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GDC 2010: Interview with Faraway's Steph Thirion
Steph Thirion is a game designer who's been releasing some of the most inventive games I've seen on the iPhone. He started out with Eliss a little while back, and he recently announced Faraway, which I got to play at GDC. The night after I played the game (it was at a party called Gamma IV), I sat down with him to chat about developing for the iPhone, why Eliss wasn't bigger, and his biggest inspiration for the more casual gameplay of Faraway. Read on for the full interview.
Playcast Media nabs support from big name publishers, aims to bring STB gaming to US
GDC is winding down here in San Francisco, but Playcast Media is hoping to snag its 15 minutes by announcing new partnerships with Atari, Capcom, Codemasters and THQ (to name a few) for use in its "console-free games-on-demand" service. 'Course, streaming games in through a set-top-box is nothing new, but few operators in the States offer such a thing with any real substance behind it. Playcast's solution enables titles to be pushed through existing cable and telco STBs, and we're told that the US market is next in line to get gifted. We're not given any significant details beyond that, but we're pretty jazzed about big name publishers signing on to finally give this distribution method a bit of credence. Now, if only this Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8300HD shipped with a SIXAXIS controller, we'd be golden.
Unreal Engine 3 adds extra dimension with NVIDIA 3D Vision
Epic Games has announced that its wildly popular Unreal Engine 3 has now added NVIDIA's 3D Vision to its list of supported technologies. We've already come across Batman: Arkham Asylum being played with NVIDIA's signature shutter glasses so this isn't a huge surprise per se, but it does put a stamp of compatibility on the vast catalog of games -- both current and future -- built upon Epic's graphics engine. Those include Borderlands, Mass Effect 1 and 2, Bioshock 1 and 2, and that all-time classic 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand. The Unreal Development Kit -- a freeware version of the Engine for non-commercial uses -- is also being upgraded to make the addition of stereoscopic 3D effects "easier than ever," while other small improvements (covered by Gamespot) show that the Epic crew isn't standing still on its core product. Good news for all you mobile mavens wanting a taste of Unreality on your iPhones or Pres.
InstantAction streams full games to any web browser, gives indie developers a business model (video)
Look out, OnLive -- you've got company. InstantAction is having their coming out party at GDC, and we stopped by for a lengthy chat about the technology, its future and the hopes / dreams of the company. Put simply (or as simply as possible), IA has developed a browser-based plug-in that allows full games to be played on any web browser so long as said browser is on a machine capable of handling the game. In other words, you'll still need a beast of a machine to play games like Crysis, but the fact that you can play them on a web browser opens up a new world of possibilities for casual gamers and independent developers. You'll also be notified before your download starts if your machine and / or OS can handle things, with recommendations given on what it would take to make your system capable. Oh, and speaking of operating systems -- games will only be played back if they're supported on a given OS, so you won't be able to play a Windows only title within a browser on OS X or Linux. Rather than taking the typical streaming approach, these guys are highlighting "chunking." In essence, a fraction of the game's total file size has to be downloaded locally onto your machine, and once that occurs, you can begin playing. As an example, we were playing The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition -- which is the sole title announced for the platform so far, though Assassin's Creed was demoed -- within minutes, and since you're curious, that's a 2.5GB game, and we were on a connection that wasn't much faster than a typical broadband line. More after the break... %Gallery-88068%
NPD: Xbox 360 wins US sales war in a downbeat February
The cosmos must clearly have approved of Microsoft's actions over this past month, as today we're hearing the Xbox 360 broke out of its competitive sales funk to claim the title of "month's best-selling console" ... for the first time in two years. Redmond's own Aaron Greenberg describes it as the best February in the console's history, with 422,000 units sold outshining the consistently popular Wii (397,900) and the resurgent PS3 (360,100 consoles shifted, which was a 30 percent improvement year-on-year). In spite of the happy campers in Redmond and Tokyo, the overall numbers for the games industry were down 15 percent on 2009's revenues, indicating our collective gaming appetite is starting to dry up. Good thing we've got all those motion-sensing accessories coming up to reignite our fire.
