# LCs Fungrube lesenswerter Artikel zu Videospielen



## LordCrash (31. Juli 2013)

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Hallo zusammen,

ich habe mich dazu entschlossen, ein neues Topic aufzumachen, in dem ich regelmäßig neue Artikel aus der Welt der Videospiele posten werde, die mir so bei meinen Streifzügen durch das Internet ins Auge fallen. Dies ist also ein Sammelthread für alles, was ich so für lesenswert und interessant finde und gerne mit euch teilen würde und was nicht schon mit einem meiner/unserer Featuretopics (Witcher 3, Project Eternity, PES 2014, Rome 2, Star Citizen) abgedeckt ist.

Wenn ihr einen Artikel gelesen habt und er euch gefallen hat, würde ich mich über ein "Gefällt mir" sehr freuen, auch um zu wissen, ob die Artikel überhaupt von jemandem gelesen werden und ob es sich die Mühe lohnt, damit fortzufahren.

In diesem Sinne viel Spaß beim Lesen! 


P.S.: Ich bitte schon im Voraus zu entschuldigen, dass einige/viele der Artikel auf englisch sein werde. Das liegt einfach daran, dass die Dichte an Beiträgen zu Videospielen in den USA höher ist als bei uns hier in Deutschland. Dagegen kann ich persönlich auch nichts machen....


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## LordCrash (31. Juli 2013)

*                                                                                     Fear is the path to the dark side                                                                                                         *

                                                                                       Obsidian on KOTOR 2 and what KOTOR 3 might have been. 




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*By* Robert Purchese *Published*                                                                                                  Wednesday, 31 July 2013 

_Please note that there are spoilers about Knights of the Old  Republic 1 and 2 in this article, although I try to keep them to a  minimum._

   To this day one decision still plagues Chris Avellone's mind:  should Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords have had more Revan  in it? BioWare and LucasArts hadn't forbidden it - instead, Obsidian  had decided to focus on new characters to allow more creative breathing  room.

   "But I don't know if that was the best decision," Avellone ponders,  speaking in a Eurogamer KOTOR2 podcast other members of Obsidian and  The Sith Lords Restored Content Mod join us for. You can listen to it in  full right now, jokes 'n all.

   "There's a lot of design decisions that occurred in Knights of the  Old Republic 2 that, to this day, I still question whether that was the  right thing to do or not, and one was, ideally we should have maybe  looked for more ways to introduce Revan in the sequel.

   "But then again," he adds, "when we were plotting out the idea of  doing the third game we just thought it would be cool if we were  foreshadowing what Revan was really doing in Knights of the Old Republic  1, and what he was preparing for in Knights of the Old Republic 2, and  then bring it to a close, the end of the trilogy, but we didn't get a  chance to do that."

   Yes, a Knights of the Old Republic 3 game existed in pre-production at Obsidian Entertainment.

   "I always liked the idea that Revan, as smart and powerful as your  player-character was, was actually even more of a brilliant strategist  than became apparent in the first game," Avellone goes on.




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   "The entire second game is littered with clues as to 'why didn't  Revan destroy the infrastructure here? What was he trying to make sure  was still intact? What did he/she see that no one else saw?' I thought  that was giving a nice nod to 'wait a minute, Revan realises there's an  even larger force at work here, and he's focusing his efforts on that  and keeping the big picture in mind'. That was one thing  - the idea  that there was a larger, global conspiracy."

   That third game would cast you as "the Exile" and allow you to  track Revan's path. "Whether you encounter him or not..." he pauses,  wary of spoilers in case the game ever happens in the future. "The idea  was that even before the 'modern day' Sith came into being in The Old  Republic ... there were even more distant Sith Lords that were  considered the true Sith, and the idea that they were still lurking out  there in the galaxy waiting for a chance to strike, kind of like the  Shadows in Babylon 5, I thought would be a cool finale for that Old  Republic trilogy.

   "Part of the fun with designing them," he adds, "was if you have  these incredibly powerful Force users and they have their whole hidden  domain out in the distant reaches of the galaxy, what would that Sith  empire really look like at the hands of these things? 
   "If they could shape entire planets or galaxies or nebulas, and  they had all these slave races at their disposal, how cool would that  be, to go into the heart of darkness and you're the lone Jedi and/or new  version of the Sith confronting these guys? What would that be like? I  thought that would be pretty epic."

_Whimper. Yearn._

Knights of the Old Republic 3 would still involve the Ebon Hawk  ship, your base and your home, and you'd have "a few" of the companions  from the other KOTOR games. "You definitely have T3-M4 and HK-47 with  you," he says, and at one point HK-47, its legs dismantled, would "ride  around in your backpack like C-3PO does with Chewbacca in Empire Strikes  Back". "So during one of the sequences in the game," Avellone expands,  "you'd actually have HK-47 firing behind you and being your cover  support while you're carrying him around on your back and getting to a  repair station."

   That KOTOR3 pitch, which is different to the Star Wars pitch  Obsidian is trying on Disney, never got past pre-production. "It was a  matter of getting LucasArts to greenlight the title and I... To be  honest I don't know all the reasons that went into this, whether they  wanted to have an internal team do it, whether they logistics didn't  work out... 

   "Ultimately," he says, "it felt like we were pitching and pitching  and it just wasn't going anywhere, and at some point people just drew a  line and said 'it's just not going to happen', which made us kind of  sad, but, OK, if that's the business, that's the business."

   It could have had something to do with new consoles - PS3 and Xbox  360 - arriving and engines needing redoing, which would have been  expensive and time consuming, points out Dan Spitzley, then senior  programmer, now lead programmer at Obsidian. "That's a good point,"  concedes Avellone. "_Thanks_,  consoles, _thank you_."




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   *** 

   As integral as Revan was and is to the Knights of the Old Republic  experience, when Obsidian first started working on KOTOR2 - the studio's  first game - no one in the team had heard of him. "We hadn't played the  original game," Avellone reveals. "LucasArts hadn't signed the contract  before we started working on it, so even though we were getting paid  for milestones, they didn't want to give anyone a release copy of the  game, so we were kind of guessing as to what the first storyline might  be like."

   They threw together concept art for characters who only _might_  exist, and whipped up a tentative story around them. When Chris  Avellone finally played Knights of the Old Republic he realised how  terrible and out of kilter with BioWare's his story had been, and flung  it into the bin. He also realised something else: this was going to be  one hard act to follow.

   "The moment I hit the planet Manaan and I was walking around in the  sea-floor I almost threw the controller at the TV because the game was  getting so f***ing awesome. And then when the storyline played out..." I  imagine him mouthing a whistle. "Incredible kudos to those guys - I  thought it was a great story, I thought the team had assembled all the  right beats for what made a Star Wars game and," he adds, "they made me  love Star Wars again."

   But, also: "Wow, I'm screwed," he laughs, recalling his thoughts.  "It's a rough act to follow! Like, I'm going to Garfunkle this up."


   *** 

   It's easy to look at the first Knights of the Old Republic, and at  BioWare, and assume Obsidian had the same conditions to make a sequel  in. Obsidian did not; Obsidian had it hard. When the deal was inked,  there were only seven people working at Obsidian, all huddled in a  makeshift office in Feargus Urquhart's attic. This dream job had been  landed through old ties and BioWare rejecting a sequel, as it was  uncomfortable with producing one in the 14-16 month timeframe LucasArts  wanted. (BioWare's Chris Priestly echoed this in a panel recently.) But Obsidian couldn't and wouldn't turn that kind of work down.

      Nevertheless, Obsidian was ill prepared for what lay ahead. It  didn't even have a full team, which would number around 30 people (many  inexperienced), let alone luxuries like in-house IT support, in-house  audio and in-house QA. The engine was new and contractors, though  working hard, were making mistakes that were hard to track down.  Obsidian didn't even have a proper office. Someone would turn on the  microwave and all the animators would lose power, Anthony Davis,  gameplay programmer, recalls. "It was a real challenge," he says, but he  loved it.

   "We just had so many good times," he expands. "Because, you know,  you're thrown into this situation where you've got cables running  everywhere, you've got machines, you're like 'who took my Xbox  development kit? What's going on?' It was a little bit crazy." But  everybody, top to bottom, was working, and doing multiple jobs. 

   "Feargus Urquhart would be in his office playing the Children of  Dune soundtrack over and over again, and he would be in that office and  he would be working, working on the game - everybody worked on the game.  And you knew everybody was pulling their weight, everybody was in the  same boat."

   "One of our senior designers, Tony Evans, his wife was pregnant at  the time and I was like, 'Tony, why are you in the office?'" Chris  Avellone recalls. "And he's like, _'I am going to get this done,'_ and I'm like, 'Tony Evans, I always want to work with you - you are amazing,' although I feel horrible right now."


   *** 

   But however valiant the team's efforts, Knights of the Old Republic  2 would not be properly finished - "broken", the team implores polite  old me - and asking LucasArts for an extension was out of the question.  "There would have been substantial penalties had we not have made that  date," Avellone tells me. But LucasArts isn't the Sith Lord in all of  this, the Obsidianites are quick to point out. The house that Star Wars  built sent QA people over to help in-house, and did "crucial" work  getting all the game's cinematics together. The LucasArts people were so  nerdy about Star Wars they could even understand the fictional language  written on posters in the game, which resulted in some odd bugs being  filed on Obsidian staff who didn't think such a thing was possible.

   No, the real fault, Avellone says, was Obsidian's eyes being bigger  than its belly. "There's a number of design decisions we could have  done to de-scope the game. We should have removed all mini-games - that  was a huge waste of time. And all those cut-scenes we had, the in-engine  sequences: all of those were such a huge pain in the arse to set up and  we could never count on them reliably." There's a reason why so many  cut-scenes take place on the Ebon Hawk, and that's because Obsidian  could ensure people would be standing in the right places when they  triggered. Oh and redesigning the interface was also "a huge waste of  time".

   Chris Avellone had originally even wanted players to visit the home  of Princess Leia, Alderaan, "but they nixed that", he recalls. And some  of the team's visions, such as the siege of Khoonda, were neutered by  the restrictive power of the Xbox console they were working on. "It was  practically finished," says Anthony Davis, "or at least several working  versions of it were finished, but poor performance on the Xbox forced us  to cut it and turn it into movies." The siege would go on to provide  the inspiration for the siege at the keep in Neverwinter Nights 2.




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   *** 

    But for all that didn't work out, there was plenty that did. The  villains of Knights of the Old Republic 2 are far more memorable than  those in KOTOR, with the exception of Revan. Darth Nihilus, Lord of  Hunger, is the most recognisable. He's a wound in the Force and feeds on  the lifeforce and Force of those around him - sometimes entire planet's  worth - and is so lost to the dark side he tore his spirit out and  encased it in his mask and robes, becoming a manifestation of primitive  intent! Malak from Knights of the Old Republic 1 is a burly bully with a  mechanical jaw. Oh whoopdie doo. 

   Don't call Darth Nihilus "the face" of KOTOR2 around Chris  Avellone, though. He doesn't like that. "One pet peeve I've always had  about the Nihilus [art] that sometimes people use is there was never  intended to be any hint of what was beyond the mask, so every time I see  the Nihilus picture and there's the outline of his nose behind the  mask, I freak out! It's supposed to be a void - that's the metaphor of  what he is, so it drives me crazy when they try and imply that he's  human."

   A small voice, that of lead concept artist Brian Menze, interjects.  He drew that nose for a magazine cover way back when. "Chris didn't  like it but he went soft on me that day and let it go," he says. "I wish  he would have stopped me because we probably wouldn't be in this  predicament any more if he had." Nevertheless, Menze earned lasting  prestige by creating Nihilus, a concept created and greenlit in all of  15 minutes. "That character has gone on to be bigger than the game we  created, and I'm very thankful for that."




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   Darth Sion, Lord of Pain, took much longer to get right. Typically  Brian Menze didn't have time to dilly-dally because he was modelling the  characters as well, so he usually sketched them quickly and roughly.  But he couldn't get Sion - a corroding immortal whose excruciating pain  was caused by the very anger and hatred holding him together - to  Avellone's liking (Avellone having been inspired by a stone demon dying in anime Ninja Scroll). The pair had "a great many" conversations about how to get him right.

   "We were trying to imagine how you would have some guy who was  literally telekinetically holding himself together," says Avellone, "and  trying to get the feel of having those small pieces of his body  actually orbiting around him. We were trying to get the engine to pull  that off. And me and Brian went through many frustrations trying to get  that correct, and I'm not sure if it ever exactly turned out the way we  wanted it to.

   "No, not really," adds Menze. "The engine just couldn't do it."  That's how Darth Sion ended up looking more human than originally  intended - a bit like a decomposing monk. 

   But the strongest and most memorable character of Knights of the  Old Republic 2 was Kreia, the blind old Jedi who guides you every step  of the way. Her strength was in how she was written rather than how she  was drawn, and she personified Knights of the Old Republic 2's other  defining characteristic: grey areas. The light side/dark side polarity  of KOTOR was questioned by Kreia at every turn. Help a poor person out  with some money? They may be mugged and killed for it. "She was  questioning everything about the Star Wars universe that I thought  should be questioned," Avellone remarks. She was the alternate  perspective without the need for ruthless and cringe-worthy evil.


   *** 

   By being a tarnished gem, Knights of the Old Republic 2 also  managed to inspire something else that KOTOR couldn't: modders. These  fans would go on to exhibit a kind of loyalty even a Sith Lord would  covet, their work eventually restoring KOTOR2 to the game it should have  been. Two members of The Sith Lords Restored Content Mod team - leader  Zbiginiew Staniewicz and anchorman Julian DeLange - join us for the  podcast.

   Obsidian didn't hide any content from the community; everything the  team made is on the game disc. That's why Anthony Davis couldn't help  but smile when he heard about the restoration projects first cropping  up. "Yeah they've really bitten off a lot," he knew, "they really don't  know how much is in there!" It wasn't a case of altruistic foresight on  Obsidian's part, though, it was simply because pulling out any content  (besides offensive placeholder language) was more dangerous to the  game's overall stability than leaving it in.

      Of the content restored it's the HK robot factory quest that's the  most significant, and entertaining. It's obvious when you play the game  without the mod that something more was intended. What wasn't obvious to  the Restored Content mod team, however, was how the quest was supposed  to end. Chris Avellone fills in the blanks (in a subsequent email):  "HK-47 went old school solo to destroy all his bulls*** 'upgraded'  models hidden on Telos. "He sneaks in, they can't detect him because  he's a similar model and then I believe he could either destroy the  50s/51s or make them part of the end battle." Or he could waltz off with  his robot army into the distance, Spitzley recalls.

   Beyond a minor upcoming update, work is at an end on The Sith Lords  Restored Content Mod. Dreams of Obsidian releasing the game code to the  community are just that: dreams. BioWare owns the engine and it has  licensed middleware in. It's complicated, in other words, and Obsidian  has no say in the matter.

   The work The Restored Content Mod team has done, Obsidian is  eternally grateful for. "One of the things we would talk about as the  various Sith Restoration projects went on was just how lucky we were  that the game was so well received by some great guys like you two  guys," Anthony Davis tells Staniewicz and DeLange. "You would fix that  which we could not fix. We were not allowed to. We're just - we're  really appreciative of that. 

   "You helped complete the experience for many people. Many people  who get the game for the first time, like from a Steam sale or whatever,  their friends are going to tell them, 'Yeah, go get The Sith Lords  Restored Content Mod, put that on their first - that's the way it was  intended to be.' And that's correct. And just, really, thank you guys  from the bottom of my heart, I mean it."

   "I'm speechless now," says Staniewicz. "I love you Anthony!"


   *** 

  Knights of the Old Republic 2 launched Obsidian, a studio that's  plied a trade making other people's sequels since, projects with tight  deadlines, but struggled to manufacture breakout a hit of its own.  Nevertheless, it's taken on some big names over the years, such as  Fallout, and there's a really promising collaboration with the makers of  South Park due out before the end of the year. There's also Project  Eternity, a more modest production but a real talisman for the studio,  plus a new IP no one at Obsidian will bloody tell me about. Humph.

   What's most important is that Obsidian has survived, though there were storms to weather along the way, and that survival is in no small part due to The Sith Lords. "I mean it's what _made_  Obsidian," comments Dan Spitzley, "it's the reason we're still here.  For me, KOTOR2 just represents, how do I say it, Obsidian as a whole."

   If it weren't for that new studio and that new game, Spitzley's  eight-year career in games would have sunk with Interplay. "I was in the  same boat," Brian Menze adds. "I was finishing up at Interplay and when  this project started, when they were able to start bringing those of us  who were still lingering behind over to Obsidian... It felt like a  fresh start, and that feeling carried over to a camaraderie that, I  don't know - it was pretty exciting and I felt so blessed to be a part  of it. Honestly, in my career - 20-some-odd games - it's probably in the  top three favourite moments of my life."

   "It was such an eye-opening, amazing experience," says Anthony  Davis, whose first game programming job it was. "And even so, now that  I'm out of the games industry after almost nine years in it, I do look  back on it and it's got a lot of bitter-sweet memories for me. I wish we  could have done more but I'm proud of what we did." It's a bitter-sweet  notion shared by Chris Avellone.

   "I miss the people," Anthony Davis closes. "I miss the good times that we had and the hard work that we put in."


Quelle: Fear is the path to the dark side • Articles • Eurogamer.net


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## LordCrash (31. Juli 2013)

*Holodeck: Holy Grail or Hollow Promise? Part 1+2 (complete story)*

                               By Warren Spector                      *Wed 31 Jul 2013 3:00pm GMT* / 11:00am EDT / 8:00am PDT 




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*Warren Spector isn't so sure the industry will be able to create a holodeck gaming experience that's actually fun*

               For years game developers, game  players, science fiction fans (generally) and Trekkers (specifically)  have been told - and have been telling themselves - that the trajectory  of video game history leads inevitably to a Star Trek-inspired Holodeck.

Since  first bursting onto the scene in the 1980s, Jaron Lanier, generally  credited as the first person to describe the potential of "virtual  reality," has argued that _something_ like the holodeck was  unavoidable. Since then, he has been one of the leading evangelists for a  fully immersive future. As recently as June of this year, in New Scientist magazine, he reiterated his desire to see that dream become a reality:

"I believe that the Holodeck as Holy Grail has the potential to lead us down a blind alley toward a dead end future" 

_Instead  of thinking of it like a very 3D movie, or a video game that you're  inside, I think what virtual reality is going to be like is a new kind  of a medium where you're playing with your own identity, and that's  what's so interesting about it… it's almost like you're exercising these  forgotten little corners of your brain, some really old corners that  evolved to actually control different bodies deep, deep, deep back in  our evolutionary past. And that kind of very profound, intimate sense of  experience is really what virtual reality's all about._

Similarly,  interactive media thinkers like Janet Murray have written persuasively  about the appeal of the "Star Trek future." In her 1997 book, Hamlet on  the Holodeck, she discusses the role of immersive simulation in the  future of narrative laying out an explanation of, and template for, a  future rich in virtual reality experiences that is still relevant  15-plus years on:

_"The format that most fully exploits the  properties of digital environments is not the hyper-text or the fighting  game but the simulation: the virtual world full of interrelated  entities, a world we can enter, manipulate, and observe in process."_

If  you haven't read Hamlet on the Holodeck you should probably do so -  it's kind of a must-read for any game developer. I'll warn you, there  are some very smart games industry folks who find the book as  frustrating as it is educational! Still, a book that engenders strong  feelings and gets people arguing is worth a read, right?

More recently, at USC, there's a team working on something called "The Holodeck Project".  (Clearly, though smart, talented, and driven by a Star Trek inspired  mission to "go where no man has gone before" they need a marketing  person to work on their naming skills). Regardless, here's what they  have to say about the goals they've set for their work:

_The  holodeck has given us woodlands and ski slopes… figures that fight… and  fictional characters with whom we can interact. Or so we were promised  many years ago by a certain Jean-Luc Picard. But now we actually might  have an actual Holodeck to actually run around in and actually fight  baddies in… [T]he Holodeck is a bit different to the [Oculus] Rift: It's  not just a head mounted display, it's a full virtual reality  experience._

"I have a rule  that's stood me in good stead over the years - never build a game that  depends on potential buyers owning a peripheral in order to play" 

And  finally, if anyone requires more evidence of the pervasiveness and  persuasiveness of a Holodeckian future, the most recent sighting I've  seen can be found in an article by Jeff Grubb, writing for the VentureBeat website:

_The  Holy Grail of immersive gaming is Star Trek: The Next Generation's  holodeck - a room that you can enter that becomes an interactive  experience and overwhelms your every sense. It's a concept so  far-fetched that it still feels like we're a hundred years away from it,  and we probably are… For something to qualify as a holodeck, it must  trick your every sense…_

Full disclosure - I worked with Jeff  back at TSR and consider him a smart guy and a friend. Despite our  history together, I can't go where he's going, any more than I can go  all the way with Lanier, Murray, and other VR/Holodeck evangelists.

In fact, I believe that the Holodeck as Holy Grail has the potential to lead us down a blind alley toward a dead end future.

I  realize I'm swimming against the current here - what with the slavering  anticipation for the Oculus Rift VR rig, reports of Holodeck-like  projects from Sony and recent Microsoft Kinect-driven VR patents. But  hear me out.

Here's my contention:

If we're careful and  thoughtful in our approach to predecessor technologies like virtual  reality and augmented reality, as well as to Holodeck-style full  immersion down the road, we might end up in a great place - a place as  compelling as the world Lanier, Murray, Grubb et al envision.

But if we're _not_ careful, if we _don't_  consider what VR, AR and Holodecks can and cannot do well, we'll just  end up spending a lot of money and expending a lot of effort giving  users something _we_ think is cool, something those users _think_ they want, but which will inevitably disappoint.

"Folks who go first often go bust. Players who buy early can end up broke" 

This  may seem obvious - do smart stuff and good things happen - but from  much of what I read and hear, from all the gushing over headsets and new  peripherals for interacting with things on the screen, it's obvious to  me that a lot of people aren't thinking about the pitfalls ahead. For  that reason, I'd like to go through some potential problems we'd better  think about - and soon.

*Pitfall #1: Do people really want VR, AR or Holodeck enough to buy a peripheral to experience it?*

I  have a rule that's stood me in good stead over the years - never build a  game that depends on potential buyers owning a peripheral in order to  play.

No matter how cool the game or how cool the peripheral, only  a portion of the potential audience will have (or be willing to buy)  something new to get the full experience of your game.

Heck, even a  peripheral that's packaged with hardware can be a sales-limiting  factor. Sometimes the old ways are the best ways and, today, lots of  people are just fine with a keyboard or controller - no surprise given  that these ways of interacting with a computer or console have been  refined to razor-sharp effectiveness by thirty-plus years of use and  mastery. People like a controller connected to a TV or monitor they  already own. Very few, if any, "normal humans" want or need more  immersion than that. Who wants to learn a whole new way of experiencing  and interacting with a virtual world? By and large, people just want to  play. Anything that gets in the way of that reduces the likelihood of  people playing.

Clearly, there are some big hurdles to overcome  here. You can say we're still in early days of gaming, let alone VR, AR  and Hdeck. You can say, of _course_ prices are going to be high and  sales limited to early adopters. In other words, you can say that an  audience limited by the need for a peripheral is okay - we have to start  somewhere, right?

Not so right, I fear. Folks who go first often  go bust (see Cybermaxx and Forte). Players who buy early can end up  broke (yeah, I'm looking at all you Apple Newton owners out there). It's  all too likely that the lack of a sufficiently large audience will lead  to lack of developer and publisher support, which will lead to  peripheral creators running into a brick wall we in the trade call "no  money". And no money for anyone on the creation-distribution-play  spectrum, regardless of where they fall on it, means the Holodeck (and  VR and AR) may be further away than current technology would lead one to  believe. They may _never_ catch on…

In my book, when you  require a peripheral "purchased separately," as they say in the  commercials, you always lose. Anyone see peripheral-free VR, HR or  HDeck? Uh-huh. Didn't think so.

*Pitfall #2: How do you control this crazy thing?*

One  of many things we learned in the VR gaming circles of 20 years ago was  that the range of mobility of the human neck limited a player's ability  to experience even the most meticulously designed and immersive virtual  world. Unless you were willing to stand while you played, or you sat in a  chair that swiveled 360 degrees, VR didn't add enough to the experience  of play to balance out the cost and deficiencies of the hardware. (And  watch out for deadly python-like cords as you rotate to take in your  oh-so-compelling virtual surroundings).

"How many people really want to walk, run and jump to navigate a virtual world?" 

And  that is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to interfacing with a  virtual world. Falling into a 3D space… feeling like you're really  there in an alternate world… In a very real sense, that's the easy  illusion to deliver to users.

The problem of how you interact with an illusory immersive world? Now _that_ is one tough problem.

Creating  a good head-tracking headset, while cool, is just the first hurdle.  Assuming the full immersion of a Holodeck is even possible, and it seems  likely it will be, probably sooner than anyone expects, what about the  interface between user and device?

In a VR world, are we supposed  to use a Wii Remote or something like it? In an AR world, are we  supposed to flap our arms around, looking rather foolish as we do so? In  a Holodeck experience are we supposed to run, jump, kick and punch?

How  do you interact with a virtual world? (Remember, your solution has to  be as seamless and refined as the mouse, keyboard and/or controller…)  Who among us wants to walk and run and actually swing a sword for hours?  How will you ride a virtual horse, climb a wall, or pick up the  inevitable crate?

Head-tracking sounds great. If you want to look  up, just look up. Check out your flank and turn right or left? Totally  do-able and cool. Look behind you?… Oh, wait… hm… maybe do a full  Exorcist and swivel your head 180 degrees? Maybe you have to get up off  the couch and turn around? Use a mouse or keyboard you can't actually  see in VR - and don't _want_ to see in AR or a Holodeck?

Put another way, how many people really - _really_  - want to walk, run and jump to navigate a virtual world? How many  people really want to swing a sword for 5-10 (or 100) hours? I think we  can agree on the answer - not many, for all the enthusiasm expressed.

A  TV screen, a mouse and/or a keyboard are looking a little better,  aren't they? If the new VR/AR/Hdeck peripheral you have to go out and  buy makes such things harder rather than easier, why bother? You might  as well go join a gym and get some exercise that way.

It's tough  but not impossible to imagine solutions to control/interaction problems  in a VR world, but being the immersive tech that's closest to what we  already have, that's not much of a surprise. AR is certainly going to be  harder, UI-wise (and that's assuming you can solve all sorts of visual  and occlusion problems!). In an AR environment, you start with the  movement problems I already mentioned, but then you also have to deal  with the problem of interacting with real objects and virtual ones (and  having the virtual objects then interact themselves with the real  ones!). AR kind of makes my head hurt… The Holodeck? I don't even want  to think about the interface and interaction problems there.

And  remember - if doing things in a VR/AR/Hdeck world is harder than it is  with the tried and true of a controller refined over decades of use,  what use is a Holodeck at all? An immersive experience that, thanks to  clunky UI, constantly reminds you that you're in a virtual world is  going to drag you in and out of the experience every few seconds. That's  makes it extremely unlikely users will be able to get into the desired  flow state than they can in older, seemingly less immersive virtual  environments.




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*Pitfall #3: All costs and problems aside, does anyone even want the full-on holodeck experience?*

Just  to get it out of the way, I'd argue that VR and AR at least have the  potential to enhance the power of immersive experiences. The holodeck  promises to add little to that and will, I fear, end up being something  no one really wants.

People _think_ they want open-ended  simulations of entire worlds - I was just at San Diego Comic Con a few  weeks ago and I guarantee you there were lots of people in the gold,  blue and red tunics of Starfleet Command who really want a Holodeck to  call their own! (True confession? I had a near-biblical internal battle  to resist buying one of those gold tunics myself...)

The big  problem with Hdeck development is... well, there are a ton of hardware  and software issues. But I'd argue that the real problems are conceptual  - solvable, maybe, but requiring a radical rethinking of what an Hdeck  can and should be.

Specifically,  read up on the Holodeck and, with very few exceptions (notably Janet  Murray, mentioned earlier) the dreamers dreaming about it seem to think  it's enough just to _be_ in a virtual world. There's a belief that  convincing geometry plus deep simulation plus AI plus rules equal a  satisfying experience:

"Look, I'm at Gettysburg!"

"I'm riding a horse on the Scottish moors!"

"I'm living on Tatooine!"

Or (you know it's going to happen...) "I'm in a porn flick!"

All  of those experiences sound fascinating - seductively so. And seeing the  Holodeck on Star Trek, with all the boring and technically challenging  aspects edited out in classic Hollywood fashion, makes full immersion  look great.  But in actuality, I suspect most people would find  open-endedness to have, at best, limited appeal.

And, not to be _too_  facetious, let's not forget that any time the Holodeck appears in a  Star Trek episode you can pretty well be assured it's going to  malfunction. It's a wonder anyone wants to take such a risk in the real  world. But many do want to leave our world for a more adventurous or  emotionally compelling experience. Let's think about the nature of the  Holodeck experience, then.

*Pitfall #4: What do you do in a Holodeck?*

"Being"  is great, but without something to do, it's kind of an empty existence.  That's true in the real world and equally true in a virtual one.

And  there's perhaps the biggest conceptual problem with Hdeck thinking  these days. There's an assumption that solving the hardware and UI  problems is all we need to do. There seems to be this idea that  simulation alone is enough. Create a compelling virtual world... add  virtual people, animals and things... add players.

Bing, bang,  boom! People will flock to the machine that lets them be a lion for a  while or visit the pyramids in the comfort of their own home.

Clearly, in my mind at least, it isn't enough to _go_ somewhere or _be_ something. You have to _do_  something. And VR can make the doing cool. I get that. But Holodeck?  Maybe for training purposes. Maybe for visiting a long ago place or  meeting people and personalities long gone. But for entertainment? I'm  just not sure.

The problem with most of those who view the  Holodeck as Holy Grail is that they downplay, deny or, usually, don't  even consider the need for a "mediator" between hardware and fleshware.  But someone has to create the software that guides the experience.

I  can think of very few people thinking about the role of the "designer"  responsible for bounding the Hdeck user experience. Too few are thinking  about what it takes to channel users in virtual directions that make  sense, that are interesting, that aren't just... well... being.

The  Holodeck as "grail" gets a lot of press and occupies a lot of  mindshare. The Holodeck as experience, as an opportunity simply to be  somewhere or be something, that generates a lot of buzz, too. But the  Holodeck as medium - as something goal-oriented and challenging and  worth spending significant amounts of time with (time that could be  spent in other pursuits)? That's not getting much attention at all.

You  read about Holodecks in military training exercises... in practice  surgeries... in virtual travel. But I'd argue that most, if not all,  technological advances become commercially viable and "mainstreamed"  when used for entertainment. And that means we need to think about the  verbs of play, of storytelling, of action as much as, or more than, we  need to think about graphics and controls. Those are critically  important and may or may not be solvable. But for solutions to be  meaningful, we need to think through the potential of the medium and  begin trying to understand the role of the mediators who will make  user... no... _player_ experiences meaningful, too.

A  fully-simulated world with no goals, no narrative, and no purpose is a  lot of work for nothing. Aimless wandering is the enemy of fun. And  without a "creator," all you have is aimless wandering. Players must  find their own fun, something they're demonstrably not very good at  doing. Well, let me soften that statement - _most_ players aren't good at making their own fun.

(And  before anyone brings up Minecraft, that's a very different animal, a  sandbox game that's all about creation of content. The tools are there  specifically to make creation easy. The Holodeck, as usually envisioned,  is about exploration and unguided experience.)

Once the novelty  of full immersion wears off (and I believe there's only so much "being a  tiger" one can take before the thrill is gone), goal-orientation will  be critical. The goal might be "save the princess" or "kill everything  that moves" (god forbid to both). Or the goals can be "operate on this  sick guy" or "terraform this planet." But you need goals to make a fully  simulated world worth exploring. You need player constraints. You need  something specific to accomplish.

And you need all of those things  in a form that can't be as well expressed without all the rigmarole of  headsets and treadmills and power gloves. At this time, I can't think of  any experience that would be improved by a Holodeck. Not one.

Prove  me wrong. Seriously. I hope someone can. Because, you see, I'm not all  that psyched about the Holodeck, per se. What I am psyched about, and  always have been psyched about, are the immersive possibilities VR and  AR offer.

*Surprising Revelation #1: I'm a Fan (Believe It Or Not)*

As  I wrap this up, and before the knives come out, let me be clear about  one thing: I'm a longtime and enthusiastic supporter of all things VR.

As  far back as 1994, I was producing first-person games that supported the  leading VR devices of the day - remember Wings of Glory? Uh. Okay. How  about System Shock? Even if you remember the games, you may not remember  that in them we supported pioneering VR headsets like the Forte VFX-1  and Cybermaxx (which we sometimes referred to as the "Cyberbrick" for  its weight and ergonomic... ahem... issues).

Back then, the  head-tracking was serviceable, but the optics weren't close to being  even "serviceable." And there was the weight (best measured in tons, if  memory serves). Plus there was the unfortunate tendency to overheat once  in a while and, you know, burst into flames. Seriously. I couldn't make  that up.

Despite all those shortcomings, I saw an amazing future  for such things and wanted desperately to be a part of it. Really  feeling like you were in another world, seemed like the Next Step For  Gaming. Looking around to see your friends and allies was incredibly  cool. Keeping an eagle eye out for enemies? Oh, yeah!

But, back  then, you couldn't read any text... dealing with menus was a  nightmare... you still had to deal with keyboards and mice to  interact... the weight of headsets back then was headache inducing and  nose-crushing... and, as I said, there was that pesky fire problem.

I've  heard that the Oculus Rift solves some or all of these problems. (If  nothing else, it better deal with the fire issue!) But I haven't seen  it, so I can't really say. I'm certainly hopeful that the issues above  have been resolved in the last 20 years but, well, this is my dubious  face. (If anyone wants to give me a demo, I'm totally up for it, by the  way.)

*What does the future hold?*

Damned if I know! But here's my foolish attempt to divine what's coming:

VR?  Sure. If what you're after is a more immersive but even more isolating  experience than ever before. And don't forget you'll have to stand for  hours to experience much beyond what a large screen monitor offers. I  wouldn't say VR is "standard stuff" but it's not so far off from the 3D  worlds we've been building for decades to bet against VR having a large  and growing place in the gaming world.

AR? Also sure. Being out in  the real world with virtual overlays sounds great. Once in a while. AR  is one of the most interesting thing going on in games right now. The  potential is there to do amazing things - things no game today,  yesterday or in the foreseeable future has been able to do. The fact  that no one knows with any degree of certainty what an AR game should  look and play like is a bonus - the possibility of failure is huge. Who  wouldn't want to mess with something like that?

A fully immersive,  alternate world-creating Holodeck? That's a solution in search of a  problem (and a solution that brings a host of its own problems along for  the ride). My gut tells me we should just leave the Holodeck to Star  Trek. 
But let's assume all the problems of VR, AR and the Holodeck can actually be solved.

Is  this the time VR is here to stay? Is AR the next big thing? Is the  current flush of enthusiasm for these things really the first  significant step toward the Holodeck? 

Or is this, as I fear, just another false alarm, like the now (thankfully) fading reemergence of 3D movies, TV and games?

Look  at the history of 3D in media and you see a clear pattern - 3D is  hailed as the savior of movies, for example, every 30 years. The 1890s,  the 1920s, the 1950s, the 1980s and, recently, the 2010s, what do we  see? You betcha! 3D is back! Every time the film business needs a  creative jolt or finds itself threatened by some new medium or business  model, roll out 3D and rake in the bucks. For a while.

Similarly,  VR seems to make an appearance every ten years or so - in the 80s, the  90s and now the 20-teens... This latest appearance seems at least  marginally tied to the current chaos in the games business, making the  growing enthusiasm for such things seem even more like the movie model.

In  movies, 3D has never stuck. It comes, it goes, the glasses and  projection systems get marginally better, Hollywood and the press go  wild. Then nothing. Audiences don't care.

I'm betting it's the  same thing with VR/AR and Holodecks. Rather than being the time such  things stick I tend to think this is just another moment where media  history repeats itself. The craze will last a while like a raging brush  fire, then fade into nothingness.

Now for the big twist ending to this column:

I  truly hope I'm wrong about everything I've said here. I hope someone -  maybe one of you reading this - can prove me wrong. I now turn the stage  over to you to do just that.

See you in cyberspace!


Quelle: Holodeck: Holy Grail or Hollow Promise? Part 1 | GamesIndustry International und Holodeck: Holy Grail or Hollow Promise? Part 2 | GamesIndustry International


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## LordCrash (31. Juli 2013)

*The Pitfalls of Politics & Ethics in Video Games*

                               Posted on July 8, 2013 by Swen Vincke @Larian Studios





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_Not so long ago, I found myself involved in a big discussion  about what rewards to attach to a most vile and despicable deed. It’s  not a position I’m used to so I couldn’t rely on instinct to sort it  out. I have to admit that it really felt wrong to give a gameplay bonus  to something  I clearly didn’t agree with, yet at the same time, I  couldn’t deny that within the logic of the gameworld we’d created, in  this particular instance it made perfect sense to award gold to a player  for behaving like a dictator with blood on his hands. _
_From this discussion sprouted the following piece,  written by Jan (our lead writer) & me. The release of today’s choice  & consequence promotion video for Dragon Commander felt like the  right moment to release this._

  If there is one aspect of Dragon Commander  that has generated frequent discussion among the team at Larian it is  the topic of politics and more specifically: the political, moral and  ethical choices you can make in the game. When you are aboard your  command ship, the Raven, a broad spectrum of political and moral issues  will be brought before you by a variety of characters and inevitably,  these characters will vehemently disagree with one another at all but  every junction.

 Our inspiration for these political conundrums we derived from  newspapers, news websites and news broadcasts the world over. We ended  up with a host of current issues that – to use a whopper of a euphemism –  create debate wherever they arise. It is these issues that we  translated into a fantasy context, though they remain quite  recognisable.

 To do so we created a host of fantasy characters that represent  people or philosophies of a certain political persuasion in an almost _commedia dell’arte_  manner. They are stock characters in their way, with their own  eccentricities and conflicting ideals, but their masks are those of  lizards, imps, elves, dwarves and undead rather than the literally  masked prototypes of the theatrical genre.
 These characters speak plainly. They speak forcefully. They hammer  home their viewpoint, often eschewing all nuance. In their own  exaggerated manner they bring to bear their opinions, and even though it  should go without saying, we’re saying this anyway: this doesn’t mean  we necessarily agree with their opinions at all.

 This is important to keep in mind, because by creating characters  that often exceed individualism only to become certain ‘types’, we  noticed that their opinion regarding various political statements were  amplified to such an extent that they became quite frankly shocking.
 What we also discovered though, and this is something we considered  important as designers, is that it made players sit back and think about  what decision they should make. Because the decisions you make aren’t  simply ethical ones. Dragon Commander remains a game and decisions  influence gameplay. That means that what you consider to be ‘the right  thing to do’ may not bring you the rewards you’d have liked.

 You take on the role of an emperor after all, and if you were really  to command an empire, how long would it take you before your ethics  would take a backseat to more Machiavellian concerns? Compare it to  conveniently ignoring injustice in a particular country, say, because  the natural resource deals you have going on there are just too good to  pass up. It is easy to say such choices are reprehensible, but a lot of  us live in societies in which our political overlords condone such  actions, and indeed our quality of life may depend on it. We just don’t  quite like to talk about it.

 In Dragon Commander, as a commander in chief, you are confronted with  problems and opportunities that may lead you to making decisions that  in real life you would never even contemplate. And yet you may well make  them anyway, because they will give you the edge you were looking for.  You’re trying to win a war in this game, and it’s a lot harder to live  up to personal standards when all around you the enemy is closing in.

 Here’s one example that caused a lot of debate to help you understand what we are talking about.

 As the game progresses one of your generals will point out that when  your armies conquer new land, this conquest is usually followed by  widespread pillaging and abuse of women by soldiers. Clearly this is a  serious but sadly all too recognisable crime that has been repeated  countless times throughout history. In Dragon Commander you can choose  to make a stand against this war crime by ordering the execution of its  perpetrators, but you can just as well let it slide because you feel you  need every last soldier for the war effort, and they can’t fight for  dragon and country when they’re swinging from the gallows.

 We sincerely hope that we can all agree the moral thing to do is  punish those who rape; that this should be the evident and indeed only  thing to do. But for us, the real problem we encountered here is that by  design each choice should have gameplay consequences that fit with what  gameplay mechanics are available in the game. And for decisions to have  a real impact, they all need pros and cons; pros yes, even if a choice  may be regarded by most as ethically despicable.

 Attaching a pro in this particular example, for instance, felt wrong  and for quite some time we therefore considered removing the situation  from the game all together. But ultimately we decided to leave it in.  This part of the game is about role playing i.e. you take on the role of  somebody else, and if you decide to role play that person as somebody  thoroughly evil, then that’s up to you.

 The net result of this is of course that in several cases this may  give the impression that we are letting our own convictions influence  the rewards and penalties you reap for making certain decisions, but we  really tried not to make this so. We did our very best not to judge and  we simply tried to balance the game in such a manner that all choices  lead to logical consequences. This  wasn’t easy because logic and  morality don’t necessarily add up.

 Anyway, we ended up with a game in which giving your subjects license  to do things that may be fundamentally wrong on all kinds of different  levels may nevertheless benefit your march to victory. But, we’ll add  that it is always possible to win the game by following your own moral  compass, even if sometimes it may feel that’s not the case, because we  did associate pros *and* cons to each decision, and while playing you never know what consequences are associated with the choice you didn’t make .

 What direction different people’s moral needle points in is another  matter entirely. Your north may be their south and vice versa. One may  say that ‘one should act only according to that maxim whereby you can,  at the same time, will that it should become a universal law’, but  nowhere does it say that – to stay in a fantasy context – a dwarf’s view  on what should become universal law does not differ fundamentally from  that of an elf.

 To accommodate for this we ensured that for all decisions you’ll make  you’ll have vocal supporters but also even more vocal detractors. And  like we said, their reactions may shock you. The intent behind that is  to make you think about what you’re deciding. Keep in mind also that all  situations are modelled on what we read, heard and saw in reality, a  reality which isn’t always a nice place at all.
 No matter what we say or write about this, we realise that what we’ve  done in Dragon Commander may cause quite a stir, and may even upset  people.

 So why do it, you may ask. Why openly walk into a snake pit?

 There are many reasons we could cite but the most important one is  that we honestly think it should be possible for the medium we work with  to address sensitive issues like these, using its biggest strength,  that of interactivity.

 Video games have come a long way in many respects; less so in others.  If no one is willing to push the envelope, we might as well make  another Mario again and again. Pushing the envelope in terms of  choice/consequence is what we’ve tried to do, and we’ll be the first to  admit that in doing so no doubt we’ve made many mistakes. Certainly, we  didn’t capture all of the nuances behind each political or ethical  position, because obviously, we still have to work within the  constraints of our medium (and budget). But, if we managed to make a  player reflect about exactly what he is doing while playing a video  game, we’ve reached our goal because surprisingly, it is fun doing the  right thing when you know you’re dealing with a game that’ll let you do  the evil thing. It only works though, if the evil thing is really  included.
 We wrote this piece  because this is the Internet. It is good at  taking things out of context. We wanted to have a place to refer to when  people address us about the choices & consequences in the game. We  realize our execution isn’t picture perfect and we had many doubts about  including this type of gameplay in Dragon Commander. But in the end it  was doubt that we set aside, because, to quote a famous playwright: ‘Our  doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we oft might win by  fearing to attempt’.

 Jan & Swen


Quelle: The Pitfalls of Politics & Ethics in Video Games | Swen Vincke @ Larian Studios


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## LordCrash (31. Juli 2013)

*Being selective*

                               Posted on May 7, 2013 by Swen Vincke @Larian Studios        

                            Yes, I know. I am long overdue with this entry. But as it turns  out, I too seem to be made  of flesh and bones, and I really needed to  slow down a bit. You can only manage _that long _on adrenaline alone and throughout the last months I’ve been living on _awake-time_ that wasn’t supposed to be _awake-time_. So now, sadly, my body decided to reclaim some _sleep-time_  and grounded me by giving me the mother of all colds!  <coughs> Which in a way is good,because it gives me the time to  pen down a new blog entry 

 For those who don’t know the context of that last paragraph:  We did a Kickstarter campaign, for Divinity: Original Sin.  The goal was to collect 400KUS$. We walked away with over 1MUS$  pledged,  a lot of public pressure, and tons of new ideas. It was a lot  of work, with little sleep for those running the campaign, but it  definitely was worth it and I’d do it again, without any hesitation.

 I already wrote a bit about lessons learnt from Kickstarter here, so consider this entry the continuation of that piece, even though it’ more of an open question.

 One of the things I started wondering about throughout the campaign  was who we should show our games to. You see, I used to think that you  should strive for maximum exposure, and try to show your game to anybody  who can hold a pen or camera. But after having talked to I guess over  200 media over the last couple of months and seeing their output, I’ve  actually come to reconsider that statement.




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_Engagor  was gifted to us by a backer. It’s a social media tool that allowed us  to track how well our campaign was doing, and it also gave me insights  into what media had an impact and which media didn’t. Very cool stuff._

It may sound straightforward, but I’ve  come to the conclusion that it makes no sense demonstrating your game to  somebody who has no interest in your type of game. At best he’ll get  the facts straight, but more than often his writing will be detrimental  to your cause. And so the question comes to mind – why do something that  won’t do you any good?
​ Perhaps you think you should put up with  it because said non-interested-journalist is from popular-website-X, but  really, what interest do you have in having a negative article on a  popular website-X? Or an article that has its facts wrong just because  you and the reporter speak a different gaming language ?

 If somebody doesn’t like a certain style of gameplay, he can’t write a  decent preview or review of a game that features that style of  gameplay. The best you can hope for is something neutral, but if it’s  surrounded by superlatives for all kinds of other games, then by  definition the neutral becomes negative.

 So imho, in the situation where the previewer or reviewer doesn’t  like a certain style of gameplay, he has no business writing about a  game in that style, and you shouldn’t ask him to either. You won’t ask  your doctor to do an evaluation of the quality of your house’s plumbing,  even if there may be similarities in the job description 

 Or to give another example, you don’t want me to review a FPS. I  don’t play them, they’re no fun to me, so all I can do is discredit them  by either writing stupidities about them or describing them in such a  factual way that you’ll start wondering what is wrong with the game.

