, and we're delighted to honor them here," said Meggan Scavio, Event Director of the Game Developers Conference.

For more information about the 11th Annual Game Developers Choice Awards, visit its official website - and for information about the 2011 Game Developers Conference, please visit the official GDC site.

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

At its Game Developers Conference keynote yesterday, Nintendo revealed that its upcoming Virtual Console service for the 3DS will not just offer Game Boy and Game Boy Color titles but also Game Gear and TurboGrafx-16 releases -- which is fantastic, but I still want to hear GBA/Virtual Boy/Lynx/NGPC announcements!

Anyway, Sega has already revealed five first-party titles that will release in its first wave of Game Gear classics for 3DS Virtual Console: Sonic & Tales 2, Sonic Drift 2, The GG Shinobi, Dragon Crystal Shirani's Maze, and Columns. Looks like you'll have to wait a little longer for Gunstar Heroes and the Shining Force releases.

It's not clear exactly when these games will be released or how much they will cost, but Nintendo intends to debut the Virtual Console service and other features to the 3DS in a downloadable firmware update this May.

[Via Andriasang]

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

Spelunky began as a freeware roguelike platformer for the PC, but has evolved into a larger-scale XBLA title due out this year.

“When I think about how that happened, how I started with this tiny little game, and it became something much larger, I’m still pretty amazed,” said Derek Yu, the game’s creator during an Independent Games Summit talk at GDC 2011.

Before making Spelunky, he had wrapped up a large project. “I really wanted to work on something a lot lighter,” said Yu, “something small and kind of fluffy. It’s kind of ironic because Spelunky’s now turned into kind of a monster.”

To get there, he made a lot of small games in between the bigger ones. “When I think about it, all those small games I made turned into something bigger,” he said. “They gradually got bigger, and that got me the confidence to do something better.”

Yu considers the freeware version of Spelunky to be a prototype for the XBLA version. He likens prototyping to drawing. “The key is really to zone in on what I’m enjoying at the time, and things I’m interested in,” he said, adding that tools like gamemaker and unity “are the equivalent of a sketchbook for me, because they help me get my ideas out as quickly as possible.”

Spelunky came about because he was prototyping a roguelike and a platformer simultaneously, and with both of them he “really didn’t get very far,” he said. “I came up with the idea of combining the aspects of roguelikes that I liked and found compelling. I wanted to combine that with a platform game.”

“I wanted to make something that was new and exciting, but also accessible,” he added, saying that with procedural content, “you can create a lot of content with a small team.” Spelunky’s levels are randomly generated from a set of specific room-types, but with additional randomization within them. “It’s really fun to work this way, because you’re always surprised by your own game.”

Yu is a big believer in the idea of prototyping game ideas. “Chris Hecker, who I know loves to be quoted out of context, described games that don’t reach their full potential as mulch, and games that do, as trees,” Yu said. “I really liked that idea, and thought you could make mulch and trees at the same time.”

Andy Hull, programmer on the XBLA version of Spelunky, said that they’re treating the game as more of a sequel to the original version. “This might be scary to hear, but you can’t be afraid to change things from the original game,” he said. “This was made easier by the fact that the original game will still exist.”

The most important thing in the new version, aside from the new art, is the streamlined interface. “When I first played Spelunky I didn’t stick with it for very long, because I had some difficulty with the controls,” said Hull. It wasn’t until he saw how much people liked it on TIGsource that he went back to it.

Previously going to the shop keeper was difficult, with multiple button presses required to purchase items, and the possibility of accidentally angering the shopkeeper. So they streamlined it, and now buying items requires a single button press.

One feature that was more requested than any other, and that’s multiplayer. When they announced four-player local play for the XBLA version, the audience erupted into applause.

“The freeware game acted as our design document for the XBLA game,” Hull concluded. “Spelunky really shows that there’s more benefit to releasing these [prototype] games than people realize.”

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

Adding to all the fun afterparties floating around the Game Developers Conference this week, 8bit Dope is throwing a chiptune show on Friday night with notable chip muscians Crashfaster, Minusbaby, Zen Albatross, Starpause, and WDUWSTS all putting down jams at the Lookout bar in San Francisco.

For those worried that this will conflict with Giant Robot's Game Over IV launch party, this is supposed to start right after (or during the latter half) that event at 9PM. You can RSVP for the show, which we're told is some sort of "unofficial East Vs West chiptune throwdown", on Facebook -- note the $3 cover and the 21 or older requirement.

Also note that Stormtrooper sprites might flip you the bird there. That might be what the "hook-up" the flyer above is hinting at for GDC pass holders.

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

I'm always excited whenever a finalist from Japan's annual Sense of Wonder Night competition puts out a new game, as they almost always have something quirky about them that's worth a whirl -- like Second Person Shooter Zato, a Flash release from Himojii (His and Her Disconnected Conversations).

In this game, you play from the perspective of moving enemies, but you must control an on-screen girl to rotate and fire lasers/missles at you. As more enemies pop up, you'll see your character from multiple angles, and you'll have to judge which enemies to shoot first based on how big you are on their screens.

It can be really intense, and I don't think I've played anything like it before! Well, unless you count cheating in four-player matches on GoldenEye for N64. You can play Second Person Shooter Zato for free here.

[Thanks, Marcus R.!]

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

[After a timely trip to Sweden, our own Mike Rose talked to Mojang's Jakob Porser about upcoming game Scrolls -- the genesis for the idea, how it will play, and when we can expect to see it released.]

With the enormous success of open-world sandbox title Minecraft, it's clear that Sweden-based Mojang's just-announced next game Scrolls is going to feel the "difficult second album" strain.

Players are set to build decks of "scrolls," and challenge opponents to one on one battles via a grid similar to the layout of a Chess board.

Jakob Porser, game developer at Mojang and head developer on the new title, sat down with us this week to discuss the digital card/board game mashup with UK editor Mike Rose.

How did the idea for Scrolls come about?

Jakob Porser: Five years ago, me and Markus [Persson, creator of Minecraft] were both working at King.com, and we got to know each other and became really good friends, and we were both into the collectible card game genre. We started talking about common flaws in the genre, and how we would like to improve them.

So then five years have passed, and we started talking about this again, and we got to the point where we were saying "we really want to do this game together, and it will be really fun."

But you know, the problem with these types of games is that you need to have a critical mass of users. If you get one hundred users, they're not necessarily online all at the same time.

And if the game requires you to play against someone, then now we have enough of a spotlight on the game to get enough players... [loud bangs coming from the main Mojang offices] Oh sorry, that's the sound of Nerf guns [laughs] They were all like "I've got a great idea, I'm gonna buy a Nerf gun!" and then someone else says "Yeah me too!" and then it all gets blown out of proportion so there are Nerf guns everywhere [laughs].

But anyway, that's basically how it came about, pitching ideas back and forth for this amount of time. And I think that, you know, the next Mojang game will be so drastically far away from Minecraft. It wasn't like we said "so, what are we gonna do next?" It was more like "we should start a company so we can make that game as well."

So yeah, hopefully Minecraft fans will enjoy this game as well, and if they don't then hopefully other people will. I mean, I love Minecraft, but I also love platformers, and first-person shooters, and turn-based, and MMORPGs.

But you know, I see these games on consoles that look beautiful and very polished, but they don't really do it for me -- I want to feel that what I do can influence the game, and I think that's why I like strategy, or Minecraft for that matter. I mean, the game is what you make of it -- you don't just sit along for the ride.

So for Scrolls, it will be up to the user what they make of the game.

So how does the fighting happen?

You've got a game board that is kinda like a Chess board but not. You each have one side of the game board, and if I have a scroll that summons a demon, for instance, I pay some resources -- I have resource management -- and then I place it on the game board. And when it attacks, it will attack in a straight line. If the other player has buildings in the way to block that attack, it won't get to them or hurt them. But if the attack gets across to the other side of the playing field, it will harm them.

