The Gamasutra article on Phil Harrison's move from Sony to Infogrames is here. Now, what exactly is happening here? Earlier in the year, the parent company of decaying Atari picked up David Gardner, an EA veteran (since '83!), to head up their publishing dept. and revamp their corporate vision, which until now might have been: "Bail the water out of this sinking ship". Indeed, Driver and Stuntman are gone, and what else is there? Not knowing the full history of either exec, I do know that both of them made their respective companies A BUNCH OF MONEY and that is exactly what Infogrames needs. I liken these events to a stock market scenario; when things are looking as poor as they possibly could be, that is the time to buy, and here we have two high-power execs doing just that. Will it be enough? I can only speculate just how financially ruined Infogrames is right now; probably the situation is grim but they are armed with some pretty big licenses, some of which are perennial failures in the marketplace and others that do OK:
-Dungeons and Dragons
-DragonBall Z
-Deer Hunter
-Dora the Explorer
-The Matrix
-Neverwinter Nights
-Rollercoaster Tycoon
As I read through these, I don't find a single killer app, but what's important is that within each target demographic these licenses represent there is room for a killer app. Dungeons and Dragons games have ever played fiscal second fiddle to, well, any other RPG title on the market; why? Why with such a rich base of lore and history does a license like this fail to sell? Improper handling. Why doesn't every member of the NRA own a copy of any one of the Deer Hunter titles? Mishandling. The Matrix games were awful. Neverwinter Nights? Eaten part and parcel by WoW. Rollercoaster Tycoon: why so little RTS/god game innovation? With any luck, Harrison will breathe a little life into all of these flagging franchises and maybe bring a few new prize horses into the stable.
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Sunday, March 2, 2008
Ew - the "art" debate!
The debate on whether or not games ought to be considered "art" by (insert ANY name here) has been raging on Gamasutra lately. If you aren't familiar with the two main players, read this article and then this one. The first is by Jim Preston, a producer at EA who is a self-styled philosopher and ex-game journalist. He's got a very EA-esque attitude; from an industry outsider's perspective, he takes a really conservative approach, just like his parent company: Sit back and wait for context to dictate whether or not games will ever be considered "art" by our country's critics. EA perennially issues derivative shit because that is their tried and tested sales model. We can't become angry with them or lose focus, however; people like him are important and companies like EA are important even if they only exist to aid in the defining of what is art and what obviously isn't. How many of EA's bestselling titles can be called "art" or at the very least "emotive"? To count them I wouldn't need all of the fingers on one hand. Is his argument valid? Probably. Is his attitude conducive to games reaching the all-hallowed plateau that film and conventional media currently occupy? Absolutely not.
After reading both articles, it occurs to me that beneath each writer's facade lies a wholly different but typical, age-old debate: conservatism vs liberality. Arey is obviously the artist here; he writes with passion, which is what is lacking both in Preston's article and his company's games. Whether sports games, their biggest sellers, ought to be artful in some way is totally up for debate; do artistic people buy those games? Without any research and an early admittance that I may be wrong, I'd say that they don't. Artless people are more likely to buy them; number-crunchers, realism fanatics...people who are passionately idiosyncratic rather than the old American model of what a man ought to be AREN'T BUYING THESE GAMES. The parallel that I'm trying to draw here is that these traditionalists go by a certain group name on the political scene: conservatives! Can we really blame EA for artlessly tailoring games when all they're really doing is skilfully aiming their product at a specific target demographic? Hell no!
With an image such as they currently have, however, it grates on me to hear a member of their ilk preach about games as art. Who are they to contest Ebert? They're the REASON he's said that "games will never be considered art". They may be the financial powerhouse of the industry, but they decidedly are NOT it's artistic leader. Granted, they are the ones who ought to defend themselves due to their station in the industry, but STILL...I don't think we ought to listen to their opinion on how to go about getting games accepted as art.
To be continued...
After reading both articles, it occurs to me that beneath each writer's facade lies a wholly different but typical, age-old debate: conservatism vs liberality. Arey is obviously the artist here; he writes with passion, which is what is lacking both in Preston's article and his company's games. Whether sports games, their biggest sellers, ought to be artful in some way is totally up for debate; do artistic people buy those games? Without any research and an early admittance that I may be wrong, I'd say that they don't. Artless people are more likely to buy them; number-crunchers, realism fanatics...people who are passionately idiosyncratic rather than the old American model of what a man ought to be AREN'T BUYING THESE GAMES. The parallel that I'm trying to draw here is that these traditionalists go by a certain group name on the political scene: conservatives! Can we really blame EA for artlessly tailoring games when all they're really doing is skilfully aiming their product at a specific target demographic? Hell no!
With an image such as they currently have, however, it grates on me to hear a member of their ilk preach about games as art. Who are they to contest Ebert? They're the REASON he's said that "games will never be considered art". They may be the financial powerhouse of the industry, but they decidedly are NOT it's artistic leader. Granted, they are the ones who ought to defend themselves due to their station in the industry, but STILL...I don't think we ought to listen to their opinion on how to go about getting games accepted as art.
To be continued...
