So this one is a timely gimme of a post. And it’s cliche. But, hey, it’s the night before Thanksgiving, and I’m getting ready to move my cubicle. Plus I get to wake up at the bald crack of dawn to drive to San Antonio. You’ll pardon me if I take the easy way out.

This is how I really feel, both in-game and out.

Anyways, happy Thanksgiving to you all, or, in the spirit of retail corporate America, happy mid-Hallanksmas season. (You know, that mash up of Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas that we’re all so used to seeing at the mall.)

If there’s one thing that real life has taught me, it’s that you gotta be thankful for the little things. Whether it’s knowing where you left your keys or finding out that, yes, you do have two more double-A batteries, innocuous events can really make your day. I’d go on and on gushing about e-mails that changed my life or meeting “the one” when I was least expecting it, but most of you will be putting up with that tomorrow at dinner.

So let’s talk about the little things that make a game. Whether it’s properly adjusted drop rates or a well-designed control mechanism, small things can really make all the difference. Does anyone remember when World of Warcraft started up and the server queues that came with it? We all thought we’d won the lotto when the lines finally died down and we got to play the actually game. Ah, memories…

Now, don’t get me wrong: I actually cannot hold popularity against anyone. I’m just not hip enough. But that’s one of those irking qualities of MMOs that sometimes cause me to question why I bother. But although we’ve all felt that kind of frustration with everything from armor that won’t drop to body campers who won’t log, we all can be thankful for one thing–group of people actually.

Every game has a dedicated team of developers whose job is to make sure that problems are fleeting. So on this Thanksgiving Eve, I’m giving a big shout out to the devs of the gaming world. You guys make it possible, and you deserve some props.

…and now that I’ve sucked up, can I get some free stuff? I kid.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone and a continued merry Hallanksmas season.

Happy Friday!

After what’s been a pretty stressful week, I’m thoroughly looking forward to chilling out and not doing anything more strenuous than going shopping (on the Sunday, not the Saturday- it’ll be hell), and watching TV in bed. Though I am considering going into the Big Smoke on the Sunday and watching the Remembrance Day parade – for once I can actually go and pay my respects in person, rather than watching it on the TV!

So, in the spirit of Friday (and of relaxing at lunchtime), here’s my review of Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising, online at GameSlave. It was such a shame that this game was released early, with a couple of extra months of work it could have been something special.

Here’s the trailer, which paints the game in a much better light than it deserves:

No, Mickey! You'll unravel the very fabric of the space-time continuum!

Mickey Mania was a neat little game – fluid animation, confident visual presentation, clever little set-pieces – until someone put a goddamn mine cart level in the second stage.  I fucking hate mine cart levels, almost as much as I hate escort missions (maybe more, I can’t decide).  They’re a crime against platforming, and they should be blacked from the game developer’s palette.  Usually you won’t see one until the latter third of the game, when the level designers have run out of ideas (see Taz Mania, Donkey Kong Country); not so with Mickey Mania.  They’re* even clever enough to disguise the mine cart level as a ride through the Mad Doctor’s lab on a Frankensteinian operating table - but a lacquered turd is still a turd.

A mine cart level by any other name...

They’re* still throwing out interesting puzzles well after that, albeit executing them in the most annoying way possible.  Mostly by sending wave after wave of respawned enemies at you while you’re trying to solve them.  The enemies are more trouble than they’re worth.  Take the skeletons for instance: some take one bean-shot to kill, some take three despite no apparent visual difference, all explode in a flurry of bouncing bones that continue to maim you from beyond the grave.  You’re better off just jumping over them so you only have one or two pieces of enemy to contend with (they throw their skulls).

[* 'They' of course refers to game designers Travellers Tales and Sony Imagesoft, which, most interestingly, included the likes of David Jaffe,  the very vocal director of the God of War games.  Later tonight he will post a video blog from his garage rebutting the many valid points of this article.]

It’s at this point I remember this was probably supposed to be a kid’s game.  Why is it that every single Disney game is far too difficult for its target audience?  Ducktales, Land of Illusion, Aladdin, The Lion King – I could go on forever – each one, though pretty enough to check all those graphics/presentation/sound/music boxes for gaming mag reviews, is the gameplay equivalent of torture.  Child torture.  And last time I checked, that’s against the law, people.

You wanna talk about torture?  Torture is having LOAD TIMES on a cartridge game.  It’s just wrong on so many levels.

'Timeless Adventure' alright!

Let’s go back to mine cart levels, why I hate them with a seething, white hot rage, and why this one in particular has raised my ire.  We’ve just become acquainted with with the titular character, his controls, how he handles, only to have that control unceremoniously snatched from us, helplessly hurtling (and hopping) towards all manner of deadly fates.  Passing the level then becomes an exercise in rote memorisation, and of course, abject frustration.  It’s nowhere near as soul-crushing as that most infamous of mine cart levels – the hoverbike-ride through the Wind Tunnels of Battletoads – but after save/load stating my way through the level, I found that the only way I could make the final jump was to purposely run into the final obstacle.  Who in their right mind’s going to think of something like that?  A child?  A ‘hardcore gamer’?  I know, I’ll just run into that thing that was killing me during the first three-quarters of the level!  On purpose!

Oh, and another thing: what’s with Mickey’s bean-shot?  What’s to prevent him from throwing magic beans anywhere other than directly left or right in a straight line?  I’ve seen platformers and side-scrolling shoot-em-ups get it on before, but Mickey Mania is an experience akin to playing Space Invaders sideways with an abacus.  That’s about the closest I can come to illustrating what a royal pain in the arse it is for a gravity-laden Mickey to shoot rogue bats on the y-axis.  He *can* jump on *some* enemies *some*times, but like all non-Sonic, non-Mario platformers, it fails to distinguish just where, when, and how that will succeed.

It’s a pretty enough cartoon to be sure, but controls maketh the videogame, and – I’m sorry to say – Mickey don’t got it.