This sounds easy enough, but it's not as easy as, you know, I put a scroll here and you put a scroll there and then we sit back and relax. Each unit comes with abilities, so it could be, for instance, that maybe this unit has the ability to move one step each turn, or maybe its attack can't be blocked by another unit, unless that unit has more life than it. And it's all these different kinds of scenarios that can throw curveballs at you.

Maybe you build an offensive line of units that you lump together as a spearhead attack, but maybe I can build a siege weapon that does area damage, so it will hit everyone. So then you'll want to spread them out.

So you've got to roll with the punches and build a deck that counters certain elements, so you know that "well, my opponent might try to do this, but if I can add this thing into my deck, it will prevent that outcome at least." It's all about balancing your set of scrolls, so you have a strategy about how you're going to win, but also fill in some blanks in your defenses.

Each team, then, has a sort of 'king' unit that you need to destroy to win, or do all the units need to be destroyed?

I can summon scrolls and it doesn't matter if those are destroyed -- to win the game, it is me you have to kill. So your units can kill me. But that's only one way to win -- there's going to be multiple ways. You can use spells, or remove all my scrolls so I don't have any scrolls left.

If you run out of scrolls, then that's you, game over?

Yeah, you can't play anymore. That's one way of winning the game. And of course, there are tons of ways you'll be able to mess with your opponent's head, like destroying his resources so he won't be able to cast any spells. There's going to be very many different strategies you can use to win the game.

Have you got a release period in mind?

I wouldn't say we have a fixed date, but what we have said thus far is, the first thing we are going to release is the closed alpha. That's basically going to be a chance for us to add content and remove content depending on how we see how it all works. There's going to be a sign-up period for the people who are interested in the alpha, which will be at Scrolls.com.

How do you think you'll pick people for that, because I'm guessing that you'll probably get quite a number of sign-ups.

Yeah! [laughs] What we've been saying is, we feel that we owe so much to the earlier adopters of Minecraft, that we haven't given a fixed number, but the first X people who bought Minecraft are going to get dibs on trying out the next game.

Now, the next game, like I said, is a lot different from Minecraft, it's not the same game and I personally feel that - well, when we talk to people in the business about this game, they keep saying that well, Minecraft is such a huge success, you've found this kind of a niche, how come you're not looking to make Minecraft 2?

But you know, for us, we don't think that players are so one-dimensional that they only want to play one type of game in one genre. And secondly, Minecraft has given us the freedom to do the projects that we want and the things that we want to do.

And Scrolls, this is the game that we really want to make. It's a game that we've been talking about for almost five years and a game that we want to make together.

So even though we feel that, like I said, the earliest adopters of Minecraft are going to get first dibs on trying this new game, hopefully they will like it. And also, starting on a small scale and adding more players in the closed alpha to kind of test our system and see how the backend holds up for many users and so on.

It must feel a bit like, in music industry terms, the difficult second album, following on from Minecraft.

JP: Yeah, obviously.

Carl Manneh [managing director at Mojang]: I mean, we're not going to see it as a failure if we don't reach the same kind of audience that Minecraft has. We know that it's probably not going to - we hope it will, but we don't think so.

But then, this is a completely different game and we can't really compare them. We want people to like it, but I think if we reach just a fraction of what Minecraft has done, then we'll do pretty well with the game.

Are you thinking about doing a physical, real game card to accompany the digital release?

JP: We're not saying a definite "no" to that, but it's not something that we're considering during the design process for the game. I think just the fact that we make this game digital and playable online and on handheld phones, we can add things to the game that would be very hard to add to a paper game.

Like for instance, say if one of the units gets damaged by another certain unit, it gets a poison counter that every round it damages by one. If this was a pen and paper game, you would have to manage that yourself. You could probably do it if it was one creature affected, but if there were ten, you'd have to remember at what stage they were affected, are they not affected anymore, and so on.

So these are things that we can add to the game to improve the game, because it is a computer driven program, and the computer can manage that for you. We're not going to say that we never will - if the game is successful, and if we have a demand for it we will probably look into it, but it's not going towards the design at the moment.

If we did, we'd probably release a side-step version that has some changes in gameplay to be more in line with the paper version.

With the name, is it tempting to add a colon and put something after Scrolls?

We're going to leave it as Scrolls actually to start out, but I'm sure if we release an expansion for instance, it will probably build on that name.

It's not always easy to come up with a name, and with this game, from the beginning we said "Scrolls" as a working title and left it at that. But then the more we thought about the name for the game, the more we thought "Maybe we should stick to Scrolls." It kind of grew on us -- it's short and to the point, and it's easy to remember.

So maybe there will be a colon in the future at some point, but we can't say for certain. But you can take some credit for that. [laughs]

Cheers! So other than through the single player, how do players earn scrolls? Can they steal scrolls from other people when playing online, or win your opponent's scrolls?

This is something we've been talking about, because we want a lot of freedom on how you can set up games. We'd love for you to be able to battle for a card, so maybe the winner gets to draw a card from the loser's deck, or you can say in advance 'we will be playing for these cards'.

But I think we will have to explore whether we will need some form of gambling license, because if it does then that will be a 'no'. But I think it would be really cool to have that as an option.

What kind of story will Scrolls have, some kind of fantasy setting?

I'm personally a big fan of the fantasy world, and the game's base is going to be in traditional Tolkien style. But we really want to think outside the box in that area, because you know, fantasy has been done so many times, and it's not unique, and certainly isn't a new thing.

But it's a world that I'm very comfortable with, and from being eight years old and playing Dungeons and Dragons for the first time, and I still read fantasy novels, and I love the epic fantasy movies and games when they come out, so I think a lot of people do like that genre and we're looking to mix it up a bit, and add some weirdness to it. [laughs] We're going to just play around with it a bit and it doesn't have to be that traditional.

Is it all one vs one, or are you considering team play?

We've thought about that -- in the beginning, it's going to be one on one. But I don't think it's impossible that, in the future, if the game is well liked and gets an audience, then we can introduce three players against each other, or two vs two.

We could also set up a template where three of us are in the same team, and these other guys are in another guild. So then we play each other one on one to see whose team is the stronger. I think that people like being able to team up in communities and guilds and stuff. It's a fun thing to add to a game.

You said there's going to be regular updates, more scrolls coming out and stuff like that. How are those going to be managed and how often will they be? I guess you may get in the situation where you've got the game balanced well, and then you introduce a new set of scrolls that alters the balance.

I'm sure it's going to need a lot of testing! But yeah, that is a constant problem with all of these types of games. In a way, I kind of like it, that certain combinations of cards can become unbalanced, because it can be really fun as a player to find these combinations and use them.

But as for tournament play or any kind of ranking game, we would have to take steps. We never want to remove or nerf cards - you know, people will invest in cards and trade cards and buy them at the auction house, and collect these cards because they think they're awesome. So that's going to be a big no-no.

Let's say we release two expansions per year, with new batches of scrolls. I think we will have to balance the batch we release with the latest two or three releases, and say 'these are the cards that will be in tournament play'. And all the other cards, you are still allowed to play with them and create decks with every scroll we've ever released, but come tournament play, you'll only be able to play with a specific set of scrolls.

That way, if the game is successful and lives on for five years and we have a couple of thousands of cards, we won't have to balance the newest card with the oldest card. We'll only have to balance the latest three hundreds cards or so.

You know, there's still room to put your foot in it. [laughs] But that gives us a better standing point.

Visually, how are the battles going to look?

We hired a great artist, jnkboy [Markus Toivonen], who has started working on this - his work is really awesome. We're going to keep everything 2D, and it's going to look sort of toonish. It's not going to look like Japanese anime, but it's going to have a little bit of that, mixed with a little bit more of the Western style of graphics. I think we're going to have a really cool look for this game.

