GameSetWatch

Best Of Indie Games: We Need More Heroes

editors@gamesetwatch.com (timw) — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:00:02 -0800

[Every week, IndieGames.com: The Weblog co-editor Tim W. will be summing up some of the top free-to-download and commercial indie games from the last seven days on his sister 'state of indie' weblog.]

This week on 'Best Of Indie Games', we take a look at some of the top independent PC Flash/downloadable titles released over this last week.

The goodies in this edition include a Japanese mech combat game for both Windows and Xbox 360, a mysterious platform game with a spooky atmosphere, a freeware horror adventure game full of suspense, an action puzzle game with a nifty gimmick, and an exploration platformer rendered in shades of black and white.

Here's the highlights from the last seven days:

Game Pick: 'Shining Blood' (Teasoft, freeware)
"Shining Blood is a mech combat game with five stages to play in the main campaign and a versus mode that is limited to duels with the computer AI only. There are up to six robots and tanks that you can choose from, either as your main vehicle or as support to help you out in the heat of a battle. The objective of the game is basically to clear the entire area of enemies before proceeding to the exit area that will appear somewhere on the map."

Game Pick: 'Fetus' (Ted Lauterbach, freeware)
"A puzzle platformer in which you play as a blue character lost in a strange world, seeking to exact revenge on the party responsible for trapping him there in the first place. There is no screen scrolling and your character cannot jump, but Ted still manages to construct one or two surprises to catch the player off-guard. Made for GameJolt's Minimal Competition."

Game Pick: '20 Heroes' (H. Inada, browser)
"20 Heroes is a puzzle platformer with a unique twist, where players are assigned twenty characters to control separately, in a group, or all at the same time. Puzzles in every area are designed around this theme, and the creativity of the designer really shows after the fifth stage or so."

Game Pick: 'The Marionette' (Team Effigy, freeware)
"A full-length 2D adventure game viewed from a first-person perspective, where you play as a sculptor named Martin who is in the middle of completing his latest work when a mysterious package arrives in his mailbox. He loses consciousness just moments after opening the plain-looking envelope, and wakes up much later only to find himself standing outside an unfamiliar house. Unperturbed by the strange turn of events, our confused protagonist heads into the house to seek for answers that will explain how and why he was brought to the spooky estate in the first place."

Game Pick: 'Umbrella Adventure - The Castle of Cake' (HiVE, freeware)
"A monotone-coloured platformer created by the developer of the popular Game Maker RPG, Ark 22. The story is about a gopher who was rudely awakened by the smell of sulphur to find his stash of more than a hundred cakes stolen in the middle of a rainy night. Curious about the disappearance, he sets out on a quest to find his delicacies, even if it means travelling all over the land to retrieve every single one of them."

GDC 2010's Experimental Gameplay Workshop Calls For Submissions

editors@gamesetwatch.com (Simon Carless) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:00:48 -0800

[Just wanted to point this one out to all, since Jon Blow, Chris Hecker and the other EGP organizers will again be putting together an awesome Workshop for GDC 2010, so hopefully some readers might have good things to contribute.]

The organizers of the Experimental Gameplay Workshop, a staple of the Game Developers Conference since 2002, have issued a call for submissions to the event's 2010 incarnation, being held in March in San Francisco.

Games demonstrated at the Experimental Gameplay Workshop, which occupies a standing-room only 2 hour timeslot on GDC's Main Conference days, should "showcase experimental, creative, non-traditional designs and ideas." The submission rules are somewhat open-ended, as the requirement of "experimental" necessarily defies concrete criteria.

Past games showcased in early form during the Workshop include co-organizer Jonathan Blow's Braid and early versions of experimental gameplay prototypes that birthed 2D Boy's World of Goo.

Other highlighted titles demonstrated at EGP before rising to fame include thatgamecompany's Flower, Keita Takahashi's Katamari Damacy, Valve's Portal, and The Odd Gentlemen's The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom.

"Experimentation involves risk, and our industry is risk-averse. But to remain healthy, we need to embrace risk, learn from our successes -– and more importantly -– from our failures," say the event's organizers.

"We strive to support risk-taking and to provide channels for communicating the results. We aim to legitimize and popularize gameplay-oriented research and development."

Game proposals for the ninth iteration of the Workshop will be received until Tuesday, January 26, 2010, and "are accepted at the sole discretion of the judges," according to the official website.

Every Game Character Needs A Beard

editors@gamesetwatch.com (Eric Caoili) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:00:25 -0800

Croatian illustrator Vanja Mrgan was sitting on the toilet recently when he came up with the idea of drawing beards on beardless figures. "Instantly, I conjured a list of characters that need beards and raced to my computer to get to work," explains the artist.

He's already posted several sketches of familiar and now-whiskered video game characters like Black Mage, Wario, and Mr. Game & Watch. He says he'll keep drawing them until he runs out of ideas, and hopes to hear suggestions on other iconic faces you want to see with beards.

Since he's already created a few portraits of non-humans, I wonder if he'd be willing to add a beard to the car from Jaleco's City Connection?

[Via Albotas]

Round-Up: Gamasutra Network Jobs, Week Of November 20

editors@gamesetwatch.com (Simon Carless) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:00:42 -0800

In our latest employment-specific round-up, we highlight some of the notable jobs posted in big sister site Gamasutra's industry-leading game jobs section this week, including positions from Relic Entertainment, Zoe Mode and more.

Each position posted by employers will appear on the main Gamasutra job board, and appear in the site's daily and weekly newsletters, reaching our readers directly.

It will also be cross-posted for free across its network of submarket sites, which includes content sites focused on online worlds, cellphone games, 'serious games', independent games and more.

Some of the notable jobs posted this week include:

Relic Entertainment: Senior Director Of Development
"The Senior Director of Development executes the developmental strategy of the studio in accordance with the GM and THQ’s strategic and tactical objectives. Responsible for ensuring project development achieves operating objectives and financial goals; ensuring development efficiency and product timeliness, and otherwise ensuring consistency and process improvements across projects."

2K Games: Channel Marketing Manager
"2K Games develops and publishes top-line PC, console, and handheld entertainment software, with a strong concentration in three distinct categories: sports, high profile licenses and specialty product. Some of the hit titles in 2K's lineup include the critically-praised Bioshock, Sid Meier’s Civilization IV, and The Darkness. 2K Games is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc."