Friday, February 29, 2008
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Street Fighter 4: 1994 pt. 2
Holy shoryuken; do we care? Can't say the "fighting" genre still interests me (not 13 anymore) but from what I've seen it looks really pretty. Sparkly skin aside, a plain truth remains: Fighting games are no longer novel, are no longer a reason for you to ditch your girlfriend and wait in line at an arcade for your turn to test your mettle against the local MASTER, and I seriously worry for this title that no one save diehard fanboys will be shelling out $60 for an art update. Seriously; have we seen this before?
Indies
Original MySpace Post
For those of you that didn't know, I brag to you now that my name has appeared in a video game manual for the first time! This happened back in October and being of the non-gloat-y persuasion, I haven't really sensationalized it (as is my predisposition), but that all changes TODAY. Here's a trailer for the game in question, "Agatha Christie's Evil Under the Sun":
I think my official title was "Game Design Assistant" or something along those lines. I can't take too much credit as my involvement was sort of a right-place-at-the-right-time thing; I happened to know the professor whose responsibility it was to "build" the game (read: write the 600-pg design document) and he knew of my literary and game design interests and allowed me to proofread those uber-secret pages for spelling/grammar issues and logic coherence. Lucky? Hell yes I am! Opportunities like that don't always present themselves and when they do the adage "It pays to know people" proves truer than ever.
I am struggling right now to stoke group interest in a class project, a game design document for which I have yoked myself with "Lead Designer" responsibilities. To augment the 3-4,000 words I've bled into it the rest of my seven-person team has added MAYBE 200 words in sum total. I'm thinking that this is the way that teams of any kind must work in all areas of the world; when assembling a team it seems like you have to account for massive effort failure beforehand, like when the project idea is barely nascent. As a leader it seems like you have to steel yourself against apathy and be prepared to compensate at great personal cost for myriad shortcomings for which you can only blame yourself. Sure, writing a design document is a great experience, but probably the most valuable experience is this "team" atmosphere. Learning how to persist in the face of unexpected shit is what I will take away from this experience and what I've taken away from all of my group project experiences.
Am I jaded? No. It may sound like a lot of bitching and whining, but quietly I understand that this is what it means to want something a little more than my peers and that the weight of the work that I put in now equals the value of the experience I earn in the end. At least that's what I'm telling myself. ;)
I've been keeping up with GDC '08 (Game Developers' Conference in San Francisco) via a dazzling array of gaming websites, notably Kotaku, 1up, Joystiq, and Gamasutra. A lot of interesting things have been introduced this year, the most interesting of which (at least to me) are both the game I mentioned last post (Aquaria) and Fable 2. These games represent advances in interface design that theoretically should improve a game's immersive quality, reducing the "gamey" feel of titles that adhere to these new philosophies. Essentially what excites me here is that these developers are exerting effort toward validating games as a more mature form of entertainment. Major advances in film such as adding actors' voices and converting from black-and-white to color had similar effects on that industry as movies that were released after these improvements generally benefitted from them (as evidenced by ticket sales spikes and studios' gradual profit increases over the course of the industry's history). The same should prove true in the game industry and even though interface improvements might sound like dorky little reason for me to jump up and cheer, I am actually cheering about the promise that some day a person with no programming or art skill (to speak of) like me will find work like screenplay writers have as their industry matured and expanded enough to accomodate them. Yay ulterior motives!
Oh, and I can't decide if the following video bothers me or leaves me pleased. This upcoming game, "Fez", has borrowed a page from the Wii's "Paper Mario" design and is plainly less pretty, witty, etc. The character's kinda cute, and the gameplay is novel, but just like Paper Mario, it feels like a suicidal improvement; these developers have created a really cool dynamic that blows its entire load early (as novelties are prone to do) and defeats further innovation in the 2D/3D gameplay arena. Why does this bother me? Why does it feel like a red herring, a development dead-end? I guess I can think of at least one cool thing that can be done with the technology which doesn't involve platforming (hopping from platform to platform), but is there more meat here? I fear that there may not be. Compare!
Update
I have developed a new respect for Phil Fish's "Fez" since last mention of the subject. This has little to do with the game itself but more with an interview with Fish that I watched and another that is transcribed over at Arthouse Games. Apparently "Fez" cost nothing (save time and a nominal IGF entry fee) to develop and netted him $20k. That's nearly 20,000% profit, yo. This game and "Aquaria" (among others) represent a very cool segment of the industry which by virtue of HOW MUCH FUN these games are deserve the attention of all three seventh-gen consoles. Disturbingly, I've heard that Microsoft is halving royalties paid to indie developers hoping to distribute via XNA or XBL. Does anyone else smell self-destructive, bottom-line enhancing policy here? Will the host of poor indie developers shafted by Microsoft look to Nintendo's Revolution or Home as more pocketbook-friendly outlets for their work? 35% sure would set me to reevaluating my options...
until next we meet...
