Hello, WordPress! This is Joseph Cassano (although my username is JPLC). This post is just to inform any new readers that this blog actually exists (and has existed for a while) in two other locations: Blogger (where my username is also JPLC) and LiveJournal (where my username is jplc). This WordPress version will be similar to the other versions in that it will have the same content, essentially acting as just a mirror (except maybe in rare occasions). One day, I may choose just one place to mull over the multiverse from, but as of now I do it from three locations (just to recap): here, Blogger, and LiveJournal. However, as of writing this, I still consider the Blogger location to be the primary location. Take that as you will. Regardless, to get a feel of things here, just read through the older posts. I’ve made an introduction once already; no need to make one again.

Also, in an unrelated matter, in my previous post (the one about console video game archival), I stated that I had also posted it on gaming news site Gamasutra in my free Member Blog. Well, it seems that it was a wise thing for me to do: the post netted me a lifetime subscription to Gamasutra’s sister publication, Game Developer Magazine! You see, every week the Gamasutra staff collects stand-out Member Blogs of that week and makes a post about it (this week’s post can be found here). Out of the ones they choose, though, only one is selected as their favourite, and to the person who wrote that post they give the aforementioned subscription. In this week’s case, mine is apparently the favourite! I am deeply grateful and I am looking forward to receiving my first issue; it has been quite some time since I’ve had a subscription to a gaming magazine.

So, yeah, this is basically just a "state-of-the-blog" post. The next one should be actually about something (whenever I decide to post). Stay tuned…?

Para melhorar o desempenho dos alunos norte-americanos e estimular o progresso das áreas de Ciências, Tecnologia, Engenharia e Matemática (STEM), Barack Obama convocou grandes editoras de games e instituições ligadas à indústria do entretenimento para integrar o programa “Educar para Inovar”. Obama divulgou, nesta segunda-feira, que o investimento será de US$ 4,35 bilhões. Mas segundo a revista Wired,  a parceria com empresas privadas pode adicionar ao fundo cerca de US$ 260 milhões.

Reconhecendo o poder pedagógico dos jogos eletrônicos para crianças e adolescentes, empresas como a Sony, Entertainment Software Association (ESA) e Fundação MacArthur se uniram ao governo para lançar uma série de ações competitivas na área de design para games.

Dois concursos nacionais serão implementados em 2010:

• O Game Changers compõe a próxima edição do Digital Media and Learning Competition, da Fundação MacArthur, que já vem aplicando ações inovadoras no processo de aprendizado, ao utilizar jogos eletrônicos, redes sociais e celulares. A Sony e a Fundação MacArthur, em parceria com a ESA e ITI, apoiam a competição que consiste na criação de um novo jogo, baseado nos princípios do STEM, que utilizará as ferramentas colaborativas do game LittleBigPlanet. Além disso, a Sony doará mil PlayStations 3 e cópias do seu título, para  bibliotecas e organizações comunitárias de locais com baixa renda.

“Na educação de hoje, as crianças desenvolvem talentos ao  jogar videogame. Resolução de problemas, pensamento estratégico e  flexibilidade são os tipos de habilidades que  os adultos vão precisar para ter sucesso no século XXI”, comenta Dean Garfield, presidente e CEO do Conselho de Tecnologia da Informação (ITI).

• Novamente juntas, a ITI e ESA lançam o STEM National Videogame Competition, em parceria com Joan Ganz Cooney Center de Sesame Workshop, Games for Change e E-Line Ventures. O objetivo é desafiar crianças e adolescentes no desenvolvimento de ideias para jogos baseados em navegação de sites e com abordagem nas áreas de Ciência, Tecnologia, Engenharia e Matemática. Os vencedores recebem US$ 300 mil e seus jogos serão utilizados nas salas de aula.  O anúncio sobre a competição acontecerá no início de 2010, com a apresentação das regras e procedimentos de inscrição. Os vencedores serão anunciados na exposição E3 2010, em junho. Outras quatro parcerias foram anunciadas, entre elas, com a Warner, Discovery e Vila Sésamo.

