VentureBeat » Portal

Portal developer Kim Swift’s next game is exclusive to Ouya

Jeffrey Grubb — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 17:41:44 +0000

This whole Ouya microconsole thing is starting to shape up into a very impressive platform.

In addition to announcing a March 28 ship date for Kickstarter backers, Ouya revealed today that Portal and Quantum Conundrum designer Kim Swift’s next game is exclusive to the company’s $99.99 Android gaming system.

“We truly feel that this platform will give us the freedom to fully realize the funky, unique game we have in mind,” Swift said in a statement. “Though the title will definitely appeal to core gamers in terms of skill and difficulty, it really has a completely unexpected, imaginative slant that’s totally at home on this console. Expect an official announcement soon!”

Swift previously worked at Valve on games like Portal, Left 4 Dead, and Left 4 Dead 2. In 2009, she left Valve to join developer Airtight Games, where she designed Quantum Conundrum.

Ouya is an Android-gaming console that connects to televisions through an HDMI port. It is an open system that allows users to install any file that they choose, but it also features a curated Ouya games store for titles that are optimized for physical controls.

In June, the console will hit retailers including Target, Best Buy, and GameStop. It’s available for preorder on Amazon and GameStop now.

Filed under: Games

GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

This is galactic dancing: Spacewar! at the Museum of the Moving Image

Community Writer — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 03:50:46 +0000

“THIS IS GALACTIC DANCING.” So reads the text prompt preceding the bonus stages in Galaga ’91, one of the games on display at The Museum of the Moving Image’s current video game exhibition, “Spacewar! Video Games Blast Off.”

Using the world’s first video game, Spacewar! (running on a facsimile PDP-1 simulation), the exhibition follows the development of space shooting video games from those primitive vector displays with their simple geometric representations of science-fiction fantasies through some growing pains like a Virtual Boy running Vertical Force (1995) and into contemporary games like Child of Eden (2011) and Portal (2007).

So, what exactly is Portal doing in among all these space shoot-em-ups? That’s what I was thinking as I stood on the museum’s third floor watching a child play Valve’s puzzle-shooter as I leaned up against a Star Wars cabinet from 1983.

With video games on display in a museum setting, a set of circumstances develops and a certain atmosphere exists that helps to withhold any questions as to a digital game’s value as an art form. Instead, the mind is freed to examine which elements of artistry are being demonstrated when we observe or play games. It’s a question we don’t often think about when we are sitting at home passively entertaining ourselves. Still, when we do ask ourselves this question, it is my experience that we value games on their representational value. As in: What does this game mean? What is it trying to say? And how do the graphical and narrative themes help communicate all this?

Looking for representational value in Asteroids (1979), what can we find? Without taking our own artistic liberties with the stark white rudimentary geometry of the game, we are given the harrowing story of a spaceship that shoots asteroids. We could dig in to the historical context and maybe describe how the popularity of space warfare games between the ’60s and ’80s had a lot to do with cold war anxieties and the space race. Either way, that does not explain why Portal and Super Mario Galaxy 2 are on display in a museum hall alongside Yar’s Revenge and Star Fox.

What the Museum of the Moving Image has really put together here is a logic of artistic continuity that takes into account not only the representational aspects of space shoot-em-ups but also lends a cleverly trained eye towards game mechanics and user interfaces. Simply, games allow for the creation of alternate physical realities to play in.

From Space Wars’ (1977) sun-dragging lasers and asteroids toward the middle of the battlefield, we can see the laws of gravitation affecting the action of a simple shootout, which leads us to where in Super Mario Galaxy Nintendo used the laws of gravitation toward pint-sized planets as a creative way of making new avenues of locomotion and puzzles for the platforming Italian plumber. And into Portal, which places the player into a fictionalized physics experiment.

Being a commercial medium, seeing games in a museum allows for an evaluation of a gaming experience that is free from the effect of consumer satisfaction. Seeing a Virtual Boy in a museum and being able to play it — without the dissatisfaction at a piece of $170 hardware that by everyone’s estimation failed to launch — allows for an actual appreciation of the sense of immersion that manufacturer Nintendo attempted. It also helps in developing a further understanding of why, from a practical standpoint, the Virtual Boy was an absolute flop. Yet from the perspective of a short play test, Vertical Force reveals itself to be an adequately fun and immersive experience.

Seeing the deliberate selection of a wide swath of various modes of implementation and design philosophies across the entire history of gaming allows for the opening of a more all encompassing view of how we can appreciate the artistry of a gaming experience. From simple geometry to detailed representations and idiosyncratic mechanisms (the hulking Galaxy Force machine is a must see), artistry in games can come from the most abstract to the most distinct and even be concerned primarily with spaceships for some thirty years.

Seeing games on display (and, more importantly, open for playing) at a museum is proof positive that games have cemented themselves in the art world. Beyond that, the atmosphere offered by a museum context opens up the door to a multifaceted discussion of the many unexamined elements of artistry in games — to help us understand that piloting a ship is not always piloting, sometimes you are dancing.

“Spacewar! Video Games Blast Off” is on display at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria Queens until March 3, 2013.

Full game list (subject to change):
Spacewar! (1961–62), PDP-1 model
Computer Space (1971), arcade
Space Wars (1977), arcade
Space Invaders(1978), arcade
Asteroids (1979), arcade
Battlezone (1980), arcade
Defender (1980), arcade
Missile Command (1980), arcade
Tempest (1981), arcade
Planet Zeon (1982), Tomytronic
Yars’ Revenge (1982), Atari Video Computer System
Star Wars (1983), arcade
Metroid II: Return of Samus (1991), Game Boy
Galaxy Force II (1988), arcade
Galaga ‘91 (1991), Game Gear
Star Fox (1993), Super Nintendo Entertainment System
Vertical Force (1995), Virtual Boy
Portal (2007), PS3
Osmos (2009), iPad
Super Mario Galaxy 2 (2010), Wii
Child of Eden (2011), Xbox 360

Curated by John Sharp

Filed under: Games

DICE Summit to open with J.J. Abrams and Gabe Newell

Dean Takahashi — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 08:01:02 +0000

The game industry’s marquee conference, the DICE (Design, Innovate, Communicate, Entertain) Summit, is going to open with the geek equivalent of Star Trek’s Kirk and Spock. Film maker J.J. Abrams, who is directing the next Star Wars movie, will appear on stage with Valve co-founder Gabe Newell to talk about storytelling across digital entertainment platforms.

The opening keynote discussion at the conference will feature a conversation between the giants of two different entertainment industries in a talk entitled, “Storytelling Across Platforms: Who Benefits Most, the Audience or the Player?” We’ll be there, covering it live.

Abrams’ presence at the game event will inevitably invite discussion about the marriage of Hollywood and gaming, two industries that have had a mixed history together. But “transmedia” entertainment properties, or those that cross into different media, have become a bigger deal, leading to either huge entertainment blockbusters or flops.

Abrams is clearly the more famous entertainment celebrity, but Newell — whose company has made blockbusters such as Half-Life, Portal, and Left 4 Dead — has an equally committed fan community in the gaming space. At DICE, Newell will enter into the game industry’s Hall of Fame.

The keynote will take place on Feb. 6, the opening day of the 2013 DICE Summit at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas. The Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences (AIAS) produces the summit, and it will feature an awards program that is akin to the Oscars of games.

“This about great entertainment, storytelling, and creativity,” said Martin Rae, president of the AIAS, in an interview with GamesBeat. “It’s about how two very different people have a conversation about what is important in entertaining their audiences. I know DICE attendees will be fascinated with what these two incredible people will have to say.”

Lucasfilm, which Disney acquired for $4 billion, recently confirmed Abrams as the director of the next Star Wars film, the seventh episode in the series.

“J.J. is involved in activities that resonate with game people,” Rae said. “And Gabe looked out ahead of everybody and anticipated what gamers needed. They’re brilliant and creative but come from different places.”

Abrams is the founder and president of Bad Robot Productions. Formed in 2001, Bad Robot has made films and television series such as Cloverfield, Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, ABC’s Lost, Fox’s Fringe, and CBS’s Person of Interest. In 1998, Abrams co-created his first television series, Felicity; he then created and executive produced Alias in 2001, and co-created and executive produced Lost in 2004. In 2006, Abrams directed his first feature film, Mission: Impossible 3, followed by 2009’s Star Trek and 2011’s Super 8, which he also wrote. His most recent feature, Star Trek Into Darkness, will open in May.

Through Bad Robot Interactive, Abrams also created two award-winning apps, Super 8 and Action Movie FX. Rae said, “J.J. is about pushing entertainment to people using different media. The question for the future is how do you want the audience to be engaged? The entertainment of the future will be more interactive.”

Newell will also speak on the morning of Feb. 7 in a talk entitled “A View on Next Steps.” That talk will focus on the game industry. Newell made headlines recently when he unveiled plans to create an open-source, Linux-based video game console for use with televisions. The machine uses Valve’s Steam service, which dominates the field of digital-game distribution.

Rae said the Abrams-Newell conversation will stream live online.

[Image credits: JJ Abrams by Joi Ito, Flickr Creative Commons; Gabe Newell, Dean Takahashi]

Filed under: Games

GamesBeat weekly roundup: GLaDOS in Pacific Rim, more Black Ops II zombies, and Portal on a calculator

Jasmine Maleficent Rea — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 16:46:24 +0000

If you follow VentureBeat but don’t regularly check our GamesBeat site, here’s a list of the best video game stories we ran over the last seven days that you may have missed.

