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World of Warcraft (Windows/Blizzard) **1/2

  • Reading time:2 mins read

by [name redacted]

This review was composed under strange conditions. I was flat broke; a reader sent me a copy of the game and said he’d pay to see my take on the game. Then after the review went up, I think four out of five responses were objections over the fishing example. Hmm.

I’ve stopped playing World of Warcraft. Actually, I stopped a few weeks ago; I only turned the game on twice in the last few days, to buy that orange tabby that I couldn’t name and to see if I had reason to pay money I didn’t have for another month of forgetting the game was installed on my hard drive and downloading a hundred megs of patches whenever I chanced to start it up.

Until I got to level twenty, I enjoyed the game. I wandered around, I improved my skinning and my leatherworking. Maybe those weren’t the best choices for a mage, since I couldn’t wear leather. Why be tidy, though.

It started out well enough. I found a nice role-playing server, where I presumed I would have less bullshit to put up with since everyone would be concerned with etiquette. The Internet is backwards that way. Give a real person a fake identity and he’ll use that as an excuse to go wild. Get into strip clubs preternaturally. Rent videos with no intention to return them. Speak in tongues, go to ren fairs, and wear fursuits. It’s a trap door from the monotony and the conformity of the suburban right-wing hate media spewing public school adolescence we all carry into our thirties.

Give an Internet person an identity, it becomes an anchor. It’s fake, and you know it’s fake. Deep down they know it too. It’s one of those lies you live with, comfortable lies, to grease the gears and keep the project moving. You all know you’re there to escape, so why rock the boat. Let’s pretend, they say. Don’t remind me of my real life. And it’s fair enough. We all have our problems. We all need to be someone, even a fake someone. The role-players are harmless and a little sad. They want to play the game right, and that sounds good to me. Let’s do it, I figure.

( Continue reading at Insert Credit )

SNK: The Future is… Coming

  • Reading time:7 mins read

by [name redacted]

I don’t know if this report even went live on the site. If so, it’s buried in the infrastructure. If not, well, that sort of thing happens at Insert Credit HQ. Either way, it’s here now.

Although my Wednesday plans called me to ask Akira Yamaoka stupid questions, on Wendesday Brandon called me to accompany him in asking SNK slightly less stupid questions.

We walked a dozen blocks, to a hotel decorated like a Roman bath. The door to the room was ajar; inside milled PR representative Michael Meyers, ensuring all was in place. On the enormous television to the right, the Xbox port of KOF: Maximum Impact; on the reasonable television head, the PS2 port of Metal Slug 4. On the coffee table to the left, a stack of DVD cases, the spine lettering on their temporary sleeves unified in all save size. Amongst these sleeves were The King of Fighters ’94 Re-Bout and Samurai Shodown V, and the new and unfortunate cover for Maximum Impact; to my recollection, all the sleeves were emblazoned with the Xbox logo.

While Brandon was drawn to Metal Slug, I asked of Michael Meyers questions that Brandon and I would again ask each subsequent person who entered the room.

What Makes Music for Games “Music for Games”?

  • Reading time:1 mins read

by [name redacted]

One of the final panels this year discussed the nature of game music; video games, being their own mode of expression with their own demands, require a different scoring approach from other forms. Over the years, this has resulted in game music becoming something of its own super genre; as different as one game score might be from the next, nearly all are linked by some quality that makes their sound and purpose unique to videogames. In this panel, a sequence of five game music professionals explores the nature of this distinction, each in their own way.

( Continue reading at GamaSutra )

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.

( Continue reading at GamaSutra )

Silent Hill 4: The Room (Xbox/Konami) ***1/2

  • Reading time:1 mins read

by [name redacted]

I have been away for a few days. On the bus today, as I reflected on my return, I began to tense up. It was strange to feel; I thought I was cured of this. I haven’t had this sensation since I left home and found my own apartment. Then it struck me: bills. Obligations. I don’t have the rent this month. Reality. Fuck.

