GameSetWatch

TGS: Sense Of Wonder Night Showcases Indie Innovation

editors@gamesetwatch.com (Simon Carless) — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 00:00:11 -0800

[I very much appreciated the opportunity to participate in Sense Of Wonder Night at TGS this year, both as onlooker and judge - and here's a pretty complete write-up of the evening's proceedings.]

At Tokyo Game Show on Friday evening, multiple entities, including industry association CEDEC, TGS organizers Nikkei BP and IGDA Japan combined to present the unique 'Sense Of Wonder Night', an evening showcasing 11 independent games from all over the world -- with the creators on hand to give presentations, and translation between Japanese and English making for a truly international flavor.

The showcased games were picked from a set of game submissions made earlier this year for the contest, which was co-ordinated by Nikkei BP in association with IGDA Japan head Kiyoshi Shin.

He also acted as effusive MC for the evening, which was inspired by the GDC's Experimental Gameplay Workshop in format, with just 10 minutes (including questions) for each set of creators to show and explain their games.

The loose, informal format was very much appreciated by the packed crowd of around two to three hundred, a significant majority Japanese, who packed one section of the Restaurant NOA at Makuhari Messe, adjacent to the Tokyo Game Show.

The event was co-located with the International Party on Friday evening, and the audience were given 'laughing' smiley-face toys to shake and make noise when they felt a 'sense of wonder' over the demonstrated titles.

A particular theme of the SoWN selections were new forms of expression and emerging genres in games, from titles using physics and flocking through titles that were prototypes or sketches designed to make you think about the nature of video games. As such, a light-hearted, wry approach was quite a contrast from the relatively formal strictures of TGS' Business Day and showfloor.

The order of the presentations for Sense Of Wonder Night 2008 was as follows:

Camera (Yareyare, Japan) (not available online)

First up was Camera, a art-game made for the PC where, simply enough, you control a hand holding a mouse. If you move or click your mouse, then the hand onscreen moves or clicks its mouse. A kind of Dada-ist prank, it's evidently pretending to be a camera showing your desk. But of course, it's actually not.

The wry Japanese author suggested to the Sense Of Wonder Night onlookers that Camera creates a "sense of unexpected that no other game offers." The crowd were much-tickled by it, and asked about the commercialization of the project -- not entirely seriously, of course.

Depict (Jesus Cuahtemoc, Moreno Ramos, Mexico) (video available online)

Next up, a Mexican duo discussed using the iPhone camera and a cute game concept to create a link with the real world. In the game, you are shown a picture consisting of a shape and some colors (say, a half red and half black image, or a white background with a red circle in the center of it), and you have to match it in the real world.

The creators then showed a cute demo video in which they and their friends tried to match the image by finding objects in real-life that resembled those colors, and taking a picture of it with the iPhone camera.

In fact, the Q&A revealed that the idea is not too far into development on iPhone just yet, because the creators can't afford to buy one of their own. But their video and ideas, including the concept of having multiplayer duels with different iPhone players submitting their photos and the best one being picked, are charming.

The Unfinished Swan (Ian Dallas, USC, United States) (video available online)

This prototype, from a member of the P.B. Winterbottom game at the University Of Southern California, starts in an all-white world, and has the player throw missiles that cover the walls and floor and effectively 'illuminate' the space with black color splatter.

The game has other twists, including a set of blocks that can be moved by projectiles, and the ability to move into all-black spaces and then throw white projectiles.

The stark, monochromatic game generated a lot of oohs and aahs from the crowd, who really appreciated the abstract, art-inspired nature of the title. In his presentation, meanwhile, Dallas honestly explained that, from what he'd seen, people were impressed with the game for about 30 seconds, until the brain understood what was going on.

But they tired quite swiftly of playing it, and in fact, many players asked for harsher game mechanics -- to have hard jumping puzzles, and even death. But that's not what he wants the game to be, even though he noted that wonder alone isn't enough for games to have longevity -- a good observation.

WorldIcelansista (Ambition, Japan) (Japanese website available)

This title, from developer Ambition, is an online RPG which creates picturebooks on mobile phones in Japan. As noted, cellphone gaming is pretty ubiquitous in the territory, and the title, a cute-looking 2D pixelated game, allows users to pick from multiple choices to make their own stories which they can save and replay.

Unfortunately, the Ambition representative didn't appear to do a great job of explaining the unique selling points of the game itself, other than explaining to people how to search for it correctly on the Internet.

However, at the close of his presentation, he showed a real printed book, and revealed that you will be able to print-on-demand books for the game, using the stories you pick out -- a neat concept.

Twin Tower (OMEGA, Japan) (Windows download available online)

Next up, noted Every Extend creator OMEGA, part of the hobby game development circle GameHell, explained his physics-based construction game, where the player needs to alternately stack falling blocks on a floating scale. If you can correctly stack either side without letting the sides tip over, then you've completed the level.

He then revealed that the GameDev forum at the infamous 2channel forums, based around rapid prototyping, were what spawned this title. Specifically, the theme for this particular 2ch competition was "Two Towers". Also, somewhat unexpectedly, OMEGA explained that the game was inspired by the "not so fun" 1983 Namco arcade title Phozon.

But how so? Well, the Japanese designer noted that he likes construction games like SimCity or Age Of Empires, but they have a long play time and are pretty complex. However, simple titles like Kenta Cho's dojin title Tumiki Fighters or Keita Takahashi' Katamari Damacy take a different, more chaotic, shorter-form approach to construction games. It was this spirit OMEGA was trying to call upon when creating Twin Tower.

PixelJunk Eden (Q-Games, Japan) (information available online, out now on PS3)

PixelJunk Eden was introduced by two Japanese staff members of Dylan Cuthbert's Osaka-based studio Q-Games. The abstract PlayStation Network downloadable 'jump action game' is on many Westerners' radar, thanks to its high-profile release in the West and the other games in the PS3-exclusive PixelJunk series -- but is not so well-known in Japan.

The creators explained, after showing a well-received trailer, that the combination of art and music was key to the creation of PixelJunk Eden, and particularly noted that an 'outsider perspective' from some of the game's designers really helped its unconventional style.

In addition, they discussed the particular choice of art direction and colors to make sure that the game looks good, but the characters are still well-differentiated from the background and playfield in the borderline psychedelic title.

Gomibako (Trash Box/ PlayStation C.A.M.P!, Japan) (video available online, PS3 version due out soon)

One of the most intriguing games of the evening, this game was developed by Jetraylogic as part of the PlayStation C.A.M.P project from Sony Japan, and a PSN downloadable title for the PlayStation 3. It's a physics engine-based title in which the player must break objects into a trashcan.

For example, you can drop wooden barrels on metal objects to smash them, and then lower in a flaming object to set the entire pile on fire. In addition, you can break water-filled objects to fill the trashcan with liquid, and then have the contents of the can rot.

In the game, which was also playable on the Sony booth at TGS, the 'bosses' are massive chunks of garbage such as trucks. If you don't correctly get rid of them, they dump mounds of tires on you. At the end of each level, you then get additionally rated on either 'ECO' (if you're good for the environment and didn't burn too much trash), and 'EGO' (if you're bad for it, presumably.)

This slick, well-produced and innovative PSN physics title went down extremely well with the packed audience. It's a devilishly smart physics-based take on Tetris, somewhat reminiscent of elements of recent PC indie title Blast Miner -- and it was also a hit with mainstream journalists covering TGS.

Moon Stories (Daniel Benmergui, Argentina) (Flash game available online)

These series of Flash 'micro-games' are created by an Argentinian former Gameloft programmer who wants to make titles "about people, not objects", and his wordless, highly conceptual game sketches were one of the hits of the night with the audience.

His main demonstration, I Wish I Were The Moon is about a three-way love story between a girl, a boy, and the moon. It has multiple endings, all set around taking pictures of the moon or manipulating the characters in the game, and is genuinely affecting.