 Give me a RPG though, and I’ll review it in detail and if you like  RPGs too, you’ll know if this is something you might enjoy. Not so if  you’d ask me to review a FPS – all you’ll know is that you can change  weapons and shoot stuff,  that’s about it 

 Now if you ask my doctor to check your house’s plumbing, he’ll tell  you to ask somebody else. If you ask me to review a FPS,  I’ll for sure  tell you to ask somebody else. So why don’t  reporters do the same ?

 I guess it’s because it’s their job and so they just do it, but  that’s really not in the developer’s best interest. It’s also not very  nice of the editor who sent them knowing that there’d be a mismatch – he  or she should know better, and actually, have the decency of telling  you. Of course, certain editors might tell you that you should be happy  that they’ll write about you at all, but that’s really not true. There  is such a thing as bad publicity.

 Because the editor isn’t guaranteed to do it for you, it’s really up  to you as a developer to watch out for mismatches.  There’s really  nothing to be won when there’s  a mismatch between game and journalist,  and the damage to your game may be devastating.  Journalists are herd  animals too and one negative article on a popular site can herald a  string of negative articles, even if it’s for no good reason.

 Observing the results of such mismatchs over these last months (using the Engagor  tool) lead me to have my doubts about the sanity of sending out game  code to anybody who asks for it. It certainly made me doubt the wisdom  of  pushing for previews/reviews on sites that have no natural affinity  for our types of games.




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_This  is where the money came from on Kickstarter. Putting this together with  the Engagor data showed us that some sites really aren’t worth it for  us, whereas others we didn’t expect do reach part of our audience._

 Of course I can’t prevent them from buying the game and reviewing it,  but if they do that, I can only assume there’s an actual interest, and  then it’s probably ok, though there’s still the next issue to deal with  and that’s the editorial quality one.

 I’m going to take an example that has nothing to do with my games,  but is typical for how imho a lot of former popular publications are  responsible for their own decay, and which for I don’t know what reason,  really upset me today ( actually, it even got me to write this entry)

 Compare this “review” to this one

 Spot any differences, other than the medium ?

 To my disappointment, reading the first review I learnt almost  nothing, not even the name of the reviewer so I’ll refer to him as  no-name. I wonder why it was even written. My seven year old does a  better job at describing the games he plays, and he certainly isn’t  afraid of putting his name under something he writes 

I know where these type of mini-reviews come from – they are born in  magazine land where you try to maximize the amount of content in a  limited number of pages – but really, in an online publication? It has  no reason for being.

 I wouldn’t have been upset if they’d called it “quick impressions” but giving it the label “review”, that was a bit too much.

 Here’s the tweet that made me discover it –  “After a series of  delays and a Kickstarter campaign, Star Command arrives on iOS. Our  review: bit.ly/YCqn1o”. I clicked on it because I was interested in  seeing the difference in opinion between Edge & Angry Joe, who’s  review  appeared before. Watching his review had given me a good feeling  for what the game is, and whether or not I’ll like it. I actually  realized from this one review (the first of his I used to help figure  out if I was going to get a game or not) that this man does a better job  than a lot of traditional publications I know, so I wanted to compare  his work to that of the legendary magazine of which I bought so many  issues.

 Right.

 Angry Joe has a bigger audience than most traditional publications  and I guess now I know why. Next time I’ll see him tweeting about a  review, I’ll click through again. That’s not necessarily going to be the  case for the tweets about three paragraph reviews made by no-name.

 Anyway, I said to myself – if were Star Command, knowing that my game  would be reviewed in such a way by no-name, would I actually send out  review codes to no-name? The anwer is: probably not. Review codes really  should only be sent out to people who’ll give a game a fair review, you  know, of the kind that at the very least describes the game, highlights  successes and failures, compares it to the state of the art, and has a  subjective appraisal with the author stating his likes and dislikes,  very much like what Angry Joe did… not to the 3 paragraphs ones. Yeah  yeah, I know it’s idealistic.

 Then the little demon inside of me asked – what if you know you made a  stinker but are still trying to sell it because you need to earn money  to feed your team. Would you actually send out any review codes at al?  Well that’s a good question, and one I seriously hope I’ll never have to  answer by not making any stinkers. I honestly don’t know what would be  the best approach in such a situation, other than trying to fix what’s  wrong with the game first.

 Anyway, it was observations like the above one that lead me to  conclude that we should start screening who we show the game to, and  review the quality of their articles, prior to actually demonstrating  the game to them. In the past I abstained from doing that, even when I  wanted to know, but now I think it’s good practice. We’ve been perhaps  too eager for attention past, and happy to show our creative babies to  anybody who passed by. That delivered us some good but also quite a lot  ofbad results, the most memorable one being PC Gamer UK giving Divine  Divinity 56% wheras their US sister magazine gave it 84% and later put  it in their top 100 games of all times. The irony 

 Perhaps there’s another more focussed approach that might yield more  benefits. I remain intrigued by the click-through numbers in our  Kickstarter campaign and the link between article appearing/pledge  counter increasing. It was clear who had what impact, and the results  were very counter-intuitive, at least to my traditional view of games  media.

 To give you an example – There exists no such thing as IGN, the  person. There’s only Joe, John and Daisy working at IGN reviewing and  previewing games. If there’s a John who like turn-based fantasy RPG’s  and played several of them, it makes sense to show him Divinity:  Original Sin, if his editor will let him.

 But if Joe, John and Daisy think the world ends with Assassin’s  Creed and Battlefield, then perhaps we should not send a version to  them, because nothing good can come from it.  You wouldn’t offer  mushroom-only dishes to a gourmet critique who hates mushrooms and is  the editor of “fabulous cooks that don’t use mushrooms monthly” either.

 Rather then than waste time on Joe, John and Daisy, we might be better off seeking out the other Gragt’s  of this world, people that care about their style of game, are willing  to sacrifice time to inform their audience to the best of their  abilities (as in, actually finish the games they review), and ultimately  feel much more genuine than most “pros”, even if they might be a bit  wordy 

 Sensible or not? I don’t know. Right now I’m mixed on the issue so  different insights are more than welcome because you know what?

 In a few months I’ll be sending out review codes for Dragon  Commander. It’s no stinker, but I’m tending to not send out even  beta-code to some of the bigger sites, because I’m afraid there’s a  chance they’ll give it to the typical intern (it’s summer) who likes  console racing games because big-publisher-strategy-title-whatever will  come out at the same time and the “PC-strategy-specialist” will be  otherwise occupied.

 Let me know your thoughts!


Quelle: Being selective | Swen Vincke @ Larian Studios


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## LordCrash (1. August 2013)

*The Greatest Generation*

               By Brendan Sinclair*, Thu 01 Aug 2013 3:25pm GMT* / 11:25am EDT / 8:25am PDT 

*GamesIndustry International looks back on the past eight years as a golden age of gaming *

_The current generation of  consoles started in the holiday season of 2005, with the launch of the  Xbox 360. With apologies to the Wii U, the next generation will begin  this holiday season when the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 arrive. The  intervening years have been some of the most eventful in gaming history,  changing and challenging our definitions as to what games are, who  plays them, who makes them, and how. Whether or not these developments  actually happened within the console space (and many of them did not),  their impact has not been limited to one platform, or any corner of the  industry specifically._

_We may disagree about what we want  out of games, what games should be, and what trends may be good or bad.  Regardless of what our positions are on those subjects, we should be  able to look back on this generation as a golden age of gaming. For  posterity and perspective, here's an incomplete chronicle of events of  monumental significance from the past eight years, each prefaced by some  brief thoughts from industry voices with first-hand knowledge of the  situation._

 *Steam Redefines Digital Distribution (Ongoing)*

*"No  company is perfect, but Steam is by far the gold standard in digital  distribution. Everything they do from developer support to storefront  curation and planning is top notch. A game can be released on Steam and  potentially make millions of dollars all without the need for a  publisher and every other expensive and sometimes unnecessary obstacle  developers have to overcome for other distributors."--Tommy Refenes,  Team Meat*

Yes, Steam was first announced in 2002, but  it wasn't until 2006 when Valve really opened up the catalog to games  from third-party developers and publishers. And that's when it really  started to resemble the service we know today. Since then, people have  essentially stopped predicting the death of PC games. And it's not  because the shelves at GameStop are suddenly cluttered with copies of  Surgeon Simulator 2013.




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_With Steam, Valve has done as much for digital distribution as digital distribution did for it._

Steam  has become a one-stop shop for games, whether it's the latest AAA  release from a major publisher or a one-man indie studio with an  interesting idea. Steam has become the Amazon.com of PC digital  distribution (all the more impressive considering Amazon sells  downloadable games itself). But there's one trait Steam shares with a  brick-and-mortar titan like Walmart, and that's the demand for shelf  space. So many people want their games on Steam that Valve has largely  outsourced those decisions to its customers.

But Steam has meant  so much more to PC gaming than just being another place to spend money.  It addressed piracy. It addressed problems with patching. Like Xbox  Live, it brought the social sphere into the same place as the storefront  and the games themselves. And it has done all of this while maintaining  a reasonably pro-consumer approach to its business (as regular  customers during Steam's seasonal sales will tell you).  

 *Guitar Hero: Birth of a Rock Star (November 2005)*

*"Before  Guitar Hero, music/rhythm video games were not in the top 10 genres of  games sold in the US. Americans didn't buy music games. By Guitar Hero  3, we sold $1 billion (with a B!) worth of Guitar Hero product. Guitar  Hero became the second game to crack $1 billion sales in a single year.  We heard similar stories of Guitar Hero's impact on music sales too.  Guitar Hero not only changed the video game world, it shook up the music  world as well."--Charles Huang, co-founder of original Guitar Hero  publisher RedOctane, CEO and co-founder of Green Throttle Games*

These  days, the Guitar Hero name conjures up memories of closets jammed full  of plastic instruments and a relentless onslaught of retail releases  oversaturating the market. However,the series gave the industry much  more than just a cautionary tale. In conjunction with Harmonix's  follow-up Rock Band, Guitar Hero provided a compelling example of the  power of social play. For a time, these rhythm games were the new  karaoke, present at wedding receptions, house parties, bars, basically  anywhere people converge to have a good time. And it wasn't just  anywhere; it was virtually anyone. The plastic guitar was approachable  enough as an interface, but it was absolutely compelling as a prop. It  didn't matter how good people were at the game; everyone wanted to have a  go as an ersatz Eddie Van Halen, or bust out a Pete Townshend windmill.  Everybody gets the appeal of music, and everybody got the appeal of  Guitar Hero. 




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_The appeal of toy guitars was nearly universal._

Just  as important, Guitar Hero and Rock Band showed the industry that people  were willing to spend a lot more than $60 on a game experience. Between  the guitars, drums, and microphones, people were spending hundreds of  dollars just on controllers for the game. Add to that the deluge of  downloadable content (the Rock Band series has more than 4,000 songs  available as DLC) and suddenly gamers were investing not just in a  single game, but in multiple ecosystems, committing to peripherals for  the system of their choice and a library of songs for their favorite  series. Before everyone in the industry was talking about whales in  free-to-play games, Guitar Hero was already proving that a particularly  devoted segment of an audience could be monetized far above and beyond  the price of a standard game.

 *Microsoft Launches Xbox 360 (November 2005)*

*"The  Xbox 360 was a lot like the Tesla Model S - not the first product, but  definitely the one that delivered on a bigger vision in a package that  had mass-market appeal. It made a lot of big bets: HD graphics,  broadband-connected games, and a live service that in some ways  represented gaming's first social network. But these were bets that the  industry sorely needed to break out of the basement and into the living  room, and for eight years the Xbox 360 has delivered for tens of  millions of gamers."--Peter Moore, Electronic Arts COO and former  Microsoft interactive entertainment executive*




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_Xbox Live was the killer app of the Xbox 360 launch._

The  release of the Xbox 360 had plenty of problems, from system scarcity to  a weak retail lineup to faulty hardware. But it had one thing that  worked phenomenally well, and that was its online integration. Microsoft  completely overhauled Xbox Live for the system, changing it from little  more than a persistent friends list to an honest-to-goodness ecosystem.  Before Gears of War, Xbox Live was the 360's killer app. Xbox Live  achievements were an instant hit at launch, changing gamer habits in  powerful ways and shedding light on just how far people will go to earn  virtual merit badges, an idea that would quickly spread to every corner  the gaming universe. (Well, almost every corner. Nintendo, as always,  did its own thing.)

The Xbox 360 launch also took Xbox Live  Arcade, a forgotten experiment on the original Xbox, and used it to  carve out an entirely new market of console game development. The rise  in HD development costs may have killed the viability of the mid-range  retail release, but early Xbox Live Arcade games like the addictive and  acclaimed Geometry Wars were evidence of an unexpectedly strong market  for $5 and $10 downloadable games on consoles.

 *Nintendo Wii Expands the Audience (November 2006)*

*"The  Wii ushered in a new era of motion control gaming and reinvigorated the  video game industry with new mainstream consumers. Non-traditional  gamers from grandparents to young kids were connecting in the living  room - it truly leveled the playing field for an entire household via  more inclusive and interactive gameplay. Ubisoft saw the console's  potential and was an early supporter of the Wii, positioning itself as  the number one third party publisher leading up to and at the Wii launch  with brand new franchises such as Rayman Raving Rabbids, Red Steel, and  Your Shape."--Yves Guillemot, CEO of Ubisoft*




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_Who didn't see at least one picture like this in their newspapers in 2007?_

Long  before Nintendo announced the Wii's name or controller to the world, it  had publicly code-named the console "Revolution." That would prove to  be prophetic, as the Wii was a cultural phenomenon, hard to find on  store shelves for its first three holiday seasons. It lacked the  horsepower of the Xbox 360 or the PlayStation 3, but the Wii's  controller--perfectly complemented by the pick-up-and-play fun of Wii  Sports--made the system an ideal ambassador to expand the gaming  audience beyond the core crowd.

All of a sudden, mainstream media  coverage of games changed from scary stories of school shooters to  soft-focus features about a Wii Sports bowling league at the old folks'  home. Intuitive new interfaces became the order of the day, with  Microsoft rolling out Kinect and Sony investing in Move. The Wii's  appeal may have faded over the years, but the system worked wonders in  changing not just the way people play video games, but the way they  perceive them as well.

 *Apple Reveals iPhone, Google Intros Android (2007)*

*"A  few years ago buttons on mobile phones were the only way to control the  game. Nowadays, touch screen, gyroscope and GPS are an inalienable part  of mobile gaming. And as the hardware gap between mobile devices and  consoles is diminishing, more mid- and hard-core gamers turn to mobile.  We see definite strengthening of the social aspects in the games as  well, and I think this tendency will continue in the future. We were  lucky enough to start working at the dawn of the industry, and it's  exciting to see how impressive the changes are, and how it continues to  evolve."--Efim Voinov, chief technology officer and co-founder of  ZeptoLab*

An argument could be made for either one of  these events being the most significant event of the generation on their  own, but there's been enough overlap in how they've upended the  industry that we'll combine them into one write-up.

It was always  cool, but the iPhone didn't become significant to gaming until the  introduction of the App Store in its second year. Since the introduction  of the App Store, the iPhone has realized its true potential, upending  and all but assimilating three previously lucrative markets: mp3  players, mobile phones, and portable gaming devices. But perhaps the  biggest contribution the iPhone made to the mobile gaming market was to  formalize a cohesive ecosystem around it.




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_The iPhone was always cool, but the App Store launch turned it into a phenomenon._

Prior  to the iPhone, the carriers had their own scattered assortment of  shops, selling games through them that may or may not work on the  handset downloading them. The market was fragmented, and there were no  assurances that a game would come to every carrier, or even the most  popular of handsets. The iPhone and the App Store made the consumer  experience as frictionless as possible in a way that no other mobile  company had managed.

One of the key innovations was Apple's  insistence on getting the user's credit card info, which made purchasing  new apps as easy and painless as possible. Further down the road, the  introduction of in-app purchasing unlocked a tidal wave of spending and  solidified the domination of the free-to-play model. Apple brought  ubiquity to the market, and in so doing opened the floodgates of  developer support, ensuring the App Store would never lack for quantity  of games.

Meanwhile, Android has provided Apple's iOS with an  open-source competitor, a necessary counterweight giving consumers and  developers another option for mobile platforms, and an inexpensive,  open-ended, and unrestricted one, at that. A key part of the Android  project was the desire to create an operating system with "no central  point of failure, so that no single industry player could restrict or  control the innovations of any other." If games are to realize their  potential as a creative medium, developers can't always be subject to  the whims of a corporate censor. Android ensures that no matter how  dominant the smartphone and tablet market become in gaming, there will  be a place for games like Phone Story and Endgame Syria.

Android's  approach has been a success, with the operating system now in more  devices around the world than iOS. However, Google's OS hasn't exactly  eclipsed the competition, as Apple still takes the lion's share of  revenue from mobile gaming.

 *The Free-to-Play Boom (2009-2011)*

*"Free-to-play  has been successful because it acknowledges that all players are  different, and it provides them a variety of ways to access, play, and  purchase content. Free-to-play is beautiful in its simplicity. It  democratizes and makes true capitalism out of the gaming space.  Free-to-play keeps games evergreen, opens them up to a wider audience,  and forces true competition. There is so much free content out there; to  truly compete, you have to create great content. With great content,  everyone wins."--John Smedley, president of Sony Online Entertainment*

Free-to-play  games have been around for more than a decade, but it was only during  this generation that they really took root in the West. From the  astronomical rise of Facebook games to more core-targeted efforts like  World of Tanks and League of Legends, the free-to-play model has been  adapted to serve essentially every audience in the industry. At the same  time, it has underscored the enormous potential of social ties to  enrich game experiences (to say nothing of game developers!) and provide  compelling entertainment.

http://images.eurogamer.net/2013/articles/1/6/0/0/1/1/2/137536826951.jpg
_Free-to-play encompasses a lot more than Facebook games now._

Free-to-play  has also introduced new challenges for designers, changing the way they  think about the relationship to their audience. In the most successful  and enduring free-to-play games, the business model has been intertwined  with the primary gameplay, but it has not been the driver of that  gameplay. Designers need to give players a reason to spend their money  while avoiding a pay-to-win model where only the free-spending players  are enjoying themselves.
The free-to-play model has attracted  legions of developers to mobile platforms, and even those who didn't  make the jump are putting its principles to use on virtually every other  platform where games are played. Free-to-play has conquered the MMORPG  market, with only World of Warcraft still holding fast to subscriptions  (and gearing up, apparently, to shift to free-to-play). Now free-to-play  is coming to consoles in a big way with World of Tanks for the Xbox  360, and in the process it's already revolutionized Microsoft's  processes and policies for updates. The free-to-play business model is  sure to be an important part of the future of every game platform.

 *iPad Debuts (April 2010)*

*"Apple's  iPhone was already well on its way to securing a foothold as one of the  'key' game platforms when the iPad hit the market, and when it did, the  two Apple devices Voltron'ed into arguably the most course-altering  combo in this era of the games industry. With the launch of the iPad,  the floodgates swung open and both consumers and developers raced onto  the platform. And although it's hard to see past the jaw-dropping  financial impact the iPad had on our industry, it also had another  impact: large screen touch-based (aka tablet) gaming became a platform  unto itself."--Nathan Vella, co-founder and president of Sword &  Sworcery developer Capybara Games*

http://images.eurogamer.net/2013/articles/1/6/0/0/1/1/2/137537028087.jpg/EG11/thumbnail/330x220
_Some mocked the iPad when it was first announced, but Apple would have the last laugh._

The  debut of iOS and Android devices, free-to-play games, and the  introduction of tablets are all intertwined. Each enabled the others,  and the combination of them all redefined the game industry, or at least  reallocated it. While the traditional console market lagged, these  innovations thrived.

It may seem obvious in retrospect, but  tablets were not pre-destined for success. When Apple unveiled the iPad,  it was derided by many as a larger iPhone that couldn't make calls. No  less an industry visionary than Jesse Schell mocked the device in a DICE  Summit talk, calling it an oversized Swiss Army Knife that nobody would  want, a stupid idea. Schell has since acknowledged he made the wrong  call, but it's not like anybody needed him to confirm that. The iPad has  already sold well over 100 million units, and an entire classification  of computer, the netbook, has fallen victim to its incredible ascent. 

 *The Kickstarter Revolution (2012)*

*"Every  creator wants to control the manner for which they develop and to  decide the future of their vision. Crowd sourced financing not only  allows this control but further puts the proceeds back with the  owner."--Brian Fargo, founder of inXile Entertainment*

One  recurring theme this generation has been the ongoing erosion of  barriers to entry in the gaming industry. Games are easier to get than  ever before, downloaded to your pocket for free instead of purchased at  the mall for $60. They're easier to play, with designers increasingly  concerned about accessibility and new interfaces allowing for those  without lightning reflexes to enjoy the hobby just the same. And they're  also easier to make, thanks to cheaper development tools and the advent  of alternative funding for developers. And as much as Minecraft needs  to be namedropped somewhere in any article about the amazing things that  have happened this generation, that game's alpha-funding model has not  yet proven as influential as Kickstarter's approach to crowdfunding.




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_25 years later, gamers are getting a Wasteland 2 sequel because they were willing to pay for it up front._

Double  Fine Productions wasn't the first developer to turn to Kickstarter, but  its success on the platform precipitated two floods: one of money from  fans eager for a new Tim Schafer adventure game, and one of recognizable  developers Kickstarting projects they wanted to make outside of the  existing publisher system. To date, the crowdfunding platform has helped  nearly 2,000 development teams raise a cumulative total of $138.6  million for game development. That may only be enough to pay for a few  AAA packaged console titles, but given the dramatic upheaval in recent  years, the industry doesn't rely on that market nearly as much as it  used to.

Kickstarter has also changed the way developers make  games. Where game development used to go in a vacuum, with people  working for years before any of their work was exposed to the light of  day, these Kickstarted projects are more like working in a fishbowl,  where developers share everything from the earliest concept art to  decisions on balancing the final game. And sometimes these developers go  even further, soliciting direct input from their backers and blurring  long-established lines between audience and artist. It's an inversion of  the traditional game development paradigm, reflecting the interactivity  of the medium with interactivity in creation. And if it proves  sustainable (something it seems too early to be sure of), this could  change the very nature of the industry as much as any new business model  or piece of hardware ever could.

This generation has not only  seen the arrival of huge new platforms, but the arrival of new business  models whose impact is still unfolding. Digital distribution is changing  not just distribution but the nature of game designs. Free-to-play is  also changing game designs, and crowdfunding is changing the entire  process of development from a secretive endeavor to a group activity  conducted in public.

Many of the trends here dovetail nicely,  showing a sort of synergy in their impact and working together to push  the industry in the shared direction of accessibility and ubiquity. In  just eight years, gaming has gone from a hobby dominated by $50 retail  power fantasies enjoyed in the living room and den to one with offerings  at plenty of price points, enjoyable by anyone, anywhere and about  almost anything.


Quelle: The Greatest Generation | GamesIndustry International

P.S.: Dass man hier nur fünf Bilder pro Beitrag anständig einfügen kann, suckt gewaltig....


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## LordCrash (1. August 2013)

*How much does your dream cost?*

 I’ve worked with a lot of people during my relatively short time in  the gaming industry. Lots of freelancers, plenty of different  organizations. I’ve been fortunate enough to work with and for a breadth  of people, some great, some not so great. Stick around long enough, and  you see trends in communication; now that social media is as much a  part of the discourse as more formalized writing like web sites and  blogs, these cycles spin up faster and louder than they once did. I have  something to tell you, and you’re not going to want to hear it, but you  have to. It’s important for you to understand the situation that you’re  in, you person who wants to make a living writing about videogames:

 You probably can’t.

 It’s not really that simple, because there are a lot of different  variables impacting whether or not you’ll ever be able to support  yourself in a realistic way by writing about videogames, but I broke  down the argument to its core in hopes of improving the chances it might  seep in through your personal hopes and delusions. Let’s go over why  the odds are very much not in your favor, and then let’s talk about what  that means for you.

 For starters, let’s be clear that I’m talking to people looking to  support themselves by writing about games. “Supporting yourself” means  having no other source of income and being able to comfortably and  reliably pay your bills. The lower your bills, the easier it is to  support yourself with any job, so those of you living rent-free at your  folks’ are better off than those of you with a mortgage and children.  For the sake of argument, let’s assume that you’re a person with rent, a  car payment, maybe some student loan debt. You need a reasonable salary  to maintain your lifestyle. Ok.

 The definition of “reasonable salary” varies wildly depending on  where you live. The rent on my four-bedroom house here in Durham, NC,  for example, would get you a studio apartment in the Tenderloin section  of San Francisco. Companies don’t typically change freelancer pay-rates  based on location, however. What works in your favor is that the place  you’re working for is probably in San Francisco or other city with a  similarly high cost of living, so their rates are probably going to skew  favorably towards those kinds of markets. It also means that if you  don’t live in one of those markets, you can make fewer paychecks do more  work for you. What works against you, no matter where you live, is that  publications rarely pay exactly on time, and there’s pretty much  nothing you can do about it. If you’re fortunate enough to fall into a  “permalance” situation, where you’re staff in all but name, you can  probably count on getting paid regularly enough to schedule your own  finances around it. But if you’re not, you can’t. Period. If you are  counting on a freelance check to come in on time before you can pay  rent, you are absolutely going to find yourself screwed at some point.  This is a fact of freelancing life. If you can’t build yourself a buffer  of cash – from another job, from your spouse, whatever – then you are  going to struggle, a lot.

 “But I’m really good!” I hear you saying. “My writing gets high  praise from everyone! Clearly I’ll be in demand!” Here’s something else  you don’t really want to hear, but have to understand: Your talent is  just one part of what gets you hired, and it may not even be the biggest  part.

 See, editors are positively spoiled for choice when it comes to  freelancers. There are tons of you, and while some are definitely much  better than others, the truth is that even if you really are That Damn  Good, there are a hundred other people who are That Damn Good, too –  actually, no, make that hundreds, plural. Even if you’re talented,  reliable, pleasant, and experienced, there are still countless reasons  you might not get work. Maybe you don’t have the expertise someone’s  looking for. Maybe you don’t live in the right area. Maybe the editor  just plain doesn’t like your style. Or maybe they’d rather go with the  certainty of someone they worked with before. Maybe they’re just out of  budget. Lots and lots and lots of reasons that really have nothing to do  with you personally or your skill.

 And then there are all the reasons that _do_. Game journalism  is a very, very small world and we editors all talk to each other. If  you’re a pain in the ass to work with, or really blew an assignment, or  are notorious for ranting on Twitter, odds are really good we know about  it. There are times we’re willing to put up with diva attitude in order  to get good content, but those times are few and far between. One  person’s drama is another person’s quirky personality, of course, and  not everyone will view your personality through the exact same lens, but  it’s another factor in whether or not you can actually do this  full-time.

 I am not saying any of this to discourage you into quitting. Not even  slightly. I’m just trying to give you  realistic parameters so that you  have a better understanding of what you’re getting into. You could be  really talented, know a lot of people, and _still not be able to make a living writing about games_.  That’s not some great injustice, that’s not any kind of statement about  the game journalism landscape, that’s just math. Lots of people all  looking for their share of the limited amount of cash currently being  doled out for this kind of work.

 So, my advice to you is to have a Plan B for paying your bills.  Perhaps you have a day job. Perhaps you have a very generous benefactor.  Perhaps you count cards in Atlantic City. Whatever. Have a way to pay  your bills that has nothing to do with your game journalism efforts.  Some people will tell you to just throw caution to the wind and go all  in on your dream, and sure, that’s a viable option, too. Just be very  clear on just what risk it is you’re taking, though. Know how long you  can stand to go without steady work. Create a bare-bones budget and  stick to it. Half of your career as a writer is art, but the other half  is business, and if you don’t treat it as such, you’ll be begging to  crash on someone’s couch for the next six months.

 Of course, if you’re the kind of person that is happy going wherever  the wind takes you and doesn’t stress about having enough money for a  Big Mac, then ignore everything I’ve just said and do yo thang. But be  honest – very honest – with yourself about the level of poverty you’re  really comfortable maintaining. As anyone who’s actually been poor can  tell you, it is awful. It’s scary, and stressful, and can have serious  long-term impact on your life.

 Again, I’m not trying to dissuade you from pursuing a career in game  journalism. Just remember that passion and talent won’t mean much when  the landlord comes a-knocking. Be smart.

Quelle: How much does your dream cost? | Quest Board


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## LordCrash (2. August 2013)

*Shockingly Short Interview: Jeremy Bernstein*

 Richard Dansky on August 1, 2013 

 One of the many things Ubi does well is fostering a community of game  narrative specialists, enabling them to share expertise, feedback and  ideas with professional peers who have a fundamental understanding of  their tasks and challenges. Or, to put it another way, it’s nice to talk  with someone who speaks your language. It’s even nicer to speak with  lots of somebodies, especially when they’re cool, dedicated and  talented.

And it’s especially nice to be able to talk with skilled  narrative experts inside and outside the company to get their takes on  challenges facing the craft. First up is the multi-talented Jeremy  Bernstein, whose career has taken him from earthbound research scientist  to Dead Space II, applying a little “Leverage” along the way. He has  written and designed serious games about topics as diverse as  congressional district gerrymandering and urban trash collection routes,  and regularly speaks at conferences like the Game Narrative Summit and  East Coast Game Conference.

So without further ado, here are five questions for Jeremy Bernstein:




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*Who the heck are you?*

I’m Batman.

I’m your worst nightmare…

I’M THE ONE WHO KNOCKS!

My  name is Jeremy Bernstein. I’m a writer/game designer. I’ve worked in  film, television, AAA console games, indie games, serious games and  dabbled in table-top games.

Oh, and back in college, I briefly experimented with LARPing. But really, who didn’t?


*Once upon a time, you were a research scientist. Is there anything from that background that applies to writing in games?*

I  actually find a lot of it applicable – and not just because I sometimes  do serious games about science. Writing, like science, requires  experimentation and iteration. You always have to be willing to try  something, see if it works and, if it doesn’t, figure out _why_ before trying again.

Obviously, this is a process to which game designers can relate…

Also,  being a good scientist means having a good understanding of basic logic  and interacting systems, something I find incredibly important when  interfacing with programmers and game designers. You have to be able to  understand your game system to write for it well. It’s also been  critical on some of the serious and indie games I’ve worked on, where  I’ve had to be my own QA team; being able to think in terms of  controlled experiments has been invaluable.


*Part of your  professional portfolio involved writing and designing serious games. How  does writing for those vary from writing for more traditional game  experiences?*

I tend to mentally divide game writing into  two categories: narrative writing and procedural writing. Narrative  writing is everything the player needs to know to follow and invest in  the story, whereas procedural writing is everything the player needs to  know to be able to _play_ the game. There’s often overlap between the two (particularly in tutorials), but thinking in those terms keeps me focused on the function of what I’m writing. And, y’know, form follows function and stuff.

So,  since serious games don’t usually have a whole lot of story, writing  for serious games is primarily procedural writing, not narrative. My  core job is to make sure the player understands the game system and that  the learning objectives are clearly conveyed.

That said, I do  always try to have my procedural writing delivered by strong,  entertaining characters. I think of serious games as the spoonful of  sugar that helps the medicine go down; the more fun you have, the less  it feels like you’re being taught something, and the more you actually  learn. Peppering dialogue with character goes a long way towards  disguising just how procedural it is – and that obviously goes for  traditional games as well.


*You gave a talk at the East  Coast Game Conference wherein you called out pacing as a key element of  game narrative that can be improved. How do you reconcile pacing –  something that’s theoretically about a strict schedule – with player  freedom?*

Well, I disagree that pacing is about a strict  schedule. I think pacing is, in the broadest possible terms, about  knowing when it’s time to run and when it’s time to breathe. You have to  vary that up or people lose interest.

And I find that one of the  biggest – and most avoidable – pacing issues I encounter boils down to  ludonarrative dissonance about which of the two the player should be  doing.

How many times have you played a game where an NPC says something along the lines of _Hurry! The building is collapsing!_  but the map is covered with ammo drops, health packs, power-ups,  trophies and audio logs? The story says run; the level design says  breathe. Add to that the fact that the building usually isn’t really  going to collapse on me no matter how many times the NPC loops their  dialogue, and any sense of tension or urgency is destroyed.




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So  I think making sure narrative design and game design are on the same  page about pacing would go a long way. If narrative design points out  that the story requires running, game design should try to avoid putting  side missions there. And if game design says the area needs to be a  breathing space (like an ammo dump right before a boss battle or  something), then narrative should find a story reason for it.

We can’t control if the player runs or breathes, but we can certainly nudge them in the right direction.


*You  wrote multiple episodes of the television show “Leverage,” which  centered each episode on a heist. Do you see the heist mechanic working  in videogames? Are there places where it’s been done well?*

I  absolutely think that the heist mechanic can work in videogames. A good  heist is basically an asymmetric, cooperative game (or  semi-cooperative, in the cases where not everyone on the team trusts  each other). The gameplay is primarily stealth, but with lots of room  for good platforming, puzzle-solving or combat.

The best example I’ve seen recently is Monaco: What’s Yours is Mine.

There  are interesting challenges in adapting some of the core tropes of the  heist genre into videogames. These tropes work well in traditional  media, but not so much in games. One such trope is The Plan. Good heist  stories fetishize The Plan. The heroes have a Plan.
They will execute The Plan. Things will go wrong with The Plan, but  that’s okay, because they will adapt The Plan on the fly, and that’s  exciting.

You ever seen gamers try to adapt a plan on the fly? “Exciting” is not the word I’d pick. I’d go with “TPK.”

Another  huge heist trope is the Con. Heist stories almost always involve some  element of Con, sometimes on another character, but almost always on the  audience. A Con on a character is doable, but tricky. Cons are talky,  which is difficult gameplay (Monaco’s Redhead character abstracts this  with a “charm person” mechanic; as I think about it, though, I’d love to  try using something like Telltale’s Walking Dead engine to build a  con-artist game). But the Con on the audience – the reveal at the end  that what you, the viewer, thought was The Plan falling apart, was  actually part of The Plan _all along_ – is probably the biggest  single trope in the heist genre. I’m hard-pressed to think of a heist  story without one. But it’s easy to get away with this in a linear  medium, where information disparity between characters and audience is  perfectly reasonable; in a game, when the audience _is_ the character, it’s cheating.


*There’s  never been a good television adaptation of a videogame, and yes, I’m  including the Pac-Man cartoon in that category. Why not, and do you  think there will ever be one?*

First of all, 8 year-old me  will defend to his dying breath the Pac-Man cartoon. Speak ill of  Saturday Supercade, and you and I are quits.




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That  said, outside of children’s animation, I can’t really even think of any  attempts at adapting games to TV. Much of that is probably due to  budget; so many popular games are sci-fi, fantasy or historical, and  that don’t come cheap.

But I suspect the bigger issue is that television, at its core, is about _characters_.  Great shows have great characters, people we willingly invite into our  living rooms every week, characters we want to spend our time with like  old friends. There’s a reason so many TV shows (“Cheers,” “MASH,”  “Friends,” “Buffy,” “Star Trek,” “Battlestar Galactica”) are about  chosen families. The characters choose each other, and we choose them.

Videogames, however, are not renowned for the strength of their characters.

Now  generally that’s by choice. Videogame protagonists are often  deliberately ill-defined, allowing players the freedom to make the  character their own. But that approach doesn’t work in TV. We love being  Gordon Freeman or Master Chief, but I can’t imagine inviting either of  them into my living room week after week (You know Gordon Freeman would  drink all my beer and never even say “thanks”).

Still, there  certainly are videogame characters who could support a show, so I think  it’s only a matter of time before someone takes a good run at it. I  think the most likely way around the character problem, however, is  going the transmedia route — creating a show with new characters in an  existing IP universe — and if that’s not what the recently announced  Halo TV series turns out to be, I’ll eat my hat.

So give it time, Pac-Fans. Give it time.

Quelle: Shockingly Short Interview: Jeremy Bernstein - UbiBlog | Ubisoft®


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## LordCrash (2. August 2013)

*Powerpoint World Championship!*

 Filed in Developers' diary by Dan @ 12:18 pm UTC Aug 2, 2013




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_A fetching slide from our presentation_

 In the last entry I covered our overall strategy and how we started  to get ready for pitching the game to publishers, I talked mostly about  the game demo. But there is more to a pitch than just a playable demo,  it includes various documents, screenshots, artworks and most  importantly a PowerPoint presentation that summarizes everything in a  nice and accessible way and which may be the most important thing of  all. We are going to discuss the video next time, today, I am going to  submit for your reading pleasure an essay on working the PowerPoint.  It’s gonna be exciting!

  If you want to be successful, you have to know how to sell yourself.  You know the drill: Elevator pitch, describe your project in one  sentence, what are the most important features of your game… If you want  your game to see the light of day eventually, you have to have all the  answers at the ready. For some games, based on one or two central ideas,  this can be done more-or-less easily, but it’s a daunting task for an  RPG where the combination of everything that goes in is more important  than any single part.

  The easy answer is, of course, saying: “Our game is Like XXX, but  better…” Even allowing that it’s true, it’s still a pretty pathetic  thing to say. Or you can try to get your point across as you would to  your buddies over a pint, but this is very risky – is the person across  the table going to be on the same wavelength as your buddy? What are his  tastes? Is he going to be more impressed by passion, trendy superficial  slogans, or by sales statistics of similar games?

  That was my biggest worry in the month leading to our trip and it  made my head hurt. To think that you can ruin months of effort of many  people by one ill-chosen word, misjudging your partners and their  preferences, that’s awful.

  The biggest problem I saw in our pitch was the very fact we are  making an RPG and a realistic one to boot. For some reasons publishers  do not like RPGs and try to avoid them, even though when one is  published, it usually sells well enough if half decent. For this reason I  put some slides at the beginning of our presentation with the aim to  persuade the publishers it would be a mistake to look down on our  “adult” RPG. Creating these slides was pretty hard though. Eventually  they included half a dozen pictures, including e.g. 1960’s Batman and  today’s Batman, or Red Sonja dueling Arnie and a poster for Game of  Thrones. They were to communicate a clear message: our game is Game of  Thrones, while other RPGs are Red Sonjas! Surely, there are fans who  like Sonja, but most people will understand what I’m trying to tell  them.

  I went through a sort of first round of pitching at last year’s  Gamescom when sharing info about our game with some people. The first of  them, even before I started, told me: “If it’s not a Skyrim killer,  there’s no point in showing it…” That felt good even though I was a bit  surprised: it appears as if a few million units sold changes RPG genre’s  perception among publishers and it’s going to be easier. It was. But  was my defense of the genre useless? It depends. When pitching our  prototype for real, I made this bit shorter, but didn’t remove it  completely.




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_And another one_ 

*A PUZZLE*

  I still had to create the rest of the presentation, showcasing our  project and making totally clear what kind of game it’s going to be, why  it’s going to rock, what sets it apart from other games that rock and  what’s special about it. It’s important not to be too self-serving,  don’t drown the audience in detail and don’t make them think you are  making a niche wacky oddity for nerds.

  Creating the presentation took me several weeks and it was real hell.  You spend the whole day discussing the wording of your pitch with a  bunch of people, some of them on the other side of globe. Is it better  to describe the controls as ‘intuitive’, ‘innovative’ or  ‘revolutionary’? As you try to divine what’s going to go best with your  audience, you feel your mind slipping away. And believe me, it matters.  When I started, my idea was: “Nobody’s going to praise you if you don’t  praise yourself.” In the PR business, things are always made bigger than  they really are, so I made them bigger too. Then we went through every  word of it three times with several people and finally one of them  challenged me: “What’s revolutionary about these controls?” And so I  quickly changed ‘revolutionary’ to ‘innovative’. It should be noted  though, that I really do believe that our controls are revolutionary in a  way.

  And it goes on like this with the whole thing. There must not be too  much text so as not to be boring and to fit in the time windows, but  neither too short, so as not to appear composed solely of slogans and  clichés. You also have to think about the visual side. You like the  result, but somebody tells you that the managers don’t care for fancy  graphics and you should use Arial font to make it easy to read. Then  somebody else tells you that it’s good to read but looks awful.

  It’s up to you if you believe in your intuition and judgment or yield  to other, possibly misleading, opinions. Often you suspect that a  compromise between two opposing concepts will combine the weak aspects  of both and that it would be better to have one of them executed  properly than trying to reconcile them. After some time, tiredness and  resignation sets in: “It’s going to be like this, or I’ll go crazy and  it’s not going to look better if I keep fiddling with it!”

  This is exactly what I did in the end. This moment came the evening  before our departure and it was not the end. We had modified the  presentation several time based on feedback from our audience. We  changed the order of the slides, deleted duplicate information and even  created new slides with a bunch of text about stuff people kept asking  us about (and it would never occur to us somebody could be interested in  that). How our tour turned out, that’s a story for another time,  though.

  Beside the presentation you are going to need some nice printed  leaflets, screenshots and video and everything neatly packaged on an  elegant USB drive. You need to make clear what you’re going to show and  what’s going to be left behind. Are you going to run the video first and  then PowerPoint, or do you just show the game and leave the video on  the USB drive? Are you going to let them play or even leave the playable  version behind? Or are you going to play and politely refuse if they  ask you to have a go?

  I prepared the leaflet, the USB drive looked splendid, I captured the  screenshots and we desperately waited for the video to be recorded.  This had to be done last, because the video is captured form the final  build and the build is always final just as your plane is about to take  off. But let’s talk about that next time.

_Dan Vavra, Creative Director

_Quelle: Warhorse studios: BLOG


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## LordCrash (2. August 2013)

Sid Meier's impact on gaming cannot be overstated. As one of the fathers  of the turn-based strategy genre, and the designer of games like  Civilization, Pirates, and Railroad Tycoon, he's established himself as  one of the titans of the industry. Adam Sessler got a rare chance to sit  down with Sid and discuss his legacy, his philosophy on game design,  and why he's so attracted to one genre. 





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00:46 - Becoming a game designer

03:04 - The influence of board games and foundation of design

04:43 - Microprose's interest in reality and their design philosophy

07:10 - The creation of Sid Meier's Pirates!

10:30 - Developing Sid Meier's Railroad Tycoon

14:07 - Civilization

18:58 - Why has Sid stuck with turn-based strategy?

23:40 - Did Sid see the gaming industry becoming this big?


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## LordCrash (2. August 2013)

*             Opinion – Ambiguous Endings Shouldn’t Be Feared*

                              by                      Kimberley Wallace on                         August 02, 2013                         at                         03:45 PM             




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 Video game storytelling has grown tremendously. In less than 40 years, we've gone from two ping-pong paddles and a ball to full-blown narratives, multidimensional characters, and complex themes. I love watching people dissect modern games and come away with different interpretations, and that developers even hide secret messages for the most dedicated players to unravel. Despite this, many gamers haven't reacted well to non-traditional storytelling and cryptic endings. 

*Spoiler warning: This editorial discusses the endings of The Last of Us, BioShock Infinite, Mass Effect 3, and Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward.*

 Lately, I've noticed more and more blowback at endings that don't wrap things up in a neat little package, and instead leave gamers to make their own interpretations. Ambiguity is looked at as the ugly stepsister of endings. How dare the writers leave any unanswered questions? One of the problems with video games and why gamers yearn to have the loose ends wrapped up is the time commitment. Compared to watching a movie, there's more buildup and hype to the culmination of our efforts. Being left unsatisfied stings, especially when you've spent numerous hours with the characters and universe. Not every game should walk the ambiguity route, but I wish gamers would take some delight in coming to their own conclusions.

 Take Naughty Dog's recent hit, The Last of Us. The writer made a deliberate choice to end with Joel lying to Ellie and the audience not knowing what that lie will mean for the pair. Ellie actually asks him if he's telling the truth, acknowledging to the audience that even she is speculating about Joel's motivations. However, Joel continues his lie and she responds with a simple "okay." You can take her "okay" to mean a number of things, but the credits roll leaving you with just that word. While many defended this ending, the first question I was asked by many gamers is if I thought Naughty Dog would release DLC or a sequel to "provide closure" and "wrap up the story." My response has and always will be that knowing the complete outcome would ruin it . Part of the magic is putting together all the information and interpreting those last lines for yourself. I've thought about that ending long after I saw it because it left me to connect the dots. I am satisfied by my interpretation, and don't need Naughty Dog to spell it out in order to enjoy one of the year's best tales.
 Not all stories have clean resolutions, and neither do those in reality. Life is messy and complicated; journeys don't end with all the pieces in place. Some of the best writing must be analyzed, left to one's own interpretations, without having writers commit to one "right" way to take their work. 

 Science fiction often leaves loose ends and unanswered questions. For whatever reason, this has been met with resistance when it pops up in games. Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward's ending is a classic take on the sci-fi genre, yet the complaints are rampant. Many gamers thought it was simply a setup for a future game, despite it being reminiscent of many speculative science fiction stories. Few absolutes are presented in VLR; by the end, you can't trust your own thoughts, and that's where it succeeds. Did the game end where it began? Time travel is always complicated and some of the best sci-fi plays off its ambiguity.




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 However, a bad ending is a bad ending, and there's no getting away from that. Just make sure you're calling out the company because it was poorly executed, not just because it's different. Fans felt like Mass Effect 3's often-debated finale didn't fulfill the cocktail of promises BioWare waved in front of them, especially regarding their own choices. The fact that fans couldn't bear any loose ends, such as not knowing the impact of the destruction of the mass relays, says something about how powerful the series' storytelling is. Nonetheless, for some the ending overshadowed the entire game. When fans have a five-year investment in a series, sky-high expectations can make ambiguity hard to pull off. This is also a two-way street, though. Fans must meet writers halfway, and allow them to experiment and not force-fed them all the answers. 

 As the industry grows, more styles will emerge. This makes me worry they won't be embraced because we're too rigid in our expectations, rejecting anything that turns away from the norm. Still, I'm hopeful. Over the last few years, not all ambiguous endings have been met with displeasure. Games such as BioShock Infinite inch closer to great literature and film; gamers weren't just watching and having all their questions answered, instead being invited to think through what Infinite's ending meant. 

 The best games spark us to discuss and analyze them with others. This is the most gratifying experience a gamer can offer and I'd hate for gamers' longing for neat conclusions to deter writers from going outside of the box. We have to be okay with not having our hands held; the writers are sharing their stories with us, and sometimes the best storytelling asks for a little more of its audience than a passive acceptance of perfectly laid out details.

Quelle: Opinion – Ambiguous Endings Shouldn’t Be Feared - Features - www.GameInformer.com


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## LordCrash (2. August 2013)

*Trainspotting: Why Train Simulator is the Coca-Cola of games*

By Rachel Weber *Tue 30 Jul 2013 4:00pm GMT* / 12:00pm EDT / 9:00am PDT 




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*Railsimulator.com's Paul Jackson on big dangerous machines, satisfying a passionate audience and zombies*

In the old days train  enthusiasts could usually be found lurking on railway bridges, anoraks  zipped tight against the British weather, noting down details and  dreaming of playing conductor. These days those same train fans are just  as likely to be sat at their PC learning to drive the NKP S-2 Class  Berkshire. And one of the men making those dreams come true? Paul  Jackson of Railsimulator.com, home of the massive Train Simulator  series.