Now somebody give me a medal for not mentioning Epic Mickey a single time during the course of this write-up.

Oh.

Think Services expands its 2010 Game Developers Conference to include social gaming and iPhone events. Press Release by GameDev.net

I decided to upload the essay I wrote for our first master course in hypermedia (or interactive media). It’s basically another (more thought-out) attempt in trying to situate myself in the “games as art” -discussion. Loads of the articles and books I’ve read on games and art didn’t make it to this paper, and loads more are still waiting for my eager eyes. Nevertheless, this course and essay were a nice, soft landing to the field.

The essay is a short and easy read. Please leave a comment/send email if the essay provokes any thoughts, you have some good ideas to share, or you think a certain researcher, book or article is a must for me.

(As a sidenote: I’m actually planning on gathering up a list of publications I should read, and publishing it here.)

The concept behind Kickstarter is to have a lot of people pledge a small amount to accomplish something great!  Artists, musicians, small business owners, explorers and even game developers all find a warm welcome in this new opportunity to help one another, and help themselves at the same time.

We just launched our project on Kickstarter TODAY! Come check it out!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1799801709/visions-a-christian-mmorpg

Thanks for supporting us!

Dear IGDA members who attended the Austin GDC,

I had an excellent time meeting many of you throughout the week, and look forward to doing so again in the future.  It is clear to me that you understand the power of your chapters is in your volunteers and their willingness and desire to make the organization into something greater than the sum of its parts.

As you know, I have been working diligently since July 1st to increase the value of the central organization. Being developers, I am also confident that you understand nothing is achieved overnight or by one’s self.  The IGDA Board of Directors has been integrally involved in all of the changes you have seen in the last 3 months, and there are MANY more to come.

It is because the need is so great that the Board, upon reviewing the departure of 3 elected members, decided that additional volunteers were needed.  The full Board reviewed and discussed a number of candidates, specifically focusing in on those who had expressed interest previously, and who had skill sets that the organization needs in this critical period of transition.

We have challenges ahead, which should not be news to you.  But we also have solid plans to rebuild membership, increase participation, and bring increased value to each individual member.  We also have the administrative issues that any organization servicing 12,000 people worldwide faces.  So it was that we needed some help, and could not wait for the election cycle to roll about. This is exactly why the ability for the Board to appoint members was placed into the by-laws in the first place.  These folks have agreed to serve for shortened 2 year terms specifically to support the association in this time of transition. There is work to be done, and they agreed to help get on with the jobs at hand.

I ask each of you to support these new Board members as well as the existing ones.  For without them, the IGDA as an international organization would not exist.  I also ask you to consider volunteering to run for the Board yourself.  It is not an easy task, and it requires more than a little of your time, but if you want to make a difference in the IGDA, that is the best place to be.

Sincerely,

Joshua

Incredible but true, I’m still not feeling sleepy one bit, although it’s already 4:30am (GT +3 due to DST). This obviously a perfect time for some Intellectual Scientific Theorizing (from now on simply IST). On the other hand, I already had issues when trying to figure out the spelling for ‘theorizing’, so this might turn out to be either interesting, embarrassing, or both. Personally, I’m trying to keep up the flickering hope of something useful turning up, so here goes, for your entertainment if nothing else.

The heading is unusually long and heavy of me (I tend to do the long and heavy -part in the actual text), but I could not imagine affiliating anything lighter with this topic. Judging from what I’ve done and learned this far, defining the research question is the Ultimate Trial. Once one has overcome the Challenge of Challenges, coming up with a new, well-defined, shiny and bright Research Question, everything else falls into place by itself. Yes, yes, of course I’m exaggerating. Nevertheless, once figuring out a good research question, the rest of the work gets a heck of a lot easier, starting from source-hunting and ending up all the way in the actual thesis writing.

Although the almost-mythical Research Question seems elusive as ever (not only judged on the hearsay of graduate students, but also on my personal experiences), certain general ideas, topics and words keep catching my eye and ear time and time again. First and foremost, game studies. Mostly from a humanistic or a sociological point of view, although I’m also trying to understand the technological side of it. Narrowing down, I used to end up with game cultures, but recently the words have changed places or even form, and I’m sitting there with topics like “Games as Culture”, “Games and Culture”, “Games as Art” and “Games as High Culture”. Why? Let me open it up for you a bit.

Art as a whole is a phenomenon that has always intrigued me. Especially visual arts, like painting, sculpting and architecture never seem to lose their grip on me, and once I realized digital games is the area I want to specialize in, this art-fixation of mine started to hunt me more than ever. After my realization, some other topics have of course come up, some of them forgotten immediately, some still lurking in the back of my mind. Take Japan, for example. Some heavy lurking going on with this topic, since it even made me travel all the way to the other side of the globe for a year. While spending most of my time studying the language, I did also manage to wade some room in my schedule for getting to know the thing I went to Japan for: games. Especially people who play games, or even better, make them. Getting to know a number of people who work in the business was the final factor convincing me on the essentialness of including their views in my thesis, maybe even making it the focus of the research.

This brought up another thing that had been circling in my mind: finding out what people think about games. Game developers’, indie or commercial, but also gamers’ opinions. Very soon after coming up with this, I realized I also want and need the views of Average Joe and those of people who don’t work in development, but could otherwise be considered experts in the fields of digital games, art, Japanese gaming culture, and all these combined. The last group of people is quite a mixed bag of course. So, I’ve got both the question and the people to pose the question to, why am I still saying it’s heavy business?

First of all, I’m doing a master thesis, not a doctoral one. There is no way on earth I could even dream of including all that in a hundred-or-so -pages and ending up with a good thesis. An easy problem, granted, and solved, for example, by simply narrowing down and focusing on one group of people. That’s what I did, and ended up with this: “Are games art?”. This is the oldest version, and very, very intimidating. Defining the research question like that, I’d be forced to define not only what digital games are, but also take part in the dreaded What Is True Art -conversation.

