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Hype begins and ends with the gaming press
Wanna see a hype fest? Do you? You do?! Well just head over to Eurogamer, where the site decided to give Peter Molyneux a free license to hype up his unannounced projects. In an "interview" that in fifty years will be regarded by scholars as the definitive example of hype creation, Eurogamer asked Molyneux "what's your next game, and when are we going to find out about that?" The rest of the interview consists of Molyneux spouting hyped, fluffy nonsense about how he can't tell us what the game is about, but that it'll definitely be awesome+1 to the max! I just can't blame Molyneux for this mess -- if you give one of the game industry's most savvy game developers/marketers an open microphone, it's practically a law that he will use it to hype his product. Since Molyneux didn't actually say anything about his next game that might not be included in the game (like what happened with Fable) Molyneux is totally covered. The real blame lies with Eurogamer. This goes way beyond them failing to rein him in; they've gone out of their way to construct hype out of the interview. The accompanying article is dedicated to encouraging readers to guess the word that defines Molyneux's next project. Do they think that the average Eurogamer reader is five years old?! As Winston Smith says in 1984, "if there is hope, it lies in the proles gamers", so it's encouraging to see commentators calling Eurogamer out on this trash. Stoatboy says "Oh ffs - that was a terrible interview. Love him or loathe him - that interview said NOTHING above any beyond "it'll be GREAT", which is the very least anyone would say about any game they happened to be working on." See also: Joystiq's interview with Peter Molyneux
Gamer's Room 101: the argument FOR balance
The concept: During the 'Game Design Room 101' session at Develop, several developers brought out props to represent their pet peeves from games. If you've read the novel 1984 by George Orwell, you'll know where the concept comes from. In the UK, Room 101 is a weekly game/talk show presented by Paul Merton, who invites a guest to come on the show who then attempt to convince him that a certain annoyance in their lives should go in the bin, and never be seen again. This seminar (and series of posts) takes a look at certain elements of games that were nominated by the panel to go in the games designer's bin. Jen and I are going to take opposite positions in the debate. The point: Jonathan Smith of TT Games brought out a pair of scales to represent his nomination -- balance. Balance, according to Smith, is where a developer expressly sets out to tell the player "you can have this much fun", rationing the pleasure out piece by piece. My stance: Balance should stay. Jen's stance: Balance should go. You decide.
Gamer's Room 101: the argument AGAINST balance
The concept: During the 'Game Design Room 101' session at Develop, several developers brought out props to represent their pet peeves from games. If you've read the novel 1984 by George Orwell, you'll know where the concept comes from. In the UK, Room 101 is a weekly game/talk show presented by Paul Merton, who invites a guest to come on the show who then attempt to convince him that a certain annoyance in their lives should go in the bin, and never be seen again. This seminar (and series of posts) takes a look at certain elements of games that were nominated by the panel to go in the games designer's bin. Conrad and I are going to take opposite positions in the debate.The point: Jonathan Smith of TT Games brought out a pair of scales to represent his nomination -- balance. Balance, according to Smith, is where a developer expressly sets out to tell the player "you can have this much fun", rationing the pleasure out piece by piece.My stance: Balance should go.Conrad's stance: Balance should stay.You decide.
Seen@Develop: BBC Tech Editor Darren Waters and Guardian GamesBlogger Greg Howson
On the second day of Develop, Jen and I got into a conversation with Darren Waters (right), the new Technology Editor over at BBC Interactive. In the middle of the conversation I mentioned The Guardian, and then the dude on the left piped up and said "I work for them". Turns out it was Greg Howson, a writer for The Guardian who blogs at The Guardian's GamesBlog. We spent most of the time talking about blogging: how the BBC wants to do it, how The Guardian is very brave to already be doing it and how we don't know anything else.Read - Greg's write-up of DevelopRead - Darren's interview with Bungie legend Marty O'Donnell (quaint picture)
Joystiq interviews Tetsuya Mizuguchi of Q Entertainment
In our final interview from the Develop Conference, Jen and I had a quick chat with Tetsuya Mizuguchi from Q Entertainment (and Rez fame) about the problems western developers face in trying to tackle the Japanese market, Rez 2 (he regrets never making it) and the issue of games that are critically successful, but don't sell so well (Rez again).Earlier on in your career you worked on titles like Sega Rally, Channel 5 and Rez. These are all very different genres and styles of game. What's inspired you to create such varied styles in your games?I don't care about the genre. Somebody once told me that I'm "hopping genres", but I've never really cared about genres. I always think about the human being, the wants that I think people have. Their basic instinct. So my games speak a universal language, so everybody can feel what is fun.