----------------
Now playing: The Seatbelts - Green Bird
via FoxyTunes
For those of you that didn't know, I brag to you now that my name has appeared in a video game manual for the first time! This happened back in October and being of the non-gloat-y persuasion, I haven't really sensationalized it (as is my predisposition), but that all changes TODAY. Here's a trailer for the game in question, "Agatha Christie's Evil Under the Sun":
I think my official title was "Game Design Assistant" or something along those lines. I can't take too much credit as my involvement was sort of a right-place-at-the-right-time thing; I happened to know the professor whose responsibility it was to "build" the game (read: write the 600-pg design document) and he knew of my literary and game design interests and allowed me to proofread those uber-secret pages for spelling/grammar issues and logic coherence. Lucky? Hell yes I am! Opportunities like that don't always present themselves and when they do the adage "It pays to know people" proves truer than ever.
I am struggling right now to stoke group interest in a class project, a game design document for which I have yoked myself with "Lead Designer" responsibilities. To augment the 3-4,000 words I've bled into it the rest of my seven-person team has added MAYBE 200 words in sum total. I'm thinking that this is the way that teams of any kind must work in all areas of the world; when assembling a team it seems like you have to account for massive effort failure beforehand, like when the project idea is barely nascent. As a leader it seems like you have to steel yourself against apathy and be prepared to compensate at great personal cost for myriad shortcomings for which you can only blame yourself. Sure, writing a design document is a great experience, but probably the most valuable experience is this "team" atmosphere. Learning how to persist in the face of unexpected shit is what I will take away from this experience and what I've taken away from all of my group project experiences.
Am I jaded? No. It may sound like a lot of bitching and whining, but quietly I understand that this is what it means to want something a little more than my peers and that the weight of the work that I put in now equals the value of the experience I earn in the end. At least that's what I'm telling myself. ;)
I've been keeping up with GDC '08 (Game Developers' Conference in San Francisco) via a dazzling array of gaming websites, notably Kotaku, 1up, Joystiq, and Gamasutra. A lot of interesting things have been introduced this year, the most interesting of which (at least to me) are both the game I mentioned last post (Aquaria) and Fable 2. These games represent advances in interface design that theoretically should improve a game's immersive quality, reducing the "gamey" feel of titles that adhere to these new philosophies. Essentially what excites me here is that these developers are exerting effort toward validating games as a more mature form of entertainment. Major advances in film such as adding actors' voices and converting from black-and-white to color had similar effects on that industry as movies that were released after these improvements generally benefitted from them (as evidenced by ticket sales spikes and studios' gradual profit increases over the course of the industry's history). The same should prove true in the game industry and even though interface improvements might sound like dorky little reason for me to jump up and cheer, I am actually cheering about the promise that some day a person with no programming or art skill (to speak of) like me will find work like screenplay writers have as their industry matured and expanded enough to accomodate them. Yay ulterior motives!
Oh, and I can't decide if the following video bothers me or leaves me pleased. This upcoming game, "Fez", has borrowed a page from the Wii's "Paper Mario" design and is plainly less pretty, witty, etc. The character's kinda cute, and the gameplay is novel, but just like Paper Mario, it feels like a suicidal improvement; these developers have created a really cool dynamic that blows its entire load early (as novelties are prone to do) and defeats further innovation in the 2D/3D gameplay arena. Why does this bother me? Why does it feel like a red herring, a development dead-end? I guess I can think of at least one cool thing that can be done with the technology which doesn't involve platforming (hopping from platform to platform), but is there more meat here? I fear that there may not be. Compare!
Update
I have developed a new respect for Phil Fish's "Fez" since last mention of the subject. This has little to do with the game itself but more with an interview with Fish that I watched and another that is transcribed over at Arthouse Games. Apparently "Fez" cost nothing (save time and a nominal IGF entry fee) to develop and netted him $20k. That's nearly 20,000% profit, yo. This game and "Aquaria" (among others) represent a very cool segment of the industry which by virtue of HOW MUCH FUN these games are deserve the attention of all three seventh-gen consoles. Disturbingly, I've heard that Microsoft is halving royalties paid to indie developers hoping to distribute via XNA or XBL. Does anyone else smell self-destructive, bottom-line enhancing policy here? Will the host of poor indie developers shafted by Microsoft look to Nintendo's Revolution or Home as more pocketbook-friendly outlets for their work? 35% sure would set me to reevaluating my options...
until next we meet...
----------------
Now playing: The Seatbelts - Green Bird
via FoxyTunes
Another Blog!
It's been awhile since I've used Blogger, and I'm happy to be back. I've been using my MySpace blog for a general-purpose outlet but I'm finally beginning to feel comfortable enough about my level of immersion in the game industry to begin recording my opinions! Yay! It's going to be rough for a little while and I have a feeling that it's going to be obvious to readers that I'm a student, but this is a necessary step for me in moving away from zealous conjecture toward writing informed opinions on industry topics. The trick will be keep it fun; who wants to read a string of rants and cold facts? I sure as hell don't and hopefully no one else will either. If you have opinions on any of my posts, leave comments! I am wide open to all sides of a debate and encourage conversation-generating (read: constructive) dissent. Thanks for stopping by!
----------------
Now playing: Air - New Star in the Sky (Chanson Pour Solal)
via FoxyTunes
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Now playing: Air - New Star in the Sky (Chanson Pour Solal)
via FoxyTunes
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