Most of my antipathy for this debate actually results from something quite different from fear: it seems to me a very pointless and endless fight, sometimes inducing eerie similarities with that of different religious groups, and at others sinking to the level that makes a fight over which are tastier, strawberries or blueberries, seem sound. Come on people, face it: there is no absolute definition for art! I know it’s hard for a human mind to accept some things can’t be defined the same way as the tectonic structure of our planet, but that’s just how it is, so live with it. Art is something that has a different meaning and manifestation to each and every individual on this planet, and that’s the closest we’ll ever get of having an absolute definition for art. Take it or leave it, get all emotional or don’t give a shit, it doesn’t change the fact one bit.

Not wanting to take part in this Holy War of Art and Non-Art, I tried my best to find a more eloquent research question, and maybe did. Unfortunately that has to wait for another time (maybe tomorrow?), since I’ve stayed up ridiculously long and should go to bed. Stay put for another episode of some hard ISTing and exemplary Holy War -avoidance, it might be coming up sooner than you expect!

As a side-note: Damn I wish this thing had a footnoting-system. Another side-note: No laughing at typos and aberrations, it’s frigging 6:43 am here.

Dear IGDA Member,

Thank you for your continued membership in the IGDA.  I am delighted to report we have a number of new initiatives that are live and more that are coming, and I wanted to take a few moments of your time to give you a heads up about what is going on in your association that you can take advantage of.

IGDA Unemployed Member Rate: These are tough economic times for everyone. If you or one of the members you know has recently decided not to renew their membership due to having lost their job, let them know that the IGDA is offering a discount upon renewal.  This special rate is available only to unemployed members, and we are using the honor system here.  If you are an independent developer, then we don’t really consider you unemployed.  However, If you tell us you are unemployed, you can access the discount upon your IGDA renewal date.

SCRUM Certification with Clinton Keith:  If you (or your team) have been looking for ways to increase efficiency and productivity levels as well as communication and teamwork, then you’ll be thrilled to learn that the IGDA has partnered with Clinton Keith to offer a special 2 day Game Developer specialized training for using SCRUM (an iterative incremental management technique)  for game studios.

This 2 day workshop is limited to 35 professionals from the game development community.  Clinton has adapted his training program to use Game Specific examples and cases as well as anecdotes and examples from his extensive experience to show you and your team how to take the core concepts of SCRUM and apply them directly to your current project.

When you leave this workshop, you’ll have a set of project management tools and reference material to bring back to your organization and apply immediately.  With the practices and techniques that Clinton goes over, you will see an increase in team communication, understanding between team members, and awareness of the project needs and status.  These lead all of your folks to begin pulling more effectively toward reaching milestones and deadlines, and be proactive about solving issues from one section of a project to another.

The workshop will be held in San Francisco, CA, at the San Francisco Airport Marriott on November 10th and 11th.  It will lead up to the IGDA Leadership Forum, and attendees who register for both will receive a great discount off both registration fees.

Seating is limited to 35 participants and beginning to fill up, so register today: https://www.igda.org/leadership/ (There are additional discounts for teams of 3 or more who wish to attend, please contact me directly about these opportunities joshua@igda.org.)

The IGDA Leadership Forum:  Our 3rd annual Leadership Forum and Professional Development Conference is coming up soon on November 12th & 13th in San Francisco, CA.   Held at the San Francisco Marriott, you’ll have the opportunity to meet and mingle with over 200 top Game Development Professionals.  Join Samantha Ryan, Senior Vice President of Development and Production for Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment (WBIE); Chris Satchell, Chief Technology Officer for International Gaming Technologies, as well as a host of top shelf industry professionals as we run 3 tracks of programs and networking sessions for all types of game development professionals.  Stay for our cocktail reception and introduce yourself to some of the top guns in the business, and meet other rising stars who are beginning to make names for themselves.  Whether you are an independent producer, a studio head, or simply an overachiever, this seminar offers a series of powerful sessions designer to make you a valuable asset in the game development community.

Seating is limited, so take a few minutes and register today to save your spot at the 3rd annual IGDA Leadership Forum. http://www.igda.org/leadership/

Free Member Webinar Series:  The IGDA is launching a new series of webinars titled “The IGDA Presents…”   These will begin on Sept. 29th with Clinton Keith.  More details to follow under a separate header with our initial 3 month schedule.

Well that’s a few things to chew on for the moment.  More to come.

I will be attending the GDC in Austin next week, and welcome any of you who would like to connect to reach out via email or phone and let’s schedule a time.

Sincerely,

Joshua

Download

http://kewlshare.com/dl/9885f231ed35/AI_For_Game_Developers__2004_.pdf.html

http://hotfile.com/dl/7896087/c23f06f/AI_For_Game_Developers_(2004).pdf.html

Family Feud would like to thank Gahd, Mom, and Apple Pie for its transition into Videogamedom.  Family Feud: The Video Game pledges allegiance to The Flag every morning.  It reaches for the shottie under the pillow and hollers “get off ma propertay, you dang varmints!” It straddles a warhead and rides into the Middle East yelling “YEEEEEEEEEEE-HAWWW!!”

Family Feud: The Video Game is a delightful little slice of Americana with a side of ass.  It’s a snapshot of post-war America and is most definitely not for the politically correct [or even the correct] at heart.  If you think you’re even remotely intelligent, and your heart beats in time with the rhythm of the masses, then I challenge you to defeat the Dunnigans, the Halls, and the Romeos in a round of Family Feud.  You will swear, you will be confused, and you will laugh your ass off*.

* Unless of course you are an American Baby Boomer from the Deep South, which, alas, I am not.

Spelling in clause, I kid you not. (Protip: Hitler, Stalin and Churchill are at the bottom; the rest are American presidents.)

