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

When I wrote in this column a month ago about how I wanted to give away my collection of old video game and computer magazines, I wasn't expecting much response. I never found that many people interested in my collection before, after all.

Back a few years ago, when I was accumulating the majority of my collection, which spans around 8,000 magazine, I felt like I was very much on a solo mission. Lots of people collected classic video games, but I only knew one other person in the US who specialized in game magazines and he didn't live anywhere near me.

It's always been a quixotic mission, one that a lot of people don't understand. Let's say, for example, I took my girlfriend home for the first time. If I had a large collection of NES games, maybe my girlfriend would look at them on the shelf and say "Wow! I had one of these as a kid! Do you have [game name]?" and I'd say "I sure do" with a smug look on my face. (Dork fantasy fulfilled.)

That same person, face to face with a room full of 25-year-old computer magazines and ferret toys -- her reaction could very well be "You must be one of those hoarders like I saw on TV," and her stance would be completely justifiable. Average people my age see value in old games, but not so much in the assorted ephemera that comprised the game scene as it existed in the past.

That's why I was surprised at the large response I received nationwide after writing that column, which described how I wanted my collection to be handled in the future. I'm talking, like, dozens of people, from large research institutions to university libraries to commercial outfits to random collectors asking of my complete GameFan run was for sale.

I expected some private collectors and was fully anticipating a long process of splitting up the collection and sending it to all corners of the globe, but the amount of attention I received from scholarly outlets wasn't something I was anticipating. I had to spend a few days sorting through all the offers and figuring out which one was the best thing for what I was trying to accomplish.

I could've just sold everything on eBay in piecemeal fashion, I suppose, but after around a decade of collecting, I'd like to think that the collection deserves better than that. I don't think it's going too far to say that not many other people have so large and far-ranging a collection. There are complete runs of game mags like Electronic Gaming Monthly, Nintendo Power, VideoGames & Computer Entertainment, Die Hard GameFan, Game Developer, Game Players, and a couple dozen smaller, less successful publications. (That, and a lot of incomplete runs. I never did quite finish up Game Informer. Those mid-'90s issues are downright obscure.) I have Edge from issue 1 until the year 2000, approximately half the entire run of Japan's Famitsu magazine (over 500 issues), every issue of Byte from 1974 to 1990, and hundreds upon hundreds of 8-bit computer mags from around the world, some in languages I can't even identify. You work in the publishing industry long enough, these things seem to sort of gravitate to you.

But enough bragging. In the end, I've decided to donate the whole of the collection to (drum roll) the Internaional Center for the History of Electronic Games, part of The Strong's National Museum of Play up in New York.

ICHEG is an institution that has a big-arse collection of games -- something like 25,000, according to their website -- and in addition to running public exhibits, they allow researchers and other folks to come up to the place and look at and/or play whatever they like. They have some game mags already, but my collection would definitely flesh theirs out a lot, judging by what I've heard.

Donating to ICHEG fulfills a few goals for me. One, it gets the collection out of my hair -- it wouldn't have been long, after all, before I woulda needed to rent out public storage to keep it all together. Two, it's a safe place, one where I can be sure the collection's available to all, in one piece, and kept in good condition for the foreseeable future. Three, ICHEG's agreed to help out with any efforts to digitize parts of the collection for easier access, as I discussed in my previous column. (I've made headway on this effort, too, but it's still a bit early to discuss firm details. It's really exciting, though.)

We'll probably be doing the big transfer of the collection to New York later this summer, once work settles down a bit for me. I'm very happy things are working out as they are, and I look forward to checking out ICHEG pretty soon. In the meantime, thanks again to everyone who expressed interest in the collection -- I'll keep you all updated as things progress.

[Kevin Gifford owns over 8000 video-game and computer magazines. Despite this, he is capable of sustaining a conversation with a woman for at least three minutes per go. He runs Magweasel, a really cool weblog about games and Japan and "the industry" and things, and in his spare time he does writing and translation for lots of publishers and game companies.]

Posted by Kevin Gifford at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

[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 space shooter controlled with the microphone, an interactive music video from the developers of Machinarium, a visual novel by Christine Love (author of Digital: A Love Story), and a top-down 2D shooter that took its creator three whole years to code.

Here's the highlights from the last seven days:

Game Pick: 'PewPewPew...' (Incredible Ape, commercial indie)
"PewPewPewPewPewPewPewPewPew is a two-player side-scrolling space shooter in which both players control certain aspects of the game via microphones. One players moves the spaceman up and down by blowing into their microphone, essentially creating a jetpack-like noise. The other shouts 'pew pew' into their microphone to make the spaceman fire his laser."

Game Pick: 'Tottenham' (Theta Games, freeware)
"In Tottenham you're a demolitions expert tasked with clearing a path between two stations, so that connecting subway lines can be built from one destination to another. Explosive charges can cause flying debris to kill you, so it's advised to stay clear of them whenever you decide to blow something up."

Game Pick: 'Osada' (Amanita Design, browser)
"Osada is a psychedelic interactive music video by the developers behind Machinarium and the Samorost series. In each scene, you need to work out where to click to progress the action forward. Along the way, the music plays a huge part as you build up different instruments and harmonics."

Game Pick: 'Don't Take It Personally, Babe' (Christine Love, freeware)
"Don't Take It Personally, Babe, It Just Ain't Your Story is a visual novel that puts a huge emphasis on the way technology has led us to talk to one another differently, while also tackling the usual issues that visual novels styled in this way delve into."

Game Pick: 'Ranger' (Foppygames, freeware)
"Ranger is a top-down 2D shooter that has taken developer Robbert Prins three whole years to write. You play as a space pilot hired to travel to several alien planets and rescue the hostages who are being held for ransom negotiations, all the while dispatching any kidnappers and mercenaries who dare stand in your way."

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

The NYU Game Center will host a lecture by Valve Software writer Erik Wolpaw (Half Life, Psychonauts) on May 5, during which he'll present a "brief guided playthrough of Portal 2", his company's latest game.

Following that, he'll take part in an interview and general discussion moderated by Frank Lantz, NYU Game Center's interim director and Zynga New York's (formerly Area/Code) creative director.

Attendees are encouraged to join the discussion, and are invited to "bring questions about Portal, game writing, criticism, narrative and the overall subject of games in general."

The talk begins at 7PM at 721 Broadway (Room 006). You can find more information on the event and RSVP here.

[Via @ZenAlbatross]

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

I'm quite fine with Andy Helms no longer posting his Dude-A-Day illustrations of video game characters, as he's now taken to making fantastic 8-bit scenes and animations based on films and television shows.

In just the past week, he's posted nifty GIFs of Ghost Busters, Aliens, Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, Inception, and others as retro-style video games-- of course, I've collected them past the break.

You can follow Helms' latest pixelart postings on his Tumblr blog oktotally, which is dedicated to "silly artwork that is only serious about not being serious".

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 CCP, BioWare, Tencent, 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:

- CCP - North America: Senior Animation Programmer:
"CCP is looking for a senior animation programmer to lead our development of a state of the art animation system and pipeline for an upcoming MMOG. We are looking for a leader with a blend of strong programming and animation skills needed to help guide this team."

- BioWare: Senior Web Producer:
"BioWare Austin is searching for a senior web producer to lead the vision, strategy and total user experience for our website. The senior web producer position is based in Austin, Texas and will manage the creation and maintenance of Internet applications and the development of highly interactive and customized web experiences while creating programming that will be compelling and interactive in enticing people to explore our game and strengthen our customer relationships."

- Tencent Boston: Systems Designer:
"Tencent Boston is a premier game development studio led by industry veterans that are driving the creation of world class online games for a global audience. We are a division of Tencent Inc., one of the largest Internet companies in China. If you’re an inspired, driven individual who is ready to take game development to the next level then Tencent Boston is your new home."

- Sony Computer Entertianment America - San Diego: Senior UI Programmer:
"Be a part of the most exciting and innovating computer entertainment in North America. Sony Computer Entertainment America LLC (SCEA) markets the PlayStation family of products and develops, publishes, markets, and distributes software for the PS one console, the PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3 computer entertainment systems and the PlayStation Portable (PSP)."

- Retro Studios: Game Designer:
"Retro Studios, founded in 1998, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Nintendo Company, Ltd. Retro is a state of the art game development studio working in conjunction with Nintendo to bring cutting-edge games to Nintendo hardware systems like the Nintendo GameCube and Nintendo Wii."

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

Posted by Tom Curtis at 1:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

[This week, our partnership with game criticism site Critical Distance brings us picks from Ian Miles Cheong on topics including thoughts on the Portal 2 ARG and how perspective affects immersion.]

Welcome to another fine edition of This Week in Videogame Criticism, where we curate the most interesting articles in the critical blogosphere for you to peruse and enjoy. Though whether this week’s edition is truly "fine" is something better left for you to judge, dear reader.

The first article to grace this week’s edition is Adam Ruch's piece on the immersion of first- and third-person games in Kotaku Australia.

He writes, "My issue lies somewhere in between the concept of immersion and character-identification, which aren’t exactly the same thing. The two are related, and reinforce each other, but can also operate independently and in different ways."

"The first way, the ‘common wisdom’ is repeated in game design manuals and states that first-person perspective is more immersive and makes the player feel more like they are the character in the game."

Also on Kotaku, Mark Serrels wrote a two-part article about his quest to obtain 50 street pass hits in one day with his newly acquired Nintendo 3DS.

Elsewhere on the internet, contributing writers to Kill Screen review a few of their favorite fatalities in Mortal Kombat. Kirk Hamilton also wrote an article on Paste Magazine on the subject of genres and classifications in videogames.

He Writes, "Videogames certainly present all sorts of unique challenges when it comes to genre; to start with, they exist across a wide enough experiential spectrum that even the simplest ones require multiple types of classification. We must take into account how a game looks, its setting, and if applicable, the type of story it is trying to tell. But first and foremost, a game's genre must describe how it plays, the ways in which we can expect to interact with it."

Also on Paste is Sinan Kubba’s article on what went wrong with Mirror’s Edge, and how to fix it. Returning to the subject of genres, K. Cox shares her thoughts—or meditations—on the adventure game, a genre long maligned for its strict linearity.

Matt Weise writes about "The Sublime Joy of Flight" for the MIT Gambit Lab, in which he shares his experience with Pilotwings Resort and relates it to his love of flying games. Johannes Koski continues his investigation into the women of Liberty City on the Border House. The article is part two of a three-part series.

On his blog Dubious Quality, Bill Harris writes about a storm that’s currently brewing in the game industry, which should give everyone something to worry about. According to the post, game publishers are attempting to starve the traditional games press out of business in an effort to "control the message" about their products as much, and as often as possible.

Jorge Albor of the Experience Points blog has a few words to share on the launch of Portal 2’s ARG, which lead up to the release of the game. He writes, "The marketing stunt, if we can call it that, is unsettling, at least personally, because it fires a spotlight on the cultural power differential between the development studio and its player fan base."

On Zang.org, William Huber writes about "critical gamification," and the recent trend of "gamification," which is quickly becoming a part of marketing buzzspeak, and how critics can deal with it.

Wrapping up this week’s edition of TWIVGB is a piece by Paul Bauman, who rarely updates his Iterations of Cid blog. He's written a piece on Earth Reborn, a new board game that manages to provide meaningful experiences through strategy elements in its gameplay.

