GameSetWatch

In-Depth: EA's Gibeau On Reinvigorating EA Games

editors@gamesetwatch.com (Simon Carless) — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 16:00:11 -0800

[Over at Gamasutra, Christian Nutt has been talking to EA Games' Frank Gibeau about the continuing -- if you believe it, which I believe I do, somewhat -- reinvention of Electronic Arts as a more creative, progressive game company. And that's worth a crosspost here on GSW, I think.]

Since its unveiling during Game Developers Conference 2005, Will Wright's evolution sim Spore has become a huge investment for EA, one which the company hopes might eventually expand into an entire division of the company, as has Wright's mega-hit franchise The Sims.

Until that happens, however, Spore falls under the EA Games umbrella managed by label president Frank Gibeau. Beyond that game, Gibeau is working to encourage a label-wide focus on quality, one which he admits had "slipped" in the years prior to CEO John Riccitiello's wide-reaching reorganization of the company.

Gamasutra sat down with Gibeau to discuss the high expectations for Spore, what exactly success means in the context of that game, plans for the franchise, and why it's important to EA's long-term bottom line that studios be allowed to prioritize quality over rigid development deadlines.

Spore And Electronic Arts

What does Spore mean to EA?

Frank Gibeau: Spore is a huge priority for EA and specifically for our EA Games label. This has been a big bet for the company over the last several years. It's a Will Wright project that carries a level of expectations for quality and, frankly, success. And we're finally on the verge of bringing it to market after a few E3s and a few years of working on it, and we couldn't be more proud of the product and we're very excited about it.

We believe it has the potential to become a platform on which we can build a very large and enduring business. The team that is building Spore has been the team who put out The Sims and The Sims 2, so they bring a lot of experience and knowledge from the business side about how that grew, but even more importantly, we have a really powerful creative idea in Spore with the combination of the editors and the gameplay and the quality of content that frankly we think travels pretty well.

It's a global idea -- an idea that appeals to eight-year-olds all the way up to 80. It appeals across gender lines -- probably not as much as the female-skewing of The Sims, but there's a lot of women who find Spore appealing and have been playing the Creature Creator.

On [September] 7th, we'll be launching it on the PC, Mac, DS, and also iPhones and mobile phones. We haven't even scratched the surface of other platforms out there like consoles and the Wii and some others. Clearly we're thinking about those, and we believe the Spore concept and IP can move a lot across a lot of platforms over a long period of time.

The Meaning Of Success

I know this has come up before, but can you define what success means, in the context of Spore? Obviously, we the public probably won't know how much in the way of resources went into it, but success is definitely a big question in terms of that game.

FG: I think that we will consider Spore successful based on the critical reception that it receives, based on the commercial reception, and how long and enduring the business will be. We believe that we've got a very high quality game that we're anticipating that we're going to meet success on a critical level.

On a commercial level, the indicators are pretty positive with the reception to the Creature Creator and the buzz that's out there. Obviously, you want to score with unit sales and revenue profit, and those will start to roll in and we'll be able to gauge whether we hit our goals or not. And frankly, time will tell whether or not Spore as a concept is as broadly appealing a concept as controlling people in The Sims, and whether Spore's unique blend of editors and pollinated content gameplay can expand and move across more platforms.

I think when we think about Spore, we believe that it has the potential to be another label inside of our company, much like The Sims is. That would be something that we would ultimately aspire to. But we're a very focused bunch, just in making sure that we have a great release on September 7th and that our SKU plan shortly thereafter starts to roll out with a lot of content and new gameplay modes for our customers.

Can you talk at all about the kind of investment you've made thus far?

FG: I can't give you hard numbers. I can say that it's been a significant investment for the company. It's been in development for a number of years, and you've probably seen it at a number of E3s. It's a significant investment for the company, but I can't really give you hard numbers.

This is pure theory, but what would the roadmap be like if it turns out that Spore doesn't have the reception that you're hoping for?

FG: I think we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. (laughs) I'm not sure speculating on a hypothetical of "What if it doesn't work?" is something I want to do right now. Again, we're really focused on nailing the 7th and making it a hit. If something isn't hitting expectations, we'll make adjustments. We always do.

Again, we believe that we're on track and we believe that we have something that's a pretty powerful idea. It wouldn't be getting the buzz and the anticipation if its core didn't have a compelling quality and idea. The Creature Creator's reception has been pretty positive. We released one segment of the game back in June and we've got millions of uploads on our creatures and millions of downloads, and a very positive customer reception to it.

How has the commercial success of the Creature Creator been? A lot of people are using it, but it's unclear how much of that translates into commercial success. What do you think about how it's performed so far?

FG: I think you saw it in the PC charts -- I think it was number one in the month that it was released. It's a relatively low price point, so it moved quite a bit of volume to get to that chart position, and the same was true in Europe. Also, what's not tracked by that chart are digital downloads that our store and other third parties experienced, so between the digital and the retail sales of the Creature Creator complete [version] were very positive.

But again, we looked at that as an experiment, which was to put out a free version so that the folks who just want to try and see it for free can do that and have a great time, and for the people who were investing more time, we had the blocks set up for a purchase. We sweated that, and we wanted to really make sure that the customer saw value for that dollar. We believe that we successfully nailed that, and the feedback from the marketplace has been very positive.

Spreading Spore

You're alluding to this potential that it could become a large-scale brand like The Sims. I feel like Spore sort of exists outside of the Games label already, in the sense that it's got a large, comprehensive, multiplatform strategy. It doesn't feel so much like the other versions are ports of it, but they sort of plug in to this overarching strategy. Can you talk about how that has developed?

FG: I don't think of Spore as a product. We think of it as a platform. We have lots of opportunities to take that platform to other consoles and to smart phones. It allows us to bring different styles of gameplay. It allows us to bring multiplayer to it. I think it's a very flexible platform for us to be able to bring with lots of experience, because the idea is so gigantic -- creating and controlling a universe -- we can take it in lots of different ways.

When you talk to the design team and brainstorm of what we're going to do next, we never really run into walls. It really is, "Is it fun? How can we move it to a different region or customer in a different way?" Again, we think of it as a platform, and that's ultimately why when you make that development investment, you do it on a really big idea.

You're just going to see the opening salvo on the 7th in terms of those four platforms, but rest assured, they're not going to be ports on the Wii and the DS later on in its cycle. It's not going to be ported to the 360. We're going to look at how to bring that idea to life on those platforms in a unique way, because that's the only way it's going to work.

The strategy with other platforms -- do you think it's risk mitigation, or is it trying to serve the Spore strategy from the perspective of getting a global, broad appeal for the title?

FG: We actually looked at it more fundamentally, which was, "What would a Spore experience be like on the Wii, and why would that be cool?" And if it passes muster on that type of brainstorming and design, then that's when we start to move forward with it. Of course there's a business strategy behind it, which is platform extension and brand extension, but ultimately, where we've started is looking at, "Okay, how do you create and control a creature on the Wii in a universe and have it be fun?"

Does Spore exist in a browser experience? Sure. Could you create and control a universe in a browser? Sure. Is it completely different from what we're doing on the PC? Yeah. Again, we go back to that original creative idea that Will had, and the combination of pollinated content and editors, and bringing that to life in lots of different ways.

Is there a browser version of Spore in the works right now?

FG: We're not announcing anything, but speaking against your hypothetical, that was one of the platforms you could look at, sure.

Will Wright And Electronic Arts

Will Wright is not only a great fountain of game development ideas, but he's also becoming a significant player, culturally, and is starting to get the recognition that goes along with that. How do you see the significance of Will Wright in your organization, both in terms of designing games and in the broader question?

FG: It's a tough one to answer, because he is Spore. He created The Sims. These are incredible entertainment experiences from a genius, so when we look at Will Wright, he's the guy. When you look at what he wants to do and how he works, it's very much a collaborative and flexible environment in terms of how we work together, but he's the guy who came up with Spore.

Now, there's an incredible team around him at Maxis that frankly helps bring these things to life and makes them a reality in terms of the game design and the code and the rest of it. But he's magnificent when he's in these teams and inspiring young designers, and he's surrounded himself with some pretty capable engineers. And Will Wright is Will Wright. He's everything he's cracked up to be, and he's an excellent part of our company.

Mainstream Appeal

The title is getting some mainstream notice. What are your expectations there? Have you been finding this is a concept that's really being embraced by the larger world of media and culture that encounters it?

FG: Yeah, we've been very surprised and have loved the reception we've been getting from non-traditional gaming media, and frankly, just from the people downloading it who have never played a game before and who are casual players.