"I think we're a niche business, but about 20 years ago  Coca-Cola recognised that they'd got something like 80 per cent of their  business from 11 per cent of the population," he told GamesIndustry  International.

"I kind of expect us to be just like Coca-Cola, a niche business with millions of customers."

To  anyone not familiar with the world of Train Simulator, or even just  more used to a world of blasting aliens or fighting goblins it can seem  an oddity at first. And Jackson admits that the series' core audience is  made of transport enthusiasts, who come to the games looking for a very  specific experience.

*Train manager*

 Paul Jackson Esq. OBE launched Railsimulator.com in 2009, but his career  started at Electronic Arts in 1988. He started at EA Northern Europe as  vice president and managing director, and stayed with the company for  18 years.  

 Between 2005 and 2008 he was the board director and a trustee of BAFTA,  and between 2006 and 2009 he served as director general of ELSPA. 

"People who, like me, if life had taken another turn we'd  be train drivers or farmers or pilots or racing drivers or truck drivers  or something. And in my head often I imagine them coming home from the  city, watching an episode of Ice Road Truckers, and then driving a ten  thousand tonne train in our on sim."

But there's another audience who don't just come for the tracks, they come for the thrill. 

"We  have a wider group of players who play an array of management  simulation titles, various types of titles, and then we have a range of  fans who come to us through their passion for big dangerous machinery."

He  likens it to the feeling you get stumbling off a jumbo jet at a small  airport, and making your way down a set of open steps straight on the  tarmac, feeling dwarfed by the massive machine you just sat for 6 hours  eating peanuts on. 

"And that seems to be a constantly growing and  exciting group. Our audience is growing, our community is growing by 50  odd per cent a year and has done ever since we started."

But that community is one that demands a level of authenticity beyond the norm. 

"Our  players end up being very dedicated, very enthusiastic, and servicing  them is really quite a responsibility for us to bear and we have to and  we need to take that very seriously. That brings with it some pretty  significant challenges, not least of which is the amount research we  have to do so the sheer amount of travelling, photography, measuring  even, that our dev teams have to undertake is... we ask them to do a  lot."

For  instance, in the last six months the dev team have taken trips to  California, Pennsylvania, Germany and Japan, and wherever possible the  official blueprints for a train are used, for example on the German ICE 3  express train. The company also maintains relationships with train  manufacturers like Hitachi Rail Europe, National Railway Museum, and  Freightliner. 

But the upside of such an active community it that  you can also make the most of their expertise, one specific instance  Jackson mentions is when the team are researching sounds for trains  which no longer run or no longer exist. Perhaps part of the secret of  that symbiotic relationship is that Jackson maintains an open office  door policy when it comes to the community in a way it's hard to picture  many other CEOs doing. 

"I've probably spoken individually to one  customer or another every week for the last four years. And often every  day," he explains.

"So we're able to keep incredibly close to our  customers and to try and understand what they want. The key often is to  back that up with heavy duty research because quite often what people  are prepared to say online is different to what they really want. And so  with a combination of those things we're able to hopefully define what  people want and try and give it to them."

Of course, even in the world of transport simulations there have to be slight deviations from authenticity. 

"What  we have to do is simulate things in a way that simmers can address  them. So if it takes 6 months to learn to drive a particular locomotive,  or in the case of steam engines years to learn how to do that, in real  life we have to shortcut that in some way and to ease the path of our  players to being able to simulate that experience. It's the, as  Coleridge would put it, the willing suspension of disbelief I guess, we  need to try and get that balance right."

Perhaps  the biggest break from the company's authenticity rules came from a  surprising idea, with surprising results. Trains vs Zombies, the  shuffling, undead brainchild of one of the content developers that  Jackson decided to back.

"We were quite nervous, it clearly wasn't  authentic, it clearly was a departure for our fan products, but the guy  was enthusiastic, we wanted to give it a go, so we did it. And we put  it out there at Halloween and we were a little bit trepidatious but  funnily enough the reaction we got was fabulous." 

"It's not our  business going forwards but it does show that while we're very serious  about our simulations both as developers and as customers, we're happy  to have a bit of fun periodically."  

That balance is clearly  working for the company, it's seeing major success in its genre and has  the added advantage of facing very little competition from large or  small developers. As a veteran of the industry, Jackson is surprised by  the situation, but not exactly heartbroken.

"I don't think that  our customers have changed, I just think that the mainstream industry  has stopped supporting that particular element of video gaming to any  great degree. And that's something we're happy to address, bluntly. I'm  very comfortable where we are."

He points out that when he started  out Microprose beat EA to be the first $100 million company in the US,  and did it by providing simulation style games. So if it wasn't the  customers that changed, what did? Jackson admits it's something he's  been puzzling over for years. 

" I think at the end of the day  where the industry is now in the mainstream is if it's costing you $50  million or $70 million to commission a game, we probably wouldn't start  off commissioning a train simulator either," he admits.  

"And so  it's a change in the way we're reaching our customers through digital  distribution, the breakdown of the old way of doing things that's  allowing this older type of game play, you might say, to re-emerge. "




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For  now the team are focussed on keeping its core technology strong, and  making sure that it takes the community with it as it updates. 
"If  you've ever bought a copy of our core sim in the last four years, no  matter where from, you will get that technology upgrade for free the  next time you log onto Steam. And that's something we do that's very  important to us, we hope to be able to do that forever."

As for  the future? Train Simulator 2014 has just been announced and is due out  in September, and during the interview he hints that the company isn't  just looking at moving to new devices (a request that has come from the  community) but also on creating some products that aren't just focused  on trains. Jackson refuses to say much more than that, but it seems like  the formula that is working for the company so far could easily be  applied to a number of big, dangerous machines. 

"There are big  challenges ahead of us in terms of how we address our customers concerns  and where we address them. They're exciting problems to have."

Quelle: Trainspotting: Why Train Simulator is the Coca-Cola of games | GamesIndustry International


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## LordCrash (5. August 2013)

*Why Core Gamers Hate Free-to-Play*

*It's about trust.*

             by Justin Davis, July 29, 2013

                                        What if Borderlands 2 was the exact same game as it is today, but it was free?

 Imagine a Borderlands 2  experience monetized by a player economy instead of a $60 up-front fee +  $60 worth of post-launch DLC. You get the full game - the complete  experience. If you choose to, you can buy and sell drops on a real-money  auction house, with the creators taking a 10% cut. Simple.

 It sounds like a friendly, generous system. Would you play it? My guess is I lost many of you at “Real Money Auction House.”
 Is there a way to make “freemium” more than a dirty word  for hardcore gamers, or will we always push back against anything more  than paid cosmetic options?

 Let’s take a look at why so many gamers have a problem with freemium, with Borderlands 2 in the hot seat:

*   Immediate Hardcore Backlash*

 In fact, I already asked this question on Twitter. Most gamers immediately recoiled at the idea:




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    These gamers are saying they wouldn’t want to get the _exact same experience_  they paid $60+ for, completely for free. Not only would it be free, but  they could actually make money selling drops for classes they aren’t  playing or otherwise aren’t interested in.

 Isn’t this setup superior, at least from the player’s  perspective, in pretty much every way? If you are philosophically  opposed to buying or selling virtual goodies, you could just ignore the  marketplace and experience all that Borderlands 2 goodness that IGN awarded a 9/10, completely for free.

 The truth, as you might guess, is a little more complex.  Even if Borderlands 2 were balanced in the exact same way as it is now,  introducing real-world dough into the equation changes the perception.  And perception is everything.

*   Player Trust*

 If Borderlands 2 was free, but 2K made a little money each  time players sold Eridium to one another, how long would you have to go  without finding any to become suspicious?

 This question lies directly at the heart of the problem  many core gamers have with the industry’s massive shift towards freemium  games. It’s a problem of trust. If you can’t buy Eridium, you would _never_  become suspicious, because there is nothing to be suspicious of. But  once it’s for sale, the shop’s mere existence puts the idea into your  head.

 Even if the Eridium drop rate was absolutely identical  (remember, the hypothetical is that this free version of BL2 is exactly  the same), it just wouldn’t feel as good. Players, at least some, would  worry they were being manipulated. Others would hop onto forums and  prove with cold hard data that Eridium is dropping at the same rate it  always has. Someone else would inevitably retort that back in the “good  old days” when games just cost $60, issues like this didn’t even need to  be discussed. Neither group would be wrong.




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_Even if you ignore real money functions, they intrude into your mind and can ruin immersion._

 Even if none of this bothers you -  if you’re one of the  rational, data-driven gamers happy to put hours into a free Borderlands 2  - there’s still a certain grossness associated with real-money values  continually intruding into your mind. When you find a truly badass  weapon drop in a $60 Borderlands 2, there’s nothing but happiness. Equip  it, and wreck faces.

  If you find the same gun in a Borderlands 2 monetized by a player  economy, you have to choose if you want to equip it, or tab over to the  marketplace and see if it’s worth $5 or another amount of dough high  enough to consider selling. Every awesome drop becomes a choice.
 There’s a purity in playing a paid game that’s lost in most  freemium alternatives. Video games are all about escapism. There’s a  certain indecency to thoughts of real-world money intruding into the  experience. I believe this is why many gamers prefer a $60 Borderlands 2  experience over a free alternative. Many of us will pay a higher  up-front cost to protect the integrity of the play experience.

 And this is why many gamers are likely to _never_  fully embrace free-to-play. Even if it’s done right, even if no drop  rates or other game balance dials have been tweaked to bring in a few  extra dollars, the idea has now been planted in the player’s head. How  can is a gamer ever supposed to be sure?

* The Devil in the Details
*
 And of course, far too often freemium models aren’t done  right to begin with. Many free-to-play multiplayer games include a cash  shop with power-up items, undermining the game’s balance. Many freemium  games feature artificial barriers put up by the game designers, which  players can pay to overcome. Practices like these are where the blanket  fear and distrust originate from. Gamers' time is valuable. Pay up to  not waste it grinding. Ick! Core gamers are a smart, plugged-in bunch  that does its research. They’re a hard group to fool.

 This is why some of the biggest and best freemium game  success stories have come from some of the game industry’s most trusted  game makers. Valve has spent nearly 20 years treating gamers right (and  making billions of dollars in the process). So it’s no surprise that  gamers were willing to give freemium Team Fortress 2  and DOTA 2 a shot. Valve rewarded this consumer trust with balanced and  reasonable money-making mechanisms in both titles. This trust isn't  something that can be bought or faked. A game maker's only option is to  form a genuine relationship with its customers, instead of wallets from  which to squeeze as much short term revenue per user as possible.

 Core gamers are increasingly coming around to the idea that  freemium game design can actually (gasp) benefit them in a few key  ways, and isn't always a pay-to-win scam. In a shooter, MOBA, MMO, or  any other genre that relies on an robust and active player-base, the  rise of free-to-play has been a boon. Hooked on Lord of the Rings Online  or Team Fortress 2  and wanna bring your buddies in? No arm-twisting is necessary. You’re  just a free download away from playing together. This is a very cool and  very powerful evolution of the traditional “$60 up front” model.

* Other Freemium Options
*
 Of course, the vision for a free Borderlands 2 I laid out  above isn’t the only way it could be done. If the game were free, but  monetized in a way other than player-sold drops, the temptation to sell a  fun gun for a few bucks goes away, and the integrity and player trust  in the experience could potentially be restored.

 It’s a tough proposition, but there are a variety of  intriguing options. A free-to-play Borderlands 2 could feature  randomly-dropped keys that are used to unlock new areas of Pandora, or  players could pay up to unlock them early. Slots for a 5th weapon or 2nd  relic could be sold. Free raid bosses could reset once per day, or  players could pay a small fee to reset them early. But perhaps the most  consumer-friendly, “reasonable” free-to-play model of all is to simply  charge for new content.

 The problem is that consumer trust in free-to-play games,  at least amongst the most plugged-in core gamers, has eroded to the  point that game makers can get away with things in a $60 game that  players would endlessly howl about if they tried to do it in a freemium  release.
 If the Borderlands 2 base game were free, but 2K was  up-front about charging for new classes, multiple level cap increases,  and new bosses/areas, many gamers would likely voice their displeasure.

 “We don’t want to be nickle and dimed. Just charge one  price and include all the classes and levels. I don’t want to get hooked  and then have to pay for a Final Boss.” And so-on.

 And yet, the $60 (now $30) Borderlands 2 is charging for  all of these things, and Gearbox has largely been praised for their  extensive post-launch support!

 We now live in a time where giving gamers $75 in high-quality DLC in a  paid game is good customer service, but trying to do the same in a  freemium game results in distrust and derision.

 Perception is everything. Freemium isn't a bad thing just because  some scammy games take advantage of weak-willed players, just like $60  games aren't a bad thing just because some very bad ones are released.  But for freemium games to ever make real inroads with the core gaming  community, they need to find ways to make money without breaking player  trust or immersion. I don't want to think about dollar bills when  blasting away Skags on Pandora.

 It's a tall order - I don't have all the answers. Until game makers  figure it out, I'll keep buying games for full price and playing to my  heart's content.

Quelle: Why Core Gamers Hate Free-to-Play - IGN


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## LordCrash (5. August 2013)

*Enough of the games media “shock jocks”*

               By Rob Fahey* Fri 02 Aug 2013 7:00am GMT* / 3:00am EDT / 12:00am PDT 




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*We can't stop abusive hordes on social media - but we can stop encouraging and nurturing them for profit*

  Phil Fish's dramatic exit from  the games industry has provoked a fair degree of navel-gazing among  developers, writers and even certain groups of gamers. The basic story  is pretty horrible; a talented developer who created a much-loved game  finally reaches the end of his tether when a professional member of the  games media makes a nasty personal attack on him, coming at the end of  months of online abuse over social media from a whole host of attackers.  He exits the industry, leaving it a poorer place without his creative  talents. Everybody is very sad. The end.

The truth, of course, is  much more complex - and even if much of the world seems to have slipped  into a "let's not speak ill of the dead" mode over this entire story,  it's worth bearing in mind that Phil Fish's online persona was itself  abrasive, rude and combative. I've been told on numerous occasions that  he's lovely in person, and have absolutely no doubt that this is true,  but on the Internet, he'd never met a fight he didn't want to dive into  feet first. Sometimes, he waged online campaigns that were very much  justified - you'd see the occasional retweets of "#teamfish" going  around at those points when he sallied forth against something or  someone particularly unpleasant - but either way, he was always at the  heart of mud-slinging of some form or another.

There are various  phrases we've all heard while growing up which apply to a situation like  that. If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen; don't dish  it out if you can't take it; and so on and so forth. There's something  about sticks, stones and broken bones which also applies, of course. Yet  even while I'm uncomfortable with the sainting of Phil Fish as an  innocent dreamer who was cruelly tortured and hounded from the industry  by the social media masses, I'm altogether more horrified by the sheer  outpouring of hatred which is dished out by "gamers" on social media  once they sense some blood in the water. Is Phil Fish guilty of being a  thin-skinned man who foolishly starts fights which go on to wound him  far more than his opponents? Yes, certainly. Does that excuse the awful  pile-on which ensued all too regularly? Absolutely not.

Moreover,  it's not like this is the first example we've had of this kind of thing  happening. In the same week, we saw death and rape threats aimed at a  man's family because his company made minor tweaks to weapon balance in  an online game. Plenty of other game developers and representatives of  game companies have come in for similar outpourings of hate and vile  threats - and that's even before we get on to question of the absolutely  horrific treatment of any woman who dares to stick her head over the  parapet in gaming (it's often not great for ethnic or sexual minorities  either). The treatment of Anita Sarkeesian in particular was an  eye-opener for many people - although plenty of people kept their eyes  firmly closed even in the face of that awful incident, complaining that  coverage of her treatment was silencing legitimate criticism of her work  (it wasn't, but way to try to deflect from the issues) or effectively  saying that Sarkeesian deserved such abuse for stirring up the Internet  Hate Machine in the first place (she didn't, and saying "women should  shut up if they don't want to be abused" makes you as bad as the  abusers).

Social media is a nasty place. We know that. It goes far  beyond games, of course - politicians, writers, actors and indeed  anyone in the public eye, no matter how minor, can be turned upon and  hounded for the slightest perceived slip or fault. I recall being  shocked and astounded a few years ago by the story of a talented young  singer in South Korea who ended up a virtual recluse with a security  detail outside his family's home because a group of obsessive Internet  users had decided (based on maliciously placed fake information) that  his university degree was a fake, and began an orchestrated campaign of  hatred which spilled over into real-life stalking and threats. It turns  out that I was wrong to think that South Korea was a bit crazy in this  regard; it's just that, as with so many other things about Internet  culture, they're a few years ahead of us. Now hate campaigns here are  just as crazy and unhinged. Hurrah for progress.

The gaming world  does attract more than its fair share of this kind of thing, though,  largely because the gaming world continues to attract a core audience of  young males - essentially the same people who are most likely to act as  online trolls and abusers, it seems. It's Catch-22, of course -  trolling and flaming makes the community less attractive to people from  other groups (women, minorities, other demographics, etc.), which means  we remain stuck with a core audience of young males, and so the cycle  continues. A savvy business or development type at this point will have  noticed, if they haven't already done so long ago, that this kind of  toxic environment isn't just socially unpleasant, it's also extremely  bad for business, since it restricts the growth of the core gaming  audience significantly. 

"Traditional game controllers and genres are  intimidating for new audiences" is an idea we discuss quite often in  gaming; it's important to recognise that those things aren't half as  intimidating as being called a "slut whore" or a "fag" for joining an  online game or posting a question or opinion in a forum.

What a  high profile incident like the Phil Fish affair reminds us of is that  it's the responsibility of everyone involved in games to work to control  and limit this kind of toxic, unpleasant behaviour. We can't stop it  entirely, of course - that's beyond the control of any company or  individual, since this is simply a dark, nasty side of human nature  we're talking about - but we can consider, as we build networks, games,  online services and communities, how those are to be policed and how  they contribute positively to making people feel safe and welcome as  they play. We can try harder to step outside ourselves and understand  that even if we're thick-skinned and unlikely to be targeted for  particularly hurtful abuse, there are other people - our customers, our  audience, our colleagues, our friends and family - who are not in that  position, and try to build products and services that work for everyone,  not just for the slice of humanity we're lucky enough to inhabit.

That goes doubly so for  the media, because one other thing that has been thrown into stark  relief by Fish's departure is that certain parts of the media, far from  trying to clamp down on abusive or toxic behaviour and comments, have  actually been thriving off it. There's a new strain of games media  "personality" which has emerged in recent years which openly thrives off  the primordial slime of negativity and hatred that pollutes so many  comment threads and forums around the Internet - a kind of games media  "shock jock", a hugely negative, cynical personality who seems to have  nothing good to say about anything, who channels the cynicism and  nastiness of the darker corners of the gaming world into a slicker and  more carefully packaged format. Marcus Beer, who trades as  "AnnoyedGamer" and dropped the offending straw on the camel's back when  he called Fish an "asshole" on a GameTrailers show, is one such  character - there are quite a few others who are cut from the same  cloth. The online personas these people present are calculated to  justify and validate the kind of gamer who participates in flinging  hateful abuse at public figures within the industry.

I recall,  when I first started writing about games professionally, being  absolutely stunned at the existence of some really cynical and  unpleasant people in the games media - people who had simply been at  these jobs for too long, had fallen out of love with games but had found  themselves, presumably, with no marketable skills that would allow them  to work elsewhere. It was an unsettling experience to go to events or  travel abroad on press tours with people whose eyes glazed over if I  talked about games I'd enjoyed recently, or who openly and with curious  pride announced that they hadn't played a game in years. They were  always a small minority, but they were generally not very pleasant  people overall and they were always around. The Games Media Shock Jocks  give the same impression - disgruntled men (for they are always men) who  don't like games much and seem unhappy with their lot in life, but have  found an outlet in cynically stoking the fires of discontent among  angry, hate-spewing teens. Awful, soul-destroying work if you can get  it.

This is where I firmly believe that the games media has a role  to play in fixing the culture that has come to surround games. Not just  in controlling the comments threads and forums they operate, which few  websites do to any degree of professionalism or satisfaction, but also -  and far more easily - controlling the kind of message their employees  are putting out, and the kind of culture they're encouraging. I'm not  calling for censorship, but rather for stepping back from the brink of  "hey, this deliberate controversy-stoking is worth a few hits!" and  thinking a little about your impact and your responsibility to the wider  culture of games. Stoking the fires of fanboy hatred might earn you  some traffic and a little ad revenue in the short term - but in the long  term, it'll help to guarantee that core gaming struggles to grow past  the stunted little niche it now occupies. The "shock jocks" emerging in  the games media are at the vanguard of that. Tone it down, or give up  the act; there's nothing big or clever about a grown man making his  living by riling up abusive teenage boys. If you're in this industry  because you love games, why are you spending so much time talking about  all the things you hate?

Quelle: Enough of the games media


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## LordCrash (6. August 2013)

*Swimming in a sea of shit: Phil Fish and the Internet’s war against creatives*

By *Ben Kuchera*, 7/29/13 at 8:55 AM




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  I was somewhere outside the United States having a conversation with  another critic about our respective jobs. The subject of whether we had  ever thought of quitting came up, and he told me a story about sharing  the death of a family member on social media, a loss that had affected  him greatly.

Someone sent him the following message: “Good.” He told me that was the  first time he had seriously thought about quitting, that the job just  wasn’t worth the nearly constant stream of abuse you’re forced to endure  online.

  These are stories we rarely tell.





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   What I know of Phil Fish I learned through Indie Game: The Movie,  interactions on social media, and a few e-mails we’ve exchanged. I  respect him creatively and as a person, although it seemed like he never met a hornet’s nest he couldn’t improve  by giving it a good kick. He seemed to quit the game industry over the  weekend, after having an altercation with yet another person in the  press, the latest in a string of encounters he seemed to find  frustrating.

  He posted the following message on Polytron’s official web page:

_“FEZ II is cancelled. i am done. i take the money and i run. this is as  much as i can stomach. this is isn’t the result of any one thing, but  the end of a long, bloody campaign. you win.”_

  Some people rolled their eyes. Some people repeated that same word that  so bothered my friend: “Good.” A few people called him crazy. Others in  the game development world nodded their heads slowly, aware of just how  bad it can get online.

* The horde picks up the torches*

  Listening to other people talk about Fish, in both good and bad terms,  and what all this meant, and often brutally personally attacking him, an  interview kept popping back into my head. No one who is crazy,  weak-willed, or thin-skinned makes a game like Fez.

  I'm going to let Dave Chappelle sum it up:





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That interview sums up the entire situation. The issue isn't with the  press interactions that may have pushed Fish over this edge, or even  Fish in particular. This is the sort of world we live in now. You open  yourself up to constant abuse, hate speech, and hounding if you dare to  release any creative work.

  This goes for game developers, this goes for critics and reporters, and  this goes for artists, photographers, or people making Youtube videos.  It's universal. The ability to soak in, digest, and live with abuse is a  prerequisite for being in the public eye, or existing online in some  form next to your creations.

  David Vonderhaar is the Studio Design Director on _Call of Duty: Black Ops 2_.  Recently it was announced that a gun in the game was being balanced.  “The DSR fire time was 0.2 seconds. It's now 0.4 seconds,” Vonderhaar  said on Twitter. “The rechamber time was 1.0 seconds. It's now 1.1  seconds.” He also said that he didn't know if these fractions of a  second are worth threats of violence.

  That's not hyperbole, and in fact he was being very calm about the sort  of messages he was receiving, some of which you can see in this tumblr.  I want to quote a few, and I'm not going to edit any of the words or  spelling. This is what we ask the people to make our games to wake up to  every morning. This is their diet of fan interaction.

> why do i get probation when even when the game kicks me u fucking retarded faggot piece of shit paki cunt




> im going to tie you up and rape your family if you dont fix the dsr




> i hope you die in the gas chambers like your parents did


It goes on and on. I'm not going to repeat the names or Twitter tags of  the people who said these things, and don't comfort yourself by stating  that they're obviously troll accounts or aren't indicative of what a  normal day can be like for the people who make the games you play. The  people who send these messages often make multiple accounts, and they  understand that when you block one of their accounts it only means  you're seeing their message.

  This is the situation we're in: You can make yourself a bigger, more  attractive target by using the safety options on social media.

  I've heard these stories from so many creative people that it's hard to  believe. Many, if not most, of them are afraid to talk about it,  because it can often sound like someone is complaining about success.  That's not what's going on, and it's important to say that money,  notoriety, or other creature comforts don't excuse or make up for  systemic, often focused harassment.

* Abuse isn't localized, rare, or limited to one gender*

  This isn't something that happens to some people online, it's something  that happens to everyone who has ever put any of themselves out there  for public consumption. Someone on Twitter told Jonathan Blow that you  can just ignore these messages.

“This is false,” he replied. “We can't choose to ignore it. As soon as the words are read, they have already hit emotionally.”

  You can't give up on Twitter, because it's too good of a tool for  interaction with your fans and players. You can't filter e-mail, because  people send threats of violence with subject lines that sound  innocuous. You just have to grit your teeth and slog through it, day  after day.

  “I'd like to say that none of this bothered me – to be one of those  women who are strong enough to brush off the abuse, which is always the  advice given by people who don't believe bullies and bigots can be  fought,” writer Laurie Penny wrote in 2011.  “Sometimes I feel that speaking about the strength it takes just to  turn on the computer, or how I've been afraid to leave my house, is an  admission of weakness. Fear that it's somehow your fault for not being  strong enough is, of course, what allows abusers to continue to abuse.”

  How bad did it get? “Efforts, too, were made to track down and harass  my family, including my two school-age sisters. After one particular  round of rape threats, including the suggestion that, for criticising  neoliberal economic policymaking, I should be made to fellate a row of  bankers at knifepoint, I was informed that people were searching for my  home address. I could go on,” she explained.

  That's the cost of the attitude that this is just something that you  have to endure if you hope to be a creative mind today. I was once at a  lecture with Kevin Smith, and someone asked what it was like when Ben  Affleck and Jennifer Lopez were breaking up. Smith asked the audience  what it would be like to deal with the tabloid press making up lies  about your friends when they went through what may have been the lowest  point of their lives.

  We're judged on our anguish, our pain, and our worst moments, and then  we're judged on how we deal with that constant judgment and pressure. We  make fun of celebrities who hire people to run their Twitter accounts,  but what sane person _wants_ to spend time and brainpower dealing with the toxicity that comes from having a presence online?

  This has nothing to do with politics, or gender. I know women who have  been threated physically because of their thoughts on real-time strategy  games. I knew men who had their spouses and children threatened, or had  racial or sexual harassment thrown their way, because of review scores.  This isn't new. This isn't rare. And it's not something anyone can  easily ignore, or something they should expected to endure silently and  gracefully.

  Is it crazy for someone to walk away from this environment? Absolutely  not. Asking the people who make our games to hold their breath, submerge  themselves in this environment, only to judge them for gasping when  they come back up for air is too much for anyone. We do it anyway, and  then we continue when they walk away.

  It's not about forgetting or forgiving bad behavior, or saying it's  okay to lash out at writers or fans, it's about finding a shred of  empathy for what so many online are asked to deal with on a daily, if  not hourly, basis. We call it all part of the job, as if you're not  allowed human emotions due to your success or prickly nature. 

  “Maybe Vahn is super patient. Maybe Vahn is super human. Maybe Vahn is heavily sedated,” Activision's Dan Amrich blogged about Treyarch's designer described above,  who is forced to deal with that abuse due to a small tweak in the game.  “But the fact that he focuses on the useful feedback, puts that intel  to good use fixing the problem, and doesn’t irrationally lash out at the  immature, whiny assholes is amazing.” Grace under that sort of fire  isn't professional, it's superhuman.

  Phil Fish cancelling a game isn't a win for anyone. It's another  symptom of this disease. It's also unlikely to teach anyone anything.  The next time someone comes up gasping for air, or finds a  self-destructive way to deal with the perpetual personal war the  Internet wages against creative people, we'll line up once again, ready  to shove their heads back under the water.

Quelle: The PA Report - Swimming in a sea of shit: Phil Fish and the Internet’s war against creatives


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## LordCrash (9. August 2013)

*A history of (muted) violence: The present and future of Adults Only games

 *http://www.polygon.com/features/2013/8/8/4595050/adults-only-ao-games



Dieses Mal ohne Einbettung hier, da dies das Layout des Artikels zu sehr zerstören würde. Außerdem ist der Artikel durchaus einen Besuch (bzw. Klick) bei Polygon wert.


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## LordCrash (9. August 2013)

*Core gamers, mobile games and the origins of the midcore audience*

         By Tracey Lien            on Aug 09, 2013       at 9:41a                 @traceylien 




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                         The rise in popularity of "midcore" video  games is partly fueled by technology advancements, increasing player  sophistication and core gamers demanding more from mobile devices,  according to developers from the mobile games industry.

  Until the past year, mobile games were mostly associated with casual  experiences and were labelled as such — casual games were found on  mobile, "hardcore" games were found on PC and consoles. But the recent  rise in games that identify as "midcore" is challenging the binary  notion that games need to fall into one category or another, or that  certain kinds of games belong on certain platforms.

 As the name would suggest, midcore games fall somewhere in the middle  of the casual to hardcore spectrum. The remaining criteria for what  makes a game midcore aren't widely agreed upon. Some developers argue  that midcore games are hardcore experiences played in casual ways (e.g.  shorter play sessions, less time commitment, more social frameworks),  while others argue that a hallmark of midcore is its high monetization  on a per-user basis.

 While the details of its definition might be disputed, its recent  growth in the gaming market isn't, and the developers we spoke to about  it had a few ideas as to why we've seen a recent spike in midcore games.

 James Hursthouse is the CEO and co-founder of Roadhouse Interactive, the studio behind _Mechwarrior Tactics, Elemental Power_ and _UFC Undisputed_. He believes there are two main forces behind the growth of midcore: device availability and demand from hardcore gamers.

 "Midcore has been driven by the emergence of tablet," Hursthouse told  Polygon. "It's very hard to say you're immersed in a three-in-a-row  game like_ Candy Crush Saga_, which is great on the one hand, but  at the same time if you want to have a more immersive experience you can  lose yourself in, then the larger screen size is part of the emergence  of midcore."

 According to Hursthouse, immersiveness is a key factor in midcore  games — they're experiences that are complex enough that players can  lose themselves in the game world. He likens the larger screen offered  by tablets to the gamer's previous domain of the large television with a  console attached to it. The tablet, he says, allows gamers to have that  same experience away from the television.




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 "I think it's more the case that people who have been gamers since  they've been kids, they're starting to have kids of their own now.  They're getting busy at work and they don't have the time to devote 20+  hours a week to a game," he said. "Those gamers want something they can  enjoy in bite-size pieces through a device that is with them all the  time."

 Hursthouse says that many of the game loops and actual game mechanics  in midcore games are "quite core," and that midcore mostly refers to  shorter play sessions.

 DeNA's Ben Cousins, who previously worked on EA's Battlefield series and recently released_ The Drownin_g for iOS, seconds Hursthouse's idea that technology is a primary driver of the midcore gaming market.

 Speaking to Polygon, Cousins said mobile devices are now powerful  enough to satisfy a "not-quite hardcore gamer, but certainly a gamer who  appreciates depth and high-quality graphics, and perhaps an adult tone  to their game, which are some of the definitions I would give for  midcore."

 According to Cousins, mobile devices were not powerful enough in the  early days of smartphones to support the kinds of games that appeal to  core gamers. As technology has advanced, more complex gaming experiences  have been made possible.
 "In the early years of the App Store, it was more casual and  2D-based," he said. "I think there are more hardcore experiences on the  devices now made possible by the technology, and that's a trend that  will continue. So I think we'll go from casual to midcore to core to  hardcore to ultra-hardcore, and by the end of the day I think our mobile  devices will be having really hardcore games like _League of Legends _or _World of Warcraft_-type equivalents."

 But not everyone agrees that it's all about the evolving technology.




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 Jon Radoff is the CEO and founder of Disruptor Beam, a studio best known for its work on _Game of Thrones Ascent_,  a strategy game on Facebook based on the Game of Thrones book and  television series. In his view, midcore isn't even a market — it's a  term that executives and investors within the games industry use to  describe games that have more sophisticated mechanics than have  historically been in the casual games market. The rise in the kinds of  games that people would label as midcore isn't fueled by hardcore gamers  — he believes it's coming from the casual end.

 "When you ask why didn't midcore happen sooner, I think that's part  of a question of how do markets evolve over time," Radoff said. "I think  it took time for people to get exposed to simpler games, and then learn  the tropes and the expectations of gameplay so they were then prepared  for more complex and sophisticated gameplay over time."

 Radoff told Polygon that it's not primarily a technological issue but  a cultural issue. The tech may have made it easier for people to  discover and access games, but it has not necessarily made the games  themselves any more complicated or deep — he cites board games like _Settlers of Catan_ as complex experiences executed using simple technology.

 Big Fish's VP and general manager Chris Williams is also skeptical of  the claim that technology was a primary factor in the rise of midcore.  According to Williams, many of the mechanics used in midcore games came  from Japan where they were pioneered on feature phones as text-based  experiences, so the ability to achieve depth in a game on simpler  technology was already possible more than a decade ago. As for immersive  mobile games with high end graphics, Williams told Polygon: "I think if  people want a graphically-rich, intensive experience, they're going to  buy the new console and sit down with their HD TV and get immersed. I  wouldn't say it's the power of the device that's fueling midcore."

 With the technology argument pushed to the side, Williams doesn't  believe the market is being fueled by casual gamers becoming more  sophisticated, either.

 "I wouldn't say it's casual gamers getting more sophisticated because  at a certain point you're going to have to a series of very polarizing  decisions to make," he said. "Do they want to compete head-to-head? Do  they want to come back to their game and have their village be attacked  and have lost all their resources and troops? Yes or no. If no, then  that's one leg of midcore chopped off.

 "Is someone who started off playing a casual game going to be a guild  leader in a D&D-esque game where they're hosting raids? That's hard  to believe."

 Like Hursthouse and Cousins, Williams believes midcore gaming is  being driven by the hardcore gamers who want to have those experiences  in a light-weight on-the-go way.

 "So I think it's coming the other way," he said. "It's core gamers  wanting the same times of social interactions and the same types of  gameplay experiences — without the commitment."

Quelle: Core gamers, mobile games and the origins of the midcore audience | Polygon


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## LordCrash (9. August 2013)

*How Wasteland 2 Will Acknowledge Gender, Discrimination*

 By Nathan Grayson on August 9th, 2013 at 12:00 pm.




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_If all goes according to plan, Wasteland 2 will be one of the most reactive, choice-driven games  to grace PCs since man first rubbed two sticks together and invented  the keyboard. Everything from juicy bits of dialogue to party members to  entire locations can vanish or appear in an instant, all thanks to your  actions. And wastelands, well, they tend to be pretty nasty places,  radiation-scorched cesspits of violence, prejudice, and, er, waste. So  naturally, some characters are going to hate you for simply being, well,  you. inXile’s hinted at the system in Kickstarter updates, but I found myself exceedingly curious about how it’ll all actually come together. Here’s what the developer told me._

 I adore Fallout 3, but even I’ll admit  that it was hardly water-tight. If you poked at it enough, you’d  eventually find holes: glitches, uninteresting characters, some sloppy  quests, and so on. But there was one area where Bethesda’s Fallout  revival fell flat on its face that I honestly didn’t notice until  someone pointed it out to me. And truth be told, that fact makes me feel  a bit ashamed.

 We want to be true to the individual characters, and not try to apply some sort of global morality.

 No matter what physical sex you chose, the game treated you like a probably-straight male. RPS comrade and Boobjammer extraordinaire Jenn Frank pointed it out in a brilliant piece  a while back, and after getting a glimpse of things from her point of  view, it became glaringly difficult to ignore. Threats, reactions to my  actions, the odd pick-up line – all delivered as though addressed to a  default “regular” dude (especially throughout the main storyline).

 That was bad enough on its own, but really the game just didn’t acknowledge much about what I was or who I was with _at all_.  Sex/gender was only the beginning. And I think that’s a shame because  a) it made the world go from living, breathing place to desert of  unblinking, defective automaton dolls and b) letting people fully  inhabit characters with day-to-day experiences different from their own  both enriches those people and makes game characters more interesting.  It struck me as a huge missed opportunity, especially in light of the  fact that desperate, dog-eat-dog post-apocalyptic situations can explore  these topics from angles that fantasy, futuristic sci-fi, and the real  world can’t even begin to touch.




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 So I was quite pleased to hear that Wasteland 2 will pay close attention to _precisely_  that. Party composition and your various characters’ identities will be  under frequent scrutiny by wastelanders’ mistrusting glares, a holdover  from the real world turned up to 11 by the fact that this setting isn’t  particularly kind to those who hand out free hugs with reckless  abandon. Or anyone really, for that matter.

 At one point during my multi-part Wasteland 2 demo session, we came  across a traveling salesman straining muscles and herniating discs to  get his cart out of the mud. He seemed nice enough – at least, once we  freed his wares from their waist-deep grave. Apparently, however, he  could’ve changed his tune in any number of ways if our party had been  even the slightest bit different.

 “Here’s a merchant that turns into a store if you help him get his  cart out of the mud,” explained inXile president Matt Findley.  “Otherwise he’s just a guy that hates you. The conversation that he has  with you is really dependent on so many different factors – the makeup  of the party. He has different lines if you come up with an all-women  party or if there’s a really high charisma male. There are little flags  that he’ll react to.”




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 Wasteland 2 isn’t necessarily trying to make a statement, though.  Rather, the goal is to portray a world full of interesting individuals –  each with their own preferences and prejudices. This place certainly  isn’t a kind one, so some will inevitably be assholes. Others might give  you the benefit of the doubt simply because you’ve picked a certain  sex/background or brought a certain character with you.

 “That particular character loves all-women parties,” Findley  continued, still referring to the merchant. “But some characters might  not give any information to an all-women party, because they might have a  problem with women. The idea is to make each NPC unique in their world  view. A guy might be more likely to give women information or more  likely to give men information. This guy specifically, I think he says  something inappropriate, and then raises his prices.”

 It’s an admirable attempt at infusing the world with its own internal  realism, but also a risky one. What if most of the game’s male NPCs  speak to women in overtly (or covertly) sexual fashions, whether being  jerky or “nice”? What if a majority of characters of a certain gender or  preference end up in negative roles or clustered into joke factions? Or  – those concerns in mind – what if inXile ends up playing it too safe,  creating an implausible wasteland of rainbow sparkles and butterfly  kisses? For his part, Findley was confident that his studio has crafted a  balanced, believable setting.

 “We want to be true to the individual characters, and not try to  apply some sort of global morality to all the characters in the world,”  he said. “We want to allow the characters to be unique and to have their  own world view and to be consistent.”




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 But when mechanics are tied closely to character and story, sometimes  certain choices can garner preferential treatment despite a developer’s  best intentions. Think of morality-based games where the “evil” side  grants cooler powers. That sort of thing. In these situations, it’s not  that left hand and right hand have never met. It’s that they don’t quite  see eye-to-eye, and the message they write together comes out muddled  and sloppily skewed. Again, however, inXile is doing its best to make  sure _nothing_ slips through the cracks.
 “Whatever your party makeup, however the world reacts to it, there’s  nothing that’s like, ‘This is the right one. This gives you an  advantage. This other one is the wrong one.’ There’s enough diversity in  the characters that you deal with that no matter how it’s made up,  there will be some advantages and some disadvantages,” Findley  clarified.

 “And then some of the reactivity is just cosmetic. It’s just changing  the intro line or the exit line. If you come in with an all-women  party, the only thing that might change is, when the conversation is  over, he’s like, ‘Have a good day, ladies!’ As opposed to just, ‘Have a  good day!’ Some of that reactivity just makes it a bit more personal, a  bit more unique.”




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 Topics like  preference, prejudice, and discrimination won’t grind to  a halt at physical characteristics, either. Wasteland’s world is quite  far removed from our own, so it has its own set of histories,  oppositions, and even atrocities. Various factions treat each other with  utmost contempt, and those morasses of ugly, burbling hatred will color  interactions between many characters, festering like a disease. Findley  pointed to the Red Skorpions as an especially hateful group.

 But again, it all comes down to individual characters at the end of  the day. There are exceptions to every rule, and there are exceptions to  those exceptions. For now, it’s just good to know that inXile is doing  its damndest to carve intimate details where most developers would never  even consider looking. Sometimes it’s not about the size or scope of  your world. Without love for every last element – whether tiny minutiae  or huge acknowledgements of the fact that _anyone_ could be playing your game - it’s all just a giant waste.

Quelle: How Wasteland 2 Will Acknowledge Gender, Discrimination | Rock, Paper, Shotgun


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## LordCrash (12. August 2013)

Es gibt ihn doch noch, den echten Spiele JOURNALISMUS. Den Beitrag, der mich zum Nachdenken anregt, der nicht nur reine Informationswiedergabe ist. Der Beitrag, dem ich jedem empfehle, der intensiv und viel spielt und jedem, der daran interessiert ist, warum wir spielen und was der Kern eines Videosspiels im Bezug auf unser reales Leben ist. 





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## LordCrash (13. August 2013)

*Smothered by Nostalgia*

  August 12, 2013 10:00AM PDT, Tom Mc Shea, Editor

_    Tom Mc Shea explores how our insatiable desire to relive the past has undercut the creative freedoms that developers need._

     Nostalgia has a power over me that is is unlike any other compulsion.  During my formative years, I was more likely to explore Hyrule than my  own backyard, and my heart still thumps happily when that electric theme  pricks my ears. Free from responsibilities, I spent untold hours with a  controller in my hands, and I would love to rekindle the feelings that  warmed my younger heart. But it's not possible. 
Everything was so new  back then, so exciting, and developers cannot recapture that wonder by  resurrecting the past. Even though I am still susceptible to the sounds  and imagery of my childhood, I've realized just how underhanded the  business of cashing in on nostalgia has become. I no longer relish the  promise of recreated memories; I just shudder. 




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DuckTales Remastered  is the most recent example of a game that relies on the goodwill its  progenitor inspired to make it relevant today. From the moment the midi  rendition of the iconic theme song started to play, visions of sitting  in my friend's basement trying to overcome that treacherous Transylvania  stage bounced in my head. I was hooked before I even picked up the  controller. Sadly, my happy memories began to slip away once I set out  on my treasure-hunting adventure. So boring is DuckTales Remastered that  I began to doubt if the original was actually good, or if my childhood  ignorance had clouded my judgment. Thankfully, we have a copy of the  real DuckTales in our office, and it took no more than a couple of  minutes for me to realize that I was right to heap such praise on these  earlier pogo escapades. 

 Wayforward Technologies fell into a trap like countless other  development studios before them. Instead of focusing on the underlying  appeal of the original game (in this case, the satisfying action), they  highlighted secondary pleasures such as the soundtrack and characters.  It's a misstep that does a massive disservice to the source material.  DuckTales hasn't stood the test of time because of its catchy tunes  alone; if that were the case, we'd cherish the music but nothing else.  No, it was the spelunking action that was so incredible. WayForward  messed with the physics, toned down the difficulty, and transformed the  thrilling original into a hollow shell of its former self. It's a  superficial remastering that tries to exploit the nostalgic feeling so  many people hold rather than create its own place within this industry.  

 And yet, I do have sympathy for the position that WayForward put  themselves in. By peddling nostalgia, WayForward had to walk the line  between the old-school ideals the original exhibited and the modern  sensibilities we've grown accustomed to. Whereas I celebrate my  memories, they were handcuffed to them, forced to deliver an experience  that was both a faithful reimagining as well as a new entry that could  stand on its own. There's no question that they failed in their task,  but our excessive demands put them in a position where it was nearly  impossible to succeed. We remember DuckTales--or at least think that we  do--and believe that any developer given the chance to work with such a  property should be able to improve upon an experience that we deem a  classic.  

 Talk about an unenviable situation. 




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  It's because of our insatiable love of all things nostalgia that we  receive such sad efforts. If WayForward had the gall to ignore the  blueprint of our expectations, we would have lambasted them. How dare  they deviate from the expected path? DuckTales Remastered follows the  template created by the original, never offering a hint of genuine  ingenuity. 2D platformer? Check. Cane hopping? Check! Globe trotting?  Pattern-based bosses? Gem collecting? Check, check, and check. There's  no room for deviation from the core foundation, and that's unfair.  Because we're so feverishly drawn toward nostalgia, we limit the  creative freedoms of developers. They build games around our memories  rather than their own desires, and that means we're stuck with flat  offerings that might contain the music and the characters we remember,  but none of the formidable elements that can conjure lasting appeal. 

 The saddest part of this quixotic quest is that developers often succeed  in blinding us through brazen manipulation. Problems that would be  crushing in a typical game are overlooked when they're surrounded by the  characters and music that we've grown to love. The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword  contains imaginative puzzles and devious dungeons, but does have its  fair share of annoying problems as well. If the endless tutorials and  forced backtracking weren't shielded by the fantasy world we're so  enamored with, would so many people have been as forgiving? Would people  have so eagerly shelled out money to play The Simpsons Arcade Game  if they didn't have fond memories of jumping rope as Lisa in a dimly  lit arcade? Is there any chance Sonic would even still exist if people  couldn't look back fondly at his Genesis days?  

 Publishers have learned how susceptible we are to nostalgia and used  that power against us. Stamping a franchise from our youth on the front  of the box practically guarantees that a significant contingent of  people will play (and enjoy) it no matter how many problems it contains.  I've been outspoken about the dip in quality Zelda has suffered, but  there are few games that I'm looking forward to more than whatever form  Link takes on the Wii U. I'm so drawn to this franchise that, no matter  how many times I've been beaten down, I still stand back up, ready to  embrace whatever comes next. This is a terrible cycle of rising  expectations and crushed hopes, and I'm helpless to break free from it.  I'm trapped in a cage of nostalgia, and even though the door has been  left wide open, I refuse to escape.   




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  But we do have a choice. We have the freedom to turn up our nose at  subpar efforts. Instead of forcing developers to continually try to  remake our youth, we should urge them to try something new. After all,  neither The Legend of Zelda  nor DuckTales were trying to appeal to any of our prior memories. They  were great on their own merits, and have been celebrated for more than  two decades because of what they accomplished. If we stop demanding that  developers must continually release sequels and that said games must  adhere to a strict formula, we empower these creators to make something  they're passionate about. We need to break free from the hold nostalgia  has on us. Only then will we be able to see games for what they truly  are, and maybe open ourselves up to entirely new experiences.