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

Seattle-based indie developer Spiderweb Software has announced that Avadon: The Black Fortress, its 40-hour fantasy RPG that debuted for Mac systems last month, will release for Windows PCs on Monday.

Like the developer's Avernum and Geneforge series, which have a small but devoted following, this first chapter of a planned "epic fantasy saga" is a turned-based 2D isometric game. It features four unique classes, "many different endings", dozens of side quests, and hundreds of magical items.

Spiderweb sets up the plot:

"As a Hand of Avadon, ruthless and efficient enforcers of peace, your missions will take you to the 5 lands of The Pact and beyond. Battle those who seek to disrupt peace in the land while dealing with spies and assassins who wish to use the power of Avadon for their own gain.

As your comrades are picked off one by one it will be up to one stalwart Hand to steady the scales of justice. ... Learn the unique history of the five lands of The Pact and make important decisions on your journey that will reveal one of many endings."

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

Here's a neat teaser for a documentary series called 8-Bit Generation: Playing The Revolution, which looks at "games, arcades, technical breakthroughs, [and the] social climate under the lens of the actors who took part in the process", interviewing industry pioneers like Ralph Baer, Al Acorn, and Eugene Jarvis.

Lorenzo Faggi, who co-directed the series for Junk Food and Claw Films, posted this synopsis:

"Before people became reliant on personal computers, internet and DVDs; before Mortal Kombat clones started invading our lives; before videogames turned into massive productions like Hollywood blockbusters… There was the 8-bit generation.

A journey backward from the Spacewar milestone, to the rise of the 16-bit era. A piece of human history that would have changed the way people approach game and technology, and definitely their lives, forever.

What was behind the first time a young prankster Steve Jaruszek borrowed his first token to play Defender? And what happened when Toru Iwatani sat down at his local pizzeria with a slice-off pizza in his front? Who did first envision Atari's fall?"

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

The novelty of thrift store/garage sale-bought scenic paintings altered to add video game characters (e.g. these Katamari Damacy, Pokemon pieces) hasn't worn off on me yet, so here's a neat, autumnal scene invaded by Valve's Half Life 2, created by Nicholas Forslund.

Gordon Freeman's orange suit sticks out too much for me, but the threatening Strider and the enemy search group in the creek/woods fit really well. According to users on Reddit, the original painting, "Woodland Retreat" was by American artist Richmond Irwin Kelsey.

Kelsey's paintings typically sell for thousands at auction -- fortunately, this is just a print that was badly water damaged and that Forslund bought for just $1.

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

[When it comes to ARGs, our own Leigh Alexander feels that some interaction designers have gotten a little too easy with the word "meaningful", suggesting some events are exploitive of human creativity.]

I'm going to state the obvious: Game design is an incredible art. Its scope and potential become even more interesting when we look at all the ways design learnings can be applied in a broader context than "video game" -- like newsgames, or social games (the actually-social ones) or even outside of the digital space.

People make outdoor games, participatory group activities, and physical board and card games using the same kind of engagement principles players have come to love through in the digital world.

And while most people don't really like talking about it, game elements can be layered on top of real world utilities to the benefit of advertisers (and theoretically to make those utilities more fun for their users).

The power of designed interaction often brings out the best in people. With just a little structure -- a mission system or goal structure, components to command, and meaningful rewards, "people" become "players", and often individuals become important contributors to a powerful collective that can consume and process information at a superhuman rate.

I know I sound like anyone who's touting anything gamification-related these days, and whenever they start in on this talk about empowerment and meaning (when they're talking about FourSquare badges and Facebook ad campaigns) I roll my eyes.

But I do think the core reasoning is sound; the fact remains that individuals engaged with designed interaction appear happier and more able than they were before.

That almost makes Alternate Reality Games even more loathsome. I hate them; always have. When I learned of I Love Bees, the ARG that paved the way for many others like it to come -- and how the purpose of that grand adventure was to market Halo 2 -- I felt repulsed. Virulently, in a way that still arises whenever anyone brings up ARGs.

When we're children, we're imaginative in a way we gradually need less as we get older. We spend hours talking to invisible people, imagining that the aether of the living world is thin and could easily admit us to realms beyond if only we found the right key. Any log, any stone, could conceal an entire kingdom of miniature animals.

This kind of creative play prepares us to be successful adults -- because being a successful adult often requires believing in and visualizing those possibilities that can't be seen with the eyes, requires creative answers to "where do we go from here", "how do I build something that's mine," and "how can I be part of something bigger than I am?"

I find that while most adults have forgotten many specifics of their childhood, they can recall their imaginary friends, or the magic of favorite pretend-games, vividly, as if those things continue to exist independent of time, our own personal eternal wellspring of inspiration.

But ARGs prey on the natural desire that all people have had, since childhood, to stumble upon a special secret -- and subvert that desire into the service of a marketing campaign. I always think of poor Ralphie in A Christmas Story. Feeling anxious and marginalized as children often do, the kid hoped by ordering a Little Orphan Annie decoder ring, a prize from Ovaltine that tied into the radio drama he enjoyed, he could be needed, part of a global community of heroes.

Of course, many people have seen the film: The message Ralphie uses the long-awaited ring to decode is 'BUY MORE OVALTINE.' When I think about ARGs, I think about his crushed expression.

Looking back, we now see that when we were kids we sought clues to "mysteries" without worrying much about how they'd turn out; we sought secret doors without concerning ourselves with where they led. The fun was in the playing and in the journey.

Importantly, however, we aren't kids anymore; part of adulthood is understanding destination, that if you're going to walk through a door you should, ideally, be as fearlessly curious as you were when you were young -- but you should also, ideally, have at least a couple ideas about what you're doing it for and where you might end up.

The kind of adults with the resources to be good participants in complex ARGs also have the resources to know they should expect something momentous for their trouble. I read that someone risked being swept away in Hurricane Katrina to receive a phone call related to I Love Bees.

I wish I could find that dude and ask him how he feels about risking his life for basically a commemorative Halo DVD, or whether he was just carried along on the insatiable tide of human appetite for the unknown, for the chance to be useful and heroic.

Me, I'd feel betrayed. Apparently, so would lots of people. When it comes to the latest big ARG geared at unlocking Portal 2 early, user reviews on Metacritic seem especially punitive in light of the fact that many passionate players participated in the indie game cross-promotion, buying and playing games they may not otherwise have -- all for about a 10-hour head start on the release date.

But it was fun, right? Nobody was forced to do it, and Portal superfans were probably excited to find a way to engage with the new release they were waiting for. Some people just love solving problems, wondering what mysterious websites are about, competing with other people to see who can be the first to figure out a clue.

Fine. But when I hear popular authors and speakers talk about all the amazing things users can achieve within the context of designed interactions, I'd rather them be a bit more honest; we'll probably still play anyway. Give us an idea of what it's all for and what we can expect -- that way, you can surprise us by beating our expectations, not letting them down. And give us something for our trouble besides the joy of having been marketed to.

Most of all, I don't want to hear ARG designers or gamifiers or anyone like that talk about imagination, about fun and engagement, about the triumph of human spirit and creativity, when their work is best applied to glorified ad campaigns. That's insulting, and it's exploitive of everything great about human nature.

Posted by Simon Carless at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

GDC Europe organizers have announced new lectures for the August show, including BioWare on Mass Effect 3's creatures, IMVU on "continuous deployment", and Slant Six (Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City) on production pipelines.

Taking place Monday through Wednesday, August 15-17, 2011 at the Cologne Congress-Centrum Ost, GDC Europe 2011 -- alongside the major gamescom trade show -- will again provide the essential pan-European perspective of game development and business trends.

Following the first set of announced Main Conference sessions, including Brink, Blue Fang and Crysis 2 talks, a major new lecture compares the radically different creature creation pipelines used on Mass Effect 2 and the upcoming Mass Effect 3.

Why, if you've just released a game that got a 96 score on Metacritic, would you completely change the process used to develop all of the creatures of the game?

Answering this question, Scylla Costa and Brenon Holmes of BioWare will present a Production track talk "From Boxes to Life! How to Prototype and Develop Creatures: Mass Effect 2 and 3 Case Study".

Elsewhere, GDC Europe attendees will learn how releasing updates to customers 20+ times per day is possible in the Programming track talk "Using Continuous Deployment to Move Fast and Release without Pain".

Drawing from his experience at leading 3D avatar/chat firm IMVU, the company's Brett Durrett will discuss why it’s valuable, and how to successfully implement the system at a company of any size.

Finally, focusing on three main areas in his Production talk "Supersize Your Production Pipe!", Slant Six Games’ Paul Martin (SOCOM: Confrontation, Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City) will give valuable insight on how to create new, or enhance existing, content authoring tools and data transformation pipelines. Martin explains how these actions will promote efficient work flow for production teams -- a necessity for today’s complex games and tight development timelines.

Many more GDC Europe Main Conference sessions are due to be revealed over the next few weeks for the event -- part of the UBM TechWeb Game Network, as is this website. This year, GDC Europe has added notable Summits on social games, smartphone and tablet games, and indie games to the existing line-up of learning and inspiration.

For more information on GDC Europe as the event takes shape, please visit the official GDC Europe website, or subscribe to updates from the official Game Developers Conference news page in RSS form, official Twitter page, or official Facebook page.

Posted by Simon Carless at 6:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Pixelartist Caleb Hystad, the animation director that turned Doom monsters into those tiny any cute sprites, has released a fun looking "iPhone story game" called Herbert's Day Out.

The interactive short story follows Herbert the pig as he "escapes his farm to quest for delicious tuffles, all the while keeping one step ahead of the farmer's dog".

Players hold their iPhones or iPod Touches horizontally and tilt the device to whichever direction they want to send Herbert, then tap the sceen whenever prompted with menus or options.

So, to sum it up: simple controls, charming art, a short and light story, and music from a singing cowboy, all for free. Why haven't you downloaded it yet?

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

Juegos Rancheros, a new independent game collective in Austin, is putting together a free and public meetup at The Highball this Sunday where indie developers and others interested in the local scene will be able to gather, share drinks, and play games like Twisted Pixel's The Gunstringer.

This event will be the first in a monthly series hosted in partnership with Alamo Drafthouse's Fantastic Arcade, and is styled after similar indie groups/get-togethers like Toronto's Hand Eye Society, Montreal's Mount Royal Game Society, and Denmark's Copenhagen Game Collective.

The Austin collective includes developers like Adam 'Atomic' Saltsman, Renegade Kid, TigerStyle, and many others. Twisted Pixel is bringing the highlight game for this first meetup, as this will be the first time its Xbox 360/Kinect title The Gunstringer has had a playable demo for the public since March.

Flat Black Films' Bob Sabiston, creator of the Rotoshop rotoscoping software (used in Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly) and the recently released Inchworm Animation DSiWare app, will also be at the event showing off his new title. Oh, and make sure to bring your 3DS for StreetPass exchanges, too!

You can RSVP for Juegos Rancheros: The Gunstringer edition and find more information on the meetup at Facebook.

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

[Our own Kris Graft talks to Fred Dieckmann, lead designer on upcoming RPG Darkspore, about the re-emergence of the action-RPG genre and how "this whole genre ... is getting a new life again."]

With Maxis' release of Darkspore this week, the studio previously known for simulation-style games is embarking on new territory.

The PC-exclusive title, which shipped Tuesday, blends elements from loot-driven action-RPGs like Diablo with a character editor born out of 2008's more simulation-focused Spore.