Distribution-wise, are you planning on staying independent, or perhaps looking to make a deal with Steam?

We are planning to stay independent, for a number of reasons. We just like being indie developers, and not having to customize our products after other people's plan, so we can do our own thing.

We're more than happy to take advice from those people who can give it, but you know, we're in a very fortunate position with the success of Minecraft, that we have the financial means to create a game like this, and that we have enough spotlight and attention from Minecraft, to be able to present a game like this to the public.

We feel that we don't really need a partner for publishing. So we're going to try to do this totally on our own.

How many members of the team are going to be working on Scrolls?

Well right now, I'm working on it, and our graphical artist jnkboy, and we've hired a backing developer who's going to helping us, so I think us three for starters working 100 per cent on the game. Then Tobias [Mollstam] is going to help some, and one of the developers for Minecraft, Jens, is probably going to help a little bit, and we're also going to have an intern from Germany who's going to help us in April.

Is there anything from working on Minecraft that has influenced how you plan to work on Scrolls?

I think the constant releases of small iterations is something that we will definitely adapt from Minecraft. You know, Minecraft started selling at a very early stage, when the game was far from complete, and there are many advantages to that.

After the Scrolls closed alpha, then there will be an open beta. And basically everyone can join in the open beta and everyone can buy the game, and at that point we will try to sell it to the audience. And that's kind of the way that Minecraft was as well - Markus didn't have a closed alpha, but the early customers will have to live through a period where we're still developing the game and adding new stuff to it.

Like for instance, the single player part of the game will not be in the closed alpha or open beta - that will come with the full release. So the open beta will be where you can acquire cards, buy them at the auction house, use tournament templates and so on, but then we're going to add new stuff to this. So maybe the player will come on a few weeks later, and new templates for setting up more exciting tournaments will be available.

So I think that's what we're bringing forward from Minecraft. And of course, one major thing is to continue to stay close to the community and to the players. With Minecraft, we have benefitted so very much from the community.

I mean, some of the items in Minecraft are things that we might have just added from a tweet, like 'Oh, this will be awesome! You're right, I'll add it!', and then pushed it live two days later, you know? Twitter is not a one way street; it's not about us giving information to the people who follow us. It's very much about receiving as well.

So we need to continue that and try to have as close a connection with the community as possible and to really listen to them.

The closed alpha, then - is that going to follow the same format as Minecraft, with a cut price to join that, and a bumped up price later on?

Well, the closed alpha won't cost any money. I think at that point we're just going to shower content on the people who are signed up and ask them to try it and play with it and tell us what they think, to see what combinations are broken and what doesn't work.

And at the end of that... well, we're gonna take everything away from them. [laughs] Then we move onto the open beta, and that's when the actual game starts.

So the closed alpha will be a bit like how normal games behave at the beta. So like, if you were the beta tester for the latest release of World of Warcraft, you can get to a certain level, but as soon as the game is finished, they will make you start over again. So basically that's how our alpha will work.

What kind of price point are you looking at at this stage?

We haven't decided on a price point yet, but the way it will work is, the game itself will be free for anyone, but the content of the game -- the scrolls -- you can buy packs of those. So we want people to be able to try the game before being able to invest in it, and we think that is the best way for everyone.

I myself have bought so many games where I've thought 'oh my god this looks awesome', then you install it and it's sh*te [laughs]. So this way, you'll be able to get a feel for the game, then you can buy it or not. So let's say -- this is no fixed number, just off the top of my head -- you invest 10 euros in the game and you get 60, 70, 80 or whatever scrolls. Then you have expanded your collection. And this will be random, so if you're lucky you'll get a really rare card.

Ah, so when you're buying packs, you're not buying a specific set - it's as if you're buying real packs of cards in a shop. So you might get a 'shiny' card in a pack?

Yeah exactly. I mean, we're gonna try to balance it up in some way so that you won't get an entire pack of only 'common' cards, but yeah, it's random, so you don't know exactly what you're going to get. You may get lucky and get a really rare card, then you might keep it or place it in the auction house, that will be up to you.

Are we looking at a PC-only release?

The first release is going to be PC and Mac, and you'll be able to install it. But there's also the possibility of playing it in a browser.

Will that be Flash?

No, it's not going to be Flash, but we have talked about having an open API so anyone can create their own client, since everything is going to be server-side anyway.

The problem with Flash is that no-one really takes it seriously. Plus of course, the performance issues. So we're going to look beyond that. We're probably leaning towards Unity. Unity has some added features, and performance-wise it outruns Flash. Plus, if you want to use 3D or particle effects and so on...

But we're also thinking that this game would be great to play on an iPad. Drawing up scrolls with your fingers would be a nice touch. We're looking at smartphones in general - the Android and the iPhone and the iPad.

Any consoles?

We're not looking at consoles right now, but if the game turns out to be successful and has a fair amount of users, then it could definitely be something that we consider doing.

There's a problem with consoles though -- I mean, on the PC and Mac and the iPad and the smartphones, everyone can play against each other. But if we get it to, say, the Xbox, then they (Microsoft) only want you to play against other Xboxs.

Ah yeah, I guess then you've got a problem with your online leagues.

Yeah exactly. We want people to be able to play cross-platform. But we will see, maybe in the future. It's not impossible.

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

Eurogamer Network announced GDC After Dusk, a new online show tying in with this year's Games Developers Conference, hosted by John Teti (The Daily Show, The A.V. Club) and Ellie Gibson (Eurogamer, BBC Technology).

The three-day/episode series will feature guests like Epic's Cliff Bleszinski, Monkey Island creator Ron Gilbert, Lionhead's Peter Molyneux, Frontier Developments' David Braben, PopCap's Jason Kapalka, and Minecraft creator Markus "Notch" Persson.

GDC after dusk hopes to have conversations with the guests about "the craft and artistry of games" while giving audiences a taste of "the pulsing community of ideas that flourishes every year at GDC".

"GDC After Dusk is set to capture the essence of what this conference is all about," says GDC director Meggan Scavio. "It's sure to be essential viewing for anyone who is involved or just interested in the games development industry."

You can see the scheduled guests for GDC After Dusk, which starts today with an "Indie Night" episode, after the break:

Episode I - Indie Night - Wednesday 2nd March

• Markus Persson (Creator, Minecraft)
• Chris Hecker (Creator, Spy Party)
• Kellee Santiago (Co-founder, Thatgamecompany)
• Andy Schatz (Creator, Monaco)

• Cliff Bleszinski (Design director, Epic Games)
• Jason Kapalka (Chief creative officer, PopCap Games)
• David Perry (Founder, Shiny Entertainment)

• Peter Molyneux (Creative director, Microsoft Game Studios Europe)
• David Braben (Founder, Frontier Developments)
• Ron Gilbert (Double Fine Productions)

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

Definitely one of the most interesting releases for the summer, Catherine is coming to Xbox 360s and PS3s in North America, and Atlus has put up this first English trailer to mark its localization announcement for the "HD mature romantic thriller game".

The game follows the "treacherous love triangle between Vincent, Katherine, and Catherine" by day, and strange nightmare portions that have Vincent climbing a tower of blocks while avoiding obstacles and traps. There's also some talking sheep.

Catherine's offbeat premise isn't too surprising when you remember that it's being developed by Atlus' Persona team -- the game also features music by the Shin Megami Tensei series' veteran composer Shōji Meguro.

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

Bungie concept artist Isaac Hannaford has posted several early designs from Halo: Reach's heroic Noble Team, offering a bit of insight on the characters' armor styling and pointing out some details that you might have missed in the game.

On chief warrant officer Jorge (above), for example, "You can see the kill marks in Covenant blood on Jorge's left shoulder pad...the side that faces the enemy. This aspect of his personality doesn't show much in the game, but its a left over habit from his origninal Spartan II squad.  He continues the tradition out of reverence."