Benmergui also showed a second title, Storyteller, which has a similar no-text, no-movie, simple art approach, and features three windows, each with a separate comic strip-style occurrence in it. Juggling what the characters are doing (attacking, imprisoning, etc) in each of the frames results in a different outcome in the final frame, an ingenious study in causation.

The Misadventures Of P.B. Winterbottom (The Odd Gentlemen, United States) (video available online, coming soon to consoles)

USC's Ian Dallas made a re-appearance to present this title, since he was also a designer on the university's Winterbottom, which he revealed will be coming to un-named consoles at some time soon. The Gorey-inspired side-on platformer stars a pie-loving Edwardian villain, and includes normal running, jumping and gliding controls.

But the main differentiator is the ability to record and utilize multiple versions of Winterbottom doing things such as jumping, balancing on teeter-totters, and even dying, using these multiple simultaneous character actions to solve puzzles and complete levels.

The title has been a multi-award nominee in areas from the IGF to Indiecade and beyond. It obviously echoes indie darling Braid in its time rewinding and recording, but uses very different design elements - for example, the player having to avoid previous versions of himself.

And with SCEA previously having a close relationship with USC projects such as Flow, this author is wagering we'll see this title on PS3 and PSP some time in 2009.

Genocide Automation (Naoya Sasaki, Japan) (Windows download available online)

The swarm simulator, with many units fighting against each other, looks a bit like a mutant Game Of Life. It features odd, abstract shapes being formed by lots of individual units - both blue and orange - attacking each other and fighting each other off until one side or another is destroyed.

Even though "each unit is only thinking about itself", the acting-out of the game logic creates the swarms that appear co-ordinated.

The author, Sasaki, explained that the title was simply to "watch and enjoy" until just recently, where he realized that mouse control could affect the swarming of the characters in real-time. Now, the aggressiveness of the AI can be affected by mousing over an area of the screen - leading to interesting conceptual possibilities for this prototype.

Nanosmiles (Yu Iwai, Japan) (Windows download available online)

Finally, Engrish-Games creator and OMEGA's fellow GameHell hobby group member Iwai showed Nanosmiles. This is a micro-organism shooting 2D game that uses some of the same swarming ideas shown in Genocide Automation.

However, it differs in that it has automated swarming characters gathering around the player, and only indirect offensive attacks are allowed. In effect, your swarming colleagues do your dirty work for you after you point them in the right direction. Iwai (aka Dong) also noted you can hide behind walls and let the swarm intelligence -- using boids -- take all the risk on your behalf.

Conclusion

Following the end of the presentations, the judging committee, which included Katamari Damacy and Noby Noby Boy creator Keita Takahashi, Enterbrain's 'Maker' series director Kenji Sugiuchi, and Vector.co.jp executive Takashi Katayama, as well as the author of this article, were asked to give their impressions on what we had seen.

Particularly notable were the clipped comments from an ever enigmatic Keita Takahashi, who claimed that he hadn't been to Tokyo Game Show for 8 years -- but that this event had drawn him to attend.

The evening ended with assurances from Shin that Sense Of Wonder Night will occur again next year -- a good thing for uniting the indie game scene in Japan with the rest of the world.

COLUMN: 'Game Mag Weaseling': Mag Roundup 10/11/08

editors@gamesetwatch.com (Kevin Gifford) — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 16:00:00 -0800

Not strictly related to video games, but is this not the best magazine cover you've ever seen? The Cooper Black font, the eerie CGI bits, the way everything fits together like a jigsaw puzzle with the pieces broken and crushed in a vain attempt to make them snap together? This is what we need more of, people! (And yes, I really did buy the mag just for the cover. I dig reading about electronics projects, yes, but I don't buy these mags regularly.)

On a slightly related note -- do you folks really like me doing these Mag Roundups? I'm beginning to get the impression that I'm repeating myself in most of these -- US mags are tiny and their preview sections are boring, Britmags are nice but expensive, Nintendo Power interviewed this guy, hooray. Do you readers want me to continue with this, or would my time be better spent covering fewer things in more detail instead of giving a more general view? Feel free to leave your replies below.

Until then, however, here's a look at all the mags of the past fortnight. It's the big ad-sales season for game mags, not that you can really tell anymore...

Edge November 2008

Cover: Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars

This is one of those uncommon occasions when Edge, for the most part, gets outrun by pretty much every other media outlet in America. Nintendo Power already did a big cover blowout story on GTA:CW (complete with separate spread devoted to Dan Houser PR'ing off in the engaging way he's capable off); Official Xbox Magazine also visited Rare this month to take an insider look at the new Banjo; and the "how Harmonix became such an important developer" piece was done a couple months back in Future's Guitars & Gaming one-off. (Edge interviews the VP; Guitars & Gaming interviewed the co-founder.)

The highlights of this month's issue, then, are in the littler things -- the way the reviewers pick on games like Star Wars: The Force Unleashed and Spore and Mercenaries 2; the retrospective piece on ridiculously ambitious 8-bit art piece Deus Ex Machina; and most impressively, the first interview Chris Crawford's given to the game media in about a million years. (If that name doesn't ring a bell, then...ah, never mind.)

Retro Gamer Issue 55

Cover: Ant Attack

Speaking of obscure Brit 8-bit games, here's one that the editor-in-chief obliquely compares to Ico in his editorial -- which is stretching things more than a little bit, but it's a lovely little making-of piece regardless, covering a game that spawned the first real overnight sensation in the out-of-the-basement British computer games industry.

RG continues to straddle the line between new and super-retro, covering PlaneScape: Torment in one feature and Defender in the next. Lotta neat stuff.

Total PC Gaming Issue 11

Cover: FarCry 2

Oh God, what has happened to my Total PC Gaming? It's now in a plastic polypag, comes with a DVD and some other crap, and the price has gone up by five bucks (a pound and a half in the UK). I thought the point of this mag, the thing that made it truly stand out from PC Gamer and PC Zone, was that it didn't rely on stupid "free gifts" to shift copies! What the hell, Imagine?

The stupidity of the free stuff in this ish is in the eye of the beholder of course. This one has a DVD where the only exclusive content is some editor commentaries laid on top of trailers (stupid); an except from an EVE Online novel (novel excepts are the only thing I hate more than useless DVDs); and a handbook devoted to PC overclocking (useful, but there's no reason why this should be a pamphlet with black-and-white photos and not inside the magazine). No way, no how is this worth $5 more to me. The content of the mag itself is nice as always, but I'm having trouble putting this above PC Zone in my mind any longer...even though I still have trouble getting PC Zone over here.

Electronic Gaming Monthly November 2008 (Podcast)

Cover: Resident Evil 5

Ahh, and now it's time to leave the Brit-mags and turn back to the American pamphlazines. EGM, at 100 pages (39 of which are ads -- a stat I hate pointing out becuase it's such a trivial thing to criticize mags for, but it becomes harder to ignore with page counts like these), is smaller than both GamePro at 114 and Play at 112 this month. Seriously, smaller than Play?! The mag that was lucky to break 80 pages a few months back?

I'm a little spoiled on the RE5 piece because I read the meat of the gameplay reveals in Famitsu last week, but it's got a nice avant-garde vibe in the design. It anchors a preview roundup of games with heavy co-op emphasis, which I hope you like, because that's about it after reviews and the front-end news section.

GamePro November 2008

Cover: Gears of War 2

GamePro.com has been redesigned, if you haven't noticed. That website's easily seen more redesigns than any print-mag site I'm aware of; this is the second or third large-scale redo since I was working there in '03. It looks nice, and while nothing's changed with the mag's design, this is a pretty solid issue, with more Cliff freakouts (how does the man find time to develop games in between all the media interview he does?) highlighting one of those massive GamePro-trademark preview blowouts for Gears 2. Which I hope you like, because that's it beyond reviews, etc., etc.

Play October 2008

Cover: Splatterhouse

Classic Play 'ere, as a Halverson interview with the leads is the entire content of the cover story and The Legend of Spyro gets about 100 times more coverage than in any other game media out let (print or online). Solid consistency.