Darkspore lead designer Fred Dieckmann told us in a phone interview that he thinks the top-down action-RPG genre is seeing a resurgence in popularity that has only strengthened over the course of Darkspore's two years of development.

"I would say this whole genre, just from my opinion, is getting a new life again," he said. "It's finding a new audience. I've always been a big fan of it -- I've played Torchlight and Diablo, and am looking forward to the new ones coming out. But it's definitely become one of those things where people are kind of rediscovering it, and enjoying it."

Torchlight in particular has done very well as a launch title for developer Runic Games. The game sold over 600,000 units as of summer last year, and that was prior to a console version that arrived on Xbox 360 as a download this year.

And Blizzard Entertainment's Diablo III is expected to be a breakout hit when it launches, as pent-up demand for the game has been built up over several years since the last Diablo II expansion pack.

It's not just the top-down style of action RPGs that seem to be finding a new audience. Gearbox's Borderlands and From Software's Demon's Souls are recent examples of popular games whose influences can be traced back to 30-year-old dungeon-crawler Rogue.

"I don't know [why the genre is finding new audiences]," admitted Dieckmann, who has credits on The Sims and The Sims 2, among other titles. "Personally, I think it's just one of those things that just kind of comes in waves, and it's one of the things that has always been there. To me personally, I don't think it's ever really left. I always play these games."

Darkspore is the first game to come out of Maxis since co-founder and industry veteran Will Wright left the studio in 2009. The game also fits nicely into an established genre, unlike previous Maxis titles such as SimCity and The Sims, which established new genres in and of themselves.

But DarkSpore still aims to incorporate a unique Maxis flavor. While Maxis and parent Electronic Arts have been marketing Darkspore as an action RPG ever since the game's unveiling last summer, Dieckmann said the cooperative game will constantly evolve after release.

"I'd say it's actually more along the lines of an MMO," he said. "So we're going to have servers up and running, and we'll be actively getting feedback from players, adding new levels, new heroes to collect and that type of stuff. So although the team is 'shipping,' we're going to actively be working on the game after it ships."

Looking back at the project, Dieckmann said balancing the game so it didn't feel "out of whack" was one of the main challenges with Darkspore, along with maintaining a sci-fi feel, fighting against the urge to take too much from the genre's sword and sorcery, fantasy-inspired roots.

For now, Darkspore is a PC-exclusive game, taking advantage of mouse and keyboard controls and the ability to update and patch the game at will. But the studio has considered bringing the game to consoles, he said.

"[Bringing the game to consoles] has come up, but right now the team is really focused on making sure the PC version is done and solid before we even look at anything to do with a console, because we're going to have to take all of our learnings from this before we even tackle that," Dieckmann said.

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

South Korean developer and publisher Gamevil has released the latest edition of its popular mobile RPG, Zenonia 3: The Midgard Story, to Apple's App Store. The new adventure has players guiding "Chael through a fateful journey in search for his destiny and the truth about his mysterious father, Regret."

Zenonia 3 features four different melee and ranged character classes (each with 13 active skills, 9 passive skills, and unique combos), 227 maps, 136 quests, a new Fairy helper system meant to add "another layer of leveling strategy, and streamlined inventory and item management.

The new action RPG also adds an Execution Room Mode for both single-player or aysnchronous co-op play, brings back the online PvP arena mode, and offers various character customization options ("184 weapons, 120 helmets, 120 armors, 100 gauntlets, and 100 footwear").

You can buy Zenonia 3: The Midgard Story for your iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad for $4.99 now.

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

Kotaku discovered this killer Flickr group called Growing Up In Arcades: 1979-1989, in which, naturally, members are invited to add photographs of people hanging out at game centers and share their memories.

The group pool has some awesome images of old cabinets and pinball machines, and captures the atmosphere of arcades in their heyday, but it's also a great (often hilarious) look at the fashions of kids and teens decades ago.

My favorite shot actually isn't inside an arcade -- it's the one I've embedded after the break of the kids hanging outside Chuck E. Cheese as they celebrate one of the boy's tenth' birthday. You can see more photos here.

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

While PopCap's Unpleasant Horse seems interesting enough, I'm more excited to see Allied Star Police, the iOS game it created under the direction of 9-year-old Owain Weinert as part of his request to the Make-A-Wish Foundation, the non-profit dedicated to helping children with life-threatening medical conditions realize their dreams.

After he was diagnosed with pre-B Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia, Weinert told Make-A-Wish he wanted to create his own video game, and the group worked with PopCap to help make that happen. Weinert has been visiting the Seattle-headquartered developer every week to guide them in creating an iOS shooter.

PopCap held a pizza and cake launch party for Allied Star Police last night with Weinert, and it should be releasing the game to the App Store soon.

[Via KCPQ, @Capy_Nathan]

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

['The Interactive Palette' is a biweekly GameSetWatch-exclusive column by Gregory Weir that examines the tools and techniques of the digital games trade with a focus on games as art, using a single game as an example. This time - a look at incidental character choices in "Balloon Diaspora."]

Sid Meier, designer of Civilization, described games as "a series of interesting choices." Janet Murray, new media researcher, defines player agency as "the satisfying power to take meaningful action and see the results of our decisions." Emily Short, IF author, refines this further by claiming true agency requires the player to care about and be able to guess at the consequences of his actions.

In tabletop roleplaying games, players often construct elaborate backstories and personalities for their characters. In the best campaigns, these character details affect future stories and events. But in less integrated games, the choices made at character creation feel important to the player even if they don’t change anything about the rest of the game.

There is a conflict in the heart of any video game design between agency and authored story. The simplest game narrative is one which is linear: once which does not change in response to player action. However, this sort of narrative fails to take advantage of the most special aspect of games: their interactivity. On the other hand, accounting for every possible way a player could affect a story requires either an impossibly detailed simulation or a creative mind serving as Game Master in the style of a tabletop RPG.

How, then, can we resolve the conflict between the player’s desire to express himself and affect the game world in a meaningful way and the practical restrictions on the scope and complexity of the game’s story? How do we provide interesting choices that don’t require extraordinary design feats?

"Balloon Diaspora," a short game by Cardboard Computer, takes a clever approach. It presents the player with questions that carry emotional weight and visible consequences that paradoxically have little to no effect on the events of the game. This is emotional agency, not narrative agency, and it provides a startlingly effective way of making the player feel empowered while not requiring a complex story design.

Across the Gusty Sea

In "Balloon Diaspora," the player inhabits a visitor to a dark land where the residents travel by way of balloon. The player character’s own balloon has crashed, and to repair it she must collect six patches of cloth. The non-player characters in the game are all exiles from a place called the Balloon Archipelago, which is suffering some vague upheaval that prevents them from returning.

Character interaction occurs through standard dialog trees, where the player selects options from a menu. Unlike many games, where the PC is always asking questions and the NPCs are always responding, the characters in "Diaspora" often ask the PC questions, sometimes of a very personal nature.

In the game’s first conversation, the PC’s new companion Silas asks a series of questions to learn more about the PC. Where do you come from: The High Plateau, Across the Gusty Sea, or Neither? What’s your family like? What should I call you? In a computer RPG like Morrowind, these questions would determine character statistics or starting situations. Here, however, they just result in comments on how an only child is like a hunting owl. The game does remember your responses, so that later a character will comment that you smell like the Gusty Sea, but the responses only provide incidental flavor. They have no effect on the large-scale narrative: collecting six patches to repair a balloon.

Later conversations follow the same pattern. The PC is asked interesting questions with little significance: "Have you ever been engaged in serious scholarship?" The player can only choose to answer in the negative, but can pick what she prefers to scholarship: "the warmth of conversation" or "the silence of the stars."

These questions as described seem incidental, even trivial, but in the game they gain greater weight. This is a game about conversation; conversation is the only way of affecting the world, and the only thing the PC does other than walking from place to place. Taken on its own, one of these questions would be an unremarkable distraction. However, when they are asked more than once in every conversation for the entire game, they gain an importance. They are how the player expresses himself, and they are how the player discovers the character he is playing.

The Warmth of Conversation

Many games encourage the player to create and roleplay a character. In order to tether the character to the game world and grant it significance, designers often attach mechanical significance to the choices made. Maybe being born as a nobleperson means the PC starts the game with more money, or ethical choices affect a "morality meter" that governs available powers or NPC dispositions.

Too often, though, these links between story and mechanics feel artificial or arbitrary. Every important choice is telegraphed and has a "good" and "bad" option, and every other choice has no ethical weight despite its consequences. However, making the connections deeper or more important often adds too much complexity. One could imagine a game with a complex ethical system, where every choice made affected a selfishness meter, an idealism meter, a friendliness meter, and so on. Such a system would collapse under its own weight, becoming impractical for the developer to construct and difficult for the player to understand.

"Balloon Diaspora" avoids this artificiality by removing consequences from the choices. The game recognizes reacts to the player’s responses, but they do not have any real effect beyond that. Is this true agency? Perhaps not. But it gives the player a feeling of interaction and expression. The player is making a series of interesting choices about her character. This is meaning and significance without consequence or result. By the end of "Diaspora," the player has a good understanding of the character she played and how she felt about the game’s setting.

Here, then, is a possible solution to the dilemma of characterization through choice. A game that responds to the player’s character choices grants significance to those choices, even if it never gives them consequences. Assassin’s Creed has NPCs protest when the player starts scaling walls; if it also had them comment on interesting character choices, it would lend the player’s actions more emotional importance.

These incidental character choices have two requirements in order to be effective. They must be interesting, and they must be frequent. If the choices are dull, the player will get tired of them very quickly. Asking the player if he likes an NPC’s dress is boring; asking why the PC dresses the way he does is interesting. If the choices are too rare, they will come across as odd non sequiturs. The player should expect these choices to occur with regularity. Of course, choices that are too frequent or choices that repeat will tax the player’s patience; a balance must be struck.

The choices do not need to be conversation options. The game’s characters can respond to the weapon a soldier uses in a situation or the path the player takes through an area. The game can give the player a choice of downtime activities between missions that need not have mechanical results. Because these options do not need significant consequences, the cost of including them is limited to the resources and code needed to implement the immediate response.

Using the technique presented in "Balloon Diaspora," developers can give the player’s choices about her character the same emotional significance as the choice of backstory has in tabletop RPGs without requiring many development resources. Presenting the player with frequent, interesting choices that result in responses — but not necessarily consequences — can make the player’s decisions feel important and make her identify more closely with her character.

[Gregory Weir is a writer, game developer (The Majesty Of Colors), and software programmer. He maintains Ludus Novus, a podcast and accompanying blog dedicated to the art of interaction. He can be reached at Gregory.Weir@gmail.com.]

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

A sequel to Katakis/Denaris, the R-Type-esque shoot'em up released to Commodore 64 and Amiga (by Manfred Trenz and Factor 5 respectively), appeared at last weekend's Revision 2011 demoparty in Germany with a promotional video.

VIS-Games is developing the follow-up for PC using Unity3D and LightWave3D, according to Emme73, who has posted several renders from the game. As the trailer shows, Katakis II will feature four weapon systems and more than 10 levels when it releases in late summer.

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

Supermono Studios, developer of swanky RPG/to-do-list hybrid Epic Win, has unveiled a new iOS game called Drive Forever that's billed as a sort of "massively multiplayer OutRun-meets-SimCity, but set in the future."