Fonte: prnewswire.com, gamasutra.com e wired.com
Imagem: whitehouse.gov e playstation.com

o Gamasutra deu na semana passada que a Sony quer vender 13 milhões de PlayStations 3 no ano fiscal 2009. bom, com a notícia do G1 de hoje, fica fácil:

A força aérea dos Estados Unidos encomendou 2,2 mil consoles PlayStation 3 da Sony. A intenção é criar um supercomputador barato capaz de realizar processamento de dados com a mesma eficiência das máquinas usadas pelas forças armadas do país.

Os videogames serão ligados em rede e serão utilizados para o processamento de dados de imagens de radar em alta resolução e vídeos e ajudarão na pesquisa de “computação neuromórfica”, um novo tipo de circuito de computador que imita arquiteturas neurobiológicas.

Os consoles serão enviados diretamente para o laboratório de pesquisa da força aérea americana onde serão conectados aos 336 que fazem parte do sistema.

Scribblenauts, despite its flaws, is still one of the best, most innovative games to come out this year.  In a post release discussion with Gamasutra Joseph Tringali sat down to talk about some of the issues that they had with the game.  The biggest part of the discussion dealt with the controls, which they have said were not as good as they would have liked. 

“We still feel stylus control was the correct decision for Scribblenauts. The DS is a casual platform by design and allowing non-gamers the ease of use of a pencil-like system for a game targeted at everyone over a D-pad only scheme was overall the best choice. But in retrospect; our implementation of those controls was only at 50 percent of where it needed to be.”

They went on to talk about how they knew it needed to be changed, but in the end they just ran out of time to implement a change to the controls.  The article also talks about localizing the game into a number of different languages.

“We delivered Scribblenauts in English, French, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, German, Italian, Dutch, U.K.-English, Danish, Finnish, Swedish and Norwegian. We had unique dictionaries for every language, and these word lists were constantly being updated. Version control became a nightmare as we tracked dozens of files for both dictionary files and word lists.”

All in all it’s a really interesting read that you should check out.  And if you haven’t played the game you should check it out.  Despite some issues with the controls, it is one of the better releases of the year.

Source: Gamasutra

Os últimos meses do ano sempre foram os mais aguardados pela  indústria de jogos eletrônicos, para lançar seus novos títulos. Porém, uma  análise feita pelo site Gamasutra mostra que, em 2009, algumas editoras de games, em função da crise econômica, estão começando a investir em uma nova estratégia de marketing: postergar seus lançamentos para o primeiro trimestre de 2010. Assim, os consumidores adquirem os games não somente pelas férias, mas para jogar ao longo do ano.

De acordo com o site especializado, os editores não confirmam a notícia, mas empresas como a Ubisoft, Blizzard, Take Two e Sega têm planos para adiar seus lançamentos. O presidente da Sega, Mike Hayes, comunicou previamente que o resultado de uma análise de mercado levou a editora a considerar que 2010 será o momento ideal para maximizar o potencial de Bayonetta (Xbox 360/ Playstation 3).

A Take Two Interactive segue a mesma estratégia com Mafia II, lançamento previsto para o primeiro semestre de 2010; enquanto a Activison Blizzard anuncia o título de Singularity para março de 2010; e a Ubisoft confirma Tom Clancy´s Splinter Cell: Conviction para 23 de fevereiro.

Fontes: www.gamasutra.com,
Imagem: www.framebuffer.com.br

So this past week I had a very sobering conversation on path of my career with a fantastic instructor of mine who has a ton of industry experience, Net-net, I need to decide whether I’ll be a coder or an artist. Not because I was good at one or the other, but simply the fact of time to learn the plethora of tools, technologies and game engines out there just doesn’t exist. He also illuminated that the program I’m in isn’t geared toward creating game developers, but rather environment artists and game asset creators.  Yikes!  I wanted to learn everything so I could be in super demand after I graduated but now it seems I have to focus more on the modeling front.  I don’t have a huge problem with this.

Here’s the kicker though – I’m in the one year certificate program and he let me know that’s just not enough time to create a kick-ass demo reel.  THIS I have a problem with. Now I need to re-evaluate not only my focus, but my graduation date and hence, the date I get a job.  Not cool given I have a family.