This week, the voice of GLaDOS from the Portal series shows up in the trailer for the movie Pacific Rim, Disney buys South Korean game developer Studio Ex, and Call of Duty: Black Ops II gets more zombies, now on the Nuketown map.

You’ll also find reviews for Uncharted: Fight for Fortune and Guardians of Middle-Earth.

News:

Mobile News:

Previews:

Interviews:

Reviews:

Pieces of flair:

Filed under: Games

How a game design student in California brought Portal to a graphing calculator

Jacob Lopez — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 20:00:33 +0000

Alex Marcolina is a game design student based in California. He impressed the gaming community when he recently released Portal Prelude for Texas Instruments’ Ti-83 and Ti-84 graphing calculators. It pushes physics, graphics and animation on a very limited piece of hardware through 38 Portal-style test chambers. Portal is a first-person view puzzle platformer game for consoles and PC by Valve Software.

A community of hackers, coders and mod-makers to specialize in creating games for Texas Instruments’ calculators, but those are usually based on much simpler concepts like Pac-Man or Super Mario Bros.

Known as Builderboy 2005 on Reddit, he posted a link to his game, and it wasn’t long before it grew in popularity around the Internet.

Marcolina took some time out of studying for finals week to talk to GamesBeat about his project.

GamesBeat: Why did you choose Ti-83/84 to re-imagine Portal?

Alex Marcolina: The Ti84 was the first platform where I began my interest in game programming, so I will probably always have a little bit of an attachment for it. Plus, I always say that programming for such a restrictive platform really forces you to be creative and work harder to get your work done. If you program something simple for the computer, even if you program it badly it will still run quickly, whereas with a calculator, you need to work extra hard in order to make your code run at a reasonable speed.

GamesBeat: What was the challenge about working with such limited hardware?

Marcolina: The largest challenge with working on the Ti84 was mostly the memory constraints, especially the fact that at most I can have 16K of executable code, which is a really hard restriction when you have as much animation and physics as Portal does.

GamesBeat: What’s the particular challenge in taking a 3D environment and turning it into a 2D world — and making it work?

Marcolina: The largest challenge with the conversion to 3D is that puzzles could not be as complex, and you really had to work hard in order to make everything fit nicely on to the screen. Level design was definitely the part I spent the most work on for this project.

GamesBeat: Has Valve taken notice?

Marcolina: Not that I know of, but it would be awesome if they did!

GamesBeat: What made you choose Portal, aside from it being a game you enjoyed?

Marcolina: Probably the largest influence was the fact that when I was originally learning to program on the calculator environment, I was programming in TiBasic, which was a lot slower than the current language I am using, Axe. My very first game I released in TiBasic was another Portal game! It was incredibly crude and had no concepts like momentum, cubes, buttons, or anything like that. But when I first learned Axe, I thought it would be both awesome and fitting if my first Axe game was Portal as well.

GamesBeat: You said you worked on this for several years. What were you thinking when you started? Was it something you just did on any available off time you had, or were there periods that you wouldn’t work on it at all?

Marcolina: Most of the games I work on get worked on in my spare time. Consequently, most of my projects can take more than a year to complete, or not even be completed at all! When I started, I was just kind of going with the flow, and waiting to see if my idea actually had the possibility of becoming a real game, or if it would just be a small project I played around with for a bit. Once I realized that the game could actually be finished, I started working a lot more on things like level design and story.

GamesBeat: Was there ever a point when you questioned continuing the project?

Marcolina: Yes. There actually was a point in time where I abandoned the project for around half a year, due to being super busy and other things. I technically handed off the project to another, but in he only ended up contributing ideas and inspiration for the final product, and was half the reason I decided to pick it back up.

GamesBeat: Do you develop for any other platforms?

Marcolina: I do program for the PC in my spare time as well, and I am interested in making apps for Android or the iPhone.

GamesBeat: Are you planning any other games?

Marcolina: I tend to work on many projects simultaneously. I work on whatever catches my interest at the current time, and consequently I have probably half a dozen unfinished games or projects right now. Some might be abandoned, and some might be picked up later to be finished. Currently, I have no major projects I am working on, and I am just taking a nice break from finishing Portal.

GamesBeat: Are you interested in game development as a career?

Marcolina: Absolutely, I am currently perusing a degree in computer science: game design at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Game design is what I love to do, and being able to do it as a career would be the ultimate dream come true!

Filed under: Games

The GamesBeat ‘Naughty and Nice’ alternative holiday gift guide for your geek

Rus McLaughlin — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 17:49:58 +0000

Black Friday! A day of retail armageddon and full contact-shopping … what could be better? And odds are you’ve got a gamer on your holiday gift list – because they’re everywhere now. Naturally, you don’t want to give them video games. They’ve got those already, and let’s face it, those things all the same, anyway. Better to surprise them with something they didn’t even know existed but always secretly wanted in their heart of hearts. Fortunately, I know what that is. Don’t ask how.

I also know someone will inevitably rope you into buying something for a total dork you despise with every fiber of your being. No worries. You can easily give the gift of sabotage.

So in the name of science, I’ve assembled a list of gift ideas guaranteed to delight your geekish friends and punish your nerdy enemies. That’s what the holidays are truly all about.

The Nice List

Dark Horse Deluxe Normandy SR 2

Geeks love toys. Just accept this into your heart. This nicely sculpted tchotchke, based on the signature space cruiser from the Mass Effect role-playing game series, is just right at a 6-inch length. It comes in both its Cerberus and Systems Alliance (pictured) liveries, includes a stand, and makes a nice focal point for the entire room. Unfortunately, you’ve got to make your own engine and laser sounds.

$28.75 at Amazon

Portal Companion Cube cookie jar

Finally, an easily attainable product that combines our two favorite things: crunchy, delicious chocolate-chip cookies and unconditional, artificial love. You’re under no obligation to provide the former because you are, after all, a monster. But any true nerdcore human will find this ceramic jar, patterned on our dearly departed friend from Portal whom we did not savagely destroy for personal gain, a necessary and tasteful addition to their kitchen and/or bedroom. Even when they steal all its cookies and hate it for being empty. Because that’s what best friends do.

$29.99 at ThinkGeek

MOGA Mobile Gaming System for Android 2.3+

Have I seen a lot of cheap controller add-ons for smartphones and tablets? Yes. Yes, I have. The Moga, however, feels rock-solid and is ergonomic and smartly designed. Rubber grips, nice action in the buttons, and surprisingly stiff control nubs (perhaps a touch too stiff) single the Moga out, and a retractable arm grips your phone tightly indeed. You’ll have to pick and choose the games you get for it with care (Pac-Man and Sonic CD come free), and it’s only compatible with Android phones, but that just goes to show how good the Moga is. I want it to work with every game on every phone and tablet so I’m never without it again.

$44.99 at Amazon

Super Mario Wall stickers

The geek on your list probably already has these. But just in case, and since you’ll probably want them for yourself, I include them here. Vinyl, reusable, and in glorious 8-bit color, these decals can go up on any wall and come down again without peeling your landlord’s paint off. Easier than painting Koopa Troopas yourself, more legal than armed robbery, and nostalgic enough to bring tears to the strongest of us, these will go up in your friend’s home office before Christmas morning comes.

$68.11 at Amazon

Sifteo Cubes

Got kids? Get these. Sifteo Cubes might just be one of the more clever and versatile tech gifts around. The basic set includes three 2-inch square touchscreen cubes that you move, place, touch, and tilt to solve puzzles, cleverly disguised math and grammar problems, and even some light Metroidvania-style dungeons. How? You reveal the maze by moving the blocks around each other. Very neat. More cubes (sold separately) sync right in to add more complexity. It comes with nine games, and you can buy and download more for a few bucks each, and if you’re really lucky, your kids will let you play with them, too. But probably not. Rotten kids.

$129 at Amazon

But what perfect gifts could you bestow on your most hated enemy? We have a few ideas about that, too.

Filed under: Business, Games

Pages: 1 2

Nexon to publish Dota 2 in Japan and Korea

Jason Lomberg — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 21:26:00 +0000

Dota 2 is heading to Asia.

“Freemium” publishing guru Nexon (MapleStory) is partnering with Valve Corporation (Portal, Half-Life) to publish the Defense of the Ancients sequel in both Korea and Japan.

The original Defense of the Ancients, is a free-to-play mod for the real-time strategy game, Warcraft III. This birthed the “multiplayer online battle arena” genre of games such as League of Legends. Upon release, the original quickly established a presence in e-sports tournaments worldwide, including BlizzCon and the Cyberathlete Amateur and CyberEvolution leagues.

A 2008 Gamasutra feature, “Defense of the Ancients – An Underground Revolution,” noted that “DOTA is likely the most popular and most-discussed free, nonsupported game mod in the world, judging by the numbers.”

Considering that DOTA also was featured at the annual World Cyber Games (operated by the eponymous South Korean company and sponsored by South Korean stalwart, Samsung Electronics), it’s no wonder the sequel found its way to Asia.

Dota 2’s release date is TBA, but it’s already created a bit of a stir. Enigmatic designer “IceFrog“ will contribute to the game, which uses Valve’s proprietary Source engine.

Interested parties can sign up for a “Free Dota 2 Invite” on the official blog: http://www.dota2.com/survey/experience/

Filed under: Games

Steam’s Linux beta will include Portal, Team Fortress 2, and Serious Sam 3

Jeffrey Grubb — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 17:53:40 +0000

A team within Valve is working to bring the Steam digital-distribution client to the Linux operating system, and now we know which games will work on the open source OS during the beta test.