Built on the studio's new 3D engine, Drive Forever allows player to create their own city and drop a winding road in between its skyscrapers. The city is stitched together with other user-created cities that players can then race through.

Supermono explains:

"The idea is that you never need to drive the same bit of road twice. You just press ‘drive’, and the game picks a section of track that somebody’s made, and downloads it. As you get to the end of that bit of track…it downloads a NEW bit of track, that somebody else has built, and seamlessly adds it to the end. And it keeps going! Forever! Or until you run out of time…

Imagine it as sort of like a YouTube playlist of the best tracks people have made, all laid out end-to-end. You can rate tracks, and save your favourites to play later. And the ratings from everyone around the world are used to automatically pick the best tracks for your never-ending driving pleasure."

Supermono says it's deep in production with Drive Forever, and expects to finish the game in the next two to three months. You can follow its development on the developer's blog.

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

[In his latest interview for GameSetWatch, Jeriaska catches up with chiptune band Anamanaguchi to discuss their contributions to the recent Scott Pilgrim game from Ubisoft, detailing the noted New York band's approach to the video game version of the movie and comic book series.]

Bitpop band Anamanaguchi emerged from the New York chiptune scene to widespread recognition around the time of the 2006 Blip Festival concert. Their live performances have since become a fixture of the bi-coastal Penny Arcade Expo events.

Shortly after Kotaku named the chiptune band most likely to break through, they were approached by Ubisoft to compose the music score for Scott Pilgrim vs the World: The Game. A 24-track soundtrack album resulted, the single largest Anamanaguchi release by volume to date.

The diverse influences of the soundtrack run from Miles Davis and Angelo Badalamenti to NES composer Kôzô Nakamura. Band members Peter Berkman and Luke Silas describe it as a mixture of turmoil and fun that remains on the positive side. The equation equally describes what fans associate both with the band's music and the tone of the Scott Pilgrim graphic novels.

In this interview we hear how the two musicians viewed Scott Pilgrim: The Game as making sense as an Anamanaguchi project. They also describe how the collaboration with band members James DeVito and Ary Warnaar complemented the game's distinctive sprite art by Paul Robertson.

You were fifteen when Anamanaguchi first started. How did the band finally take shape as the core group was solidified?

Peter Berkman: James was always a constant, because we went to high school together. I’m also still friends with everyone who has come in and out. I went to high school with George Michael Brower. He played guitar, then he went to UCLA while I went to NYU. Then there was a short lived lineup, and after that Ari and Luke joined the band.

Peter Berkman on stage at PAX East

Luke Silas: I was living in Los Angeles at that time and had seen a few shows. I'd downloaded a lot of the 8bitpeoples discography, but at that point I wasn't as immersed. Coming to New York and meeting everybody, I was exposed to a lot of new artists.

Where were you learning how to create NES music?

PB: My early days of chiptunes were on 2A03.org. I met my current roommate Dave Mauro, who's done a lot of our album art, through there. It was where I first started talking with Nullsleep and Peter Swimm.

How did the game soundtrack come about?

PB: We were approached by Ubisoft. I remember getting a cryptic email a couple months before finding out what it was, saying, "Hey, how would you like to work on a game for Ubisoft?" It sounded interesting but we really needed more information.

Later we were at this house party in Lexington, Kentucky and there was this copy of Scott Pilgrim on a coffee table. I saw it that night right while going to sleep and thought it looked cool. The next morning we got the phone call from that same dude saying, "By the way, the game is Scott Pilgrim."

With us, that made sense. It was part of the same world of videogame-meets-rock, set in a suburban setting. That John Hughes/ Kevin Smith backdrop is what we're all about.

LS: There was the youthfulness and enthusiasm there.

Was this an opportunity for you to begin formally composing music for Anagamaguchi?

LS: I'd been doing composition for a while, but that was where it started as a writer for the band. For a few years prior to Scott Pilgrim I'd been using LSDJ, but this made me learn the program a little bit better in order to expand the sound palette. For me, tracking has been a lot of fun.

Luke Silas crowd surfing at PAX

How would you decide which member of the band would write which track?

PB: We split them up pretty arbitrarily. I'm the one writing with an NES. Luke did the shop theme "Cheap Shop," which he knocked out of the park.

LS: The specific idea for the shopping muzak was "super light, faux-bossa nova." It was really fun to write and the middle part is a direct rip-off of jazz standard "Autumn Leaves." For everything that we wrote, there was in-depth discussion. Everyone had input.

Were you sending drafts to Ubisoft for feedback?

PB: 95% of the time they'd say, "That's awesome." There were times when they felt a track was too lighthearted, but then they'd wind up using it anyway. For instance there was the song I wrote for Roxie Richter. She's one of the toughest bosses in the game and I wrote a super uptempo Jpop DDR track.

LS: "Come On Down" plays in the elevator down to the last level in the game, which is classic beat-em-up fair. For Matthew Patell's theme they wanted something "Bollywood," but it's not very Indian. The lead sound is about as close as it comes to being Bollywood. Maybe ethnic-blipcore? To be fair, I don't think the song they gave Matthew Patell in the movie was super Bollywood.

The mini-boss theme "Subboss Theme" is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, NES composers trying to make metal. The only difference is we actually had guitars to make metal, though they're a little low in the mix and doubling what the Game Boy is doing on this song.

PB: The triangle waves on "TechnoMan," the last level theme, are a direct homage to Mega Man. They're also kind of a self-homage to "Airbrushed." For "Just Like In the Movies" I wanted to write something totally chilled out. Originally they wanted a beach level, which was great because I love the Beach Boys. Then they were like, "Just kidding, second level's a movie set." I was down with that. It still works.


James DeVito performing at PAX East last year

Previously Anamanaguchi had released EPs like "Power Supply" and "Dawn Metropolis," but not a full LP. Was having strict deadlines on this music something that contributed to the creation of a full-length album in a short span of time?

LS: Having these small deadlines to turn in songs did put us in a creative zone. There was one EP in 2006 and another in 2009 and we still haven't done a record.

PB: We pretty much did all the work in a month and a half and we're extremely happy with it.

The first track from the game that anyone heard was the Scott Pilgrim anthem performed at PAX. What were you looking to communicate in announcing the soundtrack in a live setting?

PB: I was super emotional during the making of this game so this song has that quality. The first assignment had been: "Give us an anthem for Scott Pilgrim." I looked through old works in progress, not having to work from scratch because everything I had done was in that vein.

I wanted to write something that reminded me of John Hughes, where there's turmoil but there's fun. Paul Robertson cooked up some sprites for that show. At that point it was a comforting moment to say to a room full of videogame fans that it was happening. It signaled that it would exist someday, beating out Duke Nukem Forever.

At that performance you were playing with VJs outpt+paris. It's a collaboration full of gaming crossovers, as Mary Ann Benedetto has taught game development courses in Brooklyn. How did that creative relationship with the audio-visual artists first develop?

PB: I remember seeing Paris's visuals in 2005 when Random from Sweden came to New York for Pulsewave. He did this set with "Spontaneous Devotion" that just blew my mind. I think there's footage of it in Reformat the Planet. When we made the album Dawn Metropolis, I wanted them to do the live visuals. From that point on it was a great relationship. We went on tour together in 2010 with the 8 Bit Alliance.

LS: They play with all the amazing electronic artists in New York. Right now they're performing with Benny Benassi.

Ary Warnaar on stage at PAX East 2010

Paul Robertson designed the sprite art for Scott Pilgrim: The Game and has also contributed art to your album releases. What are your thoughts on the presentation of his 8-bit visual style?

LS: He is maybe unparalleled. He did artwork for the single "Airbrushed" that we released last summer.

PB: He's the best pixel animator I've ever seen. Paul Robertson, Bryan Lee O'Malley and Anamanaguchi: the whole game has been a great artistic collaboration. We were even in touch with Edgar Wright, just for general brodom. If Paul Robertson called us and said he's working on a videogame where you control a space monster, I'd be like, "I'm going to make music for that game and you won't stop me." I love having our music attached to awesome stuff, wherever it makes sense.

Who was responsible for naming the track titles found on the soundtrack album?

PB: They named them for us. I didn't have any qualms with the titles, though "Rox 300" I might have named "Rox 3,000,000%." "Skate or Live" happens to be the name of a song by Best Fwends, a band we like. I wanted to have a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles style lead, because that has some of the best videogame music there is. "Another Winter" was called "Toronto Streets," where you're infatuated and chasing after Ramona. It's the start of an adventure.

What kind of assets did you have to work off of while writing the music for the game, and who did you ask to do the mastering on the album?

LS: Some levels had playthrough videos, while others only had a color scheme to work off of. The goofy thing was they sent us a bunch of NES reference tracks, the problem being that those were eight bars of music, while they were asking for a track that was two minutes long.

PB: Nathan Ritholz, a close personal friend, did all of the engineering. He knows what we want and he knows how to do it. We were five friends, all in the studio until 6:00 am every night. It was all recorded in Brooklyn at Lionshare headquarters.

Are you playing any of the compositions from the game while on this tour?

PB: The only problem with that is that they're loops. I did write a full version of the credits theme that we played at PAX in 2010. I wanted something epically romantic for the track, so Queen's "We Are the Champions" and Twin Peaks were huge references.

Twin Peaks is not a reference that I would have come up with on my own as an analog to Scott Pilgrim, but there are certain parallels, especially in the surrealism that's encroaching on those very mundane environments.

PB: The romanticism of Julee Cruise's music by David Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti, where the chords shift in a surprising way, is there on the album.

Anamanaguchi is currently on tour through the end of the month and you've just finished a couple shows in the Los Angeles area. Do you find it adds to your creative process to be appearing with other artists while on tour?

LS: When performing with other bands, you're literally influenced by everything you see. Either you see something that's cool that makes you wonder what would happen if you tried something like that, or conversely you hear something and you don't ever want to sound like that. There's both sides that we're experiencing on tour.

Having often performed together with Nullsleep, do you see that contrast of optimistically bright versus cataclysmic and dark styles as broadening the scope of chip music?

PB: Yeah, it's like good and evil. We want to do a tour where he'd be the Axis and we'd be the Allies.

LS: That would be four band bills. The allies would be Anamanaguchi, George & Jonathan, USK and Starscream. Axis is Nullsleep, Rainbow Dragon Eyes, Huoratron and Stagediver. They'd start east coast, we'd start west coast and do battle in the earth's core.

This article is available in Italian on Gamesource.it. For more information on Anamanaguchi, visit the band's official website. Images courtesy of Ubisoft. Photos by Jeriaska.

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

Fans of video game zines -- wonderful alternatives to bigger, ad-filled magazines that might not cover the more obscure games and topics you're interested in -- have a new publication to pick up: Michael Brown's Cul/tured Magazine, which debuted its first issue over the weekend.

Cul/tured seeks to "educate a wider variety of people about video game development and the people behind some of today’s most interesting and thought provoking games, as well as those pioneering new concepts in the industry."

The first issue includes features examining three studios: Capybara Games (Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes, Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP), Double Fine Productions (Brütal Legend, Costume Quest), and Telltale Games (Sam & Max, Back to the Future: The Game).

Brown says readers will learn "where the studios came from, their actual development process, some of the games they working on and have made before, as well as what they are doing that is unique." He profiled critical creative figures at each of the three video game developers, too.