Family Feud is by very nature a populist game show – there are no right or wrong answers – you must divine the Will of the Hive Mind to win.  In the SNES iteration, that Hive Mind seems to consist of one or two game developers, and it would appear that they were 51 year old white American males at the time of development (and presumably still are white, American, and male, provided they haven’t died and/or undergone drastic cosmetic surgery since then).  Discerning the most popular responses of the ‘virtual live studio audience’ to the survey questions, then, can be an exercise in frustration and hilarity.  It’s like one of those text-based adventure games, for example Hugo’s House of Horrors, where the real task at hand was to discern the quirky inner workings of the game developer’s mind**.  (Thank God Tim Schafer et al. came along to show us what commands were actually available to us with the introduction of the text menu so I could stop typing ridiculous things like ‘put knife in Igor’ and ‘put rubber bung in hole’).

Case in point: when asked to ‘name something that gives off heat’, I naturally responded with ‘fire’.  BE-BOW!  WRONG! A member of the Dunnigan family answered ’sun’ – “number one answer!” – $5,000 bonus! WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?!  THE SUN IS FREAKIN’ MADE OF FIRE!!

Case in point #2: ‘name something you’d expect to find in a courtroom.’  ‘Gavel’ – correct.  ‘Judge’ – correct.  ‘Jury’ – BE-BOW! ‘Lawyer’ – BE-BOW! ‘Bible’ – BE-BOW! Handover to the Whitebread family, who sweep it away with an answer of ‘flag.’  God bless their bleeding star-spangled hearts.  The remaining answers on the board included ‘Jury Box’ and ‘Bailiff.’  So let me get this straight, the proposed majority walking into a courtroom would expect to find a judge, a hammer, A FLAG, and a jury box; but no jury in said box, no lawyers, plantiff, defendant, or even a Holy Bible to swear on?!  WHAT SORT OF HEATHEN TOPSY-TURVY WORLD IS THIS?!!

Now I know what it's like to travel without a Green Card.

** (Unlike those text-based adventure games, these text-input events come in short, measured bursts.  If you don’t get the answer right, the reveal is not too far away.  The host will soon say, “and the survey says!” and either put you out of your misery or send you into a fit of blind rage.  This feedback loop of anticipation-revelation-response puts the game squarely in ’so bad it’s good’ territory.)

I don’t know if these questions were lifted from a board game version or devised by the developers themselves, but as a 25 year old white Australian male lefty scumbag, they [and their answers] disturb me (you’ll find some of them scattered throughout this review).  The only way to claim victory in this game is to think like ‘them’ (this is simultaneously the game’s most frightening and entertaining aspect).  You must become the post-war white American slob, the one that can fit 16 hamburgers on his grill; the one that plays Battleships with his son while the women wash up in the background; the one that endures harsh northern hemisphere winters (more on that later).  There’s even “Duelling Banjos”-style Hillbilly music for ‘thinking music’.

“Quick, Huckleberry Finn, ya only got 39 seconds to come up with an ans-wer to this here question!”
“You’d best know that ah’m fixin’ to answer this here quiz thang in four, Mister Sawyer!”

God forgive me for my terrible Southern accent.

These things are important to know.

Never before have I been forced to consider Family Feud as a purely American phenomenon, having enjoyed the relatively long-running second-last Australian series as hosted by Rob “where is he now?” Brough – complete with permed mullet and unnervingly resilient game show smile – as a child of six and seven.  The game show’s signature ‘be-bow!’ sound is so ingrained in Australian culture, uttering that very sound has become an acceptable substitute for the words “wrong!” and “think again!”  The writing you see here is the shocked response of a man whose senses have been assailed by something so thoroughly American, it is overwhelming.  But Family Feud is for everyone! I naively told myself on my initial playthrough.  The game then pulled out its mustard-ketchup-pickles mortars and blew me away with a resounding “NO!!!”

Let me set the scene for you: I live in one of the hottest countries on God’s Green Earth; I have played an outdoor rock gig in 50 degree (that’s 122 degrees Fahrenheit to you, Joe American!) sunlight on a stage with no roof; sanctimonious Poms/Yanks/Poles come down here and proudly declare that we have no winter at all.  Imagine my culture shock when the virtual host asks me something to the effect of “what would you need to put away when summertime arrives?”  What would I put away?  I, who saw my first snowflake at the age of 22, in a foreign land?  I wouldn’t put away anything!  No!  Think like an American!  Ummm…“mittens” – ding!  Uhhh…“sled?” – be-bow!  Damn! “Bob-sled?” – be-bow! “Scarf!”, come on, Americans are always going on about scarves– be-bow!  WTF?!!

Then comes the swearing.

Thank GOD this wasn't the correct answer! But look at the question - SEXIST MUCH?

Play this game.  Play it with a sibling.  Give your virtual family a swear word for a name.  Laugh at the implied sexism of the questions.  It’s like digital crack from an alien world.

When a game comes out that is just so damn good it seems to just completely change your standards, you tend to stop playing games mediocre in comparison. Basically, when standards rise, game companies work harder and harder to deliver better and better games. That’s pretty obvious.

One game market has, however, seemed to have completely failed in this regard. A few giants have risen out of the ashes, but hundreds if not thousands of games seem to have just fit in that “mediocre” category.

Dana Massey at MMORPG.com wrote about what is wrong in the MMO market today:

This week, I open with a simple test. I want you to honestly ask yourself or a gamer friend the following two questions:

Where are you in [insert any single player RPG here]?

And where are you in [insert any MMO name here]?

The answer to the first question is almost definitely a description of where you are and what you’re doing. The answer to the second is much simpler: “Level X of Class Y.”

I tried this quiz at E3 and not a single person answered any differently. Predictable and instantly, they’d describe where they were in Fable 2, for example, and then immediately name class and level for the MMO.

It’s simplistic, but this is the core problem that I tried to identify in my last column, but never quite arrived at.

When people measure their progress through the mechanics and math behind a game instead of what they’re doing in it, it changes how they approach it.

That is why people complain about the grind. That is why people demean the genre as paying someone to work.