Linux users get fully functional versions Serious Sam 3: BFE, Portal, and Team Fortress 2 in the upcoming beta, according to a Facebook post from developer Croteam. The studio, which developed Serious Sam, is apparently the only other company providing a game for this anticipated trial; Portal and Team Fortress 2 are both Valve products.

Steam for Linux represents a significant effort by Valve to diversify its platform support. The company’s digital-download store is available on Mac OS X as well as Windows PCs.

Valve’s chief executive officer Gabe Newell voiced criticisms of Microsoft’s newly arrived Windows 8 calling it a “kind of a catastrophe.” Linux could act as a lifeboat if Valve needs to abandon Windows, as unlikely as that is.

Filed under: Games

Our gaming heroes are actually evil, horrible monsters

James Pikover — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 22:00:56 +0000

Are our favorite game characters actually good, or is that just a ploy to get us to like them? If you really think about it, they’re actually pretty awful. Consider just how many people they have to kill, how many awful things they do in the course of the game’s story. In The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, players are mass-murdering thieves with the psychotic compulsion to take everything. Uncharted’s Nathan Drake kills hundreds of people around the world, generally locals, and blows up buildings and landmarks only to find some lost treasure.

And don’t even get me started on Pokémon.

This funny take on video game characters is cute, but it’s also thought provoking. Are all of our favorites really this bad?

Have any of your own? Share them in the comments and make us laugh.

Via Reddit, originally found on lolmyday.com (original author unknown)

Filed under: Games, gbunfiltered

15 game-infused weddings (gallery)

Jeffrey Grubb — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 21:23:54 +0000

I’m planning my own wedding. The details fill my brain with thoughts of varying color schemes, catering stations, and seating charts. It’s a pain.

But as personal as this event is, I don’t think I have the guts to incorporate my hobbies into the ceremony or reception like some nerdy couples. It takes a special brand of confidence to bare your passions to the world. I just don’t think it’s for me, but that doesn’t mean I don’t admire those who do.

Previously, we’ve written about some fellas who used games to propose. Now, we’re going to celebrate the couples who effortlessly include games in the actual wedding. That’s what we have for you today: a bunch of invitations, cakes, and officiants that artfully display a passion for games.

Filed under: Games

If Portal’s Chell had a dating site profile

Mike Minotti — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 19:19:02 +0000

Everybody needs love. Yes, even fictional characters. But where do our favorite heroes and villains from gaming go when they’re looking to find that special someone? Hey, this is the digital age! They’d go to a dating web site, of course! A place where gaming characters could search for their soul mates. Well, such a place could look something like Extra Hearts, our made-up dating site for fictional digital people.

This time, we look at Chell’s profile. Will the hero of Valve’s Portal series find true love online? Hopefully, she’s as good at romancing as she is at puzzle-solving.

Likes: Large, open spaces.

Dislikes: Science, quitters, sarcasm, the color orange, and science.

Background: I’m just getting back on the dating scene after spending a significant amount of time enslaved in an underground lab by a crazy artificial computer. Years of isolation may have made me a little socially awkward, but I’m sure we can get past that.

Also, could you bring me some clothes?

Favorite Movies: The Great Escape, Escape from New York, Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa, The Shawshank Redemption, and The Escapist. Love of 2001: A Space Odyssey is a deal-breaker.

Six things I could never do without: My “Aperture Science Advanced Knee Replacements.”

My best friend, the Companion Cube. I <3 you back, buddy!

The portal gun. This thing’s a lifesaver when I have a hard-to-reach itch on my back.

That’s kind of it. I haven’t had many possessions lately.

You should message me if: You’re willing to give me plenty of space.

Comments:

More Profiles:

Filed under: Games

GamesBeat weekly roundup: Dragon Age III, Borderlands 2, and the BioWare doctors retire

Jasmine Maleficent Rea — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 18:24:24 +0000

If you follow VentureBeat but don’t regularly check our GamesBeat site, here’s a list of the best video game stories we ran over the last seven days that you may have missed.

This week, Zynga lost three more executives, Sony revealed a new slim PlayStation 3, and BioWare founders Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk retire.

We also have reviews for the action-role-playing games Borderlands 2, and Torchlight II.

News:

Mobile News:

Zynga troubles:

Reviews:

Interviews:

Features:

Pieces of Flair:

Filed under: Games

A working Aperture Science Sentry Turret from Portal

Jeffrey Grubb — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 14:48:30 +0000

The talented Kiwis down in the WETA Workshop have begun sub-contracting for Aperture Science.

WETA is the New Zealand-based special-effects company, best known for bringing life to The Lord of the Rings series of films. Game publisher Valve worked with the company to produce a real-world version of one of Portal’s iconic weapons:

That’s an Aperture Science Sentry Turret from the Portal series of games with fully functional parts. It collapses and expands just as the equipment does in the first-person puzzle games. These operations don’t happen at random either. WETA packed in a motion sensor so the turret knows when and where to fire at human targets.

Are you screaming: “Shut up and take my money” in the general direction of the southern hemisphere? Well, WETA says it’s possible it could sell these to consumers if Valve agrees to it, but the price would be exorbitant.

“It’s a little less pricey than a piece of military hardware from the U.S. government — and a bit more expensive than a piece from the New Zealand Government,” WETA Workshop director, Sir Richard Taylor, told the N.Z. branch of Stuff magazine.

Filed under: Games, Science

In Gateways’ puzzles lies the secret power of learning from other games

Stephanie Carmichael — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 17:47:46 +0000

Puzzle games are self-descriptive: The best ones combine tiny pieces to create something bigger and more exciting.

That’s exactly what Gateways — a puzzle-platformer from Smudged Cat Games coming out tomorrow, Sept. 13, on PC and Xbox 360 – does with finesse. It’s a little bit Portal, a little bit VVVVVV, a little bit P. B. Winterbottom, a little bit Metroid, and more…but altogether, it’s something much greater. That very idea can mean the difference between a stale game and an innovative one.

“Developers always look at games and think, ‘I like that, but I would have done X, Y, and Z slightly differently,’” Gateways’ creator, David Johnston, told GamesBeat in an interview. “There’s always a lot of talk about people stealing ideas, like declaring every voxel game to be a Minecraft clone. People also accuse Minecraft of stealing ideas from Infiniminer, as well, but really it’s just a new genre of game that has emerged recently. It’s like how every first-person shooter used to be declared a Doom clone, but we now accept that it’s a genre of game.”

At its core, Gateways seems a lot like Valve’s popular series Portal — only applied in 2D instead of a 3D world. As an inventor exploring his own ruined lab, you find the gateway gun, which allows you to reach otherwise inaccessible areas by traveling through two-sided portals. But that’s only the beginning. As you obtain upgrades, you can illuminate dark areas with a “torch” (it’s more like a flashlight), reflect laser beams with a mirror, shrink the professor or make him giant-sized, rotate the gravitational pull, and even create duplicates of yourself by manipulating time. These are all elements we’ve seen in other games.

But the game isn’t all puzzles and solutions. Players must figure out how to defeat the strange alien-like “monkoid” enemies that have infiltrated the inventor’s lab, too, and this requires platforming skills and a fresh perspective.

“The enemies aren’t really there to pose a major threat,” says Johnston. “Once they’re destroyed, they’re gone forever. They’re really just a way to break up the puzzle-solving elements a bit and give you something more action-based to do while you travel between different puzzles. The only exception is the recharging enemy type, which requires a bit more thought to eliminate. I think it’s nice to have a bit of variety. Even if you really love a particular type of game, it can get monotonous if you’re doing the same thing over and over again.”

Gateways keeps its gameplay interesting by challenging players to use techniques in new ways. Time travel is the most difficult by far, especially in combination with the other power-ups, and eventually players can activate all the various gateway guns at the same time. It would be a huge headache if it weren’t so well done and addictive.

The game’s hint system helps with that, too, and it’s something lots of other puzzle games could learn from. For the cost of five power orbs, you can learn whether or not you have progressed enough to solve a puzzle or if you must complete another task first. For 40 orbs, you can pay to see the solution; the game even performs it for you. But the different names of these help points can provide clues as to what players need to do, as well.

Johnston says it’s important to have a good system in place for when players get stuck. “People play games for fun,” he says. “It’s nice to be challenged and feel that sense of accomplishment when you complete a difficult puzzle, but if you get really stuck and can’t continue the game, then you can feel a bit cheated. You’ve paid for all this content but have suddenly been locked out. It’s always a difficult line to tread because if you provide a free help system, it encourages people just to automatically use it, so they never get that sense of accomplishment. At the same time, I don’t like the thought of people running out of orbs and being unable to continue. Hopefully, Gateways gets the balance right!”

But aside from the platforming, puzzles, and hints, another important aspect of the game is the layout, which Johnston says is inspired by Metroid. Here the lab is color-coded, and each section features a different type of music. You can also unlock shortcuts that transport them from the center area to different spots around the map, which is easily viewed at any time. Taking a quick look at it prevents players for getting lost and reveals the next possible objectives.

“I decided quite early on to have different areas of the map,” says Johnston. “It helps break things up a bit and feels like you’re really exploring; it also help a lot with navigation. If everywhere in the map looks exactly the same, then it can be difficult to remember what was at a particular point, but different areas give you a reference. Once I had the different areas, it made sense to have music tracks for each of them to help give them all a different feel. The basement area is very dark and gloomy, the upper section is more high tech with the most difficult puzzles, and the middle area is more platforming-focused.”

While none of the ideas presented in Gateways are revolutionary by themselves, together they become something original and fun. Arguably, Gateways is so enjoyable precisely because Johnston pays attention to what else is out there — he doesn’t create games in a vacuum.

