Archive for the ‘Game Conventions & Expos’ Category

IndieCade 2009 is now over and with it, a new batch of stunning independently (mostly) developed games have one won awards. Hosted this year in Culver City, CA gamers, developers, and press bustled about this small southern California town for four days of presentation, speeches, awards and most importantly, games! This year there have been a slew of comments comparing the young game awards to the Sundance Film Festival, which seems to sit well with the awards presenters who are taking aim at a growing demographic within the game industry that prefer artistically driven, creative games that are often free.

The primary difference between Sundance and IndieCade is that Sundance (and other, prestigious independent film festivals) tend to set trends for the coming years, inspire the mainstream or often times propel the careers of young directors and actors who successful display their film. IndieCade has yet to prove it can do this. By and large the indy genre remains inconsequential to the mainstream consumer base and publishers alike. Games tend not to influence much beyond other indy games and very few developers have been able to leverage their success as an indy developer into a larger career in the industry. Now, to be fair we have seen smaller, sort-of independent games such as Defense Grid: The Awakening, World of Goo and Braid tap into the mainstream and prove that indy (sort of) games are financially viable but the success of these games was in no way linked to IndieCade. It will be interesting to watch the growth and development of this niche and the award ceremony that caters to it and see if the comparisons that have been so common this year can hold water.

A full list of winners and links to their sites (or media) can be found here, on the IndieCade blog:

http://www.indiecade.com/index.php?/blog/entries/indiecade-applauds-2009-finalists-and-awardees/

The most impressive I’ve seen from the selection this year has to be Closure, developed by Tyler Glaiel and Jon Schubbe which is a platform puzzle game that uses beautiful and somewhat creepy art design, using light and shadow to guide a player threw increasingly complex levels. If you haven’t checked it out yet you really need to. Closure kicks open the doors for a new world of flash gaming creates an atmosphere for the player.

Tokyo Game Show 2009

TGS 09 was a failure. The headlines have been saying this for several days now: attendance is down, several normally filled-to-bursting halls closed off, and even some of the remaining show space was dedicated to museum pieces of armor from the country’s history rather than games. Capcom’s Keiji Inafune, the creator of Mega Man and Dead Rising, even went so far as to go on record as saying, “Man, Japan is over. We’re done. Our game industry is finished.”

But why?

What has brought the industry that was so much a part of our gaming culture to its knees? In a few words: their attempt to imitate western development. America invented the video game, and for a long time, it didn’t know what to do with it. American game development companies certainly tried, but western-developed console games were looked down upon…and with reason. They usually sucked.

What western companies tried to do in the NES through Playstation eras was emulate Japan…but there are problems with that: an incomplete understanding of the culture that gave birth to the game being the most important. What need was the game supposed to address? What were the critical design philosophies that made this work, and what philosophies needed to be thrown out to address those needs?

History repeats itself now in Tokyo. For the last few years, Japan has been trying to create the sorts of games western developers might, because they need to garner a worldwide audience to make it in this world, and they perceive western games to be what everyone wants. In doing so however, they trip over their incomplete understanding of the culture that birthed the games they’re trying to emulate. The result are cries of Japanese developers not “getting it”.

There’s a nasty cycle building up: Sony and Microsoft develop the next big HD console. Game development companies need to amass huge budgets to take advantage of the graphics capabilities, so they begin looking to what other companies that have that sort of budget are doing, to see what’s selling well, and to see if they can do the same thing. And as the cycle of prettier and prettier looking games continues, the consumer is conditioned to be wary of games that don’t look like a photograph.

This brings us to TGS 09. What can Japan do at this point to save their industry? The answer does not lie in imitation. It lies in creating a game to fit a need within the society the developer is familiar with, it lies in innovation, and it lies within the advertising necessary to push acceptance through to the mass audience. Only when they’re not selling a product everyone else is making better, and only when they can educate potential consumers as to the merits of their game can Japan succeed.

Moral of the story: Play up your strengths. Don’t be the one-off.

Even if you’re not under the age of 10, there’s a good chance you’ve heard about Club Penguin, which is reported to have over 12 million user accounts. After being bought by the Walt Disney Company for the hefty sum of 350 million dollars, such lucrative success has not gone unnoticed and competitors are eagerly planning ways to capture this audience.

I had an opportunity to attend a session at Austin GDC given by Min Kim, Vice President of Nexon. He eyes the generation of growing gamers born during the dot com bubble, as he believes that these players – one of Club Penguin’s core audiences – will eagerly pay for digital items. It’s no secret that MapleStory has a large community, and we’ve already seen its similarities with Club Penguin. But as kids become teenagers, the game genres they are likely to play will change with them.

It is clear that MMOGs grow and evolve with technology. As time passes, the number of 2D games is also likely to decrease. If you take a quick look at any of the new and upcoming games, they are mostly 3D games with better graphics than industry leader World of Warcraft. Will players be tempted to turn back to outdated 2D games like MapleStory when a slew of visually stunning 3D games beckon for their attention left and right? The answer is probably no.

