reports

Global Mobile Games: New Business Models, Hit Games, and Mobile People from Around the Planet

  • Reading time:2 mins read

by [name redacted]

Current rumbling in the design community suggests that mobile games have yet to find their real application, and most games for the platform are just ports of established console or handheld ideas; they aren’t really based on the intrinsic character of the mobile platform. Taking in mind the control problems, the group began to discuss new ways the platform provided to interface with a game. Perhaps the camera could be used to sense rotation, so the user could swing the phone like a golf club. Some phones have rotation, stroke, and squeeze sensors that could be put to use.

Someone then observed that a game that requires a camera would have trouble getting “live;” not all phones have cameras. The only way to get carriers to support a game is if you design it for the lowest common denominator, technologically. Bringing carriers into the conversation set off a chorus of groans. Someone noted that carriers do not, really, understand content, and wondered whether not going straight to a carrier – rather, developing for a publisher that was in a position to negotiate with carriers – would give developers more freedom to push the envelope; to develop less “safe” games.

( Continue reading at GamaSutra )

Audio Production for Halo 2

  • Reading time:1 mins read

by [name redacted]

“The main Bungie approach to games,” O’Donnell said, “is this is entertainment. When someone sits down, you want to keep him entertained the whole time.” This starts from the moment the console is powered up; over the corporate logos, a custom piece by Steve Vai leads into the game’s opening theme. “The music at the beginning of the game,” O’Donnell continued, “is the overture.” It establishes a theme, to be used throughout the game. From the title screen, O’Donnell pressed “start;” as the game loaded, a motivated piece of music began to play against the Halo 2 logo.

O’Donnell explained he never wants to see the word “Loading”: It’s not entertaining. You always want the player to feel like something exciting is about to happen. “I never want an excuse for someone to get up and leave the game, if possible.” The key to that is flow. O’Donnell prefers to think of audio as a cohesive whole; he would rather not have any one piece stand out.

( Continue reading at GamaSutra )

Real-time 3D Movies in Resident Evil 4

  • Reading time:1 mins read

by [name redacted]

One of the final lectures on Thursday was from Yoshiaki Hirabayashi, lead designer on Capcom’s Resident Evil 4. One of many distinctions in this game over previous entries in the series is an absence of prerendered cutscenes; any cutscenes present are rendered in-engine, and sometimes include QTE segments (as popularized in Shenmue ). At other times, the player must tap the Action button to make Leon run faster. Overall, the experience is a more dynamic one than in the past.

The reason for this, Hirabayashi said, speaking quickly through translation, is that he feels a videogame is a package as a whole; although pre-rendered movies are pretty, they passive, and pull the player out of the game. At least real-time movies are not as distracting, as the game remains consistent. Furthermore, when you change things during development, it often means you have to go back and re-render your cinematics to match again; this takes time and resources that could be better used elsewhere. Real-time cinematics remove that problem.

( Continue reading at GamaSutra )

Normal and Displacement Map, Sitting in a Tree

  • Reading time:1 mins read

by [name redacted]

Factor 5 designer Matthias Worch began Wednesday morning with a brief lecture on asset creation for next-generation games; his focus was on the distinctions between full-on digital and maquette models, as newer technology has come to make older techniques seem attractive. Before Worch began, however, he already had two problems. One was that, as his next-gen projects have yet to even be announced, he was unable to use his own material in the demonstration. The other problem was that his lecture began twenty-five minutes later than scheduled; to well use what time he had, Worch skipped straight to the demonstration.

( Continue reading at GamaSutra )

Labor Relations 101

  • Reading time:1 mins read

by [name redacted]

After the McConnell lecture on quality of life, Gina Neff, from UC San Diego, took the podium to address the audience on the growing question of unionization in the videogame industry. Rather than push any one answer, Neff’s goal was to clear some misconceptions about unions, and to offer a palette of options, to get the audience thinking about what the industry really needs, perhaps to craft its own solution.

( Continue reading at GamaSutra )

The Business Case for Improved Production Practices

  • Reading time:1 mins read

by [name redacted]

After lunch Tuesday, the Summit presented an hour-long lecture from Steve McConnell, Chief Engineer of Construx Software. McConnell’s goal was to illustrate the value of improved planning in software development, for development teams and management alike. Counter to intuition, McConnell explained, greater structure means greater morale, as the team members know what to expect. Greater morale means greater productivity. “Will a systematic approach hurt creativity?” McConnell posited. Not necessarily, he explained. It can, if you’re dumb and lazy about how you apply it. Otherwise, structure can be of benefit. It is orthogonal to creativity; there is no real connection between the two.

( Continue reading at GamaSutra )

How Serious Games is Helping the Commercial Industry

  • Reading time:1 mins read

by [name redacted]

The Monday afternoon session featured Sherpa Games founder and president Warren Currell moderating a panel of three: Dean Ku, the vice president of marketing for dance pad manufacturer RedOctane; Ubisoft Director of New Business Management James Regan; and Roger Arias, from Destineer Studios. The format was question and answer with Currell directing a series of three questions to his panel regarding Serious Games and the consumer market. With those questions expended, an audience Q&A session would begin.

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E3 Errata

  • Reading time:1 mins read

by [name redacted]

I really wanted Nanobreaker to be a step toward something excellent — or at least something compelling and odd. Or for it to show that Igarashi knows what he’s doing with 3D games. I don’t think it accomplishes any of this, in the state in which I saw it. I mean. It’s… sort of interesting in the sense that it’s just so damned bloody. Or. I guess Igarashi insists that this isn’t really blood, but oil or something. Whatever it is, it’s red and it’s goopy and it’s everywhere.