Cul/tured's inaugural, 58-page issue also looks at the annual Game Deveoper's Conference, its history, and its impact on the game industry. You can buy the first printed issue for a discounted price of $10.35 here. Brown intends to release a free digital version on May 1st.

[Via @expdotzine]

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

As promised earlier in the year, Japanese developer Q Handmade Games (Sense of Wonder Night 2009 finalist ecolpit), has released a two-stage demo for Collte's Spoon Devil, the unique arena shooter/bullet hell game coming to Windows PC.

The gist of Collte's Spoon Devil is that you're controlling two characters simultaneously: you maneuver the slower/more vulnerable witch Collte with the keyboard, while you control her Spoon Devil creature with the mouse.

Both of the characters have their own health meters and weapons, but you will lose the round if Collte takes too much damage. The pair targets incoming enemies automatically, and regain health when next to each other.

The Collte's Spoon Devil demo that's available only has a Japanese language option so far, but our sister site IndieGames.com says it's "rather easy to learn even if you can't read a single word of Japanese". You can download it for free here.

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

GSW's sister publication Game Developer magazine, the leading game industry publication, has released the results of its 10th annual Game Developer Salary Survey, this year contrasting increasing salaries for mainstream game developers with continued strides for independent creators.

The Game Developer Salary Survey, available in full in the April 2011 issue of the magazine, is the only major publicly-released analysis of salaries in the worldwide video game industry.

It provides an exhaustive breakdown of salaries and benefits at major game studios by discipline, job function, experience level, region and gender. For the last two years, the survey has also charted the growing worldwide independent game industry.

By the numbers, the traditional American mainstream video game industry – including salaried participants in the AAA console and emerging social/online game areas - saw a 7 percent salary increase in 2010 over 2009, reaching $80,817. (The survey does not track total numbers of employed game creators.)

Elsewhere, independent contractors earned an average of $55,493, while self-identified ‘independent game team’ members reported an overall $26,780 average salary in the U.S., an increase of over $6,000 from the previous year’s survey - showing swift indie growth.

Highlights of specific findings per category for the game developer-specific survey in the United States are as follows:

Programming: Programmers continue to be one of the highest paid talent in both the console and online game industry, after production and those in the business and legal sectors, with an average annual salary of $85,733. Salaries for programmers increased some $5,000 over 2009 numbers, except in entry-level positions, which saw a $1,000 decrease in salary.

Art & Animation: Similar to last year’s figure of $71,071, artist and animator salaries hold steady at $71,354, with the slight bump in compensation coming from pay raises for art directors.

Game Design: The design discipline also saw a slight boost from 2009 numbers, with the average salary being reported at $70,223. Designers saw little movement in 2010, as the discipline has been one of the most stable where compensation is concerned.

Production: After seeing an overall salary dip in 2009, producers rebounded with an increase of over $13,000, for a total average salary of $88,544. This could be attributed to the depth of experience that survey respondents reported (over half had more than six years of experience), or the shift toward social games, which pay producers closer to Web 2.0 project management salaries. Female employees continue to be best-represented in this field, with 17 percent of the respondents being women.

Audio: Sound designers and composers earned an average of $68,088, with 15 percent of respondents reporting that they earned less than in 2009. The category typically has a low response rate, due to the fact that there are few full-time audio professionals employed in games, but individuals in the field are those most likely to receive royalties for their work.

Quality Assurance: Home to many entry-level game industry positions, quality assurance remains the lowest paid discipline, with an average salary of $49,009 being reported. Similar to industry employees working in production, the 2010 salary bump over 2009’s $37,905 figure could be a result of those individuals working in web game-centric industries and with more complex testing skills.

Business: Business and legal employees remain the highest paid in the industry across all levels of experience, with the average salary being reported at $106,452. Along with also having the second-highest numbers for female representation, those working in business and legal are more likely to receive additional compensation, with 85 percent of respondents reporting that they had.

In the “self-reportage” area of the survey, where developers can voice their thoughts about working in games, we saw that in spite of the vastly greater average income, salaried game developers had a sometimes bleaker outlook on the industry.

Anecdotally, these respondents stated that working in the traditional structure is “frustrating,” lamenting that larger studios are “trimming talent” and crunching harder. Meanwhile, independent developers, though they made far less money, felt the industry was more fertile and innovative than ever, praising the arrival of new platforms and revenue streams, even going so far as to call 2010 “the year of the indie."

More information on the survey is available in the April 2011 issue of Game Developer magazine, and worldwide paper-based subscriptions to Game Developer magazine are currently available at the official magazine website.

In addition, the Game Developer Digital version of the issue is also now available, with the site offering six months' and a year's subscriptions, alongside access to back issues and PDF downloads of all issues, all for a reduced price. There is now also an opportunity to buy the digital version of April 2011's magazine as a single issue.

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

French artist Oskunk (a.k.a. Ozcan) continues to amaze with his custom-painted video game works, following up his stylish Bubble Bobble Master System II and vibrant Samba de Amigo Dreamcast with this cracking Streets of Rage paintjob for a Genesis/Mega Drive and controller.

He's taken advantage of all the recent attention on his pieces by putting out a lot of other neat stuff, like the dripping Bomberman Munny and mushroom-eating Super Mario Game Boy pieces I've included after the break. You can see more of Oskunk's painted video game consoles and figures on his blog.

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

["If our medium is art, how could there be a line?" Gearbox Software CEO Randy Pitchford tells our own Leigh Alexander, addressing the role -- and potential responsibility -- of gaming content within a broad entertainment landscape.]

The video game space just gets bigger and bigger, its relevance finally impossible to ignore in the wider entertainment media landscape. While you'd think this means the days of seeing mature-themed video games as fodder for evening news warning bulletins are over, sometimes it seems the lens of scrutiny is on game content more intently than ever.

And strangely, this cultural heyday for games as a sophisticated and socially-acceptable medium comes with some odd signifiers: The joyful recidivist gore of Bulletstorm is one example, but there's none so blatant as the upcoming launch of Duke Nukem Forever, almost a decade and a half awaited.

Duke's world of big explosions, 90s action cliches and bikini babes seems almost all the more anachronistic in context.

It raises a striking question: Now that "we" have the spotlight, what, if any, responsibility do we have for our content and how it's perceived?

It's one thing for developers to say they're making games that act as self-expression or that represent the kinds of games they themselves would most enjoy playing; it's one thing for gamers to say that games are just for fun. But what signifies the sophistication of a medium: Its content diversity, or the highest common denominator?

"We are in an interesting time right now," Randy Pitchford, CEO of DNF developer Gearbox Software, told us when we asked him that very question. "Video games have created the largest generation gap in the history of all entertainment on earth."

He likens it to the advent of rock and roll in the 1950s and '60s: "The older generation thought rock and roll music would bring about the downfall of a generation. They banned 'Louie Louie' because they thought it would corrupt the youth -- and they couldn't even understand the lyrics."

And yet even that particular musical generation gap had something of an advantage: "At least they understood what music was, and they might not approve of that [rock and roll] concept, but at least they thought that music had value," reflects Pitchford. "We have evolved a bit since then, but it's interesting because [video games] do have a much larger generation gap."

It's true that most of what Pitchford calls "the older generation" -- which includes modern policy-makers -- were born and grew up in an era that preceded video games altogether. But today's young people have been brought up in a world where video games have always been an option among a wide range of entertainment choices.

"I read a study that suggested that 95 percent of school-age children prefer video games over all other forms of entertainment -- books, music television, film, everything," says Pitchford. "And now if you take the same survey of people around the age of 90, you'll probably find the inverse -- and they're afraid of them."

"So we have this ginormous generation gap, but it'll go away, because we will get older -- and as gamers get older, they keep playing games. Soon we'll have a president who has a Gamertag. And every news anchor will have a Gamertag," he adds.

But in this wide new world, are there limits to the content game developers are producing, as realism and extremism marches on? "I don't actually think that the evidence supports that video games are becoming more violent or irreverent," Pitchford disputes. The humor and content of DNF "is actually the same stuff that was in Duke Nukem 3D," he adds.

"Is there a line [to cross]? If our medium is art, how could there be a line?" he suggests. "How could we allow there to be a line, and who gets to decide what the line is? That's a very slippery slope -- there should not be a line."

Unrestricted creativity and expression are not necessarily at odds with the concerns some still may have about content, however: "We do care about developing minds," Pitchford emphasizes. "We do care about the difference between children and adults, and all of us should."

The fact that the industry's ratings system is more effective, in Pitchford's view (supported by some research) than that of other entertainment media helps, he says: "It's much easier for someone under the age of 17 to sneak into an R-rated movie than it is for them to get into an [M-rated] video game," he says.

"And once we're in the realm of adult stuff, really, we're going to be a society that draws a line?"

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

TaleWorlds announced that Mount&Blade: Fire & Sword, the new expansion for its medieval and open-world action RPG, has gone gold and will release on May 3 for Windows. It also put out this "Siege" trailer to show off the firearms and grenades that will be added to the game.

Unlike previous Mount&Blade releases, With Fire and Sword is inspired by real-world events, particularly the Khmelnytsky Uprising during  the 17th century. The expansion is based on Polish author Henryk Sienkiewicz's famous historical fictional novel of the same name.

Along with the new firearms, With Fire and Sword will feature new battle formations, a new Captain game mode (up to 16 players command a squad of soldiers) multiple endings, enhanced siege mechanics, seven new multiplayer maps,, and more.

The expansion will launch on digital distribution platforms for $14.99, and will see a retail release shortly afterward. It has already been made available in select European markets (Russia, Czech Republic) for some time now.

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

Capsized, the Metroid/Exile-inspired action platformer from Saskatoon-based indie Alientrap Games (Nexuiz), will release for Windows this Friday on Steam and on the developer's website for $9.99, and will be accompanied by a free demo then, too.

If you don't remember Capsized from when we first featured it in late 2009, it's a visually dinstinct game featuring the familiar plot of a crash-landed space traveler stuck on a mysterious planet, forced to explore the environment and fight its hostile creatures:

"Artist Jesse McGibney and programmer Lee Vermeulen create an immersive alien world teeming with bizarre life-forms and strange landscapes presented in a unique hand-drawn art style.

Combining control elements of first person shooters and innovative physics based combat, Capsized emphasizes action without giving up the smart problem solving of classic platform games."

[Via RPS]

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

[Dance Central and Just Dance have been standout successes of the last year, but is this phenomenal spurt of activity heading for disaster? Sister site Gamasutra's business editor Colin Campbell speaks to Ubisoft’s Tony Key and the analysts...]

The dance genre is wildly popular. Ubisoft says it's sold 12 million Just Dance games, as well as three million Michael Jackson games on Wii. Harmonix's Dance Central was the top-selling Kinect game in November 2010. Majesco's Zumba Fitness has shifted more than a million units.

These games have cultural impact way beyond the game industry's borders. Michael Jackson: The Experience has almost half a million Facebook fans, while Just Dance's various Facebook pages boast over a million fans.

As Matt Matthews pointed out recently, approximately one in every 11 units of software sold on the Wii since the end of September 2010 has been a copy of Just Dance 2.

But is this sustainable? Haven't we seen before how the music sector can promise unending revenues, but deliver disappointment and even disaster? It seems highly likely that we will see a large number of dance games entering the market in the next 12 months and the inevitable results of saturation.

