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GDC 2013: Hands-on with Infinite Crisis
We just learned of Infinite Crisis' existence on Monday, but don't expect a long wait to get your hands on the game's various DC Comics characters. The new title is well beyond the here's-an-idea-for-you stage -- in fact, it's already playable! So what did this MOBA noob think of the game? Does it do justice to the Justice League? When is beta going to happen so others can get in on the action? And how on earth did Turbine keep Infinite Crisis a secret so far into its development? After my play session I sat down with Creative Director Cardell Kerr to discuss some of these burning questions.
Halfbrick tries for a 10 with Fish Out of Water
Halfbrick Studios held a media lunch at GDC to show off its brand-new original title, Fish Out of Water. It's the company's first since the very popular Jetpack Joyride arrived a few years ago (the Australia-based studio is also known for making Fruit Ninja). As we'd previously heard, Fish Out of Water is more casual than Jetpack, and it boasts the same great polish and beautiful work that fans expect from Halfbrick. In Fish Out of Water, the main mechanic simply has you throwing fish. You're presented with a school of various creatures, all with different shapes and sizes (and all adorably named -- the big whale is called "Micro" and the fastest one is called "Rocket"). To play, you grab one with a finger, pull it out of the water, and fling it off to the right as fast as you can. That fish flies through the air, and the game tracks number of skips on the water and total distance traveled. A high toss will likely earn more skips, and the type of fish you throw affects that as well. For example, Rocket is big on skipping, but the dolphin simply jumps in and out of the water rather than skipping across it. Distance is affected by fish type as well, and both stats are also affected by the weather. The game runs on a clock up in the left corner which ties in to your real local time wherever you play the game, and different weather conditions, like sun or rain, will affect your skips and jumps as well. During the course of a round, you can throw three different fish, and then you're judged on your throws by a line of crabs, who are also very adorable. They put up numbers (and each crab is also named and has a favorite piece of the game: Skippy Steve really enjoys it when you score a lot of skips), and the average out of 10 is your final score for the round. That's the game: Throw fish, try to score as best you can during the three throws, and then the crabs will boil down your score into one number out of 10. It's not super-hard: Even in my first few throws, I was able to pick up an 8.5 and an 8.7. But to score a perfect 10, you'll need to put a little bit of strategy into the game, picking exactly the right fish for the right weather conditions, and even choosing fish based on which throw you're doing. You can use a big whale for the first throw for distance, for example, and then choose a fish that splits into multiple fishies to ramp up your skip score. As you skip along the water, you also score coins that both give you a speed boost to use (with a strangely placed button along the top of the screen) and also allow you to buy various upgrades and cosmetic items for your fish. And finally, you can collect gems as you play, which can be assembled together into crystals that give you various abilities like double skips or an automatic 10 from one of the crabs. The crystals system is actually pretty complex: You can pair up two colors to try and form a specific crystal, or experiment a bit. One of the most powerful crystals is a black crystal, which sends a huge school of fish out to join the one that you throw. Just like Jetpack Joyride, the game is very social as well. Players can join "leagues," which award trophies every single day for the highest scorers in each league. Leagues also win prizes on their own, so there are lots of rewards to go around for all players involved. Fish Out of Water will launch at a price of US$0.99, which feels a little fishy on Halfbrick's part: The company has had a lot of success at turning their Fruit Ninja and Jetpack Joyride games into freemium titles, and it's a bit surprising that they're not embracing freemium right away with this one. Still, as good as the game looks and plays, you can't blame them at all for charging a little bit out of the gate -- even at a buck, this looks like a terrific game. It is more casual than Jetpack Joyride even. After you throw the fish, the game is more or less hands-off, as you sit there and watch your fish skip along to victory or defeat. And that casual approach may leave a few hardcore players out of the boat on this one. But not to worry, Halfbrick told us at GDC this week. The company has quite a few more titles in progress, including some games that are a little more complicated and deeper than this one. So if Fish Out of Water doesn't quite float your boat, just wait a bit and we'll see what else the company is working on soon. Meanwhile, you can get ready to go swimming with this one fairly soon.