PC Gamer December 2008 (Podcast)

Cover: Empire: Total War

If it weren't for that topmost coverline (which I love), this would look almost like an old CGW cover -- all that old historical stuff taking center stage instead of Crysis or Fallout or whatnot. This issue's heavy on the reviews and short on features -- I guess PC games are getting done for the holidays sooner than their console counterparts, or something.

Game Developer October 2008

Cover: Top 20 Publishers

Aww, and you can't forget GD, either! This issue's most interesting bit to me: A report from the GameStop Expo in Vegas, the only one I've seen from someone who wasn't posting on a message board. [EDITOR'S NOTE: There's an adapted version of the same write-up on Gamasutra, too, FYI.]

[Kevin Gifford breeds ferrets and runs Magweasel, a site for collectors and fans of old video-game and computer magazines. In his spare time he does writing and translation for lots and lots of publishers and game companies.]

Opinion: Why LittleBigPlanet Is Web 2.0 For Games, Fulfilled

editors@gamesetwatch.com (Simon Carless) — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 08:00:09 -0800

[In a new editorial, Gamasutra publisher Simon Carless uses his LittleBigPlanet Beta experiences to examine why he thinks one of this holiday's most-awaited PlayStation 3 games represents "the future of user-generated content on consoles".]

I have seen the future of user-generated content on consoles, and it is the Beta version of Media Molecule's much-awaited LittleBigPlanet -- which the nice folks at Sony were kind enough to give us advance access to, ahead of its imminent PlayStation 3 debut.

Now, I'm sure some might accuse me of hyperbole in the face of relatively little evidence. And it's true that I can't tell what's going to happen to the community based around the game, when the full weight (and, hopefully, ingenuity) of the PS3 masses are brought to bear on it.

But the game has managed to do what console titles have thus far shuddered to provide - an open, easy to use creation system that lets the community make the magic, while the creators stand back and marvel.

Why is this such a big deal, and what makes LittleBigPlanet's air of creativity so different?

Here's the key things that LBP does correctly with regard to user-generated content. Previous console games just haven't managed many of these -- often through no fault of their own:

Robust Online Sharing

This is an absolutely key differentiator. Playing levels in LBP is as easy as going to the main menu, selecting an option, and rotating around a globe filled with the latest community-contributed levels. A simple selection from there, and you've downloaded the level and you're playing it, within just a few seconds.

Compare this with the hoops you have to jump through for pre-online console games (ugh, memory card sharing) or even recent Wii titles such as Blast Works (go to a website, queue your levels, go to your Wii and download them -- extremely fiddly.)

Joypad-Based Level Construction

There's another reason why very few decent user-generated levels/games have been created on consoles thus far, with the possible exception of Enterbrain's Maker series. It's the input device. Compared to using mice and menus, having to create objects and manipulate levels via the Dual Shock might be rough.

But I believe -- at least, judging by some of the comments from MM's Alex Evans at recent conferences -- that a large reason for the game's delay was because of constant testing and refinement of the creation tools.

As a result, it's hardly perfectly straightforward to design levels in LittleBigPlanet -- it can still be daunting. But it's definitely the smoothest and most entertaining interface created thus far, with your character the creative center of the levels as they are created.

Graphical, Text-Based Design Freedom

Historically, many console games that you can modify have been loath to give the player full control over all of the bells and whistles.

Why? Well, it's in case those darn users say rude things or express views that might be tied to the game's makers, publishers, or hardware manufacturers.

And let's be honest, this may still be a problem with LBP -- we've already had video of the penis level, even if it's not playable in the game, so when's that illogical tabloid smackdown due?

But -- and I think a lot of this was the Phil Harrison-led Sony at work -- the real-time community flagging ability (and the willingness to tell the more terrified lawyers not to sweat it) has meant freedom, freedom, freedom.

You can tell stories with a combination of visuals and text -- as with the charming but basic 'Heist', an early community level highlight. Or you can riff on pop culture cults, as in the charming Ninja Warrior (Sasuke) level that recently got added, complete with the Hanging Wall. Oh, and there's that 'Little Big Computer' level, showing you can create amazingly complex mechanical devices.

You can even scan in images using the PlayStation Eye, which led to the cheeky 'red ring of death' Xbox 360-pastiching level, something which Sony could have hardly made on their own. But that's the strength of allowing your fanbase to tell your stuff for you, perhaps?

Web 2.0-Style Tagging

I suspect this is the least-discussed of the innovations in LittleBigPlanet. In a lot of ways, it's not an innovation if you've remotely been connected to the web for the past few years.

Everyone's used to creators tagging their blog posts or Flickr users tagging their snaps. But LBP makes players rate a level after they've played it. And that's a piece of genius.

In particular, what it allows is filtering by a particular keyword that interests you, with a new universe of custom levels to play after you've filtered.

So whether you're looking for stupidly short, ridiculously fast, or actually plain bad/frustrating user levels, guess what? You can find them, and it's forever dynamically updated with sprinklings of the latest goodness. This is the best Web 2.0/games mashup in quite some time.

Multiplayer, Co-Operative Level Exploration

So you may get a little frisson of excitement when you're playing Halo 3 and a bunch of unconventional maps are chosen, outside of your control. The similar effect of being taken on a 'magical mystery tour' by whoever is controlling your LBP co-op session is delightful.

Of course, with most of the user-created levels being made for one, as opposed to multiple players, it can be aimless and hit and miss at times. (I believe there's a tag to help people find the best co-op levels, however).

Even so, exploring new levels in the game by having other people show them to you in real-time is a really interesting and different discovery method -- like 'Hey guys, look what I found?' cool.

Leaderboards, Leaderboards, Leaderboards

Everyone's used to online high score tables nowadays. But, somewhat as in Rock Band 2's impermanent challenges, the concept of having massive amounts of leaderboards, each for a very granular, small part of the game is a great one.

Why? Because then anyone can be a star on one tiny part of the whole game, getting their score up into the Top 1000 or even Top 100.

Conclusion

Now, I'm not sure that everyone will take to LittleBigPlanet. The single-player, Media Molecule-created game is pretty darn neat on its own. But you do probably need to be a fan of short, self-contained, bite-sized experiences to love the user-generated content it is spawning.

Yet hey, isn't that the way that your spare time, my spare time, everyone's spare time is going nowadays? And what's better than an endlessly refreshing series of levels, forever?

GameSetLinkDump: Catch-Up, Vol. 1

editors@gamesetwatch.com (Simon Carless) — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 00:00:21 -0800

Oh dear. Thanks to Tokyo Game Show giving me - as you might expect - a bit of a hellish backlog of emails, RSS feeds and suchlike, we're going to have a dual set of catch-up posts from the GSW link-trawling, both from before I left for Japan.

Now, this does mean that a bunch of the links were found as long as a week or two ago. But fortunately, most of them are pretty evergreen due to their randomness, so I hope you'll accept them as we get up to speed again, hurray.

Link link link:

PC World - Independent Games Take Flight
'We're not seeing aggregators that specifically serve the indie community.' I think someone is going to step up.

Channel Surfing: Americas Virtual Console/WiiWare Sales Chart, W/E 9-28-08 | VG Chartz.com
Just wanted to mention - shame on you, VGChartz, unlike the similar looking XBLA charts, which are extrapolated from real data (feeds of gamertag-related info), these are apparently done by looking at the top titles in the Wii Shop Channel and then just guessing sales numbers. For pity's sake.

Gamasutra - UK Video Game Archive Coming To National Media Museum
'Academics at Nottingham Trent University are partnering with the Bradford, UK National Media Museum to launch the country's first National Videogame Archive, to preserve the history of the medium and "recognize the significant contributions made by videogames to the diversity of popular culture across the globe."' Thumbs up.