Ubisoft's Tony Key believes the market's got legs. "The market is really unsaturated. It's big, and people want to do this. Before Just Dance came along you had no good excuse to actually be dancing in your living room with a group of people. We've created a reason for a home dance experience."

Michael Pachter, analyst at Wedbush Securities isn't so sure. "I think dance is even more of a bubble than music. There is simply too much content out there and barriers to entry are way too low. When Majesco can have a modest hit with Zumba Fitness - average Metacritic 43 on Xbox 360 - it shows that anyone can succeed if the underlying music or IP is sufficiently compelling. I think that Ubisoft's success with Just Dance will attract even more competitors, and think that the genre will fast become saturated."

Jesse Divnich, analyst at EEDAR adds, "The rise and eventual fall of the dance category will be no different than what occurred in music games. What is great about interactive entertainment is the constant evolution and experimentation with technology that allows consumers to experience video games in a manner not possible in the past. This is why we've seen dance, music and fitness grow into respectable categories; however, those that consume it rarely show long-term frequency consumption. In the simplest terms, they are fads. People like to dance, but not every day. They want to be fit, but quickly stop any diet regimen when a target goal has been met."

"In short, yes, the dance category is a bubble, much like most things in entertainment."

Quality in this genre has been variable. Just Dance was a mega-hit, but it failed to impress the critics - Eurogamer called it "a stupid, shallow, garish thing." Reviewers gave a good deal more respect to the spruced up sequel, especially in the light of the franchise's success, and it has gone on to sell 4.4 million units in the U.S. alone (source: NPD)

In turn, the Michael Jackson game has reviewed so-so on both Wii (56 percent) and Kinect (65 percent) according to Metacritic. Zumba Fitness didn't attract many reviewers, but among those that bothered, none gave it a positive review. Harmonix' Dance Central has been both a critical and a commercial success with sales of 1.5 million and a Metacritic rating of 82 percent.

This is a sector apparently impervious to the views of professional game critics, but the market rarely forgives a lack of excellence for too long. Not only that, but we have clear precedents in the music sector, where over-saturation, samey experiences and over-reliance on the novelty of the music artists themselves have taken their toll.

Tony Key believes comparisons with the guitar-and-drum sector are off the mark. "We're not the first dance game but what we did was make it cool and fun for the whole family to enjoy together. When was the last time you went to a party where when people started dancing it didn't get better?"

He has a point. The genius of Guitar Hero and Rock Band is in how the designers created new experiences around mastering control and timing. But it ceased to be fun because, ultimately, the games were all about pressing buttons and did not deliver sufficient variety or novelty. The dance games are purely about dancing, a pastime that we've been enjoying since time immemorial, and which offers unending variety.

Obviously, dancing can be an awkward social convention. These games enable stuffy old farts to trip the light fantastic. I know because I'm one of them. Only Dance Central, or possibly a bottle of Don Eduardo, is ever going to get me on my feet for a Lady Gaga number. These games also give those wonderful people with the natural exuberance to dance a unique take on a beloved pastime.

But we are talking here about people who don't spend much of their time playing console video games and take little interest in games that don't cater for their individual cultural leanings.

So, it feels like a genre that will be unforgiving to endless retail iterations. Ubisoft waited less than a year to get its Just Dance sequel to market and now Michael Jackson appears just a few months later. This rush to market acknowledges that the songs people dance to change rapidly, but I find it difficult to believe that the novelty of Just Dance is sustainable through a never-ending parade of new dance hits.

If and when a cornerstone game arrives that is absolutely without technical flaws, it's difficult to see why anyone would keep coming back for more.

Key adds that "Michael Jackson is just the first 'The Experience' brand" and there's no reason why "another artist can't make a great dance game under the Experience brand". He says there's nothing on the books right now, presumably because whatever Jackson sells will be a high ceiling for other dance related brands that follow. (Fred and Ginger, anyone?)

Maybe we're still on the upward curve with dancing games, and the numbers being posted by the likes of Ubisoft are certain to attract interest from competitors. E3 will see new dance brands emerging from the shadows, followed, inevitably, by deflation in the sector.

[As well as being business editor for Gamasutra, Colin Campbell works for a marketing agency. You can follow him on Twitter at @brandnarrative.]

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

An Italian group of Golden Axe devotees have released a fanmade prequel to the sidescrolling Sega series called Golden Axe Myth, building it with the OpenBOR engine originally created for Streets of Rage mods.

Golden Axe Myth features new artwork, music, hand-drawn graphics, stages, and more. Here's a synopsis of the beat'em up, which has been in development since 2007:

"The Empire of the Joined Lands has been the real symbol of wealth and power since a long time ago. But now, evil creeped into heart of the Empire, and the Golden Axe was stolen. The council of Defensors was tricked and misguided.

The four best warriors of the whole realm are already on pursuit of the enemy. The council gave them the power of Elemental Magick, since great are the dangers they'll have to face. They know no fear or doubt. In their hearts and minds there's only the sacred quest: to get back the Golden Axe."

[Via Orobi]

Posted by Eric Caoili at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

If you played through Persona 4 (which you should have, as it's fantastic) and thought the silver-haired protagonist's eyeglasses looked slick, or if you're just looking for the final accessory to complete your cosplay outfit, you will soon be able to buy an identical pair from import shops.

Cospa -- presumably with the help of Teddie -- is producing a run of eyeglasses that feature the same design as the pair worn by Persona 4's hero, and the SMPTE color bars on the side. According to product listings, they're meant to help you "dispel the fog of the world of television."

The glasses are designed so you can put in your own prescription lenses, if you'd like to use these for everyday use. You probably will want to, as it's hard to justify spending $85 when these ship in late August. Oh, and you'll likely also want to buy the Persona 4 Eyeglass Case Set!

[Via @colettebennett]

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

As you might have seen on our sister site Gamasutra, Sony revealed two tablet computers last night, the S1 and dual screen S2, that boast support for the company's new PlayStation Suite platform and the ability to run PlayStation 1 games. I've embedded a supplementary trailer Sony also posted for the devices above.

The 9.4-inch screen S1 is designed for "rich media entertainment", features front- and rear-facing cameras, and has a curve in the back simulating the feel of holding a magazine. The S2 has two 5.5-inch screens and a DS-like clamshell design -- when playing PS1 games, the controller interface appears on the bottom.

Both tablets use Nvidia's Tegra 2 processor and will run a modified version of Google's Android 3.0 operating system, which is built from the ground-up for tablet devices. The S1 and S2 are slated to release this fall.

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

[Skullgirls project lead Mike Zaimont tells our own Christian Nutt what sets the strikingly appealing and playable downloadable 2D fighting game apart from the Japanese titles that inspired it.]

The 2D fighting game genre has long been dominated by the Japanese. Even in the genre's arcade heyday, the only serious Western contender was Mortal Kombat -- otherwise, all of the notable franchises, including the industry-leading Street Fighter franchise, came from the East.

The situation has not much changed these days. Mortal Kombat is still huge, Street Fighter has revived in spectacular form, and Marvel vs. Capcom is back and very popular. But a new upstart developer, California-based Reverge Labs, has emerged -- and is prepping its first title, Skullgirls -- a 2D fighting game. It will be released as a downloadable console title this summer.

A cartoony game clearly influenced by cult titles like Darkstalkers or Guilty Gear, it seems at first to play very similarly to Capcom's stable of fighting games, with the familiar six button layout the company pioneered and popularized.

However, dig deeper, and you'll find there are some profound differences between Skullgirls and the competition. In this interview, project lead Mike Zaimont explains to us exactly what sets the game apart from the titles that inspired it:

You guys are doing something that hasn't been done for a long time, which is create a new 2D fighting game franchise. This is especially rare for a Western developer. Where did the inspiration come from to actually pursue making a new 2D fighting game franchise?

Mike Zaimont: Well, from the gameplay mechanic side, I wanted to make a game that was as easily approachable as possible but still kept all the creativity of the older 2D fighters where you can pretty much do whatever you want and it all works. We've actually done a lot to make it easier for beginners. The game uses the standard six button layout, and some characters have common moves like fireball, Hurricane Kick, and Dragon Punch.

You have experience in fighting games. You have worked with Capcom, right?

MZ: Yeah, I advised them on the console port of Marvel Vs. Capcom 2. And I helped do balance testing and stuff for BlazBlue: Continuum Shift and Calamity Trigger.

There have been very few 2D fighters that are well balanced, outside of a handful of exceptions.

MZ: Yeah, we're actually doing a fair amount to make sure that the balance will end up the way we intended it. Because a lot of the things that usually make games unbalanced are either abusable features that were unintended, or abusable features that were intended, but turn out to be worse than the developer anticipated.

How are you going to test the game, considering that you don't have the same capacity as other developers? You can't really beta it, and you can't do something like a location test.

MZ: I've brought it to pretty much every tournament in SoCal, and we have people come over every Wednesday to play it. The group of people that used to come over and practice for BlazBlue and Street Fighter IV tournaments now comes over and plays this. So we constantly have people that know what they're doing with fighting games testing it.

You talk about fairly advanced mechanics, but you also are talking about accessibility. How do you balance the game to accommodate advanced mechanics and maintain accessibility?

MZ: So one of the easier accessibility examples I can give you is with our character Cerebella. She's a grappler; grapplers normally have 360 input [Ed note: meaning a full circle with the joystick or D-pad] commands and whatever. So we have a throw input already, so if she had a command throw, instead of being a 360 motion and throw, it's just fireball and throw. Instead of a 360 motion and punch, it's just a fireball and throw.

Basically our approach is make it easier to do the things that you want with a character, rather than making into a single button for a special move or whatever. And that also changes game balance.

Yeah, Capcom tried stuff like that with an "Easy Operation" control scheme in some of their games, but it ends up with people just spamming moves.

MZ: Yeah. In this game, if you want to learn how to Triangle Jump, for example, it's not just for experts anymore. It's actually a viable option for intermediate players. The thing is, it doesn't make it faster or more common or anything, because experts do it all the time; it just makes it more accessible. So these are examples of stuff that we're doing to make it easier for beginners to play in ways that haven't been done in games before.

In addition, there are always infinite combos and stuff like that in these types of games, so our approach is to assume players are going to find abuse-able stuff, and then limit what abusable stuff they can actually do, regardless of what it is.

For example, if I do an infinite combo on you, you'll see the hit sparks change and hear the noises change. You can then hit any button to escape, but only if I do an infinite. And it's not number-of-hits based, it's not timing based, it's based on the combo you're actually doing. I don't know why this approach hasn't been taken before, but this is the only way to do it that makes sense to me.

So you're basically taking different approaches to address these sorts of issues.

MZ: Yeah. I'm a player; I know what people are actually trying to do to the game. I'm trying to prevent the things that players are really doing, as opposed to taking an abstract view and saying, "This is what they might be doing." We try to avoid that whole problem, but we still allow long combos and all the rest of the stuff that makes the system open and creative and fun.

Yeah, it's interesting. Have you tried pitting intermediate players against really advanced players? Has it changed the dynamic of balance in any way?

MZ: Well, the advanced players are better at resets and stuff that allows you to kill people really fast, so they still steamroll intermediate players. But for intermediate players versus beginner players, it actually makes a huge difference.

Intermediate players are always at the level of thinking, "I can do this a whole bunch of times," or whatever, and they know they have all of the escape mechanics and they know they have unblockable protection. So this is more of how we prevent players from breaking the game. I don't know which unblockables you can find, but I know they're not going to work. Same thing goes for infinites; I don't know what infinites you can find, but I know that they're not going to work.