Raven Software/Activision: Senior Game Designer
"Raven Software is looking for a Senior Designer for our latest unannounced action title, primarily focusing on combat systems and encounter design. Designers will work with the rest of the team to create and implement combat systems, AI behaviors, and scripted events in the game world. Additionally, the Senior Designer will act as the arbiter of quality for all the combat sequences in the game, working closely with other designers to make sure we have consistent, high-quality combat encounters throughout the game."

Sony Computer Entertainment America: Maya Technical Director
"Be a part of the most exciting and innovating computer entertainment in North America. Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) markets the PlayStation® family of products and develops, publishes, markets, and distributes software for the PS one™ console, the PlayStation®2 and PlayStation®3 computer entertainment systems and the PlayStation Portable (PSP™)."

Zoe Mode: Senior Technical Artist
"As a Senior Technical Artist, you’ll define and drive the technical vision and art pipelines for multiple games throughout the studio. You will work closely with both the Lead Artist and engineering staff to create powerful, yet easy to use, systems for artists and designers to use in our ground breaking games."

To browse hundreds of similar jobs, and for more information on searching, responding to, or posting game industry-relevant jobs to the top source for jobs in the business, please visit Gamasutra's job board now.

Fluid Shares Inspirations, Early Work For HOTD: Overkill's Branding

editors@gamesetwatch.com (Eric Caoili) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:00:35 -0800

UK-based creative agency Fluid Design posted another batch of media for its case study on Sega/Headstrong's The House of the Dead: Overkill, one of many video games the company has helped design packaging/advertising for. I previously featured some of the game's prototype boxes, logos, and T-shirts here.

Among the dozens of new images the firm uploaded are collages of grindhouse-style logos/movie posters that served as inspiration for Overkill's branding, early drafts of the comic included with game preorders, and more. Apparently, the resulting materials Fluid created was so well received, it was awarded "Best Press Kit" at Leipzig Games Convention. I had no idea that award even existed!

"Entrusted with total creative freedom, we began the project from scratch, with a focus on hand-drawn illustrations to create an authentic feel to the design content," says the firm. "The project called for a multilayered branding concept that took iconic 'grindhouse' aesthetics and created a contemporary feel for the game."

You can see all of the images on Fluid's Flickr set for The House of the Dead: Overkill.

Sound Current: '2 Player Productions - Reformatting PAX for DVD'

editors@gamesetwatch.com (jeriaska) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:00:00 -0800

[Continuing his 'Sound Current' interview series for GameSetWatch, Jeriaska sits down with video game and music documentary makers 2 Player Productions to discuss their work showcasing Blip Festival -- and, notably, this year's Penny Arcade Expo -- in cinematic form.]

When the chip music scene began to form in New York City, 2 Player Productions found a way to capture the excitement of Manhattan arts organization The Tank's live events in their video reportage. Their footage led to a feature-length documentary called Reformat the Planet, screened online on Pitchfork.tv and at the 2008 Penny Arcade Expo.

Founded by Paul Levering and Paul Owens, the team has branched out into various videogame-related media, including capturing the behind-the-scenes making of the game Infamous and overseeing the mixing and mastering of the Blip Festival 2008 live album. Their next big media adventure will be translating the events of PAX 2009 to DVD.

In this interview with the filmmakers, taking place during their relocation from New York to Portland, Oregon, the Pauls offer some background on their history with PAX-headlining band Anamanaguchi and the Penny Arcade team. The discussion provides a history of their movie-making process and also hints of what to expect in months ahead.

Paul Owens and Paul Levering at the Penny Arcade Expo

Previously 2 Player Productions has documented chip music performances including the Blip Festival. What approach do you feel has worked best in introducing audiences to this form of music?

Paul Owens: Just presenting things in a natural, truthful way. Showing you how it is, basically. It seems like an obvious thing to say, but most things tend not to be presented that way most of the time. The chip music shows are really energetic and raw. You can get a camera in the crowd and present it the way it is.

Paul Levering: Stylistically we leave in a lot of stuff that other people would leave out. We mix in some of the B-side and it just gives it that extra bit of dimension. You see another side of someone: maybe they’re making mistakes, maybe they’re nervous. Little things like that flesh out their character and makes it feel more personal.

PO: At the point where we were making Reformat the Planet we had seen a lot of other people looking at it and documenting chip music as well. Everyone seemed to be focusing on how they were doing it, and I think going in we were definitely like, well why are they doing it?

In the first five minutes of the movie it’s explained, they’re making music on a Game Boy. We present that fact and then from there on you can kind of forget about it. You can focus on the music and people.

PL: We had one LSDJ demonstration in the movie… that I think has been cut. The concept is that if you’re watching a rock documentary, why would you have somebody hold up a guitar and show you how a guitar works? We wanted to get away from the novelty of the Game Boy as much as possible and focus on the inspiration.

At the moment you are in the process of putting together video of the Penny Arcade Expo. What form of media do you see this footage arriving on?

PL: It’s always been for a DVD, but if the Penny Arcade crew wants to do more web distribution they have a ridiculous amount of content to work with. We brought in more cameramen than we usually have, and we were all really surprised by the size and the energy of the event. I think it made everybody perform at their utmost best.

And now you've been immortalized in a Penny Arcade webcomic.

PL: Yeah, I’ve read the strip for as long as it’s been around. We were just in the Penny Arcade office, beginning to shoot the documentary, and they were making a strip about the camera crew. They said, “Who wants to be in the strip?” Everybody just kind of pointed to me. It was pretty crazy to sit there and watch Mike draw the strip. I know there are a lot of people that would probably kill for that, but it just sort of happened.

What are major differences between filming music and documenting the game design process, such as on the making of Infamous?

PO: In a way it’s all the same. We hold to the same values.

PL: Honestly, with chip music you don’t have to care about continuity because it’s just somebody pushing buttons. We have to be more careful with this show because with live rock you can’t go back and just put in a different shot of someone playing the guitar.

Is it true that you've both known each other since high school?

PO: Yeah, in South Jersey. At the time we met I had already been planning to go to film school. I think we both loved movies and connected over that, but I don’t think we saw collaborating as an option.