( Continue reading at Insert Credit )

Final Fantasy XII

  • Reading time:1 mins read

by [name redacted]

I have never been all that hot on Final Fantasy. A few games in the series have managed to amuse me, on one level or another. In general, I am bored by what Square has continually tried to accomplish with this series. I feel often that they have gone in the wrong directions, for the wrong reasons, and have as a result — given how much political influence they have within the design community, and how misdirected and conservative their design philosophy has been — been largely responsible for the lack of substantial evolution in the Japanese console RPG genre which they helped to popularize. They just set a bad popular precedent, for the rest of the industry to follow. And follow, you know the industry will. Biohazard was another problem; Mikami is now on his way toward fixing it. Now, though, I think Square might be on its way to joining Capcom in this trend toward repairing a whole genre.

( Continue reading at Insert Credit )

Myst IV: Revelation

  • Reading time:1 mins read

by [name redacted]

This was a surprise; I had heard nothing of a new Myst. I knew about Uru, and I knew of its troubles. It has been a long time since I have bought a PC game, however; I just haven’t had the computer to run anything made after 1997. Then, since there hasn’t been a lot interesting going on with the PC scene since the mid-’90s (unless you’re into whack-a-rat or first-person shooters, or you absolutely must have the fastest graphics card and processor, to show off the newest tech demo), I have for some time felt safe to ignore that whole segment of the industry. Yet, it seems like there is still some activity worth tracking. I think.

( Continue reading at Insert Credit )

Altered Sega

  • Reading time:1 mins read

by [name redacted]

There was nothing going on at Sega. Perhaps that’s why they decided to hide the booth in a small room off a little-used hallway, apart from the show floor, where no one who found it did so by accident and few who did intend to take a look remembered to do so. Out of sight, out of mind. Yu Suzuki strolled around, gently sipping his bottomless Coca-Cola. Some other high-level Sega staff sat crosslegged on the carpet in the hall outside, chatting. No one paid attention.

( Continue reading at Insert Credit )

KOF: Maximum Impact

  • Reading time:1 mins read

by [name redacted]

From the beginning, SNK has tried to spruce up 2D fighters by incorporating elements of three-dimensionality. With 1991’s Fatal Fury, SNK introduced the idea of multi-planar fighting, where the characters may step along a Z axis, into or out of the screen. The King of Fighters ’94 adapted the idea of a sidestep for a single plane: press two buttons, and dodge into the background for a moment, to avoid being hit. SNK already had the technique down, that was not rediscovered until five years later, in Sega’s Virtua Fighter 3.

All of that I see now, in retrospect.

( Continue reading at Insert Credit )

The Secret of Pac-Man’s Success: Making Fun First

  • Reading time:2 mins read

by [name redacted]

The radios were on the seats, this time. Most of the radios remained in place. On the screen to the right, An isometric illustration of Pac-Man greeted newcomers. A scruffy middle-aged man fumbled behind the podium. Brandon and I chose seats close and to the right of center. When most of the seats were filled, the man behind the podium turned on his microphone; it was Iwatani. He introduced himself, and his topic, in an English which might have carried him through the lecture, were he able to keep it up.

He wasn’t. To fill in the language gap, Iwatani was given a tag-team of feuding translators. Every few minutes, one woman would trade off for the other. It was a little bizarre to listen to, as it was clear that neither translation was as accurate or well-phrased as it could have been. One of the women tried at least three times, and ultimately failed, to pronounce “Galaxian”. Neither seemed to notice Iwatani’s well-organized slides, which almost narrated his lecture on their own. According to Brandon, who chose to listen to the Japanese channel on his radio, there was a point when one of the translators shouted at the other to “shut up”.

( Continue reading at Insert Credit )

dep3D

  • Reading time:1 mins read

by [name redacted]

While we bode our time for Zelda time, Brandon and I drifted into the lonely walled-off corridors to the left of the main entrance. Beyond a door and a glass wall, in a far corner, we encountered a low-key display of several otherwise-unmemorable driving games. The only immediate sign of life was in that the place seemed oddly crowded. As we neared, it became evident why: the driving game on the big-screen TV was… blurry. I looked down, and at my feet I saw a bucket full of paper spectacles: 3D glasses. Oh my. It has been a while, hasn’t it. And these were not your old-style red-and-blue glasses; these are the newer type, which provide a clear, untinted picture.

( Continue reading at Insert Credit )

OutRun2

  • Reading time:1 mins read

by [name redacted]

As we strolled past the Megaking booth on the show floor, I spotted an OutRun2 machine in the distance. Drawing closer, I noticed that it was a feature of the CRI (now a subdivision of SEGA-AM2) booth. A polite elderly Japanese fellow swiped Brandon’s and my ID cards; he handed us pamphlets and old-fashioned Japanese fans with the CRI logo on them. Only two people were before us. The initial plan was, I — being such a fan of the original OutRun — would play the game, and subsequently write up my impressions. Time was short.

As we waited, I read through a bilingual “Naze Nani CRI” comic, which illustrated for kids on both shores the benefits of MPEG SofDec and the ADX compression algorithm. A middle-aged Asian man stood behind me, arms crossed in front of his ID badge. “Do you like the original?” he asked. We nodded and grinned, politely.

( Continue reading at Insert Credit )