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Behind the mic drop: Sony re-wrote E3 script after Microsoft backlash
Sony's E3 2013 press conference was the definition of mic drop – Sony Computer Entertainment of America CEO Jack Tretton stepped on stage and devoted his finale speech to tearing down the contentious DRM, always-online and used-game restrictions that Microsoft had just announced for the Xbox One. He never mentioned Microsoft by name, but instead simply listed the things that the PS4 would allow. And the crowd went wild. Sony Computer Entertainment head Andrew House re-wrote that speech the weekend before E3, after witnessing backlash to Microsoft's policies, he said during the Develop 2014 conference (as reported by Eurogamer). "I remember reading an article literally the weekend before E3 that was basically saying that this is the direction Microsoft was taking and that it was only a matter of time before Sony adopts the same approach," House said. "That sort of put me on the back foot and I went and re-wrote portions of my E3 presentation script that weekend and we re-crafted the presentation because there was now an onus on us not to be seen to be going down the same path." House said Sony's policies never changed; only the messaging did. One week after E3 2013, Microsoft reversed the most scandalous of its Xbox One DRM policies. A few of Sony's promised features for the PS4 haven't yet materialized – such as sleep mode and the ability to let a friend take over your game online – but Sony is "working on it."
Breaking down the cost of an E3 booth
Semiformal Studios secured a 600 square foot space on the E3 show floor this year, and it ended up spending $100,000 on the entire show. That figure may be shocking – because it's so low. "If we hadn't second-guessed everything, worked really hard, and gotten clever it would have been about $300,000 - $500,000, but the necessity to put on a good show and the lack of funds forced us to think cleverly and work hard to make it happen on the cheap," Semiformal Studios Director Ian Kinsey tells me. "I'm confident we had the cheapest price per square foot (when you factor in all costs) of all the decently interactive booths at E3." The space itself cost $30,000 – 600 square feet is the smallest space offered – and that doesn't factor in the actual booth itself. For its construction, Kinsey got quotes from dozens of booth and expo designers, even museum exhibit companies, that ranged from $80,000 to $250,000, just for a standard design, no frills. "Some companies literally told us that the reason for the cost was simply, 'If you want an E3 booth, you have to pay E3 prices,'" Kinsey says. "Even some of the non-E3 expo makers, like the museum designers, gave that as their reason."
How 10 indie developers got into E3, legally, with Indies Crash E3
Reserving 600 square feet of space on the show floor of E3 costs $30,000. That's $50 per square foot for the smallest offered space, and it doesn't include other necessary costs – fees for the E3 management company GES, union labor and various red tape – which can add up to $15,000. More still, these prices don't include actual booth construction, game-demo tech, man-hours or convention swag. Semiformal Studios bought one of the 600 square foot spots to show off its game, Ensemble Online, at E3 this year, and the team ended up spending $100,000 in total. This was cheap – Semiformal could have easily spent $500,000, Director Ian Kinsey tells me. After dealing with the finances of E3 firsthand, Kinsey and Semiformal saw why more indies were unable to show their games at the event – and they decided to help. Semiformal established Indies Crash E3, a fan-voted contest to allow 10 indies into E3, using passes Semiformal was granted as a show-floor developer. The developers would demo their games in the Semiformal booth, share in its marketing campaign and have access to the most concentrated batch of networking opportunities of the year.
Murdered: Soul Suspect E3 walkthrough combs the crime scene
Eric Stutter, Senior Design Director at Airtight Games, provides a thorough walkthrough of the E3 demo for Murdered: Soul Suspect above. The adventure game revolves around a detective who must solve his own murder – as a ghost. The E3 walkthrough of Murdered: Soul Suspect is lengthy, spanning almost 26 minutes. Highlights include: cops slapping other cops; wearing a dead man's hat; possessing the living to eavesdrop on their conversations; and learning how christening a home can keep ghosts off the premises.