PL: We weren’t huge friends at this point.

PO: We had English together.

PL: It was something where we both had the same kind of personality, where we didn’t have huge amounts of friends, but I think we respected each other. We got back in touch years later and started collaborating on these projects. It worked out really well. Paul had just finished college and I was looking to start a serious life change. We both went in this direction.

Is it accurate to say that one of you brought brought documentary skills, one of you brought chiptunes, and that added up to 2 Player Productions?

PO: Yeah, I didn’t know anything about it until then. I had a lot of experience with documentary work in school at Drexel in Philadelphia. It was easy for Paul to watch the other stuff I had filmed and translate it to chip music.

PL: I was on a videogame music kick. It’s never really went away. I noticed the alternate branches it took around the late ‘90s when the remixing scene was taking off and chip music for the Game Boy sect was starting up. I would hear about rock cover bands like the Minibosses but it took awhile to notice the bands that were taking it in even stranger directions.

PO: I think we had an interest. I don’t think we knew it was called “chipmusic,” or that there was even a term for it.

PL: These were some of the earlier 8bitpeoples releases, around 2003, when it was Nullsleep, Psilodump, Paza. I had never heard Game Boy music being arranged into actual songs instead of for the purposes of a soundtrack. It just blew my mind. We hunted down local shows, since it was all in New York and went to check it out live. That was the big game changer I think.

Peter Berkman of Anamanaguchi with Paul Levering at PAX's Bandland area

When did you first encounter Anamanaguchi?

PO: The first show we saw was Nullsleep and we saw Anamanaguchi together with Shawn Phase and Tugboat at the very next Pulsewave, the New York monthly chip show.

PL: Anamanaguchi was like 15, 16. I don’t think they had played many live shows at that point. They were really young and were stiff, kind of bashful.

PO: I came away from it definitely not being impressed.

PL: But then we loved their EP!

PO: I think they were also a little uncomfortable because they were using guitars mixed with the chip music. They didn’t know if people would take them seriously because they "weren’t a true chip band." As people got into the music, they became more comfortable.

PL: Now they’re playing at PAX and we see them playing in front of 5,000 people. They try to interact more with the crowd and Pete is a fan of irrelevant comedy, so he always brings that into his performances now. They also have a dedicated drummer with Luke.

PO: To see them go from there to here in three years is pretty cool and we have it all documented. In the beginning it was just Pete Berkman having written all the music and the lineup was constantly changing. Now I think they’ve settled on four guys that really fit into the band.

The Penny Arcade organizers have talked about a heart-wrenching letter that they received from you about South by Southwest, how you had completed Reformat the Planet and didn’t have anywhere to show it.

PL: I was very disenchanted with that entire process because we spent a tremendous amount of money. Reformat the Planet cost nothing to make, while South by Southwest cost $20,000 just to go there. We don’t have that kind of money, so it was borrowed from family members. The experience and the results were not what we thought it would be.

Here we are two years later and we’re releasing the movie ourselves. I had always wanted to work with Penny Arcade and I really wanted to show the movie at PAX. We had gone through all this and we needed some extra exposure. They helped us out and set us up at PAX, and that led to much greater things.

You’ve purchased solid state HD cameras for PAX. Does this offer advantages over working with tape in that you are not required to switch out casettes in the middle of a set?

PL: This is our first big HD project and is a big step up from the Blip Festival recordings. I think it’s going to end up being about 3 terabytes of footage. The workflow is different in that we have to be more on top of it now. Before you could always just pop tapes into the camera but now you have to be sure you’re rotating your memory. We don’t have so much memory and it has to keep cycling: getting copied over to a hard drive, erased and back to the camera.

You can almost have a continuous recording with solid state. It’s also kind of scary, because if you’re not careful you can mess and delete all the footage while transferring the backup. With tape you always have a physical object. The concerts are long (they start at 9:00 and run until 2:00 in the morning) so the cameras have to be constantly cycling. If you mess up you can delete someone’s entire set. You can’t have that happen.

Anamanaguchi and VJs Paris & outpt at PAX

What made you decide to relocate from New York to Portland?

PO: We really liked the experience of working on INFamous, the PS3 game. It was such a cool experience, so we’re looking to do more with them. Penny Arcade is out here as well.

PO: It’s a little bit about spreading the chipmusic around a little more. There’s only a handful of guys doing it in Portland, but from everything we’ve heard, they support underground music. It hasn’t been presented in the best way possible yet.

PL: There are things that need to be done in order to inform the general populace, just so that it’s not alien or a strange gimmick. Doing workshops, having speakers, showing the movie and trying to educate people about what the music is—that’s the kind of thing we want to try to apply.

The Blip Festival 2008 Live Album was on sale for the first time at the PAX Bandland area, where Anamanaguchi and Metroid Metal were hanging out. How does this CD fit into your mission to popularize chip music?

PO: It’s purely live chip music, so if you like this, there’s another world you can enter now.

PL: Even though the live album is representing the festival in its purest form, I still feel like the stamp of our style is on it. The live album was very specifically built and all the tracks were selected, the flow was constructed in a certain way. The transitions, the style, the ambiance was very thoroughly plotted out. We didn’t want just a straight board feed. We wanted that excitement that you would have at the show.

We got partnered up with Gabe Liberti around when we were working on the 2007 DVD. He mixed a lot of our audio, and he’s a brilliant sound technician. Gabe was like the biggest missing piece of the puzzle since none of us had any idea of how to do any of this stuff.

PO: I don’t know why he started working with us. He was telling me the other day, “Oh man, I was so excited to do that Bit Shifter video in 2007.” I was like… “Really? Why did you want to work with us? We didn’t have any money.” I still don’t know why.

PL: He’s completely brilliant, so we got another big loan to kick start the company, gave him a budget to buy sound equipment, record Blip and do it right. Gabe mixed all the audio and we got it mastered at one of the best mastering houses in New York, because Gabe knew people there and could get us a cheap rate. It would be a top quality release in any genre.

Has it helped spread word having the album up on Bandcamp?

PO: Yeah, you can listen to the whole thing, buy it and download it.