As long as I’m away, at least I am removed from these problems. I might be hit by a car, or I might get jostled by a street person or yelled at by a light rail employee or frowned at by a cashier at the market, or I might just lose my way — yet it’s a fantasy violence. I grit my teeth, shudder a bit, and move on. None of it matters.

When I come home, it matters. It’s all that matters. Home is reality. Today, I’m safe. No bills. There are no new surprises. I can relax. I am safe, for now.

This is the kind of horror that The Room depicts.

( Continue reading at Insert Credit )

On the Outside: An Informal Look into Silent Hill 4

  • Reading time:3 mins read

by [name redacted]

Today’s post is brought to you by Andrew Toups and the letter Æ.

People complain about Henry’s personality. I don’t get it. I mean, I do. There seems to be this idea that The Room is substantially more character-based than the earlier games, and that the tendency toward supreme understatement in all parties somehow undermines what emotional potential there might be. I don’t know how true that is, though. Taking the game for what it is, I get the idea that the characters are distant because they’re distant. Because that’s the nature of our interaction, as the player and as Henry Townsend.

See, Henry is a strangely normal guy; in a way, more typical than either Harry or James. He doesn’t have a dead wife and a lost daughter. He doesn’t have a dead wife and a crushing sense of guilt. He just has a bottle of white wine and a carton of chocolate milk in his fridge. He has no particular problems, outside his current predicament. Although compassionate for his part, he maintains his distance. As far as others are concerned, Henry’s role is of the bemused observer.

Although he’s not just a foil, Henry is a parallel for the player. You might call him a bit of a Raiden. Think of his circumstances in terms of Myst — with the Malkovich-holes in place of linking books. Notice how much of the game involves peeping — Henry, taking in his world indirectly, which we in turn take in indirectly through Henry. That is, except for the portions in room 302. Those, the most overtly Myst-like, we experience in the first-person. It is only when we leap through the holes, back into the game world, that Henry returns as a buffer.

In his relationship with others, Henry continues this role. He’s nice enough a person; it’s just, this isn’t his world. He’s busy living the life of the mind. Even when he’s standing next to Eileen, he’s still peeping. He’s not really there. He’s just watching.

It is this distance, and the safety it provides, which the game later tries to dissolve — for Henry and the player alike. When the game notices Henry is when it notices the player. When the darkness intrudes into room 302, it is intruding into the player’s own perceived safe space, where there is no Henry to fall back on.

For my part, I would find Henry’s conversations jarring if they were any less zoned-out. I would be distracted if the human relationships were any more satisfying. That would be too perfect. Perfection ruins any illusion. Henry would cease to be so very normal. He would become someone special. And he’s not. He’s no hero. He’s barely a protagonist. He’s just a twentysomething guy with white wine in his fridge. And at the end, Henry has resolved no personal problems. He remains the guy he always was. He just needs a new apartment.

KOF: Maximum Impact (PS2/SNK Playmore)

  • Reading time:1 mins read

by tim rogers [don’t capitalize my name, please]
red text by [name redacted]
green text by tim rogers
teal text by [name redacted]

Yeah… I don’t know what happened here.

King of Fighters was a union of Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting; there were other characters from other places, to be sure, and there were plenty of new ones. [Here, you cut out my explanation that in KOF: Maximum Impact, Geese Howard is running for President of the United States. There are political posters and everything.] [Yeah, I liked that part. You took too long to get to the following sentence, though.] The first thing King of Fighters did right was remove the damn stupid plane-switching and the god-forsaken nausea-inducing zooming. This spirit has carried the series into the present with a vigor that only fans previously known as “hardcore” could appreciate: each new game in the series subtracts one unnecessary formerly-experimental element for each new feature it adds. [clue 1b]

( Continue reading at Insert Credit )

Ishmael

  • Reading time:1 mins read

by [name redacted]

I can’t remember his name, so I will call him Ishmael.

It was hard to avoid Ishmael, as he was in most of my classes. Some of those classes consisted of little but heated debate between the two of us, as the other students sat dumbfounded and the teachers hid under their desks. Still, as little common ground as we shared, at least Ishmael was a worthy adversary.

( Continue reading at Insert Credit )

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 )