General gaming |
- Keiji Inafune's Charlie Sheen Moment
- Dyad Looks to be the Underdog of GDC
- The Radical Transparency of SimCity
- Quantic Dream's Kara Demo Gives a Promising Glimpse Into the Future of Motion Capture Technology
- Metanet's Mare Sheppard Takes on Sexism in the Industry
- Peter Molyneux's Departure Leaves His Future Wide Open
- SimCity Returns as One Part Simulation, One Part Stump Speech
- Tell 1UP: Who's Your Shepard?
- How to Resuscitate a Dead but Beloved Franchise
- The Importance of Teaching Proper Game History
| Keiji Inafune's Charlie Sheen Moment Posted: 07 Mar 2012 08:55 PM PST Listening to Comcept.Inc boss (and former Mega Man, Onimusha, and Dead Rising producer) Keiji Inafune speak tonight at Game Developers Conference 2012 was a little like taking a trip in a time machine back to last spring. You remember -- back when people's tongues couldn't stop wagging about Charlie Sheen's bizarre, possibly drug-inspired rants about "winning." |
| Dyad Looks to be the Underdog of GDC Posted: 07 Mar 2012 08:10 PM PST The Game Developers Conference is far from over -- actually, the show floor just opened today -- but if bumping into people over the past couple days has been anything to go by, a PSN game called Dyad seems to be getting the best word of mouth at the show. Well, let me try that again -- the Halo announcements, SimCity, Quantic Dream's bundle of joy, and the Independent Games Festival probably win this award I just made up. But for the underdog word of mouth, I'm going with Dyad. A couple days ago, I was able to play it for about an hour. Developer Shawn McGrath invited some media to try the game in his hotel room, each alone, with the lights off -- "the cool kids' way of playing it," he said -- which seemed odd, but made sense when I realized the game is a weird mash-up of Rez, a light show, a kaleidoscope, and a racing game. "Weird" is his word, by the way. |
| The Radical Transparency of SimCity Posted: 07 Mar 2012 05:53 PM PST EA gave SimCity a public debut at an event last night, but it was at a GDC presentation this morning that three of the game's developers explained how the under-the-hood mechanics of the simulation will work. Creative Director Ocean Quigley, system administrator Andrew Willmott, and gameplay engineer Dan Moskowitz explained how GlassBox -- Maxis' new simulation engine that will power SimCity as well as future titles -- controls the city. The key innovation of the new SimCity is the transparency of its simulation. Previous games in the series benefited from a strange quirk of human psychology -- our need to find patterns in everything. Players of previous games would tend to attribute buggy or even random behavior as intelligent or unpredictable AI. This also frustrated players who felt subjected to rules of the game that they had no way of learning. This new SimCity does just the opposite, with almost every object in the simulation represented in some in-game visualization. "We try to build what you would expect to see, and that's the game," said Willmott. Rather than animations or objects representing a traffic-jam, they're produced dynamically by masses of Sims who actually travel to and from work. When a factory produces something in game, you can see it chugging away producing objects that will then be transported to stores and homes. Other simulation games fake these effects, but SimCity actually does them. |
| Quantic Dream's Kara Demo Gives a Promising Glimpse Into the Future of Motion Capture Technology Posted: 07 Mar 2012 05:30 PM PST David Cage, the CEO and founder of development studio Quantic Dream, demoed some impressive performance capture technology during a session at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. In a session called "Virtual Actors and Emotions in Games," Cage unveiled footage from a year-old demo called Kara. In it, actress Valorie Curry assumes the role of an android that looks similar to something from I, Robot, and displays a range of human emotions and characteristics. |
| Metanet's Mare Sheppard Takes on Sexism in the Industry Posted: 07 Mar 2012 05:02 PM PST Feminism can often be an inflammatory issue, so I wasn't surprised to see Mare Sheppard's "Why I Hate Women in Games Initiatives" panel begin with a brief crash course on the topic -- and I certainly wasn't shocked to witness the amount of attendees at her panel far outnumber the few I've attended so far. In any other context, this sort of primer would come off as condescending, but at a week-long event devoted to the future of a male-dominated industry, it seemed necessary. Feminism is an easily misunderstood issue, with many of its detractors overlooking the simple message of equality in favor of tearing down straw man arguments about special treatment or robbing the rights of men. Mare (pictured above alongside fellow Metanet co-founder Raigan Burns) herself would agree that employing women based on gender alone won't solve the problems of inequality in the industry; rather, she believes inequality in gaming is a