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GDC 07: Warhawk's transition into a Network title
At the Sony blogger's event, Warhawk's Dylan Jobe admitted that the PlayStation Network game doesn't deserve "to be a full priced game." Unfortunately, he admits, it's not his job to set the pricing. The team wanted to make a good product, but there were a few employees frustrated that the game was becoming a Network-only game. There's a stigma, he noted, and one disgruntled employee left the team due to the misconception that downloadable games are somehow lesser experiences."Crap product will sell like crap, whether or not it's on a shelf or not," Dylan admitted. He thinks that the future of Sony's Network offerings is exciting, especially because it "transcends arcade rehashes." These are "high quality titles" that will allow the company to "earn the player's trust back."Going forward, Sony admits that they're trying to get a "downloadable demo for every title." There is no Warhawk demo in the works now, but the possibility of offering a public beta for trial purpose is still being discussed.
The difficulty of contact in game sex
Making sex games is tough. Between political issues, the ESRB's ratings board, cultural differences and technical issues -- it's a war zone. Brenda Brathwaite, the encyclopedia for sex in the industry, held a few roundtables about different aspects of sex over the course of GDC. The first day was about the business side of things and one of the major conclusions was if there is anything holding back sex-based games in the industry it's collision detection software.Some of the designers in the room had worked on fighting games and explained grapples that you see in games are all canned. Simon Strange, a designer on Godzilla: Destroy all Monsters, said, "Single point of contact between two people in games is already difficult enough. If you're going to have people having sex, there is ultimate contact. How do you support their weight? There are multiple points of contact. That is the difficulty."
GDC07: Classic Suda 51 weirdness hitting the DS
Suda 51's first games as part of Grasshopper Manufacture are being remade for the DS. The games, called The Silver Case and The Silver Case Ward 25, were originally released for the Playstation and mobile phones, respectively. Suda revealed this fact during his GDC keynote "Punk's Not Dead".Both are graphical text adventures; Ward 25 uses static art and the original Silver Case uses full-motion video. Unfortunately, because of the amount of text that would have to be translated, Suda isn't sure the remakes will be released outside Japan. Someone tell him that American DS players love graphical text adventures! And tell him that we <3 Grasshopper Manufacture too.
Making LocoRoco players smile
A GDC seminar given by Tsutomu Kouno, director or LocoRoco, explored his process and goals in creating that PSP game. Like Miyamoto said earlier that day, Kouno wanted to make people smile. Speaking in Japanese, with us listening to a group of translators over a set of headphones, Kouno began with a personal history.He described growing up making toys, saying he would show them to people to make them laugh. He felt that LocoRoco came from that history. He said, "I wanted to make a game that was easy to play, so that women and children, and people who have never played games before would be interested in playing it. ... I wanted to use AI to make people laugh. That's why I included actions like the LocoRoco stacking up."See our gallery of LocoRoco design slides from the seminar.%Gallery-2050%
LittleBigPlanet developer on dealing with publishers
When gaming journalists violently collided in the hallways of San Francisco's Moscone center, a common topic of conversation, besides their universally poor navigational skills, was the PlayStation 3's physics-driven platformer, LittleBigPlanet. The game quickly became somewhat of a critical darling after its unveiling, prompting us to attend a presentation by Media Molecule, the company behind it and Rag Doll Kung Fu. A GDC session held on Wednesday was presented by Mark Healey and Alex Evans who both spoke very candidly about their company's origins and their approach to dealing with publishers (the "bad guy" as far as many developers at GDC are concerned)."We're jumping into the abyss with rockets strapped on our back," said Evans in reference to Media Molecule's enthusiastic approach to game development. Part of this attitude reflects in their relationship with publishers, who Healy insisted are best dealt with by being as upfront and communicative as possible. "Everybody has good ideas," added Evans, but the trick is communicating these ideas. Giving the publisher as much information as you can is key in gaining publisher backing, with visual and playable examples being particularly effective -- Evans called it "the power of prototyping."A video of a LittleBigPlanet prototype was shown during the session, depicting a brightly colored and two-dimensional character waving his arms about, grabbing onto objects and striding up stairs in a decidedly awkward manner. Despite its early state, the physics technology and the control method immediately shone through, a fact which ultimately played a large role in Sony's eagerness to pluck the game up. It seems a similar approach would be just as effective on gamers -- forget the feature bullet-points and dry press releases. Just show us why your game is fun!