Let’s be honest with ourselves: we all know MapleStory sucks and many teens nowadays love 3D games. If Nexon puts over 50% of their manpower on MapleStory, where will that leave them?

Browser games are an interesting beast.  When most of us pick up a browser game, it’s usually to kill some time that we had nothing better to do with – whether that’s in a college dorm between classes, or at work while the boss isn’t looking.  Simple, addictive games draw in players who would otherwise never even look at a video game.  They’re the epitome of casual gaming, something that inexplicably frightens and angers some of us.

The Browser MMOG panel at GDC Austin, consisting of David Georgeson (Gaia Online), Philip Reisberger (BigPoint), Samuel Lorétan (Ankama), and Jesse Schell (Schell Games), argued that browser games were the future.  Certainly, browser games have certain advantages: they can be played from practically anywhere, and there’s no huge client to download.  Still, I initially balked at this assertion: I have yet to experience a browser game that could provide the depth of experience a traditional client or console game gave me.

The panelists did provide some solid points.  Easier system requirements means friends are less likely to get split up, which makes guilds more likely to jump from game to game as cohesive groups.  In spite of their reputations, browser games don’t have to be a shallow experience, and they all maintained that their own games of course had plenty of depth.  And many of their players played their games while also actively enjoying console games, so they’re able to work around the competition traditional gaming might provide.  I was still not convinced when I left, and had to spend some time mulling the matter over.

Games like Fusion Fall show off the current reach of browser games, giving players a fully 3d environment without a heavy download.  Reisberger strongly believes that in a few years time, we will see browser-based games that can match the production values of consoles and clients, with tools such as the Unity 3D engine.  And with upcoming projects like Gaikai, which will let you actually stream a full client over a browser, perhaps we will live to see a game where hefty client downloads are a thing of the past.

Believe me, I’ve worked on games with downloads upward of a gigabyte, and massive client sizes is one of the biggest barriers to getting players in the game.  As browser plugins become more powerful, game companies might have no choice but to switch over to the browser platform, whether we like it or not.  And while some of us resist the mass marketing of casual gaming in recent years, can we not also benefit from streamed content and no waits to get into the games we actually want to play?

I guess this is the big one everyone’s been waiting for. Well, I hate to disappoint, but there weren’t any new announcements or sneak peaks this time around. Rather, our speakers Frank Pearce and J. Allen Brack talked about the size and scale of Blizzard and World of Warcraft. Who knew Blizzard was so big?!

But in all seriousness, as many professionals in the industry noted, it’s truly a testament to their efficiency and organization. Blizzard employs over 4,500 people worldwide, and with that many people, you’d expect webs of entanglement. But they get shit done, and they get shit done correctly. Most companies in the online games world are 50-man strong (or weak), and at times won’t see anything completed, even if it’s an everyday mundane task.

So yes, Blizzard is big, but don’t simply say you knew that. Their streamlined structure and efficiency is something other companies can model after and learn from.

I had the good fortune today to sit in on a case study of EVE Online’s player-elected council, the Council of Stellar Management (CSM for short).  I’ve long admired the various player driven societal structures of EVE, ranging from basic corporations and alliances to advanced businesses such as banks and media.  Pétur Jóhannes Óskarsson of CCP explains that the fact that EVE’s nearly 300,000 players aren’t split up on different servers allows these advanced organizations to form.

The CSM is a tribute to the way CCP conducts its business.  In short, the CSM is 9 player-elected representatives who act as liaisons between the userbase and the developers.    These representatives have no additional power, in-game or otherwise, have to campaign using their real-life names, and are flown out to meet with the developers every term (6 months) to discuss important player issues.  Since the CSM began in 2008, over 30 of the topics they have brought up have made it into the game and over 120 have been prioritized or are in the development pipeline.

How many times have I heard players complain that a company doesn’t care about them, or only cares about squeezing as much money out as possible without fixing any bugs?  In my own experience, my coworkers past and present got into the business because they had a passion for games.  In that context, the above players’ complaints seem patently ridiculous – yet they crop up again and again.  And there’s a simple reason this happens: lack of communication and transparency.

Many companies are afraid to admit to any wrongdoing.  Other companies have a mysterious urge to keep things secret as long as possible, sometimes to surprise the users, and other times for no clear reason at all.  While some secrets should be kept (surprises are fun, after all), in a vacuum of information all we have to go on is rumors, and even the most insane claims can appear almost reasonable.  In CCP, we have an example of the developers opening a direct line of communication to their players actual, giving their players a voice that they can hear clearly.  And in return, they’re giving answers and improving their game to match what their userbase really wants.

Point in fact, according to Óskarsson, the changes to the game’s sovereignty system (a central facet to EVE’s PvP) in the upcoming Dominion expansion is based largely on the feedback they received from the CSM.

Even though EVE is an unusually political game, the CSM is not directly tied to any game mechanic.  If another publisher or developer wanted to, they could implement a similar system.  Even if very few in-game changes took place as a result of a player council, at least the users would know they’re being heard, and would have a centralized method of direct communication.