Quelle: Smothered by Nostalgia - GameSpot.com


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## LordCrash (15. August 2013)

*Brian Fargo On InXile’s Darkest, Publisher-Driven Days*

By Nathan Grayson on August 15th, 2013 




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_The future is looking very bright for Wasteland 2 and Torment: Tides of Numenera developer inXile. Very bright indeed.  Two wildly successful Kickstarters and one nearly complete, maddeningly  exciting game later, Brian Fargo and co have finally found their niche.  Or rather, they’ve settled back into the comforting clockwork of an old  wheelhouse, an old home. But the road to this point was hardly an easy  one. The developer-publisher relationship has always been rather skewed,  and inXile’s taken its fair share of licks. Some times have been good  (see: The Bard’s Tale), and others, well, others have been Hunted: The  Demon’s Forge. The latter, especially, is a sore spot for Fargo, but  he’s been burned by various publishing arrangements far more than once.  He and I discussed that subject, whether Kickstarter is inXile’s  permanent solution to that problem, and tons more after I saw Wasteland 2. It’s all below._

*RPS: Working with publishers has been kind of a bumpy ride  for inXile. On one hand, you got to do Bard’s Tale, but then you also  ended up doing things like porting Line Rider, having big projects  canceled, and, er, developing a party game. That’s basically the  opposite of a sprawling, sophisticated PC RPG.*

 Fargo: It’s like in all businesses, when you start them. The  beginning is what you have to do. You work your way up to what you want  to do. I always wanted to make role-playing games, but it was impossible  until now. With Bard’s Tale, it had to be consoles. I could not get a  deal unless it was console-oriented. And then, whether it was Line Rider  or Fantastic Contraption, that was just me seeing talent or seeing  products I thought would sell. We’ve done very well with them. But I was  struggling to find a business model to allow us to make these kinds of  games.

 It’s easy to look back and say, “Brian, you should have just gone  from Interplay and done role-playing games. What an obvious thing for  you to do.” It wasn’t there. When I would talk to publishers, because  there was no other way to get the money, I never got to the part where  they said, “How much?” They had no interest at any price. There were no  options. Once I saw Kickstarter, I said, “This is it. Here’s our  chance.”




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*RPS: How long had you had the idea to do a Wasteland 2 before you finally could do it?*

 Fargo: 2002. Well, when did I get the mark? 2004. I take that back.  2004. But I’d wanted to do something with it. It was one of the first  marks that I got. I thought it was going to be an easy pitch, especially  because I had it, and then I was trying to get things going, but then  Fallout 3 came out from Bethesda and sold like five million copies.  Okay. This is fantastic. I executive produced Wasteland and Fallout. I  got one of the designers from Fallout, Jason Anderson, working here. And  I had Mike Stackpole, one of the original designers of Wasteland. I  have the perfect pitch. I thought, based upon Bethesda’s success, that  it would be easy. Nope. No way.

*RPS: They’re very different sorts of games at this point.*

 Fargo: Yeah. They are different. But here’s the best part. As painful  as it was [to be turned down so much], I’m glad it never happened any  other way. The game we’re making now, that’s the game I wanted to make. I  don’t know that, if it had been financed a different way, or with a  partner along the way, that I’d be able to do it the way that I’m doing  now. It was the best thing for the product.

 There was a keynote at GDC Shanghai at the end of 2011. It was about  the death of the narrative role-playing game. I would go to Singapore  and China and they’d say, “What about Bard’s Tale? What about  Wasteland?” I’d always get asked about it. It was all about free-to-play  and where that market was going. It’s hard to do a narrative when I’m  focusing every bit of my effort on how to get money out of your pocket.  It’s a different kind of experience. So it was all about how it was kind  of sad that I didn’t see how those games could be made anymore. It was  not even six months later that we had the Kickstarter.

*RPS: How has the unpredictability of publisher-driven  development affected your company? How much has it grown and shrank? It  sounds like things weren’t looking so great for you guys before  Kickstarter.*

 Fargo: We used to have more than 60 people. I had to mothball it down  to about 15. Again, it’s been trying to find a business model that  works, something that’s repeatable. Being a developer is very difficult,  because you don’t know what comes next, what you’re going to be working  on. The all-or-nothing strategies.

*RPS: When you had to cut it down to that size, did you think  you were in danger of just having to call it quits on the whole thing?*

 Fargo: I always had revenue coming in from Bard’s Tale and Line Rider  and Choplifter. I’m kind of a scrappy guy, for making things happen. I  wanted to build a business. Ironically, I was going full circle.  Interplay was a very similar thing, in that when I first started  Interplay, it was, “How do I build a business?” Most of the guys who  were making games back then were making money. Somebody who did a Dr. J  and Larry Bird, well, it sold about a quarter million units, and if  you’re just one guy who did it, he’s doing great. If I have a team of  people and I sell a quarter million units, big deal. It was why  Interplay became a publisher, ultimately.

 When I was doing Bard’s Tale one, two, and three, Wasteland, I wasn’t  making much money. I was making nothing. My guys were getting it all. I  was making nothing. That was why we became a publisher and started  doing Battle Chess and Castles and all those other things. It was  changing the paradigm. Here, I could probably sit at home and, through  my contacts and ideas, make a nice little living, but it’s not really  building a business and doing all this, which is what I love. So it’s  come full circle, me figuring out how to do that again.

*RPS: It’s interesting that you went from something like  Hunted: Demon’s Forge to this. That, to me, felt like an RPG that was  all of the… “This needs to be on console, so we have to include elements  from shooters and things like that” obligatory pandering.*

 Fargo: The original pitch for that was to be a dungeon crawl. That  was what that game wanted to be. Then it got slowly changed to become  more of a shooter. But that’s not my background, so… To me, that was a  typical failing, where you have the arguments about what a product  should be and everything that goes with it. People don’t know sometimes  how little the developer can have input-wise into a product, even if  it’s theirs. The opening cinematics weren’t done by us. The voice  casting was not done by us. We didn’t get to direct the voices in the  game. There are all these things that go on that are just pulled away  from the developer, that we had no control over.
 Ultimately, the people that control the purse strings are going to  control the direction of the product. But yeah, how it came out was very  different than what my pitch was.




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*RPS: When that happened, was it basically devastating? *

 Fargo: Extremely so. Frustrating. Very frustrating. Because  ultimately… It’s like when Obsidian took a hit on their Metacritic and  didn’t get their bonus. Mostly they got dinged because it was a buggy  product. Obsidian, their reputation was taking a hit for shipping buggy  products. They don’t control QA. The publisher controls it. The  publisher always controls QA. They decide when it’s done. There’s no bug  we can’t fix. There’s no bug they can’t fix. Somebody made a conscious  decision – because there was a list. I guarantee you the QA department  had a list of bugs. They said, “We don’t care. We gotta ship it anyway.”  Why does the developer lose their bonus and get their reputation killed  for that?

 So yeah, you can imagine – even if it’s a different scenario – how it  can be frustrating to be a developer doing work when you’re the one  that’s taking it every which way. You’re usually not making money,  either. I would run the numbers on games and say, “Look. You guys are up  $20 million in profit. It’s my idea. I came to you. I did 100 percent  of the work. And guess what? I don’t mind if you make more money than  me. That doesn’t bother me, because you took the financial risk.  However, when you’re up $20 million after paying your marketing and  everything, don’t you think we deserve $1 million?” Nope. So yes, it’s  frustrating.

*RPS: So then you inevitably have to lay off a bunch of your  friends and co-workers because there’s no longer enough to go around.*

 Fargo: Yeah. Every dollar they give you, typically… There’s always  some deals that change. I’m sure the guys working on Titanfall have a  different deal, so put that on the side. But most developers have a  certain kind of deal. It’s all in advance. If a publisher says… Let’s  say they slow you down and you have to spend another six months on the  project and your team is burning half the money in a month. That’s $3  million of your money. You’re in the hole another $3 million, because  everything is in advance.

 It also hurts on the creativity, because let’s say you think, “God, I  have a great idea. Let’s do it.” And it takes two more weeks to do it.  Now you’re in the hole another $150,000 for doing it. It’s counter to  coming up with clever ideas. It’s almost like you saying, “Oh, I have a  great idea, but you know what? I have to add some more money on to my  mortgage.” You’re not going to be as inclined to come up with creative  ideas, because you’re never getting out of that hole. You’re digging it  deeper. That’s why you have… Usually the owner of the company is  spending very little of his time on the project, which you’d like him to  spend. Instead he’s thinking, “What are we going to do next? We’re  probably not going to recoup and I don’t want to let people with  families lose their jobs.”

*RPS: With that looming specter of joblessness, too, I think  you end up risking not letting the team establish a rapport. If someone  comes into a company with the knowledge that after the project’s done,  they’ll probably be out, then they can’t get comfortable. They never end  up feeling like part of something bigger.*

 Fargo: And they’re looking for jobs as a result. What you’re going to  have is, towards the end of the project you’ll have people leave.  You’ll have people leave with two months to go. They’re saying, “Brian,  do I have a job afterward? What’s the deal?” I’m not gonna lie. I’m  gonna say, “I don’t know. My publisher wants to see how well the product  does.” That’s not very much reassurance for a guy who has a wife and  kids. You have that even further on top of it.

 That’s why this is wonderful here. Everybody knows that we’ve been  pre-funded. Any units we ship will be profit. Also, I have Torment. I  don’t assume that… We may sell 10,000 units or a million units. I don’t  know. I don’t count on that. We don’t know where the production is going  to roll. So most of these people you see – Matt and Chris and them –  they’ve all been here for 10 years.




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*RPS: How big is inXile now?*

 Fargo: A little more than 20 now.

*RPS: How big had it blown up to during Hunted and things like that?*

 Fargo: More than 60.

*RPS: So that’s when it hit more than 60. Then you just had to let most of those people go.*

 Fargo: Yeah. We had to reinvent ourselves. If you’re not doing a big  triple-A game, you can’t have 60 people. You just can’t do it. It’s so  hard to make money doing the triple-A business. So hard.

*RPS: Yeah. You see it more and more right now. People who  have been triple-A for decades, even, going indie. I know that there’s  been… Not an exodus, but a number of people leaving 2K Marin now that  The Bureau is wrapping up. They’re all going off and just doing little  indie projects, because it’s finally viable.*

 Fargo: Right. It’s more satisfying. You feel closer to the sales part  of it, too. You think, “If I can make this do 50,000 units…”

*RPS: Then you’re golden.*

 Fargo: Yeah, you’re golden. These times, they are a-changin’.

*RPS: Do you think that, as a company, for whatever the next  thing is once you’re done with Wasteland and you’re on Torment, will  Kickstarter crowdfunding be where you go for that too? No more  publishers?*

 Fargo: I don’t see why we wouldn’t stay with it. You can look at it  from a persepective of… Obviously it would only be predicated on us  delivering a Wasteland that everybody loves. Now we’ve delivered a game,  and they did it. To go back again, you could look at it from one  perspective of, “Hey, that way we can get the game cheaper than if we  bought it at the final price.” But there’s this whole dialogue and this  whole vetting of the idea. If I want to go do something, well, maybe  it’s a good idea and maybe it’s not. To me, it ferrets out all these  different issues. It opens up a dialogue that we love. I think it’s a  great way of doing business. I couldn’t see stopping it.




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*RPS: What about your history, though? Do you think you’ll keep revisiting aspects of it? What about Bard’s Tale, for instance?

*  Fargo: I hate to comment on what we’re going to do next, because we  have a lot of different ideas, but I’d be more likely to do something  more for my core audience than I would to do something off-kilter. We  have our niche. It’s role-playing games. One guy’s going to have a niche  for train simulators. I think we’re all going to have our different  niches. I feel like I know what this audience loves. I’m good at  delivering it. So I’m more likely to stay in that wheelhouse.

 Comedy [ala the most recent Bard's Tale] is tough, though. I just  find that with humor, everybody has an opinion on it. We were going to  do a Bard’s Tale 2 Disney, actually. Kind of a funny story. They loved  Bard’s Tale, right? So we had this letter of intent in place. We  delivered a script. And then somebody on their team, who was an  accountant, said, “This isn’t funny.” It was only a first draft. We were  going to make a thousand iterations over the next year and a half. It  was just to get going. “Well, it’s not funny.” So I was talking to one  of the executives there and I said, “Okay. We think it’s funny. She  didn’t think it’s funny. We have just shipped a game that we wrote,  Bard’s Tale, that people said is the funniest game of all time. So being  that we’re like this, wouldn’t you give us the nod? Wouldn’t you think  that maybe we had it? You know, the accountant, she hasn’t done this  before.” Nope. Killed us. For that and for some other reasons. But it  wasn’t funny [laughs].

*RPS: Hah. But also awwww. Thank you for your time. It was, um, a lot. Extremely kind of you.


*Quelle: Brian Fargo On InXile’s Darkest, Publisher-Driven Days | Rock, Paper, Shotgun


----------



## LordCrash (16. August 2013)

*Plague of game dev harassment erodes industry, spurs support groups *

         By Brian Crecente            on Aug 15, 2013       at 1:00p                 @crecenteb 




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                         The greatest threat to the video game  industry may be some of its most impassioned fans.  Increasingly, game developers are finding themselves under attack by  some of the very people they devote their lives to entertaining. And  this growing form of gamer-on-game-developer cyber harassment is  starting to take its toll.

  Developers, both named and those who wish to remain anonymous, tell  Polygon that harassment by gamers is becoming an alarmingly regular  expected element of game development. Some developers say the problem  was among the reasons they left the industry, others tell Polygon that  the problem is so ubiquitous that it distracts them from making games or  that they're considering leaving the industry.
 The problem has become so pronounced that International Game  Developers Association executive director Kate Edwards tells Polygon  that the organization is looking into starting support groups and that  while the harassment isn't yet having a major impact on game  development, "we're at the cusp of where it could."


*Power and positioning*

 Fans are, by definition, fanatical.

 That passion for the books they read, the movies and television they  watch and the games they play can lead to amazing things from cosplay to  tribute operas, from charities to art. But that fanaticism can also  lead to a level of obsession that can trigger some very bad things like  threats of death, kidnapping, torture, stalking and financial ruin.

 Online harassment, no matter the reasoning, is always about power and  positioning, about putting people in their place, said Nathan Fisk,  lecturer at the Department of Science and Technology Studies at  Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

 "I think fans harass developers for a range of reasons, but again, it  is always about power and position," said Fisk,  who co-authored  Bullying in the Age of Social Media. "Fans are invested in the stories  and worlds that developers create, and certain design decisions can be  seen by fans to threaten those stories and worlds. Harassment silences  and repositions content creators in ways that protect the interests of  certain fan groups, which again is no justification for the kinds of  abusive behavior and language seen online today."

 The internet and the anonymity it grants has made harassment easier.  According to several studies, Fisk said, the lack of social cues and  perceived lack of consequences afforded online communication also  changes the way people treat one another.

 "This is particularly true in the case of harassment in gaming  communities, as most of the abusive behavior is not grounded in local,  offline relationships and social networks," Fisk said. "There are groups  of fans harassing developers and representatives, and it can be assumed  that very few (if any) of those fans have actually met those developers  in person. Further, game developers are in many ways becoming public  figures as they openly interact with gaming communities, and social  networking technologies have made making contact a simple process."

 Fisk believes that online harassment is more of a problem for  industries and professions which rely heavily on the creation and  management of public image, than those that don't. And the video game  industry's evolution to mainstream popularity may be playing some role  in the problem.

 "In particular, I think that the game developers — more recently  independent developers — are struggling with becoming public figures,"  he said. "I also suspect that problems with online harassment have long  been a problem for the gaming industry, but with the level of visibility  provided by platforms such as Twitter and the growing public concern  over various forms of harassment among gamers, that industry  representatives are no longer willing to quietly ignore harassing or  threatening comments."

 The rise in harassment in gaming communities can be linked to a number of factors, Fisk believes.

 "First, traditionally gaming communities have developed around big,  triple-A games, coming from developers and publishers large enough to  have employed moderators and PR staff," he said. "With the recent  explosion of independent development, there are small teams or  individual developers managing the work of managing fans and  expectations on their own, resulting in increased tensions and the  potential for more publicly visible reactions. Second, gaming  communities are experiencing growing pains as they become more diverse  and mature, challenging the status quo. The recent debates over the  portrayal of women and minorities in games are bound to generate  aggressive and hateful comments, which again do the work of silencing  and repositioning those groups to maintain dominance. Finally, I think  there has been a reaction by gaming communities towards industry trends  which are genuinely manipulative and restrictive, and while that in no  way justifies abusive behavior, it certainly plays a role in the  increase of online harassment by fans and gamers."

 Fisk said he and his colleagues were just discussing recent issues within the gaming community, including those surrounding _Fez 2_ and _Call of Duty: Black Ops 2_.

  Late last month, Treyarch studio design director David Vonderhaar  took to Twitter to announce a patch to popular first-person shooter _Call of Duty: Black Ops 2_.  The seemingly innocuous changes included reducing the damage of one  weapon and rate of fire on two others. The changes, which were fractions  of a second, spurred threats of violence online and an editorial by Activision social media manager Dan Amrich.

 In the piece, Amrich cautioned calmer heads and noted that a vocal minority were giving gamers everywhere a bad name.

 "If you enjoy your games," he wrote, "have a little respect for the  people who make them — and stop threatening them with bodily harm every  time they do their job."

 Four days later, game developer Phil Fish got into an online argument  with writer Marcus Beer, tweeting "I fucking hate this industry" (for  the negativity and criticism it's brought.) The back and forth ended  with Fish tweeting, "I'm done. _Fez 2_ is canceled. Goodbye."

 He later confirmed the game's cancellation, and hasn't responded to press requests for comment since.

 Those two are just the most recent in a series of vitriolic responses to games and the people who make them this year.

 Adam Orth, a Microsoft Studios creative director, provocatively  tweeted about always-online consoles in April in the thick of growing  trepidation about that possible requirement for the Xbox One. The tweets  spurred death threats, an apology from Microsoft and international news  coverage. Orth left Microsoft about a week later.

 The botched launch of _SimCity_ in March led to a flood of angry  emails, tweets and the seemingly inevitable death threats focused at  some of those involved with the always-online game.

 And those are just some of the more public cases of harassment.  Stephen Toulouse, who for six years headed up Xbox Live's policy and  enforcement, says the problem is omnipresent in gaming.


*"I'm going to kill you"*

 "I have approximately 70 messages on Xbox Live right now and half of  them are, 'I'm going to kill you' and 'I'm going to find you and destroy  you' and I haven't worked (at Microsoft) in two years. Even to this day  people who don't know I left Microsoft still come after me."

 But Toulouse seems more amused than annoyed by the messages. It comes  with being the head banhammer at Xbox Live for so many years. It's to  be expected, he says.

 "The root cause of the problem isn't in what we do, making games,  it's that there are so little consequences to this wildly violent  approach of communication that we are simply one audience of many that  are subject to this type of focus," he said. "There's no real penalty  right now."

 For Toulouse that consequence-free harassment even included swatting,  essentially tricking a law enforcement agency to respond to a person's  house for what they think is a violent confrontation.

 "Even the swatting thing, only now that Justin Bieber gets swatted,  do prosecutors go, 'Oh, we should probably do something about this'," he  said. "I couldn't get the Seattle police interested to save their  lives, in prosecuting the kids who were doing this. I'm like, 'Come on,  guys, they're sending your SWAT team out. What if you shot somebody.  Don't you have an interest in going after these kids?' And they're like,  'No, because they are kids and at the end of the day it will be a  juvenile sentence in juvenile court and that doesn't give prosecutors  headlines.'"




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While adults certainly take part in online harassment, Toulouse believes that it is the younger harassers who are the worst.

 "With the adults you get a lot of the bluster, but no follow  through," he said. "Because they do have something to lose. They might  realize on some level the difference between typing, 'I'm going to kill  you,' and calling you and saying you're going to kill someone is a  pretty big leap when you can be recorded."

 "The vast majority of adult vitriol is bluster."

 Toulouse says working as the head of enforcement for Xbox Live  required him to have very thick skin, something not all developers have.
 "You have to approach it from a very dispassionate point of view, and  that's a really hard thing to do," he said. "Not everyone can do that.  That's a tall thing to ask people to do. It's like, 'Yeah, I know they  just said they're going to rape your wife, but you've got to let that  bounce off you.' That's tough to ask people to do."

 In his role at Xbox Live, Toulouse said he was often asked to step in and help developers deal with these sorts of issues.

 "A lot of developers just sit and make their games," he said. "Not  everyone is Jonathan Blow, who is willing to engage. The vast majority  don't, so they're almost constantly surprised when something happens.

 "Here you are trying to create and in what manner does creation  entail, engender or otherwise justify horrifically violent  communication. It's not like we're making political or religious  inflammatory content, we're making games. At what level does making a  game trigger that bizarre overreaction and hatred?"

 Toulouse said that when he started at Xbox he analyzed the problems  Xbox Live was having with this issue and determined that one solution  was to have a single person as the face of enforcement for Live, a  "sheriff."

 "Nobody knew who was actually processing those complaints," he said.  "Customers needed to know that there is someone who is in charge of  making sure this gets better. What came along with that, unfortunately,  was SWAT teams and threats and abuse."

 One of the reasons Toulouse left, he said, was because Microsoft didn't know how to deal with that from a corporate standpoint.

 "Microsoft didn't know what to do," he said. "I would bring it up. I  would say, 'Hey, I am putting my family at material risk, by you wanting  me to be this public sheriff.'"

 Toulouse said he asked for security because people would tell him they were going to kill him at events like PAX.

 "They were like, 'We don't do that,'" he said.

 Since Toulouse's departure, no one has stepped into those very public  shoes. So while Xbox Live certainly still has a sheriff, it's not a  person as approachable or harassable.


*The Cyberbullying Research Center*

 Founded in 2005, the Cyberbullying Research Center is a clearinghouse  of information on the misuses and abuses of technology. 

Co-directors  Sameer Hinduja and Justin Patchin have been researching the topic since  2002 and includes data from about 14,000 children about their  experiences as both cyberbully and victim.

 One thing they've found is that there seems to exist a disconnect between a person and their conscience when they go online.

 "When individuals are online they are sort of separated from their  conscience and from social conventions and morals and norms and even the  law, and they feel a little bit more free to say whatever they want to  say," Hinduja said. "You can be spontaneous online and just listen to  your emotions and just go off on someone without taking a moment to sort  of assess the situation."

 While the organization saw its formation in the wake of a number of  cyberbullying-spurred teen suicides, and was formed to deal directly  with the problem in schools, Hinduja said that adults routinely contact  the group seeking advice. The center also occasionally works with  companies on cyber harassment issues.

 "We hear these stories (like the game industry harassment cases) and  we know that they are taking their toll on adults," he said. "We're  seeing more and more of these cases surface."

 Hinduja sees the problem getting worse before it gets better. That's  because he believes society is entering a new internet age, one that  doesn't bring with it the decorum and manners formed over thousands of  years of civilization.




> *Stop Harassment*
> 
> 1. Do not retaliate.
> 2. Keep evidence of all harassment.
> ...


 
  It's as if the internet hit a reset button for some people in terms of how they treat one another.

 "It's almost like we're reverting to our primitive tendencies where  we didn't know rules of social decorum and so forth," he said, and in  the short term it seems to be getting worse, as if people are socially  devolving online.

 "I feel like how we've progressed over the years and decades, I feel  like it's more and more normative to be cruel and then be JK, LOL, not  really a big deal, even though we know that words wound," he said. "I  think we're seeing a desensitization when it comes to acceptability and  conduct, whether it's online conduct or even offline conduct, whether  it's verbal or textual or the things we post to embarrass other people.  We can try to cover our tracks or say we were just messing around, but  the damage is done. That's why we have kids killing themselves based on  what's been posted and sent and shared."

 Hinduja's hope is that at some point the social devolution will stop  and people will start acting online how they do in real life.

 "My hope is that, and hopefully this doesn't sound too idealistic,  that over time people ostracize those who are jerks to other people, who  are rude and cruel online and we just get to a point where we just  don't do that anymore," he said. "Kind of like we don't really litter  anymore. Or people don't use the N word anymore because we finally  socially have gotten to a point where it is completely unacceptable. My  hope is that we get to that point with this sort of stuff."


*"Graphic threats to kill my children"*

 Jennifer Hepler left BioWare this week to begin work on a book about  narrative design and do some freelance work. Her most recent job title  was senior writer on _Dragon Age: Inquisition_. But it was _Dragon Age 2_ that led to the death threats, the threats against her family and children and the harassment.

 After _Dragon Age 2_ came out in 2011, Hepler told Polygon, many  of the people involved in the game's development received angry emails,  abusive forum posts and petitions calling for them to be fired. About  that time, someone dug up an old interview Hepler participated in six  years earlier. In the interview Hepler mentioned that her least favorite  part of working in the game industry was playing through games and  combat. Some of the interview was put in the official forums as evidence  that Hepler was to blame for changes in the game's combat. The forum  post was removed and Hepler went on maternity leave. But then the  following February someone created a forum post resurfacing the  interview and called Hepler the "cancer" that was destroying BioWare.

 "I had opened a Twitter account a few weeks before that, and this  poster or others quickly found me there and began sending threatening  messages," she said. "I shut my account down without reading them, so  I'm not certain what they said, but other people have told me they were  quite vile."

 The forum post and Hepler's initial response on Twitter, ignited a  firestorm of hatred and harassment that included emailed death threats  and threats against her children.




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 "I did my best to avoid actually reading any of it, so I'm not quite  certain how bad it got," Hepler said. "I was shown a sample of the forum  posts by EA security and it included graphic threats to kill my  children on their way out of school to show them that they should have  been aborted at birth rather than have to have me as a mother."

 Hepler also received harassing phone calls and threats on the BioWare Social Network.

 The impact though, she said, was mostly positive.

 "The outpouring of support I received — large amounts from female and  gay fans — was incredibly heartening," she said. "I got hundreds of  messages from people who had been deeply moved by characters and scenes  that I wrote and who had made positive changes in their real lives  because of it. Without the negativity, I'm not sure that I would ever  have heard from all of these people confirming that there is a need for  characters that tackle touchy social issues, for characters who are  untraditional or even unlikeable. It has definitely strengthened my  desire to continue to make games that strive for inclusivity and that  use fiction and fantasy to explore difficult, uncomfortable real-world  issues."

 The incident also spurred Hepler to think a lot about how to raise  her children who "won't have that sense of entitlement where if they  don't enjoy a particular entertainment product they think it's fair to  attack the creators personally."

 "I definitely try to make them understand that there are real people  behind the shows they watch and the games they play," she said, "and  even if they don't like the finished product, they should understand and  respect the work that went into it."

 As with other game makers who have been harassed, others who have  been attacked reach out to Hepler to talk about their own incidents.

 "It's something that comes up in almost every conversation with  female developers," she said. "Overall, people seem to try to shrug it  off publicly and fume privately, and younger women contemplating the  field are reconsidering whether they have the stomach to handle what it  currently asks of them. That's the biggest risk, in my opinion: that we  will lose out on the talents of people who would make fantastic games  that we would all be the better for playing, because they legitimately  don't want to make themselves into targets. A lot of the best artists  and storytellers (and quite a few great programmers too), tend to be  sensitive people — we shouldn't lose out on their talents because we are  requiring them to be tough, battle-scarred veterans just to walk in the  door."

 Hepler, like many of the people who talked to about this, believes  that gamer-on-game maker harassment is one of the biggest threats to the  video game industry.

 "Games cost much too much money to focus on a niche market," she  said. "To survive, they need to be such a broadly popular part of  entertainment culture that you would be hard-pressed to find anyone who  doesn't play games. Women represent over 50 percent of the population,  tend to be in charge of household finances, and are the majority  purchasers of games (when factoring in games bought by women as gifts  for husbands, children, friends, etc.). To indulge a community that is  actively trying to alienate this powerful market segment (not to mention  gay men, casual gamers of all types and anyone new to the hobby), is  suicidal.

 "It's important to listen to fans about what's important to them, but  it's equally important to listen to people who are not currently gamers  about why they aren't playing. Hardcore gamers want a product that is  made specifically for them and is actively unfriendly to anyone new.  They will beg and bully to get this product and then praise and wax  nostalgic over any game that lives up to their standards even if the  company that made it went bankrupt. They don't care about keeping  companies in business or artists employed. Their only job as fans is to  say what pleases them, and it would be foolish to expect them to think  beyond that. But to cater to those desires without thinking about how to  bring new audiences in and make them comfortable will ultimately result  in a stagnant and money-losing industry.

 "I could go on and on about this, but I'm just going to consider one  example: the word 'noob.' If you decide to take up almost any other  hobby in the world, you can find beginning classes teaching you how to  do it. If you want to knit, you can go to a yarn store and meet fellow  knitters who will help you get the basics. If you want to play  basketball, you can join a rec center or community league at a beginner  level. And generally, the people already involved in those hobbies are  thrilled to have someone with whom they can share their passion. But if  you want to get started as a gamer, you get told, 'go home noob,'  because people in this hobby hate newcomers so much they turned the word  itself into an insult. How are we supposed to thrive as an industry if  we are actively hostile to growing our audience?"


*A harassment support group*

 "At the end of the day, it seems the number of hot button issues you  can 'step on' increases every day," one triple-A developer told Polygon.  "Soon, I think a lot of game developers will spend as much time going  about avoiding those issues, time they could have focused on better game  design, performance, art direction and balance."

 The topic of developer harassment has circled among special interest  groups within the International Game Developers Association for awhile,  but recently it seems to be coming to a head, said IGDA executive  director Kate Edwards.

 "It's gotten onto our radar," she said. "We're getting to a point  where we're thinking, 'Yeah, it's becoming something we're going to need  to talk about. It might be time to consider doing a more explicit  support group or mechanism to help people who are dealing with this sort  of thing."

 What bothers Edwards, beyond the very real impact it has the  individuals targeted, is the potential impact it could have on the  industry as a whole.

 "It adds a layer of discouragement," she said, "especially to people  who are just starting out or maybe they had a career at a studio, a  larger studio, and they're trying to start an indie effort and now  they're getting squashed right out of the gate, before they even really  finished something. I don't think it's having a major impact (on the  game industry), but I think we're at the cusp of where it could and I  think there are a couple of major reasons for it."

 Edwards believes that some of the issues are tied to the rise in crowdfunding for game development.

 When a developer goes directly to fans to ask for money they're,  perhaps accidentally, creating the illusion that those fans will have a  greater say in the end product. And sometimes that's not meant to be the  case. Social media, and the sense of relationship it creates among  fans, can also lead to problems, Edwards said.




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 "When we put ourselves out there on Twitter and other social media we  are inviting more of a conversation and I think the fanbase sees that  as more of a conversation about the creative direction and not just a  conversation about the fandom of that particular IP," she said.
 Finally, fans can be fanatical. And in some cases, that can become wearing.

 Edwards points to George Lucas' very public semi-retirement last year  as an example. In January, Lucas told the New York Times that he was  retiring, blaming in part the negativity of fans.

 "Why would I make any more," he said, "when everybody yells at you all of the time and says what a terrible person you are?"

 "If someone as successful as George Lucas, someone who has been  arguably both creatively and financially successful, is basically  hanging it up because he's tired of hearing the negative feedback,  that's a pretty serious thing," Edwards said. "He is such a prominent  person and to have him so publicly talk about that particular issue, it  kind of resonates with a lot of people."

 And then there is Phil Fish, who so recently gave up the game  development industry for similar reasons. Edwards worries that others  will look at his example and decide to follow suit.

 "Phil Fish and his declaration could get people thinking about,  'Maybe I should think about it as well. Is this something I really want  to put up with?'," Edwards said. "I think it would be disappointing to  see Phil and others like him not do what they're so passionate about on  the basis of that kind of feedback.

 "Harassment isn't new but we didn't use to see the kind of vitriolic  harassment that we're seeing today. There needs to be a broader sense of  how we're going to cope with this as an industry."


*Death threats and game development*

 "It's definitely gotten worse," said Greg Zeschuk. "The threshold for  a flip out or a major scandal has dropped. The smallest thing will set  people off."

 Zeschuk is happily talking about the game industry as an outsider  these days. As much as he loved his career — his second career, building  Bioware with fellow doctor Ray Muzyka and creating franchises like  Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights and Mass Effect — he's happy he left  it. And he's likely never to return.

 Now he's onto his third career: writing about, creating videos about and maybe one day even brewing craft beer.

 While he's no longer in the industry, he says he can't help but still  watch it and he's noticed the flare ups of harassment. Perhaps that's  because BioWare's _Mass Effect 3_ was the flashpoint for one of the  most publicized recent gamer backlashes. At the time it seemed an  unprecedented reaction by fans who were unhappy with the ending of the  Mass Effect trilogy. While most fans displeased with how the game  concluded simply expressed disappointment, a small, vocal group began  threatening and harassing BioWare and its developers.

 Zeschuk said the studio was "without a doubt" shocked by the reaction  to the game's ending and in particular to how virulent that reaction  was. But he stops short of discussing what impact it had on his and  Muzyka's ultimate decision to leave both BioWare and the game industry  half a year later. But it was, he told me in January, a factor.




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 Since the release of _Mass Effect 3_, and the over-the-top  response to it by some gamers, Zeschuk believes that those sort of  death-threat-laden reactions have become more common in the game  industry.

 "What amazes me is that all of the gloves are off on this stuff," he  said. "It's just astonishing what people will do online now."

 Death threats have become the routine, the sort of knee-jerk minimum  among cyber harassers. And Zeschuk has a couple of theories why.

 There is the ease at which someone can communicate their thoughts to a broad audience.

 "Part of it is availability," he said. "It's this megaphone that's  sitting on your desk and if you want to use it you can. And that moment  when you're most angry and frustrated there's no reason why you can't  send out an email or put a post up or do a video, and if you get more  attention as a result all of the better.

 There is the increasing access fans have to the caretakers of their passions.

 "It's unprecedented the access that exists today," he said. "It's a  double-edged sword. It's not always going to be accolades, there are  also going to be complaints."

 There is, as Zeschuk puts it, a new breed of opinion-makers who seem  to deliberately inflame in order to grow their reach and popularity.

 "A path to awareness on the internet is controversy and people  drumming it up," he said. "I think it's almost like if more people throw  fuel on the fire and there's more and more of that and some people  think, 'Hey, I can do that. I don't need to work, I can be an internet  personality and yell at people all day long. I win."

 Zeschuk, like Edwards, like most of the developers we spoke with, has  big concerns about the lasting impact this sort of behavior is going to  have on the industry. But unlike many, he thinks it's here to stay.

 Dealing with online abuse, Zeschuk said, is now an integral part of being a game developer.

 "It's part of going out there and putting yourself out there," he  said. "I just really wish it would get sorted out. I do think there are  good, passionate people who get dragged into it and it makes their lives  miserable. Making games is stressful enough, just making them, without  having to worry about this.

 "The impact of having all your brightest creators losing steam and  going, 'Screw this,' it's not good. It's not going to lead to good  stuff."

_Image Source_ Wikipedia, Flickr user OregonDOT, Flickr user Bitspitter 
Quelle: Plague of game dev harassment erodes industry, spurs support groups | Polygon


----------



## LordCrash (8. September 2013)

*Stalker fallout: Polygon traces the exodus from Kiev's legendary GSC Game World*

               By _Charlie Hall_ @Charlie_L_Hall on September 08, 2013


_The team behind the Stalker series  had nearly 200 members in its prime. Polygon sought out enclaves of  former employees, both big and small, in post-Soviet Ukraine._ 


        Sergei Grigorovich was the CEO of the largest game developer in Eastern Europe, GSC Game World.  He and his company were famous  for two game series. The first was Cossacks, a set of real-time strategy  games known best for its scale, pitting upwards of 60,000 units against  each other at one time. Popular throughout Eastern Europe, the series  made Grigorovich a millionaire before he was 25 years old.

  The second series was called Stalker. Its first game, subtitled _Shadow of Chernobyl_,  was nearly eight years in development when it was released in 2007. An  ambitious blend of first-person gunplay and role-playing, it featured  elements of survival horror as well as an open world that reacted to the  player based on their reputation. It received outstanding reviews, both  for its gameplay and its narrative, and became a hit throughout Europe  and North America. 

  In February of 2011, while Grigorovich and his team were busy working on the fourth game in the series, called _Stalker 2_,  Ernst & Young, a multinational financial services firm, named  Grigorovich Ukraine's entrepreneur of the year. He was the first member  of Ukraine's booming IT industry to earn the honor.

  Ten months later, on Dec. 9, Grigorovich dissolved his company. He gave no explanation to the staff beyond "personal reasons."
  While the games media flailed for answers, Ukrainian news site Ukranews posted the simple headline, "Kiev company ... decided to self-destruct."

  Polygon went to Kiev to map the  fallout from the implosion of Ukraine's most famous game studio. From  the largest triple-A developers to the smallest indie team, these are  the people of the late GSC Game World and the games they're making after  Stalker.


*The survivors*

     Oleg Yavorsky started working  at GSC in 2000, just a year before the first Stalker game entered  development. More than 11 years later, the soft-spoken public relations  manager was there for the end.

 "[Grigorovich] just gathered us all up in the presentation hall," Yavorsky remembers. "He said, 'I have decided to stop _Stalker 2_ development. Goodbye.' ... It was a very short speech."

 The staff of GSC was in total  shock. People went back to their desks and stared dumbly at their  monitors. There was silence for almost two hours.

 The cruel irony is that the  team had been looking forward to that Friday for weeks. It was supposed  to be the first chance for the entire staff to learn about the _Stalker 2_  storyline. Yavorsky had even helped plan a small party, with pizza and  drinks, intended to boost morale. The game had been in development for  two years by that time, and layoffs and attrition had shrunk the staff  from a high of nearly 200 to a core group of less than 50.

 "We were all so passionate about _Stalker 2. _We were involved with it for two years. It was like a child that we were slowly raising, watching it grow up." Their last paychecks would arrive in February. After the Christmas break they would all be officially unemployed.
 After Grigorovich left the building, Yavorsky went ahead with the presentation of _Stalker 2_  anyway. It was a bittersweet moment for the staff, who sat viewing a  partial trailer that they knew would likely never see the light of day.

 "We were all so passionate about _Stalker 2_,"  Yavorsky says. "We were involved with it for two years, and the Stalker  series well before that, since 2001. It was like a child that we were  slowly raising, watching it grow up."

 After the presentation, not  far from the cold pile of untouched pizza, Yavorsky and the rest of the  middle management stood before their staff to discuss the two paths that  lay before them. They could each go in separate directions, or they  could band together and try to find another way, a way without  Grigorovich and without GSC.

 "In the end," Yavorsky says, "we decided to stick together."

 GSC's remaining leaders worked  as quickly as they could to contact publishers in Europe and North  America, but because of the holidays no one would talk to them. With  time working against them, they began to look for venture funding. It  was their first experience trying to find capital, something in short  supply in the former Soviet country.

 "We went to local investors,"  Yavorsky says. "We went to Moscow to talk to people in Russia about  potential funding, but ultimately we found problems because  [Grigorovich] ... seemed to want to continue with the [Stalker] license  [on his own]." Unable to come to an agreement over the intellectual  property rights, the former staff of GSC resigned themselves to starting  over from scratch, to building a new game world on their own.


*Vostok*




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 In Survarium, nature has risen up to reclaim the world. 




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 Survarium's ruined schoolhouse 

  Yavorsky says that since most  investors did not have enough money to fund the entire development  process for a multi-platform game the size of _Stalker 2_, the team was forced to lower its ambition. It settled on a PC-based multiplayer shooter set in a post-apocalyptic world. _Survarium_  would look much like Stalker, but play more like Call of Duty. To reach  as wide an audience as possible the game would also be free-to-play up  front.

 After these modifications potential investors began to come forward.

 "It was important to have a  partner who was safe enough," Yavorsky says. "You [had] to be sure that,  in the worst case scenario, if the game [didn't] work out, that funding  partner wouldn't come to knock your head off or something. In the early  '90s, after the collapse of the USSR, we really had those gangs around  and it was a risky time."

 Yavorsky laughs, deeply at first, and then swallows hard. "They could easily kill you."

 The memory of that chaos, a  period that Ukrainians call the "Wild '90s," was still fresh on the  minds of his team members. They were cautious, thinking it better to  disband than to take dirty money.

 "We were very lucky," Yavorsky  says. "By March of 2012 we met with guys from Vostok Ventures. We found  that they were actually looking for a team like ours," he says. "It  took us barely two weeks to reach the basic agreement."

 Vostok Games was founded that  month, and soon moved into its current location, an old industrial park  in Kiev just a few minutes' walk from the former headquarters of GSC.  The building, dating from the Soviet era, has been remodeled and looks  new. Painted a cheerful pink, it stands out from the overgrown  industrial lots that surround it. Inside the office Vostok's walls are  bare. The conference room is empty, save for a few chairs. Yavorsky says  that Polygon is among its first visitors, that until now the team  hasn't had a reason to purchase a table for presentations.

 But around the floor, more  than 40 artists and programmers, the last remaining employees of GSC  Game World, are sitting and working on _Survarium_. They're  tapping away on modern computers with dual monitors, creating assets and  designing levels. Currently in closed alpha, the game is being played  by slightly more than 1,000 Eastern European players.

 By the end of 2013 Vostok plans to open the game more broadly  to other Russian-speaking countries. Morale is high, and Stalker fans  seem excited to see what the team has in store for them. By the end of  our visit Yavorsky was beaming, proud of all that he and the other  former GSC leaders there have accomplished.

 But his team is not the only band of survivors soldiering on after the collapse of GSC. In fact, it is only the most recent.


*4A*

     A half-hour cab ride in Kiev  costs about 40 Ukrainian grivna, or about $5. But 30 minutes is all it  takes to travel from Vostok Games to the only other triple-A developer  headquartered in Ukraine.

 The offices of 4A Games are  set behind an eight-foot concrete wall glazed with Cyrillic graffiti. An  old man sits near a weathered gatehouse behind the entrance to the  complex, and inside that wall he is surrounded by industrial debris and  rusted chunks of Soviet-era trucks. Stray cats stalk the lot.

 Amid the clutter, huddled  inside a small gazebo perched atop cinder blocks, a few casually dressed  smokers kill time after lunch. Beyond them an unmarked door leads into  offices, where the men and women of 4A build a grim but popular series  of first-person shooters. This is the home of the Metro series,  including _Metro: 2033_ and _Metro: Last Light_.

 Like at Vostok, nearly  everyone at 4A is a refugee from GSC. The company was founded in 2006,  after the first Stalker game was finished but before it was published in  the West.

 The owner of the studio is a  short, powerful man named Andrew Prokhorov. The son of Ukrainian  artists, he graduated university with a Ph.D. in aeronautical  engineering. His boyhood dream was to one day design and sell beautiful  aircraft based on his parents' paintings, but when the Soviet Union  began to collapse in the 1980s his plans changed.

 From 1991 to 1995, during his  graduate work, he was employed by one government research center after  another, earning a salary of less than $100 a month. He became  interested in playing games, and began to teach himself computer  graphics as a way to make money on the side. Soon after he discovered  GSC Game World was hiring he said goodbye to aeronautics forever.

 When Prokhorov came to GSC in  1996 it was only a loosely affiliated group of 15 people in a two-room  apartment. The 26-year old Ph.D. was interviewed by their leader, a  then-16-year-old Grigorovich.

 "It was like a crazy house,"  Prokhorov says, but the work was intoxicating and the pay was marginally  better than what he was receiving from the government.

 Throughout the early 2000s, as  GSC grew larger on the sales of Cossacks games, Prokhorov and others  began to resent how the company's earnings all seemed to go to  Grigorovich. Their CEO had stated many times that Cossacks earned the  company more than $100 million, but Prokhorov says the wages of average  employees remained comically low.

 In 2005, six years into the  development of the first Stalker, GSC employed 140 people. Prokhorov  says that in the parking lot there were only four cars. Three of them  belonged to Grigorovich: a BMW X5, a Porshe Cayenne and a Ferarri F430  with plates that read "Stalker."

 The fourth car was a  second-hand beater owned by one of GSC's programmers. One hundred forty  people worked for Grigorovich, with only one car among them. There is  anger, disgust even, in Prokhorov's voice as he tells the story.

 Eventually, after a falling  out with Grigorovich over wages in 2006, Prokhorov and two lead  programmers left the company to found 4A. After the first Stalker was  published in 2007, Prokhorov says that Grigorovich fired the entire art  department at GSC. Nearly all of them came to work for 4A.

 "We decided to make [4A] a  firm where the first priority will not be money, but people," Prokhorov  tells Polygon. "We pride ourselves on having created a good team.  Because if you have a good team, sooner or later you'll earn the money.  ... Most of our people own a car." On the day Polygon visited there were  perhaps a dozen cars in 4A's main lot, a black luxury BMW among them.    The average level of games industry experience at 4A is 10 years.  Prokhorov puffs out his chest as he talks about his team, proud of its  expertise, its perseverance and how far it's come since leaving GSC  seven years ago en masse. _Last Light_ survived the bankruptcy of its publisher, THQ, and has gone on to sell more than the original Metro title.

 The only challenge left to  Prokhorov is finding enough people to help his studio grow. He says his  darkest moments come during those rare instances when employees leave,  because there is no one in Kiev with enough experience or the right  skillset to replace them.




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*Humans must answer*

     When companies like 4A and  Vostok Games look for talent, they are ultimately drawing from the  dozens of independent studios now popping up in and around Kiev. For  that reason Prokhorov and nine other industry leaders spoke at Kiev  Games Night this past April.
 The event, organized by  Russian journalist–turned–business developer Sergei Klimov, was billed  as an opportunity to network, a way for aspiring developers to learn the  secrets of the trade. But in reality it was a stage for the big  developers in Kiev to promote themselves as good places to work.

 More than 250 people packed  the tiny coffee shop in Kiev, while half as many more were turned away.  Most were doing work in the mobile space, but one team in attendance was  nearly finished with its first PC game.

 SumomGames is composed of two  men, Denis Matveenko and Evgeny Yatsuk, formerly playtesters at GSC.  They left their jobs in July 2011 to become independent game developers,  just five months before GSC closed down.

 Yatsuk is 30 years old. He  graduated from university in 2007 with a degree in technical physics.  His area of study was electro-optical devices, like infrared motion  scanners and CCDs. Unable to find work in his specialty, he took a job  as a playtester and eventually came to GSC.