I think I barely scratched the surface in my convo with my instructor and need to dive more deeply into it, working out every little painstaking detail. Yeah, this is where sweating the small stuff really counts. You can throw you’re own cliche’ in here too.

I’m also having a great discussion on what is a game designer versus a game developer and who’s the one that gets final say on what gets put into a game.  Check it out here.

Take the poll below and make a stand – game dev or game designer?

Gamasutra just posted up an interesting article which examines the game completion rates of the top 13 Xbox360 titles being played on XBL for 2008. Go ahead and check out the article for details, but the general idea is that the majority of people never finish the single player portion of the game in this day and age.

The data was tracked utilizing achievements, and broken down in two aspects:

% of players / % of achievements gained for a game
% of players / % completion of the game in itself

For those unfamiliar with how achievements work, here’s a basic summary. Developers integrate achievements which are objectives/milestones that the game will track and once unlocked, will add to your overall gamerscore. Some can be based off of optional objectives, such as “get 500 headshots with the pistol”, where upon shooting 500 people in the head with a pistol will result in your unlocked achievement, and a few points added to your overall gamerscore. You can very well finish a game, and never get 500 headshots, which is something that may be above and beyond the normal gameplay scope for some gamers. Other games on the 360 will contain achievements that will naturally unlock as you play, such as your standard “finish chapter x”, which upon clearing said chapter of the game will unlock.

Since Microsoft has access to the account of every gamer, they can easily track the progress of each gamer, how many achievements they’ve unlocked, their gamerscore, etc The article features data provided by Microsoft, which points out games like Call of Duty, that contain achievements for finishing the last chapter of the title. By aggregating achievement data from a source of about 14,000 gamers, they are able to develop a percentage of players who have made it to a certain point in the campaign. Long story short, if you never unlocked that “cleared the final chapter of the game”, then you obviously never finished the game, even if you nabbed that 500 headshots achievement.

Percent Completion of Achivements via Gamasutra

Keep in mind, the difference between completing a game from a achievement perspective, and from a storyline/campaign perspective. You can completely finish a game, but not get all of the achievements. The question they have poised, is why players never finish the storyline portion of a video game. There are hundreds of factors that can lead to a gamer not completely finishing a game, so there’s no right answer here, only hypothesis. I’ll take a stab at why I think people don’t finish a storyline.

I’ll base my theories on the games featured in study, which are: Call of Duty 4, Halo 3, Gears of War 2, Gears of War, Fable 2, Call of Duty: World at War, Battlefield: Bad Company, GTA IV, Rainbow Six Vegas

Percent Completion of Campaign via Gamasutra

Based on the list of titles in this study, I would assume that the issue lies within the strong push for a multiplayer focus as opposed to the campaign. I honestly don’t think the difficulty in any of these titles is enough to stop a person from playing or finishing the campaign. The other factor for some of these may simply be boredom. Let’s examine on a title by title basis.

Call of Duty 4
I would attribute not finishing the campaign for this title to the multiplayer experience. All of the achievements for this game focused on the single player aspect of the game, and as  huge fan of this campaign, I played through and grabbed all 1,000 points available. I do however, have a decent amount of friends who never finished, let alone played the campaign and went straight to the multiplayer component. Let’s rule out boredom, because this game had anything but that as a factor, in my opinion.

Deciding Factor: Multiplayer

Halo 3
I would like to think that the majority of people playing Halo 3 didn’t actually play the first or second installments for the franchise. That being said, there could have been little incentive to play through and finish the campaign. Add in the fact that a newcomer to the Halo series would have a substantial level of trouble following the story here, and you’ve got yourself a formula for putting the campaign segment on the sidelines. Multiplayer for this title is pretty heavy as well.

Deciding Factor: Multiplayer (secondary – little incentive to finish the campaign)

Gears of War 2
The campaign for this guy was lackluster, but entertaining. I wouldn’t go as far as saying that boredom could have been a factor here, but I’ll chalk this one up to the multiplayer being the focus as well. I know a few folks that just weren’t interested in finishing the campaign.

