gdc-2012
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Play Guacamelee at PAX East
It seems unlikely that you'd forget a game called "Guacamelee," but feel free to watch the trailer and refresh your memory. During an appointment with developer Drinkbox Studios, we had the opportunity to watch that lovely trailer again -- and to learn that Drinkbox plans to bring a playable version of the world-shifting luchador platform action game to PAX East 2012. So not only will we get an update on the game, which is a strong contender for best title ever (reminder: "Octodad: Dadliest Catch" exists) -- we'll get to play it soon.
GDC 2012: SOE's PlanetSide 2 gunning for the big time
Our PlanetSide 2 bootcamp didn't start on the war-torn planet of Auraxis. It started on a plushly appointed hotel terrace in the middle of downtown San Francisco. Sony Online Entertainment brought its A-game to GDC 2012, and though its MMOFPS sequel is still undergoing internal alpha testing, the demo was striking enough to make us feel like battle-weary soldiers returning from the front. Executive producer Josh Hackney kicked things off with a short spiel that touched on what made the original PlanetSide unique (truly massive combat, ambitious open-world design, and a passionate/enduring community, in a nutshell). Hackney then turned the microphone over to creative director Matt Higby and a team of SOE devs who proceeded to wow the gaggle of game journos with an hour of pure awesome.
Medal of Honor Warfighter powered by Frostbite 2.0
Medal of Honor Warfighter executive producer Greg Goodrich told Joystiq this evening that October's Danger Close game is being built using EA DICE's in-house Battlefield engine, Frostbite 2.0. This marks the second use of Frostbite 2.0 outside of its origin studio, following last year's Need for Speed: The Run.After a brief on-stage presentation of the game in action, Goodrich spoke to us about how Danger Close is attempting to distinguish the game visually, despite it being built in the same engine that powers EA's other big shooter. To us, the game didn't look dramatically different from what we've seen in DICE's work with Frostbite 2.0, via BF3."I don't think the engine dictates on what it's gonna look like," Goodrich said. "We have a wonderful art director who has a very clear vision of the type of lens he wants to tell our story through. The tech is just a canvas, and that canvas is much larger than it's ever been before."MoH Warfighter is being developed entirely in-house at Danger Close this time around, with DICE offering little more than engine support (and perhaps the occasional hearty back pat). Goodrich confirmed to us that he and his team aren't growing the same impressive beards during Warfighter's dev cycle."My wife won't let me this time," Goodrich said with a smile. "Same guys, less beard."%Gallery-149880%
Ponycorns creator('s dad) Ryan Creighton talks funding fun, family
Ryan Creighton makes sure to acknowledge precisely how average he is, but it's not a self-deprecating point. Creighton, the man behind Sissy's Magical Ponycorn Adventure and dad of the designer, then 5-year-old Cassie, led a panel at GDC titled "Ponycorns: Catching Lightning in a Jar," which focused on tips for building a brand and marketing a product as an indie developer.For an "average" developer, Creighton makes some exemplary points.For example, build a game-specific blog or website and publish the story behind any game's development; personalize the process and make is easy for people to give you money, Creighton suggested and we completely agreed with.Even though Creighton offered some wonderful tips for emerging developers, he also pointed out that there isn't a guarantee for success, at least not in the traditional sense.Creighton's studio, Untold Entertainment, is in the hole at least $6,233, but it's raised more than $3,000 for Cassie's college fund, Creighton said. He didn't make Ponycorn to get rich -- luckily -- but had clear reasons: Creighton believes kids should learn to code, that there should be more women in the games industry, and he wanted to spend more time with his children by involving them in the family business. In these areas, it appears he succeeded.Creighton works on Untold contract projects and develops games for under-funded, lackluster Canadian television spin-offs to support his family, he told Joystiq after his presentation. Creighton had hoped to develop original titles for Untold full-time, but "it's been a rough three years," he said. He then turned to a circle of developers waiting to ask him questions and offered another piece of advice: "Here's a hot tip, fellas. Don't start your own company in the middle of a global economic collapse."Creighton is currently developing Spellirium, a "trashpunk" graphic-adventure, world-puzzle title for Mac, PC and mobile devices, which he is, of course, blogging about.