 Today he lives with his  mother, father and grandmother in an apartment the family was given by  the Soviet government after World War II. A similar apartment, he says,  would cost him more than $1,000 a month to rent.

 Yatsuk never made more than $900 a month working at GSC.

 Matveenko is in his 20s and  dropped out of college in the mid-2000s. He wanted to study computer  programming, but found the materials and instruction at his public  university to be more than 20 years out of date. Before working at GSC  he dabbled in eSports. As a member of the Kiev-based _Defense of the Ancients_  team Explosiv, he placed first in Ukraine and fourth in Russia, but  gave it all up in order to make games with Yatsuk full time.

 Their shoot 'em up (SHMUP), called _Humans Must Answer_,  is the first Ukrainian game funded through Kickstarter. With the help  of a partner in England, they launched a campaign in March that closed  the same day as Kiev Games Night: April 12, 2013. The men earned 5,519  British pounds.

 They would use the majority of that money to pay for their living expenses over the next four months.

 Matveenko's one-bedroom  apartment is the closest thing Sumom has to an office. His building,  which overlooks Kiev's busy Industrial Highway, is a five-story  structure dating back to the 1950s or earlier. In the entryway, which is  painted a dark military green, the lights are broken. The remains of  some hasty rewiring tumble from an open junction box near the ceiling.




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  Denis Matveenko and Evgeny Yatsuk 

    Outside, in the rain,  Matveenko's neighbor is picking greens from between sections of broken  sidewalk. She is washing them in the stream of water falling from her  umbrella and handing them to her son, no more than 8 years old, who  dutifully places them in a plastic bag. These greens will be part of  tonight's dinner.

 Inside, at a desk pressed up  against a dirty blue wall, Matveenko is using a pirated copy of  Photoshop to make a SHMUP that is reminiscent of the 1987 classic _R-Type_  but with chickens. It seems absurd, but in reality this type of  entrepreneurship is desperately needed in Ukraine, and the skills Sumom  is learning are invaluable in creating the next generation of Ukrainian  game developers.
 "We want to make a SHMUP,"  Yatsuk says, "but with some additional elements that haven't been seen  in other SHMUPS, including weapon combinations and tower defense  elements."

 "There are many damage types  and armor types," Matveenko quickly adds. "There are many different  combinations." Their enthusiasm is contagious.

 While Yatsuk paces off his  nervous energy, moving the length of the tiny apartment, Matveenko shows  off their compiler, which takes the easily manipulated Photoshop files  and converts them into game code. By altering the image they can build  spectacular levels, filled with secret passages and intelligent enemies.  It is a good place to begin, but they admit they have a long way to go  to learn how modern games are made. For them, this is just the first  step.

_Humans Must Answer_  was released in July. So far Sumom has sold a little more than 1,300  copies. That's including the 372 copies it gave away to donors of its  Kickstarter.

 For Matveenko and Yatsuk, it's  not about sales numbers or profits. It's about the act of creation.  SumomGames has begun working on its second title. It will not be a  SHMUP.

 "If [our first game is] not  very popular it's no matter to us," Yatsuk says. "We can do this! We  made this! It's very important for us. ... It means that, for the first  time, we achieved something.

 "It's more important to us than finishing high school, or finishing university," he says. "It's about making something."

*
Anmerkung: Ich empfehle euch unbedingt den Originalartikel auf Polygon zu lesen, da er noch einige Zusatzabsätze und zusätzliche Medien enthält. Außerdem solltet ihr Polygon für den Artikel einen Klick spendieren. *

Quelle: Stalker fallout: Polygon traces the exodus from Kiev's legendary GSC Game World | Polygon


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## LordCrash (25. September 2013)

*Game devs ditching mobile in favor of PC, console?*

_By James Brightman Tue 24 Sep 2013 2:11pm GMT / 10:11am EDT / 7:11am PDT _




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*“I wouldn't touch mobile with a ten foot pole” - we chat with several devs about the challenging mobile market*

  The mobile and tablet market has  grown tremendously in the last several years. The number of apps on  Apple's App Store and Google Play is downright mind boggling, and if  you're an app developer... well, best of luck to you. As the new survey  from App Developer Conference organizers revealed this week, piracy and  discoverability are making it incredibly hard to succeed. Nearly half  of the app developers surveyed made no profit at all. 

So the  question has to be asked: after years of flocking to mobile, are  developers actually retreating to the PC and console space? Devs _GamesIndustry International_ spoke with were torn on this, but none would deny the massive challenges of developing apps today.

"I  speak with lots of mobile devs regularly and most are moving away or at  least thinking of it, either to other platforms or out of the trade  completely," Paul Johnson, managing director and co-founder of Rubicon,  told us. "Having to give your game away for 69 cents a throw (after  Apple's and Google's cut) and then competing with 1000 new apps each day  is hardly a draw for anybody. We've reached a point now where even  those slow on the uptake have realized the goldrush is over. It's  actually been over for a few years."

 Jeffrey Lim, producer, Wicked Dog Games, agreed: "The mobile space  offers certain advantages, like having the largest customer base and  relatively low development costs. However, there's no doubt it is  getting harder to be profitable with the ongoing piracy and  discoverability issues." 

"So  yes, we do think developers (especially indies) are considering going  back to develop for the PC - and even game consoles. The cost of  self-publishing on these platforms has dropped significantly, and  console makers are also making their platforms more indie-friendly now,"  he added, alluding to efforts on next-gen systems like Sony's PS4.

Chillingo  COO Ed Rumley isn't quite of the same mind as Johnson and Lim, but as a  publisher, Chillingo has noticed that too many developers simply are  failing to make high quality games, so it's no wonder that their titles  are being ignored.

"The number of games being submitted is  growing, as is the number of developers contacting us. I'm not sure if  some are being scared away, but we know from experience that some  developers underestimate the time and quality it takes to make it in  mobile now. 

Consumers are a savvy bunch and spot second rate games a  mile off. You can't just knock something together in your spare time,  upload it and wait for the money to roll in anymore," he warned.

Michael  Schade, CEO, Fishlabs Entertainment, acknowledged the big challenge in  mobile, but he doesn't think developers are going to have to look  elsewhere.

"Sure, mobile's not an easy market to breach into, but  then again, which market really is? No matter what business you're in or  what product you're trying to sell, you'll always have to work hard to  gain your ground and make a name for yourself," he noted. "So that alone  shouldn't scare you away from mobile, especially when you keep in mind  that no other platform in the history of digital entertainment has ever  evolved faster and born more potential than mobile! With more than a  billion smart connected devices in use and hardware capabilities on par  with current-gen gaming consoles, today's smartphones and tablets  constitute by far the most widespread, frequently used and innovative  gaming platform the world has ever seen." 

Schade also remarked  that the last few years of veteran developers getting into the mobile  scene has made things more difficult. "The fact that more and more  established PC and console veterans open new mobile gaming studios and  more and more traditional publishers port their titles to iOS and  Android, doesn't make it easier for one particular company or product to  stick out. But that's not necessarily a bad thing, as it clearly shows  that the trend goes towards mobile, rather than away from it," he said.

For  every developer we spoke with, the discoverability issue reared its  ugly head. There's no doubt that this is a major concern. While building  a high quality game can help, it's simply not enough. In the world of  apps, you cannot let the game do the talking for you.

"I think  many developers have the misconception that it's simply enough to  release the game and let it speak for itself. They underestimate the  importance of a marketing/PR campaign leading up to the game's launch,"  Lim stressed. "As a result their games fail commercially; not because of  the quality, but due to lack of visibility. Hence the marketing/PR  campaign should be seen as an integral part of the game's development.  An appropriate portion of the overall budget and effort should be  allocated to increasing the game's visibility, and if developers do not  have the experience or time in marketing/PR they should consider hiring  professionals in this area to lend a hand."

Gree vice president of  marketing Sho Masuda concurred that marketing is becoming crucial to  mobile success. "They have to spend more time thinking about marketing  and post-launch efforts in addition to building the the games.  Fortunately, there are a lot of tools and services available for devs of  all sizes to ensure that they can get the direction and support they  need in these areas. Additionally, the mobile dev community is a very,  very tight knit community and there is an amazing level of information  sharing and support," he said. "We encourage mobile devs of all sizes to  talk to their peers, take advantage of all the meet-ups and events, and  get to know all the services available to help get eyeballs on their  games." 

A number of devs also believe that platform holders have a  larger responsibility that they've been shirking so far. "For platform  holders (e.g. Apple's App Store), they can start to curate apps released  on their store because there are too many clones of existing games that  are taking up the traffic. They could attempt something like Steam  Greenlight; although it is still an imperfect system, it's better than  not having any curation at all," Lim commented.

Paul Johnson  agreed, telling us that he'd really like platform holders to have a much  more active role, as the discoverability issue has "about reached  terminal" for unknown devs. 

"If Apple don't pick your game out  for a feature, and you can't drum up enough interest before launch  yourself, then I'd say you're pretty much screwed. It doesn't matter how  good your game is if nobody ever sees it and downloads it. They can't  tell their friends about something they themselves don't know about!" he  stated.




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_ If Apple spotlights your game, you're golden_

"The  only thing I think the platform holders could do to help is stop  allowing crap to be released. There's only so much space for features  and the end users only have so much effort in them to look under all the  categories all the time, so I really don't think adding more of them  would help much. Maybe more apps for shorter times, but this is all a  drop in the ocean really."

"The one thing I've come up with that  would make a real difference is for the platform owners to charge five  grand for a developer license. All the utter crap would disappear and  there'd be less apps fighting for space," he continued. "And the  end-users wouldn't have to waste time downloading the crap as nobody who  makes stuff they don't believe in would dream of fronting that license  fee. It's Draconian but it's really the only thing I can see having any  noticeable effect. Anything else is just lip service."

Discoverability  issues aside, another major - and possibly growing - problem for devs  to contend with is piracy. The App Developer Conference survey showed  that 26 percent of devs had their apps pirated and a similar amount even  had in-app purchases stolen.

 James Vaughan told us, "Plague Inc. has a piracy rate of about 30-35  percent, which equals millions and millions of copies, but I don't  consider piracy to be a problem; it is simply a fact of life and I don't  get too worked up about it. Piracy is a byproduct of success and I  choose to focus on the success which has resulted in piracy rather than  the piracy itself. (The best way to stop your game from being pirated is  to make a crap game!) I focus on continually improving and updating  Plague Inc. which makes the game even more valuable to the people who  have brought it (and encourages pirates to buy it as well)."

For those devs who actually do lose sleep over piracy, there are some ways to combat it, Lim said.

"There's  no question that piracy is prevalent, and I think it will continue to  be so for a long time to come. In fact, with high-speed Internet access  and the wide spread use of file-sharing software nowadays I think this  problem is going to get worse," he observed.

"The first way to  deal with piracy is to implement the appropriate business model, and I  think free-to-download with micro-transactions is the right way to go.  Making the game free for download can work to our advantage; it allows  us to reach out a larger customer base. And if players are hooked by the  game, they can be enticed to buy additional high-quality content for a  minimal price."

"The second way would be to build a strong rapport  with our customers - e.g. through frequent interactions on social  media, events or even email. Developers of notable games (e.g. Hotline  Miami and Game Dev Tycoon) have addressed piracy in this manner. By  having a loyal customer base which is appreciative of our efforts in  delivering quality content, they would empathize with us and be more  willing to pay for the games in support of our development efforts."

The  good news for iOS devs, at least according to Schade, is that Apple's  store is less prone to piracy. "Having lived through the 'dark ages' of  Java and made it out of there with two black eyes rather than one,  piracy has been a very delicate topic for us at Fishlabs ever since.  Based on our own experience, however, it is not as much of an issue on  the App Store as it is on other platforms," he noted. "I guess that's  mostly because Apple still has a lot of 'premium' customers willing to  pay for high-quality content. Of course, we're well aware of the fact  that neither the closed iOS environment nor the Free-2-Play model will  ever be able to eradicate software piracy entirely, but at least they  are doing a comparatively good job at containing it as good as  possible."  

If developers can effectively navigate the problems  of discoverability and piracy, there's no doubt that the potential is  massive. One look at the overwhelming success of Angry Birds, Temple  Run, Clash of Clans and others proves what's possible. But for the vast,  vast majority of devs, that's a pipe dream.

"From the consumer  angle, it's a golden age. The amount of good quality games that can be  bought for laughable prices is fantastic and there's a ton of money  being spent on this platform as a result. The problem for developers is  that each individual cut is tiny. This isn't even remotely sustainable  and I don't know what the future is going to look like. If I was  starting again now from a blank slate, without an existing fan base, I  wouldn't touch mobile with a ten foot pole," said Johnson.

Quelle: Game devs ditching mobile in favor of PC, console? | GamesIndustry International


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## LordCrash (27. September 2013)

*VIDEO AND CABIN FEVER*

 Filed in Developers' diary by Dan @ 9:26 am UTC Sep 27, 2013

 


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_An image from our storyboard, this one was not drawn by me_

  A strict deadline for all things to come together invariably leads to  “funny” situations. You may for example have fully functional  pathfinding and a completely operational crafting minigame and when  combined into a single whole, both will stop working for some  unfathomable reason. The likeness of that happening increases with the  number of systems that are being joined together, as a result, when  everything is merged, nothing works.

  It goes without saying that the bar goes up as well. You stop  overlooking “tiny” glitches like clipping (graphics that vanish when  they get too close to camera) in combat. It didn’t bother anybody so  far, everyone was happy that it’s possible to fight at all and we saw  superficial stuff, like two weapons intersecting each other, as  something to be fixed later. But when you show the game to somebody, the  clipping and the weapons intersecting each other are the first things  they’re going to notice in combat. It doesn’t matter that no other game  ever had combat like this: it flickers and looks unfinished, so it must  be rubbish.

  And when you try to fix those things, you learn that you need a new  version of the engine that’s going to be released in a month, i.e. about  a week too late for your demo. And what now? You have to start hacking.  Doing that, the enemy AI starts to behave strangely and you come a long  way on your downward spiral. People get nervous and start quarrelling.  So besides being nervous yourself, being a boss, you have to be a  company shrink for the rest of the team to put their minds at ease.

 *PIECE OF CAKE*

  In our case the catalyst of the tension was the video. We decided to  go beyond a mere collection of in-game shots and top it off with an  action-packed intro outlining the plot of our game. At the same time, we  didn’t want the video to be too difficult to make. I wrote the  screenplay several months ago, the animations were mostly recorded in  the motion capture session, and we didn’t forget about voiceovers – so  it was going to be a piece of cake. Not completely…

  We discussed our options for putting it all together with respect to  our time and resources, I drew a simple storyboard and artists as well  as animators set out to work. We have good artists and animators and so I  was pretty sure everything was going to turn out well and went on with  my PowerPoint wizardry. When I saw the first draft shots in a few days, I  was aghast. “This doesn’t look next-gen, guys!” “Why? It’s exactly as  you wanted it!” “But the lighting is all weird and the shots are too  long and boring.” “The shots are exactly as they are in the storyboard!”  “That may be so, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t cut a long shot  with a different one. It just didn’t occur to me when I was drawing it!”  “But I did it exactly the way you wanted it!” “All right, but can’t we  re-cut it somehow? And we should do something with the lighting, it  looks like a faded video…” “I like it the way it is…” “But if we re-cut  it, it’s definitely going to be better. Can you please do it?” “I don’t  know how, so either tell me exactly how to do it or you can do it  yourself…” And the atmosphere around the office grows thicker. Opinions  differ occasionally and somebody has to make a decision (by virtue of my  position it should be me), somebody is bound to disagree completely  and, unwittingly, a conflict is born. I have lot of experience with  that, I used to be a ruthless angry boss riding roughshod over other  people’s feelings to get what I wanted. This can be a good short-term  strategy or it may work under some very special circumstances, but it’s  counterproductive from the long-term perspective. So I try to do the  exact opposite now: getting reasonable, consensual people that are good  at what they’re doing. It makes for fewer opportunities to get angry,  but from time to time it just doesn’t work anyway.

*IT’S TOTALLY CLEAR! IS IT?*

  Sometimes the root of a disagreement is a simple misunderstanding. I  have a very specific idea how a thing should look, I explain it as best I  can, I make pictures, supply photos of how it should look but the other  party understands it in their own way and as a result, when they  deliver what is, from their viewpoint perfect work, they feel  understandably irritated when I have a feeling that they created  something completely different from what we agreed upon. This is  ‘wrong’.




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_An image from our storyboard, this one is the work of the master._

 In this situation it always boils down to how specific the original  idea was and how to approach a different (not necessarily worse) result.  Once I showed the artists a shot from an older movie and noticed that I  like its lighting and colors. However, I didn’t make myself clear  enough and the result was almost the exact opposite of what I wanted.  The artist thought I was pulling his leg and I felt exactly the same way  about him. It would have been enough, though, to specify the OBJECT in  that shot the color of which I liked, instead of saying I LIKE THE COLOR  OF THIS SHOT.

  Things like that cannot be avoided with creative work like making  videogames. You can limit it somewhat by making very detailed  specifications, but this will make the creative people feel they have no  freedom, they won’t like what they’re doing, will deliver poorer  results and finally leave the company for a place that would allow them  to express themselves better. Or you can give your colleagues just a  rough sketch and leave the rest to their creativity. The result can be  something so awesome you wouldn’t be able to dream about it much less to  describe it, because your artist is understandably much better at what  he’s doing than you are and his work will be better than your idea. Or  the exact opposite happens and the result is something quite  unutterable, because the artist, genius as he may be, did not understand  your idea at all and went off on some weird tangent. When this happens,  you have to have him redo it and this will probably anger him more than  a too strict specification would have.

 *ALL IS WELL THAT ENDS WELL*

  Every person feels about these things differently. Somebody  pedantically sticks to strict specification, somebody else hates it and  want to have his hands freed (but this only works if his tastes are  similar to yours). And then there are people who are very good craftsmen  that would be appalled if something inventive is asked of them.

   A good creative boss has to know the best way to approach somebody.  You hear stories about film directors that purposefully make actors  angry so that they look authentic on camera, send them to military boot  camp, avoid talking to them or use other manipulative techniques.  However, developers are not actors, game development takes much longer  than actual movie shooting, and you want to avoid violent confrontation,  so it’s better to eschew some methods.

  Finally my colleagues made the video as they saw fit, I re-cut it a  bit, everybody had to swallow some pride and everything ended well. Save  for me cutting the video at 11pm with our plane leaving in the morning.

  That’s how it goes when you work in a company that does video game  development instead of video editing and one day you need to edit a  video. You download all kinds of freeware to convert video from one  format into another, desperately try to find a codec where it would look  best and would work for everybody. Finally, everything was ok and the  video (or rather several videos) was here. We had a trailer, five-minute  overview of all the game’s features and a thirty minute complete  play-through of the whole prototype.

  In the meantime Viktor & Co. were desperately fixing the build  that started to break down on its own as usual. We changed the ugly  beard of one character for a nicer one and an apple that the character  was looking at suddenly disappeared. A journeymen in a forge stopped  working the bellows (he probably went on strike) and the riders that  were supposed to gallop past the player in the opening scene sometimes  rode, sometimes walked and sometimes didn’t move at all. We were also  fixing our automated camera system. For several months I ‘didn’t have  time’ to show the programmers how to set cameras and so I ‘did it’ just  before leaving and at the very last moment we were dealing with stuff  like viewing angles, depth of field and camera placing. Fortunately, we  were successful.

  Late at night we copied all of it onto a flash drive and our  demonstration unit and went home, where I stayed up till four packing my  stuff for our dainty three week roadshow. But that’s another story.

_Dan Vavra, Creative Director

Quelle: Warhorse studios: BLOG
_


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## LordCrash (27. September 2013)

*An important lesson*

_   Posted on September 18, 2013 by Swen Vincke, Larian Studios_

 I have these little notebooks in which I write down my thoughts.  Every day I fill a couple of pages with new observations, questions and  decisions. Whenever a notebook is full, I put it in a drawer, there to  stay until the drawer is full at which point I empty the drawer, and put  the notebooks in a box. I really don’t know why I bother with it,  because I rarely read what I wrote, but I guess it helps me organise my  thoughts. It also makes it look like I’m paying attention in meetings  I’m not particularly interested in.

 If you’d take the notebook that says January 2013, you’d see that I listed as major tasks for 2013, the organising Divinity: Original Sin’s kickstarter, releasing Dragon Commander  and releasing Divinity: Original Sin. At that time, I only had hopes  and aspirations and I really didn’t have a clue whether or not my plans  were going to work.

 Taking risks is of course part of the metier of running a game  development studio, and there’s only that much that you can do to cover  your bets. You know certain things will go wrong, you hope more things  will go right. So last night, I started thinking about how we were doing  compared to what I hoped for at the start of 2013…

 Well, pretty good actually.

 If I look at where Larian stands today, I can’t say that I’m unhappy  about how 2013 unfolded so far and I think it’s safe to say that more  things went right than wrong. Our Kickstarter campaign beat  expectations, Dragon Commander outsold Dragon Knight Saga 3 to 1 in its  first month and will  be profitable, and a surprising amount of people  reported that they had fun playing the game.  Sure, things could even be  better, but considering some of the environmental parameters we  encountered, I’m definitely not going to complain.

 But that is already in the past and I really have no time to linger  as there’s plenty of work ahead of me. My next job is to finish and  release Divinity Original Sin, something that given the scope of the  game will be quite an undertaking. In a way it’s the one task I’m the  most nervous about, probably because I have the feeling that that’s the  game where our players expect the most from us. I also know that  considering the many opportunties I’ll get, chances are high that I’ll  make some judgement error in the coming months that’ll hurt the game. I  can only hope the damage won’t be to big.

 My activities last night were part of an introspective exercise with  the aim of avoiding making mistakes  made in the past, and so I started  taking stock of what went wrong on Dragon Commander and specifically,  what problems were caused specifically by decisions I made. Of course,  looking at failures in past performance carries with it the risk of  sounding too negative, so I do want to make a point of saying that I  don’t think we botched up the release of Dragon Commander too much, and   I’m quite proud of what we created. I think there was a lot that went  right and if I talk a lot about errors and mistakes in the next  paragraphs, then it’s because I believe good ends when it stops  improving.

 Looking at how I personally handled the self-publishing part of our  business, if anything, I think my biggest mistake was that I let weaker  sales channels or markets affect our development flexibility at the  expense of the better sales channels and bigger markets. I’m mostly  talking about the retail portion of our release here, though the lesson  is applicable to other channels/markets too, such as territories with a  low amount of paying players but complicated localization needs. It  really doesn’t pay to spend most of your resources on markets where  you’ll gain the least, especially if your resources are limited. That  may sound obvious to you, but it wasn’t that obvious to me in the run up  to the release of our latest game, and it cost us.

 For Dragon Commander, at present digital sales make up 85% of our  revenu and retail only represents 15%. If you take into account that the  digital lifecycle of a game is a lot longer than its retail  counterpart, and also a bit more profitable, then numbers like this tell  the entire picture – if you have to choose where to put your effort,  put it in the digital side. The mistake I made was that I had our studio  do pretty much the opposite of that, for all the wrong reasons. As a  consequence, a large portion of our publishing investments were done in  the retail side of things and that automatically meant that certain  digital opportunities were lost, because obviously, we couldn’t do  everything. That wasn’t such a clever move.

 I guess the thing I regret the most about my misplaced belief in  retail was that I let it affect our flexibility so much. Small teams  like us gain part of their competitive advantage from our ability to  quickly make changes when needed, and I  feel I was a fool for  manouvering ourselves into a position that handicapped this flexibility.

 For a variety of good and bad reasons, we ended up crunching for two  months to get everything ready, and during that period we really  could’ve done without the constraints of a retail release. I’m sure that  had we not been locked into a fixed street date, we could’ve gained a  few extra points in our review scores, because we wouldn’t have had to  make some last minute compromises. PC Gamer gave it 85%, Gamespot 8/10 and IGN 78%. Obviously it’s the 78% that hurt.

 I was of course aware of the risks we were taking when the release  date was set a few months before, the biggest risk being that we were  still developing. Still, I thought we could manage, and to ensure there  was some extra buffer time,  decided to make the retail box Steam  activated. That way we could have a day 1 patch which everybody would  get, meaning that we could continue developing until the very end,  instead of until the day the gold master was delivered to the factory.  But while that worked to a certain extent, we still had to make more  compromises than I wanted to.

 There’s a lot of preparation involved in a retail release, especially  if you’re launching in multiple countries, and in a small team like  ours where the same people wear many hats, a retail release problem  popping up automatically means key developers will be affected.

 A good example of this is what happened to our translation system.  The timelines involved in localizing a game with 200K words and full  voice acting with facial capturing on top necessarily require several  months of localization. Spread that over multiple languages, and you  have a compicated process. It’s already hard when you have a all the  source assets in place, but it’s even harder if you’re still developing  and the text that is being translated is prone to change.Because we were  running late, this was the case for Dragon Commander, so we knew there  were going to be some casualties. Still I reasoned, better that than  stop making improvements to the game. We had come prepared for this  eventuality, having invested significant resources into developing a new  and fancy well-functioning localisation system that could deal with  incremental versions of a localisation kit, presumably without a hitch.

 Yeah,right.

 The problem was that our new system had only been demonstrated to  work with test data, and well argumented theory, and that the programmer  responsible had since left for the competition. In real life, the  localisation system failed miserably, and of course it only started  doing that when we only had a few weeks left. Life suddenly became very  complicated, the nights became even longer and a lot of much-needed time  was lost fixing this particular problem. It was seriously bad and if it  hadn’t been for the fixed retail release dates, I would’ve postponed  the game with a few weeks right there. Or at the very least, I’d have  released the English version first and let the other languages follow  later. But I couldn’t make those kind of decisions anymore because of  the retail agreements we had, and so several lead developers had to  scramble to get things sorted out. That of course made them lose time in  other domains which were desperate for attention too, and inevitably it  meant that certain things weren’t done or only half-done. A real pity.

 I realize the  core problem here was that the system didn’t work and  that the localisation had to start when we weren’t ready with  development yet, but these are the kinds of things that happen in any  complicated production, and at times like that, you really want to have  as much flexibility as possible.Being locked in prevented me from taking  the decision that was the best for the game, and it was quite  frustrating.

 A similar thing happened because we chose to release on different  digital channels. Here the problem was that our multiplayer layer used  Steamworks for matchmaking and lobby creation, and that we didn’t have  any really good alternatives for players on other platforms. (We  actually thought we’d have them but that didn’t work out). I completely  mismanaged this part, even if we did spend a lot of effort on it, and in  hindsight I think we’d have  been better off just releasing on Steam,  and then deal with the other platforms later. That could’ve avoided a  lot of unnecessary frustration and allowed us to focus on the core  release, which a Steam release is in the modern day PC market.

 As I continued to review things that went wrong on the publishing  side and that affected development, I found that the common pattern was  that most of them were inspired by the different requirements of the  different sales channels. Things like separate builds, different feature  requirements, special DLC packages etc… I seriously underestimated the  impact of this on our development, and I should’ve been more alert when  initially agreeing to certain things. Funnily enough this is of course  the very thing that I always cursed publishers for, so I guess a few  apologies are in order here and there.

 Like them I found myself sending out review code to magazines, even  if the game wasn’t ready for review, pumping money in ads just to  convince retail buyers that there’s a market for the game and limiting  the size of a day 1 patch because I didn’t want retail buyers to have to  downoad gigabytes and gigabytes. Oh oh oh , what I have become!

 Of course, every time there were logical reasons for all of this, but  in hindsight, they were not good enough reasons. I should’ve guarded  development more than I did because after a while, the only thing  players remember is the quality of the game, not who released it or how  it was released. At least, that’s what I remember when I think of a  game.

 So yes, I discovered a few interesting lessons.

 The most important one for me was that in the future I’ll try to only  commit to a release date when the game is actually done. Not if it’s  85% done or even 95% done, but only when really, it’s done. As in, ready  to be released. It doesn’t matter if that release date is inconvenient –  the lifecycle of games is now much longer than it used to be, and there  are ways around inconvenient release dates.
 In case we find ourselves in a case again where we have to release,  which I guess will be  more than often the case, then at the very least  I’ll play hardball when it comes  to guarding our flexibility and refuse  anything that’s not focussed on our core release or our core release  channels.Fragmentation over different channels cost us too much time and  we didn’t gain that much from it. On the contrary, if we had focussed  on our primary channels and disregarded the secondary ones, we could  probably have improved things here and there.

 So to conclude, as I said, this may all sound obvious to you, but in  the heat of battle, it really wasn’t to me. The thing I wrote in my  notebook therefore was exactly what you’d expect after reading this  entry: _When in doubt, finish the game first, then think about  releasing it. If that’s impossible, focus on where it matters, and  refuse all the rest, no matter how tempting._

 If that’s wise or not, I don’t know, the future will tell. I know  several developers or publishers who make quite a lot of money by being  on every platform they can think of, so I might be wrong, or it may  really depend on the game, team and release path.  It in any case seems  to be the most sensible thing I could distill from my experiences of the  past months and so it’s shaping my thoughts. I’ll let you know how it  works out for us.

Quelle: An important lesson | Swen Vincke @ Larian Studios


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## LordCrash (7. Oktober 2013)

*Going it alone: Adventures in self-publishing *

_                                                                                                October 4,  2013   |   By Mike Rose                                                                                                                  _




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                      Double Fine has seen both sides of the video game publishing coin. The studio originally had titles like _Psychonauts, Brutal Legend_ and _Costume Quest_  distributed by a variety of publishers, and while this worked out  reasonably for the company, there was always the thought that going down  a DIY route could work wonders.

With the release of its _Broken Age_ Kickstarter, Double Fine stuck  a longsword deep into the belly of the traditional publishing beast,  and went it alone -- well, "alone" meaning "with tens of thousands of  Kickstarter backers," of course... and for the most part, the company  isn't looking back.

"For the most part, I think the traditional publishing model for third  party development is dead," says Justin Bailey, vice president of  business development at Double Fine.

"The days where you take a paper pitch for a console game to a  traditional publisher and walk away with $10+ million are effectively  over, and have been for a couple of years now," he continues. "Very,  very few publishers are spending that kind of cash on outside  development, and the value added service they used to provide, such as  retail shelf space, dev units, console access, and marketing budgets,  have become either irrelevant or inconsequential."

Bailey is quick to point out that there are still a number of publishers  adapting well to the shift, and are developing new ways to add value  for developers.

"For those publishers, I'd say we are still very much interested in  partnering with them, but at least a part of our studio will always be  working on self-published games - I don't see that changing," he notes.*When should you self-publish?*

Since  Double Fine has experience on both sides of the fence, I ask Bailey  when smaller studios should be considering self-publishing, rather than  using a publisher for their games.

"It's definitely a complicated decision with many far reaching  implications," he muses. "The answer to that question relies upon the  answer to many other questions, such as will the game need external  financing? What is the business model? What's the best distribution  model? Etc."

He adds, "If you have an alpha-funded or crowd-funded game, the success  of those models usually revolve around effectively engaging and  leveraging your supporters. In these cases, the developer needs to stay  as close to the community as possible and therefore self-publishing is  preferable if not required."




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But  if a developer is working on a free-to-play mobile or online game,  Bailey believes that using an outside publisher is probably a good idea.

"There's a whole slew of things that those types of publishers do that  have nothing to do with game development, and quite frankly are not  things a game dev is likely to enjoy or be successful at by figuring it  out as they go," he reasons.

Another point to consider: Do you have any experience or interest in all  of the traditional publishing elements, such as QA, localization,  distribution and so forth? If not, you've got another reason to consider  a publisher.

"Unfortunately, one of the current challenges is that there's not a  'one-size-fits-all' publisher, so many of these functions usually come  as a packaged deal," Bailey says. "And part of the package, especially  if there's financing involved, will require a dev to give up some  creative control."

For Double Fine, the self-publishing model has fit in with its  development style perfectly. "Frankly, we relish being closer to our  community and being as transparent with our supporters as possible,"  Bailey tells me. "And that transparency has paid off in a very  surprising way, such as our community serving as de facto good will  ambassadors for the studio."

Conversely, Double Fine has found that it needs to be a lot more  disciplined as an outfit. Without review milestones put forward by a  publisher, the studio is having to create its own targets and goals.

"Since we're the publisher now, we have to ask the hard questions of  ourselves, and ultimately it's more stressful because we feel a deep  seeded accountability to the fans that helped make these games  possible," he notes.*"You're entering a very mature arms race, and if  you don't have a significant war chest, you're going to get your ass  handed to you."*

Of course, the best thing about self-publishing  versus the traditional publisher model is that you have complete  creative freedom over whatever you are creating, and you can easily  bring in community feedback whenever you like.

"When we solicit feedback from our community during development, we have  the ability to directly incorporate it into our game designs," Bailey  explains. "This type of interaction has already occurred with _Broken Age_ and _Massive Chalice_,  and it's almost like the rush that a band gets from putting on live  shows, where the fans excitement ends up driving the team to greater and  greater heights."

When it comes to self-publishing, there are certain situations in which Bailey would rather not find his company dealing.

"I'd say don't spend money on traditional marketing and customer  acquisition," he says. "When you play that game, you're entering a very  mature arms race, and if you don't have a significant war chest, you're  going to get your ass handed to you."

"Instead, do the things that come naturally - build a grass roots  community and spend a lot of time cultivating it.  Concentrate on your  games' quality so that there's potential for great word-of-mouth buzz  when it gets released."

He also recommends partnering up with other developers, and helping each  studio out as much as possible. "Disintermediation has created a lot of  opportunities for developer to self-publish," he adds, "but it's also  created many issues around discoverability - so take every advantage you  can.  Maybe even partner with a veteran developer who's done it before  and who can show you the ropes."*Renegades of self-publishing*

Renegade Kid  is another studio that has worked with publishers and self-published.  Before Jools Watsham started up his own studio, he worked at  Iguana/Acclaim for around 13 years, where all the titles he contributed  to had a publisher.

"It was a good experience, but it took me and my friends and colleagues  through many highs and many lows," he explains. "It was quite a ride.  Quite chaotic, really."

"The day we started Renegade Kid... I felt a huge sense of relief and  excitement to have the opportunity to make games for the right reasons,  and not to be steered by people who - in my opinion - did not base their  decisions on what's best for the game and player."

The first five years of Renegade Kid saw Watsham and co. working with publishers, to release original IP like _Dementium: The Ward_ and _Moon_, both on Nintendo DS.

"This was certainly a step up from what I experienced at Acclaim, and we  thoroughly enjoyed and appreciated the experiences," he notes. "But  when compared to having ultimate freedom - as we did with _Mutant Mudds_ - it was still very much tainted in many ways."

Renegade Kid finally moved into self-publishing in 2012, when the studio  made the switch from Nintendo DS to 3DS. The aforementioned _Mutant Mudds_ was the first big self-publishing hit for the company, and Watsham says, "it changed everything for us."




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"The  development of the game was a joy," he adds, "despite it being a  project we crammed in on the side while we developed games for money  during the day. And, to have the game be received as well as it has been  is more than a dream come true."

Now Renegade Kid plans to stick with self-publishing, and has done so with further titles like _Planet Crashers_ and the upcoming _Mutant Mudds_ sequel. Yet Watsham says he is not against working with publishers again at some point.

"It just has to be for the right reasons and under respectful conditions  on both sides," he notes. "It should be a partnership, not a  parent-child relationship."*"I think what's most important is trying to determine what's going to make you and your team happy."*

With  Watsham's path to self-publishing in mind, I ask him when a new studio  looking to release its first game should consider self-publishing over  the traditional publisher model.

"I think what's most important is trying to determine what's going to  make you and your team happy," he answers. "What is the most important  thing you wish to accomplish by making your game? Is it success, sales,  and so on? Perhaps it is artistic expression? Or, maybe it is just the  desire to create fun?"

Once you're 100 percent clear on what that important element is, you'll  be in a much better frame of mind for deciding how to guide your game  through the publishing process.

"Something I firmly believe in is that one of the biggest risks of all  can be taking no risks at all," Watsham says. "Be bold. Have fun.  Tomorrow won't make it any easier. Just do it today. These are all very  cliche, I know, but they are also very true. The trick is to believe in  them, and truly understand why you believe in them."

And what about those studios that have decided self-publishing is the  correct route for them? Are there are obvious dos and don'ts to be aware  of?

"No, I don't think so," Watsham tells me. "Everyone and every game is so  different that in today's crazy market anything goes really."

That being said, he's keen to stress that your studio's image can be  extremely important in today's connected world, thanks to social media  like Twitter and Facebook.

"I don't necessarily think anyone should censor themselves, but you  should be mindful of the fact that a press website can take anything you  say and turn it into a headline," he notes. "That can be both in your  favor and harshly against your favor. Boosting sales and crippling them  accordingly."

"How you connect with your audience, and how you respond to individual's  questions is something you will encounter if your game is successful,"  he says. "It is important to at least take a moment and think about how  you - and your company - want to be perceived by the public, and live  with that decision."*When a publisher doesn't make sense anymore*

Adam Saltsman  is another developer who has seen it all. Along with his studio  Semi-Secret Software, Saltsman has worked on self-published games (_Hundreds, Canabalt_), licensed games (_Hunger Games: Girl on Fire_) and many more.

His thoughts on the publishing vs. self-publishing divide are blunt and  to the point. "From where I sit, I have a hard time imagining a scenario  where a publisher would fit in with my plans," he tells me.




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"That's  not to say it's totally out of the question; publishers can totally  help you. Publishers can have money so you can buy food, and connections  that can help your game reach a wider audience, and they can help  negotiate with platforms and distributors, and they can help you push  your game to that kind of super clean presentable level of polish even.  But they can also be really toxic, and risk-averse, and controlling, and  can be looking for really evil levels of returns on the back end."

The developer suggests that any studios considering whether to go with a  publisher should think less about the ideology, and more about whether  your interests align with those of a potential partner.

"Right now a lot of the things a publisher can offer are not super  valuable to me," he says, "and it feels like the returns they expect are  really out of proportion. But I also know a lot of really smart,  talented people that are having really positive experiences with  publishers, especially on consoles."

And if you do opt to self-publish, Saltsman has some simple pointers to  keep you heading in the right direction. "At this point I think my main  advice is to just start building hype early, and don't worry about  over-explaining things," he says.

"Err on the side of open. Building awareness of what makes your game  different and special and clever and fun is hard, and it takes a long  time, and if you wait until after your game comes out you are taking a  pretty huge gamble," the dev notes.

He admits that either way it's all a gamble at the end of the day --  "but you are taking an unnecessary risk if you put [building awareness]  off to the last minute," he adds. "And you can do this in a good,  honest, authentic way - marketing doesn't have to be nasty and slimy.  But it does take a long time!"*And on mobile?*

Notably, Saltsman has dabbling in mobile game publishing too. Semi Secret Software published _Aquaria_  on iPad -- yet Saltsman states that mobile game publishers on the whole  are even less reliable than those for traditional platforms.

"It's less reliable in the sense that publishers with some big hits are  definitely not converting every game they publish into something that  gets a wide audience," he states. "It's more extreme in the sense that  they often give less money up front, and take more money on the backend.  I am suspicious that they can do this because the signal-to-noise ratio  is so low on mobile right now, that anybody and everybody are desperate  to get noticed, even if it means giving their game to someone else."

Are there are specific situations in which the _Canabalt_ dev thinks a studio would benefit from having a publisher for a mobile game?

"Not at the moment," he answers. "They don't seem to be able to convert  their audiences or have good brand recognition, and there is so much  competition for App Store space and player brain time, that I just don't  see the point right now."

Tate Multimedia is another studio that has experience with mobile game publishing. The company is about to release _Urban Trial Freestyle_  on mobile, having already brought the game to consoles and handhelds --  and having a publisher for the iOS release just made sense for the  company's Paul Leskowicz.

"Having a publisher for our mobile games makes real sense when it comes  to targeting a specific market, where the content of the our mobile game  shall be adapted to the local cultural and gaming habits," he notes.

"Releasing a mobile game in Japan with a publisher makes great sense,"  he continues, "since what the players expect there is quite different to  what might be proposed to the European or American players, and the  input of a local publisher might be a great added value to match the  player’s expectations."

Leskowicz notes that self-publishing could allow the studio more freedom  in the development process, and that working with a publisher means  they don't have full control over every aspect of the game -- but  self-publishing means his studio would have to do its own QA, marketing,  press relations, sales et al, and he's perfectly happy to get a  publisher to handle all this.

Quelle: Gamasutra - Going it alone: Adventures in self-publishing


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## LordCrash (7. Oktober 2013)

* Rimworld: A Video Game Review *

  Every so often something comes along that is completely outside our  scope of normal coverage, but is so much fun it cannot be ignored. And  that’s Rimworld a game by Tynan Sylvester that’s currently up on Kickstarter. Where it has cleared its funding goal in a matter of days, and has now more then doubled it.

 Tynan was kind enough to give us a copy of the Pre-Alpha version of Rimworld to let us tell you all about it.(Remember  that everything we’re going to talk about here is from an early build  of the game, and will be subject to change. Everyone who backs the  Kickstarter at the $30 CAD level or higher will get a copy of this same  Alpha build after the Kickstarter concludes. )




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​   First let’s talk about what Rimworld is. 

 Rimworld  is a single-player strategy game where you are trying to survive on a  deserted planet with only what you can find and build. The look of  Rimworld currently resembles Prison Architect  (but that will be changed once Tynan hires an artist), as does some of  the game-play. With the main mechanical similarity being the click and  drag to build, and plopables system. But that’s where the similarities  end.

 Mechanically speaking Rimworld’s primary difference from  similar games is its AI Storyteller. The Storyteller (inspired by Left 4  Dead’s “Director”) controls how the “random events” will flow during  the game. They will affect the weather, determine if and when you’ll be  attacked by pirates, or if new folks will stumble on to your colony and  join you.




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 Currently  there’s only one real storyteller “Cassandra Classic” and she steadily  increases the challenges the game throws at you. For example: while  early on pirates may come in groups of two or three, by the two hour  mark or so, you might face eight or more. There is also “Randy Random”  who just throws truly random events at you. And eventually there will be  at least one more “Phoebe Friendly” who will keep the violence to a  minimum and let you enjoy the building aspects of the game. Right now  Tynan is asking his Kickstarter backers if there are any other types of  Storytellers they might like to see. So, if you have an idea and you’re a  backer feel free to make a suggestion. You can also head over to Ludeon Studios to find out more and join the forums there.
 Now lets talk about my gameplay experience.

  I  played for about two hours straight without even noticing the time  pass, the experience was engrossing and very fun. I started like all  players by picking my colonists.

 From  the new game screen you get to name three colonist, and randomize their  traits. Every time you click randomize you basically get a new person;  their sex, age, job skills, and background will all be changed. Just  keep clicking till you get one you like. Do this three times and you  have your first set of settlers.

 One thing you might notice in  the image above is Klein spent her childhood as a medieval slave, which  at first may seem odd for a distant future setting, but one of Tynan’s  main influences was Firefly,  and this trait represents that she was raised on a primitive outer  world. She also has a bad back, and pretty mediocre stats so, time to  hit the randomize button again.

 Landing on the planet… The world  is procedurally generated, so it will be different each time you start a  new game. Currently there is only one sort of arid mountain-y biome.  But Tynan has suggested the possibility of multiple biome types like  jungles or frozen wastes. Whether we get these will be based on fan  demand and how much work it will take. So if that interests you, be sure  to let Tynan know.

 After  your colony ship crashes the three of you have only some metal, a few  tools (which you won’t see, but trust me they have them), a little food  and a place to sleep in the dirt. (There’s also a trash heap and a  storage area.) In the upper right you’ll notice it says “build a room”  and “need meal source.” These are nice helpers to let you know what you  should be focusing on. If you ever feel lost just check up there, if  there’s nothing there your probably doing pretty well.

 You’ll  have full control of game time so after your colonists land you should  pause (While time is pause you can still issue order and the like, but  nothing will happen till you un-pause.), and start laying out what you  want to do. One of the first things you might wan to do is specialize  your colonist work priorities. In the screen below you can see al the  colonists and the types of work they can do. If there’s a green check  that colonist will do that job when they’re fee to do it. The lighter a  checkbox is the better the colonist is at that job.




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 You  can see here that Klein is a miner, and her mining box is nearly white,  so it’s best of she focuses on that for now, especially in the early  stages of the game. You can also see what everyone else is good at just  by glancing, but if you want more detailed info, hovering your pointer  over a checkbox will bring that up.

 Life is hard when there are  pirates… And after about ten days the first “dark season” will start and  Cassandra the Storyteller will start bringing in the pirates. Which  will be minor nuisances the first season or so.

 But after a couple “cycles” your colony may start to look like this…




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 Hard  combat has left the ground blood stained, and the graves are starting  to fill up.(You know its going to be a great game when one of the first  things you need are graves.)  You can see in the lower left UI that  there is a big “Draft” button. This allows you to make any colonist a  soldier. While drafted they will only do as ordered. They will not eat  or sleep, so be sure to stand them down once the danger has passed.

 Well  after about two hours Cassandra had beaten me down pretty well, all my  original colonists were dead, and the new folks hadn’t had much time to  recover since the last fight (they hadn’t even picked up all the bodies  yet). Then 10 new pirates arrived, when it was all over and the dust had  settled my colony was lost. I had made some mistakes earlier, and they  cost me in the end.




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   In  all Rimworld is a great strategy game to fill in those hours when you  don’t have anyone to play a good board-game with. Of course it’s a great  game to play for any reason. If you like games like Prison Architect,  or Dwarf Fortress, and you’re a fan of a Firefly style sci-fi universe  then this game is defiantly for you. Personally I’ve played Prison  Architect and I prefer Rimworld’s theme and more advanced combat system.

 If you want to see this game in action check out Quill18’s excellent introductory video.





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  Well that’s all for now, if this looks interesting to you be sure to head over to Kickstater and back this. And if you’re a Steam user be sure to vote to Greenlight this game as well.

 One  last thing… This is the first videogame Kickstarter I’ve ever backed,  and I’ll tell you why. The fact that he has a real working game running  and has sent it out to some really awesome youtubers to make previews  really sold me. I’m confident, he will actually make this game and it  won’t languish in an eternal development cycle never to be released.  Also I’m happy to he’s taking the Kerbal Space Program  approach by having a public Alpha we can all enjoy, and share in the  development experience. That way all these newly minted Rimworld fans  will have a game to play as soon as possible and it will only get  better.

 Happy gaming.

Quelle: Front Toward Enemy: Rimworld: A Video Game Review


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## LordCrash (8. Oktober 2013)

*The Simulation Dream*

                              by Tynan Sylvester on 06/02/13 04:09:00 pm

*                     The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community.
                    The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.                 * 

 There’s an old dream in game design. It drives the design of games like _SimCity_, _Dwarf Fortress, Tropico, The Sims, _and _Prison Architect_. I like to call it the Simulation Dream.