PL: We all adore Bandcamp. We had envisioned this album as something that could be distributed for free online, that artists could embed on their myspace pages. Bandcamp provides all those things. Every suggestion that we’ve made for features, they’ve done it, and in the period of a couple of days. We wanted to embed pictures of all the artists in the songs, so you could see who they were, and it happened.

PO: I always maintain to Paul, just wait 15 years. People will look at this and think it’s important. Right now it’s on the table at Bandland and no one cares. They’ll pick up an Anamanaguchi t-shirt… which is okay, but. Over time it will find its place, I think.

PL: If VH1 does a history of chip music 20 years from now, all they’re going to have to cut back to is our stuff. That’s all that’s going to exist. We’re in for the long hall.

[Learn more about 2 Player Productions by visiting the official site. Images courtesy of 2 Player Productions. Photos by Jeriaska.]

The Art History of Games Symposium Announced

editors@gamesetwatch.com (Eric Caoili) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:00:59 -0800

The Art History of Games, a three-day Atlanta-based public symposium investigating games as an art form, has announced its February 2010 event.

Organized by Georgia Tech Digital Media and SCAD Atlanta, the event will take place February 4-6 at Atlanta's Woodruff Arts Center. Along with several talks and Q&A sessions, The Art History of Games will premiere three commissioned games from Jason Rohrer (Passage), Tales of Tales (The Path), and Eric Zimmerman (Gamelab co-founder and former CEO).

The symposium will feature experts from the fields of "game studies, art history and related areas of cultural studies", like game designer and artist Brenda Brathwaite, who worked on the seminal Wizardry series, Jagged Alliance, and more.

First-person shooter pioneer John Romero, known best for his work on Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and Quake, currently EVP of MMO company Gazillion Entertainment, will present a talk at the event, too. Academic video game researcher, game designer, and educational publisher Ian Bogost is expected to speak as well.

Other speakers for The Art History of Games include A Casual Revolution author Jesper Juul, Area/Code (Parking Wars, Spore Islands) co-founder and director Frank Lantz, and Stanford University's curator for the history of science and technology collections and film and media collections Henry Lowood.

Also slated: John Sharp, professor in the interactive design and game development and art history departments at the SCAD; Christiane Paul, The New School media studies graduate programs director and media studies associate professor, as well as adjunct curator of new media arts at the Whitney Museum of American Art; and Michael Nitsche, digital media scholar and Georgia Institute of Technology assistant professor.

You can find more information on the event, its slated speakers, and registration details on the The Art History of Games' official website.

Mama Cooks It Up For Arcades

editors@gamesetwatch.com (Eric Caoili) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 08:00:22 -0800

After bringing her culinary minigames to Nintendo DS, Wii, mobile, and iPhone, Cooking Mama is now setting up her kitchen for arcades. Manufacturer Universal Space showed off a redemption machine for the cooking game at annual amusement industry tradeshow IAAPA this week, inviting attendees to try out its touchscreen gameplay.

The pink cabinet and 46" monitor (the setup is priced at $4,600, according to Arcade Heroes) offers a collection of recipes for players to prepare like Ratatouille, Minestrone soup, Sushi, Tortilla, and more.

Once they select a dish, players are taken through a series of timed mini-games in which they can slice, chop, peel, boil, and sauté their ingredients using gestures on the touchscreen. Mama judges their performance at the end, awarding tickets based on players' final score.

Now, how long will it be before we see a coin-op adaptation for Gardening Mama (or her rival and jilted lover Science Papa)?

Interview: Sands of Destruction Team Talks Battle System, Story Creation

editors@gamesetwatch.com (Simon Carless) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 07:00:00 -0800

[Just wanted to sneak this niche, but neat interview in, as our own Brandon Sheffield speaks with Sega and Image Epoch about the Japanese DS role-playing game Sands of Destruction -- scenario by Chrono Trigger's Kato, music by Chrono Cross' Mitsuda -- and its aim to be an "atypical" RPG.]

Sands of Destruction is a new DS RPG from Sega and Image Epoch, titled World Destruction in Japan, where it came out in 2008, and due for North American release in January 2010.

The game is notable primarily for its scenario writer, Masato Kato, who also wrote the scenario for Chrono Trigger, and for composer Yasunori Mitsuda, who wrote most of the music for Chrono Trigger, and Chrono Cross, and has completed a number of other highly-acclaimed scores.

The scenario surrounds a young man with the power to destroy the world, and a girl who's trying to convince him to do so. To this interesting mix, the team added traditional RPG elements and character archetypes, as well as a rather complex battle system.

In this interview, we spoke with Image Epoch president Ryoei Mikage, and Sands of Destruction Sega producer Yoichi Shimosato about creating RPGs in the flooded DS market, the scenario writer's process (which mirrors the collaborative style of film director Sergio Leone and composer Ennio Morricone), and why the game's original scenario was cut and reworked:

What’s it like making a new RPG in Japan these days? There are a lot of RPGs coming out for DS - how did you go about trying to differentiate yourself from the beginning?

Yoichi Shimosato: Actually, there wasn't any specific ambition or big goal for this game, but each person, Sega, Mr. Mikage from Image Epoch, Mr. Kato the scenario writer, and Mr. Mitsuda the composer all got together and said, "We want to make a great RPG."

Each of those particular people have their own ambition and motivation toward what a great RPG would be, so when they got together, they started talking, and that's how Sands of Destruction was formed.

Did Image Epoch feel any pressure to make it a “Sega-like” RPG?

Ryoei Mikage: No. None at all. Because Sega's not necessarily known for RPGs... we were able to create what we wanted to.

With Kato (scenario writer), what was his process for the writing? Did you present him with a specific idea or just say, "Hey, we want an interesting scenario for this"?

RM: Our only request to Kato was that it not be a traditional storyline, something that's different, something that's unique, and something that goes against the standard. Mitsuda, Kato, Image Epoch, and Shimosato from Sega were all geared up to do a great RPG together.

How it turned out was that Mitsuda came up with a composition, with music that he felt would be appropriate for a great RPG. And listening to that music, Kato came back with a storyline, which was per request not the typical, traditional storyline. And then Sega and Image Epoch took that and made that into a game.

I was going to ask if Kato's scenario influenced the game design, but it sounds like it was more that Mitsuda influenced the game design ultimately. Is that the case?