<i>Singh Is King</i> — Flash Game Brings Humor to Indian Political Issues | GameCulture
'He's smarter than your average PM — that's the tagline for an Indian Flash game called Singh Is King (pictured), whose cartoonish graphics and simple, runner-game mechanics harbor some dark moments in Indian politics.'

Financial Woes | How They Got Game
Stock market analysis and, uh, crash-related games, from the Stanford archives.

Lost Garden: Rules of Productivity Presentation
For everyone, but amazingly relevant to game development (and from a game creator), too.

super nohoho fighter ii x: Three Charts was the Morning
Wow, proper graphs for who wins what, character-wise, during Japanese tournaments in Super Street Fighter II.

Ludomancy » The Kongregate Experiment
'If you were wondering, after 66,000 gameplays, Moon made… 45 bucks (it can be increased by implementing the Kongregate API and signing exclusively, but still).' He's done a bit better since then (see post updates), but will be great to see just how well you can do out of this, if he'll spill.

Matt Sandorf: Journey to Endless Entertainment - Jay is Games
'Matt Sandorf: Journey to Endless Entertainment is not just an artistic point-and-click game. It is a *sniff* advergame — a promotion for the Sony empire from music to gadgets to games.'

T=Machine » Over $150M invested in Europe into social games, VWs, casual MMOs & games
Quite a wide definition, as is often the case with things like this, but interesting nonetheless due to the lack of previous VC interest in the game biz - also see $350 million outside of Europe predictions.

In-Depth: Why Halo's Multiplayer Almost Didn't Make It

editors@gamesetwatch.com (Simon Carless) — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 16:00:01 -0800

[We split out the other half of the recent Hardy LeBel interview about Far Cry 2 because Chris Remo discovered the designer was the original multiplayer guru behind Halo's multi-person modes - and that they almost got cut in development! Possibly the first time this story has been told in public, we think.]

One could argue that the multiplayer component in Bungie's original Halo: Combat Evolved single-handedly made Microsoft's Xbox a staple in college dorms nationwide, giving the company's fledgling console a foothold.

But when Microsoft acquired Bungie, at the time a veteran PC and Mac developer, and repositioned Halo as a flagship Xbox title, its multiplayer mode was almost axed in the interest of expediency and cost-saving -- a move that may have altered Microsoft's early status in the hardware race.

Gamasutra recently caught up with multiplayer designer Hardy LeBel, half of the two-man team that brought the mode back from the brink. After Halo 2, LeBel went on to head up Zipper Interactive's SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs franchise -- itself a multiplayer staple on Sony's PlayStation 2 -- and now serves as multiplayer lead on Far Cry 2. In this retrospective interview, he recalls his Bungie days and comments on the various design approaches available to multiplayer developers.

Were you on Halo when it was still targeting PC?

Hardy LeBel: I was at Bungie when Halo was a PC project, but the origin of the title was out of the Chicago office, and I was the creative director for the San Jose office. When we got bought by Microsoft and relocated, it was clear that for us to be able to hit the launch window for Xbox, we all had to work on Halo, so we all kind of got pulled in.

What was your project before that?

HL: I was the lead designer on Oni, which was a kind of a third-person action title. When we got bought by Microsoft, Alex Seropian and Jason Jones, who were the two principals of Bungie, came to me and [former Bungie engineer and animator] Michael Evans, and said, "Multiplayer is cut from Halo because we're trying to make it really work on the console and we just don't have the resources."

But we threw a fit and were like, "No way! You can't cut it! It's just too cool!"

They said, "We were hoping you'd say that -- because you two guys have to resurrect it."

Wow, talk about changing the course of history. (laughter) That component of the game is a big part of what made it so ubiquitous.

HL: Well, my goal with the design for Halo was to make something that was a shooter that played like an action game. In other words, I honest to God wanted to make something that would have felt like it could have been made by Nintendo. It was just -- oh yeah, you get in there and everything feels good. It's smooth, it's really accessible, the sound effects are really accessible.

Even the naming conventions -- I'd like to point out that I didn't call it "deathmatch" because I felt like [the term] "deathmatch" was too hardcore, perhaps. I called it "Slayer" instead, because I wanted it to be more broadly accessible as a naming convention, like [the Halo gametype] "Oddball."

Bungie had a tradition of that -- in the Myth series and so forth. There was a history of off-kilter stuff in the multiplayer gametypes.

HL: Yep. Absolutely, there was that tradition. So the two of us basically dove in to resurrect multiplayer. Michael made a set of tools for me so that I could create multiplayer maps that plug into the Halo toolset. It wasn't the full set of Halo tools and we didn't actually have a level artist, so a lot of the levels in Halo were me learning how to use 3D Studio Max.

(laughter)

Really?

HL: Yeah! I was like, "Oh, I wonder what happens if I use this extrude tool. Whoa! That opens up all new possibilities!" (laughter) Anyway, it was a very, very small team.

So I worked on Halo, I was a contributing level designer on Halo 2, and then I was the creative director for the SOCOM [U.S. Navy SEALs] series of games. I left Microsoft and I went over to Zipper Interactive.

That's interesting, because the SOCOM games were almost the counterpart to Halo in terms of being the big flagship multiplayer games for the PlayStation 2.

HL: It's true, yeah. Absolutely, absolutely.

In each one of those games, to kind of bring the conversation back around, in Halo and in the SOCOM series of games, encounter design and level design is very much about creating a basis for the encounters and then populating it with a bunch of different elements that are sort of randomly generated.

Every time you play Halo, if you were to play the same level or the same encounter three separate times, you're going to get different guys every time. And you're also going to get different guys depending on the difficulty setting. You can try that.

Next-generation development is more about saying, "OK, we have this bed, or this group, of elements," and you're really trying to conduct them more than you're necessarily trying to explicitly say, "I want this guy to run this way and this guy to run that way." I've spent a lot of time and experience trying to shape the random elements together to make something fun and interesting.

In terms of including all the crazy modes, Halo still does that more than most games -- although I imagine you guys were influenced by Unreal Tournament in that regard as well.

HL: Well, sure. With Halo, I can authoritatively say that we learned at the feet of Unreal how much value you can glean and get out of the ability to customize your own rules.

However, in terms of the overall fun play experience, I personally never got as much huge value out of weird, kind of custom rules so much as a really screamingly good map with kind of good fundamental weapons and some complexity to the combat model. You know, that it was sort of deep enough for me to be able to explore and enjoy. For me, that's so much that you can really sort of get into and plumb. Counter-Strike is the absolute opposite end of the spectrum, right?

Right.

HL: Counter-Strike is all about map customization, really not about game play customization. Love that. Just love it.

Then some games are sort of neither -- you've got Team Fortress 2, which is more, "We've whittled this down to a few really solid things that we think work. We're pretty confident you'll like this mode on this map, because you're going to be playing a lot." That seems to be working for them.

HL: I think, it is. Yes. It can work. It is interesting how modal that is. In other words, if you find TF2 to be to your taste and you like it, then you'll like it anyway. But, if not...

Right, you're kind of locked out.

HL: Exactly. You're kind of frozen out. So, I think, for that particular product, that strategy makes sense, because there's a proven history, and there's an audience out there of people who are sort of looking for that team based, class based game play model. But, yeah, with not wiggle room, you either love it or you don't love it. That's a little bit tough.

In single-player as well, that's Valve's design aesthetic, is to go for that highly authored experience -- but they're also doing Left 4 Dead, which has the dynamic spawning and all that.

HL: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. I should say, I worship the ground that Valve walks on. For me, their authored experiences are better than anybody in terms of creating and maintaining that amazing sense of location and feeling.

But, yes, a lot of games -- Halo, SOCOM, Far Cry -- are looking more at introducing those random elements so that it's [about] the fun set-ups. And really, so much of what comes out of this systemic approach in the single-player side in Far Cry 2, because it is so systemic, everyone's story ends up being incredibly unique and incredibly personal. You and I may have run into separate checkpoints, separate encounters, separate gunfights, and our personal story about what the weapons did or what the weather was or anything else, becomes personal.