You're addressing it from a system level. Sometimes it seems Japanese developers just try to address things in less of a big-picture way.

MZ: Yeah. They might say, "This character has this problem so we're going to change this character to fix that problem," as opposed to changing all the characters that have that problem in the same way or addressing the problem outside the characters.

The other part of our strategy is that the infinite protection and stuff rewards you for being creative; it rewards you for finding longer things you can do rather than easy loops. But in addition, since I don't have to change any way that any character works beyond saying, "I want this character's moves to work this way," it allows me to be more creative in the character design, it allows me to be more creative with the game engine.

Do you think these sort of systems are going to change high-level play?

MZ: I hope so. I mean, I'm not a long time established fighting game company; I don't have ways that I already do things. But as a player, these are certain ways that it looks like I should be doing things. And I certainly hope that this kind of stuff will change high level play away from repetitive things and toward more things like resets and interesting things like that.

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

If you pay attention to NES homebrew releases, you might have heard of Battle Kid: Fortress of Peril last year, Sivak Games' impressive platformer inspired by titles like Mega Man, Castlevania, and I Wanna Be The Guy. It released on an actual cartridge that you could pop into your NES!

Sivak is working on a Battle Kid sequel subtitled Mountain of Torment, which will have a redesigned HUD and new features like teleporterts (for transporting to different parts on the giant map), wall gripping, a heart meter, a Super Meat Boy-esque death counter, and more.

This embedded video featured at RetroCollect starts off slow, but you'll see around the 3:15 mark, Sivak runs through the hazards in several rooms. In production since last July, Mountain of Torment so far has 511 rooms, 24 enemy types, 4 bosses (5-8 planned), and 17 music tracks.

While there's no release date yet for Battle Kid 2: Mountain of Torment, we'll let you know once it's ready to ship of course.

[Via @gamespite]

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

Add another title to the growing list of ambient, silhouetted indie games that have released lately (e.g. Limbo, NightSky), though this one is less a platformer and more "a slow-paced game of exploring different choices", with secrets to unlock and endings to reflect about.

Star Sky is essentially a game about a man on a midnight stroll. Swedish developer and sound designer Mårten Jonsson (Melodia) warns that it's "not a game for everyone" and is something players should play patiently to allow themselves to take in:

"Star Sky is not a game you play for hours on end. You play it once, see what there there is to discover and then play it as many times as you feel like. Then hopefully you will return and finish it at some point, in order to unlock the end.

The game is meant to be a relaxing and ambient experience focusing on creating a soothing atmosphere rather than intense gameplay. It is similar to an interactive poem. A poem that has several endings and allow you to explore different scenarios."

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

['Game Mag Weaseling' is a weekly column by Kevin Gifford which documents the history of video game magazines, from their birth in the early '80s to the current day. This time -- an analytical look at the latest video game magazines released in the last couple of weeks.]

Welcome to the first Mag Roundup in a while, a biweekly feature where I dissect and discuss the game magazines that have hit my mailbox over the past little while. Apologies for being lax about this bit -- I got distracted, repeatedly.

One modification that I should note is that I'm not going to be covering Beckett Massive Online Gamer in the future. Why? Chiefly because I got a renewal notice and it made me realize that I have not enjoyed reading a single issue of that magazine since its debut. Yes -- Beckett MOG is so bad that I am willing to resist my obsessive completionist ways when it comes to magazine collecting, just to starve the publisher of their $15. I have to draw the line somewhere.

Kicking off:

Game Informer May 2011

Cover: Mass Effect 3

I got into a discussion with a colleague of mine over this cover. I have an aversion to bald space marines on the covers of game magazines, something that longtime column fans might've noted once or twice over the past half-decade.

My friend, on the other hand, hailed this cover as iconic and a sort of culmination for the series -- which, admittedly, it very well could be, if you were familiar with the Mass Effect games in the first place. However, in the end, it's still a bald space marine. (This is not GI's fault, of course -- most of their covers are first looks at upcoming AAA titles, and most upcoming AAA titles have starred Vin Diesel-ish dudes for the past 2 or 3 years.)

The ME3 feature has already been well dissected online, so I won't dwell on it apart from stating that it's your basic sort of modern GI feature -- divided into discrete parts, and a bit more like something you'd see in a Future magazine than the long narratives that used to define cover stories here. (The secondary feature on the new Spider-Man is more standard in that respect.)

Opening features are an interesting mix of modern and classic in terms of game mags. There's a roundtable piece that tackles and debates some of gamedom's outstanding questions ("is Japan irrelevant," "will mobile gaming kill handhelds," and so on), which is quite Edge-ish and in-depth.

A couple pages later, though, there's Matthew Kato driving a Porsche 911 Turbo around a racetrack in order to see if his Forza 3 addiction prepared him adequately for the real thing. That's the sort of thing that EGM did all the time in the late '90s, and in some respects, I miss articles like that. Game mags getting mature is good and all, but there needs to be some fun now and again too.

GamesTM Issue 108

Cover: Unreal Engine/Samaritan

This month's GI devoted a small article to the new UE demo Epic showed off at GDC, but GamesTM goes all-in with the bit, spending eight pages on it (including a spread devoted to interviewing Tim Sweeney). Everyone who cares has long since seen the demo, of course, but I have to say that GamesTM's capsule explanations of the technical tricks behind Samaritan are really concise and explain some pretty complex techniques extraordinarily well.

Six pages also get devoted to an interview feature on El Shaddai, the sort of treatment that I don't think any US mag could afford to give at this point even if they wanted too. It's backed up by a couple of other evergreen features, including one about how the proliferation of game options is cheapening the entire industry -- a topic GI obliquely covered in the aforementioned "big questions" feature, but again GamesTM goes all-in with it, interviewing folks and fielding opinions from all over the place. That's the difference you get, I suppose, when you have a bit more freedom in page real estate.

@Gamer May 2011

Cover: Rage

It's renewal time for readers who ponied up to be charter subscribers of Best Buy's in-house magazine. Unlike Beckett, I'll cheerfully renew for this one -- the mag's not the most extraordinary one I get by a longshot, but I like Andy Eddy and I like the design a great deal.

That being said, @Gamer is mainly previews, reviews and gear coverage, so there isn't a lot I can write about in a column like this. The PSX East feature is neat, though, and part of what seems like an ongoing effort to cover gamer-participation events which I don't see in much other print media.

Electronic Gaming Monthly May 2011

Cover: Uncharted 3

Contrasting @Gamer, the print side of EGM continues to concentrate almost entirely on "industry" topics -- the concept of "problem" gaming, the devaluation of games by mobile platforms (a popular issue this month after Satoru Iwata's GDC keynote), and the Mustard brothers talking about both their current successes with Infinity Blade and the pains they went through with the big-budget Xbox flop Advent Rising. The latter, in particular, is really worth reading, as are most of EGM's longform interviews.

All this before we even get to the cover feature, which is remarkably pictoral in nature for a mag with such a small book size -- and such a rep for being wordy, at least in my mind.

The industry bent makes this a really great mag, a worthwhile companion to GamePro in that respect. They might want to proofread a bit more carefully, though -- an article claims that Iwata made his keynote speech at "GDC 2010," and the word "impressive" is misspelled right at the start of the Mustard interview.

Retro Gamer Issue 87

Cover: N64

I am paying dearly for Retro Gamer lately -- first to renew my subscription, then to pay for this issue (which I missed because my sub lapsed), and presumably next to pay for Issue 88 because it arrived MIA in my mailbox and I've failed to find anyone breathing at Imagine Publishing to tell me if I can get a replacement or not.

The cover kicks off a new series of collectors' guides in the mag, features that cover each game system and concentrates on what makes it collectible, what are the must-plays on it, what are the oddities in the library that are worth looking out for on the market, and so on. It's basically Retro Gamer taking their console hardware profiles (a hallmark of the mag since its debut) and freshening them up a bit to avoid repeating themselves too often, and I think it succeeds -- a good mix of history and the sort of goofy trivia that is right up the alley of this mag's target audience.

PC Gamer June 2011

Cover: Portal 2

The DVD included with this issue has some really neat Minecraft-themed PC Gamer artwork on it, touting the demo on the disc. It's enough to almost make me wish PCG put it on the mag's cover too, although that'd be silly in a month with Portal 2 coming out.

The review feature's nice, as is a follow-up piece rounding up cheap PC games you can purchase online, but otherwise it's the usual sort of business.

World of Warcraft: Official Magazine Issue 4

As I wrote a bit ago, it's time for charter subscribers to this expensive-but-deluxe experiment to decide whether they want to spend $40 on another year. I must admit, I'm still pondering over this. I don't care much personally about WOW at all, but I want to support drives like this -- and what's more, back issues seem to be outdoing their retail price on eBay right now, something that I suppose is encouraging news.

This issue keeps up the standard, too, offering the big tour of Cataclysm and featuring enough pretty art and design to keep any fan enthralled.

[Kevin Gifford owns over 8000 video-game and computer magazines. Despite this, he is capable of sustaining a conversation with a woman for at least three minutes per go. He runs Magweasel, a really cool weblog about games and Japan and "the industry" and things, and in his spare time he does writing and translation for lots of publishers and game companies.]

Posted by Kevin Gifford at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

[Continuing his new 'Tales from the GDC Vault' series, digital historian Jason Scott showcases his work on the the GDC multimedia archives, presenting a Betamax video rundown and talks or excerpts featuring Peter Molyneux (Black & White) and Chris Taylor (Dungeon Siege).]

Jason Scott, GDC Historian here. I'm here to talk about the future. I'm here to talk, in other words, about the Betamax format.

For people of a certain age, Betamax is kind of a joke. For others who are younger, it's barely a word, something you might have heard in passing in an unrelated discussion about video. But what it is, in fact, is a video format that never quite died, and which still sees some amount of activity in the present day.

It was a contemporary format to VHS, first introduced in the 1970s, as one of the standards intended to be used in all sorts of consumer-grade hardware for videotape. It had some positive features, but a crushing grip by Sony meant that the format was shoved aside for its not-so-great-but-cheaper competitor, from JVC. Not one to just kill the format,

Sony instead tweaked it: the professional reworking of that consumer-grade video technology into Betacam meant that it had a lot of use in the professional sector going forward. Granted, that activity has decreased intensely with the advent of digital recording and high-definition requirements, but you can be assured that there are more Betamax players and recorders out there than the initial guess of "zero". One of them, I am happy to say, is in my house.

Check out this svelte monstrosity:

Unlike the all-too-frequent ebay "shipping and handling" shenanigans, when I discovered this thing was fifty actual pounds I thought the price charged was fair indeed. (I purchased the entire item, with shipping, for about $250, in case you're wondering). It works really well, too, another bonus.

In this situation, I am taking tapes that are in some cases a decade old and running them through, so I'm still in the process of testing various encoding and capturing trickery to get the whole thing working.

Another side technical note - the video ingesting system uses an RCA plug for audio input, but I found that a real waste considering the Betacam player uses professional grade XLR outputs. So, I ended up buying a bridging box to go from XLR to USB input:

So what tape gets the inaugural treatment? My first experiments have been with a tape of Peter Molyneux, from the GDC March 2000 (also called GDC '00) conference, in which he introduces the world to his new game Black & White.