RM: Mitsuda and Kato are actually really, really good friends, and they always work very well together and very near each other. So, for example, Mitsuda would come up with a piece of music, and then Kato would take that and write a scenario. Then he'd say, "Well, actually, my scenario is turning out to be this way, so maybe your music could fit this better." And then they would work together that way.

This may be a difficult question, but the high concept of the game, where you are a character who is being compelled to end the world, is very interesting. But why take that and add some very, very traditional RPG fetch quests and anime characters and things like that?

RM: So this is probably the same in Japan, Europe, and the U.S., but the ratings boards -- for Japan, it would be CERO -- have been cracking down on the game industry. It's been becoming more and more difficult to make games that are kind of out-there.

So, for this game in particular, Kato’s original scenario actually came back saying... In the final game, humanoids are ruled by the ferals, the beast men. The humans were food for the beast men in the original scenario, and there were scenes in there where the beast men would actually eat the humans.

Obviously, that would be rated Z in Japan. But for an RPG on the DS, the board felt that it would be more appropriate for the actual gameplay content to be something that even kids can pick up and play.

That’s unfortunate -- if you had U.S. or Europe as the target market, you would not have had to change that. You would have gotten a Teen rating, maybe, but it certainly would not have been for mature audiences only.

YS: I agree. In my opinion, because this game was made specifically more for the Japanese market, it was appropriate the way we made it. But if it was more geared toward the Western audience, then, as you said, the original idea would have been more fun and compelling.

It seems that in RPGs, battle systems are getting more and more complex, and have more interlocking elements and things players have to think about. Do you all view that as a good thing or a negative thing?

RM: [laughs] For Image Epoch, we’re working on up to four titles a year, and those four RPGs vary from very casual to more in-depth, more difficult RPGs, so it's very difficult for us to say which is better, but both Image Epoch, and Shimosato from Sega believe that it's more about who your target audience is.

So, if the RPG is geared toward a casual gamer with a lighter storyline, then an easier battle system would be more appropriate. But if it's a deeper game, a more complex one, than a more challenging one would be more appropriate.

When you're creating a new RPG, do you begin with core concepts that you want to get across? Or do you start with a feature spreadsheet? Or do you start with a battle system concept? How do you actually start building a new RPG from the ground up?

RM: Because Image Epoch is a young company and the staff is also very young as well, we've changed a fair bit since last year. So, last year, it was more of “let's learn from the big RPG titles that we respect, and learn from them and build from them.” Since then, in a sense, we’ve finished with our studies of the older RPGs.

And this year, for titles that we have yet to announce but that they're working on now, you'll be seeing newer applications of what we learned last year with battle systems that you've probably never seen before. So, in terms of our past titles, you would have to look at each title specifically and see how it was built. But I can say that with the games that we’re building this year, we’ve started from the battle system.

D&D Player Reviews Palin's Going Rogue

editors@gamesetwatch.com (Eric Caoili) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 06:00:39 -0800

If the release of Going Rogue, Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin's new book out this week, had you hyped for a new, in-depth Dungeons & Dragons supplement for the tabletop RPG's thief class, you might want to read this review posted on Wizards of the Coast's forums first.

According to Ravnor_darkwater, the memoir lacks any character optimization tips or guidelines for new trade equipment/weapons/magic:

"To my chagrin, it didn't start out well. I thought, well, at some point, this has to get better. But guess what, it doesn't! There's nothing at all about dex rolls, dps builds, searching for traps, sneak attacks, assassins, +4 daggers, or anything!
All it is [is] some woman whining about how everyone in her party wouldn't let her make any decisions, about how something called a Couric made her look like a complete idiot (I couldn't find it in the monster manual, but I'm guessing it must be like a Sphinx), and how her group leader McCain wouldn't let her be rogue enough."

So, scratch that off your list of must-have D&D supplements! If you're looking for a book to flesh out your thief, you might want to pick up last year's Martial Power instead.

[Via @ferricide]

COLUMN: Design Diversions: Anatomy of a Gun

editors@gamesetwatch.com (Andrew Vanden Bossche) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:00:29 -0800

[‘Design Diversions’ is a biweekly new GameSetWatch-exclusive column by Andrew Vanden Bossche. It looks at the unexpected moments when games take us behind the scenes, and the details of how game design engages us. This time -- A dissection of the way Borderlands teaches players about guns.]

Gearbox and 2K Games' Borderlands exudes style, character, and charm for a good half hour before dropping it. It’s regrettable since the game has so much going for it in this department: colorful characters, a vibrant but derelict landscape, and an alien society of corporations and vagrants. Unfortunately, it’s the first that drops off most completely and without characters the story is like a bus without a driver; it’s not going anywhere no matter how pretty it is.

While Borderlands' plot drop may be unfortunate, it can be ignored. As a game of cash and guns the setting does everything it needs to teach players what kind of world they’ve been thrust into. The wild west aesthetic fits perfectly with the themes of big guns, piles of cash, and fast death.

After all, the most important characters in Borderlands are the ones players can never look away from: the guns. Like in the Diablo clones that influenced it, the loot of Borderlands is the real star. What drives players beyond the last boss, beyond the end of the game, is the quest for the perfect loot.

Perfect is subjective, and finding the equipment that fits that personal definition is part of the reason why players enjoy this kind of game. Because Borderlands has a ridiculous amount of equipment, players need to be able to pick out what they want and what’s good at a glance. This is where the world design of Borderlands does its job in teaching the players what’s what. The color and flavor of the world gives players the tools to be able to immediately dissect the loot they find and use that information to decide whether to keep or toss it.

The Name You Know

Borderlands borrows liberally from the RPG that influenced it, even to the point of using almost the exact same color coding system in Word of Warcraft. Accusing Borderlands of ripping it off, or other such nonsense, completely misses the point, which is for the color coding system is to be familiar. Colors are an arbitrary designation anyway, and as Steve Gibson, Gearbox VP of Marketing said in an interview with Strategy Informer, “Why reinvent the colours when you’re just going to confuse people?”

With guns brightly outlined in their rarity color, players know instantly if something special drops. Distinct colors are immediately recognizable, and since rarity is one of the most important single factors in determining a weapon’s worth, it makes sense that it should stand out more than any other.

Check me out, I’m Dancin’!