And for sniper Jun, Hannaford notes, "At one point we were considering making it possible to break down the sniper rifle...that idea was abandoned but you can see here an idea of how it would be stowed. This was also an earlier version of Jun's helmet. It was a bit hamfisted, but really communicated beyond a doubt that he was the sniper of the team."

You can see Jun's design after the break and the rest of Hannaford's posted images of Noble Team on his personal site.

[Via Super Punch]

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

Marketing? "You need to be merciless."

Passion? "I'd rather have a team player."

Inspiration? "It's not all about creating the game you want."

Three surprising quotes from three prominent developers with studio backgrounds who went the indie route -- Jake Kazdal of Haunted Temple, Daniel Cook of Spry Fox, and Ichiro Lambe of Dejobaan Games, respectively.

Haunted Temple

Kazdal, whose background includes stints at Sega Japan (where he worked on Rez) and EA LA (the cancelled Spielberg project LMNO) has formed his own three-person indie Haunted Temple with two other ex-EA cohorts and is currently working on Skulls of the Shogun, a downloadable strategy title.

"While we were at EA we had really specific roles, and now between the three of us" all three handle a number of functions. "It's insane and it's fully the craziest thing I've done in my life," says Kazdal.

He sees the obvious differences between life as an indie and life at a studio -- noting that he likes the freedom to work at his own pace, and also the creative freedom of the indie life.

The team has "total creative freedom," he says. "We're constantly trying new stuff, and there's no chain of command, we come up with a cool idea and we just do it."

However, his previous jobs taught him important skills that he still uses. For example, for Space Channel 5, the team at Sega had created such a detailed style guide that even though he joined the project a year in, and didn't speak Japanese at the outset, he was able to start contributing quickly.

For artists, style guides are essential to keep the "vision concrete, and bring new team members up to speed, and keep everybody on the same page."

And he learned the value of a "core small team making creative decisions" on that game, and on Rez. Working with a small pool of top-level creatives "kept me at my absolute best, to keep up with the team" says Kazdal.

"We didn't know what we set out to make and it was really challenging, a really tiny group being able to go deep and go out of bounds."

However, the team went too far, he says. "It was just us playing it every day and it was getting weirder and weirder and weirder. There was no context." When there was finally a playtest, Kazdal learned another lesson: the game has to be understood by outside audiences. "It forced us to take a step back and do a huge pass on visual communication."

Says Kazdal, "We've had to kill a lot of cool features in Skulls of the Shogun for the same reason."

Defining a game's art style from the outset makes the work much easier, Kazdal is convinced. "I have experienced every role from the bottom to the top of the art pipeline in games but I've never had to do them all at once," he says.

"By doing a lot of the heavy lifting and definition at the early stage I was able to work quickly and efficiently, because I was able to go back and check my stuff against these style guides."

But the most important thing? An EA lesson -- a vertical slice.

The vertical slice the team created for Skulls changed his concept of the game's optimal map size -- but once the change was made, the game was more fun. This also had knock-down effects, leading to major decisions for props and other gameplay elements.

Moreover, "Spending all of our efforts on the small chunk, we had a complete blueprint of how the game would work... You could show it to publishers and press, and they would get it immediately."

And finally, "Things get exponentially faster from that point because you have a rock-solid foundation."

He also noted that "far too many developers put all of their effort into making their game... You need to be merciless" about going out there and speaking to the press. "Constantly focusing on raising awareness of your game," is key, Kazdal said, mentioning that events like PAX and E3 (where the team toted around a laptop and stopped showgoers) have been crucial.

Spry Fox

Daniel Cook, co-founder of Spry Fox, has a different message, one gained over 16 years in the industry -- he started at Epic Games (when it was still called Epic Megagames and focused on shareware) and moved to Microsoft before booting up his own company.

Spry Fox is "project-based, we assemble teams, and if they don't work out they all disperse -- and if it does work out we all share revenue," he said.

Looking at the audience, Cook surmised that everyone out there was capable of making a game. The important question is "How do you make them profitable, successful, and distribute them? These are the things that are really interesting."

With Spry Fox, he hopes to "look at all of those lessons from the shareware game days that are still valid today, and then a whole bunch of new lessons" learned from the contemporary AAA space.

To keep the company running, he says, "portfolios are critical" -- Spry Fox has developed five games in its first year. The two most successful are Flash game Steambirds and Kindle puzzler Triple Town. However, "neither one of those games have generated enough revenue to keep Spry Fox going itself."

Keep making games, and you'll eventually hit one that's "great, right platform, right time, with the right theme. And it's very hard if not impossible for a small independent game developer to control all of those factors all the time. Develop games simultaneously if you can, release games early and often if you can't."

At Microsoft, Cook experienced six levels of hierarchy over design. "Any one of those people could look at your design and say 'You know what? I don't think my daughter would like that! She's into ponies now!'"

The games that resulted had poor design and took too long to find the fun. Cook began to be convinced he's not a good designer, in fact. "Once I got out of that particular environment, I'm like, 'Holy crap!' When you have a single creative director on a design you can design so much better."

Keeping in mind "all of those instinctual factors you've learned over the years," working at a studio, "you can actually go with your gut. If you've been training yourself, you can make damn good decisions. The games we're making now, where there's a clear design lead on the project converge on the fun so much faster."

Teams should aspire to iterate daily, Cook says. "We're inventing entirely new ways of playing and critical to that is get a playable prototype, get design feedback on that, and then implement that design feedback. That's your design cycle."

But be careful. "If that starts getting to a week, you're in a bad place. If you're getting to two weeks your design may never converge. You may never find the fun."

And recruiting collaborators is not completely intuitive, he warns. Interviews? Forget them. "When we start up a team, we say, 'This is going to be a short term project. Let's see if you can finish it.' That's the interview, and that pulls the gems from the mud like nothing else. If they can't finish, find someone else to work with."

His major criteria include reliability -- which he notes is impossible to discern in an interview; ability to see the big picture -- "We're all making this awesome game together, it's a shared goal"; and the ability to work well with others -- "Genius programmers who can't work well with people can't make great games. It doesn't work"; and people who respect the role of game designer -- "It's a completely and utterly different skill than art or programming. It's what you're making." It's critical the team understands that.

On the other hand, there are things to watch out for. "Crunch is stupid. If you're crunching for more than a week or two weeks, you're doing it wrong. It results in worse quality games."

"Passionate is okay, but sometimes it means obstinate. I'd rather have a team player who sees the vision," says Cook. And "located in North America doesn't mean crap." Global contributors "bring unique perspectives and they're just as talented."

In conclusion, "You can do the impossible if you have an awesome team."

Dejobaan

Ichiro Lambe, of Dejobaan Games -- of Steam hit AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! - A Reckless Disregard For Gravity shared his insights next.

The first: think holistically. Says Lambe, "I like to think strategically rather than tactically... [about] how things are interconnected, rather than discrete."

"Conventional wisdom is that indies need to wear many hats," says Lambe, but "the mistake is that we sometimes make is that we consider them to be separate problems. But I consider it better to bring them together."

For example, Dejobaan combines marketing with bug support. "We might reply in 50 point Comic Sans or iambic pentameter... It takes no time to reply with something interesting versus something dry, but people who get a response like that will notice there is a human in the other end and they will talk to their friends about that. It's fun to do and it makes people talk."

In responding to community comments on Rock Paper Shotgun, Lambe created a YouTube video instead of just posting to the thread. "That's no more difficult than sitting down and typing the answers to these comments, but when we posted the video the commentors went wild."

In short, "If you are an indie who is working on all of these things, you have the opportunity to connect them" -- like marketing and design, one Lambe feels strongly about.

Marketing is not about getting people to buy crap they don't want to buy, says Lambe. "I view it as the process of creating a game so amazing that they are open up their wallets and give you their hard-earned money to play your game. You're going to create the game such that people will comment on it. If your game is worth talking about more people are going to hear about it."