….

It’s taken me two columns to get my head around it, but I honestly believe this test uncovers the simple problem of MMOs. As long as progress is mentally measured through an experience bar and not some other means, be it story, unlockable items or territory, then MMOs are destined to remain a niche genre (and yes, I am aware of how many people play WoW and I still think MMOs are a niche genre).

And that got me thinking: how could a game company fix this? Massey seems to think that eliminating the experience bar and replacing it with unlockable items & territory, etc. to show for progress will fix MMO’s. I completely disagree; substituting virtually anything for a progress bar to show for progress will no matter what keep the grind, because in the end those obtainables are an achievement gotten through work or just playing the game. No matter how you look at it, game devs will make these achievements a challenge, because otherwise no one will play.

The main problem game companies have with MMO’s is the ability to make the grind, or rather the “journey” (because grind implies boring and repetitive), to end game fun. Recently, I’ve been playing more single-player RPG’s on the PC, and it seems as though that games like Oblivion and Fable 2 are leaps and bounds ahead of any MMO in achieving that “fun” in the journey. This is probably in part due to the fact that these single-player games rely almost completely on their storyline, questing system, and gameplay to keep players playing, whereas MMO’s rely on competition or a desire for certain achievements (items, territory, etc.) to keep  players playing.

Think about it: when is the last time you thought you were grinding your way through a single-player campaign? Probably never, because repetitive RPG’s tend to just get negative reviews, and thus aren’t popular. These RPG’s aren’t classified as games with a lot of grind, but rather repetitive and bad. MMO devs simply create this “repetitive and bad” formula (grind) in their games and further slap some hard to obtain achievements to keep players playing.’

MMO companies need to look across the field into such games as Fallout 3, Fable 2, GTA4, and Oblivion and learn to create that fun factor in questing that these games have already mastered. Until then, we’ll just be stuck with mediocricy.

It’s not laziness or bad planning, it’s a marketing tool, and it’s mandatory. If you’re a gamer you most definitely know the agony of wanting to play an unreleased game. You might have seen a stunning trailer, impressive game play footage or it might be a sequel to one of your favorite games, ever. Either way, it’s painful, the waiting that is. Developers always tell us “soon” and we keep believing them.

While laying at their feet hungry for what’s to come, drooling non stop and mesmerized by the words they feed us, they convince us they are doing everything they possibly can to release their highly anticipated title to the starving crowd as soon possible, and we keep believing them.

They lure us with their betas, managing to get us hooked even sooner. We then spread the disease to our friends and fellow gamers, getting our fixes from dev chats and discussion boards. They throw us bones in the form of imaginary release dates we know deep inside can’t possibly be correct, but again, we keep believing them.

Twitter feeds, interviews, official website news, social representatives on the forums are the livelihood of the fans. The drug is ingenious, ostensibly harmless. White lies flying around unnoticed. Why would they lie to us, their biggest fans, their own little community? They made us, they brought us here in perfect formation not to please us, the soon to be customers, but rather to ante up the hype and maximize their profit.

Phille

Dragon View is the sequel to Drakkhen, which probably means ‘dragon’ in German, or something.  See?  I’m full of awesome trivia!

For instance, DID YOU KNOW that 16 percent of SNES games beginning with ‘D’ have the word ‘dragon’ or ‘dragons’ in the title?  Heh, bet you didn’t know that.  And DID YOU KNOW that Dragon View for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System utilises MODE 7 GRAPHICS? Do you even know what Mode 7 MEANS?! Neither do I, but I’ve heard it’s in Mario Kart and it’s probably the menace behind this ugly-ass overworld as well.

U-G-L-Y, you ain't got no alibi! Yo' ugly!

It just goes to show that after 15+ years, game developers still haven’t figured out that overworlds suck and get in the way of, you know, PLAYING THE ACTUAL GAME. The Mode 7 sections of Dragon View are probably only there so that Kemco could advertise it on the box art, and really only serve as a vehicle for getting from level to level (it’s only appropriate then, that when I collided with a shrub next to a doorway, I had to reverse out, steer, and drive back in as if parking a bus).  As I drove my magic bus through fields of green, watching poorly redrawn sprites blink in and out of the frame, seeing enemies flutter towards me like spotted silver clouds, I thought to myself, perhaps this is the ‘dragon view’. Perhaps this is how a dragon views his world; here and gone in the blink of an eye; his enemies reduced to tiny, silver clouds.

If there's one positive thing about my overworld experience, it's that I found a 3D Triforce on the ground, which will please Zelda fans to no end (OMG 3D Zelda before Zelda 64!!!).

When I hit a silver cloud (in my magic bus), I got a taste of the real game.  And that is, side-scrolling slash ‘em up (slmup) action!  It was kind of like bullfighting once I’d worked out the patterns.  Slash them front on, move out of their path, let them charge like a moron, then get behind them now that they’re facing the wrong way and stab them in the back like the yellow-bellied coward I am!  (Flash fact: the evil butterflies are more dangerous than the scorpions!) These encounters are good for level-grinding, which I needed to do to stop dying in the actual game.  Thing is, I could avoid them altogether by simply driving around the silver clouds.

(Protip: make sure you read your map and check your compass regularly, or you could be stuck in Mode 7 hell FOREVER.)

When I wasn’t getting lost or killed in the overworld, I was speaking with villagers in a strange narrated format (“a blessing upon your house, sire”, he said, “and upon your children, and your children’s children”) and doing fetch-quests for them.  Then I’d get a priest to record my valiant deeds [save game] and trudge my way through the overworld again to find whatever damned thing I was supposed to find, and bring it back.  One such example was having to go to Tylon’s storeroom (which is a cave filled with demons and A GIANT SCORPION) across the other side of the overworld to get him some more dynamite, so that he could make some more bombs for me, so that I could blow up some fallen rocks, so that a lady could get home via Galys Pass.  Now, if you hear your grandparents jabber on about how they had to walk 50 miles to school everyday barefoot in the winter snow, you can tell them to shut their damn faces.  Here’s why:

This is "on the way home" for your typical Dragon View shopkeeper.