symptom of gender inequality in our culture as a whole. This stance, combined with Mare's strong belief in the concept of meritocracy, raises an interesting question -- one which has raged on since the earliest days of affirmative action: if you want a true meritocracy, how do you even the odds for people who have a significant handicap thanks to decades of institutionalized sexism and racism? After all, we can't start with a clean slate and choose to ignore the many historical factors tied into continued inequality. It's an issue with no easy answers -- and definitely one that can't be resolved in a 25-minute panel -- but the N+ developer believes that an emphasis on diversity in general may help pull the industry out of its current sexist tailspin. In her companion piece on the subject for Gamasutra, Mare states: |
| Peter Molyneux's Departure Leaves His Future Wide Open Posted: 07 Mar 2012 03:54 PM PST Famed game designer Peter Molyneux today revealed plans to leave his positions at Microsoft and Lionhead Studios. Before moving on to a newly-formed independent developer, however, he will complete work on Lionhead's upcoming Kinect-controlled Fable game. "It is with mixed emotions that I made the decision to leave Microsoft and Lionhead Studios, the company that I co-founded in 1997, at the conclusion of development of Fable: The Journey," Molyneux said in a statement shared with Kotaku. |
| SimCity Returns as One Part Simulation, One Part Stump Speech Posted: 07 Mar 2012 02:00 PM PST Last night, Electronic Arts confirmed the worst-kept gaming secret in recent memory: Maxis is hard at work on a fifth SimCity installment. Called simply SimCity rather than SimCity 5 -- not even this durable franchise is immune from the reboot bug, it seems -- it's set for a 2013 release date, and surprisingly enough won't be a social or free-to-play game. It's an old-fashioned packaged product, and it'll be strictly for Windows, at least as first (per a conversation I had last night with an EA rep: "SimCity is back!" "...but not for the Mac?"). EA unveiled the game at a strangely highbrow press event featuring a brief trailed followed by two hours of discussion with a number of media luminaries, including An Inconvenient Truth documentarian Davis Guggenheim and Twitter creator Biz Stone. The decided lack of direct information about the game itself got under many attendees' skin, as did the political nature of the discussion. While the dialogue was unusually oblique for a Game Developers Conference presentation (though that same EA rep promises that as people learn more about the game they'll look back at yesterday evening and say, "Oh, so that's what that was about"), the socio-political tone was hardly inappropriate for SimCity. I jokingly remarked that the press conference was unintentionally turning into political indoctrination, but after further reflection realized that was precisely the intention. And it suggests that -- despite series creator Will Wright's absence -- Maxis' designers are taking SimCity back to its roots. |
| Posted: 07 Mar 2012 01:10 PM PST One of the coolest aspects of Mass Effect 3 is the idea of consequences and choices that carry over from the previous two games. My Shepard may look similar to yours, but we all play the game differently. Above is a screenshot (click to enlarge) of my Shepard. I named him John back in 2007 -- and I don't quite remember why. But, more importantly, my choices from the previous two games are represented above for all to see. |
| How to Resuscitate a Dead but Beloved Franchise Posted: 07 Mar 2012 12:20 PM PST Deus Ex: Human Revolution wasn't simply one of last year's best games, it was a sequel to one of the most beloved PC titles of all time that managed not to alienate or infuriate most fans despite the complete lack of involvement of the original game's designers. That's a remarkable feat in any medium, but especially in games. When I spoke to the team at Eidos Montreal last summer, they agreed with the comparison to J.J. Abrams' Star Trek reboot, as what they sought to accomplish was very similar to how 2009's movie revitalized a flagging film franchise. |
| The Importance of Teaching Proper Game History Posted: 07 Mar 2012 10:54 AM PST Experienced professors from MIT, NYU, and UC Santa Cruz challenged the current practice of teaching game history during the Game Developer's Conference in San Francisco yesterday. In a panel session called "Knowing the Past: Game Education Needs Game History," Clara Fernandez-Vara, a Postdoctoral Researcher at Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab, and her two colleagues, NYU Game Center Assistant Professor Jasper Juul and Associate Professor of Computer Science at UC Santa Cruz Noah Wardrip-Fruin, stressed the importance of integrating game history into college game studies courses. The trio of educators also presented helpful solutions to address the type of technical problems associated with having students play older games. |
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