I think the vessel or the idea that has really worked with them has been the Creature Creator -- the fact that you can make these fantastic animals and make them do different things. You're almost a Pixar artist overnight without training, in terms of how easy to use the editors are. That's really been the entry point to this idea of Spore for the mass market that I think has captured their attention -- this idea of evolution and the toolbox of the editors to create whatever you can imagine.

Frankly, we've been blown away with what we've seen uploaded to YouTube. We knew we could get to some pretty wild designs, but the quality of even the ones that are salacious is amazing. It's really cool to see what people can do when you give them these tools.

It's funny just to see the ones that mimic preexisting characters. I saw a really convincing Pikachu, which kind of surprised me.

FG: I saw a Viking ship! We were just stunned. Every day here we're just shooting around different creations that people have made. Again, I think what's so killer about the game is that you can download it. When you're playing the game, that Viking ship is in the game, or that Pikachu that you saw could be in the game.

I think that's another powerful part -- this idea of the pollinated content and the social networking that can happen inside of that. It's really elegant, simple, and I think it ties to a lot of interesting things that people are doing right now with user-generated content.

Reinvigorating EA Games

At E3, John Riccitiello spoke to Dean Takahashi and the quote that stuck out in my mind was, "I don't think the investors give a shit about our quality." There's been a big push for quality from EA, and it's been building over the past couple of years, but the EA Games label is probably under the most scrutiny, especially from the hardcore gamers, to deliver on that strategy. What do you think about it?

FG: I think our quality slipped, and that was one of the things -- as an assumption and then an objective -- that I brought to this job, which was, "We are going to improve the quality of our products, and we are going to create IPs that have the same resonance as some of the top ones we're seeing in the industry."

In the 24 or so months before I got the job, there were some big mistakes, and the quality was down. I think what I brought to the job and thought about most carefully on the initial, "What are we going to do here?" was, "How do I unlock the talent I saw inside EA?"

I think there's incredible designers and creators inside this company, but the talent was being stifled or prevented from really manifesting itself into great games. That was really job one, to figure out how you unlock that talent and how you find room in the business plan to give yourself the time to create the hits -- "hits" meaning games that are averaging north of 80 on Metacritic, as opposed to being in the 70s or lower.

It's going to be a long process, but I'm very pleased with the start that we've had so far in the first part of this year. I'm very proud of Burnout [Paradise] and [Battlefield:] Bad Company, and I'm very pleased with where Spore's ending up. Warhammer [Online] looks to be doing great, and Mirror's Edge, Dead Space, and Need for Speed: [Undercover].

We've really given the teams the autonomy, the flexibility, and the time to really get after quality in each of these different franchises. And while we're not perfect, I think we're definitely making strides here. Our average quality is way up through the first part of this year. We're not satisfied, though. We need it to be higher, and we're going to continue to press and push to make it that much better.

If the games are better, they probably will sell better. Investors don't care about quality directly, but they care about it indirectly. It's obviously much more creatively satisfying to encourage talent to blossom and to see great games coming out, but what do you think about it strategically?

FG: Strategically, you've got to find a methodology that allows you to orchestrate all of these different game releases into a financial plan. But it all operates off the idea that good games generate good profits. Frankly, they generate long-term, enduring profitability, and when you cut corners on quality and ship a game that's a 65 in order to make a quarter, you might make the quarter, but I can guarantee you that the gamer customers are not going to be happy and they're not likely to buy the sequel in any sizable numbers. In fact, you might even get some of the units back because you overestimated or you dumped in the channel.

I wasn't party to John's interview to Takahashi on that quote. My view is more simple, which is, "Great games generate great profits." I know that John feels that way, and that's what we dialog at internally at the company, but for me, I try and look at all the different studios inside of our label, and I try to figure out how to orchestrate a plan over the long term that generates this long term, enduring profitability, but it starts with great games, because that's what we do.

We've been there where we've been pumping out games, and you can look at the reception and the response from gamers out there and our fans kind of starts diminishing. You can't get that back. The only way you get that back is by making great games and winning them back one at a time. That's what we intend to do and are doing, frankly.

"The Core And More"

One thing that the label split does is that it sort of shuts the EA Games label out of the casual boom to an extent. I mean, you've got the EA Casual label, The Sims label, and you've got Pogo, but you guys are focused more directly on the core. What do you think about your positioning there?

FG: I think the way we describe it internally is, "The core and more." If you look at Need for Speed or Spore, they're pretty broadly appealing designs, and they do reach a customer that is more casual in terms of their play pattern.

It depends on what you call casual, but a guy who's on Kongregate or Addictive Games... they're hardcore gamers, in all those cases. They're playing for free, but at the same time, they're [also] playing World of Warcraft or they're playing Metal Gear Solid on the PS3 or they're playing Bad Company on the 360. So I tend to come at it from a point of view of that we're not shut out of the casual games market at all.

We're really looking at male gamers, 15 to 35, and where they spend their time. There's lots of different expressions of the franchises and brands that we do that could work in a play-free model, as well as a traditional packaged goods model. So I don't feel like I'm shut out at all. It's really a play that's "the core and more," but acceptability is pretty key to us, being able to grow this market. I'm not interested in being "only M-rated games that appeal to a certain segment that's only this big."

Dead Space isn't the first M-rated game that EA's published, but it's maybe the first significant M-rated new IP developed by EA. I could be going out on a limb here, but it stands out in my mind.

FG: When we started that project, it was a very careful calculation, frankly, that said that the survival horror genre is a great genre, as represented by Resident Evil, but there's room for more in that category, and there's ways to innovate there. That was an example of very carefully saying, "Yeah, this is a survival horror game. It's M-rated, and we're going all out. We're not going to compromise and try to make this T-rated."

But when you look at something like Spore or Need for Speed or even Mirror's Edge, we're trying to reach a broader audience with an accessible design -- something that can really appeal to the mass market. In those cases, again, it all starts at the original game idea and really understanding where its limitations are and where its opportunities are.

Are you concerned at all with the extreme, hard-M kind of content that's going to be going into Dead Space? As you're publicly traded and open to criticism and are to an extent new to dealing with that sort of content as a company...

FG: Not in the least. For me, the rule is, "Does it have creative integrity?" And I think that it does. I would be proud to be the publisher. If we were a cable channel, I would be very excited to have The Sopranos, Generation Kill, The Wire, Weeds, or any of those M-rated shows, because at their core, they have incredible creative integrity. The writing is spectacular, and you can be proud of that.

The thing you have to watch is that you need to follow the rules in terms of how you promote it. As long as the right age groups are buying the game, I'm satisfied, because I'm very proud of what's in Dead Space. But Dead Space has creative integrity. If something is just there for gratuity, bolted on to try and hype it, then that's not something that I'm interested in.

The Casual/Hardcore Divide, Or Lack Thereof

You're talking about the distinction between casual and hardcore, and I think it's awfully forced sometimes, in the sense that it seems like an "either/or." It's not really as much of a black-and-white situation as it's painted. Mirror's Edge does have a broad appeal in a lot of ways. Just on the face of it, it's fairly hardcore just in terms of it being first-person action-oriented, but its worldview is so different to a game like Dead Space or Medal of Honor.

FG: Absolutely. I couldn't agree with you more. I kind of reject the notion of casual and hardcore gamers. I think it ends up putting you into boxes with limitations that you don't need to be dealing with. But when I look at what we do in our label, it's not about EA, the corporation. It's about the developers, and it's about the individual city-states -- the studios.

I play a lot of games, and I'm a big fan of Infinity Ward and Call of Duty and Blizzard and World of Warcraft, and I think of those development teams and franchises just as people think of Maxis with Spore or DICE with Battlefield or BioWare with Mass Effect. I think that's where the value is in what we do, and that's where the importance is. That's why the model that we're trying to use inside of our label is much more focused on those developer brands and going after ideas like you describe, which is Mirror's Edge as well as Dead Space, as well as Skate and Need for Speed.

The State Of EALA

EALA has been primarily creating games that fall under EA Games. Since it's the end of the Neil Young era, can you tell me a little bit about where it's going and what's going on there?

FG: Neil hasn't run EALA for a while. EALA reports into my organization. There are multiple groups down there. There's the mobile team and some casual groups. But in general, we have Command & Conquer, both Red Alert and Tiberium. We've got Medal of Honor down there. We've got a very good business. Mike Verdu, who ran the Command & Conquer business with Neil, is now the general manager of EALA.

He reports in to Nick Earl, who runs our California studios. He manages Maxis, as well as our Redwood Shores group that's doing Dead Space. I feel very good about the management and the leadership and the franchises at EALA.

Across town, you have Pandemic, so we have a pretty sizable footprint in LA inside our label with the EALA group as well as Pandemic. It's a group that we have very high expectations for, and we have a future plan for them over the next few years. We feel really great about the Red Alert product coming out this November.