GameSetNetwork: Best Of The Week

editors@gamesetwatch.com (Simon Carless) — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 08:00:41 -0800

Even though myself, Brandon Sheffield, and Christian Nutt have been representing Game Developer magazine and Gamasutra at Tokyo Game Show this week, various other crack operatives (Leigh, Chris, Eric) have been holding down the fort at big sister site Gamasutra, for which we thank them heartily!

Anyhow, the features put up this week on Gama span the gamut of neatness, including this year's Bad Game Designer, No Twinkie from Ernest Adams, a postmortem of last holiday season's Uncharted, a great editorial from Parappa's Masaya Matsuura (pictured), and a v.informative Microsoft-sponsored feature on how they certify Xbox 360 games (don't think they've gone into that much detail before).

Time to list links:

Next-Gen Audio Square-Off: PlayStation 3 vs. Xbox 360
"Next-gen's about more than graphics -- how about audio? Gamasutra discusses next-gen audio approaches on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 with Bungie, Naughty Dog, and the hardware creators."

Sponsored Feature: XNA Game Quality: The Certification Story
"In the latest Microsoft-sponsored article, part of the Gamasutra XNA microsite, Microsoft's Nick Bodenham, Andrew Donnelly, and Michael Steer lay out the processes that go into certifying Xbox 360 and Games for Windows releases."

The Designer's Notebook: Bad Game Designer, No Twinkie! IX
"Designer Ernest Adams is withholding the confections again, taking big design mistakes to task in this ninth installment of his seminal series."

Postmortem: Naughty Dog's Uncharted: Drake's Fortune
"Naughty Dog calls Uncharted their 'biggest and most complex' challenge yet, and shares successes and stumbles in this fascinating postmortem."

A Sense of Fun: Anybody Could Be Your Player 1
"In an impassioned opinion piece, seminal Parappa co-creator and 'father of music games' Matsuura talks about his hopes for the future of games as tangible experiences with positive feelings attached."

Afro Samurai's David Robinson: New Studio, New Problems, New Chances
"In this in-depth Gamasutra interview, we go inside Namco Bandai's internal U.S. development studio with senior producer David Robinson, discussing outsourcing and art direction for Afro Samurai."

[Want to get RSSed-up with all Think Services' game sites? Quick list, with WWW links after the RSSes, goes like this: GameSetWatch's RSS (editor.blog), IndieGames' RSS (indie.games), Fingergaming's RSS (iPhone.games), GamerBytes' RSS (console.downloads), Gamasutra's RSS (main.site), WorldsInMotion's RSS (online.worlds), and GameCareerGuide's RSS (game.edu.info).]

Opinion: 7 Deadly Sins For Strategy Games

editors@gamesetwatch.com (Simon Carless) — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 00:00:08 -0800

[In this enlightening opinion piece originally printed in Game Developer magazine, EA Maxis designer and former Firaxis (Civilization 4) lead designer Soren Johnson details seven common pitfalls that can hold back a strategy game, like overly aggressive anti-piracy measures and adding story in the wrong places.]

Amongst computer games, the strategy genre is one of the oldest and proudest, with a strong tradition, running from M.U.L.E. to Civilization to Starcraft and beyond. Nonetheless, certain design mistakes keep being made over and over again. Here are seven of the most common:

1. Too much scripting

Strategy games have a direct lineage from board games, and the fun of playing the latter comes from understanding the rules and mechanics of the game world and then making decisions that have consequence within that world. Computerized strategy games allow a single player to experience this same world on his or her own.

At some point, however, strategy developers began to create lengthy, scripted scenarios as the single-player portion of their games (In fact, the recent World in Conflict shipped without a single-player skirmish mode altogether). These scenarios have a peculiar feeling - they use some of the same rules as the core game while often violating others. The AI takes action depending not on its own development rate or strategic priorities but on whether the human has hit certain triggers.

In many scenarios, in fact, the human cannot even lose because -- when defeat approaches -- the script will freeze the AI and starting pumping in free units for the player. Further, these scenarios are often built around specific “objectives” to achieve, such as destroying a specific structure or capturing a single point.

This artificial environment takes decision-making away from the player. Not only is there only one path to victory, but the player’s performance along that path may not even matter. Games without interesting decisions get boring quickly.

Fortunately, some recent strategy games, such as Sins of a Solar Empire and Armageddon Empires, have returned to open-world, random-map gameplay -- without pre-set objectives or artificial triggers -- and are reminding us of the joy of cohesive and consistent strategy games.

2. Too much stuff

The temptation to pile extra units and buildings and whatnot onto to an already complete design is strong. Indeed, I have seen many developers describe games as simply a collection of stuff (”18 Weapons! 68 Monsters! 29 Levels!”).

This approach is wrong-headed. A game design is a collection of interesting decisions, and the “stuff” in the game is there not just to fill space but to let you execute decisions. Games can provide too few options for the player but -- more commonly -- games provide too many.

How many is just right? Obviously, there is no magic number, but it is possible to come up with a good rule-of-thumb for how many different options a player can keep in his or her mind before everything turns to mush.

Blizzard uses the number 12 to make sure their RTS’s don’t get too complex. StarCraft averaged 12 units per side. So did WarCraft 3 (not counting Heroes). And you can bet that StarCraft 2 is going to be in that neighborhood as well. In fact, Blizzard has already announced that, for the sequel, they will be removing some of the old units to make room for the new ones.

Players must be able to mentally track their in-game options at one time, and putting too many choices on the table makes it impossible to understand the possibility space.

3. Limited play variety

No matter how good your game, it is going to get stale after awhile. It’s unfortunate when a great game doesn’t take the few steps necessary so that players can change the settings to create alternate play experiences.

Company of Heroes is an incredible tactical RTS, a watershed moment for the genre - but the game allows neither Axis vs. Axis battles nor matches with more than two teams. This design choice may fit the fiction of WWII, but it significantly reduced the game’s play variety.

An example of an RTS that got this right is the Age of Empires series. Not only could you mix-and-match any combination of civilizations and players and teams, but you could also design your own map scripts.

I remember one interesting Age of Kings map that had almost no wood but tons of stone and gold, which turned the game’s economy upside-down. The game even allowed multiple players to control the same single civilization (one could control the military, the other the economy, for example). Thus, I’ve played 2-vs-3 games of AoK where the sides with 2 civs was actually controlled by 4 players (and, in fact, handily won the game!).

These simple variations probably doubled the life-span of AoK amongst my group of friends. Significantly, these options should be orthogonal to the game’s core mechanics -- they need to add variety without adding complexity.

4. Black box mechanics

Sometime during the late-90’s, around when Black & White was being developed, the concept of an interface-less game came into vogue. The idea was that interfaces were holding games back from larger, more mainstream audiences.

Ever since then, I have noticed a discernible trend to hide game mechanics from the player. Age of Kings shipped in 1999 with an incredible reference card listing every cost, value, and modifier in the game.

For modern RTS’s, however, it’s unusual if the manual actually contains numbers. I want to emphasize that the answer here is not to bathe the players in complicated mathematics in the name of transparency. Instead, designers should think of their interfaces as having two levels: a teaching level and a reference level.

The teaching level focuses on first-time players who need to know the basics, like how to build a tank and go kill the bad guys. The reference level should answer any question the player can think of about how a game mechanic works. It is perfectly fine, by the way, to put this info inside of a separate in-game resource, like the Civilopedia.

Rise of Legends implemented an interesting version of this two-interfaces idea. Most of the popup help in the game had an “advanced” mode that you could unlock by holding down a key, giving you significantly more details about the game’s underlying mechanics.

5. Locked code/data

Protecting your code and data is a very natural instinct -- after all, you may have spent years working on the project, developing unique features, pushing the boundaries of the genre. Giving away the innards of your game is a hard step for many developers, especially executives, to take.