And in the end, what more can we ask for?

An emerging theme at this year’s GDC in Austin in the growing importance of not only the younger audience but that of the entire family unit as well. A number of advantages are already well known about this demographic and the first is often counterintuitive; kids can drop big bucks on a game. Second, establishing brand loyalty at a young age is increasingly important in an oversaturated market.

So the big question this year is; how do you tap into this market?  Panelists Jesse Schell (Schell Games), Laralyn McWilliams (Sony Online Entertainment), Sheri Graner Ray (Schell Games), Matthew Schwartz (Cartoon Network) and Megan Geiser (Her Interactive) delve into the strategy behind reaching this new demographic and converting the younger audience into a paying audience. The key is not only to appeal to the children in a variety of ways but to target and earn the trust of the parents, so that their children will be able to spend money on the title.

While developing a game where both children and parents can enjoy is ideal, it’s no simple task. Children grow, behavioral patterns change, and it all happens in a span of a few short years. The panelists state that parents will help kids play until they reach five or six years old, but by the time they reach the age of eight, the tables begin to turn and parents need to seek help from their kids. They argue that at age twelve, kids are already worrying about perception and social acceptance, and that boys especially become hypersensitive about “kiddy” stuff. As a result, they get turned off. So what do they enjoy? According to Schell, the older boys associate high difficulty and competition with a good, adult game. However, that doesn’t necessarily appeal to the girls. So to cut the edge off of competition, he argues that there should be an emphasis on player progression, but more importantly, rewards, because it keeps player engagement.

Parents, however, do not need to get too involved with actual gameplay and mechanics. The panel argues that oftentimes, parents enjoy watching from the sidelines, and that they get their enjoyment from simply watching their kids. They also believe that in order to get parents to open their wallets, parents need to see their kids excited about the game, and they need to be constantly reminded about the game. So not only is it important to design a game where players can simply hang out, but to keep parents in the loop and engaged by providing rewards and incentives so that they know their kids are still enjoying the game they play.

Early today, Justin Cooney of Sony North America confirmed that it will be removing features it initially touted for the PSP Minis platform such as wireless multiplayer functionality, downloadable content for games and the ability to offer downloadable patches. All this is being down in order to speed up the approval time for games developed for the PSP Mini platform. The original idea of the PSP Minis was to offer an iPhone style apps platform to game developers for the PSP. With more robust features the the iPhone platform can offer, the PSP Minis have been eagerly anticipated by the PSP crowd. Now, there does not appear to be much of a difference between the platforms and only time will tell whether the incentives to develop for the PSP market are really there.via Gamasutra 

Since its launch last April, Free Realms has become a force to be reckoned with in the casual MMO front.  On Wednesday morning I had the opportunity to sit in on the GDC keynote speech given by John Smedley, president of Sony Online Entertainment.  With quite some pride, he clued us in on many of the techniques he used to bring Free Realms to its current state – and why shouldn’t he be prideful?  In a genre that has a core demographic in its 30s, he’s captivated a youthful audience that, until now, has largely been untapped.

I’m of course writing about tweens and younger.  One of the design goals in Free Realms seems to have been giving parents something to do, so that parents and children can play together.  And rest assured, when I someday have an eleven year old child, I look forward to playing games with him.

But make no mistake: the game we play will certainly not be Free Realms.

It’s no secret that this game is casual to its core.  One does not go to Free Realms seeking challenge, and Mr. Smedley himself mentioned in his speech that they found the wrinkles in quests and job progression that players weren’t getting past easily, and smoothed them out.  And yes, while this certainly isn’t the only easy game on the market, there are still plenty of challenges for more “serious” gamers to pursue.  So, what’s the problem here?

As an industry, gaming is beginning to move past its adolescence.  We’ve all been impacted by the first games we played, and those games are the measuring stick by which we gauge our future gaming experiences.  Now we’re looking at a generation that could well grow up playing Free Realms, a game that deliberately throttles the challenge.  We’re already seeing examples of major games with no possibility of death (Prince of Persia and Fable II come to mind), and as long as we train our young to play easy games, we’ll only see more in the future.

What makes this particularly bitter is that we’re finally seeing studies that show how challenging games can do things like improve a surgeon’s accuracy with a knife (handy for when you only want to be stabbed in the right places) or help keep you sharp well into old age, and now we’re looking to scale that challenge back?

I suppose I can’t really fault SOE for this.  They’re a money-making enterprise, and keeping frustration in any form out of Free Realms was a necessary step to keep the younger market, whom they’ve discovered to have a shorter attention span.  When television first came out, many idealists saw the opportunity for it to become the greatest educational tool the world had ever known.  Instead, companies just like SOE – companies that need to make money – created a great mass entertainment machine that churns out lowest common denominator-style shows by the dozen, only very occasionally striving to produce something clever or original.  It breaks my heart to see games following a very similar path.

I realize that it probably can’t be stopped.  I also realize that, in the end, it probably doesn’t really matter which road gaming follows.

I’ll just have to content myself with being a grumpy old man when that time comes.