AMD announces Sky Graphics as part of cloud gaming strategy
AMD is making a new push into cloud gaming. The company today announced the Sky series of Radeon graphics cards, designed especially with cloud gaming in mind. The line includes three enterprise-grade cards, with the high-end Sky 900 incorporating a whopping 3,584 stream processors, 6GB of GDDR5 memory and a memory bandwidth of 480GB per second. The cards are built on AMD's Graphics Core Next architecture and use RapidFire technology, which it says allows for "highly efficient and responsive game streaming."The company is "working closely" with several cloud gaming companies to take advantage of the new line of cards, including Otoy, Ubitus, G-Cluster and CiiNow. The latter in particular was promoted heavily, with AMD noting that, paired with its new Sky cards, CiiNow is capable of delivering content to a broad range of devices including game consoles, tablets and, of course, computers. Furthermore, it claimed that CiiNow offers lower latency than competitors like Gaikai and, somehow, even lower latency than the local signal between a game console and a television.Nvidia made similar claims about its Grid cloud technology last year, at which time Ubitus and G-Cluster were also announced as partners. Awkward.
Battlefield 4 screens leak [Update: Trailer]
A trio of Battlefield 4 screenshots found their way to the Battlefield blog and were picked up by Neogaf member L1NETT. The pictures have since been removed from the official blog, but they come directly before an EA event kicking off tonight, tied in with GDC 2013 in San Francisco.EA announced Battlefield 4 in July, predicting a fall 2013 launch window; it will be set in modern times. We expect plenty more news about Battlefield 4 tonight.%Gallery-183940% Update: We now have the official trailer.
On the hazards of drinking and driving the Oculus Rift
"You know, it's funny. People, when they are intoxicated, don't enjoy the Rift nearly as much."Oculus Rift inventor and co-founder Palmer Luckey shared a cautionary tale of sorts when we asked for anecdotes on the VR rig's testing procedures. After a short pause, Luckey dropped some sage advice for future Rift owners and developers alike.The Rift, which has been known to cause motion sickness in some users (Joystiq staff included) due to the disarming intensity of the experience, apparently has the ability to exacerbate one's inclination toward intense nausea after a night of partying."What happens is, when you get severely intoxicated, you end up throwing up," Luckey said. "One of the reasons for that is that your body knows something is wrong; your reaction time is slow, things seem to blur. And if it gets bad enough, it says 'Wow, I'm screwed up, I need to get whatever it is out of my stomach that's causing this.' The Rift doesn't do that much, but when you stack it on top of someone already being intoxicated, they tend to not enjoy it nearly as much."Under normal, non-intoxicated testing conditions, the disconnection between what a Rift user sees and what their body experiences – the cerebral disparity that can cause nausea - wasn't much of an issue."So, use the Rift sober."
Magicka: Wizard Wars 'not a MOBA,' revenue model still up in the air
For Paradox North's Executive Vice President, John Hargelid, Magicka: Wizard Wars has been labeled improperly as a MOBA. It features themes seen in the genre, but for Hargelid the differentiator is the simple gameplay that provides a vehicle for high-level tactics."This is why we think we're not a MOBA," Hargelid said. "Magicka: Wizard Wars is much more skill-based, much more hardcore to be honest. At the same time, anyone who hasn't played this type of game before can simply be satisfied by gameplay. It's quite simple to get into it and it's not this 40-minute game mode you have to learn what the progression looks like and halfway through, you'll know if you lost or won."
Antichamber 'exponentially recouped' dev costs
Antichamber, the mind-melting puzzle game that Alexander Bruce had in development for six years, sold more than 100,000 units in its first seven weeks on the market – "You do the math," Bruce tells Joystiq after his talk at GDC 2013.Challenge accepted: Antichamber costs $20 standard, but was on sale for a week after launch for $15. Without knowing how many copies were bought on sale, we'll take the median of $17.50 and multiply that by 100,000 copies, for a speculative estimate of $1.75 million.This doesn't automatically mean Antichamber made a profit for Bruce, since it has to be offset by development costs. Bruce estimates he spent $60,000 developing Antichamber, though he made back roughly $50,000 in prize money and government grants; he didn't pay himself a salary, he saved money by living at home, and he streamlined all convention expenses."I have absolutely, exponentially recouped all my costs," Bruce says. "Ridiculously, definitely made back all of my costs."Bruce guaranteed low development costs by working with the Victorian government in Australia to receive grants. For example, during GDC and PAX East last year, Bruce decided it would be easier to stay in the states for six weeks straight, rather than fly back and forth during the interim. He presented this plan to the Victorian government and it said, "That's fine." Victoria covered half of his expenses abroad, meaning if he spent $6,000 on booths and living, the state gave Bruce $3,000, he says."This is how I kept my costs so low. I kept my costs absolutely low," Bruce says. "That's why I was able to just be dedicated to quality and make sure that I had it correct."Antichamber is on sale on Steam now, for $12, through March 29.