FFXIV final beta phase 3 test begins tomorrow
One million beta testers strong, the Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn is poised to possibly deliver a comeback story unlike anything we've seen in the MMO genre to date. The rebranded makeover of the flopped 2010 fantasy title is currently preparing for the conclusion of beta phase 3, which has been announced as starting tomorrow. Square-Enix tweeted that the final test for phase 3 of the beta will begin on July 10th and conclude on the 15th. This test will take place for both North America and Europe. Following phase 3, FFXIV will move into phase 4, also known as "open beta." Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn's launch is scheduled for August 27th. We covered the heck out of this title at E3, including its PlayStation 4 plans, a hands-on with its demo, a look at its PlayStation 3 user interface, a video overview of the FATEs system, and our thoughts on its convention appearance. [Thanks to Space Cobraaa! for the tip]
How a couple of indie devs snuck into E3
Two days before E3 began, Steve Swink and Erin Robinson finalized plans to attend the convention. They packed their laptops with the latest builds of their games, Scale and Gravity Ghost, threw some clothes in a suitcase, and started the six-hour drive from Phoenix, Arizona to Los Angeles, California. This is a process similar to what thousands of developers go through before showing up at E3, but there was one thing different about Swink and Robinson's trip. They didn't have passes.
Bungie releases full Destiny E3 demo footage
Destiny, the first post-Halo project of former Microsoft indentured studio Bungie, received a nice long play demo at E3 2013 showing off its open-world and MMO elements. And thanks to the magic of the Internet, you can now watch the 12-minute clip for yourself in full, glorious HD. Check out the video after the jump, and for the complete E3 experience try watching it after cramming into a room with 200 strangers while nursing a faint hangover.
Destiny sends E3 gameplay walkthrough into the wild
Bungie has sent out its full E3 gameplay demo of Destiny, containing all 12 minutes of footage from the Sony E3 2013 keynote. Within, we get a glimpse of some combat, the remnants of humanity following the collapse of its Golden Age and that Peter Dinklage-sounding AI companion.%Gallery-191163%
Titanfall cleans up in E3 2013 Game Critics Awards
Respawn Entertainment's Titanfall won six awards at E3, besting all competition in every category it was nominated for in the E3 2013 Critics Awards. Titanfall is the first game to win six awards in the history of the E3 Critics Awards, snatching Best in Show, Best Original Game, Best Console Game, Best PC Game, Best Action Game and Best Online Multiplayer. Tearaway won Best Handheld/Mobile Game, while Supergiant Games' Transistor was honored with the Best Downloadable Game award. Need for Speed: Rivals drove off with Best Racing Game, NHL 14 snagged Best Sports Game and Best Social/Casual Game went to Fantasia. The rest of the awards can be seen in the full list past the break.
Plants vs. Zombies 2 gets delayed, now coming later this summer
I got to see Plants vs. Zombies 2 running at E3, and the game looked essentially done. That's why this news is so surprising. PopCap has tweeted that the title has been delayed from its July 18 launch to "sometime later on this summer." Note that it will still premiere on iOS. There could be several reasons for this. PopCap is part of EA, so perhaps the title must go through extra quality reviews, or maybe July 18 conflicts with something else in EA's lineup. It's also possible that PopCap wants to leverage other additions to the Plants vs. Zombies empire (the company is working on a cheeky third-person shooter based on the popular franchise). There are also some concerns from E3 about the game's freemium elements. Unlike the original game, Plants vs. Zombies 2 is free to play, but dependent on in-app purchases for revenue. So it's possible that PopCap is reconsidering, or at least tweaking, those elements. We won't know for sure until we see the game again, which will hopefully be soon. Plants vs. Zombies 2 (which is somewhat ironically titled "It's About Time") is now set to arrive later this summer.
Conan goes to E3, endorses everything
If you're looking for an alternative synopsis of E3, 'Clueless Gamer' Conan O'Brien provided one on his show this week. Keep an eye out for fleeting appearances from Hohokum, Ryse, Dead Rising 3, Mario Kart 8, and the "tragic" Charles Martinet.
Titanfall dominates Game Critics Best of E3 2013 nominations
Respawn's Titanfall picked up the most nominations ever in this year's Game Critics Best of E3 awards, notching up six compared to the previous record of five. The multiplayer mech-stuffed shooter is up for Best of Show, and is one of 16 nominations for publisher EA. Endeavoring to stand tall against Titanfall in the Best of Show category are two other games in Watch Dogs and Destiny, which both received five nominations each. Also up for Best of Show are two pieces of hardware: the Oculus Rift and the PS4. The PS4's nomination is the icing on the cake for Sony's showing, with the platform holder earning a total of ten first-party nods compared to three for Microsoft and Nintendo each. The Xbox One is up for Best Hardware against the PS4, however. Also, the Xbox One leads the PS4 in terms of nominees per platform, up 34 to 33. As for who actually won what, the winners will be unveiled next week on July 2. In the meantime, you can check out the full list of nominations here.
