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Rocksteady's Sefton Hill shares Arkham recipe
Rocksteady Studios co-founder and game director Sefton Hill shared his recipe for making Arkham games at DICE 2012. Beyond the basic ingredients listed, all you'll need is a major license, a supportive publisher and millions to fund the project.Sefton's Arkham recipe: Make the game instantly fun and accessible. "We believe it's our job to entertain," Hill said, adding that the free-flow combat of Arkham was meant to instantly convey the feeling of being Batman. Deep core mechanics, with a contant, incremental challenge to maintain engagement. "We developed combat by introducing new enemy types ... it keeps giving you more, it keeps challenging you." Complementary Orthogonal Design. Boiled down, it's that systems like navigation, combat and story "all have their own distinct and strong uses." Essentially, he encouraged designing complementary design elements that don't step on each other. Authenticity. "The restraints of the character define the character." Hill said certain elements may seem like a pain the ass, but that one must embrace those constraints. The fact that Batman can't kill anyone was something the team had to maintain at all times. "It stops us from falling back on a lot of game cliches." Takeway: Celebrate and explore the limitations of characters and what makes them unique.So, there you go. Oh, you'll also need an engine. We're sure if you write a really nice letter to the guys at Epic, they'll let you license the Unreal Engine at a good price.
Batman: Arkham City copies available early at Times Square TRU event
The Times Square Toys R Us location will hold an event on Monday, October 17, where 500 copies of Batman: Arkham City will be available a day early. The first 100 customers who pre-purchase a copy of the game through the store's "Personal Shopping Department" (starting now, we guess?), will receive a ticket reserving their copy, and can have their game autographed by Jim Lee (co-publisher at DC Entertainment), Kevin Conroy (the voice of Batman) and Sefton Hill (B:AC Game Director from Rocksteady Studios) at the event. The other 400 copies will be available for purchase at the event, which officially starts at 4PM, but who knows when people start lining up? The event will include photo ops with actors dressed up as Batman and Catwoman, and game demos. Obviously, keep your eye on the prize. You could get Batman: Arkham City a day before everyone else, or those with Amazon Prime who longingly stare out the window for any glimpse of the UPS man.
Batman: Arkham City adds interrogation to detective skillset
In the latest issue of the UK's PSM3 magazine, Batman: Arkham City director Sefton Hill outlined an upgrade to Batman's "Detective Mode" designed to help him extract information. Batman will now be able to scan a criminal database to find likely informants among henchmen, and then interrogate them to get what he needs -- like extra Riddler clues. "The Riddler continues to taunt the Dark Knight with mind-bending puzzles and exploration challenges," Hill said, "but the location of his biggest secrets are known only to him and people he's told. Rather than unlocking their locations using maps, Batman will be able to scan a gang of thugs to find a potential informant." We're excited about the new gameplay mechanic -- as well as the challenge, described by Hill, of making sure not to knock out the one guy in a crowd you need to talk to. But mostly we're happy for the Riddler. He's well on his way to figuring out the secret to successful crime: not immediately giving the world's greatest detective any clues about how to find your stash.
Rocksteady: publishers fully backed Batman: Arkham Asylum delay
Boy, Rocksteady has WAY better bosses than we do. When we say we need two more months to finish a post, our higher-ups open a whole barrel of complaints: "There's no way it could take you that long to write a post," or, "It won't be anywhere near relevant anymore." We've heard them all. But when Rocksteady said it needed two more months for Batman: Arkham Asylum, pushing the release from June to August, it was apparently backed completely by the game's publishers, Eidos and Warner Bros. Speaking with Kotaku, game director Sefton Hill said the secret is to have "confidence in the game" and "be able to show that [added] time is going to be well spent." So, in closing, we'd like to tell AOL that we're confident the extra five months we're spending on that PS3 Slim rumor post you asked about will be well spent. Thank you.
Batman: Arkham Asylum creator focused on quality over quantity, hasn't played BioShock
In a lengthy post-mortem with Gamasutra this week, Rocksteady Studios creative director Sefton Hill spoke his mind on a mess of topics regarding this summer's surprise hit, Batman: Arkham Asylum. "There are too many games out there that deliver lots of average content," Hill said when asked about the relative "tightness" of Batman in comparison with other games. Personal inspiration for the game's design came from places like Zelda and Metroid, two game series he's been a fan of "for years," as well as Silicon Knights' Eternal Darkness. And though Arkham's audio logs and "environment as a character" motif hearken back to 2007's BioShock, Hill claimed he's never played it. "It's on my list of games to get back into ... I can't say for me that was a big direct influence."Truth be told, we're just scratching the surface of Gamasutra's thorough dissection of Batman -- a game we loved with all of our jaded, rancorous hearts -- so do yourself a favor and stroll through the entire five pages. Call it an afternoon treat! You deserve it, dearest Joystiq reader.%Gallery-31781%