Deciding Factor: Multiplayer

Gears of War
When Gears first came on the scene, the campaign was a breeze, and I blew through it over co-op. However, word on the street was that the multiplayer was so damn fun, that everyone should be playing that. I’d rule out boredom because it was a great new IP, and everyone I know enjoyed it for the most part.

Deciding Factor: Multiplayer

Fable 2
I never finished Fable, so I don’t know what to tell you for this one. I will say that quite a few people loved playing the campaign, however there is so much to do in the game, that many were enjoying their time in Albion, and before having the chance to finish it, they simply moved onto other games. In my biased opinion, I became bored pretty fast, and my game was also buggier than the sketchy caves in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Remember that part of the movie? Yeah…that’s a lot of bugs.

Deciding Factor: Time investment vs other games (possible boredom as a secondary factor)

Call of Duty: World at War
World at War was obviously riding the coat tails of Modern Warfare, and I would assume most people picked this up and went straight into the multiplayer. My cousin plays this all the time, but hasn’t made it 3 chapters into the campaign. Another guy on my friends list has 0 achievements unlocked for anything single player related. I never finished it because I simply wasn’t interested. However, that’s just my own perspective. That being said…

Deciding Factor: Multiplayer

Battlefield: Bad Company
Never played this, and never wanted to. From what I can tell in the press,  reviews, etc. the core focus of this game was in the multiplayer as well.

Deciding Factor: Multiplayer

GTA IV
This game I am putting in the same category as Fable. There is simply a ton to do, so it’s understandable that people won’t actually make it to the end. I think the surprise here is that it’s such a popular game, and with the amount of people playing, such a low percentage actually completed the game. I’ll go out on a limb here and say that I hated GTA IV. It bored me to death, and screw finishing the game, I didn’t make it past the first 4 driving missions before thinking it was a waste of time.

Deciding Factor: Too much to do, and boredom

Rainbow Six Vegas
I’m chalking this one straight up to being boring. This campaign sucked, and I was really looking forward to it. I spent most of my time in terrorist hunt. Multiplayer is fine and all, but I saw about 2 people on my friends list that even played this game. When they were playing, it was terrorist hunt as well.

Deciding Factor: Boring

————————————–

So there you have it folks. My opinion as to why people aren’t finishing these games. There was a time where I could only afford to invest in one game every other month or so. So please believe I finished everything I had. Case in point, if you hop over into my collection tab at the top, you’ll see a ton of Playstation games. Up until my acquisition of the Xbox 360, I finished every single game I ever owned. Take a look at a few of my more recent posts, and you’ll see that I have a huge backlog of games that I haven’t yet played, or never finished. I think the issue might be that quality of a game might factor into not finishing it, as does the sheer amount of games that make it out the door these days is insane. Sure, production value and all of those fantastic HD games are great, but the key component to gaming is having fun. If a game can’t keep you engaged enough to warrant finishing a title, then what’s the point of putting it out? If you’re going to take that route, and you still want people to play, then your multiplayer functionality is going to be your saving grace.

Any other ideas as to why people aren’t finishing current generation games? Feel free to comment and share your thoughts.

So, I guess I’m not anywhere near my RL def cap. Might be that I’m BM specced IRL and I don’t need a bloody def cap! Might just be that I’m kind of clumsy, too. Or might just be the RNG boss critting me.

I was washing dishes last Monday (I know, so long ago!) night right before bed and there was (unbenknownst to me) a broken glass in the sink. One bone-deep slash down the inside of my thumb, two bloody dish towels, one nearly fainting Significant Other, four hours in the Emergency room and three stitches later, I’m trying to drive myself back home through a terrible rainstorm in the wee hours of the morning and thinking that it’s a damn good thing it’s our week off raiding cause I won’t be able to play WoW for a while. (I also got the tetanus shot buff. Thankfully they’ve changed to tooltip from the last time I got it. “Tetanus shot now applied discreetly in the arm.” is such an improvement.)