Tiny Brains is the 'Pinky and the Brain' puzzle game that never was
Tiny Brains didn't exist seven months ago – hell, Spearhead Games, the developer of Tiny Brains, didn't exist seven months ago. The studio was founded in December by a trio of AAA deserters, including Dead Space 3 Game Designer Malik Boukhira and Assassin's Creed 3 Design Director Simon Darveau, and by E3 this year they had a stylish, playable next-gen game on the show floor. Tiny Brains is due out on Steam, PSN and XBLA this fall, with a launch on PS4 to follow. It's a lot for one brand new studio to handle, but Darveau tells me he has the passion to make it happen – and it has to happen now. "I really believe that a revolution is coming and that the future will belong to those guys who know how to create new types of experiences," Darveau says. "It was a very difficult choice for me to quit, because I was in a stable position and I was successful, but I felt like if I didn't do this I would miss the train. Something is happening right now, something huge, and it's only the beginning, I'm convinced of that." And after some time playing it, I think Tiny Brains could be part of "something huge."%Gallery-192333%
Keeping your eyes open in the cold of Company of Heroes 2
After navigating a troubled road alongside former owner and publisher THQ, developer Relic Entertainment has found a new home for its library of titles with Sega. Though shifting to a new company with different policies and directives could hurt a studio's progress, a recent mission playthrough at E3 tells us that Company of Heroes 2 has not suffered in the transition. Last December, Relic previewed the seasonal combat on show in the multiplayer mode (which has been in open beta for most of June), its E3 demo for Company of Heroes 2 focused on a single-player mission, one based on the historic Battle of Leningrad between the Russians and Germans in World War 2. In addition to Relic's RTS design expertise in action, the mission had a new technology on display: a feature known as "TrueSight." Using this new system, darkened areas of a map only become visible based on the realistic line of sight a soldier has on the battlefield, with terrain and objects able to obstruct their views to the dangers that lie in wait.%Gallery-191374%
Takedown: Red Sabre bringing tactical shooting back to Steam and XBLA
Indie developer Serellan billed its first-person shooter Takedown: Red Sabre as a "spiritual successor to the original Rainbow Six and SWAT 4" when the developer successfully raised $221,833 on Kickstarter in April 2012. Squad-based tactical shooters, where real-life military tactics take priority over the run-and-gun trappings of triple-A shooters, are arguably harder to come by and have become a niche in the broad FPS genre. Crowdfunding Takedown made more sense to creative director Christian Allen then, who told Joystiq at E3 that "part of [the decision to crowdfund] was figuring out what people really care about and what people really wanted." The project's 5,423 backers saw promise in the game, due in no small part to the team's history; Allen is a former creative director on the Ghost Recon series and was design lead for Halo: Reach. Perhaps equally reassuring for tactical shooter fans is the fact that Allen spent about nine and a half years serving in three different United States military branches: Four years as law enforcement in the Marines and over five with the Air Force and Army. Takedown: Red Sabre features single-player, six-player co-operative and 12-player competitive multiplayer modes. Like tactical first-person shooters of the past, sprinting through the non-linear maps isn't a viable strategy, as the game places an emphasis on slow, strategic and realistic warfare. Part of that realism comes from the work put into the game's weapons: Allen said that creating just one gun for the game takes about three weeks of development time for the Seattle-based team of about 10 developers. %Gallery-192121%
Super Joystiq Podcast Live 054: Favorites from E3, Reader Picks
The Joystiq crew returns for another live edition of the Super Joystiq Podcast. When the show kicks off at 3pm Eastern, Joystiq editors will discuss their favorite games and moments during E3 2013 and talk about yours. Expect Dark Souls 2, Quantum Break, PS4 indie Outlast, a discussion on next-gen controllers and more. Submit your favorite games and moments in the comments below and we'll talk about what we saw from the show floor. Have a question for the crew? Drop it in the comments below! We'll see you right here, live at 3pm.
