Articles by Boy of Tomorrow
Morten Iversen, the man surrounded by some of the most gorgeous promotional outfits I've ever seen, is the guy behind Recoil Retrograde one of the most exciting games I got to check out at GDC. Iversen and I sat down for a few minutes to discuss his upcoming game after I got to play through the demo, and he provided some great tidbits about the title.
From the minute I walked in, I knew this was going to be a great lecture: a Calvin & Hobbes comic was projected on two screens and classic rock music was blasting over the speakers. And then Earnest Adams took the podium and I fell in love with the man: he was wearing a fedora. Apparently he used to wear top hats, but he forgot it in England.
This lecture was different from the usual track Adams normally follows in his speeches, as he normally lectures on interactive storytelling. This time around, the focus was on examining some of the aspects of god games and to throw some ideas out into the public domain so that developers might be able to take something away if they’re working on such a title.
The continuation of yesterday’s “Developers in the Crosshairs” was even more heavily attended today, which led to a lot of interesting discussions even though the suggestion of possible solutions to backlash and scandal were only briefly mentioned.
This time around, there were a lot more developers on hand who were working on upcoming games and were curious about what they could do to dampen possible problems with their developing games (I noticed a number of folks from the team working on This Is Vegas).
Holy crap, there are a lot of people who like MMOs. I kinda forgot about that until I slunk into "The Future of MMOs" panel discussion today and was shocked to find that there were not only no available chairs, but there was very little standing room, either.
As opposed to the last panel discussion, though, this one was incredibly well-run and featured a number of people who I felt were actually justified to be talking to us. Jack Emmert, Jon Wood, Mark Jacobs, Min Kim, Ray Muzyka, and Rob Pardo, who are all pretty good authorities on the topic of MMOs, if their respective games are anything to go by, were all in front of the crowd and did a great job of answering questions without hijacking the conversation at any point.
There are times, rarely, where I wish that I’d been put in charge of a meeting I’m attending. It’s rare, mainly because I despise responsibility in any shape or form, but sometimes the meeting is managed in such a way that I want to commit acts of unspeakable cruelty in order (like give Uwe Boll more funding) in order to vent my frustration. As I sat through this year’s “Future of Storytelling in Games” panel discussion, I found myself desperately wishing to instruct the speakers (and the moderator in particular) the lessons from “Robert’s Rules of Order”.
The panel of speakers was comprised of Matthew Karch and Michael Hall (who both worked on Timeshift), Dennis Dyack (of Silicon Knights), Mary DeMarle (who’s written a number of game stories, including Myst 3 & 4), Matt Costello (who wrote The 7th Guest’s story) and Tim Willis (creative director of ID). At first glance, this sounded like it was going to be an excellent talk, particularly because of the representation of game developers who are on opposite sides of the “story vs. technology” debate, but a lot of the arguments ended up occurring between Karch and Dyack in ways that were more irritating than enlightening; meanwhile, moderator Deborah Todd did a poor job of keeping the discussion on track.
The ECA is an organization which I think just about every gamer on the planet should join. Why, you ask? What do they stand for, you inquire? I have no clue, I just like them because they continuously pimp my artwork on their official T-shirt. Man am I glad I found Hal Harpin today in Moscone North so I could finally find out what it is his organization actually does...
Hit the jump for the interview.
Oh my God. Oh my God. I can't breathe. I'm still laughing whenever I think about this game. No, really, Hail to the Chimp is really that freaking funny. The game, developed by Wideload Games, is a party game which follows the basic plot involving a political race to take over a newly formed animal republic. You see, the king (a lion) has been dethroned, and the kingdom decides to make itself into a democratic republic. And so, players assume the roles of political candidates who, in turn, beat seven kinds of snot out of each other in an effort to make their way to the presidential office.
Gameplay-wise, things are pretty simple, but in a deceptive sort of way. The actual controls are a bit limited in terms of variety, but things are quickly spiced up by a number of different gameplay modes and levels, not to mention all the various unlockables one can snag during playtime (trust me, the outfits and movies are so funny they're worth it). It turns out there are 16 different play modes which can occur in any of 10 different levels, so things will probably stay interesting for long after you've bought the game. I got to play through three full rounds as a badass octopus who generally got his butt kicked by a platypus.
After playing through a certain number of rounds (anywhere from one to nine), the player who's accrued the most points (clams) is declared the winner and the new president of the republic. The entire journey to political power is narrated by GRR, which is the animal version of Fox News right down to its mean-spirited commentary. Actually, come to think of it, I'm pretty sure we could replace Fox News with GRR and people would respect it more. All of the cutscenes seemed to be really well-animated and voiced, were all incredibly funny (I was particularly entertained by the parody of Oprah entitled "Orcah"), and it turns out that there's going to be over 90 minutes of unlockable footage on the game.