GDC 2010: The secret to App Store success
For the last panel of GDC 2010 day two, David Whatley of Critical Thought took the stage to talk about the App Store success he found with his games geoDefense and geoDefense Swarm, and almost dared other iPhone developers to follow his "guaranteed plan" to go from "zero to Time Magazine." He's got quite a background in the trenches of coding and game development, having designed and run online mulitplayer games for over a decade with his "day job" at a company called Simutronics, but he decided to take to the iPhone in his spare time both to learn the platform and see what he could do with it. First things first, he said, to make an iPhone game, you've got to figure out your goals as a business. He talked about the potential on the iPhone in terms of millions of dollars, but of course, since "99.9% of businesses on the App Store make no money," it's much more likely that if something goes wrong during development or something doesn't click right, the money will drop down to just "a few bucks." It's a balance of costs (which he relabeled as "risks") vs. revenue -- it's very easy, he said, to make money on the App Store, but the issue most developers have is that they let costs get away from them by having too big a team or by investing too much development time, and that comes straight out of their bottom line.
Talkin' Windows Phone 7 Series gaming with Microsoft at GDC
We already got a look at Microsoft's little XNA show-and-tell as relates to Windows Phone 7 Series, but our colleague Andrew Yoon over at Joystiq had a chance for longer sit-down with Xbox Live general manager Ron Pessner and XNA Game Studio manager Michael Klucher at GDC today, and he's been kind enough to share the interview with us. The main topic of conversation was the company's plans regarding Xbox LIve and, specifically, how it would be integrating it into Windows Phone 7 Series. And believe us, there was plenty to discuss -- including the sweet science of porting games from Zune HD to 7 Series phones ("it's 90, 95 percent code reuse... in an hour or couple of hours, we're taking games that were written for Zune HD and putting them on the phone"), the importance of maintaining a consistent gameplay experience amongst different hardware, and the reasoning behind limiting devices to asynchronous multiplayer. What are you waiting for? Hit the source link to embark on this miraculous journey of discovery.
Valve on Mac piques interest from other game developers
Now that Valve has committed to offering full support for the Mac for both its in-house games and Steam, its digital game delivery system, other developers are expressing interest in the Mac as a gaming platform, too. Gas Powered Games, creator of Supreme Commander 2, Kings and Castles, and Dungeon Siege, has said of the Mac: "We, as a developer, will include a Mac platform option in all of our proposals moving forward. We're in 100 percent support of it, absolutely." Chris Taylor, founder of Gas Powered Games, says that porting games over to the Mac is relatively easy since Macs and PCs now have largely identical internal architectures. Intel processors and ATI or NVIDIA graphics cards are common to both platforms, making game porting far easier than it was back in the PowerPC days. Taylor also says that recent rises in Mac sales are another contributing factor making the Mac a more attractive target for game developers. Swedish gamemaker DICE, best known for the Battlefield series of games, may also be throwing more support behind the Mac -- one of the company's lead developers has said that "We're currently investigating the possibility of making [Battlefield: Bad Company 2] available on Mac." That's not as big or flashy a commitment as Valve or Gas Powered Games, but considering the popularity of the Battlefield series, it still goes a long way toward improving the state of gaming on the Mac. Over the next year or so, many other developers are likely to be watching Valve's success (or lack thereof) on the Mac with a very keen eye. If Valve manages to make a healthy amount of money by selling games to Mac users, it may only be a matter of time before many more gaming outfits follow suit.
OnLive launch titles 'in the teens,' 50-60 games by 2011
Following today's GDC keynote from OnLive CEO Steve Perlman, his COO, Mike McGarvey, fielded questions about the game streaming service that's launching June 17. Unfortunately, just how much full games will cost on top of the $14.95 monthly subscription fee was not one that he answered. McGarvey did confirm that the service will launch with a lineup of titles "in the teens," comprised of some that will have been on shelves for a few months -- Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age: Origins were examples -- and others that will release closer to OnLive's debut, such as Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands. The catalog will grow from fewer than 20 games on day one to "50 to 60" by the end of 2010, according to McGarvey. These (and all) games on the service will be playable "for years" after release, he said, addressing concerns that buying a game "hosted" by the company could be a risky investment. Some details are being saved for an announcement at or leading up to E3, including when the OnLive micro-console will be available and, of course, game pricing. McGarvey would say that the company is looking to offer incentives (free games, perhaps?) to build the subscriber base, and that those who sign up "may get some free content" for the monthly fee ... at some point. The micro-console may also be offered free with a service commitment, McGarvey stated, though it will "potentially" be sold on its own. Saying that more than 250,000 people signed up (but weren't all accepted) for the OnLive beta, McGarvey admitted that the company expects "demand will far outweigh capacity" for the service's launch -- we'll be interested to find out how many people actually "pre-subscribe" and if the company changes its outlook leading up to mid-June.