“I do play quite a lot of games,” he says. “It’s really interesting to see what other people are doing, particularly in the indie scene. There are a lot cool ideas out there, and the chances are if you come up with an idea, then someone will have done something similar before. I thought the way you look through gateways was unique, but then I heard about ASCII Portal by Cymons Games. A lot of indie games have really interesting ideas but never quite get the audience they deserve, so it’s always interesting to look and see what’s going on.”

Johnston adds that playing games has made him a better developer. “It helps me to see what other ideas people have tried and what works as a game mechanic,” he says. “Sometimes something sounds like a good idea on paper, but when it’s actually implemented and you get a chance to try it out fully, it doesn’t quite gel somehow. If someone else has already tried an idea that is similar to yours, then it helps to see how it works and if it’s actually something that can be fun.

“One thing I find about puzzle games is that they tend to be pretty linear in general. It’s one of the reasons I decided to set Gateways in an open world and allow the player to explore and discover things off the beaten track. It comes back to that thing of reaching a puzzle in a game and being unable to progress. In those situations, it’s nice to know there are other options to keep you occupied while you [think] about that puzzle that’s proving a bit too tricky.”

Gateways releases tomorrow on Steam, the indie digital download service Desura, and Xbox Live Indie Games as part of the Indie Games Uprising promotion. It costs $5 for PC (initially on sale for $4) and 240 Microsoft Points for XBLIG. Gateways was a winner of this year’s Dream.Build.Play competition from Microsoft.

Filed under: Games

Source Filmmaker now available for free in open beta

Mike Minotti — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 01:35:06 +0000

Ever wanted to make movies but, you know, without all the expensive equipment and software? Or maybe you’re just a big fan of the online shooter Team Fortress 2 and would like to recreate Casablanca using its cast of colorful characters. Well, it’s your lucky day. The Source Filmmaker went into open beta today, and it’s a free download.

Source Filmmaker is a tool that allows you to make your own movies inside developer Valve’s Steam engine, which powers games like the first-person puzzler Portal and the zombie-infested Left 4 Dead.

“The SFM condenses the production pipeline of an animation studio down onto a single gaming PC,” said Valve in an e-mail sent to GamesBeat. “To help the community get started, the SFM includes all assets from Team Fortress 2 along with assets from two of the ‘Meet the Team’ short films.”

You can download the program at the official site. You can also check out some of the movies the community has already made here.

Filed under: Games

NASA discovers portals (but don’t book your ticket yet)

John Koetsier — Wed, 04 Jul 2012 15:12:11 +0000

Madeleine L’Engle called them tesseracts. The Syfy channel calls them wormholes. Gamers call them portals.

Whatever you call them, they are fictional doorways to faraway places: another planet in the solar system … another star in the galaxy … another restaurant where the service doesn’t suck quite so bad.

But today they’re perhaps a little less fictional than yesterday. At least according to a Science@NASA post: Hidden Portals in Earth’s Magnetic Field, which says they are real, sort of. A NASA-funded researcher has discovered them surrounding the Earth at distances from 10,000 to 30,000 miles.

University of Iowa plasma physicist Jack Scudder is studying them.

Source: NASA

A view of one of NASA’s X-points

“We call them X-points or electron diffusion regions,” he says. “They’re places where the magnetic field of Earth connects to the magnetic field of the Sun, creating an uninterrupted path leading from our own planet to the sun’s atmosphere 93 million miles away.”

NASA’s THEMIS spacecraft and Europe’s Cluster probes have been observing the portals, and NASA is sending a new mission, ”MMS” (Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission) in 2014 to study them in more detail. MMS consists of not one but four spacecraft that will circle the earth, finding and studying the “X-points” where the Sun’s and the Earth’s magnetic fields connect and create portals.

What they are, exactly, is not yet entirely clear, but Scudder says that tons of magnetically charged particles flow through the openings, causing aurora and geomagnetic storms. Some are tiny and disappear almost instantly, while others are large and fairly stable.

According to NASA, Scudder has found shortcuts ”worthy of the best portals of fiction, only this time the portals are real.”

Some might beg to differ, pointing out that the best portals of fiction are actually usable by humans, go places that are interesting and somewhat safe (as opposed to the surface of the sun, which is doubtless very interesting but not exactly safe), and can be opened and closed at will.

However, there’s no doubt that this is a pretty cool announcement. Just not one that we can use to get to Tatooine or the Delta Quadrant.

Here’s the full video from NASA:

Filed under: OffBeat

12 incredible Lego projects inspired by video games (gallery)

Dan Crawley — Sat, 30 Jun 2012 17:35:11 +0000

Gamers are a creative bunch. Not content simply playing their favorite titles, some like to express their love for gaming through the medium of Lego. The Lego Cuusoo site, a kind of construction Kickstarter, if you will, is now helping reward this creativity.

Minecraft was the first gaming franchise to be immortalized in plastic via the Cuusoo initiative, gaining 10,000 supporters and then making it through the stringent review process. Hot on its heels are a number of other gaming projects, two of which are now also under review: The Legend of Zelda minifigures and the Eve Online Rifter ship.

The gallery below shows these models alongside some other impressive video game projects shared on the DeviantArt and MOCpages websites. They are a testament to the creativity of both the Lego and gaming communities and a reminder of the versatility and power of the humble Lego brick.

[Images: Bioshock - Imagine_/Instructables; Portal - Brickthing/Cuusoo; Pikmin - Filip Felberg/MOCpages; Zelda - Mingles/DeviantArt; Arwing - archus7/DeviantArt; Castle Crashers - czar/Cuusoo; Rifter - czar/Cuusoo; Siege Tank - antti hakala/MOCpages ; Gyrados - retinence/Cuusoo; Gameboy - vonbrunk/Cuusoo; Minecraft - Facebook]

Filed under: Games

Artists use chalk to bring games to life…or sell pizza (gallery)

Mike Minotti — Thu, 21 Jun 2012 22:06:53 +0000

When I played with chalk as a kid, I was happy to just make a circle, or if I was feeling especially creative, a triangle. Luckily, people far more talented than me have taken the colorful sticks and used them to create impressive works of gaming-themed art.

The gallery below features characters and worlds from some of the most popular video games (including titles from Nintendo’s noteworthy The Legend of Zelda series, the physics-breaking Portal, and the block-falling puzzler Tetris) brought to life thanks to the power of chalk.

Filed under: Games

Quantum Conundrum is an unbalanced measure of brilliance and flaws (review)

Rob LeFebvre — Thu, 21 Jun 2012 14:00:41 +0000

Portal is one of my favorite games of all time. I love it so much that I even learned to play “Still Alive” on the ukulele. Knowing that Kim Swift, the Portal designer who went on to join Airtight Games, led Quantum Conundrum’s development only added to my intense anticipation for this title.

Journalists have quoted Swift saying that she wants to create games that are accessible to a wider market with enough challenge to satisfy more experienced players. Quantum Conundrum is a fantastic attempt at doing just that even if it doesn’t quite hit all the bullet points that such a widely appealing yet core-gamer-pleasing experience would need to have. It isn’t perfection, but it’s a brilliant try all the same.

Players will take on the role of a young child, aged somewhere between 10 and 12, who visits his wacky mad-scientist uncle’s house every year. This time, the boy arrives to find his relative missing and only able to communicate by voice. Professor Fitz Qwadrangle is the uncle’s name, and science-juice-fueled dimensional trickery is his game. With the aid of a dimension switching glove and several “batteries,” the player must move through each environment to ultimately restore power to three generators throughout the seemingly endless corridors and rooms of Qwadrangle Mansion.

WHAT YOU’LL LIKE

Dimensional shifting is a delight
The central gameplay mechanic here is that of changing the environment’s basic physical laws along fairly straightforward lines to access areas and avoid obstacles along the way.

In the fluffy dimension, all objects weigh far less than they otherwise would. Players can pick up and fling safes and couches with ease. The heavy dimension is the polar opposite: Objects have incredible weight, allowing cardboard boxes to trigger pressure plates and open remote doors. The gravity dimension reverses that force of attraction so that items will fall up. The slow dimension forces the flow of time to a crawl, allowing all sorts of tricks to occur, like jumping through a deadly spinning fan blade or tossing a table to jump on to float over and across large expanses of flooding, fatal science juice.

The real fun, however, comes in combining the different dimensional shifts in concert and with precise timing to achieve the goal in each section. Later levels have players manipulating time, gravity, and weight to move a safe from point A to point Q past laser beams, walls, conveyor belts, and more just to drop it on a pressure plate to open a door. When the player shifts dimensions correctly, he’ll experience an amount of zen concentration not unlike that of an conductor waving a baton to keep an orchestra playing along masterfully.

Level design brilliance
If one thing shines forth in Quantum Conundrum, it’s the beauty of the level design. Even the brutally difficult areas contain their own solutions, which become obvious with some attention, observation, and testing. None of the stages felt unfair or simply tricks: Each well-executed set of obstacles and solutions felt extremely satifsying to both suss out the answer and then execute perfectly to reach the end area.

Even the levels that required twitch-perfect timing and near-genius platforming skills felt like I could master them with just another try, just one more go. The puzzles are never too hard to figure out yet remain just one step ahead of the previous solution to constantly guide players to ever more epic amounts of effort and insanity.

Voice-overs matter
Professor Qwadrangle is a brilliantly acted character voiced to melodramatic perfection by John DeLancie, best known for his role on Star Trek as Q, the multi-dimensional being from the Q Continuum. His character in Quantum Conundrum is at turns hilarious, sarcastic, acerbic, and informative. He shows concern for his nephew throughout the twists and turns of the mansion but never as much as his worry for his house, his possessions, and — heaven forbid — the amount of damage players need to do to progress to the next section.