Jetpack Joyride ascends to two million downloads on PSN
Speaking to Joystiq at GDC today, Halfbrick Chief Marketing Officer Phil Larsen confirmed with that Jetpack Joyride has amassed two million downloads on PSN. Halfbrick unleashed Jetpack Joyride on Sony's network in November 2012, initially as a $3.99 download. In December, the game became free on PSN, quickly rising to its first million downloads by February of this year.
The '101 Gameplay Ideas' behind the Assassin's Creed franchise
During a panel at GDC today, Ubisoft writer Corey May and lead mission designer Philippe Bergeron discussed their "balancing act" in crafting the stories of Assassin's Creed. May is focused on building up the story, making the characters and their relationships important to the player, while Bergeron and his colleagues aim to deliver fun mission gameplay, and stay within the various technical and developmental limitations shared by the entire team.May and Bergeron both focus on research at the outset of the process. For each Assassin's Creed game, the team has picked an era first, and then looked for potential locations, specific events to portray, major characters, "potential Templar targets," and possible protagonists. While May picks characters, Bergeron's team brainstorms various mission ideas for the game.May said Ubisoft has an internal document containing "101 gameplay ideas." It has been pillaged and refilled since the first Assassin's Creed game, as designers sample previously unused ideas or add more when concepts don't make the cut during development of the latest game.Finally, May said, once all the mission plans are completed and his early script scenes are done, he takes the mission design documents and pastes them directly into a file that eventually becomes his finished script for the game. May said this process was "the ultimate expression of our collaboration," and that mission designs created by Bergeron's team are then used as "the skeleton and the backbone that I work off of."Once the script and designs are all completed, the real work of coding and testing the game begins. May and Bergeron's teams cycle down (or, most likely, move on to the next game in the process).The talk was a simple look at an undoubtedly complex process, but it did offer some good insight into the marriage of story and mission design in the Assassin's Creed franchise.
Halfbrick's Fish Out of Water coming to iOS soon
Halfbrick's next mobile game is ready to hit the iOS App store "very soon." That's according to Chief Marketing Officer Phil Larsen, who handed me an iPad running Fish Out of Water, a new game which expects you to fling some fish as far as you can.That's really all it is: you touch a fish to snag it, then swipe to fling. The further your fish goes, and the number of skips it makes on the surface of the ocean, both factor into your overall score, which is calculated from three separate tosses.The fish are not only aesthetically different, they're functionally unique. Pointy fish tend to dive down more depending on the arc of your fling, while the puffy blow fish fella is more prone to skipping across the surface.Fish Out of Water features the same mission system found in Jetpack Joyride, and it's one of the many systems included to fuel replay. The game also has competitive leaderboards through Google+ and Facebook, hourly weather changes and unlockable treasures.Fish Out of Water will debut on iOS devices first for $.99, and though there aren't any ports in the works right now, Larsen said "it's only logical to think it'll be on other platforms later."%Gallery-183894%
Injustice: Gods Among Us mobile app announced at GDC
A mobile version of Injustice: Gods Among Us is in the works. Although details weren't provided during a GDC showing of the console game, a Warner Bros. representative tells us we should learn more shortly.