GDC 2010: Real Racing and Flight Control on the iPad with Firemint
We got to sit down with Australian developer Firemint here at the Game Developers Conference 2010 in San Francisco -- it's a mobile game developer who hit it big last year with the very popular iPhone game Flight Control, and while it used to make mobile games for just a handful of larger game publishers like EA, the company is now trying to cement a reputation for making a smaller stable of high quality App Store games. "We like to joke that we went from ten customers to ten million," community manager Alexandra Peters told us. She also showed us their second game, Real Racing, which has been winning all kinds of awards even in the crowded accelerometer racing game genre, and talked with us both about Flight Control HD (their upcoming "soon after launch" title for the iPad) as well as what's next for the company.
GDC 2010: Ngmoco explains how Eliminate was built
As they explained during the presentation, they had a heck of a goal with this project: they wanted to put together "the definitive FPS for iPhone," complete with all of the functions of a standard console deathmatch-style FPS, in just five months with just three engineers. And they started with the toughest nut of all: the networking code.
Tekken bound for the iPhone
Namco is bringing the popular Tekken franchise to the iPhone. It's not confirmed whether it's a port of the original game -- released back in 1994 in arcades, then on the PlayStation -- or the current Tekken 6. This comes a few weeks after Capcom announced the release of Street Fighter IV for the iPhone, leading to an eventual fighter game showdown in the App Store. While both games on the iPhone is pretty awesome, I'm waiting to see how they will look and play on the iPad. I also wouldn't mind seeing even more Namco titles on the iPhone - especially selections from the Tales RPG franchise. Namco has a number of games in the store, including classics like Galaga, which was "remixed" for the iPhone, Burger Time Deluxe, which graced arcades way back in 1982! Here's hoping for old-school Tekken. [Via Gizmodo]
Meizu MStore open for business, Mr. Jelly on sale now for 29 cents
We have some news on the app store that Meizu announced for the M8 a while back. The official name is apparently MStore, and it is indeed open for business with its first paid app, Mr. Jelly, going for about 29 cents (we believe it's a productivity tool for managing your, um, jelly). If that sounds familiar, it is -- the game is a port of an iPhone App Store gem. Regardless of its somewhat KIRFish nature, we do wish Meizu (its app developers) all the best. Now, when are we going to get Super Monkey Ball for this thing?
Palm unleashes webOS PDK beta on the public
If you've been looking to get in on some of that red hot game development action that Palm's been all about lately, check it out: among the announcements at this year's GDC, Palm has announced the release of its public beta PDK for webOS. This bad boy promises to let devs "use C and C++ alongside the web technologies that power the SDK and mix them seamlessly within a single app," just the thing for porting game titles to the webOS platform. And it's available now! Hit the source link to get started -- and maybe someday we'll finally get to play Mr. Jelly on our Pixi. We can dream, right? [Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Valve: Steam, games coming to Mac in April
Valve announced on Monday that several of its popular titles, and both Steam and Storm, will be coming to the Mac in April. We anticipated this, based on the upcoming Gameinformer issue report, but now it's official! Game titles we can expect to see include Left 4 Dead 2, Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike, Portal, and the Half Life series. Even better news is that Valve intends to make simultaneous platform releases the norm from here on out. Expect Portal 2 to be the first game to be released on both Mac and PC at the same time. Steam is Valve's digital delivery system for games (think iTunes for fragging); Storm Source is the game engine from the company [Editing error, sorry –Ed.]. The system's been ramped up to even greater heights of awesomeness with a new feature called Steam Play. What that does is let you purchase the game on one platform (PC or Mac) and play on the other free of charge. It gets better. Valve's Jason Holtman explained how Steam Play and Steam Cloud work. "For example, Steam Play, in combination with the Steam Cloud, allows a gamer playing on their work PC to go home and pick up playing the same game at the same point on their home Mac. We expect most developers and publishers to take advantage of Steam Play." Really? Are you kidding me? Rumors of Steam coming to the Mac surfaced in February when users found OS X icons hidden within a beta version of the new UI for their system, and were all but confirmed when Valve themselves released these teasers. All that's left now is the hardest part: The waiting.