Nonetheless, we released the game/AI source code for Civ 4 shortly after shipping, and -- so far -- the results have been fantastic. Three fan-made mods were included in the game’s second expansion pack -- Derek Paxton’s Fall from Heaven: Age of Ice, Gabriele Trovato’s Rhye’s and Fall of Civilization, and Dale Kent’s WWII: The Road to War -- and so far, these scenarios have been heralded as one of Beyond the Sword’s strongest features. These mods would have been nowhere near as deep or compelling (or even possible) if we had not released our source code.

For many PC developers, I’m preaching to the choir, so I’d like to be very clear that the problem is worst amongst strategy games. For whatever reason (perhaps the lack of a pioneering developer like id Software?), strategy developers have been much more closed off to modding than their shooter and RPG brethren.

There are exceptions, like Blizzard’s fantastic scenario editor for WarCraft 3, but by and large, strategy modders do not have many places to turn for platforms on which to work, which was one reason we felt compelled to focus on modding for Civ 4. Giving stuff away can feel good. It should also feel smart.

6. Anti-piracy paranoia

The damage that piracy does to our industry is impossible to calculate but also impossible to ignore. Few company heads can be as brave as Stardock’s Brad Wardell, who chose to leave out copy protection altogether for the Galactic Civilization series (They encourage paying customers by providing on-line updates to players with legitimate serial numbers.).

Having some sort of mechanism to stop casual piracy is a given in the industry, but what is not a given is the hoops companies will make their customers jump through just to be able to start the game. The most important question to ask is “will this added security layer actually increase our sales?”

A good place to be lenient, for example, is with local multi-player games -- in other words, can players without the CD join a multi-player game hosted by a legitimate copy. Starcraft let you “spawn” extra copies of the game that could only join local multi-player games.

Allowing unlimited LAN play was our unofficial policy for Civ 4 as well. The game does a disk check when opening the executable but not when you actually launch the game; thus, a group of 4 friends could just pass one disk around for local multiplayer games.

We do not believe players are willing to buy extra discs just for LAN parties, which are rare events. However, we would love for new players to be introduced to Civ in these environments, encouraged by their friends who are already fans. At some point, they are going to want to try single-player -- in which case, it is time for a trip down to the local retailer to buy their own copy.

7. Putting story in the wrong places

Story and games have a checkered history. Too many have suffered from boring cut-scenes, stereotyped characters, and plots that take control away from the player. Especially problematic are games which don’t let the player fast-forward through cringe-worthy dialogue.

The worst offense, however, is when a story gets stuck somewhere it really doesn’t belong. Like in a strategy game. After all, strategy games are the original games. Humans first discovered gameplay with backgammon and chess and go; it’s a noble tradition. The “story” in a strategy game is the game itself.

Picking a specific example, how much better of a game would Rise of Legends have been if Big Huge Games had given up on creating a story-based campaign and instead iterated on the excellent turn-based Conquer the World strategy layer from Rise of Nations? Ironically, the campaign mode was my favorite way to play RoL. I loved that you could only acquire technologies and advanced units on the strategic map between missions, which helped simplify the core RTS game.

However, I enjoyed the campaign in spite of the story, not because of it. The key point here is that, for the sake of chasing a story, Big Huge Games missed a big opportunity to match a great core RTS game with a simple, overarching strategy layer that could be infinitely replayable. They are not alone; almost every other RTS developer seems to be falling into the same trap, and it is time for this trend to stop.

Tokyo Game Show, Pictorially Speaking: Pt.2

editors@gamesetwatch.com (Simon Carless) — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 16:00:18 -0800

Time to load up with a second part of the Tokyo Game Show snaps. While you'll find plenty of pictures of megabooths and their smiling attendants on other blogs covering the show (and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that!), I'm generally trying to keep it more specific and quirkier for you good GSW readers.

For better or worse:

It's absolutely fascinating to me that the early U.S. RPG series from Sir-Tech, Wizardry, is still a cult favorite in the country, thanks to lots of Japanese-only instalments up to v.recently. Thus, this Wizardry T-shirt in the merchandising area.

Another sign of how gigantic Capcom's Monster Hunter series is in Japan, this particular cutesy armored cat (!) was promoting a Monster Hunter CCG, I believe. Stories in Akihabara were littered with merchandising for the series, too

Although somewhat ignored by the press, the student section of TGS -- essentially lots of game schools trying to get consumer day attendees to sign up -- is increasingly interesting in terms of weird, alternative and neat games (some of them made using XNA, interestingly.) This student title, called 'A Lot Of Broccoli' (?!), I just picked out because of the totally bizarre art.

Another piece of inspired merchandising, this Sega Mega Drive/Genesis bag is '16-bit' all the way. It was nice to see a few third-party licensed merchandise stalls like this, given that a number of the major publishers no longer have merchandise stands at TGS - only Square Enix and Capcom bothered this year, with no Namco or Konami appearances, aw.

TGS: Analysis - The State Of Sony, Microsoft... Nintendo?

editors@gamesetwatch.com (Simon Carless) — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 08:00:53 -0800

[Reporting from Tokyo Game Show, I took a look at the fortunes of the major console creators -- is TGS a bust or a boon for their fortunes in Japan and worldwide? Straightforward opinions and show floor impressions ensue...]

Looking over the 2008 Tokyo Game Show, one of the main factors an interested onlooker might consider is how the console manufacturers are handling the show. Both Microsoft and Sony, currently dueling for position in the worldwide market, sought a strong showing at TGS.

Sony needed to convince consumers that its recent loss to the Xbox 360 in the monthly Japanese sales charts was just a one-off. On the other hand, Microsoft needed to convince the assembled masses its momentum in the territory was not a flash in the pan. As for Nintendo -- well, we'll get to them a little later.

On Microsoft's Showing

Let's start with Microsoft. It laid out its agenda in John Schappert's first-day TGS keynote, which we've already covered at some length here on Gamasutra. The Halo 3: Recon announcement was important for the world stage, if not as much for the Japanese market. But on the show floor, its key titles were surprisingly Japan-centric and well-received.

Much of this has to do with Square Enix's high level of support for Microsoft's console, with The Last Remnant and a beautiful-looking Star Ocean: The Last Hope both playable at its large booth. Then there's Final Fantasy XIII, this year confirmed for Microsoft's console but nowhere to be seen. And with Namco Bandai's Tales Of Vesperia the key recent hardware-mover for the company, Xbox 360's Japanese support is becoming wide and surprisingly deep.

Take Capcom's Resident Evil 5, for example, a massively important title, and the first series entry on a Microsoft console. In addition, Koei's Gundam Musou 2 will also be appearing on the Xbox 360, and From Software's Ninja Blade looks particularly promising.

Street Fighter IV also made a high-profile appearance at Microsoft's booth in lush form, and the niche shooter community is starting to become heavily supported thanks to titles such as Raiden IV and Death Smiles.

Relatively few of these titles are guaranteed to be Microsoft-exclusive over time -- most of the larger ones are likely to appear on PlayStation 3 at some point. But as the company has found, getting companies to launch their former Sony-only franchises on Microsoft's console as well is a massive equalizer for consumers -- as demonstrated by Namco's revelation that Tekken 6 will appear on Xbox 360.

And the firm is still producing Xbox 360 exclusives to help differentiate its console further. Some are with niche developers on the otaku end of the chain.

But those that exist higher up the ladder, such as Ninety-Nine Nights II, confirmed at the press conference, may be further reasons for Japanese consumers to get excited about Microsoft's console. The care given to resurrect Japanese retro titles on Xbox Live Arcade is well-appreciated, too.

One probably wouldn't argue that Microsoft is winning the battle in Japan. Rather, the company has muscled its way into a significant install base worldwide -- and now Japanese companies are releasing their expensively-produced titles across multiple platforms out of global necessity. It's definitely getting Microsoft somewhere.

On Sony's Showing

Sony held no press conference to showcase its titles, but its show-floor presence is imposing and impressive, with LittleBigPlanet the key title with which it's hoping to impress the Japanese public this holiday season.