Notice the falling rocks, the craggy cliff face and the skeleton wedged under a rock! Hot-damn this game is hardcore.  More hardcore than your grandma, bitches.

It turns out boomer women do play computer games.

And do they ever. The business of cranking out casual games–snack-sized alternatives to time-consuming fare like “World of Warcraft”–is mushrooming. Consumers paid $2.25 billion for such games last year, and the demand for titles like “Diner Dash” is growing 20% year-over-year, according to the Casual Gaming Association.

And while casual games appeal to everyone from pre-teens to old men (the world\’s richest man, Warren Buffet, 77, haunts online bridge parlors while using the handle “T-bone”), women over 35 are the most likely to pay for them; 75% percent of those who pay for casual games are women, and 72% are over 35 years old.

The result: The gaming industry is hustling to remake itself to please these paying customers. Microsoft is adding new titles to its online Xbox Live Arcade gaming hub. Nintendo will roll out a portal for bite-sized games for its Wii console, dubbed WiiWare, later this year. Even social networks like Facebook and Bebo are getting a makeover as developers hard-wire casual games into online social networks.

In Pictures: Games That Charm Us

But while the crime-themed adventure game “Grand Theft Auto IV” will rake in big bucks this year from players with the time for hours-long, Mountain-Dew-fueled sessions, stealing cars and assassinating gang rivals is not for everyone.”My wife is not going to buy that for the family,” says Craig Holland, chief executive officer of casual game developer Freeze Tag.

To be sure, classifying casual games as “games for girls ” would not be fair. But casual female-targeted gaming hits with female heroines, such as “Diner Dash” and “Wedding Dash,” make it clear that casual game developers are attacking far broader swaths of the population than the traditional 18-to-35-year-old male demographic coveted by makers of hardcore games.

In addition to appealing to a broader audience, casual game developers also benefit from lower development costs. While a graphics-intensive game like “Halo 3″ will take years and tens of millions of dollars to make, developers can build a casual game for as little $150,000 with a team of two or three in nine months or less, Holland says. They can also sell these games to users equipped with everything from mobile phones to older PCs: Cutting-edge graphics are not required.

And while game studios spending millions grinding out futuristic or violent epics have to rely on distribution via store shelves and online retailers like Amazon.com, casual game developers have more options. Most go for the “try and buy” model, distributing their games through portals, such as RealArcade and Big Fish, or sites affiliated with AOL, Yahoo! or MSN. Gamers can download a game, try it for an hour and, if they like it, buy it.

Others, however, are experimenting with putting flash-based games entirely online. Some sites, such sas Kongregate, rely on developers to contribute online games and share online ad revenues with game developers. Yet others, such as the makers of “Scrabulous,” are building a following on social networks like Facebook.

In short, casual gaming is everywhere. Which begs the question: Is it really a niche? Casual gaming\’s biggest star, Flo–unlike, say, Halo\’s faceless super soldier, Master Chief–is a recognizable character with a recognizable problem: She\’s got to keep her diner running. Culturally, at least, casual games –and the women who pay for them–aren\’t just part of the mainstream. They already are the mainstream.

�

(By Brian Caulfield, Forbes.com)

It turns out boomer women do play computer games.

And do they ever. The business of cranking out casual games–snack-sized alternatives to time-consuming fare like “World of Warcraft”–is mushrooming. Consumers paid $2.25 billion for such games last year, and the demand for titles like “Diner Dash” is growing 20% year-over-year, according to the Casual Gaming Association.

And while casual games appeal to everyone from pre-teens to old men (the world\’s richest man, Warren Buffet, 77, haunts online bridge parlors while using the handle “T-bone”), women over 35 are the most likely to pay for them; 75% percent of those who pay for casual games are women, and 72% are over 35 years old.

The result: The gaming industry is hustling to remake itself to please these paying customers. Microsoft is adding new titles to its online Xbox Live Arcade gaming hub. Nintendo will roll out a portal for bite-sized games for its Wii console, dubbed WiiWare, later this year. Even social networks like Facebook and Bebo are getting a makeover as developers hard-wire casual games into online social networks.

In Pictures: Games That Charm Us

But while the crime-themed adventure game “Grand Theft Auto IV” will rake in big bucks this year from players with the time for hours-long, Mountain-Dew-fueled sessions, stealing cars and assassinating gang rivals is not for everyone.”My wife is not going to buy that for the family,” says Craig Holland, chief executive officer of casual game developer Freeze Tag.

To be sure, classifying casual games as “games for girls ” would not be fair. But casual female-targeted gaming hits with female heroines, such as “Diner Dash” and “Wedding Dash,” make it clear that casual game developers are attacking far broader swaths of the population than the traditional 18-to-35-year-old male demographic coveted by makers of hardcore games.

In addition to appealing to a broader audience, casual game developers also benefit from lower development costs. While a graphics-intensive game like “Halo 3″ will take years and tens of millions of dollars to make, developers can build a casual game for as little $150,000 with a team of two or three in nine months or less, Holland says. They can also sell these games to users equipped with everything from mobile phones to older PCs: Cutting-edge graphics are not required.

And while game studios spending millions grinding out futuristic or violent epics have to rely on distribution via store shelves and online retailers like Amazon.com, casual game developers have more options. Most go for the “try and buy” model, distributing their games through portals, such as RealArcade and Big Fish, or sites affiliated with AOL, Yahoo! or MSN. Gamers can download a game, try it for an hour and, if they like it, buy it.

Others, however, are experimenting with putting flash-based games entirely online. Some sites, such sas Kongregate, rely on developers to contribute online games and share online ad revenues with game developers. Yet others, such as the makers of “Scrabulous,” are building a following on social networks like Facebook.