EA A, I'm going to be blunt here, has been a disappointment by and large, I think, in terms of output. It's produced a number of games that disappointed creatively. The last installment of Medal of Honor was, I'm sure, a disappointment commercially, too. That's why we're kind of wondering what the story is there.

FG: We're very confident in EALA. This isn't BS, because if we weren't, we'd do something different. I believe in Mike and his leadership. I believe in Nick, and I believe in the teams down there. We have a product in Command & Conquer that has delivered 80-plus rated Metacritic, which is a tough standard, for seven years now. It's an extremely successful business for us globally, so if you just take it by pieces, certainly the Command & Conquer business has been humming along.

Medal of Honor? It's been bumpy, no question about it. We hope to have a different strategy there that allows us to get back and bring that brand to greatness, and I feel confident that we have some good moves underway there. And we have some other products down there that we're evaluating with Doug Church's team, on the Spielberg projects, and also on Tiberium.

This is software meets entertainment. Things get bumpy. Sometimes you have groups that have uneven performance. But all I can speak to you right now is what I'm responsible for, which is what's going to happen to LA going forward. It's a key part of our organization, we have some top franchises there, and I think we have a very proven, stable, aggressive leadership team there in place now where we intend to change your perception of EALA, for sure.

COLUMN: 'The Aberrant Gamer - What Women Want'

editors@gamesetwatch.com (Leigh Alexander) — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 08:00:22 -0800

[Back after a few months' hiatus, The Aberrant Gamer is happy to return as a biweekly, sometimes NSFW column by Leigh Alexander, dedicated to the kinks and quirks we gamers tend to keep under our hats – those predilections and peccadilloes less commonly discussed in conventional media.]

“Why don’t women like the big console games?” Someone asked me recently.

As a female game journalist, I’m one of the few and the proud, although as a female gamer I’m not nearly as unique as the population of internet forums would probably suggest. Still, I’m often asked questions like these, about “what women like” and what they don’t.

And I usually get a little bit miffed, to tell you the truth. I tend to reject assertions that there must exist a uniquely female palate for video games. I feel that my preferences and aversions as far as video games have more to do with my personal taste and less to do with my gender, and my position is generally that it’s the same for most women.

Is it really?

It’s a touchy area. In order to parse out what people enjoy about games, after all, it makes sense to first pick out what their needs are, and then identify those games that have elements that address those needs. And while it’s generally acceptable to make a few safe assumptions on what males enjoy in games, the evolving role of women in society over the past several decades makes it somewhat easier to offend us as we wrestle with how – or whether – to identify ourselves by gender.

Take, for example, the following statement: “Men like to play powerful characters that make them feel strong.” Assert that, and we women will generally reply, “what, you don’t think women like to feel strong, too?” Say: “Men are more likely than women to identify with a protagonist who’s a 400-pound space marine,” and you might be right – but some women will say, “are you calling me fat?”

Right now, some of you already have your mouse hovered on the comment link, ready to excoriate me for generalizing. Just hang on one second, will you?

We've Got History

Yes, yes, everyone is different, I know. You don’t need to tell me there are plenty of women who like blowing things up; I love blowing things up. You don’t need to cite any of the numerous PopCap surveys that find the average gamer is a female in her 30s or older (without mentioning that like my fifty-plus Mom, she only plays Snood all day).

We generally perceive that gaming has been a historically male-dominated industry – we know, at least, that the majority of game design professionals are male, and many companies are making concerted efforts to induct more women into the professional fold. More still are making concerted efforts to diversify their consumer base by “targeting” female consumers.

More female design professionals and more female gamers is definitely a positive goal. But how can we achieve it if we’re so afraid to differentiate “female tastes” versus “male tastes?” So egalitarian are we that I think we might be losing an opportunity to broaden our audience by analyzing people.

The Boys' Club

With exceptions, myself included, it’s generally boys who like the big console blockbusters, one finger on the left trigger and one on the right. I’ve been asked by a few people recently why I think this might be – is there some innate principle of the game design that is not oriented for so-called “female brains?” Or is it the premises – Sci-fi, lots of explosions, women with big boobs and space soldiers doing the fist-bump – that turn them (turn us) off?

Those same PopCap surveys I highlighted were most likely conducted with the aim of proving that company’s favorable market positioning in the casual games biz. Casual gaming, which generally spans anything from sparkly browser-based puzzlers to The Sims, has appeared to find more traction among adult women than modern console games have. And Nintendo’s DS has done well among women of all ages too, a success generally credited to the accessibility offered by pet simulators and brain trainers.

But even though this column is proposing we embrace the differences between male and female preferences – or at least, embrace the possibility that such differences may exist – we ought to be hard-pressed to embrace the conclusion that men like intense, complex experiences and women like quick, shallow ones.

I was recently pleasantly surprised by how much fun I had playing EA and Pandemic’s new Mercenaries 2. And then I wondered why the pleasure surprised me. Part of it is that I’m overwhelmed by the fast pace at which large new releases hit the shelves, and occasionally long to just play something (relatively) smaller and more familiar, like Symphony of the Night, for the umpteenth time. But when I really thought about it, I couldn’t deny the prevailing reason. Mercs 2 is a game for boys.

How do I know this? Because you can choose either one of two big muscle men or one hot girl to play as? Nope. I played as the girl and didn’t mind being hot. Then, is it because it thrives on gunplay and explosive mayhem, instead of training, raising and nurturing, like the vaguely feminine Harvest Moon? Nope, not that either – it turns out that the explosions and tanks were my favorite part of Mercs 2 (and I know a good quantity of male Harvest Moon fans too, by the by).

In other words, I’d be hard pressed to identify any one aspect of Mercs 2’s design, gameplay or appearance that is explicitly “for boys.” That is, except for the packaging and marketing of both the software itself and the consoles you can play it on – and the way such games are positioned inside both gamer culture and society at large.

It's The Package

The perception of a “boys club” around certain kinds of games is either intimidating or offensive to most women I know. I’ve got galpals who play Rock Band and even various Mario games, but if I try to cajole them to take a shot at the latest complex console epic, they balk – even with a game like Mercs 2, whose controls are extremely streamlined alongside pacing that introduces the player gradually into their use.

The best guess, then, is that the real reason more women don’t get “into” video games is because, from a distance, it doesn’t feel like it’s “for them.” And if it’s a perception issue, not even a 50/50 ratio on the development side, nor less masculine titles and packaging will help. None of my female friends and family members have ever heard of Portal, for example, even though it was widely received as a "feminist" title.

And while having more feminine perspectives behind games will surely take us far, this long-running, self-perpetuating paradigm won’t be easily shaken up. To do that, we need more titles that can serve as a true gateway to help a larger audience of women feel as though games are something in which they can see themselves. And to create those, we find ourselves confronted with a question so large that society’s made a bit of humor out of it: What do women want?

If there were an easy answer to the broader question, we’d have quite a lot more happy men on earth than we presently do. But it’s possible to find out what women want in games – and to do that, we’ve got to ditch the politically-correct pussyfooting and stop pretending we’ve already got the level playing field we ultimately desire.

Some women may like Metal Gear Solid just as much, if not more, as they like Katamari Damacy and The Sims (ahem). But we are the exception – come on, let’s admit it – and while ultimately I still believe game preferences come primarily down to personality and not gender, maybe if we look closely at what the average female likes to play on the console, or is attracted to at retail, we might be able to pick out a rule or two we can learn from – besides "make it pink."

Sigh. All right. Now you may run to the comments section and talk about how you’re a girl who likes Gears of War, or how your sister is better at Army of Two than you are, or you and your galpals play Halo competitively.

Just remember – just because women aren’t excluded doesn’t mean they feel welcome in a widespread way, and that’s definitely something it’s possible to change. And without being unafraid to look more closely at the issue and entertain the idea that men and women just might have different needs, we’ll never really know precisely where to start.

[Leigh Alexander is news director for Gamasutra, freelances and reviews often for a variety of outlets including Variety and Paste, and maintains her gaming blog, Sexy Videogameland. She can be reached at leighalexander1 AT gmail DOT com.]

Best Of Indie Games: Adventures in Space

editors@gamesetwatch.com (timw) — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 00:00:02 -0800

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

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

The delights in this latest version include a Game Maker production which has been in development for more than three years, a new Flash game by the co-creator of Gish, two remakes of classic shooters, and a puzzler by the people who brought you Jets'n'Guns.

Game Pick: 'Aether' (Edmund McMillen, browser)
"A new collaborative effort by the co-creator of Gish and Tyler Glaiel, where players get to see the a small part of the universe through the eyes of a young dreamer as he ventures into space on the back of his newfound friend."