Marketing is "not an afterthought. It's also not inherently evil."

In his view, "there's a fallacy of the indie game developer: you're doing it because you want to create the game you've always wanted to create. It's not all about creating the game you want. There are millions of games you might want to create."

What Lambe wishes to create are games that he wants to create but are also games that people want to play and want to pay for.

"The happy spot is somewhere in between; that is going to pay your mortgage. So in the broad sense, at the outset, before we even think about whether the game should be on Windows, or be an action game or whatever, we want a game to be excited about -- and [a concept that we can] state on paper such that we can tell people about and they say 'that makes sense'."

In short, developing games people care about is a question of character. "Some people are innately good at this," says Lambe. "Sometimes I tend to forget about it. I'm sitting here working on [the game] and I just want to get the game done and it's very easy to forget about these fun things."

Character is, he feels, "the intersection between game development and marketing." And if it's an explicit goal of the project, "it gets done."

In fact, planning is key, but it can be tough. "I'm horrible at project management," says Lambe. "We have individuals in our team who are competent -- but you need to tie this all together. You need to make sure how they get from point A to point B."

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

Autumn Games and Reverge Labs posted this first trailer for Skullgirls, the stylish 2D fighter featuring a unique (if a bit morbid) cast of female characters illustrated and animated by talents like Alex Ahad, Mariel Cartwright, and Jonathan “Persona” Kim.

The game is built on Reverge's proprietary sprite-based engine, combining 2D art with real-time lighting effects -- Reverge claims this is a first for a fighter. It also has "Dark Deco" visuals drawn at twice the resolution usually shown on 1080p HD screens, which the studio says allows for "more detailed characters and in-game effects".

Skullgirls will feature the usual versus, story, arcade, and training modes, and a feature that allows players to share their replays and highlights of their matches on YouTube or Facebook. Expect the game to release for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 later this year.

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

In a panel at the Game Developers Conference this afternoon, indie developer Mossmouth revealed that the upcoming Xbox Live Arcade port of its cherished roguelike/platformer Spelunky will add a multiplayer mode, supporting at least four players.

It's unclear in this single screenshot -- captured by @kinten -- if the multiplayer gameplay will be a co-op or versus (or a mixture of both, like New Super Mario Bros. Wii) affair, but either option sounds like it would be an enjoyable time based on our my experience with the original PC game.

Along with multiplayer support, Spelunky for XBLA will also have new visuals, graphical effects, music, modes, achievements, and more.

[Via Joystiq, photo via IndieGames.com]

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

Playing the punishingly hard Super Meat Boy is a masochistic exercise for many players. But in a GDC 2011 presentation today, creators Tommy Refenes and Edmund McMillen – the two person Team Meat – laid out the many ways that the development process was equally masochistic, at times.

“I remember looking at the calendar and feeling the panic and feeling the stress of that, and... I said to myself, 'I will die when this is done,” Refenes said, in what he assured the audience was not hyperbole. “I kept thinking, 'If I make it through, I probably won't die, but it's OK if I die afterward.'”

The reason for the nearly lethal development pace, the team said, was the promise of being included in Microsoft's Xbox Live Fall GameFeast, which they were told would lead to increased visibility and more sales. With their dwindling bank accounts unable to sustain them until the next promotion six months later, Team Meat undertook a truly punishing schedule to get from rough trade show builds to a polished, bug-free game in just a few months time.

“This isn't an exaggeration; the last two months of development, Tommy and I never took a day off and never slept more than five hours a day,” recalled McMillen, who joined the talk via Skype call from his home office. “It was like a Groundhog Day situation, where we're just living this same awful day over and over.”

The incessant grind got so bad that McMillen recalls frequently telling his wife he was ready to throw out all their progress and just quit. Refenes, who's diabetic, said the stress caused his blood sugar levels to become disastrously unstable, and that his parents had to bring him a meal every day, or he would neglect to eat.

And after all that hard work, Refenes and McMillen said they were extremely disappointed with the promotion offered by Microsoft. What was supposed to be a featured promotional spot on the Xbox 360 dashboard, with no competing new digital releases for the week, quickly turned into a fourth slot initial placement opposite the release of Double Fine's highly visible Costume Quest.

Refenes and McMillen said Microsoft's limp support was somewhat understandable due to the somewhat underwhelming performance of earlier GameFeast releases Hydrophobia and Comic Jumper. Still, they felt like the rug had pulled out from under them, to an extent.

“It isn't supposed to hurt your feelings, because it's business, but it did hurt my feelings” Refenes said. “Ed and I killed ourselves to get this game done, and we're just kind of pushed to the side.”

Despite the promotional snafu, Super Meat Boy received widespread critical acclaim and attention on the way to nearly 400,000 downloads across Xbox Live and Steam. But the high cost of that success had McMillen looking back in confusion.

“I still think back to those months and I'm like, 'Jesus Christ!'” he said. “The human body can do it when it needs to, but I would never voluntarily go through that again. If someone said 'Hey you want to do Meat Boy again and get the same success?' I would say 'No way.' … In a way I'm weaker because now I'm afraid of something like that.”

That said, there are some tangible benefits to the development hell. “When we'd see someone pick up the game and not put it down, that would take any sadness we had and just put it aside,” Refenes said.

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

Japanese electronics firm Panasonic Corporation revealed that it has cancelled development for the Jungle, its online- and MMO-focused handheld, citing changes in the market and its strategic direction.

Announced last October, the Jungle featured a full QWERTY keyboard, a high resolution display, a touchpad, and more. The portable was meant to emphasize online gaming, and Panasonic intended to make games like Bigpoint's Battlestar Galactica Online and Jagex's popular RuneScape MMORPG available on the Jungle.

Some analysts were skeptical of the system considering Panasonic's last attempt to market a dedicated game console, the ill-fated and expensive 3DO. There were also doubts that the Jungle would be able to compete against the three already entrenched gaming handhelds -- Nintendo DS, PSP, and iPhone/iPod Touch --  or their successors.

Nevertheless, Panasonic established a new U.S. subsidiary, Panasonic Cloud Entertainment, to handle "products, services and content for online gaming, social networking, and other forms of emerging, web-based entertainment" for the device. The company also began public testing for the Jungle last Noveber.

"Panasonic decided to suspend further development due to changes in the market and in our own strategic direction," the company said in a statement sent to Reuters. Panasonic did not reveal its future plans for the U.S. subsidiary.

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

Microsoft has opened registrations for its Dream.Build.Play 2011 Challenge, its contest encouraging independent developers to create innovative projects with XNA Game Studio, and is offering up $75,000 in prizes.

Now in its fifth year, the Dream.Build.Play competition invites developers to submit original, playable titles built with XNA Game Studio 4.0, its toolset for Xbox 360, Windows PC, and Windows Phone games. Previous winners include Beat Hazard, CarneVale Showtime, Weapon of Choice, Dust: An Elysian Tail, and last year's Lumi.

The contest's judges will review submissions based on how fun they are to play, how creative and unique they are, and how well produced they are. Four winners will be chosen to receive a share of $75,000 ($40,000, $20,000, $10,000, and $5,000 depending on their ranking) and an opportunity for an XBLA publishing contract.

Developers can register for free at the official Dream.Build.Play site. Once registered, they will have from May 17 to June 14 to submit their playable projects to the contest. After the entry period closes, the competition's judges will review submissions and choose their top 20 favorites, which will be posted on August 2011. The final four prize-winning games will also be posted then.

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

We haven't seen much from Ms. Splosion Man, the sequel to 2009's Xbox Live Arcade hit Splosion Man, since Twisted Pixel unveiled the game with a trailer late last year, but now we have 10 explosion-filled minutes of the upcoming game from this GDC demonstration captured by GameSpot.