 In 1996, Starr Long, the associate producer of _Ultima Online_, talked about the game before release:

_“Nearly everything in the world, from grass to goblins, has a  purpose, and not just as cannon fodder either. The 'virtual ecology'  affects nearly every aspect of the game world, from the very small to  the very large. If the rabbit population suddenly drops (because some  gung-ho adventurer was trying out his new mace) then wolves may have to  find different food sources (e.g., deer). When the deer population drops  as a result, the local dragon, unable to find the food he’s accustomed  to, may head into a local village and attack. Since all of this happens  automatically, it generates numerous adventure possibilities.”_

 That’s the Simulation Dream – the idea of making a complex simulation  of a story world, which creates fascinating emergent stories as  powerful as those you might write yourself. The idea bursts with  potential. And it appears everywhere. Early in the development of _BioShock_,  that game had an ecology too. There were three parts to it. Splicers  would hunt Gatherers, who were in turn guarded by Protectors. The player  was supposed to interact with and manipulate this ecology to survive.

 But these dreams shattered. After its release, Richard Garriott said of _Ultima Online_:

_“We thought it was fantastic. We'd spent an enormous amount of  time and effort on it. But what happened was all the players went in and  just killed everything; so fast that the game couldn't spawn them fast  enough to make the simulation even begin. And so, this thing that we'd  spent all this time on, literally no-one ever noticed – ever – and we  eventually just ripped it out of the game.”_

 The same happened on _BioShock_. While_ BioShock_ retained  some valuable vestiges of its simulation-heavy beginnings, the game as  released was really a heavily-scripted authored story. There was no  systemic ecology at all. It worked fantastically as a game – but it  wasn’t a deep simulation.

 The problem is that simulations with a lot of moving parts quickly become _complex _in  the intimidating academic sense. There are so many pieces interacting  that the game can easily become too much to understand, predict, or play  with. All the interesting stuff in the game ends up lost in the  silicon, inaccessible to the human players’ understanding.

 And that’s really the key – making complex simulated events  accessible to human understanding. Which brings us to a nerdy idea I  like to call the Player Model Principle.

 *The Player Model Principle*

 The Player Model Principle is this:

*The whole value of a game is in the mental model of itself it projects into the player’s mind.*

 We make a simulation in computer code. That is a computer model of  some situation – a dwarven fortress, a prison, and so on. But that is  not the only model of that situation designers need to worry about.  There is another model of that fortress or prison - the mental model in  the player’s mind, which the player constructs while playing the game.  Designers create the Game Model out of computer code, while the player  creates their own Player Model by observing, experimenting, and  inferring during the play.




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 In play, the Game Model is irrelevant. Players can’t perceive it  directly. They can only perceive the Player Model in their minds. That’s  where the stories are told. That’s where dilemmas are resolved. So the  Game Model we create is just a pathway through which we create the  Player Model in the player’s mind.

 The Player Model Principle indicates a source of risk. Namely,  anything in the Game Model that doesn’t copy into the Player Model is  worthless. That’s what happened with the ecologies in _Ultima Online_ and _BioShock_.  They didn’t enter the Player Model and so degraded into noise. This is a  fairly obvious risk and is common in game design – all designers have  seen players not understand a piece of their game.

 But the Player Model Principle also implies an amazing opportunity.  What if we could put something in the Player Model without implementing  it in the Game Model? What if we could make the player perceive some  event or relationship or meaning that wasn’t even there?

 The advantages are obvious. We wouldn’t have to build it or test it.  And it wouldn’t add any complexity burden to the game. While this sounds  exotic, it actually happens all the time. It’s called _apophenia._

Apopheniais  seeing meaningful patterns in random or meaningless data. For example,  look at this wall socket. What do you see? A face! And not just a face.  But a face with a confused, perhaps pained expression. Why do you see  that? There is no such personality here. But we perceive it all the  same. It’s how we’re wired as human beings.

 That ability to perceive personality and intent is a deep-seated  human ability. It happens below conscious awareness, the same way you  can look at a room and understand it as a 3D space without thinking  about it. The only knowledge of the room you have is a 2D projection of  it on your retinas. But some silent processor in your brain generates  the perception of a 3D environment. In the same way, we effortlessly  perceive minds and intentions. It’s why ancient peoples perceived  spirits in rocks, water, sun and moon.
 Apophenia is powerful and varied. Consider these _Michotte demonstrations_, named after the researcher who explored them in the mid-20th century.

http://cogweb.ucla.edu/Discourse/Narrative/michotte-demo.swf

 Michotte did many variations on these demonstrations. It’s amazing  how much people see that isn’t there. We perceive human-like  relationships between the balls, with concepts of dominance, gender, and  intent. Some of the explanations are astoundingly complex. For example,  "The little ball is trying to play with the big ball, but the big ball  doesn't want to play so he chases the little ball away. But the little  ball is stubborn and keeps bothering the big ball. Finally, the big ball  gets mad and leaves." None of those feelings existed, except in the  Player Model.

 This apophenia – this perception of personality and intent where  there is none – is the key to making a simulation game work. We can’t  simulate the emotional core of a good story on silicon. Computers just  aren’t good at handling generalized intelligence, intent, and feeling.  But we don’t have to simulate those things. We only need to show the  simulation equivalent of moving balls and let the player layer in their  own emotional perceptions.

 In this way, the simulation is a co-author of stories with the  player. The simulation does the logistics and generates some random  outcomes, while the player adds the meaning and pathos.

 *Apophneia example in The Sims 3*

 Here’s a story someone created with _The Sims 3_. He created a  Sim version of himself and his roommate. Soon, a cute redhead enters  their lives. And the redhead goes straight for the roommate, leaving the  protagonist frustrated, angry, jealous, and alone.




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 But none of those emotions are in the game. _The Sims 3_ has a  very simple computer model of social interactions which does not really  depict deep human emotions like jealousy and anger. We perceive these  things through apophenia – the same way we perceive a small ball fleeing  from a large one.

 Now the player takes control of the story. He hatches an evil plan  involving a cheap stove, poor cooking skills (which cause fires), and  wooden chairs.

http://tynansylvester.com/wp-content/uploads/sims2-300x187.jpg

 And the plan works.

http://tynansylvester.com/wp-content/uploads/sims3-300x194.jpg

 This story was co-authored between the player and the game. The game  simulated some simple event (attraction between redhead and roommate),  and the player ascribed meaning to it (jealousy and frustration) the  same way he might have for the Michotte balls, even though that emotion  was not actually in the simulatiion. The next part of the story was cued  by him when he orchestrated the murder. The game simulated the  logistics of firey deaths, but the sense of sorrow and revenge was,  again, ascribed completely by the player. Most of this story is  apophenia – present of the Player Model, absent from the Game Model.

 *Creating apophenia*

 It’s hard to see obvious ways to make players imbue meaning into a  game that the game doesn’t actually have. But survey the products that  do it well and you see patterns.

*Borrow archetypes from real life and fiction*

 Use the archetypical jealousy plot, the evil stepmother, the good  king, the classical hero. This saves exposition since the player already  knows the stock character or situation you’re hinting at. This makes it  easy for players to fill in absent details.

*Allow players to project themselves into the game.*

 When a virtual character has your name pasted on, it is easy to imbue  that character with motivations that are relevant to you. The same goes  when the player projects in their friends, house, and so on, into the  game. _The Sims_ gains massively from this.

*Create uncertain situations with human-relevant values in the balance*

 This is storytelling 101, but it bears mentioning. The simulation has  to create situations that are worthy of being called stories. That  means something important has to be in the balance, and the outcome has  to be uncertain. _Human values_ must be at stake.
 Human values are things like life/death, alone/together,  wealth/poverty. The game should revolve around things that affect these  human-relevant values, and not descend into a dry simulation of traffic  networks or production lines. Such simulations may be intellectually  interesting, but will not generate effective stories because they are  emotionally hollow.

*Express or imply simple, pure, primal emotions*

 Annoyance is less interesting than fury because of the difference in  intensity. Melancholic existential hipster sadness is less accessible  than grief over a dead child because that grief is simpler, more  relatable, and more primal. If the game has no opportunities for  characters to feel such emotions, it is unlikely to generate good  apophenic stories. Stories are built from primal feelings, so the  subject matter of the simulation must create situations where characters  would feel primal emotions.

 *Drowning in Complexity*

 So we’ve covered the benefits of apophenia. But we still haven’t solved the problem that killed the ecologies in _Ultima Online_ and _BioShock_.  How do we handle complexity? For apophenia to work, players have to see  and understand interesting things happening. And this can easily  prevented if they’re drowning in complexity.

 Think of a simple system, like orbiting planets. For the most part,  each planet only has a relationship with the sun around which it orbits




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If  you want to tell a story about each planet, it’s easy. You just look at  its one relationship and talk about that. So the Earth orbited… and it  orbited… and it orbited. The problem is that while this story is easy to  see and easy to tell (satisfying the Player Model Principle), it is  also quite dull. We need more interactions, more variation, more  unpredictability. We need more complexity.

 Now imagine we’ve made a simulation of a village. Each of the hundred  villagers has a relationship with each of the others – father, friend,  enemy, lover, or acquaintance. Each can work at the fishing pond, the  market, the field, the mill. Each can satisfy their own needs at the  tavern, in bed sleeping, at the outhouse. The water can flood the field.  The outhouse can spill into the market and contaminate it, causing  sickness, overloading the hospital, making the doctor work too hard,  leading to divorce. It sounds like the Simulation Dream. But there’s  another problem now. The connections multiply until the whole system  appears as a gigantic hairball of complexity.




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 Such a system could support some very interesting stories. I just  told you one of them. The catch is that it will constantly break the  Player Model Principle. With so many relationships, it becomes very hard  for players to understand cause and effect in the system, so those  stories end up buried and unobserved.

 What we want to do is create systems that are smaller and simpler  than these giant hairballs, yet have more interesting, comprehensible  interactions than simple systems like orbiting planets. What we really  want is not a system that is complex, but a system that is _story_-_rich._ Story-richness  is a term I invented for this article, and a concept that I keep in  mind while doing simulation design. It has a simple nerdy mathematical  definition.

_Story-Richness_:The percentage of interactions in a game that are interesting to the player.

 Consider every interaction in the game – every crop harvested, every  path walked, every work spoken by a character. Of all the interactions  happening in the game, what percent are part of an emotionally  meaningful story? In a successful game, this percentage is high. Much of  what you observe will be part of a story. In a poor game, it is quite  low.

 Interestingly, real life and most fictional worlds are not  story-rich! Most days for most people on Earth or in Middle Earth are  quite mundane. It’s only very rarely that someone has to drop the Ring  into Mount Doom. Follow a random hobbit in Hobbiton, and you’ll be bored  soon. It reminds me of an old war simulation MMO, where players  sometimes had to drive a truck for hours just to reach the front line.  Yes, we know war is 99% boredom interspersed with moments of terror, but  a game about it should not be.

 This means that a simulation game can’t be a faithful simulation of  its subject matter! It has to be a narratively condensed, intensified  version of that village, fortress, or prison. And it has to seem true to  the source material without being true to that source material. The  Simulation Dream just got harder.

 *Creating Story-Richness*

 Like apophneia, the sources of story-richness are difficult to see.  But there are some patterns. The basic principle is to avoid  uninteresting events and create more interesting ones.

*Choose the minimum representation that supports the kinds of stories you want to generate*

 This is a complex piece of advice that I’ll try to unpack by example.

 Imagine we’re making a simulation game and trying to decide how to  model food in that game. How many classes of food do we put in? 
We have  lots of options


*All of them!* Cheese, venison, beef, chicken,  broccoli, barley, corn, beer, water, juice, and so on. Hundreds of  options, each acting slightly differently.
*Categories by type:* Meat, vegetables, liquid.
*Categories by quality:* High-quality, medium-quality, low-quality.
*One:* Food is food.
*Zero:* Food is not modelled and nobody eats.
 Which do you choose?

 Choose the *minimum representation* that supports *the kinds of stories you want to generate*.

 The above sentence is fairly dense, so I’ll try to unpack it.

 Consider the kinds of stories you want to generate in your game. To  what degree are they about food? If you’re making a simulation of a New  World colony in 1550, food will be important because starvation is a key  driver of many stories in such a setting. The threat of hunger is, one  way or another, part of most of the stories in such a setting. So you’d  probably want a pretty nuanced food model. In such a game, the  difference between seal blubber and vegetables could be important,  because a diet of only seal blubber leads to scurvy during the winter,  which leads to death. Human values are at stake!

 However, if your game is a prison sim, you could make a strong case  for not simulating food, or for simulating it in the simplest possible  way. Because prison stories are not typically about food. Watch _Oz_ or _The_ _Shawshank Redemption_ and  few of the plotlines revolve around who is eating tasty bacon and who  is eating cheap rice. A complex food simulation in such a game is likely  to just add a lot of systems and noise that don’t contribute anything  to the stories players care about. This complexity would be better added  to the systems for gang membership, shiv combat, or friendship.

 In general, lean on the simple side. You don’t have to simulate that  much. The game is a co-author, not an author. It just need to hint at  what is going on - the player’s apophenia will fill in details.

*Use hair complexity for cheap fictional flavor*

*Hair complexity* is my term for pieces of the simulation that don’t affect anything outside themselves.

 I call it hair complexity because it sticks off the main ball of  relationships without feeding back into it, like the hair on your head.  Such hair complexity can be ignored by players who don’t wish to deal  with it, while more interested or skilled players can pay attention and  get its full flavor. It’s like the flavortext in a card game.

 Examples:


In _Dwarf Fortress_, each dwarf has an appearance. These appearances do nothing, but help players form mental images.
In _Prison Architect_, prisoners have criminal histories. They do nothing (so far), but they add flavour if you want to watch a certain prisoner.
In _The Sims_, sims have conversation topics represented by  images in speech bubbles. For the most part, these topics don’t matter.  They could talk about sailing or sports; it makes no difference. What  matters is that they are talking and their relationship score is  improving. But players can, if they wish, watch the stream of images and  imaging a thread of conversation leading from money to cars to a mutual  friend.
It was mentioned to me at a conference that hair simulations (e.g.  Tomb Raider) are, ironically, hair complexity, since they don’t affect  anything else in the game. Har har.
 Hair complexity is cheaper to design. And since it doesn’t feed back  into the larger game system, it doesn’t add complexity – just a bit of  interface burden.

 *Eclipse Colony design case study: Crop Growth*

 Let’s put this into practice and look at a small example of a simple  system design problem from my game Eclipse Colony. I faced this problem  in early May 2013. Get ready for design nerdiness – we’re about to do  some heavy analysis on what seems like a simple problem.

*Task:* Currently, plants just grow on a timer and can  be harvested when the timer expires. But it’s odd that plants yield the  same regardless of whether they’re exposed to vacuum or not. I’d also  like some notion of farmers tending plants to help them grow and yield  more. Fix these issues.

 In this situation I wrote several candidate designs to choose between before I decided on a path. Here they were:

*Option 0 – Skip it*


Do nothing. Let plants grow the same on the same timer anywhere.
 Analysis: Option 0 should always be there. There are always a lot of  things we could work on in a simulation game. We could make a better  friendship system. We could add animals or new weapons or wild plants.  We could improve world generation. We could differentiate cultures, make  a religious belief system, or add more nuances to the combat model. You  have to be sure that what you’re doing is actually somewhere near the  top of that gigantic priority list, because it’s easy to get tunnel  vision. In this case, I decided that crop growth was worth working on  because starvation is a big part of life in this fictional space colony.  Furthermore, the missing behaviors had been bothering me in a direct  and present way during playtests. It was a problem crying for a  solution.

*Option 1 - The yield variable*


Each plant has a variable called _yield_.
When the plant is harvested, the amount of food that appears is based on yield.
Each time a farmer tends the plant, yield increases. Once tended, plants can’t be tended again until a certain time has passed.
Damage to the plants reduces yield.
Being left in vacuum reduces yield.
 Analysis: I liked this system at first because it seems to reflect  the fiction well. But there’s a big caveat: a new variable (yield) is  undesirable complexity. Also, how will yield work for wild, unfarmed  plants in the future? Will they even have it? How does it interact with  more normal damage from fire or explosions? Do plants also have a health  variable? The added complexity and edge case ambiguities made this seem  a poorer choice.

*Option 2 - Use the growth timer*

 Remember that plants already have a timer that counts down until they’re finished growing.


Each tending operation speeds the plants towards finishing growth.
Damage to the plants reverses their growth.
Being left in vacuum reduces plant growth.
 Analysis: The simplicity of this is good because it doesn’t require  any new variables. But this doesn’t capture reality – real plants don’t  just grow slower when deprived of care or when damaged. They grow poor  harvests, but they still flower around the same time. This system could  lead to absurd situation like crops being slightly damaged repeatedly  and just never becoming harvestable. Or plants being very well-cared for  and being harvestable on a weird accelerated schedule.

*Option 3 – Re-use the health variable*


Plants have the standardized health variable.
Final harvest output is proportional to the plants’ health.
Plant health steadily decreases at all times (due to insects etc.)
Plants are damaged by vacuum and normal damage sources like fire.
Tending plants is essentially repairing their health.
 Analysis: There are no new variables or interfaces, which is good. It  captures the essence of the idea well enough. It even expresses the  rotting of grown plants, since they lose health over time after they  finish growing. This seems like the minimal representation that captures  the subject matter and supports the stories I want the game to  co-author with the player.
 I ultimately decided to re-use the health variable. But even this could still change as the game gets tested more.

 *The Simulation Dream Reborn*

 It seems like maybe we killed the Simulation Dream. You can’t just  simulate a super-complex world because players won’t understand it. And  even if you did, it would be boring, because even Middle Earth isn’t  very story rich.

 But the Simulation Dream lives on. We just know we have to approach  it very carefully. We can’t blindly simulate everything, because most  things are boring and people can’t understand over-complex systems  anyway. We have to carefully craft a condensed system of simple,  understandable hints that cue players’ apophenia to do the heavy lifting  of ascribing emotion and meaning. We have to make sure that system  projects well into the Player Model. And we have to make sure that much  of what happens in it concerns powerful, primal human emotions, not  logistical details.

 But if we do all that, I think the Simulation Dream is still in our reach.

_Check out my game design book *Designing Games *(published with O'Reilly Media) at Amazon or O’Reilly._

*Twitter:* @TynanSylvester
*Blog:* tynansylvester.com.

Quelle: Gamasutra: Tynan Sylvester's Blog - The Simulation Dream


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## LordCrash (11. Oktober 2013)

*Valve is the champion PC gaming deserves*

_By Rob Fahey* Fri 11 Oct 2013 6:30am GMT* / 2:30am EDT / 11:30pm PDT _




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*Taking the fight to the living room - Valve's Steam is the most dynamic force in PC gaming in decades*

  It's quite extraordinary to look  at Valve's Steam platform today and think back to its first appearance -  as the much-derided and rather unstable digital distribution millstone  around the neck first of Counter-Strike and later, somewhat decisively,  of Half-Life 2. From such humble beginnings, Steam has become the  dominant distribution network for PC games and changed its creators at  Valve from a single developer of wonderful if incessantly delayed games  into the most powerful company in the PC gaming market - more powerful  than any publisher (EA's Origin system is a minor challenger to Steam's  dominance) and even more powerful than Microsoft, whose Windows  operating system is no longer the only saloon in town for PC gamers.

 The story of Steam is fascinating precisely because anyone predicting  this outcome back in 2003 would have been laughed out of the room - and  Valve is clearly in no mood to sit back and crush its carefully-tended  laurels. The industry is still digesting the potential impact of the  company's three recent announcements. Valve's independence from  Microsoft's operating system, which began with moving Steam to OSX  (essential, giving the increasing dominance of Apple devices in the  high-end consumer space) and then to Linux (which looked rather less  essential at the time), now looks much more aggressive thanks to the  firm's move to create its own Linux-based gaming OS. Meanwhile, it's  finally confirmed plans to define and certify a hardware spec for living  room PCs, known as Steam Machines, and unveiled an unusual and  potentially very interesting controller for those devices.

Valve's  intention with these moves is not modest, nor is it in any way  disguised. Valve wants to own PC gaming - to the same extent that Sony  owns PlayStation gaming or Microsoft owns Xbox gaming, if not in the  same manner. Valve wants Steam to be a third pole of the core gaming  market (fourth, if you count Nintendo, although they're really playing a  different sport entirely) - one which appeals to a somewhat different  market and operates on very different principles to the traditional  consoles, but which is focused around the Steam platform for  distribution and functionality just as much as consoles are focused on  PlayStation Network or Xbox Live.

For this approach to work, the  move to the living room is crucial. Ignore the would-be iconoclasts who  claim that gaming on a TV with a controller in your hands is old hat,  and we're all soon going to be doing everything with an iPad; this is  little more than second rate soothsaying from tech-fetishists who  consistently make the same fundamental error of assuming that just  because something can be accomplished technically, it means consumers  will actually want to do it, and just because something is  technologically impressive, it makes it into a good and worthwhile  experience. The reality is that the market for the kinds of experiences  afforded by a big screen and a dedicated controller (be it a joypad, a  keyboard and mouse combo, or something in between, as Valve's proposed  solution appears to be) is larger than ever and will continue to grow  even in the age of tablets and phones - in the end, it will be dwarfed  by the games market on those devices, but will still end up being larger  and healthier than it is today. Valve's move on the living room is not  backwards facing, it acknowledges a realistic market view that's all too  easily obscured by our newfound excitement at having cute little  computers in all our pockets.

In  Valve's worldview, the great advantage of PC gaming (and how long  before we all start calling it Steam gaming, a term that's already got a  certain degree of traction?) is that it can take pride of place in the  living room without sacrificing the study or the bedroom. Valve starts  from the opposite side of the pitch from Sony and Microsoft - it  operates a supremely successful software platform with no hardware  attached, while the others are hardware manufacturers (perhaps  ironically in Microsoft's case) whose software platform evolved later  and is still tied to specific hardware devices. That comes with big  advantages - you can create an iconic hardware design that leverages  enormous cost savings thanks to manufacturing tens of millions of units,  and sell them to consumers at far less than the cost that a third-party  box builder would have to charge. It also brings disadvantages, though.  PS4 and Xbox One will never be general computing platforms, and they'll  never be available in the sheer range of form factors that Steam can  reach - from a Steam Machine under the television to a powerful tower in  the den through to a gaming-specced laptop in the student dorm room. In  Steam's hegemony, Steam Machines will still only be one possible option  - every PC and Mac sold will still be a potential device for the Steam  platform.

For some people, Steam is guaranteed absolute victory in  the end simply on philosophical grounds - open always beats shut, they  declare, which is a statement that needs a fair few more qualifications  than you might like in order to actually make it true, but is still a  provocative sentiment. Of course, Steam is only sort-of open. You can  run it on any PC or Mac hardware, it's true, but you can't release any  software you want on it - Valve still acts as a gatekeeper of sorts,  albeit a bit more open than the console firms are (though they are both,  at somewhat different rates, moving towards more openness on their  publishing platforms). In that sense, Steam is a less open platform  than, for example, iOS - although anyone who actually wants to step  outside the Steam ecosystem need only drop back to a desktop and install  anything they want, which makes Steam Machines and their ilk into the  obvious gaming devices of choice for hobbyists and the technically  inclined, just as PCs have always been.

What is far more important  than the question of whether "open always wins" or not (spoiler: it  doesn't, unless you seriously mess with your definitions of "open" to  the point where they're practically meaningless to most people) is the  fact that Valve's moves are absolutely designed to align PC/Steam gaming  with console gaming in the living room, and create a genuine, workable  third way for console gamers considering new pastures, PC gamers tempted  by the simplicity of console, and newcomers dipping their toes in the  gaming waters (yes, plenty of those still exist - they're not all simply  getting as far as Hay Day and Candy Crush Saga and declaring themselves  satisfied). 

There are huge challenges to this approach, of course,  and I fear that nothing Valve can do is going to smooth out some of the  wrinkles involved with PC gaming. PC devices are more expensive than  consoles because they're manufactured by third parties who want to make a  profit from the hardware, and don't have the advantages of scale that  console makers enjoy - so the Steam Machines will probably be great  devices but will represent a much bigger investment than a console.  Moreover, their higher specs will look great to some parts of the market  (although they'll be gobbledegook to lots of other demographics) but  will also become outdated faster than consoles - a major reason for PC  gamers to 'lapse' to console remains the upgrade treadmill, and I have  to confess, there's a certain pleasure for this lapsed PC gamer in  sticking The Last Of Us into a 6-year-old PS3 in the absolute knowledge  that it's going to play it perfectly. Steam Machines won't enjoy that  advantage; for many, of course, they'll outweigh that problem with many  advantages of their own.

It's easy to be a little bit spooked by  the degree of dominance Valve is building over the traditionally open,  free and somewhat Wild West world of PC gaming - but I think this is a  development worth embracing. PC gaming may be a wild frontier, but it  has always needed a sheriff - or rather, a shepherd, a company with a  strong interest in guiding and developing the market while retaining its  essential freedoms. Once, we all hoped that Microsoft would step up to  that role, and for a while it actually did - hence the very existence of  DirectX, for example. Of late, though, Microsoft's interest in PC  gaming has been minimal, and even when it's stuck its oar in, it's  rarely been welcome - Games for Windows Live being one memorable  debacle. Valve taking the reins and delivering a great digital  distribution and social play platform, following it up with credible  pitches to marry the OSX and Linux markets to the Windows market and now  proposing hardware outlines for living room gaming systems and a  radical new controller - well, that's the kind of input the PC gaming  market needs to remain not only fresh, free and dynamic, but also  commercially credible over the next five to ten years, especially as  tablets continue to usurp sales of consumer PC hardware. 

Whatever  your belief in the power of 'open', or your personal preference in  gaming power, Valve's rise to being the dominant force in PC gaming and  its representative in the wider industry is a positive and interesting  move. It seems certain that core gamers' choices in the coming years  will have to be carefully weighed between three different logos on the  box - Sony's, Microsoft's, and Steam's.

Quelle: Valve is the champion PC gaming deserves | GamesIndustry International


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## LordCrash (14. Oktober 2013)

*Talking through The Long Dark with Hinterland founder Raphael van Lierop*

_27 September 2013 • 17 days 5 hours  ago • Story by robzacny _ 




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            “When I was in  college I had a job seismic crew in northern BC,” Raphael van Lierop  tells me. “Basically, doing seismic surveying for oil companies. You’re  flown in to the middle of nowhere by a helicopter and there’s no roads,  nothing except for a few logging camps. It’s extremely isolating. I  think that a lot of classic wilderness literature has played on those  themes; what happens to the veneer of civilization that we all carry  around with us when we’re put into a real survival scenario.”

 That’s the scenario where van Lierop and his team at Hinterland want to put players in their recently-announced survival game, The Long Dark. It’s a survival game set in the Canadian backcountry in the midst of civilization’s collapse.

 That might seem like coals to Newcastle. After all, PC gamers watch  civilization falling apart just about every day, and that’s just from  reading comment threads. Then they play games involving zombie invasion,  plague, aliens, and sometimes even environmental catastrophe. What  makes The Long Dark different is that it’s more Jack London than George  Romero, inspired less by American urban survivalist fantasies and more  by a Canadian frontier that remains untamed, where man is not the real  monster, but another of nature’s potential victims. It is a place near  to van Lierop’s heart. In fact, it’s practically out his back door.

When it comes to peeling back the  veneer of civilization, van Lierop may already have created the  definitive work with 2011’s Space Marine. That veneer is hard to  maintain when you are controlling a burly man in bright blue armor who  is curb-stomping Orks, sending curtains of blood slashing everywhere.

 “You know, with Space Marine I didn’t set out to make the  most violent action game ever made,” van Lierop says. “It just turned  out to be that way because that’s the IP of Warhammer 40,000.”

 While I will defend Space Marine to my dying breath (though I am bias),  van Lierop seems ambivalent about the project. Or perhaps more  accurately, he found himself becoming ambivalent about his entire career  in its wake.

 “After every game I’ve shipped, I’ve gone through that  process of reflection and asking myself, ‘Is this the right thing?’ And  after Space Marine it was particularly strong... I got to that point  where I reflected back on why I first got into games. What my ambitions  were when I started out in the industry. And... it felt kind of like a  now or never scenario. It was like, I could sign up for another big  triple A project that’s going to be another two or three years of my  life, or I can take a shot now, at this moment, and try and see if I can  make it happen.”




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 Time is something van Lierop has become acutely aware of.  His time in mainstream game development showed him how slowly years  transform into new games, how truly short a career in development can  be.

 He explains: “If you look back at projects that got  canceled, or that you can’t finish for whatever reason, and the games  that you do ship but don’t really resonate, you’re kind of like ‘Shit,  if this keeps up maybe I’ll get ten games out by the time I’m done, and a  couple of them will be pretty good, and the rest will be ok.’ Does that  feel like it’s going to be enough?”

*Into the wild*

 For van Lierop, it wasn’t. He departed Relic and started laying the groundwork for Hinterland Games  and The Long Dark while working as a consultant on a variety of  projects, including Far Cry 3. But it was all to pay the bills while the  small team at Hinterland started working on the game they really wanted  to make, a game with its origins in the Canadian backcountry and van  Lierop’s own connection with it.

 “My wife and I moved here out to Vancouver Iisland from  Vancouver shortly after I finished Space Marine, largely because we  wanted to get out of the city. My office is like 30 meters from 50 km of  really rugged mountain biking trails that go through all these log cut  areas and forests with cougars and bears and all this kind of stuff. So  this is my backyard,” van Lierop explains. “I really wanted to explore  that space.”




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 Van Lierop has left the city behind, and so has The Long  Dark. Van Lierop wanted to make a uniquely Canadian game, one more  informed by the isolated, rugged communities that dot Alberta and  British Columbia.

 “I wanted to explore not the end of the world, not the  urban apocalypse, which we’ve all seen a million times, but what does  the end of the world look like from the fringes?” Van Lierop asks. “What  does it look like for people who live in the crossroad towns and small  rural communities on the edge of nowhere. How did they become even more  isolated than they were before? ...We’d like to eventually end up in  some of those more familiar settings, but we want to start from this  different context.”

 On the edges of civilization, the breakdown of order and  society wouldn’t necessarily turn into the Hobbesian free-for-all  depicted in most games and movies. For people who live on the northern  edge of the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains, for whom the Arctic Circle  is almost as near a neighbor as the United States, the most likely  enemy is always nature. Where a gallon fuel oil can mean the difference  between life and death, where the nearest major hospital might be a long  helicopter flight away, survival is more about counting calories than  ammunition.

 “A survival sim is about resource management,” Van Lierop  says. “I was really inspired reading about some of the Antarctic  expeditions. These guys would very carefully plan out how many calories  of food they are going to take in, versus how much they are going to  expend. I read about how badly some of these things turned out because  they made bad choices, or didn’t calculate things properly. When you  hear about the Scott expedition, you hear about how they calculated they  were burning 4000 calories per person per day. It was only after [they  set out] that they realized they were burning closer to 7000, because  they were pulling their sledge of supplies. So gradually they were all  starving to death. They just didn’t know it.”




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 Knowledge will play a key role in The Long Dark. This is  not going to be a game where you just wander around and peer inside a  trash can and find an entire meal waiting for you along with fuel for  your car. Nor will an abandoned cache wait for you to come find it.  Other people are trying to survive, and the world’s already vanishing  resources will diminish further as time goes by.

 Van Lierop explains, “As players encounter other survivors,  or encampments or find cabins etc., when they find knowledge of some  sort -- could be a map, a conversation with someone that tells you about  something in the world -- that knowledge decays. For example I might  find a survivor on the road, and I have an interaction with him. They  mention ‘Oh hey, two hills over there at the abandoned gas station  there’s a car over there with some abandoned stuff’. Now that you have  that on your map and that it exists in the world and a pretty strong  sense that if you can get there quickly enough, you’ll be able to find  it. But if you dilly-dally and get distracted by other stuff, it might  already be gone. So there’s that constant push and pull between wanting  to explore the world, having to think about how much it’s costing you to  do that... It’s really a tug of war between exploring and staying  alive.”




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 Exploring will require a measure of woodcraft. Van Lierop  talks about how he wants players in The Long Dark to become hyper-aware  of their surroundings. To be able to trace a stream stream to its  source. To know how to escape predators, and the times of day when  they’ll be most active.

 Occasionally, those predators may be human, but Van Lierop  stresses that combat and battles with other survivors are not what The  Long Dark is about. In fact, originally they didn’t want to have combat  at all, but eventually the team felt it was too artificial a limitation.  Instead, The Long Dark treats combat as a last resort and, in most  important ways, a failure. Every encounter with another character is a  negotiation, an attempt to figure out if it will end in cooperation,  indifference, or violence.

 “It’s not about pulling your gun out before them, but  trying to suss out what they’re looking for and if there’s a way they  can help you, or them, are they going to try and kill you and take your  stuff, are they in trouble and do they have anything you need that can  be exchanged? We’ve been thinking about other survivors more as people  and a resource for knowledge as opposed to just people who you kill and  take all their shit,” Van Lierop adds.

*Project Management*

 Right now The Long Dark is not quite halfway funded on Kickstarter.  Hinterland are asking for $200,000 Canadian dollars, though it sounds  like the Kickstarter money is more aimed at giving Hinterland an extra  layer of spit-and-polish rather than funding the entire development.

 “We’re kind of scoping when it comes to the content side,  but even with our Kickstarter we’ve been really upfront with our  backers, saying our goals are not built around adding more content to  the game,” van Lierop says. “What we don’t want to do is end up in one  of those situations where we we’re forced to have a bigger game, where  we’d need a bigger team which brings more risk, etc. Our stretch goals  are more built around things like making 30 minutes of custom music into  60 minutes. So it’s not stuff that risks the production of the game,  but just adds more quality to the game. So that’s where we’re kinda at;  we have a good sense of what we can build.”

 While The Long Dark will be a realistic and sophisticated  survival sim, its presentation will be far more abstracted and stylized.“

Van Lierop explains, “We’re not going to chase photo  realism, it’s not a goal we care that much about. ...Hokyo [Lim] was the  art director of League of Legends and the Unfinished Swan, and so Hokyo  has a strong sense of his own style, and that’s why I wanted him to  work on this, because I knew It needed a very unique art style and  iconic identity for the game. So the style that you saw in the concept  we made is what we want the game to look like.”

 With a strong team of veterans developers, including former  Volition technical director Alan Lawrence, Hinterland are well-equipped  to deliver on their ambition to create a stylish Canadian STALKER. It’s  especially encouraging to hear van Lierop talk about how much he wants  to avoid experience and perk systems that create an illusion of mastery,  and create a game with enough depth to give players the real thing. As  much as The Long Dark might be a story of man versus nature, survival  depends on becoming attuned to that dangerous, hostile environment.

 “We will be successful,” van Lierop says, “if we can deliver that  kind of an experience to the player. Where they not only feel immersed  in how beautiful the world is, but where their time in the world makes  them better at being in the world.”


Quelle: Talking through The Long Dark with Hinterland founder Raphael van Lierop | PCGamesN


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## LordCrash (18. Oktober 2013)

*Why are big-budget game developers so afraid of exploring sexual themes?*

_Edge Staff at 12:00pm October 18 2013            _

 Our society already gamifies sex,” game developer Anna Anthropy  points out on her blog, linking to a Google image search on the word  ‘Cosmopolitan’. Hundreds and hundreds of Cosmo covers pop up, with  coverlines such as ‘75 sex moves men crave’, ‘100 best sex tips’, and  ‘Guys rate 50 sex moves’, as if women can win or keep a boyfriend by  thoroughly completing a checklist. Sex is everywhere. ‘Sex comedy’ is a  Hollywood film genre firmly marketed at young men and women: Easy A,  Superbad, American Pie. We are consistently told that sex sells, and are  bombarded with tits-out HBO dramas and ‘edgy’ TV series such as Game Of  Thrones. The porn industry has more vigour than ever. And yet the  best-known western videogame we have about sex is Leisure Suit Larry. Is  the industry afraid of sex?

 BioWare has tentatively included thematically serious sex scenes in  its games, to much public comment, ever since the first Mass Effect.  David Gaider, lead writer on BioWare’s Dragon Age series, gave a talk at  this year’s Game Developers Conference called ‘Sex in Videogames’, in  which he pointed out that sex is an exceedingly popular topic on the  BioWare forum. Yet videogames, he says, have a very particular image  problem. “We’ve had negative reactions [from the media] to go along with  the positive – not all of it is particularly credible, but it’s  important to understand where that negative reaction comes from… you  have to understand how people view our players, who they think our  players are. The public views our audience as mostly children… For us,  who play games, we are like, whoah, that’s so far behind – 20 years  behind the reality.” Any attempt to make a game with sexual content,  even with strict age ratings, may be construed as a subversive move for a  medium until now best known for its supposed influence in school  shootings.

 Gaider went on to explain how the game industry itself is no better:  we tend to think of players as being young adult males, which is still a  good ten years behind the reality. The ESRB reports that the average  game player is now 34 years old, and that 47 per cent of the gaming  audience is female. Regardless, sexual content remains scarce, and  female characters are still primarily the ones being sexualised. During  sex scenes, the woman tends to be the focus – her body, her vocals, her  nakedness.




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_  The Witcher’s sex scenes are representative of many across videogames – shot from a male perspective._

 Take the Witcher 2. It contains a sex scene between Triss and Geralt  that involves a 360° shot of Triss removing her clothes entirely by  magic, while Geralt dives into the bath with his trousers on. It’s  incongruous from a narrative standpoint for Geralt to do this: he’s no  prude. Triss’s hips, buttocks, super-perky breasts and orgasmic  expressions are the focus here, and her loud moans are actually the  subject of the cutscene’s narrative device. In contrast, there are no  camera shots of Geralt’s naked chest or buttocks, shots of his face or  any kind of audible vocal expression from him during this fairly  explicit scene. It’s a neat shorthand for the way games treat sexual  encounters: sex scenes are for heterosexual men to look at, and are  usually shot from that male perspective. It brings to mind Spinal Tap’s  Nigel Tufnel who, when accused of sexism, retorts, “What’s wrong with  being sexy?” Perhaps by portraying sex in the same tired manner, the  game industry is missing an opportunity not only to try new (camera)  positions, but also to broaden its (sex) appeal.

 But what about playable sex scenes? These are few and far between in  videogames, and the ones we do have – such as the one between Lucas and  Tiffany in Farenheit – seem clumsy and awkward, made more ridiculous by  the idea that you can ‘win’ at sex by pressing a button at the right  time. (Farenheit was rebranded Indigo Prophecy for the US market, with  most of its sexual content scrubbed to avoid an ‘Adults Only’ rating.)

 Richard Lemarchand, ex-Uncharted lead designer and visiting associate  professor in interactive media at the University of Southern  California, objects to sex being portrayed as an interaction that can be  won, lost, or completed. “That kind of modelling in a game of sex comes  at the subject with a certain mindset,” he says. “There’s a ‘game of  skill’ to be played here – if you win the game then there’s a positive  outcome, and if you lose the game there’s a negative outcome. I think a  lot of people have that idea about sex itself on many different levels –  you know, if you wear the right aftershave and you say the right things  you might get to have sex with someone… I think a lot of people grow up  thinking there is a right and a wrong way to ‘do sex’.”




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_  Fahrenheit’s sex scenes are made ridiculous by the idea that you can ‘win’ at sex._

 Famed for saying to a crowd at NYU Game Center that game creators put  up too much front and didn’t make themselves vulnerable enough,  Lemarchand goes on to say that he is heartened that games are becoming  more about the idea of play as being intrinsically rewarding. “The  historical place that we’ve come from in game culture is to do with  zero-sum games, or to do with win/lose states in games. I’m excited to  see a shift in games away from win/lose conditions and towards systems  and artefacts that embody many different kinds of playfulness. The  greater this shift, the more optimistic I get about being able to map  that onto unisexuality. As I have struggled to come to an understanding  of sex and what it means to human beings, over the years I’ve come to  understand that sex is not just about navigating obstacle courses and  goals. Play is an end unto itself.”

 However, Lemarchand is still keen to emphasise how difficult human  interaction is to model. “As games have advanced in the last few years,  there’s obviously been a move towards figurative descriptions of either  quasi-realistic or stylised realistic scenes… It’s very hard in computer  graphics to get characters even emoting well at one another. Depicting  the human body, and the human emotion… something as complex and as  nuanced as that – which you need to depict sex well – this presents one  of the biggest hurdles to depicting sex in games.” For example, he says,  “we always agonised as to whether we could get the characters to kiss  well in Uncharted” – a game where he says the team preferred to cut away  rather than depict sex graphically.

 Former design director for Epic Games Cliff Bleszinski shares  Lemarchand’s sentiment. “Take Mass Effect, for example,” he tells us, “a  fantastic series that I’ve praised numerous times, but when the  characters interact in their sex scenes it kind of looks like two  cosplay mannequins rubbing together. I think the key is to suggest sex,  and to imply first, before we try to make Hot Coffee: The Standalone  Game.”




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_Mass Effect’s sex scenes looks “like two cosplay mannequins rubbing together,” says Cliff Bleszinski._

 Not everyone feels this way, though. Martin Hollis, the veteran  designer whose work spans GoldenEye 007 to Bonsai Barber, is making a  game about love for GameCity Festival 2013, and he is not sure that it’s  just game mechanics that are steering big-budget titles away from more  sexually aware themes.

 “In terms of game mechanics, there’s no theoretical problem,” Hollis  says. “Videogames have a lot of repetition. Sex itself is… repetitive  seems like the wrong word, but you know what I mean. Given the repeating  layered loops in the structure of most ludic or game-like games, it is  silly to say that the medium is intrinsically antagonistic to sex. In  fact music, dance, sex and games naturally and structurally have an  intimate relation that we can loosely call ‘rhythm’… What we see,  however, is 6,000 years of games about competition, conflict or war. The  cultural history of games we have been bequeathed makes it difficult to  mine [other] tropes, mechanics or systems, so it is an uphill struggle  to design the abstract part of a game concerning sex. Even the concept  of a romantic game is a difficult one for a westerner familiar only with  middle-of-the-road western games.”

 The structural history of games can be a crushing load to bear for  game designers: the fact that there is no real track record of sexually  explicit interactive experiences being profitable or successful is a  theoretical roadblock. Game designer Matthew S Burns once lamented  games’ structural problems on his blog, pointing out that their  reluctance to leave familiar game mechanics behind causes the  accompanying narrative to suffer as a result. “The very second you try  to wrap actions like [shooting aliens or punching people] in a ‘good  story’ that does not somehow address what happens during the mechanical  part of the experience,” Burns argues, “is the second you fail to write a  good story.”

http://media.edge-online.com/wp-content/uploads/edgeonline/2013/10/Fear-of-sex-3.jpghttp://media.edge-online.com/wp-content/uploads/edgeonline/2013/10/Fear-of-sex-3.jpg
_“It is silly to say that the medium is intrinsically antagonistic to sex,” says game designer Martin Hollis._

 Is that why Mass Effect, God Of War, even Grand Theft Auto’s sex  scenes seem incidental and barely developed? Is it because we are  failing to address sex directly, with a new language of game mechanics?  Is sex doomed to be a punchline like in Leisure Suit Larry, or a racy  subtext like in Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines?

 Imagine, though, that developers had not spent years and years  iterating on technology to make violence more realistic, and instead  focused on making emotional experiences, sex and the interaction between  characters’ bodies more believable.

 Independent developer Pietro Righi Riva is making a Unity game called  Awkward Sex, which simulates two human bodies that hover where your  mouse leaves them: the aim is to click and drag where you would like  them to go. Of course, the game is called Awkward Sex, and you are  inclined to make the two bodies touch each other, but it’s melancholy  and difficult. Positioning the two humanoids to meaningfully touch each  other is a slow, almost impossible process. Imagine that we had mastered  this years ago: would we be playing games that had more to say about  sexual interaction?

 There’s still hope. Japanese games have always embraced sex as a  subject and theme, although they can be very misogynistic and often  avoid 3D modelling or any real approach to sex as a meaningful  interaction between two characters. And there certainly isn’t a dearth  of actual thematic discussion of sex in the indie game scene. As  previously mentioned, critic and developer Anna Anthropy often makes  games about sexual experiences, shunning hyperrealistic graphics for  discussion about the issues surrounding sex. Anthropy’s game Mind Fuck,  about staring down your partner erotically in a competition for points,  is multiplayer and entirely based on one button – the rest of the game  leverages your real-life relationship with a partner.

http://media.edge-online.com/wp-content/uploads/edgeonline/2013/10/Mind-Fuck.jpghttp://media.edge-online.com/wp-content/uploads/edgeonline/2013/10/Mind-Fuck.jpg
_Anna Anthropy’s Mind Fuck._

 A text-based adventure about saucy police antics, Anthropy’s Sex Cops  is a game where the oppressive constraints of the narrative options act  as a domineering dominatrix on your erotic adventure. Twine game  developer Porpentine used the same constraints to make Cyberqueen, where  your character is erotically abused by a sci-fi computer resembling  SHODAN from System Shock. From what Lemarchand and Bleszinski have said,  perhaps large-budget videogames are actually crippled by their own  compulsive reliance on incredibly sophisticated 3D graphics – so much so  that the complexities of sex are impossible to portray in a nuanced and  non-ridiculous manner.

 But exactly what is it that allows independent games to explore these  issues more freely? Although David Gaider’s games and the Mass Effect  franchise have clearly done well, what stops big-budget games being more  explicit, more incisive, more exploratory with sex like indie games?  There’s something else at work. Conservative attitudes present in  western culture, particularly in the US and Australia, are limiting the  ways in which such content is portrayed in games.

 “The taboo of sex in console games is politically and commercially  censored more strictly than that of male nudity or the taboo of killing  people,” Hollis says. In particular, Hollis cites the furore surrounding  the Hot Coffee mod made by Patrick Wildenborg for Rockstar’s Grand  Theft Auto: San Andreas, which allowed players to access a previously  unrated sex minigame that existed in the game’s undeleted assets. The  Hot Coffee content, although inaccessible without the mod, caused GTA:  San Andreas to be re-rated in the US, turning it from an ESRB rating of  ‘Mature’ to ‘Adults Only 18+’, which made many shops pull the game from  their shelves.