Game Pick: 'Iji' (Daniel Remar, freeware)
"An action platformer which took the developer more than three years to make, where players assume control of the titular character as she learns how to cope with waking up to find her world overrun by an alien race."

Game Pick: 'Archibald's Adventures' (Rake in Grass, commercial indie - demo available)
"A platform puzzler not unlike Grubby Games' successful Professor Fizzwizzle series, created by the developers of Jets'n'Guns. Archie finds himself trapped in a mad professor's mansion after a skateboarding adventure gone wrong, and it's up to you to help him escape from his current predicament."

Game Pick: 'Gravitron 2' (Castle Software, commercial indie - demo available)
"A retro arcade shooter with Thrust-like controls, where the objective is to destroy enemy reactors while saving as many scientists as you can before blasting into space. Fans of games with glowy vector graphics should not miss this."

Game Pick: 'The Hordes' (Chris Roper, freeware)
"Galaxian on speed, created by the developer of Destructivator and Return to Sector 9. Take on wave after wave of enemies as you aim for a good placing on the online high score table."

Not Quite Game Time With Mister Raroo: (Side) Eye Training in Minutes a Day!

editors@gamesetwatch.com (Bill Sannwald) — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 16:00:34 -0800

[Feast your eyes on this! Regular GSW columnist Mister Raroo continues his specially funded examination of non-games with a look at Flash Focus for the Nintendo DS. As it turns out, Mister Raroo's prescription called for eye strain, dizziness, and an eventual secession from the exhausting demands that Nintendo places upon its loyal fans.]

Of Side Eyes and Chalazions

When my niece Autumn was in fifth grade, I was introduced to the term “side eye.” A boy in her class had a lazy eye, and in the type of merciless mockery typical of elementary school children, the other kids started calling it his side eye. However, despite the heartlessness of such a mean term, it became a part of our family’s vernacular and we’ve been referring to lazy eyes as side eyes ever since.

Missus Raroo’s family is not at all unfamiliar with the curse of the side eye. Though somehow she was lucky enough to have missed the side eye gene, both her brother Thomas and his son Mario have extremely noticeable side eyes, enough so that they’ve both had to attend training sessions with a specialized doctor in order to help improve their eye control. The trainings have been very beneficial and allowed for improved vision, but they’re also costly and intense.

Recently, I came to the realization that I, too, have a bit of a side eye. It’s nowhere near as noticeable as that of Thomas, Mario, or the poor boy in Autumn’s class, but it’s still evident enough that I’ve been worried about it. I’d always thought my eyes looked a little funny when I saw photos of myself, but since nobody ever specifically mentioned that I had a side eye, I never gave it much thought. However, recently I was trying out some of Mario’s eye exercises (he gets “eye homework” from the sessions!) and couldn’t do them.

The exercises involve staring at the space between two images on a sheet of paper that, as your eyes focus, come together to make a single picture. For example, there will be two halves of a cute rabbit that come together to form a whole bunny. As you focus, it looks like the two halves are moving across the page towards each other. In a lot of ways, it’s kind of like the Magic Eye images that were popular in the 1990s in which a 3D illustration would be revealed after staring at what appeared to be a jumbled pattern of colors.

Try as I might, I could not make the damn bunny halves come together. They’d start moving toward one another and I’d begin to get happy, but this bliss was soon dashed as the two halves would scamper away from each other towards their respective sides of the paper. My initial reaction was frustration, but soon that gave way to worry. Oh no! Why can’t my eyes do these simple exercises!? My side eye is worse than I thought!

My left eye also developed a chalazion this past year. For anyone unfamiliar with chalazions, they’re lumps that develop on your eyelids that are sort of like styes except they don’t hurt and are troublesome to get rid of. I looked into getting my chalazion surgically removed, but after watching a video of the process online, I’ve opted to wait it out and let my body reabsorb it, even though that can take months or years. The chalazion has gone down significantly since it first appeared, so much so that people no longer seem to notice it (and they sure liked to comment on it when I first had it, which was embarrassing!), but I still know it’s there and having an unwanted bump on my eyelid is not something I’m a fan of.

Thankfully, the chalazion doesn’t seem to be affecting my vision, but I can’t help but think that I must look like a freaky-eyed weirdo to people. Missus Raroo assures me that my chalazion and side eye really don’t seem that bad, especially since they’re hidden behind my glasses, but when it’s the end of the day and my eyes feel tired, I can’t help but imagine that they’re veering all over the place out of tandem with one another.

The Side Eye Advantage

A few years back, Missus Raroo, Autumn, Mario, and I used to play a lot of split-screen Mario Kart: Double Dash!! together, and somehow Mario was able to not only drive perfectly through tough courses like Rainbow Road, but he was also able to watch and comment on what we were doing all the while. I swear, the kid was like The Wizard or something. Judging by Mario’s prowess with Double Dash!!, I came up with the theory that side eyes can actually improve a gamer’s abilities.

That’s right, I somehow was convinced that Mario’s side eye was perhaps giving him the edge. Even though it was hampering his ability to sit down and enjoy reading a book, having his eyes run all akimbo like a chameleon gave him an unrivaled ability to watch different areas of the screen at the same time. Of course, Mario also put in hours upon hours of play time with Mario Kart, but I can’t help but think his side eye gave him a special advantage none of us possessed.

And, when I came to the realization that I also had a bit of a side eye, my gaming tastes starting making more sense to me. I absolutely adore “shmups” (sorry to the people that hate that word!), and sometimes I wonder if my unfocused eyes have given me the ability to see more of the enemy projectiles than I’d otherwise have been able to. Whenever I play a shooter in which the screen is blanketed with bullets and I’m able to miraculously dodge them all, Missus Raroo always asks how the heck I can even tell what I’m doing. I don’t ever focus my eyes on any one thing, but instead just let my eyes glaze over the entire playing field, which allows me to almost see everything on the screen at once. Thank you, side eye!

In actuality, it’s probably more likely that side eyes hamper—not enhance—one’s ability to excel in video games. For example, my eyes get exceptionally tired and I end up not being able to find my way around whenever I play games that require running through and exploring 3D environments. Perhaps my eyes just can’t properly focus so as to handle processing the perspective and viewpoints presented in such games. Or maybe growing up playing 2D games has had such a strong influence on my gaming cognition that 3D games give me trouble even a decade after they’ve become commonplace. Whatever the case, my eyes always tend to get tremendously tired and sometimes even water and burn after playing games with 3D movement for too long.

On a quick little detour, whenever my eyes are exhausted but I still feel like playing video games, I’m glad that titles such as the amazing Soundvoyager on the Gameboy Advance exist. In Soundvoyager, the entire game can—and should—be played with sound only. The use of stereo sound is required to correctly play the game, as most of the gameplay consists of pushing left or right on the d-pad to move towards sounds. I like to lie in bed with headphones on and the lights off, enjoying Soundvoyager as I straddle the line between being awake and falling asleep.

My favorite mode in Soundvoyager, Sound Catcher, requires you to “collect” sounds that build up into a larger musical sound collage. The sounds become increasingly louder, as if you’re moving toward them, and you have to center them between the two speakers to add them to the overall sound collage. I always picture a scenario in my mind of me flying through a barren world, building up an environment of color and life with each sound addition I pick up. Hmmmm… maybe I’ve just played too much Rez and it’s influenced my mental visualization!

Obligated to Game

Being nearly paranoid about my side eye, I decided drastic action needed to be taken. However, I realized that I wouldn’t be able to foot the bill for expensive professional eye training such as the kind Thomas and Mario had attended. Instead, I opted for to take the cheapest solution I could find and purchased Flash Focus: Vision Training in Minutes a Day for the Nintendo DS. I figured at the bargain price of $20, the software was worth a shot.

The problem with Flash Focus, as with many of Nintendo’s other “training” games, is that not only are you expected to use it daily, but you are made to feel like a heel if you don’t. I’m pretty meticulous about following a number of routines in my daily life, but Nintendo keeps piling it on and I can’t keep up! First it was Animal Crossing, then Brain Training, then Wii Fit. Heck, even Pokémon had berries you had to tend after. If I continued with my Nintendo obligations, I wouldn’t have time to go to work or see my family!

It’s not easy to keep up with the demands Nintendo expects of its players. With every game Nintendo puts out that expects daily involvement from its user, I’m pretty diligent at first and keep up with the regimen. Before long, however, something will happen that’ll cause me to miss a day or two and the software will literally scold me. “Where have you been? It’s important to check in every day. Get with the program, Mister Raroo!”