Here will see the game's new heroine, a few familiar bosses from Twisted Pixel's other games, a bit of platforming outside of the Big Science laboratory for a change at the end, and a bunch of great pop culture references (including a great Total Recall one).

Ms. Splosion Man is slated to release to Xbox Live Arcade this fall.

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

[Sister site Gamasutra has a dedicated page for GDC 2011 coverage all this week, but we'll be reprinting some highlights over here on GSW, starting out with this Indie Games Summit talk from Monday.]

Though the Humble Indie Bundle eventually introduced an entirely new model for digital distribution of indie games, the bundle's creators said they were actually inspired by one of the most established players in the digital download space.

“One thing that we instantly noticed is that anytime Steam would take a bunch of games and put them together and discount the price, it would become the number one story on Reddit,” noted Humble Indie Bundle co-creator and Wolfire Games founder Jeffrey Rosen in a presentation at the 2011 Game Developers Conference. “I felt like I could do that, [that's] not too hard.”

So Rosen and fellow Wolfire employee John Graham rounded up some friends from the indie development community and offered up a bundle of their own. Now, after two iterations, the Humble Indie Bundle has attracted hundreds of thousands of downloads and brought in over $3 million in revenue, well beyond the low six-figure revenues the creators initially expected.

But Rosen said it wasn't just the viral press attention, nor the inherent appeal of the pay-what-you-want model, that led to the bundles' success. Designing a simple, elegant web site that made purchasing the bundle as simple as possible was also a factor.

“A web site with a Paypal button... that works, but there's a lot of things you can do on the site to make that better,” Rosen said. He pointed out that fancy 'features' such as required registered accounts and shopping carts just make it harder for customers to give you money.

“We were pretty adamant that instead of having to download a client or anything, you would click the buy button, get an e-mail, and download your games, which seems kind of silly, but it really worked,” Rosen continued.

Providing support for even a small fraction of hundreds of thousands of purchasers created a more unexpected problem, but Rosen and Graham managed to handle thousand of customer issues simply by pulling a few all-nighters in front of e-mail and a chat support client.

“It's really surprising how a lot of companies don't have a good customer support team, but we managed to do it across hundreds of thousands of customers while also developing the site,” Rosen said. “It's not really that hard, you just have to sit down and answer e-mails.”

Even though the Humble Indie Bundle was offered to purchasers for as little as a penny, the organizers estimate at least a quarter of the bundles were pirated either through the site or over bittorrent.

An anonymous internet survey among self-selected bundle piraters found that most of them stole because they were unable to use credit cards or online payment options in their country. Others simply preferred the convenience of BitTorrent, leading the organizers to add a relatively new web-seeding BitTorrent download option to the site.

Despite the piracy, “the amount of generous people overpowered the cheapskates,” Graham said, including 16 people who spent over $1,000 each across the two bundles. Linux users tended to be the most generous of these, leading Graham to suggest indie developers go after underserved markets.

“If you support Mac and Linux as an independent developer you have a good chance of doubling your revenue,” Graham said.

Going forward, Rosen says he'd love to have more lesser-known games – rather than previous hits like World of Goo and Braid as in previous bundles. “If a game is legitimately good and no one has heard of it... using the Humble Indie Bundle to promote that game would be a dream for us,” Rosen said.

Of course, it's that “legitimately good” part that is often a point of contention. “Lots of people send us requests [for bundle inclusion] for games they believe are great, but... we don't see it the same way,” Rosen said. “It might damage the brand if we put a lot of those kinds of games in there.”

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

Not long after we talked here about Chinatown Fair, the "last arcade in Chinatown", rumors began to circulate about the game center closing. Sadly, those rumors were partially true, as it closed up shop yesterday and will move away from its Mott Street location -- where the arcade stood since at least the 1950s -- possibly migrating to Williamsburg.

NYC The Blog has a great collection of photos from the arcade's last hours, showing regulars continuing to crowd around the fighting games and classic cabinets even as machines were being removed. The site also posted depressing images of the celebrated game center now empty and lifeless, and cabinet pieces waiting on the street for someone to transport them to storage.

For more photos of the arcade taken over the past several decades, you can check out this new Chinatown Fair Arcade archival project, which seeks to " share all the memories of the Chinatown Fair arcade on a multimedia platform". You can also see a few photos from NYC The Blog's report after the break:

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

If you were one of those hip dudes (or dudettes) that made time last weekend to visit Pulsewave, the monthly chip musi show at New York City's The Tank, you would have have seen this neat homebrew breathalyzer game for the NES from electrical engineer Batsly Adams.

To play, you simply consume some alcohol, then breathe into a modified NES cart that is plugged into the first controller slot. According to Dauragon, the game then "gives you a point value based on how slizzr’d you are and ranks you amongst your fellowship of drunkards."

In addition to this Drunken NES video, EM Dash has posted a bunch of videos from last weekend's Pulsewave, capturing performances from Minusbaby, Crashfaster, DocPop, and others. Watch them all here!

[Via TCTD, Peter Berkman]

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[This week, Her Interactive, the creator of the Nancy Drew games, has launched its first iPad title, with Nancy Drew Mobile Mysteries: Shadow Ranch, and our own Christian Nutt talks to CEO Megan Gaiser about the company's philosophy. ]

The game is a hybrid storybook and adventure game, incorporating plain text with minigames, some of which flow directly and logically from the story and others which seek to relieve the boredom younger users might feel when confronted with prose.

The goal is to attract new players to Nancy Drew. And while the company could port its successful PC point-and-click games to the iPad, the first stop is something entirely different.

With the Mobile Mysteries series, Her Interactive is "looking to create an entirely new Nancy Drew mystery experience. It seemed like a great opportunity to blend the elements of game mechanics, interactivity, and books.

"The definition of games, much like the definition of books, is no longer black and white, and this gave us the opportunity to explore this new genre," Gaiser says. "We're storytellers, and mystery makers, so this is just another way of telling a story."

And while Gaiser is happy with this first effort, she's aware that there's still work to be done. "We're trying to find the right balance between the text and interactive elements, and game mechanics.

"Just like with our first PC game, Secrets Can Kill, when we finished it we were really excited and proud, but at the same time, we felt it wasn't complete. We're perfectionists. Our goal was to create a game that has the quality level that we believe in," Gaiser says.

The same holds true for Shadow Ranch. "We want to create something that can be a series... People want to be delighted enough to come back and buy a second one, and that happened with Secrets Can Kill. We hope that will happen with this one as well."

The important thing is retaining the core aspects of the Nancy Drew brand, says Gaiser, such as making sure the game is an "inspiring experience" for players, which can "arouse curiosity [so that] interesting thinking takes place." The title also includes visual elements that women who grew up with Nancy Drew will remember, while for girls it's "just cool, retro, hip and fun," Gaiser says.

And educational elements reinforced through both text and puzzles are part of the brand too. "We don't put that on the package because it's spinach to kids, but it's there. I think there are opportunities in the educational arena to create much more inspiring ways to teach, and something like this might engage a student more so than the traditional ways that we've been going about it.

"Basically, when someone is intellectual and emotionally engaged, it becomes passion or excitement, and that's when they begin to question, and wonder, and go deeper," says Gaiser.

Players don't have to worry that the point-and-click Nancy Drew is consigned to the PC only, however. It will also come to iPad. Says Gaiser, "we're working to make them more accessible first, to welcome a broader audience, because right now those games are challenging, and we have a hard core Nancy Drew user, but it wouldn't make sense to port them to this device until we've made a few changes."

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

More than a year since its unveiling, Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery -- the much hyped collaboration from Capy (Critter Crunch, Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes), Jim Guthrie, and Craig "Superbrothers" Adams -- is finally close to release, mere weeks away from singing and dancing and adventuring on your iPad. 