I’ve always had a morbid fear of losing the use of my hands. It’s likely because so much of my life as I know it is tied up in the use of my hands – I’m a gamer, a writer, a craftsperson. (It’s also highly influenced by cultural attitues towards disability – but that’s more than I can tackle right here, right now.) I could likely still end up doing quite a few things in my chosen field if I became permanently disabled, but if I intended to continue to pursue my hobbies, I would have to make some series changes. It’s easy for me – from my temporarily able-bodied place of privledge – to not really think about these things. I don’t have to worry about how I’m going to manage to raid, to write my notes at work, to be able to properly dress and groom myself. Something that I had always academically realized but never viscerally understood -that my able bodied status is something that I both take for granted and something that could be revoked very easily – was re-emphasized to me this week.

I have often stated (indeed a large portion of the blog is based on the assumption) that “gamers” are people too. That the label is no longer one applied to pale-skinned, poorly socialized doods living in basements and consuming vast amounts of processed foods. I am a gamer. My better half is a gamer. Many of my very best friends are gamers and we represent a pretty accurate sampling of the variations of humanity. (Well, some of them. We’re all from a pretty small range of socio-economic classes.) So it stands to reason that there would be people of all ranges of ability who would also identify as gamers and my injury prompted me to wonder what the gaming industry was doing to make sure that the dollars of people with disabilities were as well spent as the next person’s. (I’m not going to be so naive as to say that game developers should be accomodating people with disabilities due to some altruistic notions. It would be a wonderful world if they did – but it’s not and they don’t. Approximately 20% of the general population is disabled in some form or another, so it’s a sensible assumption that a company would in some way want to try to capture a portion of that market niche.)

I know that Blizz had recently come out with a colour blind setting. Poking around on Able Gamers I saw that there was general approval for Blizzard and their efforts to make the game more acessable. (I also like this suggestion by Gamasutra of having a “sound radar” available for people with hearing difficulties.) Bizz looks like they’re making taking to the community of gamers with disabilities a priority – I was very interested to read this interview of Tom Chilton aka Kalgan by Able Gamers. It makes me very happy to see Able Gamers getting a lot of very good face time with some higher-ups at Blizzcon. This particular interview does open up some good conversations about how to balance the game in terms of difficult level that will challenge and engage players of all play styles as well as being inclusive towards gamers with disabilities.

I’m glad to see Blizz taking an interest in making their game appealing to an ever wider demographic. I know that this is often bemoaned as “catering to the casuals” and “making the game too easy” but it’s a sound market strategy on Blizz’ part. It also leads them to think about people who are too easily marginalized and forgotten about in the gaming world and to consider the fact that people of all abilities may want to play their games. (It also highlights Blizz’ clever strategy of letting mod developers do their R&D for them. I likes.) I applaud Blizzard in their efforts and I encourage people to continue to give their feedback to the Devs. Its seems that they do listen and they do have the time and the resources to act on some of the suggestions.

Maybe I should email them my list of suggestions. Certainly couldn’t hurt!

Post Scriptum: The gold making business is going well. Thanks to a guildie I have a good supply of eternals and my income is stable and high. (ish.) When I decided to strive for the gold cap I had just over 5k gold on my bank toon. (I keep about 500g on each of my “working” toons. So there’s ~2k scattered around that I’m not really counting in my quets to get the gold cap.) I’m now up to 17k!

Gamasutra just published an article I wrote about violence, psychology, and video games. It’s called Kill Polygon, Kill. I opened the article with a description of a time I beat up my best friend in fourth grade because he wanted to take one of my Star Wars dolls.

I remember being especially disturbed after that happened. It was the last time I ever saw him, and he had wanted the doll as a keepsake of the short time we spent together. He had moved to Fresno only a year earlier and he was already leaving again.

I didn’t really understand what was happening with his leaving, trying to internalize the idea of another person just not being around anymore was hard for my young brain. It didn’t seem real. But seeing the plastic doll in his hand as he walked out was something I immediately understood and didn’t want to accept. There was still room to barter with the idea his being in another state. The distance was abstract. It felt like something a parent could have taken care of with a car or an adult conversation with some ticket salesman. I didn’t want to lose him, and I didn’t really think I was.