One of the more subtle ways in which Borderlands conveys gun info are the little robot icons that appear next to the weapons. The weapon’s title and appearance often gives an indication of what kind of gun it is, but the robot, drawn from a set of specific icons wielding the game’s various armaments and wearing a thematically appropriate hat, indicates the specific type. Once the player comes to recognize the drawings, it’s easy to immediately distinguish the general type of weapon it is.

There are a few weaknesses to this approach, since the icons don’t articulate all of the weapon differences. For example, all handguns have the same icon, but there is a huge difference between revolvers and repeater pistols. It also may take a bit of time to recognize the symbolism implied in the various hats the robot wears, especially if you’re having trouble seeing what he’s holding. It is, however, a good way to pack more information into the relatively small box that contains gun data.

What Would You Do for a Klondike AK-47?

Borderland’s triumph of integrating game and world design is in the gun manufacturers. Each gun has a specific brand that specializes in different properties, like high damage, clip size and accuracy, or elemental properties. These manufacturers aren’t just terms that only exist to differentiate gun brands. They have a distinct existence in the game world marked by their presence in the landscape and objects all over the world. They even run some important services, like the plot device that brings players back to life.

When first dropped into the world of Borderlands, there’s no clear indication of what these different brands mean. It’s up to the game to teach the player the difference, and Borderlands does it through advertising, as if the manufacturers were really trying their hardest to get the player to buy their products by differentiating themselves from the competition.

Each of the manufacturers has a distinct design philosophy. Some are rarer and higher quality, while others are inexpensive. This is in addition to having qualities like accuracy, power, rate of fire, etc. These attributes aren’t limited to only the gun manufacturers that specialize in them, but they do let players know what they’re getting into with purchases and drops. What makes these design choice most interesting is that the game world teaches players to recognize these companies through advertising.

Sizing Up the Competition

Every time a player visits a weapon shop, the vending machine bombards them with an ad. “If it took more than one shot, you weren’t using a Jacobs,” quips an ad for the company specializing in high damage weapons. There are even posters strewn about the game world advertising the brands. In one for S&S Munitions, which specializes in clip size, the ad tells readers that reloading is something that smart people do after a battle.

Not only is it a clever parody of real world advertising, it does exactly the same job, which is to raise awareness about the company and what they do. The gun brands carry a lot of personality. Real world advertising uses a lot of the same gimmicks, building up an identity that they want consumers to take on.

Console War, What is it Good For?

It’s this same approach to advertising that is in no small respect responsible for console wars that sweep across the internet. The reason why so many gamers see it in the terms of a war is partially because these companies encourage their owners to think of their purchases as part of their lifestyle and identity. We see this supported in the lazy journalism present in articles that use console choices as a personality test for dating advice.

While this is silly, it’s still true that people often look on brands as an extension of their identity. While it’s by no means a valid way of determining personality traits, the brands players choose will say something about they value (in a gun). For a game that distinguishes itself from other FPS games through character customization and progression, that sort of personalization is really important.

Finding the Gun That’s Right for You

The neat thing about Borderlands is that it encourages players to search for a gun that perfectly matches what they want. Some games have upgrade systems, which accomplishes more or less the same thing. With random drops, the game becomes a quest to find the perfect one. This is not a better system. It is simply a question of what kind of game the player want to play.

Part of what makes the random weapon system appealing is that it generates crazy weapons you might not have ever thought about. It encourages diversity in playstyle if a player finds a rare weapon with a lot of power in a style they wouldn’t normally use. Rather than get stuck in a niche, a player is encouraged to experience more content.

Borderlands has its disappointments story-wise, but it succeeds in creating a world and style of gameplay that are not only in synch with each other, but even define and enhance each other. Whether or not one considers story to be irrelevant to games, it’s clear that their aesthetic plays a huge role in allowing players to understand enough of the game world to make the most of it. In a game where the whole point is to wield the best gun you can find, just having the gun look and feel cool is as important as its actual function.

[Andrew Vanden Bossche is a freelance writer and student. He has a blog called Mammon Machine, which will discuss video games eventually, I swear, and can be reached at AndrewVandenB@gmail.com.]

2PP Promotes Blip Festival 2009 With Trailer

editors@gamesetwatch.com (Eric Caoili) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:00:44 -0800

2 Player Productions, the indie film production company responsible for the release of Blip Festival 2006/2007's DVDs and 2008's two-disc live album, published a new commercial for the chip music event's return this December 17th-19th.

Taking place at Manhattan venue The Tank, the three-day festival will feature well-regarded micromusic acts like Nullsleep, The J. Arthur Keenes Band, Bit Shifter, Leeni, Minusbaby, and many others.

If you want to find out more about the artists performing at the event, you should definitely keep an eye on the official site's new blog, which features interviews, profiles, and music samples posted by Blip Festival organizers and the talented guys from True Chip Til Death. And watch out for an interview with the 2PP folks debuting on GameSetWatch tomorrow, coincidentally enough.

Korean Students' Cut and Paste Game

editors@gamesetwatch.com (Eric Caoili) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 14:00:32 -0800

One of nearly 200 submissions to the 2010 IGF Student Competition, Cut & Paste is a cute little adventure title that has you cutting pieces from the game world and dropping them back in to solve its different puzzles. Each scene is presented as a flipbook animation that you can stop to pull an item from your library of clipped objects.

The project come from a team of developers at Seoul's Sogang University calling themselves Turtle Cream, a name that's either adorable or horrifying, I haven't decided yet. The group has posted an in-progress build for the PC game and plans to release the full version of Cut & Paste in early 2010.

Opinion: The Lion's Gate - Majors And Indie Publishing

editors@gamesetwatch.com (Simon Carless) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 12:00:23 -0800

[In this opinion column, designer and Divide By Zero founder James Portnow lays out why major publishers need an indie arm, addressing the major factors that make it both a necessary and feasible model.]

I hear a lot of bitching that innovation is dead in America. That’s a lie. The problem is that we have two industries at odds, neither of which is really equipped to present innovations to the masses.

First off, we have the indie community, which bewails its unrecognized genius and occasionally screams “sellout!” whenever someone in the community actually manages to make a hit.

Then we have the AAA industry, which often claims that it can’t take the kind of risks that innovation requires, given how expensive it is to make a AAA game -- and yet manages to make multi-million dollar flops all the time anyway.