A numerical history, and future, of flOw dev That Game Company
On the first floor of Moscone's North hall last Friday, flOw developer That Game Company presented their storied origins. Co-founders Jenova Chen, who took a brief recess from the company to help on the DS version of Will Wright's Spore, and Kellee Santiago, met at the University of Southern California. "I don't see [video games] as being any different [than other interactive media], it's all story telling," Santiago said. Chen, who affirms that his proudest work is flOw and Cloud, explained their place in gaming with an ever-popular culinary allegory. Think of Gears of War as steak and World of Warcraft as chicken. Let's give lettuce a relation to Nintendogs and fish can be Brain Age. "Let's say you focus on chicken, but somehow you find a way to make it accessible and customizable," said Chen. The according Power Point slide shows the chicken transition into a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken. "That also expands the audience or customers. How can you make existing games more accessible to wider audiences?" Does that mean flOw is a bowl of cereal? All we know now is that we're quite famished.
For game addicts, bad games are more addictive
Prof. Dmitri Williams, one of the leading academics in the gaming space, who was an expert witness at the U.S. Senate on the constitutionality of game banning laws, held a roundtable on game addiction at GDC. Williams referenced Carnegie Mellon University A. Fleming Seay's research on addiction in an MMO context.The addiction, defined as "problematic use" by Seay, is when an entertainment product dominates and displaces other behavior,causes conflict and not playing causes anxiety. Seay found that self regulation (self monitoring, self evaluation and self consequence) was difficult for certain people. This seems obvious, but like anything in academia, if somebody hasn't done the research it isn't legitimate. The other thing Seay found was people's affinity for a game caused their problematic use -- but the interesting part was that those with "problematic use" were those who didn't like the game they were playing. They would do the same actions over and over again, didn't find pleasure in their actions and got stuck in a rut.Williams thinks now is a the time to start looking into the ideas of "gaming addiction" and "problematic use" before it gains traction. He says, "Coming up with a solution to that, is better than sitting in front of Congress in ten years."
Writers and blocks in the industry
With the lack of respect given to writers in the industry it's only a matter of time before collective frustration causes The Shining. Richard Dansky, writer of numerous games, most recently Splinter Cell: Double Agent and Rainbow Six: Black Arrow, held a roundtable on tips, techniques and concerns for writers in the industry.After convincing a developer to actually hire a writer, which is apparently an issue all on its own, much of the conversation revolved around cutscenes. Some saw it as a reward and others thought it took players out of the game. Currently most story progression in games is handled by cutscenes so debate over the proper way to handle a cutscene is key. Dansky points out that one thing he thinks is important in a cutscene is to not show anything that the player can't actually do with the avatar in the game. One of the most interesting concepts brought up in the discussion wasn't necessarily even a "writer issue." After some conversation about unskipable repeating cutscenes when a player consistently dies, Brett Tosti of Factor 5 said, "What if we saw a brief game cutscene that told us how they failed their mission, that might be helpful." Hmmmmmm, that might be helpful in a game like Gears or War or tactical games where you can't really get a sense of the big picture with all the fighting going on.
Games from XNA challenge ready for download
Those four day XNA games are finished and ready for your downloading pleasure. If you remember, Microsoft's held a four day XNA Challenge at this year's GDC, pushing four development teams to the edge by requiring them to complete a XNA Studio Express game in four days. Sounds hard doesn't it? But all the teams did indeed finish as Microsoft is pleased to announce that all four games are free and available for download to play on your PC right now, if you have XNA Studio Express (it is also free). Be sure to read the game descriptions after the break, check out some screenshots, and download these four day masterpieces.
Reuters and the misleading PS3 chip-drop headline
Reuters caused Sony a little bit of unnecessary bother yesterday with a headline which read "Sony dropping PlayStation 3 chip." The implication being that Sony was dropping the Cell chip, which next to Blu-ray, is one of the key components of the product. What Reuters' Tokyo bureau was actually reporting as news was the three-week-old story of the European PS3 being not so backwards compatible.This caused an appropriate eye-roll by Sony's corporate communications director, Dave Karraker, in a conversation with Joystiq yesterday. Saying that one of the last things he wanted to deal with after the GDC marathon was a three-week-old story getting a second wind. He said he even got a call from a reporter at Reuters in New York saying, "I'm so sorry."
GDC 07: fl0w top selling Network game; no sequel planned
With 110,000 downloads and counting, fl0w has managed to be the top selling PlayStation Store game so far. thatgamecompany wanted to create a new kind of game that broke through traditional conventions: considering its success so far, it appears that the experiment is working. Jenova Chen and the rest of the team don't plan on being content on the incredible success of their downloadable title. The team revealed at GDC that they are working on a new title, one which is guaranteed not to be a sequel to fl0w. Considering the support they've received from Sony, it wouldn't be surprising to see their next title land on the PS3 yet again: maybe they'd like to do a Cell-remake of Cloud?
GDC 07: Calling All Cars impressions
Calling All Cars, David Jaffe's upcoming PlayStation Store-exclusive game, was available for play on the GDC show floor. The game, which has you competing against up to three other players, has you controlling wacky cop cars trying to catch criminals. The game is easy to pick up, fast, and most importantly, totally fun.Playing with three other players resulted in a game of total chaos and mayhem. The cars were incredibly responsive, and the various weapons created constant clashes. The levels were highly destructible, encouraging players to enter total rampages.Be sure to check out Calling All Cars when it hits the PlayStation Store later this week.