But when he took the doll, the idea of something being lost was urgent and I didn’t want it to happen. I didn’t know what else to do, and I didn’t have time to think anything through. So my ten year-old gut told me to fight. And to my shame, it was to fight my friend so that I could keep a plastic doll.

It’s hard for me to imagine that instinct came from exposure to Looney Tunes and Lethal Weapon. And it’s hard to imagine a culture that disallows creative expression where those angry and irrational fringes can be explored.

Aion was the number one selling PC title for the month of September, which is amazing since it was release on the 22nd. Read the full scoop over at Gamasutra if you like. I havn’t had the chance to play this game yet but I might give it a try if a demo becomes available. It’s not likely to have a demo anytime soon as it’s sales are so high but i can wait. I like MMOs but they suck up all my game time. I left the succubus of WoW because I hadn’t played a single player game for 2 months.

As a footer I’m just gonna add that I might pick up Borderland at some point. I am really interested in it’s multiplayer Coop. You can jump in and out of any game. Experience is scaled up greatly if you join a friend who is in a later level of the game, and if you complete a quest in a friends game you will also have that reflected in your own game. Four people shooting things is always fun.

Keep Gaming people!

Elsa och jag missade att det skulle vara ett G.
Kändes väldigt konstigt.

“Το Steam δε μας εκμεταλλεύεται” – Gameover.gr

Διαφωνεί με την άποψη του Randy Pitchford ότι το Steam και η Valve εκμεταλλεύονται τους μικρούς developers ο John Gibson, πρόεδρος και συνιδρυτής της Tripwire Interactive, δημιουργού του Red Orchestra. Σε άρθρο του στο Gamasutra, ο Gibson διατυπώνει μια διαφορετική άποψη, καθώς υποστηρίζει ότι η Valve έκανε στην εταιρία του την καλύτερη προσφορά από όλους τους εκδότες στους οποίους απευθύνθηκε και ότι η υποστήριξή της από πλευράς marketing και οικονομικών ήταν άψογη.[next]

Νέος XΒLA τίτλος απο την 5th Cell – Gameover.gr

Ο Jeremiah Slaczka, ένας εκ των δημιουργών της 5th Cell, μίλησε στο Gamasutra για ένα νέο παιχνίδι που η εταιρεία του έχει προγραμματίσει να διαθέσει μέσα από τον τομέα Xbox Live Arcade.[next]

Every game has its hidden doors and, of course, the rewards for finding them. Andrew Vanden Bossche wrote a great article for Gamasutra about games and their secrets. We declare it a “must read”

Fan of the original Deus Ex? Here’s a short round-up of articles detailing the development of the game:

- Warren Spector writes a Deus Ex post-mortem for Gamasutra (this is ancient, back from 2000)

- a community interview with various members of the Deus Ex team

- EDGE writes about the making of Deus Ex, with insights from Warren Spector

Have a good read!

FingerGaming (8.21.2009)

Gamasutra (8.24.2009)

GameSetWatch (8.24.2009)

FingerGaming (6.9.2009)

Gamasutra (6.10.2009)

Want to be a Games Designer? Then you NEED this website. Simple as.

Some good reading…

I’ve always thought that experience is everything, and this article by Brandon Sheffield is something you may well want to read…

Gaming the System: How to Really Get Ahead in the Game Industry

This article on Gamasutra.com is a fantastic look at what people in the Industry have to say about getting ahead in that world. There are sections from Art, sound, Design (the one for me), coding and other areas too like QA!

Make the time to give this a read because items and insights like this are the signposts and stepping stones we all need to pay attention to if we are serious about becoming games designers.

Industry site Gamasutra has a new post up examining game development in several different cities in North America. And Canada is well-represented, with sections dedicated to both the Toronto and Vancouver development scenes.

The Toronto section focuses on the city’s little known indie games scene, including commentary from both Capybara Games‘ Nathan Vella and Metanet Software’s Raigan Burns. While discussing Vancouver, meanwhile, the piece looks at the history of the country’s biggest games hub, with a special focus on the impact of Electronic Arts.