There, nothing like an introduction which pisses off everybody! Guess you’re probably listening, though, which means we can talk.

Every other entertainment industry has found an answer to this dilemma in the “indie arm” of major publishers –- Fox has it’s Searchlight Pictures, Sony Music has it’s RED distribution arm, for example -– so why isn’t there an EA-Indie, or an Activision Independent Publishing Group?

Part the First: Rehashing the Past

Before we answer those questions I’d like to take a short look at the industry as it stands now. To give you some context, I began writing this because of an argument I witnessed recently between two friends at AGDC. It went something like this:

Too Cool For School Indie Dev (henceforth referred to as "2C4S"): Just saw your latest title, WTF’s up with desaturated shooters?

Corporate Friend (henceforth referred to as Suit): They sell?

2C4S: Yeah, like a shit-covered brick, I saw the sales numbers on that one.

Suit: You mean the numbers which said it out sold your whole catalogue by a factor of, I don’t know, 1000 to 1?

2C4S: Whatev, at least we’re doing something new, and we do it on a 20th of the budget.

Suit: Yeah, and if you ever get the budget, you’ll be building FPSs like the rest of us.

I’ll leave the conversation there (though it went on through more drinks, a near fist fight, then hugs and reconciliation). The important thing about this conversation is that some permutation of it is not at all uncommon in our industry and, though hyperbolic, parts of it are rooted in truth.

Part the Second: The Awful Truth

The truth is that the indie scene doesn’t have a great track record as far as sales go, and whenever something sells, at least a certain segment of the indie community does go into clone overdrive (see social/casual games, or just go visit the App Store and Kongregate).

The indie community is also often as driven to innovate by its lack of resources as much as by any particular urge towards innovation. The constraints are greater for most indie games, so doing something within those constraints requires more ingenuity.

This is by no means a bad thing -- in fact, it leads to wonderful advances. It just means that those advances are often not as polished or apparent as they might otherwise be.

On the flip side, the major publishers and AAA studios are often more concerned with guaranteeing “good”, rather than aiming for “great”. If a AAA title is good, it will return positively, and we’re talking about big numbers, so even a small percentage positive return is by no means insignificant. And, when games bomb they really bomb, so a miss means a lot of money (or, more charitably, a lot of jobs).

This means it’s the “responsibility” of most AAA studios to mitigate risk. One way to mitigate risk is simply to emulate things which are popular. We see it in every industry with big single-product investment: from automotive manufacture to film, copying what’s already popular helps keeps the books in the black.

Part the Third: A Silver Lining

On the other hand, many members of the indie community are genuinely interested in moving the medium forward, and even those that aren’t tend to come up with some novel games due to the constraints they face.

The indie community is also rugged. They get more done in less time on a smaller budget than any other group of developers I’ve seen, inside the games industry or out.

Now, as for the AAA? Well, some great works simply require a big budget. The Sistine Chapel wasn’t cheap; neither were the Taj Mahal, the Pyramids or even the Godfather movies (because clearly they belong in that list). Without the AAA industry and the budgets it can command we wouldn’t have our Final Fantasies or Fallouts, our Grand Thefts or our Call of Duties. Not having these titles (as much as some would argue otherwise) would be a profound loss to our medium.

Additionally, not all art is about innovation. The AAA community are masters of polish. They take diamonds in the rough and reveal their true potential. Without the attentive eye of designers/artists/programmers in the AAA industry many great ideas would be left to languish in a half finished state -- but thanks to their commitment to polish, consumers have gotten to experience numerous mechanics, styles and programming innovations that would have otherwise fallen off the popular map.

Part the Fourth: Where I Actually Get to My Thesis

Okay, so now that we’ve covered the pros and cons of both sides of the industry the question becomes how to bring them together in the way that’s most profitable for the industry and best for the consumer.

The answer, as I see it, lays in major labels creating publishing divisions to put out independent games.

Why? Because it solves three major problems: It provides indie developers with the marketing and distribution/support they need; it allows major publishers to test the viability of innovations cheaply, and itt provides the consumer with more access to a variety of experiences -- which I believe increases market share and reflects positively on both AAA and independent gaming.

Let’s walk through those problems in a little bit more extended fashion.

Support

Indie development, as a rule, lacks support; this is one of its biggest drawbacks. It’s amazing what some indie developers accomplish on the resources they have available, but in general, indie developers lack the strong marketing arm and distribution channels to get their products in front of a large audience.

Indie development teams also often lack the funding and the oversight required to really put out a polished product. Many indie teams are either newcomers to the industry or segments of former teams that haven’t functioned outside the structure of a larger entity before – which means that having the organizational system and quality control groups inherent in a major publisher can be a huge boon.

Innovations to Go

Having an indie publishing arm would allow AAA developers to play the field as far as innovation goes, and only commit large investments toward innovations that have a proven amount of traction. This sort of arm allows the publisher to make a thousand $20k bets -- or, if we’re aiming for larger XBLA projects or the like, 100 $200k bets -- for the same price as a mid-grade major release.

This means they can safely test the waters and capitalize on hits by using their in house development capacity to refine and polish the best ideas.

Better for the Consumer

More, better titles are clearly better for the consumer, but is that better for us as an industry? From the indie perspective I would say, “Yes, indubitably,” but from the AAA side things get a little muddier. Major marketing pushes already make conflicting release dates a nightmare, and as projects get bigger and marketing campaigns get longer, the problem just becomes exacerbated.

While the marketing efforts put forth for these indie projects, even as an aggregate, would probably never rival the marketing spend for AAA titles, and, even though they may be focused on different marketing channels, this conflict raises the question of why, from a marketing perspective at least, a AAA publisher would want to spread its resources in this manner.

The reason’s simple: it’s because what’s better for the consumer is, in the end, better for us.

Besides the “cred” the publisher would get for putting out innovative games, an indie publishing arm would provide titles to fill the post-holiday doldrums. Much like any other section of the business, a publisher could easily play up its successes while letting the failures get buried under a different tradename -- much how Fox played up its discovery of Slumdog Millionaire and Juno, but let Phat Girlz quietly slide into the Searchlight catalogue.