'The buck stops at the simulation' with new SimCity
"We're building a simulation that really captures the world we live in today, where your decisions go beyond the boundaries of the city." Speaking at an EA press conference in San Francisco tonight, Maxis Senior Vice President Lucy Bradshaw shared some of the high-level goals for the new SimCity game, coming to PC in 2013.Bradshaw recalled shipping the first city builder in 1989, and described the return of Maxis to the franchise proper with great enthusiasm. "It's been about ten years since we shipped the last, true SimCity by Maxis," she said. Despite that passage of time, the developer still seeks to impart inspiration in simulation. "The buck stops at the simulation," Bradshaw said.%Gallery-150003%
GDC 2012: Advanced recon of PlanetSide 2 uncovers hot zone photographs
Massively's boots are on the ground at this week's Games Developer Conference, and we've stormed Sony Online Entertainment's stronghold to find out any and all information about its upcoming MMOFPS PlanetSide 2. We've been tweeting the excitement from the show floor, and while hearing it is one thing, seeing it for yourself is another. That's why we're bringing to you a mega-upload of 22 hot new images and concept art from this MMOFPS. Showing off a huge variety of environments, ships, soldiers, outfits, and action sequences, these screenshots are pure eye-candy for those anticipating this title. And after the cut, you'll find two GDC videos of the game, courtesy of PlanetSide Universe and tipster Kyle. This is only the beginning, however. Stay tuned to Massively for our first impressions of PlanetSide 2 and an interview with SOE's Tramell Isaac coming later this week! %Gallery-127964% Massively sent four resolute reporters to San Francisco to bring you back the biggest MMO news from this year's GDC, the largest pro-only gaming industry con in the world! From games like The Secret World to PlanetSide 2, we're on the case, so stay tuned for all the highlights from the show!
New SimCity scraping sky on PC in 2013
The permits are all set for a new SimCity to begin building the next great metropolis, EA and Maxis announced this evening at GDC 2012. It's coming to PC in 2013, and going back to Maxis.The official word follows a string of leaked screens and a prematurely outed trailer that seemed intended for GDC. The game will run on the GlassBox engine, which EA plans to describe in more detail at tomorrow's "Inside the GlassBox" presentation at GDC. So far, we've confirmed that it'll have curvy roads!
Epic Games China bringing Mercenary Ops exclusively to NA/EU computers this summer
There's a whole group of folks at Epic Games China and they're working hard on the first big title from Epic Games' eastern subsidiary. The game, Mercenary Ops, is a ... somewhat derivative third-person shooter built in Unreal Engine 3, which uses cover, blind fire, and active reloading mechanics (from the Gears of War franchise) as main gameplay concepts. Given the "mercenary dudes" setting, the combination of Gears gameplay and bro'd out characters gives it a Gears of War meets Call of Duty feeling, as we discovered during a brief hands-on session today at GDC 2012. So ... yeah, perfectly competent, but not the most original.Perhaps more interesting, the game isn't being published by EGC's American parent company, but instead a brand new North American publisher named Delkans. And what in the world is Delkans? That's a good question -- one that company reps weren't willing to supply an answer for when repeatedly asked during our meeting today. Apparently the publisher is made up of folks from the tech industry, though that's all we could pull out of reps.Mercenary Ops is planned for a summer 2012 launch in North America and Europe, with Asian markets potentially following (Delkans isn't talking solid plans just yet).%Gallery-149855%
One reason Fez has taken five years to make, has already won awards
Seeing Fez's technical postmortem directly before a screening of Indie Game: The Movie offered a jilted experience, one from developer Renaud Bedard, who presents the game's pitfalls in its most practical terms, and the other from a dramatic 15-foot projection of Phil Fish's muttonchops, who assure us that re-re-creating Fez was and continues to be a truly personal, life-altering experience.Fez has been in development for almost five years and is now officially undergoing Microsoft certification -- the most the public (or press) has played is in demo form, yet Fez has been widely anticipated since its IGF win in 2008, a scenario that Indie Game: The Movie explores on a deeply human level. Bedard explains it in more technical terms. Way more technical terms.Bedard and Fish created their own editor for Fez, called the Fezzer, and designed what they deemed "trixels," blocks like voxels but at 16x16x16, or as Bedard described it, four 2D views creating one 3D world. Instead of a standard 2D tile set, Bedard built 3D "triles" -- 302 of them -- in 17 trile sets. Fez will have 157 isolated levels, and these triles make up all of them.Fez stars Gomez, a 2D character wandering a 3D world, and it also features a 4D character, Dot the tesseract. Dot is a 4D hypercube fairy that Bedard created using faux 4D to 3D projections with 96 vertices and 144 triangles, lending her the feeling that she knows more about the Fez universe as a whole, which she does.Both Bedard and on-screen Fish agree that Fez has been a long time coming."The fact that Fez was such a long project means that we kept upgrading," Bedard said. "Fez is our first game, our first project. It's hard to manage the fact that you want the game to be perfect."