The entire article — which also includes looks at Boston, Seattle, San Francisco, and Raleigh — can be found at Gamasutra.

While still getting into the swing of things – finding good websites, signing up to newsletters, reading articles and what not I happened across a fantastic discovery!

Every other Wednesday Gamecareerguide.com produce a challenge for aspiring game designers, producers, marketers, businesspersons and so on which push and test those people to look at games in a new way.

This time we’ve been tasked with making a Hero out of supporting character from a game we’ve previously played! And as my first stab at anything even remotely design/ concept orientated I had a GREAT time tinkering with this!

The practice and experience are invaluable and I think will be great for other aspiring Games Designers to have a go at! After all, experience is key in so much, and this exercise proved a great opportunity to not only dust off my idea box, but also to practice presenting a Games Concept in a way that gets the idea out of the ‘in-jokes’ of my head and put before a person in an understandable and informative manner… it’s yet to be seen if I’ve achieved this!

I’ve just knocked up a first draft myself, and will tinker with it over the next couple of days – Once I’ve submitted my entry and the Challenge is closed – I shall reveal my idea!

Remember folks the closing date for this is the 16^th of September! You can find more information about this challenge at Game Design Challenge

A Fantastic place to start for aspiring Games Designers

Ahhhh.. Technology. Isn’t technology great? It is. Though technology would be a lot better if we as humans, were not limited by our own capacity to use and understand that technology. Still, we are getting there. Slowly but surely, video games and the technology for video game development are improving and the costs are lowering. But what is improving even more is, the amount of talented individuals who are coming from game education programs who take with them new skill sets and creatively innovative ideas to help usher in a new age for the video game industry.

A perfect example of course would be the game Flower. It’s not your typical game. No guns. No swords. No blood. Not even human characters we have become so accustomed to seeing on screen. Literally, it’s just a bunch of flowers. Of course there is more to it than that, but the way this game was developed, the core idea behind it, has helped touch many gamers, and game developers in a way that makes us say, “there is so much yet to be explored.” Game innovators such as Jenova Chen, as well as future game developers who are influenced by him and the innovative “out of the box” thinking are just some of the reasons this industry is so great.

From a recent article on Gamasutra, James Portnow of Divide by Zero discusses game education and the role it plays in the sea of change the game industry is currently experiencing. I couldn’t agree with him more.

Gamasutra excerpt:

For the first time in history “game creation” is being taught as a focus of higher education. From the bachelor’s degree given out by DigiPen to the masters degrees offered by more traditional universities such as USC or CMU, today people are getting rigorous formal training in game crafting before entering the industry.

But, perhaps more importantly, these institutions are providing the next generation of game developers with a safe space to innovate and create, outside of a corporate environment.

Game schools will do for us what film schools did for film. They are a place for wild experimentation and valuable, if not immediately profitable, research. These schools focus a community of dedicated, energetic young people and give that community the critical mass it needs to allow these young people to learn from each other and formulate new ideas as a group. Our Lucas, Coppola, and Scorsese will come from these schools.

Just look at this technology being developed. It’s ridiculous. What an exciting time to be part of an industry that not only provides awesome entertainment to families across the entire globe, but also provides a path for students to earn a promising education in doing something they love to do. Colleges and art schools around the world are providing students a path in game education, and developers in turn are developing games for educational purposes. Educational games have so much room to grow, and the sea of change discussed in the Gamasutra article is spot on in its assessment.

Ever since its release back in July, the 9th title in the Dragon Quest franchise – aptly called Dragon Quest IX – has been selling more than 100,000 copies each week. But for the week ending 23rd August, DQIX only sold 79,000 in Japan. I say only but its still a ludicrous amount of units sold per week when some series struggle to do that in a month! Gamasutra reported that this sales ‘dip’ relegated DQIX into seconds place after Tomodachi Collection – another DS title I might add. So far, DQIX has sold over 3.7 million copies in Japan which is a phenomenal amount so I’m sure Square Enix aren’t all that worried that sales maybe slowing down.