Beyond: Two Souls puts on its warpaint
The Beyond: Two Souls demo I played at E3 featured protagonist Jodi Holmes as a CIA operative, undergoing a perilous mission in the war-torn streets of Somalia. Quite how Jodi and her accompanying supernatural entity 'Aiden' came to this point is unclear, and that's fine; Quantic Dream has a curious life story in mind for its unusual heroine, and this was a mere portion of the game's ten or so hours. Still, it was jarring. Heavy Rain often placed itself in the more normal, human situations that games tend to avoid. While it had its share of action, those sequences were smaller parts of bigger scenes, and not necessarily what defined them. In contrast, Beyond's Somalia demo offered 20 minutes of war-based intensity, and at times it outwardly resembled the medium's bevy of military shooters. It was weird. %Gallery-191353%
Miyamoto unsure where to take F-Zero franchise
Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto stalled hopes for a F-Zero return after saying he doesn't know which direction to take with the franchise. Speaking to IGN at E3, Miyamoto said there's "only so much capacity" within Nintendo's internal staff, where the next hypothetical entry would likely be developed. "I certainly understand that people want a new F-Zero game," Miyamoto told IGN. "I think where I struggle is that I don't really have a good idea for what's new that we could bring to F-Zero that would really turn it into a great game again. Certainly I can see how people looking at Mario Kart 8 could see, through the anti-gravity, a connection to F-Zero. But I don't know, at this point, what direction we could go in with a new F-Zero." Miyamoto added that, while Nintendo brought other developers to properties like Star Fox and F-Zero previously, the company would prefer to develop those series "internally" from now on. He also noted he's been trying to increase the company's internal staff to allow for more ongoing projects at any time. F-Zero Climax, released only in Japan in 2004, represents the last F-Zero game, but it's approaching ten years since the series' last major entry: F-Zero GX on the GameCube. Going by Miyamoto's comments, the best that can be hoped for now is Captain Falcon's return in the upcoming Super Smash Bros. - and even that, like the Cap, is up in the air.
Tamriel Infinium: Elder Scrolls Online, the non-MMO MMO
Bethesda revealed an exorbitant amount of information about its MMO The Elder Scrolls Online at E3. With this being the year the game was originally slated to release, I was not surprised. Of course, Massively reporters could not keep their hands off the game. Staffer Jasmine Hruschak and freelancer Andrew Ross both spent some time behind the keyboard stealing cabbages and talking to a dog. I'm not quite sure about the dog thing, but they apparently had fun. In fact, I think Jasmine penned the most revealing quote about the game: "Their dialogues were interesting and well-acted enough to make me curious. This stuck in my mind because it's completely opposite my typical MMO playstyle. I skip cutscenes, I don't read quest text, and I go to new areas as soon as possible." Of course, I'm excited about the release, and despite being an avid MMO fan, I do appreciate the idea that ESO might not be as much of an MMO as we had originally thought. In an interview with Gamereactor, Creative Director Matt Firor stated, "This is more a multiplayer Elder Scrolls game than an MMO." Although this might turn off the standard MMO crowd, I do believe that his curbing our expectations might be a lesson that more MMO developers should learn from.
Co-Opinion: Dark Souls 2
This is Co-Opinion, where two Joystiq editors play a game and discuss their experience. This edition focused on the E3 2013 demo of Dark Souls 2, from developer From Software. .portal-left { padding: 10px; background: #CCC; margin: 20px 0; min-height: 85px; } .portal-right { padding: 10px; margin: 20px 0; min-height: 85px; } .portal-right img { padding-left: 5px; } .portal-left img { padding-right: 5px; } Richard Mitchell: So you and I both got a chance to try out Dark Souls 2. I was prepared to die, and I did. Many times. There were a few pre-defined classes to choose from in our demo. I tried a dual swordsman first. I played until I realized that he only had a tiny shield, which probably wasn't the best choice. I restarted and picked a much beefier knight with a hefty shield and sword, and a massive two-handed sword to boot. What did you roll with? Xav de Matos: I rolled warrior from the start. There's no way I'm rocking through the unknown depths of From Software's evil mind without a shield at the ready. Even though I wanted to get right into the action, I had to stop and take a look around because Dark Souls 2 looks gorgeous. From Software's new engine really gets lighting and shadows right. Even the bright outdoors pop. Then there's the little stuff, like watching the grass sway from side to side in the wind. It's all really detailed and beautiful. Sadly, no one should ever stop to smell the roses, or they'll need to be plucked and put on your grave. %Gallery-191476%