In short, casual gaming is everywhere. Which begs the question: Is it really a niche? Casual gaming\’s biggest star, Flo–unlike, say, Halo\’s faceless super soldier, Master Chief–is a recognizable character with a recognizable problem: She\’s got to keep her diner running. Culturally, at least, casual games –and the women who pay for them–aren\’t just part of the mainstream. They already are the mainstream.

�

(By Brian Caulfield, Forbes.com)

To continue my series of guest bloggers, this week Kirsty Watkinson focuses on the issue of camera angles in games- enjoy.

There are a wide variety of different viewpoints which the player can take across the gaming world, whether this means the camera is fixed or panning, first-person viewpoint or third, close up or zoomed out. This wide berth of choice for camera positioning allows the audience to focus in a way that works for each game, no matter the style.

In early 2-D games, the camera focus is often fixed and characters guided around a number of obstacles and platforms to reach the goal at the end. The introduction of 3D graphics and levels created a higher level of complexity for the gamer and allowed the camera the freedom to choose from a number of different positions for more intimate game play.
For many the fixed camera still fulfilled the purpose, being used in the first Resident Evil and the Devil May Cry series.

Matthew Lock, a 22-year-old computer games technology student from Dundee, said: “With a fixed camera there is some extra distancing from a human-controlled character and this can affect the game in a few ways.
“On the one hand it makes it harder to impress the character’s feelings on a player, as they are not so much in the character’s shoes as with first, and to an extent third, person camera.
“Also the distancing from the player means controlling can be a little more challenging. Not difficult as such, but there is a feeling of less control, which can be useful. This makes a player more wary and less certain about things during the game.”

While the fixed camera of Resident Evil creates suspense by preventing the player from seeing the zombie making the noises behind the next corner, the later games throw you into the action by allowing you to watch over the shoulder of the character and battle faster foes. This gives the game a more action-oriented feel, such as in Tomb Raider and Assassin’s Creed.

Mr Lock says: “Third person is a strange view because it is practically a 1st person camera, but you can still see the character. This can be useful when a player needs to make precise movements, but it can cause problems in confined spaces because the camera has to be far enough away from the character that the world can be seen.”
The technicalities of this viewpoint can often be jumpy or sluggish, becoming stuck on obstacles and behaving in an unnatural way.
He continued: “If too much space is taken up by the character, the camera may have to either raise up to avoid landscape or to swing around, which can be incredibly frustrating. Third person is probably the hardest camera type to get right due to this and can be difficult to use for a player coming to play for the first time.
“In some ways the freedom of this view can be a bit of a mixed blessing. There are situations where being able to see behind the character is vitally necessary to a game’s mechanics, and in this case a third person camera may be necessary. Sometimes the wider viewpoint allows for players to see things which the character would never be able to see which, in the semi-close state of the gameplay, can lead to unrealistic behaviour.
“For example, if a player can see around a corner without exposing themselves due to the view of the camera, an ordinarily realistic game becomes unrealistic. In the case of multiplayer games the act of looking around a corner with the camera to wait for an opponent is frowned upon due to this lack of realism. It gives the player an unfair advantage to see others without exposing themselves to danger.”

This kind of advantage is cleverly avoided by first-person games, which allow you to see exactly what the character sees. This viewpoint works best in first-person shooters, such as Left 4 Dead, Halo and Call of Duty, but can also be used to great effect with other styles, such as stylish freerunner game, Mirror’s Edge.

“First person camera is obviously ideal for allowing a player to really get into the character they are controlling,” says Matthew. “It allows them to more fully experience the character’s story and what happens to them.
“There are no worries about objects and scenery causing problems with the view because if the character is there the camera is there and the only issue is if you happen to be looking straight at a wall. The view is, of course, the most realistic and resultantly in realistic games is a logical choice as it allows a player access to the visual information that the character in the game would have, meaning they are making decisions based only on that information.
“There are of course times in games when more information is necessary, and sometimes a first person view is not a good idea.

Some games have adopted a combination of different views depending on circumstances. One issue with free view, which also applies to third person camera shots, is that if a developer creates a particular set piece a player can miss it.”
First-person viewpoints are often made more realistic by the inclusion of other things in the shot, such as Faith’s feet in Mirror’s Edge, so you can always look down and see where you are jumping from.

Mr Lock added: “In shooters, some weapons can take up a considerable amount of space, which is not ideal. But compared to other views it is probably still the best alternative. One issue with first person viewpoint is that, while it is a realistic view, many games are not that realistic. This can make it feel strange moving around in such a view. Often a player will like to be able to see their character, as it makes them feel more in control.
“One other issue is that while the player is fully in the characters shoes, they may not get that much opportunity to actually see the character and this can mean that despite almost being the character, they don’t have as much feeling for them as they would if they were regularly looking at them.”

When developing a new game, the choice of camera angles is vitally important to ensure the player gets to grips with the product. Though many game developers make a mistake when choosing a viewpoint, the correct combination of viewpoint and gameplay can turn a basic game into something special.

Kirsty Watkinson

klwatkinson@mail.com

SGN, a game developer for iPhone, has opened its network to other application developers, enabling these partners to grow adoption of their games in application market. Others are showing interest. 

Punch Entertainment, a next-generation games developer focused on creating mobile community-based, virally-driven games such as Reign of Swords, and Smallmedium, publisher of eMees Avatar Creator, are the first developers to sign up to this growing network, says SGN.

Last month, Apple had previewed its iPhone OS 3.0 software and announced the availability of a beta software release to registered developers. It provides new Software Development Kit (SDK), over 1,000 Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), and 100 new features.

Explaining the popularity of mobile applications, Apple announced on April 24 that consumers have downloaded one billion applications from its App Store in nine months.

In a related development, BlackBerry App World launched in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom on April 1. It provides BlackBerry smartphone users with easy access to games, social networking, and productivity applications on-the-go.  Similarly, Android Market is also an open marketplace for the recently introduced Android-powered devices such as the T-mobile G1.