GDC 07: After Burner impressions
Sega's upcoming After Burner is not good. The final version of the game appeared at GDC, and it did not leave a good lasting impression. The graphics are quite lackluster, featuring some aliasing problems, and serious draw distance issues. The game just doesn't look good, near or far. The incredibly slow pace of the plane seems somewhat insulting, making you want to hold the Afterburner button as much as you can. At least barrel rolls look cool.The gameplay doesn't really add up to much, either. The controls don't feel as tight as the ones featured in Ratchet & Clank's space shooter segments. The lock on weapons are generous, and the highly unintelligent enemy AI doesn't seem to do much to not get killed. They may fire back once in a while, and like in Full Auto 2, it's nigh impossible to tell how you're doing from the craft itself: you'll have to look in the bottom right corner to see a meter. You won't ever feel impact, nor will you feel like the craft is ever taking damage.It's unfortunate that this game is so uninspired. While the full retail version may have more options, I highly doubt that the core gameplay will get any more interesting. The game comes out March 20th.
GameTrailer's GDC video wrap-up
Our 2007 Game Developers Conference has come to an end, we've had a fun ride, but there is still more to see. And the nice folks over at GameTrailers have their GDC section quarantined off and ready to showcase some of the best Xbox 360 media. You can sit back and watch a new Portal video, maybe some Mercenaries 2, a Fable 2 dog demo, or The Darkness. It's every video they have to offer from GDC that is Xbox 360 related. And we definitely recommend watching the Fable 2 dog demo, because it just might make you think differently about this new "revolutionary" feature. GDC may be over, but your video watching has just begun.
He feels bad and stuff: A public apology from the Wii ranter
So remember that raving lunatic who badmouthed the Wii in a GDC free-for-all bash-fest a few days ago? Well, after a phone call from EA threatening to fire his ass he feels really bad, and recently came forward with a public apology. Chris Hecker, programmer for Maxis, says:"When I'm on stage, I'm me -- I'm not representing EA or Maxis. I do not think the Wii is a piece of shit."Know this, Hecker. We do not forgive you. In fact, we feel a satiric mood coming on right about now ... stay tuned.[Thanks, Markus!]
GDC 07: DJ Max Portable 2 impressions
Joystiq's Jared Rea loves the Korean import music game DJ Max Portable, calling it "the best handheld game ever". We were both colored quite surprised when we found the game on the GDC show floor: was it a confirmation of an impending US release? Certainly, the gameplay is accessible, regardless of language. Heck, the game has always been in English. A Sony representative wasn't able to confirm a US release, saying they simply "haven't announced anything yet." Watch this video of Jared's expert play. I have to say I was quite impressed, as were the dozens of people that stopped behind us to watch. DJ Max Portable will be available for importers by the end of the month. See also:Joystiq: DJ Max Portable 2 spotted at GDC
Friday Video: No More Heroes
There's nothing like a blood-drenched trailer to wrap up the week, now is there? This one delivers, but what else could we possible expect from No More Heroes? We really, really hope this one ends up as good as it looks, and so it's this week's featured video. Check out Travis and his lightsaber of doom after the jump
Friday Video: Phantom Hourglass footage
Our man on the floor at GDC, the illustrious Andrew Yoon, gave you an overview of The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass the other day, so it's only fitting that this week we spotlight a video that demonstrates some of what he was talking about -- both the good and the bad. Check it out after the jump.
No PSP redesign planned, but more colors proposed
During a GDC appearance, Sony PSP senior product manager John Koller continued to thwart off rumors that a redesign is the works. It seems that Sony is particularly interested in denying plans to reduce the handheld's overall size, especially its screen. The current strategy is to stay the course; to generate interest in the existing model. Which means? You guessed it: tapping into some of that unused real estate in the ol' rainbow. Handheld owners are known to purchase multiple units, explained Koller -- especially when there are new colors on the market. Why expand your consumer base when you can continue to re-sell freshened up old goods to the same customers? (Wonder where Sony got that idea...?)
GDC 07: Reggie plays Wii Tennis with journalists, takes names
Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime invited journalists to test his Wii Tennis mettle at a GDC soiree last night. What started as a few friendly matches, however, quickly turned into a slaughter of the news hounds. One by one, his challengers found their skills bested and their gaming egos trampled on.IGN's Craig Harris documented the emasculation of fellow editor, Matt Casamassina, with photos you can see on his blog. Craig also found himself outplayed, admitting to a shutout loss while Reggie sipped from a glass of wine in between serves. It's great to see that Nintendo's upper management have time to actually play the games that they're so busy promoting, but that's just cruel.