This new "Audience Calibration", along with sharing new clips from the game, tells us we'll meet with Sword & Sworcery on the Vernal Equinox, or March 20th. Superbrothers also shared the following text about the title:

"S:S&S EP presents a yarn about a lonely warrior monk lady on a woeful errand in the remote mountain wilderness of the Caucasus, far from the Scythian steppes. This concept is a deliberate distortion of Robert E. Howard's seminal works of sword and sorcery fiction. Any student of Hyborian geography will tell you that The Caucasus of around 1000 BC is a loose inspiration for the home country of Howard's immortal creation, Conan the Cimmerian.

S:S&S EP differs from other genre fiction in that the story is framed by a fellow known as The Archetype who is purportedly conducting a psycho social audiovisual experiment on an unsuspecting 21st century audience. This enigmatic man is intended to echo intellectuals & entertainers like Carl G. Jung, Carl Sagan, Rod Serling, William Shatner & faux Sony spokesman Kevin Butler. The Archetype was, however, created with a very specific individual in mind."

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

Kairosoft, the studio behind last year's breakout hit Game Dev Story, has released a new sim to iOS that once again has players managing all aspects of a facility, though this they'll oversee a Japanese hot springs inn instead of a game developer.

In this new title, players will try to lull their guests into "hot spring nirvana" by perfecting their inn's layout of rooms, restaurants, arcades, and baths. They'll also decorate a Japanese garden with "lanterns, pine trees, azaleas, and more."

Much of Game Dev Story's user interface has been replicated here, but newer iOS devices (iPhone 3GS and later, iPod Touch 2nd generation and later, and iPad) allow for zooming and rotating the screen.

You can buy Hot Springs Story from the App Store now for an introductory price of $3.99.

[Via mister_raroo]

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

Bit.Trip Flux, the last entry from Gaijin Games' beloved minimalist/rhythm series, hits WiiWare today, following CommanderVideo as he finally returns home and taking players back to the classic (but difficult) paddle-based gameplay we saw in Bit.Trip Beat.

Available for 800 Wii Points, the game has players bouncing back incoming blocks to the beat of the music, and features a co-op two-player mode, a new Meta mode, new power-ups, new beat types, music by chip musician Bit.Shifter, and no Game Overs.

And if that isn't enough Bit.Trip for you, tomorrow Gaijin will release Runner, the IGF award-nominated WiiWare title that originally released last May, on Steam tomorrow with HD graphics, online leaderboards, achievements, and new difficulty modes.

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

[Our own Mike Rose talks to Markus 'Notch' Persson about the future of hit online indie title Minecraft, as he explains why achievements are in his plans, and how sales went up after a price rise.]

We had a chance to visit Mojang headquarters in Stockholm, Sweden last week, and along the way, sat down with Markus Persson, known online as Notch, about the future of his surprise indie smash Minecraft.

The open-world 'sandbox' title, which started as a one-man project, has ended up selling 1.4 million copies to date at anywhere between 10 euros ($13.75) and 15 euros ($20.60), and this has allowed Mojang to hire people and expand its vision for the blocky hit.

By way of introduction, Persson told us that he's really excited about the mods being created by the community for Minecraft, which runs in a browser as well as as downloadable PC, Mac, and Linux versions.

In fact, the Swedish native hope that one day the Minecraft modding scene will be as popular as Half Life 2 mods, and that people will approach him in the future with ideas for commercial mods for Minecraft.

Ideas for mods? Persson himself would like to work on a Capture the Flag-style game set in the Minecraft world, and said that it would be "the best idea ever" to build on the game's retro-style framework, citing Team Fortress Classic as an angle he'd like to approach the idea from.

Along the way, we also had a chance to ask Persson a number of additional questions about the smash title, which is nominated for awards in both the Independent Games Festival and Game Developers Choice Awards at this year's Game Developers Conference, which kicks off in San Francisco next week:

Will you ever host your own servers [to play Minecraft collaboratively with others]? Right now third parties host their own servers.

MP: We might. I mean, if we controlled the servers, then we could give out badges and things like that.

So you're thinking of adding achievements?

Yeah, I like achievements. I know a lot of people don't, but I like them. I've had the idea to make achievements kind of like the in-game questing. So you'd be able to see the first achievement in a tree of achievements, and you have to unlock the top ones first before you can unlock the ones further down.

So the first one might be to chop down a tree, or kill a chicken, and then these branch into more things you can do. Hopefully it would encourage people to try new areas.

So what would happen when you finish an achievement tree?

Well, it could converge into a big task, like kill a dragon or something, which would put a kind of narrative into the achievement tree.

Are you worried that when you put a tutorial or narrative into the game, then it will make new players think 'this is the way I'm meant to play the game', rather than finding their own playing style as happens now?

Yeah definitely. I'd want these achievements to feel like things that you can try, rather than these are things you have to do. People can follow them, but only if they want to.

How has the game has changed since the popularity boost, and what we can expect from Minecraft in the future?

We thought that when we moved the price up from 10 to 15 euros, we thought sales would decline by a third. But it was like the opposite -- it went up from four to five thousand sales a day to ten thousand sales a day. It kind of went against everything that I'd be told by other developers.

Do you think there will be a point where you'll think "I'm done, I don't want to do anymore"?

I think so. I'm surprised it didn't happen a long time ago. I suspect I'll eventually get bored of it at some point, but then I'll just hire other people to work on it.

Will Minecraft become a franchise?

I want to work on other games, but I think it would make sense to turn Minecraft into a franchise. I think it's important that there should be a point to any future Minecraft games. So if we make an Xbox version, there should be a point to it being on Xbox.

You've mentioned bringing in outside support for user inquiries/community management in the past. Is there going to happen anytime soon?

Yeah, we've just hired someone actually who starts soon. The most crucial thing is that people who have paid money for the game get the support they need, if for example they need a refund or something.

But do you miss being able to talk to the community intimately?

Yeah, I kinda do. As the community grows, some channels close for me. So like with IRC, I can't go on there anymore because I immediately get like ten messages. I think the way I use Twitter now kind of works. It gives me an average of what people are currently thinking.

I also like the forums -- if there's a really popular topic and lots of people are discussing it. For suggestions, I try not to read them too often, because they can kill my inspiration. But I still read the popular threads.

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

[Our own Simon Parkin explores how difficulty in games has been scaled in recent years, comparing the likes of Dead Space 2 and Deathsmiles to classic '80s titles Defender and Pac-Man.]

At the October 1980 Amusement and Music Operators Association Trade Show in Chicago, the pinball machine manufacturer Williams unveiled Defender to delegates. The shoot ‘em up represented the company’s attempt to re-enter the video game business from which it had departed years earlier.

In contrast to Space Invaders’ neat mechanical rows of shuffling aliens, Defender’s attackers arrived in a squall of chaos. Its designer, Eugene Jarvis, wanted to make what he later dubbed a ‘sperm game’, an experience that would appeal to thrill-seeking males, offering the player a rush of excitement derived through bedlam and difficulty.

The game’s showing was a disaster. Delegates at the show wrestled with its over-fussy control system, many claiming that the twitch gameplay was too challenging.

Players walked away from the machine, repelled by its complexity and Jarvis, who had only finished coding the game hours before the show opened, walked away from the show disheartened.

His game, it seemed, was too hard.

But in the weeks and months that followed the show, Jarvis’ dismay proved misplaced. Rather than being turned off by the difficulty of the game, a section of arcade players flocked to conquer the game as a mark of prestige.

Soon after its release Defender was taking around 150 million quarters per week across the U.S. But its significance was greater than simply re-establishing Williams’ place at the gaming table.

Through its success in part derived from its difficulty, the game opened the door to a new business model and, through that, a new way of design, one that promoted a seemingly insurmountable challenge to players.