Steve Ballmer teases new Xbox 360 form factors, price points and options
Turns out Steve Ballmer's talk up at the University of Washington delivered even more saucy info than we were initially led to believe. In a transcript of the subsequent Q&A session, Steve is shown to have delivered the following statement on the topic of large-screen televisions and Microsoft's related hardware strategy: For that big screen device ... there's no diversity. You get exactly the Xboxes that we build for you. We may have more form factors in the future that are designed for various price points and options, but we think it's going to [be] important. It's safe to assume new form factors point to a smaller rather than larger 360 chassis, though the price points and further options he mentions are wide open for speculation. It wouldn't be unreasonable to forecast Microsoft pushing out its own slimmed-down console to match up with Sony's PS3 Slim, but we also shouldn't discount the idea of an Xbox 360 with Project Natal hardware integrated into its shell. In other words, we really don't know what Steve has going on under that shiny dome of his, we just hope it's as exciting as he makes it sound.
Sony wants to patent 'feature erosion' in game demos, illustrates the idea vividly
Want more evidence of the patent degradation of modern society? Well, here's Sony with its latest idea for selling games. The feature-eroding demo concept gives the user the full game to start off with, but then grows increasingly more limited the more you play it. In racing games, that means the number of tracks you can race on gradually dwindles, whereas in classically themed smack-em-ups like God of War your sword, erm... well, it also dwindles. We're kind of on the fence about this -- on the one hand, it's hilariously insulting to the user as it perpetually nags him about what a cheapskate he is for not purchasing the entire game, and yet on the other it does at least let you taste the full breadth of the game, albeit for a limited time. However you may feel, this is still at the application stage, but given the patent office's recent track record, there's no reason why Sony should be denied the rights over this supposed innovation.
Xbox Live termination ends in a consolation goodie bag for Halo 2 owners
As Microsoft prepares to pull the plug on online gaming for the original Xbox, it's decided to act benevolently toward the undoubtedly grief-stricken Halo 2 loyalists and has rewarded them all with some consolation prizes. A free three-month Xbox Live membership awaits, accompanied by 400 MS points and a place on the Halo: Reach beta, should you wish to accept it. For a console that's nearly a decade old, it's understandable that online gaming support would've had to end at some point, so you might as well just transfer all your energies into being a good guinea pig / tester for Microsoft's latest cash cow. Steve would just love it if you did.
Interview with Zen Bound creators on iPad and iPhone games
AppAdvice has an interview up with Secret Exit, the folks who made one of the best iPhone games of last year, Zen Bound. They spoke not only about that game and how the iPhone turned out to be the perfect platform for them to start out on, but also about the iPad and what they're planning to do with it in the future. Secret Exit echoes a lot of other developers in saying that it plans to make completely different apps for the iPad, not just upscaled or updated versions of iPhone apps. The hardware and the market, says Secret Exit, both call for completely separate releases. They also say, however, that they're worried about iPad pricing. A bigger screen and more complicated layouts mean that the investment for apps will be bigger, and if only the most recognized brands can hold down a $9.99 price point, Secret Exit says that they may not be able to build out their games to the point that they'd like. Interesting points all. Of course, much of the iPad thinking so far is speculation -- it's certainly possible that the $9.99 price point could become the default for new iPad apps, which would give developers a little more money to play with. But as with everything else iPad, we'll have to see. At least the wait's not that long.
If you throw away your console, the terrorists have won
In one of those fun, yet uncomfortable, instances where real life and video games interact, Fox News has uncovered a dusty (and old, very old) PlayStation controller during a raid of an Afghanistani farmhouse, which doubled up as a munitions depository. Lying there, in among rockets, grenades, plastic explosives and tank shells, was this humble blue-hued PlayStation appendage, which we're told can be rewired to act as a remote detonator. Should you question just how seriously the US government is taking this growing tide of console-aided terrorism, below you'll find a press release (seriously, a state-issued press release) detailing the detainment of four men in connection with the illegal transportation of digital cameras and PlayStation 2s to a "terrorist entity" in Paraguay. If convicted of the most egregious charge, they face 20 years in prison... for contraband consoles. Face, meet palm.