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_The Hot Coffee scandal saw Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas pulled from shelves and re-rated in the US._

 This is a serious issue for publishers in terms of profits, and a  warning shot for big videogame developers. But it’s an issue that the  makers and distributors of free games about sex – such as Anna Anthropy  and Porpentine – don’t have to worry about. “The bottom line is that the  only way my games got made is because I made them myself, for free, on  my own time without compromise,” Porpentine says. “[Most commercial  games] focus on realistic graphics and refuse to experiment with  stylisation that would better evoke emotions and arousal. They rely on  highly structural, antiquated mechanics instead of designing organic  controls suited to intimate experiences. You see stylisation in every  other artform, but [triple-A games are] focused on realism in a way that  reminds me of when rich people only cared about extremely realistic  paintings with detailed lighting.”

 Hollis cites commercial and political censorship as one of the main  reasons why big studios won’t touch the topic of sex. “After Rockstar  Games’ clumsy and accidental ejection and Take-Two’s spanking, we should  expect little from console games because of self-censorship,” he says.  “With Hot Coffee, a conflux of conservative America, Australia and  opportunistic politicians did wrathfully smite a game publisher who  [had] thought naughty thoughts. People say there is no such thing as bad  publicity, but there certainly is such a thing as being badly removed  from the shelves. The view seems to be that 17-year-olds should be  allowed to engage in virtual murder but they don’t have sex, and  therefore do not need to know or learn about sex in the interactive  medium. Sex is very wrong and illegal, whereas mass murder is acceptable  and legal – in games. One is abnormal and the other is normal; what a  strange world we have made.”

 “When I was 12 years old it was perfectly OK to watch Robocop or  Predator,” Bleszinski says, “but the second that a breast was flashed on  screen, my mother would attempt to toss a blanket or a coat over my  head. That probably explains a lot of my adult issues. Americans in  general have really weird ideas about sex and violence, and that  micro-example kind of summarises it nicely.” Bleszinski feels certain  that commercial games can still address the diverse ways in which humans  interact with each other; he’s just unsure about how well they can do  so.

 “I still have hope that we may someday feature titles that deal with  the nuances of relationships and how very complicated yet beautiful sex  can be,” he says. “I have a feeling that Oculus Rift might just help  with the immersion aspects of depicting a sexual experience. [But] when  it comes to nuance and pacing and depiction, that’s another battle  altogether.”




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_Wicked Paradise, “the world’s first erotic virtual reality videogame”._

 Someone who is already attempting to fight that battle is Jeroen Van  den Bosch, the founder of Wicked Paradise. His team – a group of  triple-A veterans who’ve worked on Rage, the Call Of Duty series, Lost  Planet, Madden and PlanetSide 2 – is in the very early stages of  developing “the world’s first erotic virtual reality videogame” as  episodic content powered by Oculus Rift. Although Van den Bosch says  that he will initially be making experiences targeted at straight males,  he adds that he would like to branch out into making games for other  sexual orientations too. The 3D virtual reality headset will offer more  immersive experiences, and so is ripe for exploring other experiences  than the usual death machines; already it is being lauded as a way for  those who may have mobility problems to experience things they may not  be able to do in real life.

 Asked if he thinks there is a special risk attached to making erotic  games, he says: “I think a big part of the industry evolved into  choosing the safe route and rehashing their successful formula year  after year. I remember in the early days of my career in the game  industry there was much more room for creativity. Games with unique  premises such as Messiah, Magic Carpet and Little Big Adventure had a  place. But slowly over time, it seems that most of the triple-A studios  moved towards the same style of games, and every year we have a slightly  better version of the same game being released. Most of the really  creative games have moved to the indie scene. These smaller studios  simply don’t have the same budget as large studios. There are special  risks in doing a project like this, but I don’t want to play it safe.  You just need to have the conviction to go for it.”

 For Van den Bosch, the sophistication of 3D technology is more of an  asset for him than a limitation. Having 3D bodies interact is the  crucial part of his work. “It is difficult, but it’s not impossible. I  think Mirror’s Edge did a great job of avatar embodiment, giving the  player a virtual body. Ultimately it boils down to having very talented  3D character artists and animators on the team who fully understand  every aspect of human anatomy and know how to translate that into  realistic behaviour in a virtual environment. But at the core of it, we  are using the same motion-capture techniques that are used in triple-A  firstperson shooters, so just from a pure technological standpoint there  is no difference.”

http://media.edge-online.com/wp-content/uploads/edgeonline/2013/10/Wicked-paradise-2.jpg
_Wicked Paradise uses “the same motion-capture techniques that are used in triple-A firstperson shooters.”_

 But is he overestimating how much work it will take to have two or  more 3D bodies touch each other meaningfully? Van den Bosch agrees that  his job would be significantly easier if the industry had iterated on  the mechanics of love rather than the mechanics of violence for years.  “I always found it amazing that it’s perceived ‘normal’ to blow people’s  heads off in games. However, when you create a game that focuses on  happy feelings, like sex or relationships, it immediately becomes  controversial. That just doesn’t make any sense to me. Luckily that is  rapidly changing, and I think we see it in other media as well. For  example, Game Of Thrones is a fantastic series with a rich, complex  storyline and copious amounts of sex. That paid off for them.”

 Are we talking videogame porn here, then? Is that where we are going?  “No, not at all; we are not making porn,” Van den Bosch emphasises.  “Unlike porn, in Wicked Paradise [the developer’s first game will be  self-titled] the player isn’t watching something passive on a screen,  but rather the player is immersed in an interactive virtual reality  experience. That’s a huge difference. We are actually working with a  critically acclaimed erotic novelist to help us create a rich, mature  storyline.”

 Do we even need a “rich, mature storyline” to justify our interest in  sex? Can’t sex itself be an expression of who we are? Thanks to the  fearless personal games that indie developers are making, the examples  of how to treat sex as a nuanced expression of the human condition are  out there, waiting for the larger culture to cast off its superficial  titillation.

 If it has proved a difficult task before, focusing on hyperreal  graphics may not be the answer. Focusing instead on character, and the  different ways characters are affected or motivated by sex, is something  that could help benefit the wider videogame-playing public. Games would  be the ideal environment, for example, in which to explore the idea of  consent – what it is and what it means to people. If sex is addressed  more directly in this way, it could lead to greater respect for others’  bodies, not to mention greater respect for sex itself.

Quelle: Why are big-budget game developers so afraid of exploring sexual themes? | Features | Edge Online


----------



## LordCrash (22. Oktober 2013)

*On Videogame Reviews*


*1. Game of the Year*

_BioShock Infinite_ is the worst game of the year.

 It’s an unjustified shooter without a single new idea.  It’s a  self-gratifying spectacle that confuses cunning with depth.  It’s a  craven, heartless game of false moral equivalencies that uses the  suffering of oppressed people as window dressing, as theme, while it  explores its own cold metaphysical conceits.

 For its lack of humanity, for its fake guilt, for its flat boring  gameplay, for its 100 million dollar cost, for its cleverness, for its  cowardice, _BioShock Infinite_ is not just the worst game of the year.  It’s the worst game I’ve played this generation.


*2. Complicating the Narrative*

_BioShock Infinite_ is the third most highly reviewed game on  Metacritic so far this year.  Across 3 platforms (PC, Xbox 360, and  PS3), it has received 126 positive reviews and 2 mixed.  Its overall  Metacritic score is 94 out of 100.

_“This is as close to perfect as videogames get.”__
_
_“Irrational’s achievements in BioShock Infinite dignify the medium.”_

_“[BioShock Infinite] is about circles, and how you can go around them and end up in a completely new place.  It’s a beautiful game.”_

 The question is not: why do none of these reviews agree with me?  It  is: why do they all agree with each other?  Where is the diversity of  opinion?  Where is the spirited debate?  In the aggregate, it becomes  clear that the problem is not any one review.  It’s all the reviews.

 I don’t expect every reviewer to give _BioShock Infinite_ a 2 out of 10, as I would.  But I expect to see more dissent than that offered by excellent outliers like Game Critics or Quarter to Three or Action Button.   I expect to see more actual criticism in the videogame review  community.  I expect to not have perspectives like mine looked upon as  trolling.

 Reviews are not about finding agreement.  They are not based on  commonly held values.  As if anyone is sure just what makes a videogame  great.  It’s all contested ground.  It’s our values as gamers that are  exactly at stake in reviews.  We shouldn’t be asking whether _BioShock Infinite_ deserves a 9 or a 10.  We should be asking whether it deserves a 2 or a 10.  That’s a real debate.


*3. Fake Empire*

_BioShock Infinite_ is lauded for its art design and worldbuilding.  This is an obvious plus for most reviewers.

_“I don’t say this lightly…but Columbia is simply the most intriguing, fascinating setting I’ve ever set foot in as a player.”_

 For me, this is one reason the game is so disappointing.  A  beautiful, corrupt place that I can only see, not touch.  That I can  interact with in no meaningful way except to shoot or loot.  That  actively presents itself as fake, a theme park, but offers no mechanics  to go behind the curtain.

 A game’s visuals cannot be separated into some separate category for  evaluation.  That’s the old logic of graphics/sound/fun factor.  They  are instead an integrated part of the entire game experience.  Striking  images and loving details can actually make a game worse if they draw  you in and suggest a world that the rest of the game cannot support.  A  basic dissonance is created between hand and eye, and you feel more like  a viewer than a player.  The world calls to you, but you cannot  respond.  This may be all too common in videogames – compelling visuals  overlaid on stiff, conventional, unimaginative mechanics (see also: _Sonic the Hedgehog_, _Limbo_, _Skyrim_) – but _Infinite_ doesn’t get a pass just because it’s all high-minded and old-timey about it.

 For all its artfulness, _BioShock Infinite_’_s _Columbia  doesn’t even try that hard to suggest a world.  It’s a ‘living’ city  filled with animatronic dummies and conveniently closed shops.  It hangs  in the sky with no sense of altitude, since you can’t fall off.  You  ‘explore’ by rereading the same few propaganda posters, rummaging  through desks for pineapples and bullets and hot dogs, and wandering  around until you discover which way to go and then going the other way  (for fabulous prizes).  All those fine period details become merely  glowing objects to click through, and the game reveals FPS to mean  first-person scavenger as much as first-person shooter.  It’s the  thinnest sort of exploration imaginable.  You’re not in a floating city;  you’re not in a place at all.  It’s just another videogame level.

 Of course, the game claims to be aware of all this fakery.  It  Disneyfies with glee and says: hey, this Columbia is pretty dystopian,  huh?  And if this dystopia seems like your typical videogame world, well  there’s some sly critique for you.  The _BioShock_ series’ great  talent thus far seems to be thematizing videogame conventions rather  than challenging them.  It has mastered the safe subversion, never mind  its conservative heart.  Clever self-awareness trumps actual  innovation.  And gamers eat it up.  Because we love to feel smart,  removed, safely above it all.


*4. Picnic, Lightning*

_BioShock Infinite _is an intensely boring first-person  shooter.  Its gunplay is loose, loud, full of bluster.  Weapons and  vigors are poorly differentiated and seem designed around lurid effects  rather than compelling interplay.  When I was offered the chance to buy  upgrades my first time through, none of them interested me.  So I  waited.  I saved all my scavenged silver eagles and waited for a reason  to buy anything.  And then the game was over.  I’d never bought a thing.

 It’s not that I have any particular talent for shooters; it’s that _Infinite_’s  entire upgrade system and economy is unnecessary on normal difficulty.   In fact, there is no real difficulty at all on normal (outside one  inane ghost and the final firefight).  Like the original _BioShock _and  its game-breaking vita chambers, without a meaningful penalty for  death, it all comes down to a war of attrition.  Even among modern games  and all their coddling, _Infinite_ is particularly indulgent about  failure.  Your choices are either a frenetic, garish, mayhem-filled  picnic on normal or the tedious meat grinder of the harder difficulties.

 A natural question arises: why is _BioShock Infinite_ a shooter  anyway?  If it barely matters how well you shoot, why shoot at all?  And  if the most potentially engaging part of the game – its world – is  inaccessible, why not make it some other kind of game?  One that would  allow actual exploration and some meaningful form of, you know,  interactivity?

 The most straightforward answer is that the original _BioShock_ and _System Shock 2_ were shooters.  The genre pressure on a 100 million dollar game is probably another reason.  But in-game, _BioShock Infinite_  doesn’t justify its own gameplay.  I get that Booker is tough, a deeply  violent man.  But a one-man army?  With flashy magic powers shoehorned  in just to make the killing cooler?  Given his mission (bring us the  girl, wipe away the debt) and _Infinite_’s ambition (a videogame of  big ideas), does the basic interactive premise of the game really make  sense?  In the way that the gunplay of _Halo_, _Far Cry 2_, or _Call of Duty_ does?

 This line of thinking seems illegitimate to most reviewers.  You  can’t question a game’s genre.  You are supposed to take the game on its  own genre terms, see what it’s trying to do within them, and then  evaluate it fairly.  But what if what it’s trying to do is dumb?   Telling the story of a violent man trying to come to terms with his  crimes while using lightning to make heads explode is dumb.  Creating a  world of delusion, suffering, and historical evil and them making you  feel awesome as you plow through it is beyond dumb.  This is not  meaningful violence.  This is having your cake and chain-lightning it  too.

 Reviewers speak about videogames genres as if they’re  well-established categories.  They are not.  They are in constant flux,  and any supposed convention is up for debate.  In practice, genres are  either marketing labels or convenient shorthand for writers who do not  know how to describe their videogame experiences.  They keep our  expectations in check and our criticisms either in a  comparative/historical mode or at the level of the nitpick.  We do not  ask why we’re here, what it’s all about.  We narrow and focus on  surfaces, features, the presumed genre facts, not our experiences of  them.  It’s not even that thinking in genre terms can’t ever be useful.   It’s that in videogameland, we don’t know the difference between a  genre and a rut.


*5. Not My Thing*

So _BioShock Infinite_ is not a compelling first-person  shooter.  Then again, few first-person shooters are.  Once I admit this  ‘bias’ – that I think the FPS is one of the most limited, least  interesting genres – I’ve marked myself as someone unqualified to give a  fair review.

 Online, we often say a game is ‘not my thing’ if we dislike it or  just aren’t interested but want to be nice to all those people for whom  it is, presumably, their thing.  (See also the demographic cop-out: I’m  not the target audience.)  It works as a courtesy, as a basic  acknowledgement that other people with different tastes exist.  But it’s  also shallow, a way of not engaging.  It forecloses conversations about  the ‘thing’ itself before they can even begin.

 We’ve internalized the logic of ‘not my thing’ in our reviews as  well.  We assume that genre preferences are all about taste.  Thus, you  should at least halfway enjoy platformers, or JRPGs, or racing games to  give them a fair shake in a review.  To make sure you ‘get’ them, their  particular pleasures.  To keep your criticisms in check, not prone to  personal ‘bias’.

 We assume that disliking particular genre elements disqualifies a  reviewer, but not the opposite: that being predisposed to liking a  genre, being a fan, might be the problem.  That it might also predispose  a reviewer to a fan’s conservatism, a fan’s indulgence, a fan’s myopia  and pedantry.  Fans excel at celebration, but criticism?  No, fandom  seeks to insulate itself from criticism.  And yet videogame reviewers  are, by and large, avowed videogame fans.

 ‘Not my thing’ is really gatekeeping dressed up as broadmindedness.   It’s the preemptive agree-to-disagree that keeps conversations  pleasantly limp and premises unexamined.  It erects a neighborly fence  so that thoughtful outsiders don’t accidentally wander in.  It says: I’m  treading lightly; you do the same.  And if this all sounds like a weird  club run by the faithful, by thin-skinned boys, well that’s because it  is.


*6. Press X to Elizabeth*

_“Elizabeth  though is really the hook that knocks BioShock Infinite into maximum  score territory…She is a truly phenomenal combination of coding, voice  acting, mo-cap, design, and writing…She’s a fully formed character, a  real person near enough.”_

 You have to wonder if some reviewers know any women.  Do they have  sisters, mothers?  Or, less likely, are they women themselves?  Who else  is on their list of fully-formed female characters?  The rebooted Lara  Croft?  Our standards for women in games are so low that a down and  dirty Lara can now make claims to being a feminist hero.  Never mind  that her QTE deaths are mini snuff films.  That every time she finds a  tomb to raid, the camera cozies up for a sideboob shot.  That none of  this is accidental.  (Did the sideboob camera direct itself?)

 Elizabeth may clear the very low bar set for women in games, but  she’s not a complex character.  She’s a companion cube in a corset.  For  most reviewers, this counts as a real person.  Or near enough.

 She comes from the haircut school of character development (which can sometimes actually work – see _The Walking Dead_’s  Clementine).  She gradually loses her clothes over the game until she  is finally re-damselled and etherized upon a table, mo-capped, fully  formed.  She’s been caged and ogled her whole life.  Why stop now?

 While leading the player to end-game enlightenment, Elizabeth serves a  practical function as well.  She’s really a power-up more than a  person.  A kind of embodied super-vigor mapped onto the controller,  sharing the same button as use/reload.  She also flicks coins and  supplies at you, just to remind you she’s still there.  She is otherwise  invisible to the rest of Columbia, despite being its most wanted  citizen.  She exists only for you, a marvelous tool, an extension of  your strapping self.

 This is all by design.  Irrational head Ken Levine wanted the player  to forge an emotional connection with Elizabeth but not have her be a  burden.  Because lord knows, relationships are never burdens.  In an  interview, he contrasted Elizabeth with a crying, needy Microsoft Word.  Who wants that?  And reviewers agreed, praising Elizabeth for ‘being useful’ and ‘not getting in the way’.

_“She is among the best AI companions I’ve ever had.”_


*7. Fair and Balanced*

If the reception of Elizabeth isn’t evidence enough of reviewers’ inability to evaluate the _human_ elements of a videogame, the response to _BioShock Infinite_’s story makes it perfectly clear.

 Let’s recap: a racist, nationalist, religious cult secedes from the  Union, and the planet, and proceeds to oppress all people of color,  enslave its workers, and stone interracial couples, all while its  privileged white citizens bask in an orgy of Americana.  So far, so  good.  This is a videogame, we have a gun, let’s shoot the shit out of  this place.

 But _Infinite_ has higher things in mind.  Halfway through, the  people of color who constitute the rebel Vox Populi actually manage to  overthrow their oppressors.  And lo and behold: the white man’s fear  comes to life.  The Vox slaughter, they scalp, they paint their faces  and play the part of the bloody savage.  See what happens when you let  these people out of their cages?  No better than beasts, _Infinite_ says.

 Many reviewers were impressed by this insight:

_“Infinite slyly submits that both sides of the coin have their demons, and neither can claim the moral high ground in Columbia.”_

_“This  doesn’t boil down to the typical good guys/bad guys scenario.  Due to  the nature of the world and the way it changes over time, you’ll also  see that Vox Popul’s rebel forces are capable of just as much cruelty as  the forces they seek to overthrow.”_

 Why are the Vox capable of just as much cruelty?  Because the legacy  of violence is passed on from oppressor to oppressed?  Perhaps, but  that’s not actually in the game.  Is it because history is full of  examples of bloody rebellions and reigns of terror?  But then that  ignores the actual historical context in America that _Infinite_  claims to care about, where the struggle for civil rights was remarkably  non-violent (at least on the side of the disenfranchised).

 No, the Vox are just as cruel as the Founders because Irrational  decided they would be.  They wanted to show a city fall, not just the  aftermath as in the original _BioShock_.  They wanted a new set of  enemies, a literal skin palette-swap, halfway through the game.  They  wanted to make a point about how any extreme position is dangerous.   Even if that position is racial equality, fair wages, or medicine for  your daughter dying in Shantytown.  _Infinite_ is a game that lets you peck a man to death with crows, but hey, let’s not get too worked up, too _extreme_, about suffering and social injustice.

_Infinite_ creates a clear moral equivalence between Columbia’s  oppressors and oppressed.  Both Booker and Elizabeth voice versions of  this ‘one no better than the other’ logic, in case you miss the point.   Such false equivalencies are beloved by the lazy, the aloof, the  cowardly.  It’s as if the game almost realizes the absurdity of the  scenario it has set up, since it doesn’t even happen in the universe you  occupy the first half of the game.  You have to cross over to a  parallel reality to experience it.  It’s like admitting: at least both  sides are equivalent in _some_ universe!

_Infinite_ may be about multiple universes, but the game itself  has only one reality – the one you play through.  This false equivalence  is not optional, given to some quantum fluctuation.  Open the box and  this cat will be alive 100% of the time.  This turn by the Vox is not  even background noise, something you can just ignore.  This is a  videogame after all – you have to participate.  Those people you were  just sympathizing with in Shantytown?  They’re coming to kill you now.   Pull the trigger or walk away and miss the end of this _mind-blowing_ story.  And don’t feel guilty when you shoot them in the face.  Though _Infinite_  claims to be a game about a genocidal white man’s guilt, all the racial  stereotypes turn out to be true.  The racially impure are just as bad  as the Founders feared.  You are justified.

 If you still have doubts about this equivalence, consider the question Irrational tweeted in late June (since deleted):

_“If you had to pick a side in Columbia, would you choose the Founders, or Vox Populi? #BioShockInfinite”_


*8. God Only Knows*

_“Perhaps  most importantly, BioShock Infinite doesn’t compromise its narrative to  placate a particular group or suit a specific agenda.”_

 Why is the moral failure of _BioShock Infinite_ not only accepted but celebrated by reviewers?  Because _Infinite_’s  politics are exactly the same as that of many gamers.  It doesn’t  ‘compromise’.  It doesn’t ‘placate’.  It suits no ‘agenda’.  This is  familiar conservative language for those who imagine themselves above  politics.  Who do not see that claiming no political position is itself a  political position, and a self-serving one at that.  The straight,  white male gamer could in fact find no better home for his high-minded  non-politics than _BioShock Infinite_.

 Of course these gamers don’t get what the big deal is.  They can’t  relate, didn’t feel the same way, aren’t offended.  Of course they don’t  see that _Infinite_’s ultimate depiction of the Vox is not that  far removed from the racist caricatures in the Hall of Heroes.  Of  course they applaud Elizabeth’s character growth, her ‘education’, first  sympathizing with the powerless in Shantytown and then realizing her  naivety once their brutality emerges.  Of course Shantytown itself is  just a fiction to these gamers, a videogame level, and ultimately, like  all the hucksters and snake-oil salesmen of the time, a sham.

 But see, they say, that’s not what the story is really about.  Did  you see that ending, man?  Oh right, there’s ‘always a lighthouse,  always a man, always a city’.  I’m not sure what’s worse: the false  moral equivalency, or dropping all concern with the Vox so that we can  get to this profound truth at the end.  Like so many videogames, _BioShock Infinite_ can only make comments about itself, about its franchise, about _theories_ of the world, not about the world itself, not about the human beings in it.

_“Once things unravel, easy villains vanish and people are left in their place.”_

 If only this were true.  _Infinite_ doesn’t know how to humanize  the white citizens of Columbia and make their vile perspectives  comprehensible.  Instead, it dehumanizes minorities and laborers so that  everyone is a monster.  Why does Daisy Fitzroy, a black servant falsely  accused of murder, turn into a rebel leader who would actually murder  children?  Because Irrational needed her to.  For moral equivalence to  Comstock, for Elizabeth’s character growth, for their _plot_.  Why  are the Luteces the most successful characters in the game?  Because  clever, amusing,  so-above-it-all-they-are-actually-outside-space-and-time characters are  the only ones that play into _Infinite_’s ethos.  The game doesn’t  grant characters much humanity because, while it believes in quantum  mechanics, I’m not sure it actually believes in humans.  Or has any use  for them.

 The thing is, reviewers don’t care about any of this.  _Infinite_’s  use of racism and oppression as window dressing, its indifference to  the suffering and injustice it portrays, its dropping of it entirely  once its sci-fi engines get going, none of it seems to trouble the  average reviewer.  He’d rather not have any ‘politics’ in his games  anyway.  Certainly nothing that would ‘compromise’ the narrative to  ‘suit a specific agenda.’  He who strives for ‘objectivity’, who claims  to have no ‘agenda’ of his own.  There may be consequences to callously  using race and class to fill out a world and then casually dismissing  it.  But not to videogames reviewers.  They just don’t care.


*9. Embarrassment of Riches*

I’m not the first to bring up some of these criticisms.  After the  initial wave of laudatory reviews, posts began to appear questioning the  combat, the violence, the depictions of Elizabeth and the Vox.  Cameron  Kunzelman collected some of the best of these early critical impressions,  and more appeared soon after.  Such writing is vital to the ongoing  conversation about videogames, and it has led to the present sense that  while reviewers loved _Infinite_, ‘critics’ were not nearly so impressed.

 There are a couple problems with this, though.  First, it plays up a  division between reviewers and critics, one supposedly commercial and  mainstream, the other more academic and higbrow.  This leaves reviewers  to comfortably churn out the same feeble game apologetics and the  critics isolated in their own little community of like-minded folks.   Second, the critics’ impressions are themselves insufficient.  They are  often too loose and bloggy (just some thoughts…) or too detached and  meditative or prone to simply talking past reviewers.  They observe,  they analyze, they muse, sometimes passionately, but they rarely lower  themselves to appraise.  To evaluate comprehensively, and with force.   To judge.

 It’s not like critics and reviewers would have nothing to say to one  another.  You don’t have to look for low mainstream reviews to find  criticisms of _BioShock Infinite_.  You just have to look at the 8’s.  Reviewers who score _Infinite_  in this range see many of the same problems as the critics.  Reading  their reviews, you might think they’re describing an average-to-bad  game.  That is, until you get to the part where they say how despite the  game’s obvious problems, they still admire its ambition, applaud the  obvious effort and expense, and feel, in the end, that the good  outweighs the bad.  Nice job.  8 out of 10.

 The review scale is one of the most embarrassing aspects of the  videogame community.  Where else is an 8 the acceptable level at which  to criticize a failure as colossal as _BioShock Infinite_?  The  score that won’t cause too many waves, since anything in the 7’s is  average at best, and below that: no man’s land.  Where else do you see  these numbers?  School, that’s where.  There is perhaps no clearer  admission that videogames have not escaped their adolescence than  grading them on a high school curve.

 This is an old problem, but one that even relatively new sites show  no inclination to address.  When Polygon launched last year and began  putting out higher caliber feature stories, I had some hope that they  might approach reviews differently as well.  I read their review policy  and saw a lot of fuss about updating reviews over time but nothing new  when it came to the scale.  Worse, the scale they put forward actually  validated and reinforced our current low standards, only gussied up with  professional language.  9’s “may not innovate or be overly ambitious  but are masterfully executed.”  7’s are good but “have some big  ‘buts’”.  A 5 “indicates a bland, underwhelming game that’s functional  but little else.”  Not 5 as average, as commonplace, the middle instead  of the bottom of the scale.  (Their 2’s, 3’s, & 4’s list some silly  trinity of ‘complete’ failures to justify their existence.)

 These numbers are unworthy of a serious site.  Which is to say, there  are virtually no serious sites for game reviews.  And why are they not  serious?  Because their reviewers don’t actually believe in videogames.   When you believe in something, you have high expectations.  You believe  it’s capable of amazing things, things you can barely imagine.  Our  pitiful standards for games betray not only our lack of belief but our  acceptance of this lack.  We expect nothing more than entertainment,  gratification, distraction.  And we grade accordingly.

 One might be tempted to think: hey, this scale isn’t better or worse,  it’s just different.  Once you know how it works, you can translate the  numbers to the full scale, if that’s your thing.  Except that in doing  so, in parsing all the fine distinctions between 7’s and 8’s and 9’s, it  assumes a baseline of worthiness, an implicit approval.  Look at all  our highly-rated games, look at this embarrassment of riches.  It gives  the unmistakable impression that videogames today are basically great.   Even though they’re not.  They’re really not.


*10. Let Us Now Praise Famous Games*

About two years ago, I decided to start taking notes and assigning  scores to nearly every game I played.  I’d been abroad a few years and  fallen way behind on all the next-gen games that reviewers raved about.   I suspected my own evaluations might be different, but I wasn’t sure  just how big the disparity would be.

 The first game to shock me was the original _LittleBig Planet_.   Of 85 reviews, only 5 dipped below 90.  The lowest was a 75, and the  metascore was a staggering 95.  But the game I played was a 3 out of  10.  I loved how it looked, loved its charming DIY spirit, loved how it  encouraged player creativity, even found many of the player-creator  intro videos quite moving.  But Sackboy’s running and jumping were so  appalling that it killed all my motivation to play and negated the  game’s many virtues.  There was no explaining it away with talk of  physics engines or how it was really a different kind of platformer.   Its controls were simply game-ruining for me.

 I continued to play highly reviewed games that not only underwhelmed  but often stunned me with their failures.  There were more 3’s (_Skyward Sword_, _Halo 4_, _New Super Mario Bros 2_) and 4’s (_Skyrim_, _Dear Esther_, _Tomb Raider_) but not so many 5’s (_Arkham City, Bastion_), since my feelings didn’t often fall in the middle.  Even 6’s that I mostly enjoyed (_Red Dead Redemption_, _Fire Emblem: Awakening, Journey_) were nothing to get that excited about.  Only 7’s (_Gone Home, The Last of Us, Wii Sports Resort_) and 8’s (_The Walking Dead_, _Kirby’s Epic Yarn, Far Cry 2_) really started to get interesting, and there were a handful of amazing 9’s (_The Binding of Isaac_, _Kentucky Route Zero_, _Spelunky_).  While I did play two 2’s (the other was _Limbo_), I also played two 10’s (_Minecraft_ and _Demon’s Souls_).

 Of this sampling, you might agree with some of the scores, but how  could anyone agree with all of them?  That’s precisely the point – no  one could, or should.  And without an explanation, why should anyone  care about numbers alone anyway?  If I were to write a review, it would  be my task to articulate why I thought the game deserved that number.   And of course readers could decide how convincing they found it.

 But some of these scores no doubt look ridiculous to anyone familiar  with most reviews.  The very outlandishness of my numbers points to how  ingrained our pitiful review scale remains.  It speaks to how easily we  submit to the tyranny of the perceived majority.  It’s the same kind of  thinking that leads to the many ridiculous sacrosanct positions held by  the gaming community.  To say you consider _Ocarina of Time_ not a great Zelda or find _Half-Life 2_ overrated or prefer _Metroid_ to _Super Metroid_,  as I do, demands an explanation.  It invites skepticism of not only  your opinions but of your very motives.  What’s your deal?  You’re just  trolling for clicks.  And why should I listen to you anyway?  You didn’t  design the game.  You don’t represent the average gamer.  You’re just  some vocal minority.


*11. The Other Way*

It’s exactly a reviewer’s job to speak for the minority.  A minority  of one.  How could a reviewer speak for anyone else?  They aren’t  elected to stand in for some demographic, and the review community is  not a representative democracy.  Every time I see a reviewer try to  speak for the average player, the fabled everygamer, I see a dodge.  An  unwillingness to put himself out there and state his values, an attempt  to hide in the crowd and submit to the majority.  I see not a reviewer  sensitive to his audience but a reviewer cowed.

 Even for those who have the sense to speak for themselves, there is a  more pervasive problem.  This is the call, posed a thousand different  ways, for objectivity.  Isn’t _BioShock Infinite_ objectively a  good game?  Doesn’t it have good graphics and sound, play well enough,  provide interesting characters and themes?  I mean, let’s be reasonable  here.  Let’s be fair.  Irrational put a lot of time and money into this  after all.  Most of your criticisms are just based in your personal  biases.  They’re just your interpretations.  At least you have to admit  it’s a lot better than most games out there.

 Here’s what I’ll admit: many boys have a really hard time with  subjectivity.  To grapple with your own subjectivity is to grapple with  the subjectivities of others.  It’s to see the world not as legible,  stable, conquerable but as resistant, shifting, and fundamentally  unknowable.  It diminishes your certainty and authority.  It leaves you  vulnerable.  This is a human problem, being a person among persons, but  one that many boys have trouble admitting even the basic tenets of.  And  so they call for an objectivity that has no foundation except received  opinion, that seeks to diminish individual experience, and that turns  out to not even exist.

 Objectivity is very convenient for the straight white middle class  male gamer.  Videogame culture encourages him to see his own  subjectivity as the standard, as objective.  He’ll invoke science,  economics, statistics, and all manner of folk wisdom to defend his  little kingdom.  He’ll decry any challenge as ‘politics’ or ‘bad  business’ or ‘whining’ or ‘here we go again’.  He never considers how  often objectivity is a cover for a dominant subjectivity, for a  subjectivity that stays in power by not being recognized as such.  He  fears what will happen if the established order breaks down and the Vox  take control.

 This cult of objectivity has it exactly backwards.  They want it to  be one way.  But it’s the other way.  A good review is openly,  flagrantly, unabashedly subjective.  It goes all in with the reviewer’s  biases.  It claims them for what they really are – not tastes, not mere  opinions, but values.  It is a full-throated expression of one person’s  experience of a game.  This is the authority it claims – the player’s.   And how could it be any other way?  How can a reviewer get outside him  or herself?

 Some might admit that objectivity doesn’t exist but that it’s still  an ideal to shoot for.  It is, after all, a worthy goal to try and get  outside yourself and see things from other perspectives.  But chasing  objectivity to achieve this is, again, entirely upside-down.  You do not  connect to the world outside, to the world of others, by suppressing or  negating yourself.  You do so by fully being yourself and recognizing  just who that person is.  A good reviewer knows that none of our values  are settled, that the game community is actually in thrilling flux,  despite the placid surface of its reviews.  The only way to change how  we talk about games is to encourage a plurality of voices, revel in  their diversity, and be honest about our own subjectivity among them.


*12. Old Boys*

This means the old guard, and the old boys’ club specifically, has to  go.  Out with the fanboys and apologists and sycophants.  Out with  those who know a whole lot about videogames and not a lot about anything  else.  Out with those who applaud basic competence and hand out A’s for  effort when ambitions fail.  Out with reviewers who invent new ways to  fawn, to heel, to kowtow, and whose relationship to game companies could  best be described as a kind of Stockholm Syndrome.

 We obviously need fewer reviewers who casually begin paragraphs this way:

_“I was particularly fond of the Skyhook’s melee attacks because of the gruesome executions they deliver.”_

 But also fewer adult men whose idea of sensitivity and fair-mindedness leads to asinine transitions like this:

_“While  Infinite goes out of its way to point out that these views are  negative, some are going to be disturbed by the amount of racial  caricatures and casual racism throughout the game…On the other hand, few  games in this generation have used music as well.”_

 Here’s the trouble with subjectivity – you have to own it.  If your  subjectivity encompasses a love of bloodletting, of feeling relentlessly  rad, if it conveniently espouses equanimity in the face of injustice  and over-sympathizes with the aggressors, then I can understand why you  might want to cower behind objectivity.  The straight white male gamers  so untroubled by _BioShock Infinite_, whose ideology and privilege  are in fact perfectly reflected in it, are just not up to the task of  reviewing on their own.  Their subjectivities betray complicity.  It’s a  dead end, the good old boys speaking to their bros, and only by  diversifying in every way possible can the review community thrive.

 This means more women, more people of color, more queer and  transgender folks, more reviewers from diverse social, economic, and  cultural backgrounds that don’t neatly fit the lifelong gamer mold.  Not  simply because we need reviewers to match the shifting demographics of  those playing games, but because diversity is of clear and obvious value  to any community and any discourse.  We don’t speak often enough about  values in gaming, but every game and every reviewer possesses them.  And  unless we make this discussion public and get different people  involved, then the values that inform the power fantasies and  self-gratification of the highest-rated games will continue to go  unquestioned.

 That said, not everyone’s a critic.  Everyone has an opinion,  everyone has their own experience of a game, and we need to encourage  all forms of videogame writing (many as yet uncreated).  But not  everyone is inclined to think critically about their game experiences  and articulate a judgment accordingly.  The call for diversity is not a  blind one, nor does it pretend to be a panacea for all the ills of  videogame reviewing.  It is absolutely necessary but insufficient on its  own.  Good individual reviewers – independent, dynamic, discerning  reviewers – are still needed.


*13. Portrait of a Videogame Reviewer*

What makes a good reviewer?  They are not experts, for one.   Professors don’t usually make great reviewers in their own field, and  neither does someone who’s played every platformer in existence.  Such  knowledge narrows the perspective of the reviewer and makes it difficult  to engage non-experts.  Hardcore gamers worship expertise, but an  abundance of esoteric trivia often leads to nitpicking, if not missing  the point entirely.  Videogame reviewers don’t need to know more about  genre history or how games are made; they need to know more about  something outside of games.  Many of the best reviewers I read have  clearly been educated in the human world, and they bring to their  evaluations an eye unsullied by the ingrained assumptions of  videogameland.

 Good reviewers do not go the other way either, towards a  broadmindedness that makes tough criticism impossible.  Gaming  apologists love to bring up the inner child as the arbiter of what is  good and true.  As if your inner 11-year-old, who knew little and was  open to everything, is the person you should really be listening to  while playing a game.  In my 11th year, I read _Lord of the Rings_, a dozen _Babysitter’s Club _books, and Stephen King’s _It,_ and I enjoyed them all.  I was addicted to both WWF wrestling and the soap opera _Another World_.   I was open alright, but I was no critic.  We should approach games  generously, but a good reviewer can’t experience them without judgment  all the way through.  He can’t forget all his experiences and tastes and  accumulated values while playing without being fundamentally  dishonest.  The inner child is just the nostalgic version of having no  biases, of striving to be an objective un-person, not a crusty adult  with a point of view.

 A good reviewer has her own standard, though it can shift between  games.  She calculates case by case, knowing that one aspect can ruin an  otherwise excellent game, and another quality make a clunky mess  worthwhile.  She doesn’t give her Game of the Year a 7 or 8 because she  knows it’s weird and doesn’t match others’ idea of a great game.  She  gives it a 10 and articulates why.  She isn’t intimidated by immaculate,  expensive, hollow games, and she doesn’t hesitate to score them down  for their lack of soul.  She knows her own values and does not  apologize.  And yet sometimes she surprises herself.

 A good reviewer does not fear emotion.  He knows that emotion is not  the enemy of game reviews but the key.  Emotion clarifies.  It cuts  through all the noise endemic to gaming, and a good reviewer is dogged,  even stubborn, about following his feelings to their ends.  In this, he  is not afraid to contradict himself, and he is often unreasonable (as  reasonableness hasn’t done the game community much good so far).  He  values the polemical and the contrarian, and he knows that criticism  doesn’t require a solution or any proof that he could do it better.  He  is, in all of this, self-aware.  He knows how his own point of view  positions him in larger debates, but he is not hamstrung by this  awareness, unable to argue his perspective because of it.

 A good videogame reviewer is a player first.  She speaks both as a  particular player and for the player’s experience more generally.  She  knows good reviewers across media do this as readers and viewers and  listeners, and that this is especially crucial in gaming, where there is  no game, nothing at play, without a live person.  As a player, she asks  the most basic questions.  Not: am I entertained?  Or: do I feel good?   But: what is this game experience, and how, and why?  And then, she  judges that experience.  This judgment may put some people off, but it’s  where the answers to those basic questions become forcefully personal.   It’s where the person herself comes to bear directly upon the game,  that singular, willful, unpredictable ghost invading the machine.  The  cult of objectivity would like to erase the human altogether, but a good  game reviewer reasserts the primacy of the player, and testifies to why  she matters.


*14. We Hope We Shall Arrive Soon*

_Citizen Kane _comes up a lot in game discussions, to the point  of absurdity.  There is something desperate about it, and you get the  sense that many people invoking it have neither seen the film nor  understand its significance.  But I think it also speaks to something  more honest, and more hopeful, that unites gamers: that sense that games  will someday arrive, though they haven’t yet.  The _Citizen Kane_  of videogames is meant to signal no less than the full arrival of the  medium.  And so, any fancy game with the barest pretense to meaning  brings out the faithful, the still-hopeful, ready to declare our wait  over.  Even if, as in _BioShock Infinite_’s case, what we actually end up getting is more like the _Birth of a Nation_ of videogames.

 Videogames have always carried with them an unfulfilled promise.   They seem to point ever forward, towards some new union of art,  technology, and human agency.  It’s why a screenshot can still compel,  can suggest an entire world that 30 seconds of tired gameplay will  immediately ruin.  It’s why reviews remain fundamentally responses to  previews, an evaluation of our expectations, of PR promises, rather than  of the experience at hand.  Any longtime gamer will remember those  watershed moments when the future of gaming seemed suddenly unlimited.   Playing the first _Super Mario_ or _Mario 64_ or _Grand Theft Auto III_ or _Minecraft_.   Good critics know that these game experiences are bound to time, but a  yearning for timelessness persists, for something transcendent, that  speaks through the ages, _Kane_-like.

 This longing for arrival infects our evaluations of both AAA and  indie games alike.  Where else but a AAA game studio can you find so  many smart, talented, creative people working together to produce such  puerile rubbish year after year?  And yet where are the reviewers who  will regularly and forcefully call them out on all their shiny iterative  bullshit, who will do more than give an occasional slap on the wrist in  the form of a 7 or 8, who will crucify the worst offenders, like _BioShock Infinite_?   Reviews of indie games are not much better, even if the desire to  advocate for small, spirited, innovative titles is more admirable.  We  can say ‘let’s have more games like _Gone Home_ or _Journey_’  and still vigorously criticize their shortcomings, instead of fighting  AAA score inflation with more empty 9’s and 10’s.  One needs no better  example of how reviewers can be just as blinded by indie charms than the  hysterical reviews given to the vapid dead-end that is _Limbo_.

 Some see a solution to our reviewing woes in abandoning scores  altogether.  Perhaps someday our criticism will arrive there too, and I  will welcome it.  But it won’t be anytime soon.  To those would-be  reviewers not inclined to assigning a number to an experience, let me  say: If you can criticize sharply and forcefully, offering a  comprehensive judgment that reaches well beyond the low standards of our  7+ scale, all without assigning a score, please do so.  But don’t  assume it’s the numbers that are the main problem, or use it as an  excuse not to engage the review community where it lives.  This allows  the false divide to persist between qualitative and quantitative  reviews, between biased subjective experiences and fair objective  assessments.  As if gamers can just choose which they prefer.  As if  objectivity isn’t a self-serving illusion and subjectivity our only real  option.

 Numbers are subjective too, and no official review policy can change  that.  When I first started scoring games, I wondered how I would decide  the exact numbers.  It took a few games to get the hang of it, and it  remains subject to revision (how could it not – I live in time), but it  wasn’t that hard.  I have no problem saying that games as different as _The Last of Us_ and _Wii Sports Resort_ and _Gone Home_  are all 7’s, and that this is a pretty high score coming from me.  It’s  my scale, informed by my values, and it won’t match anyone else’s.   Only by reading me a while would you get a sense for what my numbers  mean.  The burden is thus on me to be a critic worth reading.

 But wouldn’t having 100 different personal scales wreak havoc on  Metacritic?  Without common standards, wouldn’t a Metascore be  incoherent?  Indeed, but that was always the case.  Only on top of it,  we’ve made our aggregate scores dishonest and gutless too.  They betray  our conformity, our thoughtlessness, our lack of belief.  And they  remain the clearest signs that the videogame review community has not  arrived.


*15. Will the Circle Be Unbroken?*

More than 6 months have passed since the release of _BioShock Infinite_, and another game of the year has appeared: _Grand Theft Auto V_.  The adulation greeting it has surpassed that of _Infinite_ and _The Last of Us_,  and its 97 Metascore is extraordinarily high, even for our zealous  reviewers.  The game itself is the very definition of expensive,  exhaustively fun, high-quality mediocrity.  Its world is breathtaking  and brittle, a monument to wasted opportunities.  Its structure is  tired, its satire flat, its narrative trisected to no end, and the  entire experience profoundly thin.  _Grand Theft Auto V_ is exactly a modern AAA videogame.  And a 4 out of 10.

 Perhaps it’s no coincidence that the three highest-rated games of  2013 are about aging white men, their guilt, their anger, their  disappointment, their lies.  For the most part, the delirious reviews  they’ve received were also written by aging white men.  The struggles of  Booker, Joel, Michael, and even Trevor must have resonated.  At least  they often did for me.  As an aging white man, I can understand the  anger and disappointment.  I can understand the solace, the control,  sought in games.  I can understand diminished expectations and the  appeal of objectivity.  I can understand, but not accept, the lies this  all entails.  For through these lies, reviewers collude with game  developers to present the illusion of maturity, vitality, achievement.   All with a straight, if slightly haggard, face.

 And yet _BioShock Infinite_, _The Last of Us_, and _Grand Theft Auto V_  also feature protégées who represent the next generation.  Elizabeth,  Ellie, and Franklin, as well as the observant player, cannot help but  see in these father figures a warning: Do not do as I do.  If only the  next generation of game reviewers would also take this to heart.  It’s  not their job to sustain the dominant narratives of their predecessors  but instead to relentlessly, and mercilessly, complicate them.  They  must be insolent, unafraid of confrontation, unbowed by calls for  reasonableness and objective purity by the illustrious Founders.

 Gaming itself is on the cusp of another generational shift, of  another sense of arrival, and yet our reviews remain enfeebled, unable  to grapple honestly with games as nauseating as _BioShock Infinite_ or as hollow as _Grand Theft Auto V_.   As videogames continue to change, our criticism must too.  But who will  our future reviews ultimately serve?  Game companies, the conservative  industry, those gamers who want to preserve their illusions and keep  games a site for sad self-gratification?  Or will they serve videogames  themselves and the players who actually believe in them?

 At present, we have this: Carolyn Petit’s review of _Grand Theft Auto V_  received more than 20,000 comments, many of them particularly vile even  by gaming’s low standards, because she called out the game’s misogyny.   It’s easy to blame these commenters, disgusting as they are, and demand  more civility in our conversations about games.  But I blame the review  community as well for establishing the very grounds for these attacks,  for making the 9 she gave _GTA V_ a mathematical deduction on  Metacritic instead of the insanely high score that it is, for  maintaining the entire farce that is the videogame review and enabling  the boys who skulk in the comments below.

 Those boys, all those pitiful boys – they don’t get to decide  anything.  It’s the reviewers, all of them, who must give their readers  no other option but to face a game’s failures.  We don’t have to choose  between mechanics and politics.  Reviewers must pay attention to both,  and everything else besides, and score according to their criticisms.   The review cycle must no longer be a source of embarrassment but a  dynamic conversation that constantly puts our values on the table and  invites a reckoning.  To encourage this, sites must vocally, and  unapologetically, support their reviewers so they don’t have to face  those pitiful boys alone.  Carolyn’s criticism can no longer be  dismissed as ‘politics’.  It must be seen for what it is: being a _person_ while playing a videogame.

 Tough criticism is an act of belief.  It is sincere in its hopes for  the future but clear-eyed about the present.  Most videogames are  disappointing, and disappointing in dependable ways.  But it is possible  to love individual games, to be ignited by them, and see a future worth  pursuing.  We’re not at all sure what this medium is capable of, but it  certainly deserves more than our regular pronouncements of excellence  and the glib advice that we simply accept every familiar trope and  gameism.  As if criticism is just the sour grumbling of the ungrateful.