The company's worldwide devotion to the game's Sackboy protagonist is advertised by a massive globe featuring him, as well as a large puppet version of the character interacting with the presenters of the theater show at the TGS Sony booth. Plus, of course, there's a LBP-specific PS3 hardware bundle debuting this holiday season in Japan.

It will be interesting to see if the title resonates with the Japanese, given the paucity of Western experiences that have sold significantly well in the territory. However, if anyone has previously managed to make the transition, it's been Sony. For example, mascot-style platformers such as Ratchet & Clank have sold well in Japan (possibly thanks to extra eyebrows).

Browsing Sony's brochure for the show after visiting its booth, it is notable that Western titles such as Resistance 2, Killzone 2, SOCOM: Confrontation, and MotorStorm's sequel are given high billing, appearing as double-page spreads up front in the brochure ahead of many notable Japanese titles.

Why so? Well, with so many third-parties going multi-platform with major titles, Sony may want to accentuate its exclusives above otherwise great games that are now multiplatform -- even if the exclusives may not be spectacularly suited to the Japanese market.

This is significantly different to the approach taken by Microsoft, which is happy to make noise about projects that are coming to the Xbox 360 for the first time.

Extrapolating on these trends, Sony seems to be building its exclusives much more for the larger world market, in particular the the North American and European territories that share similar tastes to one another, compared to Japan -- which does not.

This observation may be unduly inflated by the fact that there seem to be major Japanese-created exclusive titles that are in development but are simply not yet ready to be revealed, save a few outliers like Level 5's White Knight Chronicles, From Software's Demon's Souls, and the thus-far PS3-exclusive Yakuza 3.

And let's not forget the PSP, which features some strong, quirky first-party titles like LocoRoco 2 and Patapon 2.

Few high-end PS3 third-party titles are showing outside of Sony's booth, but there is a gigantic number of PSP games elsewhere on the show floor, from Dissidia: Final Fantasy to Level 5's new game Ushiro, with the portable system seemingly rivaling the DS in its quantity of high-profile Japan-centric releases.

On Nintendo's Showing?

Nintendo has of course historically chosen not to exhibit its hardware or first-party games at Tokyo Game Show, often preferring to hold its own events (such as the now-defunct SpaceWorld of years past), as it did when announcing the DSi earlier this month.

Nintendo's worldwide hardware sales dominance is not currently in doubt, even with some regional variance (the PSP is performing very well compared to the Nintendo DS in Japan at the moment). The company's lack of presence notwithstanding, there is a plethora of Wii and DS titles on show, notable at this relatively "core gamer"-focused event.

And with announcements such as No More Heroes 2 timed for TGS, Yuji Naka's charming recently-announced Let's Tap for Wii, and Phantasy Star on DS just a few of the show floor standouts, there is plenty of third-party goodness to see here for Nintendo's consoles -- not least of all Monster Hunter 3, which moved from PlayStation 3 to Wii after its initial announcement. Youch.

Plus, for the first time I can recall in recent memory, there are Nintendo characters on the TGS show floor. They may have just been Animal Crossing-, Pikmin-, and Mario-themed plush toys made available for sale by a third party in the merchandising area, but hey -- it's better than nothing, right?

Best Of Indie Games: Goo Balls, Oh My

editors@gamesetwatch.com (timw) — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 00:00:07 -0800

[Every week, IndieGames.com: The Weblog editor Tim W. will be summing up some of the top free-to-download and commercial indie games from the last seven days, as well as any notable features 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 latest version include two physics-based puzzlers and three platformer with different themes - avoid losing all your lives, kill yourself and travel back in time repeatedly.

Game Pick: 'World of Goo' (2D Boy, commercial indie)
"The award-winning World of Goo is finally out for the Windows platform, with a WiiWare release coming next week. 2D Boy's debut release has been getting plenty of rave reviews, and with all the good reasons - fun, engaging, charming and addictive."

Game Pick: 'Tumbledrop' (dock, browser)
"A physics-based puzzler created by Hayden Scott-Baron, a character artist whose work can be seen in the recent WiiWare release LostWinds. Much like Gabriel Ochsenhofer's Totem Destroyer, the goal of the game is to get the pink star down to the island in each stage without dropping it in the sea."

Game Pick: 'Karoshi Suicide Salaryman' (Jesse Venbrux, browser)
"A Flash implementation of the popular platformer series, where players must once again find unorthodox methods to assist our suit-wearing protagonist commit suicide."

Game Pick: 'Love' (Fred Wood, freeware)
"Not to be confused with Eskil Steenberg's similarly-titled MMO, Fred Wood's twenty-level platformer is now available as a free 30 MB download - no strings attached. If you love (no pun intended) frustrating platformers in the style of messhof's Punishment series then this is the right game for you."

Game Pick: 'Temporal' (Oren Bartal, freeware)
"A time-bending platformer in the style of Braid and The Adventures of P.B. Winterbottom. The game involves guiding a confused robot from one room to another, with subtle instructions on solving puzzles provided by a talking technological processing unit."

Column: 'The Interactive Palette' - No Quit Without Saving

editors@gamesetwatch.com (Gregory Weir) — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 16:00:21 -0800

['The Interactive Palette' is a biweekly GameSetWatch 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.]

The ability to save is a given among modern video games, but there doesn't seem to be a save system that can satisfy everyone. As players, we want to be able to save and resume our games at any point. For many, even save points are too restrictive; PC gamers are used to quicksaving, which allows the player to save every five seconds in fear of failure.

And that's the downside of saving, really. While it means that players can exit the game without losing progress, it also means that player failure — as well as player choice &mdash holds less weight. Playing Half-Life 2 can turn into an exercise of frequent quicksaves, where taking too much damage or becoming overrun can be reversed by loading the save made just seconds before.

In this environment, messing up doesn't matter for longer than five seconds, and important decisions can be trivially reversed, meaning that there's little consequence for poor strategy and little impact for momentous decisions. Imagine the cliche where a protagonist is presented with two identical allies, and must shoot the impostor. There's little urgency in the situation if the player knows she can just quickload if she makes the wrong decision.

Checkpoint-based save systems seem like an attempt to address this, but they really just make mistakes and choices more inconvenient to reverse at the cost of limiting the player's ability to save and exit the game at any time. Persistent-world multiplayer games often address the issue by eliminating saving and permanent death altogether, but this is hard to apply to most single-player games.

However, there is a rare approach that allows saving at any time while also making the player's choices and actions important and irreversible. It's the approach taken by TaleWorlds' recently-released game Mount&Blade, and it can be used in any game that would benefit from stronger consequences for a player's actions.

The Leftovers of War

Mount&Blade is a game that simulates medieval warfare in the fictional but magic-free land of Calradia. In an open world, the player character can recruit huge armies, trade goods, and engage in battles with up to 100 combatants on the field at once. The game has detailed mounted combat and a deep combat and character advancement system. The world would not be as immersive, though, if not for the game's save system.

When the player creates a new character, she has an option of two save systems. One is called "Realistic! No Quit Without Saving!" In this mode, the game is automatically saved after most events and when the player quits. Upon returning to a character, the saved game is loaded. It's impossible (or at least difficult) to load a save to reverse a mistake or choice.

This approach isn't unique, of course. The Wizardry series, many Rogue-like games, and recent indie game Depths of Peril offer similar options, among other works. However, Mount&Blade is special because it allows major player failure while not erasing the player's progress when failure occurs.

In Mount&Blade, failure is common. If the player character falls in battle, entire armies can be lost, and towns can be razed by bandits. Failing to complete a quest can lower the PC's reputation or alienate team members, and characters remember and comment on failures in battle. Death, however, never occurs. When the PC's entire army is defeated, the PC is captured, and must escape or bribe her captors to be set free.

This means that the player must think carefully about her strategy and her decisions, because they will have lasting consequences. The player will never lose hours of game time, though, because the player character never dies. She may lose money, followers, and reputation, but those can eventually be recovered, and earned experience and learned skills persist.