The presentation itself is pretty good, but I can't put it all up yet - I am not 100% happy with the combination video and audio grab, and still want to work some of the kinks out. Here's what a frame of that presentation looks like on Betacam SP format:

So, here is a short GDC Vault-hosted excerpt of that speech. In it, Bullfrog Software founder Molyneux covers his career up to 2000, how he's always wanted games about people, and then launches into an extended overview of playing around in the Beta version of Black & White.

It's easy to see why Microsoft had him be a key part of the Xbox portfolio, and one of the game-specific presenters for the announcement of the Kinect a decade later - he's charming, and nothing in the presentation phases him. I'll have the full talk up sooner rather than later.

Betamax! Is there nothing it can't do?

Also available this week, here's a little something from the audio-only, digitized from cassette onto GDC Vault. Specifically, in the CGDC 1997 bin is a talk entitled "'Lessons Learned on Dungeon Siege and Other Random Things', done by Gas Powered Games' Chris Taylor, that is a beautiful, hilarious spinning of tales related to game development.

In 1997, the Total Annihilation designer can still bring up the single-developer era while also discussing the more factory-based situation that starts to become prevalent, where monetary choices are beginning to dominate and the games are being made along reasons far outside of creativity.

Heck, how many game talks recommend that you go buy Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People? He also let you know that instant messaging is very important. Agreed! Oh, and he mentioned that maybe you should consider using a Wiki, though he struggles to tell you how useful it can be. (Not bad for 1997!)

What a character he is in this! It feels like your buddy who got into games breaking down what his day and work is like, with no pretense, no need to justify. Sometimes things don't work out, sometimes they succeed wildly. Run it in the background while you're working on something - you might find yourself working even harder because your new buddy is inspiring you.

Stay tuned for items coming up! I'd better have some use for this gargantuan machine on my floor....

Posted by Jason Scott at 11:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

After working on the project for several years, Bob Sabiston, creator of the rotoscoping software used in films like Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly, has released Inchworm Animation, a painting and animation DSiWare application that's an awesome alternative to Nintendo's simpler Flipnote Studio software.

Inchworm Animation includes tutorials and tools that allow you to create images as large as 9,999-by-9,999 pixels, make multi-layer flipbook animations, and rotoscope by tracing on top of camera fooage. With the DSi's Camera, you can also shoot stop-motion and time lapse animations in color, too.

Oher neat features include onion skinning, six-level zooming, cut/paste/rotate, undo functions, a pattern editor, variable thickness antialiased brushes, translucent color and pattern fill, custom palette storage, rescaling clipboard images, shapes with borders, and the ability to export to the SD card as SWF/BMP files.

It's probably the closest thing you can get to Mario Paint on a DS right now, and it's only 500 Nintendo Points ($5)!

Posted by Eric Caoili at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

One of the most memorable moments from the Game Developers Choice Awards at GDC was the amazing Mega64 video revealing the intended ending of Sega's cherished Shenmue series, as told by series director Yu Suzuki himself!

The video game comedy skit group has a posted a "Behind the Scenes" video giving fans a peek at Shenmue clip's production, including Suzuki cracking up over his lines, Cliff Bleszinski's last-minute cameo, and their hotel room green screen setup.

It also shows unused footage and preparation from other videos that were premiered at the Game Developers Conference, like the Heavy Rain and Limbo spoofs. You don't really see it here, but you should watch the crew's Indie Dreamz video if you haven't yet, too.

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

Wikileaks' release today of documents relating to Guantanamo Bay and its prisoners has a curious video game-related note in the Detainee Assessment record for Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the high-profile Al Qaeda and alleged "principal architect of the 9/11 attacks".

His profile, which was put together by the Department of Defense, detailed operations intended to strike at the U.S. and its allies around the world, like assassination plots against Bill Clinton and Pope John Paul II, plans to detonate explosive-laden ships crossing the Panama Canal, and attacks on London's Heathrow Airport.

The Detainee Assessment record also mentioned this strategem involving Sega cartridges:

"Detainee discussed remote-controlled firing devices (RCFDS) which were found during raids in Karachi in September 2002. These RCFDS were built inside black Sega videogame cassette cartridges to protect the RCFDS and to make them appear innocuous."

[Via dak1dsk1, dj_page1]

Posted by Eric Caoili at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

[GGPO's Tony Cannon talks to our own Kyle Orland about how fighting game frustrations led to the development of a clever latency solution licensed by Capcom and Namco Bandai.]

Like a lot of middleware developers, Tony Cannon started developing his own tool to solve a problem he himself was having. Unlike a lot of middleware makers, though, Cannon’s creation grew out of his problems as a player, not as a developer.

As a pro-level fighting game player and one of the organizers of the Evolution tournament series, Cannon was worried that the arcade culture he was steeped in was deteriorating.

"In the mid-90s, arcades were really dying, and we were in danger of losing this thing we really cared about, because everyone played in the arcades," he said in a new interview.

A ray of hope came in 2005, Cannon said, when Capcom announced it would be releasing a console version of Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting with online play that could hopefully reconnect players who were no longer able to meet at arcades.

When the game came out, though, Cannon said lag and glitches made the internet play unusable.

"It was just bad," he said. "It was literally unplayable for a hardcore fighting game person. If all you remembered was Street Fighter II on the SNES and you just jumped back in after eight years and just started playing it, maybe it was good for you, but for hardcore fighting fans it was just unplayable."

Cannon started thinking about how he might fix these problems for timing-dependent games like his favored fighters, and came up with an idea he calls rollbacks. Instead of inserting any internet latency between the button press and the start of the move, his technique puts the lag on the beginning of the opponent’s move, with filler animation to hide the effect somewhat.

"That’s actually way better. You might see a little glitchiness, but all your timing is the same," he said.

After eight months of work, the first version of GGPO (short for "good game, peace out," a common post-match greeting in the fighting game culture) was ready by late 2006. The next step, Cannon says, was getting someone to notice, which was easier said than done.

He approached Backbone Entertainment -- which was working on a console port of Puzzle Fighter -- with a description of his procedure, but the process went nowhere.

"I learned something very important... a description of how it works is not enough to convince someone," he said.

A better strategy, Cannon said, was simply layering his code on top of an arcade emulator called Final Burn Alpha, with support for some of his favorite older fighting games. That way, when Capcom’s Seth Killian was able to set up a meeting with the Street Fighter II: Turbo HD Remix development team in late 2007, Cannon was able to show them a demo of Street Fighter Alpha 2 and let them play live against someone from a player from Europe. The demo helped everything click in a way a simple description couldn’t, Cannon said.

Backbone ended up using its own homegrown, rollback-enhanced net code for HD Remix, but the release still validated the concept used in GGPO, Cannon said.

While other companies could do the same thing, Cannon says getting a license for GGPO also brings along months of iterations and optimizations he’s made for a variety of national and international internet connections, as well as testing feedback from thousands of Final Burn Alpha players.

"That’s the real value of GGPO, I think, the concept as well as the quality of the implementation, which is very hard for developers to get in-house," he says. “How do you test your game out there on the internet for a year before you release it? You can’t.”

Use of GGPO in commercial releases is accelerating, Cannon says -- the code has been licensed for Capcom’s retro revamp Final Fight: Double Impact, Namco Bandai’s Japanese arcade fighter Dragon Ball Zenkai Battle Royale and upcoming indie 2D fighter Skullgirls, as well as several unannounced titles.

But whether they use GGPO or are just inspired by his lag-masking technique, Cannon says he’s happy developers are finally getting smarter about their net code for fast-paced competitive games.

"That’s been my goal from the start, to get fighting games incorporating some technology that replicates the arcade feel so I can play these games online, because I don’t have time to go to arcades anymore," he said.

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

[This week, our partnership with game criticism site Critical Distance brings us picks from Kris Ligman on topics including abstraction in indie games and the importance of uncertainty.]

Hello and welcome to another sumptuous and satisfying edition of This Week in Video Game Criticism. Ben Abraham is stepping out again this week so it is left to me, your newcomer editor Kris Ligman, to provide your links this week. Yes, I know, I'm excited too. So without further ado, let's dig in.

We start off this week with an ode to Monster Tale from the ever-erudite Michael Abbott. Another piece by Michael Abbott from his Brainy Gamer blog looks at styles of abstraction in art and design represented in recent indie successes, "Driven to abstraction".

He writes, "We bemoan the derivative nature of games, and we're fed a steady stream of imitative designs that prove the point. But focusing on threadbare tropes and overused mechanics may cause us to overlook the astonishingly creative work being produced by game designers experimenting with form, representation, and abstraction."

In a similar vein, John Walker over at Rock, Paper, Shotgun takes aim at development-stifling genre conventions and argues there is one place where "genre crossing" is thriving: "Do you know? It’s casual games."

Raptured Reality's Steven O'Dell laments the quick turnover of commercial titles like Super Mario Galaxy: "Nobody seems to care that Super Mario Galaxy, a game that released in 2007, still has a lot to say about the status of the platformer genre, or where Mario as a franchise currently sits. In some respects, why should they? That game has a sequel and practically everything else does these days too. But that attitude, that approach to the medium where only the current -- which gets forgotten about once the next big thing arrives -- and future matter, is dangerous and is one I wish would change."

And you've all seen the anti-smoking ad of a mocked-up Breakout styled game with a set of lungs and a cigarette, yes? Bothered by this analogy, Chris DeLeon at Georgia Tech's Newsgames blog went and made a functional game based on the image. Over on Electron Dance, Joel Goodwin has an in-depth analysis into the role of privacy (and voyeurism) in Christine Love's new visual novel, don't take it personally, babe, it just ain't your story.

Goodwin writes, "The students make me think of people who don't use their vote, forgetting how hard people have fought for that vote throughout history and how some people are still fighting for it right now. These are people typically subjected to indiscriminate surveillance without checks and balances. If not everybody signs up for the glass society, those who remain behind walls will hold all of our lives hostage. I hope DTIP scared you as much as it scared me."

Moving on, Mitu Khandaker's new GameSetWatch column "Gambrian Explosion" continues this week with a piece called "Games, Randomness, and the Problem with Being Human". And over at the PopMatters Moving Pixels blog, Jorge Albor treats us to a musing on the semiotics and relational aesthetics of Brenda Brathwaite's Train and One Falls for Each of Us, quoting Brathwaite's GDC talk when he says: "Wherever there is human-on-human tragedy, there is also a system."

Finally, we have a trio of articles from Critical Distance's own which are worth your attention. First off, regular irregular editor Eric Swain, writing in his own blog The Game Critique, looks at the scoring models and perceived biases of various gaming publications and concludes: "The score is the thesis in a way and the text is the support for that thesis. If you think a game is a 9.0 then your writing has to support that, just as if you called a game a 1.0, the writing must support that. But most of all raise your expectations to reality."

The second comes from yours truly at my new Dire Critic blog, which... Well, don't look at me, Eric submitted it. For my part, the article does serve as a direct response to Eric Swain's "Manifesto" post, arguing for reviewers to embrace their subjectivity and regard games as relational objects, a point not so coincidentally raised in Albor's post at PopMatters as well.

Last but certainly not least we have a piece from David Carlton, talking about achievements in Tiny Wings: "I’m glad I followed that nudge and did so. It added texture to my experience: without these varying goals, I would have just been touching the screen over and over trying to get as far as possible, and I would have gotten bored and frustrated fairly soon. But with the different goals given by the objectives, I had to think differently about my approach to the game."

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