 How long will it take before all our current scores are obsolete and the outcry over giving _GTA V_  a 9 out of 10 is the nonsensical embarrassment of a generation past?   What will we value in our games if the pretty and the awesome and the  comforting no longer dominate our discussions?  I want to hear every  divergent view, every unpopular opinion.  I want gaming to revel in  dissent.  We should marvel at a medium that allows us such room to play,  to explore, to bring ourselves to bear on the experience and make it  our own.  A good review will honor this.  It will say: This is what it  was like for me.  And in doing so ask: Now what was it like for you?

~ Tevis Thompson​ October 16th, 2013


Quelle: http://tevisthompson.com/on-videogame-reviews/​


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## LordCrash (4. November 2013)

*Escaping The Shooter Mold: How Oxide Plans to Revive The RTS*

_                By Mike Williams , Mon 04 Nov 2013_




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*We talk with new dev Oxide about its Nitrous engine and the rise of multi-core *

Last week saw the announcement of Oxide Games,  a brand-new startup aimed at creating an all-new engine. That engine,  Nitrous, is the work of former Civilization V developers Brian Wade, Tim  Kipp, Marc Meyer and Dan Baker, with help from Stardock president Brad  Wardell. The original announcement called Nitrous a 64-bit, multi-core  engine designed for strategy games, but Nitrous is meant for more than  just strategy.

_GamesIndustry International_ sat down with  Oxide Games co-founder Dan Baker and Stardock Entertainment president  and CEO Brad Wardell to talk about the company's plans for Nitrous.  Wardell made it clear that despite his involvement, Oxide Games is an  independent company not directly affiliated with Stardock.

"I've  known some of the Oxide guys for a long time and we've been making  strategy games for a long time," said Wardell. "Every time we go and do a  strategy game, we have to roll our own engine. It's gotten tougher and  tougher for strategy games to be competitive with say, a first-person  shooter, in terms of fidelity, because FPSs can just license Unreal. It  was getting more and more difficult for us to compete visually as  strategy games, and as a result they were becoming more and more niche.  Or in the case of role-playing games, they just became first-person  shooters."

Wardell  said that he had been talking to the Oxide team about a next-generation  engine while they were still thinking about starting their own company.  Nitrous has been designed to make "something that looks like Lord of  the Rings" with thousands of high fidelity assets on screen at once.

Wardell  explained that Nitrous is "not just for strategy games." Instead,  Nitrous is intended for a wide variety of games with Wardell mentioning  RPGs like Baldur's Gate as an example.  

"I wouldn't say that  strategy games are niche, but it's gotten to the point that unless  you're a really big company, no one can afford to build the engines or  technology that's involved in making an RTS," explained Baker. "We went  back and forth before when we were talking to Brad and one of the  questions was, 'why did the RTS genre get thinner?' I've seen a lot of  market data and the games that come out sell great. The problem is it  became so hard to just make them. It got more and more expensive, so a  lot of the publishers just backed out of that market."

Baker said  that when Firaxis began work on Civilization V, they looked for engines  they could license and found none. Nitrous is an engine for "all the  types of games that don't fit inside the traditional engine licensees."  Wardell said that part of the problem is most games are trying to fit  themselves into the first- or third-person shooter mold because that's  what the licensable engines do best. 
"We're looking to get the  entire rest of the market. Everyone's been trying to redesign their  games to fit that type of engine, because that's the only game in town,"  he said.

One big thing that stuck out in the original  announcement is that Nitrous is 64-bit only. Oxide isn't worried about  any issues due to that requirement because 64-bit hardware and operating  systems are commonplace now. And while the 64-bit part is important,  Oxide Games believes the multi-core aspect of the engine is a far bigger  deal.

"There's  a significant ramp-up cost to doing 64-bit. Part of that is because you  have to start over from scratch. We're just biting the bullet and  getting it done now. We think it'll give us a pretty big advantage going  forward because game developers want to go to 64-bit, it's just that  everything you license has been 32-bit for so long," said Wardell. "It's  a non-trivial effort to write one of these engines from scratch. These  other engines were written during a time where there was just one core.  Dual-core is not that old. In another few years, you'll have 16 or 32  cores. It's hard to start from scratch again if you started from a time  where there was just one core."

"We have pretty precise market  data on customers. Everyone's system is 64-bit, so we don't find that  controversial, except that people aren't doing it just yet," said Baker.  

Wardell agreed that most games these days are CPU-bound,  something he thinks hardware manufacturers have noticed as well. He  pointed to the fact that AMD, Nvidia, and Intel have all expressed  interest in Oxide's new engine. 

"That's because they've seen what  we've been doing. We've had video cards on the market that can do some  amazing stuff, but the game technology hasn't been able to tap them  because they're so CPU-bound. Your box might have 4 or 8 cores - even  just 2 cores - most of these games out there are still basically  single-core. With Nitrous, the more cores you throw at it, the faster it  gets," he said.

Baker explained that legacy engines have actually  held back hardware vendors in the long term: why make CPUs with more  cores if the software won't support it? Old engines are hard to  retro-fit for multi-core thinking, so the hardware industry has been  coasting along raising the speed of smaller-core CPUs instead of adding  more cores.

"People are beginning to build multi-core engines, but  the initial investment of redoing all of your code isn't an issue for  us as a new company," said Baker. "The second issue you have is that  writing multi-threaded code is generally much more difficult on top of  that. Between those two issues, there's a lot of market inertia and it's  taken a long time. A few years ago, Intel was adding more and more  cores to their CPUs and then all of a sudden that stopped."

Oxide  Games is coming out today as a supporter of AMD's low-level Mantle API,  which will allow developers to maximize performance on graphics chipsets  that support it. Baker said that supporting Mantle was a  "straightforward" adaptation that only took a couple of months on an  alpha API. 

"You'll see people misrepresenting that AMD's pushing  this technology, but the reality is that a lot of people - including  myself and other graphics architects - have been asking for this type of  thing for a long time," said Baker. "I call it a contract of trust. The  problem is driver models and APIs are built to protect against any  random scenario which might happen. That costs you a lot of performance.  Our game engine is already carefully engineered not to do certain bad  things. From our perspective, when AMD came around and said, 'we're  actually going to do this,' we were very interested to try it."

Baker  believes Mantle-enabled games will probably have a seperate executables  from their Direct X versions, for efficiency. He said that players  could probably expect an option to load the Mantle-enabled version, but  otherwise they should not be affected by Mantle's implementation.

"I  don't think it's anything like Glide. Back then, the hardware had a lot  of very specific variations," said Baker. "While there were advantages  to doing that, it was because the hardware wasn't very programmable. A  modern GPU is really just a processor; they're so programmable that the  analogy doesn't hold up anymore."

Nitrous isn't an internal engine  limited to Oxide and Stardock. Oxide fully intends to bring Nitrous to  developers everywhere, but Baker wanted to caution developers on their  expectations. It won't be a simple, plug-and-play engine.

"If you  imagine you have a car," said Baker. "These other engines are like  buying the whole car and then painting it. We're more like a  high-performance engine. You build the car around it. We're not  expecting someone without any experience writing code would be able to  take on Nitrous. It's designed for professionals in the industry who  want to get a lot of performance out of it, who understand their  limiting factor is the ability to get everything running on a lot of  cores efficiently."

Wardell said the team is still talking to early adopters and exploring options for licensing Nitrous.

"It's  one of those conversations you have. What is the best route? A  Unity-type model or do you do an Unreal model?" he asked. "I think  that's one of those things that's just going to evolve because we have a  different customer base than what you have with Unity or Unreal. With  Unreal, it's people making AAA first-person shooters. They want to just  plug it in. Unity is .NET/C#-based and they want to make an indie-style  game. Nitrous is a very flexible engine. You can make anything you want  out of it, but it's a not strategy game engine where you [easily] take  the engine and make Warcraft IV."

Nitrous  is currently aimed at PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4. The team  believes PC-like architecture of the next-generation consoles provides  new opportunities for PC developers, and Oxide is going to be on the  ground floor.

"This is the first console generation that feels  like it has PC-level capabilities," said Wardell. "I remember back in  the day, when the idea of making a console game was crippling your  game."

"It used to be that when you made a console, you had these  customized chips designed specifically for graphics," added Baker. "This  is the first generation where, even though there has been significant  customization on the hardware level for both, effectively we're using a  part that's very similar to a PC. It's not a different breed. Looking at  the PlayStation 2, it was an extraordinary exotic thing to deal with."
But  what about other platforms? Mac OS X's gaming portfolio has improved,  Valve just announced its Linux-based Steam Machines, and mobile has  jumped into the 64-bit arena with Apple's A7 chip in the iPhone 5S and  iPad Air. Both gentlemen called the Steam Machines in particular "very  interesting," but declined to comment further on platforms right now.

"We  don't want to get into pre-announcing platforms," said Wardell.  "Certainly the next-generation consoles, Mac, and Steam Machines are  interesting to us in the near-term. Beyond that, we haven't had a long  opportunity to check out iOS 7 and the latest happenings on Android."

Quelle: Escaping The Shooter Mold: How Oxide Plans to Revive The RTS | GamesIndustry International


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## LordCrash (6. November 2013)

*Major Players: Edward Kenway*

_  Feature   by Anne Lewis | Communications Associate | on November 5, 2013 _




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What  kind of research went into preparing for the role of Edward Kenway?  What did Joy Division have to do with the casting process? _How tall is he?_  These are just a few of the things we discussed when we spoke with  Assassin’s Creed IV Black Flag’s Lead Writer Darby McDevitt as well as  the voice of Edward Kenway himself, Matt Ryan.

Edward is not the  kind of Assassin you’re used to, as you’re likely learning if you’ve  already started the game. He’s brash and selfish. He’s a dirty fighter.  And he has no real desire to give up his ways to follow the Creed (much  to the chagrin of other Assassins). It’s all these things that make him  one of the most compelling characters in the series. Darby and Matt  share their unique insights into what makes Edward so special, revealing  a few exclusive tidbits along the way.

 *Finding Edward*

*Edward  Kenway began as a somewhat different character, but went through a bit  of a transformation when Matt Ryan was cast. Tell us about that change,  and how it happened…*

*Matt Ryan* When I  auditioned for the part I used a  Northern English accent. When we got  to Montreal and just started talking, Darby and the guys were like, _Hang on, what’s your accent?_  I’m from Wales and Swansea is the port I come from. So we started  talking about that, and about making that the part of the world Edward  comes from. What’s similar between my journey and Edward’s is, I left  home when I was 19 and lived in Bristol for three years and then I lived  in London and then I moved to America. So in terms of just the accent,  my accent has traveled. It would be truer to the accent Edward would  have.

*Darby McDevitt* That backstory was brilliant. I didn’t even know Matt lived in Bristol but I said, _Okay, Edward was born in Wales but moved to Bristol._  I made that up for the character before I knew that about Matt. Bristol  was a very common town for pirates. That’s where Blackbeard’s accent  would have been from. It’s a huge port town. That was just a happy  accident. I have to admit when we sent out the casting call I asked for a  Manchester/Mancunian accent because I’d been listening to a lot of Joy  Division interviews and I love the Mancunian accent on Peter Hook and  all the guys from Joy Division. So some of the first auditions we saw  were true Mancunians and it was cool, but it didn’t quite work. It took  us a long time to find Edward. We saw maybe 60 people and we finally got  Matt.




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*It’s not just Matt’s voice that’s perfect, though. He also looks quite a bit like Edward.*

*Darby*  I liked his voice, but because we were now going full performance  capture we had to worry about how he looked and held himself. Luckily,  our animation director said, _Matt has the physicality that’s right for Edward._ I remember one guy who was a bit too showy – a little too Errol Flynn.

*Matt* Edward is kind of nonchalant, isn’t he? He’s loose but then he can focus and snap to attention at a moment’s notice.

*Darby*  He’s like an animal. We needed that combination of a guy who has a warm  voice and could be friendly but also commanding. Of course, he also had  to be physically impressive. Because of technical constraints he had to  be between 5’10” and 6’2”. How tall are you?

*Matt* I’m 5’10 ½”.

*Darby* Great! If you were 5’9” we might have asked you to wear lifts.

 *Being Edward*

*What sort of research did you do to prepare for being a pirate and an Assassin during the Golden Age of Piracy?*

*Matt* Basically Darby sent me a list of books to read – including Colin Woodard’s book _The Republic of Pirates_  – and I researched the period. I think one thing that always fascinates  me about doing period stuff is the lack of technology. We take our  forms of communication for granted and it’s the first thing I do when  I’m doing something set in a different period. I just try to get my head  around that. If you’re at sea for months and months, you can’t put out  an S.O.S. and have a helicopter come and save you. You’re on your own.  Just that sort of mentality is different. Even the shadows were a  different kind of dark in those days.




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So  I researched a bunch on the period, but before I got to Montreal I  didn’t have that much information on the character or the project. The  first week was Darby and the team bringing me and the other guys up to  speed and getting us on the same page as them in terms of the character.  One thing about the process that was amazing was that we had a chance  to rehearse. We would rehearse for a day and then we would shoot for a  day. That’s so rare these days. With TV there’s hardly any rehearsal and  with movies sometimes you get a little rehearsal. The only time you  really get rehearsals is in theater. We actually had time to really go  through a rehearsal process and flesh out the scenes.

I think  throughout the whole process there were more and more things I was  gleaning from the character because it was shot from about last October  or November until June. It was a week here and two weeks there and each  time it would get deeper and deeper and the character would get more and  more fleshed out. It’s a really interesting process in terms of that.

*Darby*  On average I think we had two rehearsal days for every three days of  shooting. That was a first for me, too. We didn’t shoot Revelations this  way and maybe every character except Ezio was coming into the studio  the day we shot saying, _Okay, I got the script two days ago. I read it. Here we go._ So even for me it was a nice step forward. There’s always the question of, _Why don’t games have better stories?_  Possibly because we don’t actually empower the people who are good at  storytelling to actually tell that story. That’s one reason, anyway. But  I think in the last decade we’ve seen some great games from teams like  Naughty Dog and Irrational. We’re doing these fantastic stories now and  it’s because the companies are investing more and more and saying, _Actors are good at acting. Let’s let them act. Let’s not just put them in a studio and hand them a script._




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*What was it like doing the performance capture for the role?*

*Matt*  I was just in a big studio and the guys would show me some images and  then I’d have to imagine everything. But that’s kind of what’s great  about the medium. It leaves everything up to the imagination so you have  to really go to a different place in your head than you would if you  were doing film or television, where sometimes you have the things in  front you. In this case it’s nothing. A stick can be a gun or a sword or  anything you want it to be. It really leaves it up to your imagination,  which is such a fun thing to do. You find yourself becoming a kid again  when you used to pick up sticks in the shape of a gun and pretend to  shoot. Suddenly you’re using that part of your imagination again and  it’s a really interesting experience.

I think one thing you’ve got  to take into consideration when you’re doing motion capture is the  environment. You need to imagine the heat and the pace of things. Often  when we’re on the ship I’d be holding two sticks and I’d have to pretend  I was sailing. So you’re pitching over the wind and the water and  you’ve got to imagine all these things. Sometimes the guys are like, _You’ve got to pitch it up a bit. There’s more wind or rain here._  So I’d have to project a little bit more. It’s all left to the  imagination, which is completely and utterly fascinating and brilliant. I  think it’s a fantastic medium. I think it will become more and more  popular for more and more actors as it goes along.

*How did you balance Edward’s external and internal conflicts to create a rich, robust character?*

*Matt* I  think the most interesting thing about the process is you shoot it all  out of sequence. Normally you would have an arc and you would map it all  out in terms of where you want to take the character at certain points  in the movie or game or whatever. That couldn’t really happen within  this process, so what you have to do is hit each moment. We’d all talk  about it and what beats we were trying to hit and trust that it fits in  with the story. But that’s the great thing about this character: his  conflict.




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He’s  so three-dimensional. A lot of videogame characters aren’t. They’re  very archetypal and that was the main draw for me really – how  conflicted Edward is – and to play those conflicts is a really  interesting thing. His drive to get what he wants is so strong, but at  the same time he has all these things going on underneath. He’s a real  guy, but he’s driven by what he wants to achieve. He thinks he’ll find  happiness by achieving fame and glory and riches, but ultimately we all  know that’s not how you find happiness. Somewhere along the line he  changes routes and becomes someone different.

Quelle: Major Players: Edward Kenway - UbiBlog | Ubisoft®


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## LordCrash (19. November 2013)

*Decision Modeling and Optimization in Game Design, Part 1: Introduction*
_by Paul Tozour on 07/07/13 10:38:00 _

*                     The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community.
                    The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.                 * 

_This article is the first in an ongoing series on  the application of decision modeling and optimization techniques to  game design problems.  The full list of articles includes:_


_Part 1: Introduction (Blogspot) (Gamasutra)_
_Part 2: Optimization Basics and Unrolling a Simulation (Blogspot) (Gamasutra)_
_Part 3: Allocation and Facility Location Problems (Blogspot) (Gamasutra)_
_Part 4: Competitive Balancing Problems (Blogspot) (Gamasutra)_
_Part 5: Class Assignment Problems (Blogspot) (Gamasutra)_
_Part 6: Parametric Design Techniques (Blogspot) (Gamasutra)_
_Part 7: Production Queues (Blogspot) (Gamasutra)_
_Part 8: Graph Search (Blogspot) (Gamasutra)_
 
 *We’re Searching, Not Iterating*

  Most of game design is a process of search.  When we design, we are  evaluating many different possible design configurations to solve a  given design problem, whether it be the way the rooms in a dungeon are  connected, the set of features and capabilities that different types of  game agents will possess, the specific “magic numbers” that govern unit  effectiveness in a combat system, or even the combination of features  our game will include in the first place.
  Just as an AI-driven character will use a pathfinding system in a  game to navigate through the game world, design involves navigating  through a very-high-level space of possible configurations by taking  some initial configuration and iteratively modifying it.  We look  carefully at the state of some aspect of our design – whether it be our  combat system, one of the parts of our game world, a technology tree in a  strategy game, or what have you – and attempt to find a way to improve  it by changing that configuration.

Designers like to use the term “iteration” to describe this process, but  “search” would be a more appropriate description.  The truth is that  when we “iterate” on a design, we’re experimenting with a game in  development.  We are making educated guesses about small sets of  modifications that will change the current design configuration into a  new design configuration that we believe will better meet our design  criteria.

These “iterations” don’t resemble the generally linear changes that  typically occur in “iterations” of computer code; they much more closely  resemble a search through a maze, with lots of sharp turns and  occasional backtracking.  They often move us forward closer to the goal,  but many times it’s unclear whether they’ve improved the game or not,  and we sometimes discover that design changes we assumed would improve  the game have unforeseen flaws and we need to back them out or try  again.

Game design is an incredibly difficult discipline.  Design is like a  dark room full of sharp objects, extraordinarily difficult to navigate  safely once we stray from the beaten path.  There are nearly always some  painful injuries along the way, especially if we move too quickly.  And  we have relatively few tools to light up that dark room, and few  well-defined and disciplined techniques for carrying out this process of  design search.




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This dark room is is the reason we “iterate” -- we don’t always know  what the ramifications of our design decisions will be until we try  them.  In other words, we are searching (Will Wright even directly  referred to it as “searching the solution space” in his 2004 GDC Talk).

As a result, design is very often a productivity bottleneck, a major  source of defects, and the biggest source of risk in game development.   Countless teams have found themselves hamstrung by ill-conceived design  decisions, creative thrashing, feature creep, misperception of the  target market, or other design problems that resulted in product quality  problems.

Given all of the dangers involved in experimenting with design, it’s no  wonder that so many publishers and large developers are so risk-averse,  preferring to hew closely to established and well-explored genres,  licenses, and genre conventions rather than embracing the well-known  risks of design innovation in return for relatively unknown payoffs.   Exploring the dark room is just too risky.

We would like to find ways to change that attitude.  Rather than simply  avoiding innovation, it would be better to find ways to improve our  design skills and extend our capabilities, and build power tools to make  design innovation safer and more efficient.

 *This Series*

  This article is the first in a series that will introduce decision  modeling, a set of tools for decomposing decisions into formal models  that can then be searched to find the most desirable output.

Decision modeling and optimization are frequently used in management,  finance, advanced project planning, and many other fields to improve the  decision-making process and solve difficult decision problems and  optimization problems by searching through the possible alternatives  much more quickly than humans can do by hand.

Despite all of the potential benefits, decision modeling and  optimization seem to be relatively unknown among designers in the game  industry.  A recent survey of professional designers on a popular  developer forum indicated that only 25% respondents had even heard of  decision modeling, and only 8% had used it in practice.  A similar  web-based survey passed directly to designers via Facebook had nearly  identical results with a similar number of respondents.




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If used properly, decision modeling can significantly enhance many  aspects of the design process: It can help you optimize the  configuration of specific design systems or the optimal values of your  game’s parameters. It can help shed light on decisions as to what  combination of features to include in your game. It can help you model  the decisions a player might make, particularly in terms of helping you  to identify dominant strategies or ways that players might “game the  system.” In this series, we’ll provide examples of all three of these  usage categories.

 *A Definition*

  So what is decision modeling?

Simply put:

_Decision modeling is the process of simulating a decision and then automating the search for its solution._

We start by defining some sort of decision, attempt to pick out all the  relevant factors that go into that decision, build those into a model  that accurately represents the decision, and specify a set of input  variables and a single output variable.  Then we search for the optimal  values of a set of decision variables (or input variables) that produces  the best possible output.

If all goes well, we should be able to search through a much larger  number of possible solutions than we could do by hand or with our  imaginations.  Although we can't apply it to everything, for the  problems where it's appropriate, we can often get better results, get  results faster, and in some cases, we can even solve problems that  simply can’t be solved any other way.

Along the way, we also specify a set of one or more constraints that act  as boundaries to ensure that our model is valid.  These constraints can  limit the range or the type of our input variables or any aspects of  our model.

 *Why Build Models?*

  Have you ever found yourself playing Sid Meier’s Civilization and  found yourself wondering, “Hey, wait a minute – what’s the right way to  start off my city?  Should I build a Monument first, then a Granary?  Or  should the Granary come first?  Or maybe the Temple first, then a  Granary?  What’s the best decision?  Is there even a way to answer that  question?”

Also consider combat mechanics in a real-time strategy game.  Balancing  the parameters of multiple units in RTS games is a notoriously  challenging problem.  What if we had a system that could allow us to  speed up the balancing problem by answering questions about our game’s  combat balancing without having to playtest every single time?  What if  we could ask the system questions like “How many Swordsmen does it take  to defeat two Pikemen and three Archers?”  Or, “What’s the cheapest  combination of Archers and Catapults that can defeat an enemy Guard  Tower?”

In fact, maybe we can!

If we can model these design problems in the right way, we might be able  to use automated optimization tools to search through the possible  answers to find the one that best meets our criteria, without having to  play through the game thousands of times.

Here’s an example of a similar kind of problem – an example that we’ll solve in a future episode of this series.

Let’s say we have a game called SuperTank.  In SuperTank, we drive a  gigantic sci-fi tank into battle against other SuperTanks.  Before each  battle, we get to pick the exact combination of weapons on our tank.




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You have 100 credits to spend on your weapon loadout.  Your SuperTank  can carry 50 tons worth of weapons, and it also has 3 “critical slots”  for use by special high-powered weapons.

You have the following five weapon types, and you can use as many of each weapon type as you like, or skip any weapons entirely:




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Assume that you want your SuperTank to have the highest possible total  Damage value (assume that this represents damage per second, so it  properly represents damage applied over time regardless of how quickly  the weapon fires).  Also assume that all weapons have the same range,  firing arc, accuracy, and rate of fire, so they’re identical in all ways  except for the ones shown on the chart above.

Quick!  How many machine guns, rockets, lasers, etc should you equip on  your SuperTank?  What combination of 0ne or more of each weapon gives us  the most damage without exceeding our budgets for Weight, Cost, and  Critical Slots?

See if you can solve it by hand, or with a calculator.

Can you do it?

If you try it, you'll quickly see that it’s a surprisingly difficult problem.

There’s probably a way to solve this with complicated math equations.  But we’re designers, and math just isn’t our thing.

Also think about how the answer would change if the parameters were  different.  Would the answer change if our SuperTank could hold 60 tons  instead of 50?  What if instead of having 100 credits to spend, we had  110, or 90 – how would the optimal weapon loadout change?  What if it  had only 2 Critical Slots, or 4?

Now imagine that we had a system that could instantly calculate the  highest-damage weapon loadout for any given set of (Weight, Cost,  Critical Slots) parameters.  Type in the weapon parameters from the  table above, then type in the SuperTank's parameters (50 tons, 100  credits, 3 critical slots), and BOOM!, we can see the best possible  loadout.

Wouldn't that be awesome?

We could use this to instantly give us answers to all sorts of useful questions:

How does the optimal loadout change as we modify the parameters for a SuperTank?
How does the optimal loadout change as we modify any of the weapon parameters?
How much maximum damage will a SuperTank do at any given (Weight, Cost, Critical Slots) setting?
Are the four weapon parameters (Damage, Weight, Cost, Critical Slots) appropriate and properly balanced for each weapon?
Are there any weapons that are  overly powerful, and are used too frequently?  If any weapon is so  useful that the correct decision is always to use it, then using it is  always the optimal decision, and there really is no meaningful decision  there.  In that case, we should probably either remove the weapon from  the game or rebalance it so that there are some circumstances where the  weapon is not useful.
Are there any weapons that are  underutilized, and are rarely or never used?  Similar to the above, if  any weapon is so useless that the correct decision is to never use it,  then there’s no meaningful decision there.  In that case, we should  either remove the weapon from the game or rebalance it so that there are  some circumstances where it makes sense to use the weapon.
 
All of these are very important design questions that any designer  should want to know the answers to.  Knowing them will be enormously  helpful to us in balancing SuperTank.

In just a few paragraphs, we’ve described a problem that’s remarkably  difficult for us to solve manually, but which is trivially solvable with  tools already built into Microsoft Excel.

In a future episode, we'll actually build a decision model for this that  can answer all of these questions.You’ll be able to see clearly that  you can set up a model like this in minutes can allow you to solve this  otherwise ferociously difficult problem.  With just a bit of work, we’ll  create a power tool to let us quickly and safely explore the design  space.

 *Roadmap*

  Throughout this series, we’ll illustrate quite a few more  sophisticated examples, and we’ll provide reference spreadsheets so that  you can do all of these examples yourself with nothing more than a copy  of Excel.  Our examples will include, among others:


A simple combat example for a strategy game
A model for optimizing the  coordinates of several wormhole teleporters in a space-based  massively-multiplayer game relative to each other and a number of  population hubs
A model for determining what tax  rate to use for a simplified model of a city in order to balance citizen  happiness against tax income in a 4X strategy game such as Sid Meier’s  Civilization
A model for choosing how to assign spells and traits to character classes in a massively-multiplayer game
An optimization model for  determining the optimal build order for a planetary colony in a ‘4X’  strategy game similar to the classic Master of Orion
A much more sophisticated example of a weapon loadout in a MechWarrior-style game, including heat management mechanics
An example of a team trying to pick  the right combination of features to include in a game, and using a  decision model to help them make the appropriate trade-offs
  In general, this series will build up  from simple examples of finding optimal player strategies in specific  game subsystems and then progress toward using decision models to help  optimize parameters for game systems and optimizing feature set  combinations.
  In each of these cases, we’ll describe the problem and show how to  model it in Excel and solve it using Excel's built-in Solver tool.  In  each case, you’ll see that we can do it more easily, quickly, and  robustly than you could likely do without using Solver or an equivalent  tool.  We’ll also provide the spreadsheets for each example so that you  can download it and try it for yourself, reproduce the results, and  experiment with each of the models.

Also, remember that the underlying representation, whether it be a  spreadsheet or a program in a high-level language, or something else –  is irrelevant.  The important thing isn’t whether we do this in Excel  & Solver or Java/C++/C#, but the way we model the problem and try to  solve it.

 *Why Use Decision Models?*

  Some readers may be incredulous at this point.  Building decision  models probably seems like a lot of work (or at least, you might be  guessing that it would be).  Why go through all the effort when instead,  we can just use our existing design skills and a lot of user testing in  the form of focus group testing and beta testing?

Let us state up front, on the record, that decision modeling isn’t applicable to every problem.   Some problems are too complicated or too difficult to model with these  techniques, and there are many aspects of the design (such as aesthetic  considerations, entertainment value, and the "feel" of the game) that  are difficult or impossible to model with numbers.  And decision  modeling certainly does not eliminate the need for group testing, beta  testing, or doing your job by playing your own game continuously  throughout development on a daily basis.

But having said all that, it should become clear by the end of this  series that decision modeling and optimization methods also give us a  unique and remarkably powerful set of tools.  They can fully or  partially solve many kinds of problems that can’t reasonably be solved  any other way, and they can help provide answers and insights to all  sorts of design questions that would be difficult to answer otherwise.

As with any tool, it’s up to the practitioner to decide when their use is appropriate.

We can count any number of cases where decision models may be  inappropriate or too unwieldy to be useful.  But as you’ll see in this  series, it’s also surprisingly useful, and the more we can design  properly at the earliest stages and get the bugs out of our design  decisions before we even get into the user testing stage, the more  likely that we’ll be able to design systems that are solid,  entertaining, and bug-free.

Think about the tools available to a typical programmer.  Programmers  have a very difficult job, but they’re also blessed with many tools to  help them find bugs before they ever go into testing.  They have  compilers that constantly scream at them the moment they make a typo;  they use defensive programming practices to expose software defects;  they have code reviews to help them identify one another’s defects or  call out poor programming practices; and they have many profiling and  static analysis tools to help them find all kinds of performance bugs  and other defects.

But designers don’t have any tools like that.  Our job is arguably just  as difficult, but we have no compiler to tell us when we’ve made a  syntax error.  We have no profiler, no debugging tools, and no static  analysis tools.  We have no way to do code reviews since we don’t have  any ‘code.’  We write specifications and design docs and that’s about  it; we can share design documents and feature specifications among the  team and hope they give us good feedback, but for the most part we have  to actually get it in the game before we can see if it works or not.

That makes design incredibly risky, time-consuming, and expensive.

And just as with programming, human error is a natural and inevitable  part of the process, and we need as many high-quality tools as possible  to protect ourselves and our projects.
We are a very long way from having design tools that will support  designers’ exploration of the design space at anywhere near the level  the way that our compilers, debuggers, profilers, and static analysis  tools support programmers’ exploration of the engineering space.  But  we’re beginning to see the rise of a few custom game solvers and design  tools, including a recently-developed playability checker for a Cut the  Rope variant called “Cut the Rope: Play Forever” (link); the abstract game design system Ludi, which generated the board game Yavalath (link); and my own Evolver automated game balancing assistant for the mobile game City Conquest (link).   Decision modeling can help us move a few more steps toward that level  of support and begin to augment and extend designers’ own intelligence  with some automated tools.

 *It’s Not About Spreadsheets – It’s About Models*

  This series is written for designers -- and we mean all designers,  whether they come from an artistic, programming, storytelling, or board  gaming background.  So we're going to keep it simple, and stick to these  promises:


*No code*.  We'll  keep the articles 100% free of any code and will illustrate all of our  examples in Microsoft Excel using the built-in “Solver” utility.   However, it’s important to note that this series is not about  spreadsheets or Excel – it’s about decision modeling and optimization.   Every single thing we do in this series can be done just as easily (and  sometimes more so) in any high-level programming language.
*No math (or at least, not anything complicated)*.   We’re going to keep this series mostly math-free, and we won’t use  anything other than basic arithmetic here: addition, subtraction,  multiplication, division, and occasionally a square root.  Greek letters  will be strictly forbidden.
*No four-dimensional spreadsheets*; we'll stick to the two-dimensional kind.
  If you’re a designer, this series should give you all the tools you  need create decision models yourself, with no need to try to write code  or rely on programmers to write any code for you.  If you’re a  programmer, this should give you a fairly straightforward guide toward  programming your own decision models in any high-level programming  language, so that you can then build decision models of your own, either  from scratch or by building off of a template that already uses Solver  and Excel.

These articles are intended to be nothing more than starting point, so  that you can take the concepts presented here and choose whether to  build them out in Excel, pick another optimization tool, or try to build  a solver of your own in a high-level language.  Spreadsheets are a good  start, but these decision models are most likely to be useful as a  springboard for richer and more sophisticated models that can be  integrated with your game architecture.

 *Disclaimers*

  Before we get too far into the thick of decision modeling, a few  disclaimers are in order. Decision modeling and optimization don't  provide any kind of complete system for game design, and we won't be  making any claims to that effect.  It’s helpful to view it as a tool to  help with some aspects of the design process, and like any tool, it has  plenty of limitations.

Here are some of the limitations you should be aware of:


*It can be easily misused*.  Like any tool, decision models can be used inappropriately or  incorrectly, and an incomplete or buggy decision model can lead you to  incorrect conclusions.  Just as with software, the larger your decision  model becomes, the more likely it is to contain bugs.  It’s also very  easy to misinterpret what a model is telling you or to build an  incomplete model that doesn’t accurately model the decision you're  trying to make.
*It’s complicated (sometimes)*.   Some design problems are just too complex to be usefully modeled with  these approaches.  Many problems have too many moving parts or are too  closely integrated with other aspects of the game to be usefully  represented in a standalone Excel spreadsheet.  In these cases, you’re  left to decide whether to model only part of the system (which may leave  you with an invalid / inaccurate model), build a complete model  integrated into the game itself (which could be a lot of work), or forgo  decision modeling entirely.
*Not everything can be modeled*.   Decision models can’t tell you whether something is fun, whether it’s  aesthetically pleasing, whether it "feels" right, or whether it presents  the player with a usable and accessible interface.  There’s generally  no way to represent these kinds of subjective and aesthetic concerns in a  discrete model.  This means that there are clear limits on where  decision modeling can and should be used, and it will be much more  useful for systems design and optimizing mechanics and dynamics rather  than aesthetics.
*It has limits*.  All  optimizers have their limits, including the Excel Solver that we will  use, and it’s entirely possible to create decision models that have  valid solutions but are so complex that no optimization tool can find  them.  For large enough numbers of unconstrained inputs, the problem can  grow beyond Solver’s ability to search every possible combination of  inputs, and instead it must rely on various optimization methods.  As  we'll see throughout this series, we can simplify the expression of our  models to make them easier for Solver to handle, and the developer of  Solver (Frontline) offers a more powerful solver for larger problems, but it's definitely possible to create models that Solver cannot solve.
*It doesn't guarantee optimality*.  On account of that, when we’re dealing with complex models, we can’t  always be 100% sure that we’ve found the optimal decision.  We sometimes  have to settle for second best: we spend more time optimizing, or start  from scratch and re-optimize, so that we can say that the solution  we’ve found is either optimal or very close to optimal with a reasonable  level of confidence.
  Finally, and most importantly:


*We have to make sure we model the right things*.   Not all problems are important enough that they need this kind of  effort, and we have to make sure we know our priorities and avoid  getting overly-focused on optimizing irrelevant problems while ignoring  other, bigger problems that might be much more important.
  Broadly speaking, there are certain  things that need to hold true for decision modeling to be useful.  The  decision in question has to be something we can encapsulate within some  sort of discrete model, and map the result of the decision into a single  value.  In other words, we must be able to map a finite set of  inputs through a decision model and onto a single output in such a way  that either minimizing or maximizing the output value gives us a better  decision.

In cases where there are subjective concerns that can’t be encapsulated  in the model – for example, aesthetic considerations or usability /  playability concerns – we will need to either cleanly separate those out  from the decision model, use decision modeling only as an initial pass,  or just abandon the decision modeling approach entirely.

In order for us to model decisions in a spreadsheet, there’s also a  limit on how complex the model can be.  If our game does something very  complex, we may not be able to replicate that complexity in Excel.  It’s  important to keep in mind, though, that this is only a constraint on  the power of the models we can build in Excel, and not on decision  models themselves.  You can build vastly more powerful solvers in your  own game engine than you can build in a separate spreadsheet, and I hope  that this series inspires you to do exactly that.

On the other side of the coin, all of these limitations hardly make  decision modeling useless.  Even in a case where a problem is too  complex for decision modeling to tune completely, it can still help you  get many components of your design much closer to a correct  configuration, and it can help you find and debug a number of basic  problems early in development.

And even when a decision model can’t find the optimal solution to a  given problem, either because the problem is too complex or because it  requires aesthetic concerns or other subjective human considerations, it  can still help you narrow down the solution, helping you rule out dead  ends and otherwise reducing the complexity of the problem.

Finally, even if you choose not use decision modeling and never attempt  to optimize any spreadsheets or build your own solvers, an understanding  of decision modeling can still help you by changing the way you frame  and think about design decisions.

This series is an exploration.  We will look at many examples of game  design problems and explore ways to model and optimize them in ways that  offer us powerful design tools.  You may be skeptical, or you may feel  more comfortable not using any optimization at all.  But I hope you will  bear with me as we explore and see where we end up by the end of the  series.

 *Conclusion*

  In the end, we should want to design _correctly_.

Many design questions are subjective, with no “right” or “wrong”  answers.  But in some cases – many more than you might think – there  undeniably are.  And in those cases, we should want to know how to get  the right answer, or at least understand how we would go about defining  the “right” answer and searching for that solution if it exists.

Decision modeling and optimization are powerful tools that can help us  accomplish exactly that in many cases.  I believe these tools should be  part of every designer’s toolbox.  With a little discipline, it should  become clear that these tools have untapped potential to help us explore  the dark room of game design more quickly and more safely, and we will  show you how with many applications throughout the rest of this series.

-Paul Tozour


Quelle: Gamasutra: Paul Tozour's Blog - Decision Modeling and Optimization in Game Design, Part 1: Introduction


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## LordCrash (9. Januar 2014)

*Why The Violent Game Debate Actually Isn't Over*

By Dmitri Williams*, THU 09 JAN 2014 3:51PM GMT* / 10:51AM EST / 7:51AM PST 

*Ninja Metrics CEO Dmitri Williams offers a counterpoint on the violent games topic - the issue runs much deeper in our society, he says

* The video game debate isn't over yet, and there's a good chance it never will be. It's definitely down from the hysteria of times past, but the forces that keep it in play aren't going away. Let's walk through this from a couple of angles: legal/political and cultural. Proviso: This is purely from the American experience.

*The Legal Front

* On the legal side, the Supreme Court decision really did change things, but it was also more or less inevitable. Every court battle had started with a state law being challenged on free speech grounds and struck down. I played a role in some of these events and I think I can actually pinpoint the exact moment when things changed. It certainly wasn't in Congress. As a wet-behind-the-ears young professor, I testified before the US Senate. I was there to explain the science to the committee (TLDR version: we have three good data points, people, and we don't know squat), and my experience there taught me that the science was largely irrelevant. Senators blasted into the committee room, grandstanded, then left, ignoring the testimony. A few listened, but most had their axe to grind and our testimony was pro forma.

No, things changed in the courts, and specifically in Chicago. I was an expert witness in the case of Blagojevich v. ESA. Rod Blagojevich, for any who've forgotten, was the later-disgraced Gov. of Illinois. His anti-game law was challenged, as they all were, and the case was in federal court. I was hired by the ESA, ostensibly to "defend" the industry, although in my view my job was to explain the science to date, including my own. I'd just published the first long-term study on gaming and violence and found no link. This was an intellectual hand grenade that severely annoyed many of my colleagues, but the data tells the story, not me.

In any case, I was testifying across from Craig Anderson, possibly one of the nicest people in academia, and also an ardent opponent of games. Prof. Anderson believed, and still does, that exposure to games makes players more likely to commit violent acts. And whether you like his science or logic or not, he has a lot of people in mainstream academia who agree with him. Pooh pooh this camp at your peril.

That day I offered my testimony (which didn't matter much), and then Prof. Anderson took the stand. He explained the theories of mere exposure and schema activation. Non-nerd translation: if you see something, you'll think about it. If you think about it, you're more likely to do it. Now that's not an insane theory at all. It's quite reasonable, actually. It's just a question of degree. And on the stand Prof. Anderson explained that seeing a picture of a gun would in fact make anyone more likely to commit gun violence.

I was watching the judge in the case during this and he gave the slightest of double takes at this. Why? Because he knew in a flash that what Prof. Anderson was saying could lead to government control of any objectionable imagery. If seeing a gun is bad, then you have to ban all gun images, right? Thought police. And right there, poof, went the case against violent games. The rest--the California law, the Supreme Court case, etc.--was just the long, slow death rattle.

So it's over, right? No, not really.

*Culture Wars

* Culture Wars are perpetual because the forces that cause them are almost entirely unavoidable in society. Although the technology has changed, the socioeconomics aren't radically different today than in ancient Rome, where they had their own cultural battles. Then, like now, they were driven by race and class tensions more than by the particulars of the debate. This is an important moment to recognize the difference between the symptom and the disease. We may argue over the impact of video games or TV or Google Glass, but what we're really arguing over are our roles, inequality, poverty, and a host of other things. The tech is just a proxy for a larger issue, and the trick is to understand why.

Here's an example: What should we worry about and make policy around to make our lives safer? Chances are, the things that occur to you will not be scientifically driven. Instead, we tend to pick the things that make us feel good, or reinforce our opinions. For example, I read a slew of comments after Brendan's original article about gun control. Well, although I happen to agree with many of them, guns kill far fewer children than swimming pools. Where's the outrage over pool safety? Where's the legislation? If you want to line up what the risks are in society, there should be outrage over driver's education and salt in foods. But since those don't push any cultural buttons, they get no press or attention--unlike say guns or games.

OK, so why games? First, it's not about games at all. It's about women, and their roles in society. Take a look at the households and household incomes in the U.S. over the past 40 years. We Americans have less and less free time, more work, and really no economic gains to show for it. What's happened is that women have been "able" to enter the workforce, but that's slowly become "have to enter the workforce" to maintain the same standard of living within a family. As a result, women spend more and more time outside of the home, and correspondingly less and less time in it. This means less time with their own children, and it often unfairly puts them in the crosshairs of cultural conservatives.

As a society, we feel pretty crappy about how we treat our kids, and women often take the flak. Children are farmed out to teachers and daycare, and over the past 30 years, increasingly to electronic media. TVs, cable, VCRs, video games, phones, iPads, etc., etc. are seen--often rightly so--as electronic babysitters. This gives parents and pundits three choices: 1) Decry the economic disparity and support working families (especially working and single mothers) through policy. So far, that hasn't happened, and it doesn't seem likely in the US any time soon. 2) Make a choice to have a lower standard of living and have a parent spend more time with the children. This is pretty tough, too, especially for those at lower incomes. Or 3) Use any means at our disposal to entertain and occupy our kids, but resent the situation. In this case, the electronic media become our objects of hate rather than the system, or ourselves. For cultural conservatives who think that women should be in the home, electronic media are a particularly easy target.

If you think this is a bit crazy, consider that video games didn't start out as a cultural hot potato. Originally, pre-1981, they were cool, hip and even in nightclubs and bars. I did research on this once, looking at all of the press coverage on gaming, and it makes a hard 180-degree turn in 1981. Suddenly games articles are about kids, shame, guilt and even imputed crime. Articles in 1980 talked about lawyers playing on their lunch breaks, and in 1982 the interviewees said "please don't use my name." Adult game play essentially went into the closet.

What happened? Reagan happened, and brought with him a huge cultural shift to conservatism, family values and a tragically unfair vilification of single female parents. Welfare queens were the villains of the day, and women who didn't fit their traditional roles were bad news. Those who stuck their kids in front of the boob tube or a 2600 were more irresponsible still. So games, along with the VCR, were merely chess pieces in this larger cultural battle. They became tightly associated with irresponsibility. Then, when Nintendo made games a phoenix from the ashes of Atari in the late 80s, they made their marketing 100% child-oriented. There's the cultural nail in the coffin. From that point on, games were infantilized, and it's taken us an entire generation to grow up past that baggage

30 years later and those Nintendo kids (oh, this Atari kid feels old. Where's my C-64? Get off my lawn!) are now parents. More importantly, the gatekeepers of culture have all had a generational passing of the torch. News editors are some of the most powerful people in the world at setting the cultural agenda. And the games industry has gone from being edited by people suspicious of it or hostile to it to those who grew up with it.

But that doesn't mean games are going to get a free pass. What it means (as Brendan Sinclair rightly points out) is that games aren't going to be the first target any longer. Reporters don't take Jack Thompson seriously. Well, most of them don't. Still, let's take a look at the cultural climate. The US may have become a more multiethnic and interesting place since the '80s, but gay tolerance aside, it's not as if cultural conservatives have disappeared. If anything, the conservative movement today is as robust and loud as it was in the 1980s.

Fox News is consistently the highest-rated broadcast news network. Tea Party candidates now have national policy-making positions. The Republican Party has been taken over by its loud and angry minority, and a culturally conservative wave is underway. If you're a left-leaning, educated developer and you think this cultural war is over, think again. Conservatives are celebrating Duck Dynasty as a return to morality. Bill O'Reilly sells books like hotcakes. Sarah Palin is a serious candidate for office.

Newtown was an important moment in the national consciousness. It was too horrible to pin down on gaming, and the reporters have all now played enough Call of Duty (and not killed anyone) to know better. But America's deeply ambivalent reactions to technology aren't going anywhere. The larger forces that drive it--massive economic disparity, deep class tensions, thick guilt over parenting--are as present as ever, and getting worse.

All that remains to be seen is how it'll manifest itself next. Maybe games will get lucky and pass the whipping-boy job on to a new technology.

I offer this prediction: When Oculus launches, it'll be greeted with a mix of nerd enthusiasm and distrust. And that distrust will come in the form of three predictable fears: how is it going to medically harm us, what good thing is it going to replace, and what bad cultural impact is it going to have? It was this way for Nickelodeon, movies, jazz, radio, rock, rap, games and the Internet. Same as it ever was, people.

If you want to defuse these things, think ahead and be proactive. Otherwise, brace yourself. The fundamentals haven't changed.

_Dmitri Williams (PhD, University of Michigan) is the CEO, Sensei, and Co-Founder of Ninja Metrics, Inc. Dmitri is a 15-year veteran of games and community research, has authored more than 40 peer-reviewed articles on gamer psychology and large-scale data analysis, has been featured on CNN, Fox, the Economist, the New York Times, and most major news outlets, and he has testified as an expert on video games and gamers before the U.S. Senate._

Quelle: Why The Violent Game Debate Actually Isn't Over | GamesIndustry International


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