Hail to the Chimp is due out for PS3 and Xbox 360 sometime in May and will retail for $39.99. Personally, I think this would make a splendid addition to the Pink Castle's gaming library.
I got to spend some time checking out Insecticide this afternoon, and it was the first time I ever got actually see it in action. Hey, when you go on the road for six months, it's hard to game as much as you'd like to.
Anyway, I was given demos of both the PC and DS versions of the game by Michael Levine and Larry Ahern of Crackpot Entertainment, and I was pretty impressed by what I was shown. Both versions of the game will follow the same story, but the PC version is set to be digitally distributed in two episodic releases in order to keep the game's download size relatively small. Both versions will also tell the same story, but the PC rendition will naturally feature a lot more textures, details, full-motion videos, and larger environments.
What really impressed me, though was the game's art style, which reminds me of a blend between the equally excellent Psychonauts and Beyond Good & Evil. This is because the characters, even though they're anthropomorphic insects, have that cutely bizarre factor which Raz and his friends posessed. Meanwhile, the environments are reminiscent of the sci-fi/pulp/noir world in which Jade found herself wandering.
When I was shown the DS version of the game, though, I was floored at how tight the controls seemed to be, especially since navigation can be controlled with either the letter buttons or the system stylus. The rationale was that it wasn't that hard to adapt the navigation modes to these methods because, if you look at it a certain way, it isn't that different from using the WASD keys and a mouse. I was shown a brief chase scene, in which Chrys Lizt clambers across rooftops after a spitbug (during which the stylus navigation) and then goes through an adventure game tutorial by going a number of puzzles in the police station she works in.
It's no surprise that Crackpot knows what they're doing with this game, particularly because a number of ex-LucasArts people form the studio's population. Heck, even Dave Grossman was involved with the game for a bit! Based on everything I saw, this looks like it's not just going to be a solid game with some snazzy artwork, but it's going to be a fun experience overall for anyone that's a fan of either action/platforming or adventure games in general.
This morning, I got to sit down with First Amendment lawyer Lawrence Walters, who later on delivered a speech on censorship of the gaming industry. The man's a legal badass who has gone toe to toe with Bill O'Reilly and is taking a long-distance view of legislation affecting video games. And, really, whenever you start talking about sex, violence, and censorship, you've got me hooked.
Read the full interview after the jump
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Phaedra Boinodiris, better known to much of the gaming community as "Circe" of WomenGamers.com, took some time out of her busy schedule to sit down and chat with me regarding how the site's been doing, where she things in the industry are progressing towards, and what it's like being a gamer mom. OK, we might have been eating food at the same time, but it was still nice of her to keep me company. Oh, and she also filled me in on what Ladies Night Out is like in Seoul, Korea. Hit the jump to read the full interview.
Last year at GDC, Larry Walters' lecture "Censorship of Game Content: A Report From The Trenches" was rather sparsely attended, mainly due to the fact that it was being held at 9 AM on Friday morning. It was fascinating, but a little sad since there were only a couple of dozen people in the audience that day. This year, however, the large room in Moscone West was fairly crowded, and Larry not only avoided a sophomore slump (not that I expected him to go anywhere near one) but managed to deliver an even more interesting, humorous, and informative speech about censorship and video games than he did last time.
The session began with Walters providing his audience with a bit of background on the history of attempted censorship of video games in the USA; also making sure to point out that while the courts have invalidated every attempt at censorship, this is a battle which is still being fought on local, state, federal, and international levels.
Censorship in the arts will always be a hot topic, one which everybody has an opinion on. So it makes sense that, at the first of two forum discussions entitled “Developers In The Crosshairs” held this morning, just about everyone showed up. Almost fifty people filled the room in Moscone’s North Hall, and they came from all walks of life: designers, artists, publishers, students, professors, lawyers, reporters, and even Brenda Brathwaite sat in and contributed. And, unsurprisingly, everyone had an opinion.
The point of this forum was for developers to discuss –and this is a massive generalization of the various topics mentioned- the difficulties and backlashes involved with developing and marketing M-rated games. While a number of us are familiar with some of the difficulties developers face –mainly in the form of public outcry brought on by misrepresentation in the media- there were a number of stories shared regarding issues which don’t often make it out into the public.
And girls who like girls who like rumble packs!
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