It only takes a few sessions of belittlement from Nintendo’s software before I get angry and I take my revenge by not bothering to play any longer altogether. Take that, Nintendo! Thus, my Animal Crossing villages are no doubt overrun by weeds, my brain age has probably increased by a decade or two, and I don’t even want to know what will happen if I step on the Wii Fit Balance Board. Whenever I get the urge to play one of these “obligation” games, I always remember how it’ll no doubt result in a tongue-lashing about my break in the routine and I opt to play something else instead.

A Lack of Focus in the Long Haul

In addition to the expected daily involvement from players, Flash Focus takes a similar approach to Nintendo’s other training games in terms of its structure and design, right down to judging your “eye age” based upon your performance. The software contains a number of minigames designed to flex your eye muscles and improve your vision. These activities include trying to memorize numbers that appear on the screen for a split second, swinging a bat to hit pitches, tapping the correct sequence of symbols, and more. As with Brain Age, Flash Focus was supposedly developed under the supervision of a medical expert. All in all, it’s a pretty solid package that really does seem to give your eyeballs a thorough workout.

At first I was pretty gung-ho about my daily Flash Focus sessions. One of the best features of the game is it’ll create a vision workout for you, and I was able to get through the handful of activities as well as a warm down routine during one of my breaks at work. The downside of exercising my eyes at work was that once I was done with the visual calisthenics and off my break, my eyes would feel legitimately weary and all I wanted to do was go back into the break room to lie down and close my eyes for a while! Using Flash Focus while being at work turned out to be a rotten ombination, to be honest, but because I felt the drive to improve my vision, I forged on.

Unfortunately, after a couple weeks, I noticed little to nothing in terms of my side eye getting better, not to mention my chalazion going away. In fact, I was afraid Flash Focus was causing so much eye strain that things were getting worse! After my visual exercises, I’d feel dizzy and my eyes would hurt. I suppose there’s a chance I was using the software incorrectly, but I don’t think that was the problem. Rather, I’ve come to the conclusion that while Flash Focus is a clever little package, it can’t work wonders. If I really wanted to have my side eye or chalazion treated, I’d have to go to a medical professional, not my Nintendo DS.

Still, Flash Focus is definitely a slick piece of software. The interface is straightforward and clean, and the fact that the game can tailor a visual workout for you is something that is sorely missing in many of Nintendo’s other training games, most notably Wii Fit. The activities in Flash Focus are all reasonably enjoyable and entertaining, which is another big plus. But gosh darn it, Flash Focus strains my eyes to the point that brings back painful memories of the discomfort I felt playing my Virtual Boy. Using Flash Focus was literally paining me too much to continue.

Consequently, Flash Focus is now sitting safely on a shelf next to the likes of Brain Age, Wii Fit, and Animal Crossing, all of which have sadly become neglected. Every now and then I kick around plans to start up a serious and intense daily Nintendo training schedule. I’ll start off with a vigorous workout with Wii Fit, give my mind a jolt with Brain Age, whip my eyes into shape with Flash Focus, and finally wind down by socializing with virtual critters and pulling rogue weeds in Animal Crossing. Knowing myself, this grand plan has little chance of happening, but it’s a nice idea!

Flash Focus is certainly worth a look for anyone interested in Nintendo’s training games, and its fun activities provide a quick and lighthearted experience perfect for people that only have a few minutes to spare. But the notion of the software being legitimate vision training is debatable. For the small percentage of gamers that put in the required time needed to see results with Flash Focus, it’s possible there will be some positive outcomes. For the rest of us, it’s a harmless diversion that is enjoyable but won’t solve our vision problems, including our side eyes.

[Mister Raroo is a happy husband, proud father, full-time public library employee, and active gamer. He currently lives in El Cajon, CA with his family and many pets. You may reach Mister Raroo at mister.raroo@gmail.com. Please don’t make fun of his side eye or chalazion if you ever meet him in person.]

Column: Diamond in the Rough - 'A Body in the Dark'

editors@gamesetwatch.com (Thomas Cross) — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 08:00:57 -0800

['Diamond In The Rough' is a new column by Tom Cross focuses on an unusual innovation that a game makes on an old, tired aspect of game design -- an innovation that contributes to the advancement of video games as a medium, but that might get overlooked because the game is not otherwise remarkable or is hindered by major design flaws.]

When playing a video game, the physical presence of your character is often strangely difficult to get a visceral feel for. In first person shooters, very few attempts are made to simulate mass, friction, or a feeling of the solidity of your character’s body.

Games like Portal and Dark Messiah of Might and Magic use mass and momentum to attempt to create a virtual space that your body appears to inhabit (Portal does this well, DMoMM does not do it so well), but in general FPSs avoid the question altogether.

Third person games must take an entirely different approach. Since the player is staring at their avatar’s front or back for most of the game, the developer must create a believable surrogate for the player, both visually and physically.

This is a tough issue to get around, and most games don’t find a perfect way to solve it, but some are worse than others. Even major titles like Oblivion and Knights of the Old Republic have produced egregiously stiff and robotic character models.

Games where the objectives involve physically interacting with the gameworld (Tomb Raider, Drake’s Fortune, Prince of Persia) tend to fare better, because, your character has to have a distinct mass and tendency to move in a certain way for the game to work at all. Still, even in these titles, you avatar’s body remains static. You may sway, swing, slip, and miss handholds, but your on-screen presence is still essentially unchanging—a placeholder for your point of view.

A Shot in the Dark

This is where the new Alone in the Dark game strikes out on its own. Edward Carnby’s body is a distinct factor in everything that the player does. Your inventory is carried inside Carnby’s leather jacket. To use, drop, or combine items, you must open it wide and look down at your own chest. The healing mechanic, too, reinforces the oft-forgotten fact that you have a body. To heal yourself, you must look at the parts of your body (arms, leg, chest) that are wounded, and then spray them with first-aid liquid.

Likewise, when you equip an item, Edward reaches for it, palming it and then switching back to the stock third or first person view. Subtle touches reinforce Edward’s physical presence: if you are carrying a flashlight, and wish to hold a bottle of gasoline in that hand, you can strap the light to your shoulder lapel, thus causing it to shine at an angle. While the third person elements of the game are not perfectly realized, they still convey the weight and heft of Edward’s less than perfectly agile body.

The effect of all of this is to ground you in the body of your protagonist. You must constantly check yourself for new cuts or bruises, sometimes eliciting a tired shrug from Edward when a visual check reveals no new blemishes.

When blinded by enemies, blood, or water, you must blink Edward’s eyes to clear them. When entering a vehicle, you switch to an awkward first person perspective. From this view, you can interact with many of the car’s parts: ignition, lights, horn, glove box, cabin light, and backseat. When you exit a moving vehicle, Edward flings himself out the door. All actions you perform are animated, be they in first person or third person mode.

These might seem like minor facets of a game, but taken together, they do something importantly new with in-game character presence. No other game available today inserts you so forcefully into the body of your character; no other game makes a concern for that body a necessary part of doing well in the game. In Oblivion, you can manipulate bodies and items, but in so doing you cause these objects to dangle eerily in midair.

Additionally most doors and operable items in games swing on or open magically at a press of the use button. It’s not just graphical differences that set apart the level of immersion seen in these two games. Not only does Edward interact believably and compellingly with the world, it is necessary for the player to become familiar with these interactions.

You cannot finish the game (not easily, at least) unless you have an extensive understanding, often attained through countless visual reminders, of Edward’s body and the ways it reacts to the world. You don’t have to do this in Oblivion—you don’t think to, even though you would in real life.

What We're Used To

This did not seem odd to me before. It was just the way FPSs were. To see Edward manipulate his world through his own eyes grounds the player in ways that relate to our bedrock experiences within our own bodies. It puts Half Life 2’s Gordon Freeman to shame. Even when Gordon is being forcibly held or moved in HL2, you never get the sense that the space he inhabits is quite as real as Edward’s.

First person shooters are not the only games that could learn some lessons from Carnby’s jacket and body. Games like Resident Evil, Tomb Raider, and Splinter Cell all feature characters with bizarrely spacious pants, packs or pockets.

These are conventions of the genre, of course, so we don’t think about it, but they’re also completely unrealistic. Habit makes us blind to the silliness of Lara Croft’s tiny backpack and hardly-there shorts being able to hold flares, skulls, and automatic weapons.

Still, this disconnect between the reality of the game world and the way we interface with it is a weakness, one that, once we stop to look at it, does look ridiculous. Remember Guybrush Threepwood, the ironic protagonist of the Monkey Island games, getting some comic mileage out of how big his pantaloons would have to be to hold all his possessions.

By far the worst offender is Resident Evil 4, which traded in safe boxes for a large “briefcase.” I would love to see its protagonist, Leon Kennedy, grabbing at his sides for different firearms or ammo, or looking along his body for wounds.