Paramount: Star Trek's development prolonged to coincide with Into Darkness
Star Trek has been in development for about three years at this point, which is a "huge amount of time when you're talking about a movie game," Paramount Pictures Senior Vice President Brian Miller told us during a GDC-adjacent demonstration of the game earlier this week."Most movie games that we've ever worked on, and I would say most people ever work on, you're lucky to get twelve months," Miller said. "You're in the middle of production on a movie, you're trying to hit a target date of when the movie comes out, all the assets aren't in there, so you wind up having to rush things through."In Star Trek's case, however, the situation was reversed – development on the game was extended by a full year in order to coincide with the release of Star Trek Into Darkness, the franchise's latest theatrical romp."This game was going to come out at a different time," Miller said. "We didn't know when the next movie was going to be, we didn't know if it was going to be holiday, we didn't know if it was going to be summer, and we were just striving for it to make a game. Then when they all started lining up, it was like 'Okay, the movie is going to be here, let's give ourselves a little more development time to make sure they line up and come together.'"An entire extra year may seem like more than "a little more development time," but that's the sort of call you get to make when you're Paramount. Miller told us that while interaction between Paramount, developer Digital Extremes and writer Marianne Krawczyk was an "amazing collaborative back-and-forth," Paramount's wishes are still, well, paramount.
NimbleBit readies Nimble Quest, and then plans a return to Pocket Trains
I've met with David Marsh here in San Francisco a few times before, and somehow it always turns out that I meet with him right before his big releases. The last time was right before he and his brother Ian, the founders of NimbleBit, released Pocket Planes, the company's follow-up to Tiny Tower. And this week here at GDC, we met a few days before Nimble Quest was finally due out for release. So it's tough to ask questions about how the release of Nimble Quest is going when the game hasn't actually come out yet. But Marsh and I did chat about what they expect to see with this latest release. It's not a simulation game at all, unlike Tiny Tower or Pocket Planes, and Marsh says he hopes this game will demonstrate that the company can make a successful game that is a little more action-oriented than what they've made in the past. The two brothers were very struck by the gameplay of a game called Call of Snakes, and Marsh says Nimble Quest is essentially an exploration of that gameplay into a little wider fantasy realm. I've been playing the game for quite a while now and it is very fun, though Marsh agrees that "compared to our last three games, it is less casual." Pocket Planes and Tiny Tower basically both ran their course no matter what you did, but Nimble Quest requires some finger agility and can be lost pretty quickly. At the same time, however, Marsh says that while the game might not appeal to a casual audience, he hopes it will be very engaging with the audience it finds. The game includes a boost system (which Marsh says was inspired by PopCap's Bejeweled Blitz), and there's a certain bit of strategy there to choosing which boosts you use regularly and which boosts you put into play when you're on a hot streak in the game. I asked Marsh about the game's name, and he said that putting the company's name in the title was more about making sure it was something that could be theirs rather than something generic. "Pocket" and "Tiny" are both words that are hard to trademark well, he said -- "we couldn't really own that." When the brothers sat down to try and name this title, "Nimble Quest" is just what came to mind, so it'll be interesting to see if the game's release drives a little more interest in the company for people who may not know their story. Nimble Quest was developed in Unity (using Matt Rix's Futile framework), and Marsh says that engine worked very well for them. Unity allows the company to port its games more easily, and so Nimble Quest is the first title that will become available on PC, Mac and iOS all in the same day (NimbleBit even released a browser version already thanks to Unity's portability). Marsh does say that getting the game on Steam is a goal, though he hasn't started talking to Valve yet about how that would happen. Finally, Marsh says that while NimbleBit is currently focused on Nimble Quest (and will likely provide more content and support after released), the team's next title is actually a step backwards. When Pocket Planes was being developed, it originally started out as Pocket Trains, before David and Ian decided that having to stick to rail routes was a little too limiting and that they should take to the air instead. "But we still had all that art from Pocket Trains," he told me, so the company has an artist working on recombining that art into a "completely new game." That release is still a ways away, but we may see Pocket Trains return in some form in the future. Nimble Quest is coming out this Thursday -- NimbleBit continues to impress (the company is still just three developers and one support employee), and Nimble Quest should continue the brothers' streak of freemium hits.
Blacklight and Primal Carnage, PS4's newest games, in motion
Last night, Sony showed off two indie games coming to PS4. Blacklight Retribution and Primal Carnage: Genesis are different, united only by the circumstances of their announcements – and by having trailers you can see here.