Qwadrangle never quite reaches the genius malevolence of GlaDOS, Portal’s antagonist, herself, but his constant companionship provides a needed through-line for players to want to reach the next section, the next checkpoint, and, yes, the end of the story.

Humor is key
This is a cute game, but mostly, it is funny. The pictures on the wall change with each dimensional shift, which alters the subjects of each painting with fluffy outfits, gravity-defying situations, or heavy medieval armor, depending. Little collectibles on each level holler out inappropriate noises, like dolphin, eagle, or cheetah cries. The written dialogue can be hilarious, and the death screens detail the numerous things players won’t be able to experience now that they’re dead. Each one is a joy to see even while screaming in frustration from a just-missed jump to a floating safe.

Filed under: Games

Pages: 1 2

GamesBeat’s gigantic E3 2012 roundup

Omri Petitte — Thu, 14 Jun 2012 23:48:59 +0000

The sensory smorgasbord of the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) heaved itself upon the video game industry for three straight days, and GamesBeat’s intrepid crew enthusiastically hit showfloors, conference halls, and meeting rooms to offer our readers piles of previews, interviews, and news.

What follows below is our collected coverage during the show. You’ll find everything here sorted into categories for easy navigability.

Awards

Who needs stickers? We analyzed, judged, and sorted our top picks for the show’s offerings directly for you. Take a look — the results might surprise you.

GamesBeat’s E3 2012 Game of the Show…plus staff picks – by Dan “Shoe” Hsu

The GamesBeat E3 non-award awards: The least prestigious awards in the industry – by GamesBeat staff

The coolest technologies we saw at E3 2012 – by Dean Takahashi

The best family games of E3 – by GamesBeat staff

The top 8 trends of E3, from bows to brutality – by Mike Minotti

The top 15 swag shirts of E3 2012 – by Rus McLaughlin

Previews

You’ve found the beating heart of E3′s overwhelming magic. Whether from observatory impressions or direct, hands-on experiences, GamesBeat discussed and dissected a sizable stable of upcoming games and hardware.

Hands-on

Hitman Absolution lets you perform hits in giant crowds – by Dean Takahashi

Metro Last Light fights shooter fatigue with deeper single player – by Dean Takahashi

Crysis 3 brings the jungle, gun hacking, and silent stealth kills to Manhattan – by Dean Takahashi

EA reveals Dead Space 3, coming with drop-in cooperative play – by Dean Takahashi

Sleeping Dogs turns Hong Kong crime movies into a video game – by Dean Takahashi

From the creator of Portal, Quantum Conundrum caters to physics-based puzzle gamers – by Dean Takahashi

Capcom remakes hack-slash-shoot-grapple formula with upcoming DmC: Devil May Cry – by Dean Takahashi

Capcom shows three playable characters for Resident Evil 6 – by Dean Takahashi

Neverwinter’s user-generated content could elevate it above the competition – by Stefanie Fogel

DmC: Devil May Cry is full of swagger…and F-bombs – by Eduardo Moutinho

Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed leaves Mario Kart in its dust…and wake…and vapor trail – by Mike Minotti

Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch is an anime you can actually play – by Eduardo Moutinho

Sony Online Entertainment’s PlanetSide 2 – by Rob LeFebvre

Slice, dice, and julienne enemies in Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance – by Eduardo Moutinho

Medal of Honor: Warfighter deploys fire teams to the front lines – by Eduardo Moutinho

Hell Yeah! is like Metroid with a chainsaw jetpack-riding demon bunny – by Mike Minotti

Dead or Alive 5 wants to deliver a power blow to the competition – by Eduardo Moutinho

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive’s simplicity is just what consoles need – by Omri Petitte

Hands-off

Just what kind of game is Star Wars 1313? – by Dean Takahashi

Warner Bros. confirms LEGO: Lord of the Rings video game – by Dean Takahashi

EA’s cute The Act romance game exploits iPad’s touchscreen for unique gameplay – by Dean Takahashi

Turn the snow crimson with redcoat blood in Assassin’s Creed III – by Dean Takahashi

Far Cry 3 demo leads you deeper into drug-induced insanity – by Dean Takahashi

Quantic Dream’s Beyond: Two Souls is one of the best games of E3 – by Dean Takahashi

The 5 different games you’ll be playing in Dishonored – by Sebastian Haley

Final Fantasy XIV brings new gameplay and western sensibilities to venerable franchise – by Rob LeFebvre

Windows 8 works hard to meet the needs of all gamers – by Rob LeFebvre

A trio of Mario games strengthen Nintendo’s 3DS lineup – by Mike Minotti

OnLive’s MultiView spectating entices multiplayer and co-op gamers – by Omri Petitte

Player choice matters in The Walking Dead: Episode 2 – by Stefanie Fogel

The Last of Us is even smarter than you think – by Rus McLaughlin

Star Wars 1313 is a game of firsts for the sci-fi franchise – by Eduardo Moutinho

The adventure-game renaissance continues with The Cave – by Eduardo Moutinho

Heroes and villains join forces in Epic Mickey: Power of Illusion – by Mike Minotti

007 Legends proves personality makes or breaks a game – by Omri Petitte

Breaking down what’s exactly new in God of War: Ascension – by Dan “Shoe” Hsu

Turning technology against your friends in Watch Dogs – by Omri Petitte

Interviews

Chasing after the wayward developer or evasive executive amid a sea of journalists and industry luminaries didn’t slake our interview appetite, and we nabbed a slew of thoughtful talks with members across various gaming companies. Take a look.

Why Ubisoft is pouring a lot of resources into Wii U games – by Dean Takahashi

Harvest Moon creator wants to spread happiness with his new game – by Jacob Lopez

How Shenmue’s lead programmer rescued a bad game – by Jacob Lopez

The Last Story developer talks Operation Rainfall, reason for cover system, and Wii U – by Jacob Lopez

With 1.3B tanks obliterated and 30M players, Wargaming.net plans to conquer the online gaming world – by Dean Takahashi

Even Scribblenauts’ creator is surprised by the things people make in his new game – by Jacob Lopez

The Witcher developer CD Projekt RED wants to set new standards with Cyberpunk – by Stefanie Fogel

Japan’s Gree moves mobile gaming into the spotlight at E3 – by Dean Takahashi

THQ’s Brian Farrell talks about looking for a bottom and staging a comeback – by Dean Takahashi

Crytek says CryEngine 3 already does awesome graphics as good as Unreal Engine 4 – by Dean Takahashi

Our opinions

During the craze-filled days of E3, our minds typically busied themselves with ensuring our legs avoided snapping off our torsos and running away with yelping noises. But sometimes, a cohesive thought miraculously coalesced within our overloaded brainpans. Our hands shakily reached for the keyboard, keys started tapping, and well…these are the results.

The DeanBeat: What to expect at E3 – by Dean Takahashi

4 ways developers will use SmartGlass to enhance Xbox 360 experiences – by Dan “Shoe” Hsu

Nintendo’s Wii U: Safe on first, weak on third-party – by Rus McLaughlin

Why Nintendo will have a tough time adding a second GamePad tablet controller to the Wii U – by Dean Takahashi

Tomb Raider is not torture porn – by Rus McLaughlin

Would it be a mistake for E3 to move out of LA? – by Dean Takahashi

Bored, impressed, and giddy: Our final thoughts on E3 2012 – by Dan “Shoe” Hsu

Move over, consoles – mobile is the future – by Rob LeFebvre

Microsoft’s E3 2012: Analysis of 16,000+ comments shows Halo 4, South Park impressed, rest did not – by Andrew Hiscock

Sony’s E3 2012: Analysis shows “shotgun blast” won big, Wonderbook lost – by Andrew Hiscock

Nintendo’s E3 2012: Reactions show hardcore gamers lost faith in Wii U – by Andrew Hiscock

Memes

All it takes is one memorable quote, one Freudian slip, or some facepalm-worthy banter to prompt the Internet community’s creative and unrestrained hand at animated gifs, a worshipful use of Impact font, and hastily jangled Photoshop edits. Here’s what we’ve found.

The best memes of E3 – by Jeff Grubb

Remember these crazy memes from past E3s? – by Jeff Grubb

The wildest memes from the Microsoft E3 press conference – by Jeff Grubb

Silly memes inspired by Sony’s E3 press event – by Jeff Grubb

Aisha Tyler: Ubisoft’s meme machine – by Rus McLaughlin

The oddest Nintendo E3 gifs and Photoshops from the Internet – by Jeff Grubb

Galleries

We snapped plenty of pictures while attending parties, pressers, and meandering the showfloor. Direct your eyeballs upon these galleries, and enjoy the view!

The big gallery of E3′s huge banners – by Mike Minotti

E3 2012 will get your hands up – by Evan Killham

Our editor-in-chief’s E3 adventure – by Evan Killham

The many costumes of E3 2012 – by Jacob Lopez

Retro games have a place at E3, too – by Jasmine Rea

Videos

Dubstep. A beleaguered Lara Croft. Ham-handed hosts. No, this isn’t the latest entry in Alex Trebek’s dream diary — it’s some of our E3 video and trailer content below. Enjoy!

Tomb Raider trailer shows how Lara Croft feels sorry for shooting you – by Dean Takahashi

Konami pre-E3 2012 event: More Castlevania and Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance – by Jasmine Rea

Ubisoft shows strong commitment to the Wii U – by Mike Minotti

6 awkward moments from the E3 press briefings – by Evan Killham

Why we wub wub wub E3 2012: The dubstep of E3 – by Jacob Lopez

Press conferences

Surprises and snooze-fests alike emanated from E3′s five major press briefings held by Microsoft, Electronic Arts (EA), Ubisoft, Sony, and Nintendo. Check out all the announcements and debuts here.