The same could be said for Lara Croft, although this exercise would doubtlessly be tinged with the public’s desire to perform such actions on a nonexistent body. In fact, maybe Tomb Raider should stay how it is, given so many gamers’ childish habits.

Obviously these mechanics cannot be applied to all games. Alone in the Dark’s inventory and interface are slow and clumsy. Even with modifications, they would still only be suitable to games that allowed the player enough time to perform such actions.

There are some games that follow their own paths to convincing players that their hero actually inhabits space. Nathan Drake has more character contained in his movements and mannerisms than a hundred other PCs, and he keeps his weapons on his person, in plain sight. He flings himself at the world around him, and he is often brought up short or stymied in an appreciable way by environmental forces.

Although not yet available, Dead Space appears to create a very believable hero whose body is viciously affected by his surroundings. Of course, when it comes to changing or injured bodies, Fable 2 has to be mentioned.

Fable 2 lets you age, tattoo, and contort your body in a predetermined set of responses and actions. It may not be realistic in its inventory system (your character must have treasure chests for pockets!), but it creates a character that is an extension of the player’s will and intention, where you can write your desired character into the very body of your avatar.

Was it Worth it?

Alone in the Dark’s approach to this issue is fraught with missteps and errors. The beauty of the system I have described is marred at every turn by an extremely clumsy interface. Hopefully other games will find a way to take the lessons to had in Alone in the Dark and apply them elsewhere.

Games need to present us with more lived-in, real, and believable representations of the player or main character. This will draw players into their new roles in a completely different way. It’s one kind of immersion that we should demand more of.

[Tom Cross writes for Cerise magazine and blogs about video games at shouldntbegaming.wordpress.com. You can contact him at romain47 at gmail dot com.]

GameSetLinks: Inside The Cave Of Bootleg City

editors@gamesetwatch.com (Simon Carless) — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 00:00:46 -0800

Well, I keep digging out those links, in my frantic quest to become the Kottke of game links, and you guys keep reading them, so it sounds like this symbiotic relationship is still going relatively well, eh?

Actually, I'm off on holiday as you read this (Hawaii, since you ask - maybe I should go find Henk Rogers and say hi!), but fortunately, posting ahead and a pleasant leisure schedule should mean relatively little paucity of posting for GameSetWatch readers worldwide.

Many things here:

Press the ACTION BUTTON!: Tim Rogers reviews Cave Story
'Bottom line: Cave Story is “better than art — it’s science”.' Part of the now-completed 'Top 25 Games Of All Time' countdown at the reliably loony, virtuoso AB.

8-bit Rocket's Top-10 Midcore/Casual/Retro Game Predictions For The Next 12 Months
"Some of these are more wishful thinking than others. See if you can spot them." Fun list.

Lost Levels: 'Off-Topic: Chinese Bootleg Developer Speaks'
'Over on his blog, a gentleman by the name of maxzhou88 has been posting (in Chinese) stories, art, and even source code from bootleg Famicom/NES conversions (or “Hong Kong Originals”) of 16-bit games that he helped develop while working for a company called SuperGame.'

Storyboard - Wired Blogs
Behind the scenes making of a Wired article - we'd do similar for Gamasutra features but honestly, in most cases there aren't nearly as many steps as those Wired crazies.

IndieGames.com - The Weblog - Browser Game Pick: Aether (Edmund McMillen, Tyler Glaiel)
V.interesting new web art game from the Gish co-creator - you'll see this again in the IndieGames.com round-up, but hey.

Xbox gets an up-Braid | Mail Online
Blimey, even UK newspapers like it - via Develop.

JPMorgan Sells Sidney Apts. for $40.7M - CoStar Group
'JPMorgan Asset Management sold the 128-unit Sidney Apartments in Seattle to Ken and Roberta Williams, the founders of video game developer Sierra Entertainment, for $40.75 million, or about $318,000 per unit.'

New Computer Game, Spore, Takes Cues From Evolutionary Biology - NYTimes.com
'Dr. Near and Dr. Prum have spent a few evenings testing out Spore, one of the most eagerly anticipated video games in the history of the industry.'

The Nor-Cal Dance Dance Revolution | Jared Rea
'I was on the hunt for some ancient hard drives of mine that I left behind but what I found was a stash of Kodak envelopes, stuffed with pictures from early years of the Dance Dance Revolution tournament scene which I was a part of.'

Games Without Frontiers: Games Give Free Rein to the Douchebag Within
'Sometimes I think the best way to get a grip on my true inner self would be just to list all the people I choose to be inside games.'

The Shifted Librarian » GLLS2008 Preliminary Program Available
'Just a quick note that the preliminary program for the 2008 ALA TechSource Gaming, Learning, and Libraries Symposium is now available online.'

Opinion: Should The Government Intervene Over Online Games?

editors@gamesetwatch.com (Simon Carless) — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 16:00:49 -0800

[In big sister site Gamasutra's latest 'China Angle' column, Frank Yu examines the evolving business model for Chinese games, creating games that are "...designed like fast-moving consumer goods, trendy fashion items, and in some cases, like drugs." Is government intervention a good thing here?]

The Olympics are over and life is returning to semi-normality to Beijing and China, if you count another earthquake and the Para-Olympics normal.

In a reminder of when the term 'China Games' did not mean the Olympics, a Committee of China’s National People’s Congress this week has classified games that depict too much violence, porn or not enough Chinese patriotism as being “unhealthy.”

The committee recommends more monitoring and even automatic log off when players reach a certain time allotment.

From a recent report:

"Li Jianguo, vice-chairman of the National People’s Congress said that Internet-addicted teenagers account for about 10 percent of China’s web users. With more than 200 million Internet users in China, that’s millions of "unhealthy" young Chinese and a huge business for "unhealthy" game developers."

Ten percent of anything in China is a huge number, and will no doubt continue to rise along with government intervention. For many developers in the West, this sort of government regulation and oversight of the industry seems both odious and intrusive. I thought so too -- but now I’m not so sure.

After seeing the business models and game design of the current crop of Chinese online games, I would have to agree that the industry in China is heading towards games designed to be addictive and to essentially suck the consumer money out as quickly and efficiently as possible.

I am a bit torn by this, as a believer that game designers are like artists and need to express themselves. The current business situation for games in China requires that games be designed like fast-moving consumer goods, trendy fashion items, and in some cases, like drugs.

Due to piracy and the lack of a PC retail game market (and a lack of consoles), the free-to-play model has become the dominant model for game companies in China in the last 5 years.

Many games can be played with a free download or a free registration on the web. Some sites rely on traffic and advertising to make their money, but most games now rely on the sale of virtual items and special access in order to make their revenue and growth targets.

Limited items, power-ups, special events, and seasonal gifts are the fuel that powers the Chinese game industry. For games like Zhengtu Online or Tencent’s "skill-based" gaming, there are elements of gambling, wagering and lottery within the games that border on legality since winnings cannot be transferred back into cash, although it does take real money to take a chance.

Many of these games are designed to be easy for new users and curious players. Once they get sucked in through fast leveling or the network effect of their friends playing as well, players need to invest in special items and more time in order to reach ever-higher levels and challenges.

Although this is common for most MMORPGs even in the West, the nature of free-to-play means that, without recurring monthly subscriber revenue or up-front game purchase, free players need to be both emotionally invested in the game and their characters to make the all-important conversion into virtual item-purchasing customers and recoup the cost and investment of initial free-to-play.

Unlike traditional notions of video games with a conclusion or even a winner, Chinese online games do not end -- they just continue on to the next challenge and ever more virtual item purchases. In the Western climate, there are other alternative games, platforms and experiences that the gaming public can choose from.

Yes, there are advanced casual game portals where dancing, racing or sports games have a definitive winner, but in most cases, players still need to purchase more items, accessories or new levels.

Winning - or gaining power - in online games in China is as much about purchasing items as it is about skill or hard work. This is the reality of the business of games in China, so the designers and developers need to make their games based on this strategy.

It's not evil, it's business.

If designers and developers had other business alternatives to monetize their games, they would if they could. For now, they design the games to painlessly help users spend ever larger sums of money on virtual items. I’m sure Western publishers are looking at and exploring this model as well.

That is why government intervention in the industry is not, offhand, a bad thing. The challenge is if the government can regulate this industry without stifling further evolution, or worse. Regulations may lead to the heavy-handed restrictions that merely solidify the base of the large profitable companies that can comply more easily and stamp out newer, younger startup competition.

Instead of focusing on the content of the games, the regulators need to focus on the industry's business model. With some trepidation, the Chinese game industry has crossed a line somewhere where the gaming experience model is not based on fun, but a psychological and social compulsion to play.