Bastion's canceled feature: 'Find a shoe? Plant it.'
Supergiant Games spent one year working on a "rich gardening feature" for Bastion that the entire team was "really excited about," but was eventually cut from the game, designer Amir Rao said at GDC. The final version of Bastion demonstrates the team's obsession with plants, but gardening itself was set to play a pivotal role in exploration and players' overall sense of accomplishment, Rao said, breaking it down into four functions: Players would find seeds for story items and worlds Planters on the Bastion would open up gradually, limiting how many seeds could be planted Plants would be watered with blue "cores" They would sprout and the fruit would offer its item, world, etc.Gardening in Bastion faced a slew of problems, but mostly the seeds had no aesthetic connection to the final plant -- "What does a 'hammer plant' look like?" Rao asked -- and Supergiant eventually realized that they were solving the wrong problem. What Bastion really needed was a menu.
The Joystiq Show - GDC 2012: Day 1
The Game Developers Conference 2012 is in full swing in San Francisco and Joystiq has a team on-hand to report on the greatest things the show has to offer. In this episode, Xav, JC, Ben, and Jessica sit down to discuss their first day of the show, including some PSN and Kinect titles, and some indie game movie thing.Ben also checks back in with a special second segment for an interview with Iron Galaxy Studios' CEO Dave Lang on indie development and the developer's forthcoming XBLA title Wreckateer.Part 1 (0:51) - GDC day 1Part 2 (14:30) - Interview: Dave Lang - CEO, Iron Galaxy StudiosGet the podcast:[iTunes] Subscribe to the Joystiq Podcast in iTunes[Zune] Subscribe to the Joystiq Podcast directly in the Zune Marketplace[RSS] Add the Joystiq Podcast feed to your RSS aggregator[MP3] Download the MP3 directlyGuest: Dave Lang - CEO, Iron Galaxy StudiosProducer: Jonathan Downin (@jonathandownin - Game Thing Daily)Production Coordinator: Richard MitchellMusic: "Bust This Bust That" by Professor KliqView the full guest list and stream the show after the break.
Klei Entertainment chowing down on new Eets title
Klei Entertainment, creator of the Shank series, is working on a second installment of its other original franchise, Eets, studio co-founder Jamie Cheng said at GDC today. Cheng presented at the Failure Workshop, showing off the many iterations and doomed decisions of Eets: Sugar Rush, a title Klei worked on for four years before it was canceled for good.Cheng said Klei was burnt out on Sugar Rush (later renamed Scrappers), so the new Eets title will probably have more to do with healthful eating habits and complete objects than anything else. We'll have more details on the failures of Klei, Supergiant Games, Enemy Airship and Northway Games in a separate story later today.
NimbleBit's next work in progress: Pocket Planes
NimbleBit is showing off its next prototype at GDC this week. Rather than cram tiny, adorable denizens into massive skyscrapers, the developer's stuffing people into planes. Players start a small airline in Pocket Planes, eventually building up their transportation empire to escort people and cargo all over the world.Touch Arcade got first crack at the work in progress, which sounds similar to Tiny Tower. Players can purchase "plane bux" through in-app purchases or earn them as they go along, and customize their airplanes and statistics such as flight speed, travel distance and capacity. Given that it's a prototype, the makeup of the game may change over the next few months.
Paradox reveals 3 new games: The Showdown Effect, Dungeonland and Red Frontier
Paradox has, as promised, revealed the next three projects in the pipeline from Arrowhead Game Studios, Critical Studio and Zeal Game Studio at GDC. Each is set to launch on the PC and Mac sometime this year.The first game is The Showdown Effect, from Pixeldiet Entertainment and Arrowhead Game Studios -- you may recall the latter outfit's previous effort, Magicka. Paradox describes the game as "a 2.5D multiplayer action game in which players will be participating in death-matches to gain glory and fame." It's set in Neo Tokyo in the year 2027, and focuses on a cop destined to meet his ... destiny.The second on the list is Dungeonland, from Brazil-based newcomer Critical Studio. Up to three players assault Dungeonland, a theme park where adventurers can go to hack and slash stuff together, while the fourth player takes on the role of Game Master, devising traps and overall trying to kill their friends -- sounds like the perfect role for that one passive-aggressive friend of yours.Finally, Red Frontier is a competitive RTS that tasks players with mining resource deposits in space. Sharing is caring, guys -- even in the future we can't get along? It seems so.Hit the jump to check out the rest of the announcement trailers and some screens, hot off the wherever screenshots come from.%Gallery-149554%
Fruit Ninja Kinect sells a million units; Jetpack Joyride update in April
Halfbrick announced today that Fruit Ninja Kinect has reached a million sales, solidifying it as a very successful "console experiment" for the company. The company announced a month ago at DICE 2012 that sales had surpassed a half million.Phil Larsen, chief marketing officer at Halfbrick, also told us that the Jetpack Joyride 1.3 update is coming this April. It will add 15 gadgets that are "kinda like perks," which players can choose at the beginning of the round to assist.Gadgets include Air Barry shoes, allowing Barry to jump instead of glide up. Along with the "Freeze o Matic," which turns Barry into a sliding ice block when he crashes for extra distance. There are also magnets which allow Barry to collect coins. Still no item that allows you to actually stop playing Jetpack Joyride.