Victory is Yours

This is where the balance of Mount&Blade is struck. The player can fail, placing the PC in a very unpleasant position, and can greatly affect the game world with her choices. However, the player can never fail badly enough to earn a final "GAME OVER" with no way to recover.

In Depths of Peril, failure is no big deal. If the PC dies, she's resurrected in her covenant base with only a small cost of experience and power. This means that death holds little weight in the game. There is an overarching game of covenant rivalry, but it is very long-term compared to typical gameplay. Therefore, the "no quit without saving" technique doesn't help with the issue of making player choice more significant.

On the other end of the spectrum, Wizardry 8's Ironman mode emulates the saving system of Rogue-like games, which is fiendishly cruel. Not only are these games difficult to begin with, and not only can you not save, but character death results in the deletion of the saved game. Yes, this makes the player care about her choices, but at the cost of high difficulty and frustration. Some players enjoy the challenge, but most would find it unforgivably harsh.

Mount&Blade's approach results in a game which challenges the player and punishes failure, but doesn't ever erase hours of progress by deleting saved games. This helps with making the game world seem more real; just as in real life, mistakes can happen, and choices are irreversible. Each decision the game offers feels important, even with the game's lack of a set storyline and open world.

This technique can be applied to any game which provides a wide degree of player choice. Saving periodically and prohibiting reloading in the middle of a play session means that the player's actions and decisions can't be undone. However, to avoid alienating players who aren't seeking a cruel difficulty level, the negative consequences of failure can't be game-ending. A game could put "dead" characters in the hospital for a length of in-game time, or have the characters captured like Mount&Blade does. Games without combat will have an easier time of this, as character death can likely be eliminated entirely. However, players' actions should still have meaning, and mistakes can be punished in other ways.

Mount&Blade's approach to saving and failure would be appropriate in any game which aims to make players carefully consider their decisions, and where the gameplay is not so much a skill challenge as an experience in crafting a unique story. It focuses the freedom of an open-world game so that each action feels important and permanent.

[Gregory Weir is a writer, amateur game developer, 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.]

Design Lesson 101 - Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway

editors@gamesetwatch.com (Manveer Heir) — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 08:00:34 -0800

['Design Lesson 101' is a regular column by game designer Manveer Heir. The goal is to play a game from start to completion and learn something about game design in the process. This week we take a look at the latest installment in Gearbox's World War II series, Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway.]

Brothers in Arms is a series I've always enjoyed, thanks to its mix of first-person action and strategic gameplay. Being able to order squads of infantry to suppress and flank opponents in order to get the drop on them was always satisfying for me, and I enjoyed that change in formula from the rest of the run-and-gun shooters that were prevalent at the time.

What made the series so different for me was the requirement to stay hidden to survive. Most shooters you can run and strafe to kill enemies, but not Brothers in Arms. You had to crouch behind cover and choose your spots carefully to kill the enemy. A full-frontal assault was suicide.

Since the original game came out in 2005, much has changed in the world of shooters. Specifically, Gears of War popularized the cover-mechanic that many shooters are now using. As is natural with any good series, Gearbox has attempted to adapt the Brothers in Arms series to these new changes by adding a cover system.

However, instead of adding to the experience of the game, I found this cover mechanic to detract from the core gameplay that made the original game so much fun. It isn't because a cover system was implemented; rather, it's how the cover system was implemented in this first-person shooter.

Design Lesson: Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway implements its cover system using the third-person perspective, which changes how players approach the combat situations in the game and makes the game feel more disjointed.

The problem with going back and forth between a third-person and first-person camera is the transition between them. If you pop the camera to the new view instantly, the player may have a tough time grounding themselves into exactly where they are standing and which way they are facing. Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway gets around this by interpolating the camera between the two views.

This makes the transition a little better to stomach. However, while I knew exactly where I was at all times I found myself playing the game very differently than before. Being in third-person means there is no more aiming down the ironsights of the gun. Most shooters today have ironsights, and firing down them is more accurate but usually harder to see.

Instead, you get a zoom while behind cover, which gives you all the benefit of ironsights without any of the penalty. That may seem great, but it fundamentally changed the way I attacked many combat scenarios.

Normally, in the original Brothers in Arms I would use one team to suppress the enemy so they wouldn't move from their cover. Then, I would move to the flank with the other team and pop out and kill them rather easily. Usually I would go into ironsights quickly, to get a couple accurate shots off, then go back to hiding behind cover.

In Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway, I could easily pick off guys from a far distance thanks to the third-person view of the enemy and the perfect crosshair. So, instead of constantly flanking enemies I found myself going to cover and using my rifle zoomed in from behind cover to pick enemies off.

If I was having trouble, I would use the squads to suppress the enemy, so I could advance alone. Rarely would I actually attack the flank with the squads or even on my own. Instead, I just aimed for the little bit of head that popped up and moved closer if necessary. This took away some of the strategy that I enjoyed so much in the original, and it's due to the fact that aiming and shooting in the third-person perspective was far too easy.

Another issue with the changing camera perspectives is the fact that the game wants you to be at cover at all times. If you are not at cover, you are most likely going to die fast. So, the majority of the game you are actually in third-person not first-person.

You can actually determine what view you are in by what your actions are. If you are moving, you are in first-person most likely. If you are in combat, you are in third-person. Since most of the game has you in combat (this is a shooter after all), you probably will see more of the third-person view than the first-person. By implicitly separating actions with views, the game feels disjointed at times.

It makes me wonder why even include the first-person perspective. It adds little to the game, if the game is best played from third-person. It doesn't make the game more immersive, since you are constantly being pulled out of the characters eyes when you go to cover. The ironsights don't add more to the game, because you won't use them that often.

To me, third-person is the wrong way to go for this series. It has always been about the visceral nature of war, and I feel that is best expressed through first-person in most games. The original games proved the formula works very well.

A cover system is important, but it's possible to implement that cover system in first-person. The core strategy for winning at the game would not have changed if this were the case. The aesthetic feel of the game on a moment-by-moment basis would have remained unified and also matched the previous games in the series.

In my mind, this would have been the better approach. The game felt too much like I was doing my own thing and the squads were just there along for the ride, than being an integral part of gameplay. This makes the game feel like other World War II shooters and not like a unique franchise.

Changing camera angles on a regular basis is not a good idea, in my opinion. Find the best perspective for your game and go with that the whole time if possible. Sure, it makes sense to go third-person for the vehicle level, but don't change camera perspectives on the player every 30 seconds. Hopefully, the next installment to the Brothers in Arms series can fix this flaw.

[Manveer Heir is currently a game designer at Raven Software. He updates his design blog, Design Rampage, regularly. He is interested in thoughtful critique and commentary on the gaming industry.]

Tokyo Game Show, Pictorially Speaking: Pt.1

editors@gamesetwatch.com (Simon Carless) — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 00:00:55 -0800

While I'm running around to various appointments, keynotes, and other strangeness at Tokyo Game Show, I have been taking a few pictures of the show, which I shall be apportioning out regularly until, well, there are none left.

This batch mainly covers the business day at the show, plus a quick run around the various keynotes on the first day. Shazam:

Possibly the most adorable example of Japanese photo controlfreakery thus far, you were allowed to take pictures of the speaker and his slides in the Microsoft keynote, but not just the slides. Oh... kay?

LittleBigPlanet (watch for an editorial from me soon about it) was the center of the Sony booth at TGS, and they had this big (10ft tall?) globe with a Sackboy on top of it - v.cute.

We interviewed Takahashi Meijin on Gamasutra recently, and here he is at the Hudson merchandising booth, plugging his '16-Shot' gadget, which trains you on, yes, pressing the controller button as fast as you can. Hee.

Apparently, Spelunker is famous in Japan for being really difficult/annoying, but selling really well on Famicom. Irem is bringing it back for PSN, sure - but Spelunker vinyl toys? Really? Boggle.