PS3 dev kit BSOD... sorta
For the Develop Conference in Brighton, Sony (who was the primary sponsor of the conference) set up a booth equipped with multiple PSP "pods" and a couple of large widescreen LCDs showing PS3 tech demos. One of the demonstrations was a large shoal of different types of fish swimming around a large space, and the other was a 3D water simulation with semi-realistic waves.I spent a few seconds playing with the surprisingly light Dual Shake controller -- my first time, I didn't attend E3 -- and pressed select. For whatever reason, and this is why development kits are generally never shown to the public, the demo slowed to a halt, with the nice blue picture jerking away at 3fps continuously in the frame. In a technical sense this isn't a blue screen of death, but it did die displaying a blue screen, so therefore I proudly claim the title of "world's first non-developer to cause a PlayStation 3 to display a blue screen of death". It's certainly the most pretty pseudo-BSOD that I've ever seen.
Joystiq interviews Rob Kay of Harmonix
In our second interview from the Develop Conference in Brighton this week, Jen and I sat down with Rob Kay of Harmonix. Rob was project lead on the cult classic Guitar Hero, a game which is part of a new wave of hyper accessible games that is all about catching the mindset of the mainstream, as well as addicting millions of hardcore gamers. We talked with Rob about song licensing, Konami's recent "Guitar Revolution" trademark and the possibility of a Trombone Hero.You talked about clones of Guitar Hero in your seminar. Specifically you talked about how other companies are being inspired by the premise of games like Guitar Hero. I don't know if you heard about Konami trademarking a Guitar Revolution game?Yeah, I read that on the internet. To give Konami props, they started this whole instrument simulation in games thing when they did games like GuitarFreaks which they released in Japan. We worked with Konami on Karaoke Revolution and Karaoke Stage as well. So, I think it's great actually. I'm kind of the opinion that whoever is making these games with us then we're exploring this new ground together. I've got friends who have played Karaoke Revolution, and they wanted more songs so they've gone out and bought SingStar. So I think great, more people are out there playing these types of games.
Joystiq interviews Peter Molyneux of Lionhead Studios
Yesterday at the Develop Conference in Brighton, Jennie and I had the opportunity to sit down and talk with the founder of Lionhead Studios, Peter Molyneux. We chatted about the issue of hype, frustrations surrounding PC gaming and Peter's early days in the industry, amongst other topics.Fable was pretty much portrayed as one of the most open games of all time, but in terms of hype, it failed to meet the high expectations that you gave the game. There was even a forum post where you apologized about this: why did it get to that level?Well, it started with this fatal line that I made and that was that I wanted to make Fable the greatest role playing game of all time. I kinda still defend that because I honestly don't see the point in making a game that you don't honestly believe has a chance of being the greatest game of all time. I meet the press quite a lot, every 6-8 weeks there's some sort of press interview. The way I work then is to get a system in, play around with it, polish it, make it better. Sometimes I leave it as it is and sometimes I throw it away.
Develop: Everything you know about MMOs is wrong - apparently
Thomas Bidaux of NCsoft Europe didn't pull any punches with his presentation at the UK's Develop conference. Instead, the MMO giant's director of product development outlined four major ways in which the MMO world will be turned on its head. Or, rather, the 'online' world -- rather than limit himself to MMOs, Thomas talked about online games as a whole.