At the same October 1980 show, Japanese publisher Namco also revealed its latest product, Pac-Man. While Jarvis was working hard to appeal to highly competitive male gamers with his shoot ‘em up, Japanese designer Toru Iwatani wanted to create a game that would appeal to female players, broadening the demographic of people who played video games in arcades.

As with Defender, the lukewarm response to Pac-Man from show delegates was in direct contrast to that of the gaming public. Pac-Man immediately attracted huge numbers of female players to the arcade, and the introduction of an entirely new demographic to the industry saw vast numbers of amusement arcades spring up across the US.

Pac-Man and Defender, both seminal titles in the development of the medium, represented a fork in the road for game design: one approach attempting to appeal to as wide an audience as possible, the other focusing upon core experts, offering a challenge that was intentionally overwhelming to newcomers.

For years, these two streams of design co-existed. Jarvis’ subsequent release, Robotron 2084, ramped the challenge even higher for skilled gamers, while Nintendo led the way in creating games that could be enjoyed by young children and experienced players alike.

However, in the past decade video games that promote a tall challenge have fallen from fashion, designers instead favoring the path of least resistance to audiences that, according to perceived wisdom, no longer have time or patience for difficult games.

The LucasArts adventure titles, which offered fiendish, obfuscated puzzles wrapped in a welcoming narrative declined towards the end of the 1990s.

Doublefine Games’ recent PSN and XBLA release, Stacking, in many ways a 3D re-imagining of the point and click adventure game’s form, features puzzles that, to a 90's LucasArts audience lack bite and complexity. And even if a player does become stumped with a puzzle, no less than three clues can be accessed to provide pointers, a design borrowed from the Professor Layton series.

Meanwhile, Street Fighter IV was specifically marketed by Capcom as a return to the simpler times of Street Fighter II (a claim arguably overstated at the time), an admission from the company that, in Street Fighter III: Third Strike's exclusive challenge, a large slice of the audience had been lost.

Likewise, the creep of the term ‘casual’ into inelegant difficulty selection options at the start of innumerable first person shooters lowers the point of entry for those who want to spray their way to a game’s conclusion with minimum resistance from the AI.

For Japanese shoot ‘em up publisher Cave, a developer whose identity is wrapped up in the difficulty of its ‘bullet hell’ arcade games, the trend away from experiences that demand expertise has been a challenge not only to its designers, but also to its business model. But it’s a challenge for which the company has, in its most recent Xbox 360 release Deathsmiles, found an elegant solution.

Each of the game’s eight stages can be completed at one of three difficulty 'ranks', chosen by the player just before undertaking a new level. Those players who simply want to blast through to the game's conclusion can do so by simply selecting the lowest 'rank' before each stage.

But lowering the difficulty also reduces the number of points on offer in a stage, ensuring that those players who want to master the leaderboards can only do so by upping the challenge.

As the difficulty can be adjusted on the fly between each stage, an interesting metagame emerges, as a player must decide whether it's better to earn fewer points over more levels, or more points over challenging stages at the risk of ending their game prematurely.

The scaling of difficulty doesn't merely increase the speed of enemy bullets. Rather Cave has gone to the effort of designing entire attack patterns that are unique to each of the difficulty ranks, an investment that adds texture and interest to the game as you slide between difficulties. It's elegant, smart and broadens the pool of players who are able to get involved with the game, without compromising the challenge for Cave's core audience.

What’s surprising is how few of gaming’s heavyweight blockbusters have managed to find equally elegant ways of scaling difficulty for players. While Deathsmiles benefits from a score attack focus, meaning its designers can penalise players who lower the difficulty in a meaningful way, few so-called triple A titles go to as much effort across difficulties.

Call of Duty: Black Ops and Dead Space 2 are two recent releases that fall back on a simple difficulty selection screen at the start of the experience, players having to blind guess a challenge suitable to their ability, while enduring the nagging feeling thereafter that perhaps they are not playing the game the way its designers intended.

Meanwhile, the only incentive many games offer for playing at the most challenging difficulty is via achievement points, an arguably cheap way to sidestep the need for meaningful difficulty design.

It is, almost without exception, preferable to design a game in such a way that beginners can find enjoyment on the low hanging branches, while those with ability to climb to the top of the tree are free to do so, and reap the rewards for their efforts.

The challenge laid down by the merging of Defender and Pac-Man's lineages in recent years is to discard the use of difficulty selection menus at the start of your game. Take the road less traveled and design your game in such a way that both beginners and experts can find pleasure and challenge in your experience without having to manually adjust difficulty themselves.

It may be a more difficult design route, but it's a challenge with a rich reward for those who can overcome it.

Posted by Simon Carless at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

[In the second of a multi-part series of demoscene-related posts on GameSetWatch, following the first set of nominees, AteBit's Paul 'EvilPaul' Grenfell looks at the Scene.org awards for the best demos of the past 12 months.]

The next three Scene.org awards categories under our microscope are Best Demo on an Oldschool Platform, Most Original Concept and Breakthrough Performance.

Best Demo on an Oldschool Platform

A heavy Commodore presence in this year's nominees with four C64 demos and one Amiga.

Another Beginning by Offence & Prosonix

A real oldschool C64 demo here, from the The Last Ninja reference at the beginning to the need for the viewer to PRESS SPACE to skip between parts - none of this "newschool" trackmo nonsense here!

Gejmbåj by Snorpung

A neat demo running on the original monochrome Game Boy, and pushing it hard.

Grind by Dekadence & Accession

A metal themed demo for Amiga.

Mekanix by Booze Design & Instinct

Lovely graphics and effects in this C64 demo.

Snapshot by Glance


A second oldschool-styled, C64 megademo. This one is from Glance, and clocks in at around 12 minutes in length.

We Are New by Fairlight

As well as producing cutting edge PC demos, Fairlight also have a world class C64 division who have been cranking out original looking gems for years (Romeo is still one of my favourite C64 demos ever.) We Are New is certainly the most "new school" styled demo in the category this year.

Most Original Concept

A difficult category to call here, but remember that these are being judged from a demoscene perspective - so some of the concepts may previously have been seen elsewhere.

A True Story from the Life of a Lonely Cell by Skrju & Triebkraft

I won't spoil the story of this charming demo from Skrju & Triebkraft, but be prepared for some emotion. And once the concept has sunk in, remember that it was coded on a ZX Spectrum in only 256 bytes.

Agenda Circling Forth by Fairlight & CNCD

Not the first demo to rely heavily on particles (it's based on last year's Blunderbuss after all) but this one pushes the concept so much further.

Binary of Babel by Segfault Garden

Over 20 different programming languages were used in the creation of this demo. And you can brush up on your oldschool demoscene effect terminology while you're watching!

Darwinism by Archee

Archee is well known for his physics demo, but this 4k intro is also powered by genetic algorithms.

Payback by Haujobb

A demo running on an ATM? If you pay attention you'll spot the cut in the video, but it's still running on real hardware.

Breakthrough Performance

This is the only category where more than one production is considered. It aims to recognise demomakers who have raised their personal bar significantly over the course of the year and newcomers to the scene who have landed with a bang.

Abandonned by One Man Group

The first demo from this group, it's one member creating the music, graphics and design. The demo uses the Stravaganza Demotool suite for its engine.

Area Unstable by Badsquare

Area Unstable, from another new group, is coded in Flash. This demo also makes an appearance in the Best Effects category.

Ars Nova by Accept Corp

Accept Corp have been around since the late 90's, when they started out as a ZX Spectrum group. This year they moved onto the Windows platform and produced a couple of neat 64k demos, one of which is nominated in the Best 64k category.

B - Incubation by Ctrl-Alt-Test

Ctrl-Alt-Test are a fairly new group (their first release was in 2009) but B - Incubation is a great 64k that raised their profile.

Gejmbåj by Snorpung

Snorpung, another fairly new group, specialise in Game Boy demos. Gejmbåj is also nominated in the Best Demo on an Oldschool Platform category.

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