“With the anticipated launch of the iPhone OS 3.0 and one billion applications downloaded to date, the rush of new applications will be tremendous and it will get harder and harder to stand out of the crowd,” said SGN CEO Shervin Pishevar. 

SGN is a leading game developer for the iPhone with seven original games currently available including Agency Wars, Mafia: Respect & Retaliation, iFun, i(fluff)friends, and iBowl, which have also added Facebook Connect for the iPhone and iPod touch to their functionality. It claims that it has generated more than 12 million downloads of this suite of games.

Through in-game banner ads, SGN will create promotions within their applications that offer users the chance to download partner apps in exchange for points within SGN games.

Players are given opportunities to try other games they may like, and in exchange, they are rewarded within the games they are currently playing. Participation in this partnership is free and partners will split the download revenue, SGN says.

Fallout 3 was honored with the coveted Game of the Year award  at the Game Developers Choice Awards held last night in San Francisco. Bethesda’s post-apocalyptic RPG beat out Fable II, Left 4 Dead, LittleBigPlanet and Grand Theft Auto IV for the honor. LittleBigPlanet took home the most awards – Sony’s PS3 platformer won nearly half of all the prizes given out, taking home four out of ten awards. Nice work!

The Developers Choice Awards (unlike, say, The People’s Choice awards) are voted on by professionals, fellow developers, so you have to figure winning one of these babies is particularly satisfying — there’s nothing like the appreciation of one’s peers! Congratulations to all winners and nominees.

Reading about an awards show and watching it are two different things. To watch G4’s coverage of the ceremony, tune in or TiVo The GDC Awards on G4: Friday April 10th at 6:30pm.

Underneath the cut is the full list of victors, as well as the also-rans, in each category. The winners are emboldened.

Game of the Year

• Fallout 3 (Bethesda Game Studios)
• Fable II (Lionhead Studios)
• LittleBigPlanet (Media Molecule)
• Left 4 Dead (Valve Software)
• Grand Theft Auto IV (Rockstar North)

Best Writing

• Fallout 3 (Bethesda Game Studios)
• Far Cry 2 (Ubisoft Montreal)
• Braid (Number None)
• Grand Theft Auto IV (Rockstar North)
• Metal Gear Solid 4 (Kojima Productions)

Best Game Design

• LittleBigPlanet (Media Molecule)
• Far Cry 2 (Ubisoft Montreal)
• Braid (Number None)
• Fallout 3 (Bethesda Game Studios)
• Left 4 Dead (Valve Software)

Best Technology

• LittleBigPlanet (Media Molecule)
• SPORE (Maxis)
• Grand Theft Auto IV (Rockstar North)
• Left 4 Dead (Valve Software)
• Gears of War 2 (Epic Games)

Best Visual Arts

• Prince of Persia (Ubisoft Montreal)
• Fallout 3 (Bethesda Game Studios)
• Metal Gear Solid 4 (Kojima Productions)
• LittleBigPlanet (Media Molecule)
• Gears of War 2 (Epic Games)

Best Debut Game

• LittleBigPlanet (Media Molecule)
• Braid (Number None)
• Sins of a Solar Empire (Ironclad Games)
• World of Goo (2D Boy)
• Soul Bubbles (Mekensleep)

Innovation Award

• LittleBigPlanet (Media Molecule)
• SPORE (Maxis)
• World Of Goo (2D Boy)
• Boom Blox (EA Los Angeles)
• Braid (Number None)

Best Handheld Game

• God Of War: Chains Of Olympus (Ready At Dawn Studios)
• Advance Wars: Days Of Ruin (Intelligent Systems)
• Echochrome (SCE Japan)
• Patapon (Pyramid/SCE Japan)
• The World Ends With You (Jupiter/Square Enix)

Best Audio

• Dead Space (EA Redwood Shores)
• LittleBigPlanet (Media Molecule)
• Metal Gear Solid 4 (Kojima Productions)
• Left 4 Dead (Valve Software)
• Gears of War 2 (Epic Games)

Best Downloadable Game

• World Of Goo (2D Boy)
• Castle Crashers (The Behemoth)
• Braid (Number None)
• N+ (Metanet/Slick Entertainment)
• PixelJunk Eden (Q-Games)

I think this list is a nearly perfect encapsulation of the year in games, and a hell of an indicator of how high the “quality bar” has been set in digital entertainment. However, in the past, when we’ve posted any list of “best” games, some of you have taken issue. Is this a good list or bad list? Were any of your personal favorite games of last year slighted? Do you think LittleBigPlanet and Fallout 3 are overrated? Let us know, below.

The creator of legendary games on the Amiga like “Flashback“, “Fade to black” and “Future Wars“, Paul Cuisset, has re-surfaced and released a title in 2008 on Nintendo DS – “Mister Slime“.

According to Wikipedia, “Cuisset is the Managing Director of the french computer game developer VectorCell, which he co-owns with the french game developer Lexis Numerique.”

Cuisset is currently developing the title “The 7th Seal” for the platforms PS3 and XBox 360. We can’t wait….

Wow. What a week. The Game Developers Conference may have wrapped up, but I still have a little left over from the week-long event to post about. The big news coming out of GDC seems to be the announcement and unveiling of “OnLive”. OnLive, a digital distribution service that has been in development for the past seven years, will hypothetically allow you to instantly play games on “any device” through streaming, could shake up the industry if it takes off. MacWorld has a nice article that will fill you in on what we know so far about it:
http://www.macworld.com/article/139646/onlive.htm.

OnLive was one of the many things I got to see as I browsed the GDC floors. Have a look at what else I saw.

Will OnLive change gaming? It’s way to early to tell. But this little device pictured below sure shook things up at GDC.

One thing for sure is that the gaming industry is going strong. GDC brought together developers, publishers, and consumers to San Francisco to share the latest in gaming. It was a great experience, and I hope that this is only the first of many GDCs I attend.