Microsoft (video)

Halo 4 trailer video shows Forerunners, new tech – by Rob LeFebvre

New Splinter Cell: Blacklist borrows from Uncharted – by Jeff Grubb

Gears of War: Judgment sets Sera on fire (again) – by Rus McLaughlin

Microsoft previews Xbox Music at E3 press conference – by Rob LeFebvre

Forza Horizon brings street racing to the franchise – by Jasmine Rea

Microsoft introduces Xbox SmartGlass to integrate smartphones and tablets with Xbox 360 – by Dean Takahashi

Nike+ Kinect Training brings in-depth fitness measuring to Xbox 360 – by Jeff Grubb

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer coming to Xbox 360 this fall – by Jacob Lopez

Usher hits the stage to announce Dance Central 3 – by Rob LeFebvre

Xbox Live is getting Nickelodeon, Machinima, and tons of live sports – by Tom Cheredar

Kinect voice commands hit EA Sports flagship titles – by Eduardo Moutinho

South Park creators introduce their game and playfully mock Microsoft – by Jeff Grubb

New Xbox 360 games coming from Signal Studios, Twisted Pixel, and…Gore Verbinski? – by Stefanie Fogel

Microsoft E3 2012 press conference recap…in limerick form – by Andrew Hiscock

Electronic Arts (video)

SimCity Social: If this free-to-play game is too good, will you pay $60 for the full PC version? – by Dean Takahashi

EA reveals Battlefield 3 Premium and fields “15 million players worldwide” – by Omri Petitte

Star Wars: The Old Republic gets new planet, new species, and free trial – by Jacob Lopez

EA nabs UFC from THQ – by Jeff Grubb

Medal of Honor: Warfighter’s beautiful carnage – by Rus McLaughlin

EA shows off Need for Speed: Most Wanted at E3 – by Rob LeFebvre

Ubisoft (video)

Rayman Legends rhythmically runs to the Wii U – by Eduardo Moutinho

You are the network in Ubisoft’s Watch Dogs – by Rus McLaughlin

Here’s where that Watch Dogs cube-head QR code goes – by Jeff Grubb

Sony (video)

Experimental developer Quantic Dream reveals the haunted life of Jody Holmes in Beyond – by Jasmine Rea

Nathan Drake and the Big Daddy Bouncer join PlayStation All-Stars: Battle Royale – by Mike Minotti

J.K. Rowling is writing PlayStation’s Wonderbook – by Rus McLaughlin

Sony announces Assassin’s Creed III Vita and PS3 bundles with exclusive content – by Jeff Grubb

Sony brings down the house with The Last of Us demo – by Dean Takahashi

Sony E3 2012 press conference recap…in limerick form – by Andrew Hiscock

Nintendo (video)

Social networking comes to Wii U, Miiverse will interface with PCs and phones – by Jasmine Rea

First look at action-strategy game Pikmin 3 – by Jeff Grubb

Nintendo confirms 23 games at E3, video streaming, and more for Wii U – by Mike Minotti

Wii Fit U will make you sweatier, livelier, and happier – by Rob LeFebvre

Brag to the Miiverse and take on new modes in New Super Mario Bros. U – by Eduardo Moutinho

Zombify your face with ZombiU for the Wii U – by Mike Minotti

Nintendo bets big on “asymmetric” tablet-based gameplay – one player against several – by Dean Takahashi

Batman: Arkham City Armored Edition utilizes Wii U’s GamePad screen – by Omri Petitte

Nintendo details 3DS Mario titles, Luigi’s Mansion, and third-party games – by Jeff Grubb

Nintendo Land brings asymmetrical multiplayer to Wii U – by Jasmine Rea

Nintendo’s E3 2012 press conference recap…in limerick form – by Andrew Hiscock

Filed under: Business, Games

Portal creator Kim Swift talks about indie gaming and Quantum Conundrum (interview)

Dean Takahashi — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 16:00:32 +0000

Kim Swift has built a name for herself as a creative indie game developer. She was the lead designer of Valve’s highly original Portal game. While a student at Digipen, she co-created a project dubbed Narbacular Drop, which served as the inspiration for Portal. She won Game of the Year and Innovation awards in 2007 at the Game Developers Choice awards.

Swift also worked on Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2. She left Valve in December 2009 to work for Airtight Games. There, she began work on Quantum Conundrum, a zany Portal-like physics game with a sense of humor. The game will be published this year as a downloadable title by Square Enix. We recently caught up with Swift for an interview. Here’s a transcript of our talk.

GamesBeat: So tell me about Quantum Conundrum. How did you get started on it?

Kim Swift: I started working at Airtight Games after I shipped Left 4 Dead 2 back in 2009. I pitched a couple of ideas internally with my team of people at Airtight, and they had some pitches as well. This particular gameplay concept, being able to switch between four different dimensions and use each dimension as a tool to solve these different puzzles and challenges, kind of came to the top.

It was the easiest approach of all the things that had been suggested. We were able to get something up and running within a couple of weeks — something that we could play. Granted, it was really ugly — it was super-ugly. But you could already see the emerging gameplay and how fun it would be.

GamesBeat: It almost seems like you weren’t quite done with the Portal experience in some ways? Inspired by it in some way?

Swift: I had a ton of fun working on Portal, and I loved making this type of game. Honestly, I love making games that I want to play, and I want to play more games like this.

GamesBeat: Like a physics-based game?

Swift: Just this environmental style of puzzle game. I think it’s really fun. It’s a lot of fun. I like being stumped by things, and I like that mental challenge. So I guess, to me, I’m hoping more players — more people actually — make games like this.

GamesBeat: So you want a hundred games like this?

Swift: Yeah, exactly! I want it to be a robust genre, like the first-person shooter industry, where I can take my pick.

GamesBeat: Quantum Conundrum is unusual. Where do you come up with something like this? How did the brainstorming lead to this mechanic?

Swift: I was walking down the street one day, and it just came to me. I don’t really have a particular inspiration for the game. I just was marinating on the thought of wanting to make another puzzle game, and the idea came to me.

GamesBeat: There’s humor in this, too.

Swift: Yeah. A little more slapstick and silly, quirky humor.

GamesBeat: Why was that also important? Is that another thing there isn’t enough of in games?

Swift: Yeah. Well, I love humorous games. I love to laugh, and I think it’s a really great way to attract players. It’s not a super — there’s no violence, really, and there’s no sex. There’s no swearing. So it’s the one thing that players can really latch on to, the fact that the game is hilarious. There’s lots of little moments, not only in the environment but in the writing, that should make players laugh and have a good time.

GamesBeat: Does that mean there’s a story in the traditional sense of a story?

Swift: Yeah. There is a story to the game, and you will get to hear commentary from Professor Quadrangle, who is your uncle. He’s currently trapped somewhere and isn’t entirely sure what happened to him. He has a bit of amnesia. So at the same time as you’re trying to figure out what’s going on, he is too.

GamesBeat: It’s been in the works for a year. What’s been the challenge for you so far?

Swift: Doing it in under a year [laughs]. That’s a pretty big challenge, actually. We started using the Unreal 3 engine, but we started from nothing. We had the engine, but we had no art assets, and we had no characters. So starting completely from scratch and trying to make the best game we could in a limited amount of time with a small amount of people was definitely a challenge. But it was a rewarding one.

GamesBeat: It seems like you could have done something like this at Valve. Was there a big company/small company thing here for you? What made it so that you did this at a new company?

Swift: I think I just wanted to try something new for a little while. I’d been at Valve since I got out of college. I felt like I kind of grew up there, and I wanted to see what else was out in the world. One of the owners of Airtight Games is a friend of mine, and he asked if I would run a team there. It just sounded like a great opportunity.

GamesBeat: How many people has it taken to do this?

Swift: This was a team of 16 people.

GamesBeat: You’re on Xbox Live and PSN.

Swift: And Steam.

GamesBeat: This kind of downloadable-title market has become a much more viable part of the game business. It doesn’t seem like there was a market for this sort of mid-size game until recently.

Swift: Well, I think the downloadable scene in general is really, really interesting for developers because it’s low-risk. It doesn’t require as much money as a triple-A title. And it’s a great proving ground for new IPs, new concepts, new ideas — things that I think I, as a developer, find really attractive.

GamesBeat: What else is interesting to you? You want to ship this, right, but what else? Are there some unfinished tasks for you as far as making games?

Swift: You know, I just finished this one, and I haven’t really thought about what’s next just yet.

GamesBeat: Are mobile games or social games interesting to you?

Swift: Yeah. Pretty much all games are interesting to me. I’m open to everything. I just want to see what other opportunities are out there.

[Photo credit: Square Enix]

GamesBeat 2012 is VentureBeat’s fourth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. This year we’re calling on speakers from the hottest mobile, social, PC, and console companies to debate new ways to stay on pace with changing consumer tastes and platforms. Join 500+ execs, investors, analysts, entrepreneurs, and press as we explore the gaming industry’s latest trends and newest monetization opportunities. The event takes place July 10-11 in San Francisco, and you can get your early-bird tickets here.

Filed under: Games

Super-cool minimalist video game art posters — which one is your favorite? (gallery)

Sebastian Haley — Sat, 26 May 2012 22:15:48 +0000

We love video game fan art here at GamesBeat, but we don’t get to share it out as much as we’d probably like to. It’s usually just an internal email or Facebook post saying, “Hey, look how cool this is!” But there’s times where we have to break the rules and share something that’s too awesome to keep to ourselves. This is one of those times.