Among cases where regulation of an industry is needed, this may be the one where the market cannot or will not correct itself.

[Frank Yu is an founding advisor to Cineo. Prior to his current position, Frank started and led the first China game team for Microsoft Casual Games. He has also served as the first Regional Business Manager in Asia for the Xbox and Home Entertainment Division. He can be reached by email at capital@gmail.com.]

COLUMN: Bell, Game, and Candle - 'What Kind of Game Would Unicorns or John McCain Play?'

editors@gamesetwatch.com (Alex Litel) — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 08:00:13 -0800

['Bell, Game, and Candle' is a regular GameSetWatch column by game commentator Alex Litel, discussing stuff that happens in the game business. This time - a [verbally NSFW] discussion with a unicorn and a fundraiser foray provide insight into earthly troubles.]

“Oh fuck, Alex, I already have to deal with enough fucking demos; I don’t need different species to come into the fucking equation…. Wait, ‘unicorns,’ are you on 2C-I? (By the way, I must clarify my mention of 2C-I is not at all informed by any actual experiences I have partaken in.)”

“Slow down there, Machiavelli, you know that Sharon wants to have children, and the sailor is not as revered an occupation as it once was. Also, I do not actually know what ‘2C-I’ is, but I’m going to guess it is recreational drug and not automotive nomenclature at its most mundane.”

“Unicorns aren’t real.”

“I know; before Wii Sports, you would have said women over thirty were not a real demographic.”

“Isn’t it a bit demeaning to compare women to unicorns? And there’s no empirical evidence suggesting that unicorns are real. Alas, this industry is so counterintuitive to creative visionaries; I have great ideas like poaching Diablo Cody to bring Variety’s ‘slanguage’ to the twenty-first century and a daytime talk show strip hosted by Shalom Auslander.”

Unicorns

As Machiavelli pointed out above, unicorns kind of do not exist; thus, I took from the Ailes school of journalism and pretended that they do (obviously, the Ailes school of pretending, like that done in preschool, entails no research).

I searched far and wide for a unicorn gaming; I almost was about to just give up and just go for the Shetland pony in Creswick that watches television. But then, I discovered a gaming unicorn named Roger, who agreed to let me interview him.

Me: Hello there, would you like to start off by telling the readership a little about yourself.
Roger: Well, my name is Roger, I am a 23-year-old unicorn who is unemployed, dropped out of college, and enjoys media.
Me: I see. What games have you played recently?
Roger: While…about a week ago, while playing I was playing that artsy Adderall advergame—The Unchronological Undertaking of Stopwatch Strauss—with the puzzle pieces and the time-travelling, I discovered I had adult attention-deficit disorder.
Me: It is called Braid; I think I should say it is not an Adderall advergame. Do you really have adult-attention deficit disorder or were you saying that to be clever?
Roger: Yes, I played Oblivion, but I never understood what was actually occurring at all.

Me: Did you just make fun of my question?
Roger: No, I had an amusing anecdote related to the question. But I really realized I had adult attention-deficit disorder while playing Braid. Anyways, that game was no Primer.
Me: You have ADD and you understood Primer? But the juxtaposition of Braid to Primer is very interesting—both subvert a certain form of their medium, obviously deal with the time-travel, and fables that work on multiple levels.
Roger: Yeah. But Primer trumps Braid qualitatively, the latter is wholly stupidly Delphic artificiality, which is the antipode of the former. Not complementary, but ersatz. Not to mention that the creator of the latter blatantly stole from Proust and Time’s Arrow.
Me: Don’t you think that’s a pretty lofty accusation to make?
Roger: No, I’m pretty familiar with the former and the latter is amongst favorite texts; I know its sideways and byways. Braid is a reductionist derivative of Time’s Arrow; the book’s staggering specialness becomes infinitesimal, unprofound non-insights on people and sheer gimmickry. On a side note, [Time’s Arrow author Martin] Amis is actually a gamer, or once was—he penned Invasion of the Space Invaders back in 1982. And much like that of Proust, Tim’s prose is a puzzle in itself, there is a litany of layers simultaneously, the theoretics of memory, et cetera, et cetera.
Me: From the ways you speak, the influences of the works seem to be mutually exclusive; there could be no overlap. Also, you have ADD and you got through the 4,200 pages of In Search of Lost Time?
Roger: No, no, that definitely—certainly—is not the case. Yes, I did.
Me: I think you have misdiagnosed yourself. Have you asked a doctor about this?
Roger: No, but you really think this is misdiagnosis?
Me: Absolutely. But back to games, what did you think of Portal and what gaming journalists do you admire?
Roger: All the subversion of E.T. Interplanetary Mission with slightly better writing. And I’m a big fan of the guy who was on The West Wing and The Office—Thomas Chickedee.
Me: You mean Tom Chick?
Roger: Yeah, yeah, that’s the guy.
Me: What is your favorite game moment ever?
Roger: Indigo Prophecy’s Simon Says rooftop battle sequence with the Oracle is unimpeachably awesome.
Me: I think that is it, so thank you for your time.
Roger: Not a problem.

John McCain

Recently, while at Beverly Hills café, I noticed a news story on the television about John McCain throwing a fundraiser at the Beverly Hilton. Being the intrepid human I am, I had to find some way into the aforementioned fundraiser.

Naturally, I called up a vintage clothing store owner I knew, and bluntly asked if he had any conservative t-shirts; he did not, but agreed to make a “Dukakis Sucks” shirt on the spot and “put it through the trenches to feign twenty years of wear and tear.” Obviously, I was going to put on a nice coat and slacks—this was not Denver where all-out informality is largely apropos.

Unfortunately, I could not pass for campaign staff, so I had to cough up the young folks fee of five hundred dollars.

While walking into the ballroom, I passed by a monacled mister who looked like he did not know that the auditions for Nolan’s next Bat-flick were not happening quite yet. I said to the manacled mister, “I wonder if John Edwards is here,” and monacled mister let loose many guffaws. Monacled mister proceeded to ask me if I was the evening’s entertainment.

On a game-related note, I saw Bobby Kotick chat it up with John McCain, but nothing game-related came up. I imagine Kotick had evaded the games and technology issue for the same reason I avoid such topic with my mother—there is enough confusion from the older party about something simple that it makes the younger party feel like their brain is going to explode.

Despite me violating my own ethical codes, I could not get face-to-face with McCain but I did find his senior campaign folk.

Of course, I inquired to Rick Davis and others about the Veep selection. I was told “we want a pick that will nab her voters” and “John wants to lose us voters with Joseph or Tom, but neither of those have lady parts—the only way to attract the chicks.”

Offended, I responded quite hastily that females are not a voting block that can be attracted by the mere presence of one of their own and “can see through the transparency of pandering.”

An aide whose name I do not know ominously told me “we don’t pander; we decide. We are thinking the Alaskan chick—Palin.”

Davis threw out a non-sequitur, “Every time John McCain pauses, a bald eagle is impregnated.”

“Are you just taking Chuck Norris facts and replacing Chuck Norris with John McCain?” I queried.

“John McCain pees liberty. John McCain is strong like a bull; John McCain is strong like a moose,” said Davis.

I posed what I thought to be a fairly probing question to Davis, “Don’t you think that having the RNC foot the bill for ads that dub McCain as a ‘maverick’ leaves the campaign open to excoriation?”

Then I was kicked out faster than you can say “Vicki Isemen.” As McCain surrogate and Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot star Rocky “Sylvester Stallone” Balboa once said, “Yeah, I thought I was history too. What the hell happened? All of a sudden, this car turned into a cannoli.”

Outside of the hotel, I run into acclaimed German director Hanswuhl—talk of cinema because his surprisingly successful, recently released art house film Flechten.

Said Hanswuhl: “I am infallible; I cannot ever err. If you are unable to complete my grand work, it is impossible but your own reckless doing. Your theories are utterly ridiculous, likely arbitrary; there is only one beholder here—myself. There is no providence, but only the factual actual which I am expert of. You are all wrong, I was inspired by the great literary work Sphereland—but Fletchen is no derivative of number9dream.”

The novelty of his accent quickly wore off and his pomposity became tiresome, so I left.

Oh, oh, oh, the answer to the question posed by the title is Peggle, of course!…hold on, hold on, our friends at Electronic Arts are informing me that all of these folks will be on their Macs and PCs playing Spore, the new masterpiece from The Sims creator Will Wright and his team at Maxis which sees release on Friday in Europe and Monday in Asia and North America. Our friends at Electronic Arts also have a mobile version for iPods, iPhones and cell phones called Spore Origins and a version for the Nintendo DS called Spore Creatures.