Day-one Incredipede Steam sales eclipse previous four months
When Incredipede launched on Colin Northway's site in October 2012, "there were tears. There were all the stages of loss," Sarah Northway told Joystiq at GDC. Colin previously told us that Incredipede sales direct from his site were disappointing, in part because it wasn't yet on Steam.Incredipede launched on Steam on March 18, and in its first 24 hours, it sold more units than the previous four months of independent sales combined."It's really good," Colin said. "I mean, it wasn't good for the four months, but it was good for the one day. And now it's doing well. It didn't just drop off to nothing. It's not going to make us rich, but we're actually going to get paid for the work we did. We have enough money to make another game."Incredipede secured its Steam deal through an IGF nomination, another piece of advertisement that helped boost the game's sales. The Steam version is technically "1.5," featuring a bunch of updates that streamline the game's difficulty, adding 60 new levels and two more muscle groups that players can manipulate. Incredipede is on sale on Steam right now through March 29, for $10 on PC and Mac.
Mojang's Scrolls beta unravels at 'end of April'
Minecraft developer Mojang is targeting a late April release for an early PC beta of its next game, Scrolls. Speaking to Polygon in an interview, studio co-founder and game designer Jakob Porser said, "We'll release it early at a discount. With the help from our community, we'll take the game to the next level and see what we want to do and what they expect out of the game and you can work around that."The digital collectible card game is due on Mac shortly after, and a Linux release is being considered too. The news follows Blizzard's PAX East announcement of its own free-to-play digital CCG, Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft. Porser, however, is philosophical about how that announcement impacts upon Scrolls."In the end the consumer gets multiple choices and we have to step our game to try and make the best possible product, the best possible game we can," he told Polygon. "If Blizzard makes the better game, then all credit to them and we need to move on to something else."
Seen@GDC: A really big GameJam check, Sony's heavy indie push continues
Lead Programmer and Designer Andy Wallace of Golden Ruby Games picked up his giant check last night from Sony's Indie Arcade event. Wallace and crew won the PlayStation Mobile GameJam held this past February in New York City. Oh wait, it's not a check, it's actually a ticket with other goodies added.For winning the GameJam with Hermit Crab in Space, Wallace will have his airfare and hotel covered for E3 in June. He'll also receive a golden ticket to the annual expoganza. Golden Ruby Games will also have a dedicated space in the PlayStation booth to show off their game. Finally, if Golden Ruby Games decides to submit Hermit Crab in Space to Sony for publishing by late September, they will receive "a special promotional package, which includes marketing, PR, and community support through a variety of PlayStation channels."For those who haven't caught on yet, Sony is focusing attention and promoting indies like we haven't seen a console maker do in years. You can also listen to our Super Joystiq Podcast Special from last week, featuring folks from the IndieMEGABOOTH, to get a better sense of Sony's commitment at the moment.We've placed a video of the PlayStation Mobile GameJam that was put on in association with IndieCade after the break.
Limbo Vita outsourced to LittleBigPlanet dev Double Eleven [Update: 'This year']
Playdead is outsourcing the just announced Vita version of Limbo to Double Eleven, the UK team who co-developed LittleBigPlanet for the Sony portable. Speaking to Joystiq, Playdead CEO Dino Patti said his studio is excited about the monochromatic puzzle-platformer's first "mobile launch," even though outsourcing is an unusual step."This version of the game is for the first time being made externally," Patti told us. "In the way we work there is normally no room for outsourcing, but the talented team at Double Eleven has convinced us that this is the right decision."Patti continued, "Together we are working hard to give the mobile players exactly the same experience the PS3 players have had on the living room TV."Shacknews learned there could be a PS Plus promotion involved. Playdead also told Shacknews that the Vita port won't support cross-play features.Update: Patti expects the Vita port of Limbo to hit "this year," he told Joystiq at last night's PlayStation Indie Arcade. The port won't support any touchscreen gameplay.
First Rain footage falls at GDC
Surprisingly, since the Gamescom debut of Sony Japan Studio's Rain, we haven't seen any actual gameplay footage. We've seen comparison images of Rain's environments soaked and dry, but now Sony's finally offered up some footage of the adventure game in action.
Spelunky dares to explore PS3 and Vita this summer
Spelunky, Mossmouth's diabolically random subterranean platformer/shopkeeper revenge fantasy, is moving from its XBLA home to PS3 and Vita this summer, with "new exclusive features," Sony announced today, also confirming plans to release Limbo on Vita. Developer Derek Yu told Polygon that the port would be developed by an external studio.Spelunky was originally released as a freeware PC game, before being made into a dramatically upgraded XBLA game and a series of excellent toys.