The following gallery is a selection of stylish art posters by Ron Guyatt and his girlfriend, Indy Lytle. Each piece is available for purchase on their Etsy shop for $20, or at discounted rates if purchased in bundles. Enjoy!

And for those of you more interested in movies, jump to the next page for a Guyatt and Lytle’s movie art gallery.

Filed under: Games

Pages: 1 2

The past, present, and future of video games at the DIY-focused Maker Faire 2012

Giancarlo Valdes — Fri, 25 May 2012 20:42:24 +0000

It’s rare to see Tesla coils, a man in a giant cardboard robot suit, an R2-D2-building club, steam punk accessories, and video games share a common zip code, much less congregate in one confined space. Yet they were all part of this past weekend’s celebration of do-it-yourself culture at Maker Faire 2012 in San Mateo, Calif. Packed with exhibits and experiments, Maker Faire is a chance for “makers” — that is, anyone who actively seeks to create something with their own hands — to not just show off their projects and hobbies but to inspire the thousands of people who came to see them.

Video games were just a small fraction of what was on display, but collectively they composed an insightful reflection on the history of the medium. On the fairgrounds were not just one, but two organizations who have dedicated themselves to the preservation of video games: the Digital Game Museum (DGM), who aims to preserve and explore the history and impact of digital games (but lacks a permanent home), and the Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment (MADE), who has similar goals but also possesses a dedicated physical space in Oakland, Calif. to house its work.

Walking through the carefully curated DGM exhibit felt surreal — underneath a series of glass cases were game boxes, jewel cases, manuals, and other paraphernalia that were neatly placed next to their corresponding placards. Games were treated with the same level of reverence and respect that is normally reserved for 18th century books at other museums; except not too long ago, people could just walk into a store and buy these classic titles off the shelves.

The exhibit served as a physical reminder to just how far the medium has evolved over the last two decades, especially as consoles, handhelds, and PCs move toward a rapidly approaching, digital-only future. This emphasis on the corporeal presence of games was not limited to DGM alone: At the adjacent MADE booth, an assortment of consoles, both old and new, attracted the wandering eyes and fingers of the many people who passed by.

Through the massive crowds and sniveling children, and across an art installation that featured fire-breathing umbrellas, I found the Center Stage, where at 3:30 p.m. on a bright Sunday afternoon, Double Fine Production’s president and CEO, Tim Schafer, was speaking with a panel of crowdfunding experts. Earlier this year, Double Fine raised an astonishing $3.3 million on Kickstarter, a popular crowdfunding platform on the web, to develop a new point-and-click adventure game. Kickstarter, along with other crowdfunding sites, has since become de rigueur for independent developers looking for alternative ways to fund their creations.

Unlike the other panelists, however, Schafer was the sole representative of a crowdfunding success story, and he espoused the benefits of using Kickstarter as a way for fans to fund the games they want to play. He mentioned that, if possible, Double Fine would love to somehow make crowdfunding a part of a recurring business, since it would allow them to “directly work with the customers and not worry about any large companies getting involved.”

Despite its recent popularity, however, crowdfunding is far from being a sure bet. “It’s not a magical process that’s going to change everything for you…if you haven’t built a personal brand where people trust you and know you,” warned panelist Hiroshi Wald, managing director for venture capital firm Austral Capital Partners, “you do need to have a lot more in place [than just a website asking for donations].”

When Wald polled the audience for those looking to use crowdfunding as either a means to get a project off the ground or as a way to create a “start-up for life,” a young, scrawny man sitting behind me immediately raised his hand. “Code Hero!” he shouted. He was wearing a black hat and a black t-shirt emblazoned with the game’s logo. “We’re $170,000 in the hole!”

That man was Alex Peake, founder and CEO of Primer Labs, a small development team who had recently raised over $170K via Kickstarter for a game that teaches players how to program. As someone who had failed his programming classes back in college, I can personally vouch that learning how to code is no easy task, making Code Hero look all the more intriguing.

“First-person shooters can shoot science as well as bullets,” Alex proclaimed in a Code Hero presentation earlier that day, citing Valve’s Portal games as inspiration. Indeed, Code Hero will look familiar to anyone who’s ever played an FPS before — except instead of being handed a machine gun, the player uses a pair of glasses known as a code ray. This code ray can shoot strings of code into the game world, where the commands are then executed in real time. The team is confident that the game — through a series of puzzle levels (not unlike Portal) along with a narrative that incorporates the history of computational programming — will be teaching players to learn how to program in no time.

While other titles have flirted with this idea of making a game-within-a-game before (like Media Molecule’s LittleBigPlanet franchise), Code Hero appears to be the first to teach you coding skills that are applicable in the real world. It’s the latest push for the democratization of tool sets — already seen with Epic’s Unreal Development Kit, as well as the ubiquitous Unity engine — that allow people to develop the skills and confidence necessary to create games on their own.

This DIY mentality — also known as the “maker mentality” — for game design has the power to diversify an industry that has largely been the domain of triple-A publishers and developers. Perhaps the future of the medium isn’t going to be dependent on the newest tech engines or consoles, but on the ingenuity of millions of people who, when given the right tools, have the potential and drive to create great games.

“It starts with what you want to have,” said Adam Savage, co-host of the popular Mythbusters TV show. “When you want to learn something, you’ll make it better.” He was addressing the large maker crowd early Sunday morning with an inspirational speech about why we make what we make — his enthusiasm for the culture was infectious. With the Tesla coils towering behind him, he proceeded to deliver a thunderous declaration: “What unites us is that we are creatures of creation…make what [you're compelled to] make, because it will make the world a better place.”

Filed under: Games

GamesBeat Weekly Roundup

Jasmine Maleficent Rea — Fri, 18 May 2012 18:59:13 +0000

If you follow VentureBeat but don’t regularly check our GamesBeat site, here’s a list of the best games stories we ran over the last seven days that you may have missed.

This week, Diablo III launched and promptly caused a stir with persistent server issues, Activision and Electronic Arts settled over the Infinity Ward lawsuit, and former N-Control sales specialist Paul Christoforo revealed details in his lawsuit over the Avenger controller debacle.

You’ll also find reviews for Max Payne 3 and Game of Thrones, as well as a preview for Zombie Swipeout. GamesBeat’s guide to Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition is also available.

(Updated with new pictures) Student reveals the origins of his real-life Portal turret

Mike Minotti — Sat, 12 May 2012 16:22:44 +0000

Making a working turret that tracks movement and shoots at its targets is challenging enough, but Penn State University student Kevin Swanson had an extra objective for his final Advanced Mechatronics project; it had to look like a turret from Portal, the popular puzzle game/shooter from Valve.

“My professor, who is obsessed with Portal, told us as a semi-joke [that he'll] only allow it if the turret looks like the Portal turret,” Swanson told GamesBeat in an exclusive interview. ”I just kind of ran with it from there.”

The robot uses an IP webcam to track targets and fire bullets. “The idea started with us playing with one of those USB desk turrets, and we wanted to automate it with a camera for our final project,” said Swanson. Don’t worry, this machine isn’t deadly. It just fires soft Nerf darts, but the bizarrely adorable device still talks to its would-be-victims, just like in the game.

“It’s not done yet,” Swanson told us. He’s still working on the familiar, egg-shaped casing for his machine. “I’m looking at about another month, and it should look just like the turret form the game.” We look forward to seeing the final project…as long as it’s still loaded with just Nerf ammo.

You can see the robot in action and learn more about how it works from Kevin’s video, posted below.

UPDATED: Kevin was kind enough to send us some pictures of the development of his incredible machine.

Filed under: Games, OffBeat

3 of gaming’s most elaborate inside jokes

Evan Killham — Wed, 02 May 2012 21:54:21 +0000

Reddit user Blizzlock discovered something interesting in the beta of developer ArenaNet’s upcoming massively multiplayer online role-playing game Guild Wars 2 last weekend. The description of the in-game ability “Crippling Shot” reads, in part, “Shatter your foe’s dreams of becoming an adventurer with a single arrow to the knee.” This will sound familiar to players of last fall’s epic RPG Skyrim, in which non-player guard characters would often lament the losses of their own adventuring careers.

While developers referencing other companies’ games is nothing new (think of all the cake references since Portal’s release in 2007), a few game makers have gone all-out with their nods to other titles. For example:

Grand Theft Auto III kills the Wheelman

Developer Rockstar Games’ open-world crimefest includes a mission called “Two-Faced Tanner,” which tasks players with tracking down and killing a “strangely animated undercover cop” who is “more or less useless out of his car.” Savvy players would recognize the target as Tanner, the protagonist of Ubisoft Reflections’ (then Reflections Interactive) Driver series. In Driver 2 (which hit stores a year before GTA3), Tanner can leave his car and steal other vehicles on the road; Rockstar apparently did not approve of other people intruding on its turf. The GTA3 developer even goes so far as to match Tanner’s car to the one he drives in his own games and recreate his bizarre running animation.

Trials Evolution shows how low it can go

What do dirt bikes have to do with children wandering through dark and frightening woods? Nothing whatsoever (I hope), but that didn’t stop developer RedLynx from including a level based on Danish studio PlayDead’s spooky puzzle-platformer Limbo in Trials Evolution. If that seems like an odd match for an Xbox Live Arcade racer, you’re right, but the stage (shown in the video below) is undeniably cool in action. Not only does the environment look and sound like Limbo, right down to its gloomy silhouette aesthetic, chirping crickets, and a cameo from its trademarked giant spider, but RedLynx also drops Trials’ traditional rear three-quarter camera in favor of Limbo’s wide-angle profile perspective.