Halfbrick to debut new IP in 2012
During a meeting with Halfbrick's Phil Larsen, the iOS juggernaut's marketing man couldn't really give us much on what the studio was up to next despite our relentless inquiry. Following Fruit Ninja and Jetpack Joyride is no small task, but at least Larsen could tell us the company will debut a new iOS title this year."You'll see updates for all of our games and a new IP this year," Larsen promised following a demo of the 1.3 update for Jetpack Joyride here at GDC. Jetpack Joyride 1.3 adds 15 new gadgets to The Stash.
JS Joust creator's Dog the Wag puts Moves on butts
During his Independent Games Summit presentation on "folk games," Die Gute Fabrik's Douglas Wilson presented an example of a "deliberately stupid" game that uses technology to encourage uninhibited fun among groups. You know, like the group's best-known game, Johann Sebastian Joust.Dog the Wag, demonstrated by people acting a damn fool next to the stage, is a game played using PlayStation Move controllers, tethered to player's butts. Players get on all fours, then attempt to wag their digital tails as furiously as possible to accumulate points. Occasionally, the Moves' orbs will flash, signaling that a player is vulnerable to attack. If another player manages to wrestle said vulnerable party to the ground and press a button on their Move, points are deducted.We're going to remember this the next time we're about to tell someone GDC is a more "professional" conference.
Foddy building 'Qwoperative' portal for indie flash games
During the inaugural speech at this year's Independent Games Summit, QWOP/GIRP creator Bennett Foddy explained his reasons for self-publishing his games on his own website, rather than going with a portal like Adult Swim -- reasons including better compensation, ability to freely change and update your games, and creator identification.Then, to conclude the talk, he invited other indie Flash developers to contact him if they're interested in self-publishing on a portal, and he showed a logo for "Qwoperate."Elsewhere in the talk, Foddy offered a bit of explanation for his style of game. He half-jokingly (?) said that players love being confused, humiliated, and frustrated -- essentially, they enjoy difficulty that surprises them. On the other hand, Foddy promised he would never "inflict" a tutorial, intro movie, or explanation of any kind on the players of his games. That's just too cruel for the guy who made the game about controlling individual leg muscles.
Sword and Sworcery EP: 350K units swold
iOS title Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP has sold 350,000 units life to date, Capy president Nathan Vella revealed at GDC 2012 today.The long-form game, which took 18 months to develop, has done incredibly well on the app store, despite having "small amount of birds, no fruit, limited water," which have all become cliche requirements for iOS success."Everyone isn't a demographic," Vella noted. "Target a niche due to iOS scale, niches can be huge."He said two-thirds of all sales were on the iPad universal app and that three quarters of revenue were made on the universal app. He also noted that the title going on discount only accounted for 10 percent of sales, meaning the game had a potential audience that was willing to pay full price for the experience.Vella feels Sword & Sworcery is a good case that longer experiences can fit on the iOS platform and targeting "everyone" isn't the only way.
Rumor: Leaked pre-visualization SimCity 5 trailer purports 2013 launch window
This may be our first up-close and personal look at the still-rumored SimCity 5, or at least its debut trailer. Pre-visualization trailers like this serve as rendered storyboards, hence its distinct lack of actual motion, and are used by directors as a cinematic roadmap.It also gives us a glimpse of the game's roadmap, both literally and figuratively, by showcasing the layout of a simulated city and placing SimCity 5's release date in 2013. It's worth noting that the number five is mysteriously lacking from the title's logo, which may indicate a series reboot, rather than a sequel, should this end up being legitimate.Thankfully, we'll only have to wait a couple of days to find out if this trailer is The Real Deal with Bill McNeal, as EA and Maxis' GDC event takes place this Tuesday.