[Alex Litel can be reached at alexlitel@gmail.com and occasionally found at alexlitel.blogspot.com.]

GameSetNetwork: Midweek Madness BioShocks Us

editors@gamesetwatch.com (Simon Carless) — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 00:00:03 -0800

Once more, time to check out superneat features on sister site Gamasutra and elsewhere on our Think Services sites/blogs - particularly headed by the BioShock postmortem that's already been front-page Slashdot and Digg this week, blimey.

Also wandering around in here - EA's Frank Gibeau on the future of Spore, some neat XBLA design documents, David Sirlin on using save games for non-evil, and even Rodney 'Parappa' Greenblat's abstract art as a visual scripting language.

Thursday I'm in love:

Gamasutra Features

Postmortem: 2K Boston/2K Australia's BioShock
"Starting a new series debuting notable Game Developer magazine postmortems online, project lead Finley reveals the secrets behind the creation of 2K Boston/Australia's seminal BioShock."

The Whimsy Of Domain-Specific Languages by Mick West
"Neversoft co-founder Mick West explores making your own mini-languages for games by creating Whimsy, a graphical DSL based on the abstract paintings of Parappa creator Rodney Alan Greenblat."

Saving the Day: Save Systems in Games by David Sirlin
"In an in-depth design analysis, Street Fighter II HD Remix designer Sirlin discusses who's done things right -- and wrong -- when creating save systems for video games."

Gamasutra/Other News, Features

EA's Gibeau: 'Large And Enduring Business' Planned for Spore
"Maxis' much-awaited Spore launches this week, and Gamasutra sat down with EA Games label head Frank Gibeau to discuss company expectations for the title, plans for console versions, and defining success for Will Wright's latest opus."

Bethesda's Pagliarulo On Fallout 3's Tone, 'Profanity Pass'
"As Bethesda's Fallout 3 wraps up development, lead designer and writer Emil Pagliarulo talks to Gamasutra about finding the right tone for the game, revealing his 'profanity pass' for dialogue, "...cutting out half the profanity in the game", as part of his work to fill the "huge shoes" of the original Black Isle franchise."

Interview: Kitase And Hashimoto On A 'Final' Final Fantasy
"Square-Enix has been subtly evolving its formula for the Final Fantasy series for the past few years. But where now? Gamasutra talked to Square's Yoshinori Kitase and Shinji Hashimoto about in the cards for FFXIII -- and whether there will ever be a 'final' Final Fantasy."

GCG: Shred Nebula Releases Design Documents
"CrunchTime Games’ Shred Nebula was recently released on Xbox Live Arcade – and now founder and CEO James Goddard has freely published its design document and '60 seconds of gameplay' doc via sister educational site GameCareerGuide.com."

Epic's Fergusson: Xbox 360 'Approaching Upper End' Of Visual Potential
"Talking to Gamasutra, Gears Of War 2 franchise senior producer Rod Fergusson has been discussing the Xbox 360's technological potential, suggesting that we're "certainly approaching the upper end" of what developers can do with it -- though adding that "there's room to grow" for 2010-shipping titles."

Road to the Austin IGF - Pangea Software's Enigmo

editors@gamesetwatch.com (alistairw) — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 16:00:50 -0800

[Our new series of ‘Road to the IGF’ interviews profiles the nine recently announced winners of the IGF Showcase at Austin GDC - with the local Southern U.S. indie developers to be showcased at the Texas game development show next month.]

In this instalment of 'Road To The Austin IGF', we talk to Pangea Software's Brian Greenstone about the iPod Touch and iPhone puzzle title Enigmo, another IGF Showcase honoree for the upcoming Austin IGF show.

The game was initially released back in 2003 for Mac OS X. Greenstone ported Enigmo to the Touch and iPhone, taking advantage of the units' accelerometer functionalities. He describes the title as a “3D physics based puzzle game where the goal is to get the falling water droplets into their containers by using various bumpers, slides, sponges, etc.”

What is your background with video games?

Brian Greenstone: Well, I was one of those '70s kids who was always at the arcade pumping my 20 tokens for a $1 into Asteroids. Then, in High School, I started to learn how to program and write some simple games, but in college I became friends with a programmer at Origin who showed me the ropes.

The next thing I knew I was making Super Nintendo Games and it all went uphill from there!

When was Pangea formed?

BG: Christmas break in 1987. I had just broken up with my girlfriend, so I had nothing to do, and I decided to write a big game: Xenocide. I went to the courthouse and filed the name "Pangea Software".

On the way down there I realized that I couldn't remember how to spell Pangea, so I took my best guess and when I got home I realized that the proper spelling is actually "Pangaea". Oh well.

What inspired Enigmo, and why did you decide to develop it?

BG: I had written some physics collision code for another game and realized that I could do so much more with that code.

My grandparents had this unusual contraption at their house back in the mid '70s where a motor would drive a spiral that carried a ball bearing up a tube. Once at the top the ball bearing would be released and bounce off of drums at the bottom. It would go into a bin and then make it's way back up the spiral.

For years I had though of doing a video game based on that thing, so that was the inspiration for Enigmo.

What were your expectations from your game, and do you feel the end product lives up to those expectations?

BG: Oh, I didn't really expect much. Enigmo was one of the smallest and shortest games I had ever done. Most of the games I was doing at that point were big adventure games that took a year to do, but the original Mac version of Enigmo only took about two months to write.

It was just something I wanted to do for fun, but never expected to see a mobile version some years later that would be such a hit.

What do you think the most interesting thing about your game is?

BG: It's the physics engine. Nothing in there is faked. All of the droplets bounce around every polygon in the scene doing what they should do, so the user can really play around with it. It's just plain cool!

How long did development take, and what was the process like?

BG: The iPhone version took only a few days to get up and running, but we spent a few weeks optimizing the 3D models and tweaking the engine to run better on the iPhone.

In all, we spent maybe a month total just tweaking and testing, but the bulk of the work took place in the first week. The beauty of doing iPhone development is that it's basically running Mac OS X, so it's pretty easy to get a Mac game like Enigmo running on the device.

Was it a pretty easy decision to translate the game to the Touch and iPhone?

BG: Yes, very. The touch interface is really the more natural way to play the game, so I think the iPhone version is better than the original Mac version. Everything just worked - that doesn't happen often!

Any plans to redo its sequel?

BG: Hehe, I get asked that a lot. Enigmo 2 requires about 3x the horsepower as Enigmo, and the iPhone just doesn't have the power to do it.

Also, Enigmo 2 had 3D puzzles, whereas Enigmo was a 3D game but the puzzles were on a 2D layout. The 3D aspect was hard enough to control on the Mac, so I can't imagine how I'd do it on an iPhone. Besides, Enigmo is selling well, so no need to cannibalize the sales with a sequel.

How easy has it been to work with Apple in regards to Touch and iPhone software, and is this different to your previous experiences developing for their hardware?

BG: It's been great! Kinda like how it was to work with Apple 15 years ago when they were really into games. Over the years Apple lost all interest in games, but now it has been revitalized with the iPhone, so they're giving us all the help we need.

Obviously, they're much more secretive than they were 15 years ago, but that's okay.

What's the scene in Austin like?

BG: I suppose that depends on which scene you look at. Austin is a great place, and I wouldn't want to live anywhere else. This summer has been incredibly hot, but that's why we have lakes and rivers!

Is there a feeling of community?

BG: Among people in general, yes, definitely. Even tho we have a lot of "outsider" transplants here, the Texan attitude still shines through and everyone is nice to everyone, and men still open doors for women, and we wave to each other as we pass on the rural highways.

What do you think of the state of independent development, and how do you think independent games fit into the industry?

BG: I think it's weird that the term "independent developer" even came up. I've been doing this for 25-plus years, and I don't consider myself to be an independent anything. I'm just another small game developer.

I mean, this industry was founded on what we now call independent developers - nerds in their bedrooms hacking out code, so I still consider us to be the normal ones. It's the big guys like EA, et al, who deserve the funky names.

How about we call them the "corporate developers" and then just call ourselves "video game developers"?

Where do you see your game going from here?

BG: Well, if I'm lucky it won't go anywhere - it'll just stay on the iTunes App Store Top 20 list forever so I'll keep selling millions of copies!

But realistically, it's likely to fall in the list as newer games come out and take its place. That's ok with me because I'm ready to move onto new projects, and I'm already working on several right now.

What kind of feedback have you received so far?

BG: It has all been excellent! Enigmo has a 4 1/2 star average rating in iTunes, and there are very few games with ratings that high. I'm thrilled!

Have you checked out any of the other Austin IGF games?

BG: Nope, I haven't even had time to eat or sleep for the last few months. This iPhone stuff is keeping me busy 24/7!