Develop: Game design ideas worth stealing
Game development gets accused of stagnation on a near-daily basis, and yet recent games have all featured innovative steps that can appeal to a variety of players. From minor design choices which somehow redeemed a title, to major decisions shaping the entire nature of a game, it's easier than you might think to make a difference. Margaret Robertson of EDGE gave her top picks from the last year or so's crop of games at the Develop Conference; read on for the lowdown.
Sony's Phil Harrison: "I don't think we're arrogant"
At the end of the final keynote of the Develop Conference in Brighton, Jennie and I walked up to Sony Computer Entertainment big boss Phil Harrison, with the intention of a) thrusting a Joystiq t-shirt into his hands and b), asking him two questions on the topic of the company's perceived arrogance. What he said is below, but the most interesting part for me was what he said off-tape.What would you say to the suggestion that Sony is being arrogant?There's always going to be a risk when you are market leader for ten years that we start to lose perspective; and we have to make sure that we don't lose perspective. But I don't think we're arrogant, I think we have to recognize that we're in a highly competitive industry and that anything that we say will be eternally editorialized by professionals and consumers alike. So we're always in the spotlight.
Overheard@Develop: Mark Rein - "I need a stiff drink"
Mark Rein is currently sitting 3 feet away from me, and is heavily immersed in an interview with a journalist. Only five minutes ago I heard him saying "I need a stiff drink" in not-too-subtle tones as he walked past the press area. The reason? Most likely his supposed "heckling" from developers over his strong opinions cited in the opening keynote of the Develop Conference this morning (UK time). One developer went as far as calling Mark "a dinosaur" regarding his views about the industry's direction.In the keynote this morning he called episodic content a "broken business" and stated that "Episodic games that offer faster turnaround will inevitably be using a lot of recycled content, walking through the same environments and shooting the same enemies with the same weapons." So that's opposed to the refreshing experience that we get from walking through Unreal game after Unreal game?At least one thing's on the up: Mark seems to have got something to drink, as the picture above illustrates.
Epic's Mark Rein: Intel is killing PC Gaming
A couple of hours ago, Epic Vice President Mark Rein opened the Develop Conference in Brighton with a keynote covering topics ranging from the economics of next-generation games, episodic content and middleware (which, incidentally, Epic makes a lot of its money from). The majority of the second half of his keynote took a critical look at Intel's place within gaming; specifically, Mark thinks "Intel is killing PC gaming".Over several slides on the topic, Mark laid out the reasons he thinks that PC gaming is being harmed by Intel. He pointed the finger at Intel's integrated graphics chips. Integrated chipsets are often incapable of playing the latest (and certainly next-generation) games at any kind of graphics settings. Despite this, they are wildly popular amongst retailers. According to Mark's figures, 80% of laptops and 55% of desktops (note: he failed to cite a source for these figures) feature integrated graphics. That's bad news for companies like Epic, which are investing heavily into extremely demanding next-generation games.If next-generation games don't run on the vast majority of computers, big-name and -money developers will lose (or have already lost) their bottom end. At the same time, the higher end is getting higher. The last year has produced widespread-SLI adoption within the hardcore PC gaming community and new technologies like Quad-SLI, Quad-CPUs, physics processors and $10,000+ PCs.Over the next couple of days we'll be exploring this keynote and other seminars from Develop in more depth, but for now we'll ask you the same questions that Mark asked the audience: Do games like The Sims, World of WarCraft and other low-budget Asian MMOs prove Mark's hypothesis, that PC gaming is going away because of Intel, wrong? Will console MMOs put the nail in the coffin of PC gaming? How come big publishers aren't placing big bets on PC gaming? (Mark says that he knows of at least two "major" developers that are considering moving exclusively to console based development, although he failed to elaborate on which ones). Will the PC market be relegated to only mass-market and casual games?