Part the Fifth: Execution

The last question before us is how something of this nature might be enacted. I could write a whole article on exactly how this should be done, but for brevity’s sake, I’ll just try and go through some of the key points:

Total Ownership: The most important part of making this a viable business is making sure that the publisher gets total ownership of the IP (and really every part of the games) for anything they publish. This allows the indie arm to hand off successful IPs to the AAA arm in order to fully leverage the value of those IPs.

This may make many indie developers groan, but you can’t get something for nothing, so unless you can self-fund, if you want the capital to do your project right, you’re going to have to sacrifice something along the way.

On the other hand, a smart AAA publisher will work with the indie developer to grow and branch their IP, eventually picking up the company and bringing the employees on board.

Oversight: The publishing arm is going to have to be filled with strong, small-team producers. What’s more is that these producers can’t be seen as “the enemy” as producers from corporate often are at AAA publishers’ internal development houses. This means that you really need people who are willing to leave their own ideas behind them and work as facilitators to help teams accomplish their goals. Someday I’ll rant about producers who secretly don’t want to be producers, but for right now, just make sure your people are interested in growing products, regardless of what they are – otherwise you squash the spark that you brought the indies in for.

Talent Assessment: AAA publishers are notorious for not always making the best hiring choices. This is one of the reasons that raw experience has become such an important credential in our industry. Unfortunately that methodology is not viable when handing money over to indies.

The best answer for vetting indie developers is simply seeing what they can get done. Make them come to you with a prototype. If it’s fun and you can see where it’s going: demand that they hit a milestone that you think is difficult but achievable in the next 2-3 months before you hand over a cent. If they do so without cutting too many corners, publish their game.

Budget: Anyone trying to do this will need to set aside at least ten million dollars for the indie publishing arm. A third of that should be allocated solely to marketing. Capex should be pretty low as the existing corporate structure probably has spare workspace/computers/licenses etc. (even though it’s not at all, I’m going to say call starting capex to be nominal).

In the beginning, the staff should be pretty minimal. Figure an office of 20 to 25, with ten producers, five specialists to answer questions and help vet things like art and code, two or three superior Test Leads that can handle a scalable team, one “talent scout” to be actively looking for viable projects, one great marketing guy, and a handful of staff to help administrate and organize the publishing group itself.

After taxes and benefits let’s assume the staff costs you 2.5 million a year. Figure we leave another million in reserve to cover the capex, travel hiring of temps and all the other unexpected expenditures that are bound to come up: that leaves your group with a little over three million dollars to play with.

But the great thing about these indie projects is that many of them can be completed within the same year that they’re capitalized, which means that the division will be turning revenue within its first fiscal year…which means you’ll know if the experiment worked well before the initial capital is gone.

Could you run a “trial” division cheaper than this? Absolutely. If anyone reading this is actually considering putting together an indie arm for a major I highly recommend the full ten million dollar division, but my calculations estimate that, given less releases per year, it’s viable on two million dollars with the right people (especially if you are willing to give them a rev share percentage to offset lower salaries).

Keep project budgets aggressive and tight. Let these guys pay themselves no more than half of what their AAA counterparts are making. You want them lean and aggressive, working hard for the big payout when they see their percentage.

You want to make sure you disburse in small increment and make continued funding milestone based. Your internal producer, who knows the team and knows the project, should be setting these milestones. They shouldn’t seem slave driving but they shouldn’t be lax.

If you think you’ve got a winner, you should be willing to allocate additional funds for extra time and extra polish.

Never announce a release date until the project is complete. You want to have the freedom to let these projects slip. You’d rather hold onto a completed project than release too earlier or miss a release date you’ve spent marketing money on.

(This last suggestions may not actually be possible, just understand that with these teams you’re going to slip, and you’ve got to be okay with that)

Marketing: As mentioned before, you’ll need at least one marketing person embedded in the division (they should be hired as soon as possible, even before you have products so they can start formulating overall strategy).

Marketing these games is a different animal than marketing AAA games, there are different channels and different audiences and even vastly different budget constraints to work with. This means that you’ll need someone who knows how to market these particular types of game and can work with your AAA marketing department to make the best use of the already incredible marketing division that probably exists in your parent publisher.

Creative Freedom: Last, but by no means least, you must give the teams total creative freedom. These are their projects, not yours. The reason they’re going to be willing to give up the rights to their IP is to get the chance to bring their vision to life.

This may mean that you have to write down projects that simply go astray or release projects that end up going in a creative direction you don’t agree with (though guidelines stated from the outset, such as “no underage nudity”, are fine). This may seem counter-intuitive to a brand manager, but this is how you manage your brand with the segment that matters most, your development community.

Most independent developers are in it for the chance to do something they want to do with the medium. They’ll take a lower wage and work longer hours for that chance, but if you take that away, they’ll hate you forever.

Of course this doesn’t mean you can’t make suggestions, you can and should – in fact your relationship with your developers should be such that your suggestions are sought after and welcomed – but the final decision always has to rest with the developer.

Conclusion: Innovation is something that our industry needs, but isn’t something our industry is prepared to deliver, at least not on a mass scale. Bringing the two sides of the industry together by forming the same indie-major publishing arms we see in other industries would allow us to leverage the virtues of both the AAA world and the indie world, and reap the rewards presented by both.

Badman Dev Reveals One Million Ton Bara Bara

editors@gamesetwatch.com (Eric Caoili) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 10:00:23 -0800

When Acquire and Sony's PlayStation C.A.M.P.! development program last collaborated, the two produced the Yuusha no Kuse ni Namaikida series (a third game is already in the works!), recently brought to the States as Holy Invasion of Privacy, Badman.

The two Japanese groups debuted a new PSP project, One Million Ton Bara Bara, which looks to combine the cheerful tone of LocoRoco/Patapon with the tiny but characterful sprites of Badman. And the soundtrack, judging from the sample shared in the above trailer, is so cute it hurts my face.

In the portable title, you defend towns from giant hostile airships by breaking up the crafts piece by piece. The mechanics sound a lot like Qix, except you're avoiding missiles, droids, and other countermeasures while you tear the vessesls apart. You can also rescue prisoners trapped in the massive ships.

One Million Ton Bara Bara is slated to release in Japan some time in 2010. You can see more of the game and its characters at its official site.

[Via Andriasang]