Valve vs. Capcom: Whoever wins, zombies lose

I saved the strangest one for last: a game of literal one-upmanship.

One of the Xbox 360 Achievements for Capcom’s 2006 zombie-basher Dead Rising was called “Zombie Genocider.” To unlock it, players had to kill 53,594 undead enemies (the population of its setting of Willamette, Colorado). Two years later, when Valve released its own apocalypse-action game, Left 4 Dead, it included an Achievement called “Zombie Genocidest,” which demanded the murder of 53,595 brain munchers. See, that’s fun with suffixes.

Capcom fired back in 2010′s Dead Rising 2 by including an Achievement with the funny-in-a-different-way name of “Z-Genocider 2: Genocide Harder,” which raised the required body count to 53,596. Valve has yet to raise the bar again.

This story has an interesting side note: Radical Entertainment’s horrible-person simulator Prototype, released in 2009, awards an Achievement/PlayStation 3 Trophy called “Trail of Corpses” for dispatching 53,596 enemies. Radical beat Capcom to the punch, but failed to stick the joke-name landing. It’s a little awkward, really, like a guy who barges into the middle of a conversation, laughs at a joke someone just made, and then tells the same joke and forgets the punchline.

Filed under: Games

The four lessons other developers can learn from the Valve employee handbook

Jeffrey Grubb — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 01:42:12 +0000

Every developer should wish it were Valve. The creator of the Half-Life series has a certain quality that makes its products nearly universally praised by critics and fans. Up until now, many onlookers have credited Gabe Newell, Valve’s founder and managing director, with guiding the developer (and digital retailer) to its unprecedented success, but the recently released Handbook for New Employees suggests that a strong personality at the top is only half the story.

GamesBeat contacted Valve’s vice president of marketing, Doug Lombardi (although after reading the handbook we have to wonder if that is a title he concocted for himself), and he confirmed the book’s authenticity. Now that we know it’s real, what lessons can other developers and publishers learn from the way Valve works? We’ve pinpointed four key aspects from the handbook’s text that others can emulate.

Have a sense of humor

Like the award-winning puzzle-based-shooter Portal, Valve’s Handbook for New Employees is filled with delightfully witty writing. For example, in a section of the guide that describes some of the office’s amenities (a gym, a massage parlor, a full-service cleaner), the book tells the new hire to relax and enjoy these things. “It’s not a sign that this place is going to come crumbling down like some 1999-era dot-com startup,” reads the handbook. “If we ever institute caviar-catered lunches, though, then maybe something’s wrong. Definitely panic if there’s caviar.”

Funny pictures and humorous writing can do a lot to humanize what would otherwise be a soulless entry from the human-resources department. Making people smile while giving them instructions makes it clear that real people put in an effort. That’s something others will respond to, and it could create a caring atmosphere that ends up positively affecting the final consumer products.

Care for your employee’s families

Valve makes a lot of money. According to the handbook, its profitability per employee is higher than Google, Amazon, or Microsoft. That makes it pretty easy to take everyone, along with their families, on a company vacation, which is something that the Washington-based corporation does once a year. That’s not realistic for every studio, but that doesn’t mean others should forget about their employee’s home life.

The Valve handbook opens up with a dedication that reads: “To the families of all Valve employees. Thank you for helping us make such an incredible place.”

A “thank you” goes a very long way. It acknowledges that the employees bring their work home with them, and their families struggle with it as well. The difference between having the support of loved ones and not having that support is the difference between a satisfying job and a miserable one.

The guide also features a timeline of significant events in Valve’s history. It marks the first company vacation in 1998 to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico and notes that 30 employees attended with zero children. At the end of the timeline, it notes the latest vacation to the Big Island of Hawaii in 2012. This time, 293 employees brought along 183 children (although I suppose the guide didn’t specify that these were the employees’ children). Have you ever worked for anyone who knew the total number of children that its employees have? Again, knowing something tiny like that shows a tremendous amount of humanity, and it’s something that any company can do regardless of its budget.

Treat your employees like adults

After reading the entire manual, the obvious standout revelation is Valve’s “flat” organizational structure — that is to say that it doesn’t have one. Everyone decides which project that they should be working on.”This company is yours to steer,” reads the guidebook. “Toward opportunities and away from risks. You have the power to green-light projects. You have the power to ship products.”

Sounds crazy, right? Not so much. The Handbook for New Employees puts a huge emphasis on hiring great people. “When you’re an entertainment company that’s spent the last decade going out of its way to recruit the most intelligent, innovative, talented people on Earth, telling them to sit at a desk and do what they’re told obliterates 99 percent of their value,” Valve writes.

Maybe it’s too much to ask the rigid hierarchies at other development houses to drastically shift to this free-loving hippie way of conducting business, but it shouldn’t be too much for those companies to treat their employees like adults. After all, hiring someone is a sign of trust. Extend that trust to every aspect of the position.

When you give freedom to creative people, it puts the onus on them to make something on their own instead of waiting around to be instructed. It also makes the employee/employer relationship feel more like a partnership. It says “we’re both adults who can benefit from one another” rather than “sit down and get your work done like a good boy.” It builds respect which in turn will build pride in the work and the company.

Mitigate the fear of failure

Fear of failure is a key player in the struggle for perfection. No one notices when the work stops at good enough, but a failure to reach greatness will draw a lot of negative attention. When a job is on the line, a lot of people will quietly settle for average. Valve takes a different tactic:

“Providing the freedom to fail is an important trait of [Valve] — we couldn’t expect so much of individuals if we also penalized people for errors,” the handbook reads. “Even expensive mistakes, or ones which result in a very public failure, are genuinely looked at as opportunities to learn.”

Again, this puts the responsibility on the creative person. They can no longer point to negative repercussions as an excuse for not trying something new and amazing.

The human corporation

That’s not to say Valve is perfect. The handbook even has a section titled “What is Valve not good at?” It lists things like “disseminating information internally” and “making predictions longer than a few months out.” Most interestingly this page of the book points out that the developer misses out on some potential employees who prefer to work in a more traditional environment, which acknowledges that these methods aren’t for everybody. Still, the motivation behind these actions is something that every employer can learn from.

Humanity is the unifying theme that separates Valve from other game companies. Whether it’s respecting someone enough to trust them to do what’s best or sprucing up typical human-resources copy with pleasant humor, it’s all a sign that the people who comprise the staff care about one another and the work they produce.

Now, if only we could figure out a way to make them love releasing Half-Life 3 just as much.

Filed under: Games

Portal’s test chambers created to scale in Minecraft (video)

Rob LeFebvre — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 17:14:33 +0000

In the wake of yesterday’s report on the Minecraft Game of Thrones recreation, it’s only fitting that today we find this stunning one-to-one scale re-creation of the famous test chambers from Portal, Valve’s unexpected hit originally released for the PC and Xbox 360 as part of their Orange Box game bundle.

The Minecraft level consists of two parts: the mod that provides players with everything from portal guns to turrets and the custom map created to fully take advantage of the mod. The whole of the resulting mix is definitely greater than the sum of the two parts.

If you want to do this yourself, you can download the mod here, get the map here, and run through the classic Portal levels as seen in the video. Of course, you can also break out of them and engage in all sorts of mischief as well.

There are tons of tutorials on applying mods to Minecraft, but a great video on how to install this particular mod is right here.

Filed under: Games

The 6 best game endings of all-time (and how BioWare would ruin them)

Sebastian Haley — Sat, 31 Mar 2012 21:30:30 +0000

Video game endings tend to feel a lot like an afterthought. Whereas a bad movie only ever consumes two hours of your life, games can have you playing upwards of 100+ hours before reaching the finale, and quite often that payoff is woefully underwhelming. Two big-names examples in just the past few weeks include Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City, where the conclusion was given about as much attention as bug-testing in a Bethesda game, and Asura’s Wrath, which has a “true” ending that acts as nothing more than a gateway for “closure DLC.”

And of course, Mass Effect 3’s troubled ending has had myriad repercussions for the entire industry. With that in mind, the GamesBeat review team pooled together some of our all-time favorite climaxes in the hopes of showing modern developers how to end a game the right way.

Super Metroid

Before Aerith’s death in Final Fantasy VII, there was Baby in Super Metroid. Before self-destruct sequences became a staple of the Resident Evil series, Metroid did it first. This game’s ending has it all: suspense, nostalgia, loss, redemption, and an edge-of-your-seat escape as an entire world explodes around you. You can even subtly alter the ending by entering a secret area and helping the friendly Zebes creatures escape. Then, depending on how well you performed throughout the game, you may receive the prize you’ve been waiting nearly a decade for: a 16-bit version of Samus Aran sans her armor. It was all worth it!

The BioWare version: Instead of rushing to your defense, the Metroid larva is shown aboard the Normandy outrunning a solar-system-sized explosion, leaving you to fend for yourself during the final battle.

Silent Hill 2

Silent Hill 2 remains to be one of gaming’s most thought-provoking and unsettling experiences. If David Lynch created a survival horror game, this would be it. Even after several sequels, Konami themselves have failed to capture the essence of what made Silent Hill 2 so affecting (and they have they tried so very, very hard). There are six different endings, with the first four being no more or less perplexing than the game itself. Somehow these are outdone by the other two endings, which involve aliens or discovering a dog has been the mastermind behind all of your internal struggles. Perhaps his owner is the Architect from The Matrix Reloaded?

The BioWare version: The Dog ending is the only ending available. The door on the left reveals a shih tzu, the one down the middle reveals a pug, and the one on the right reveals a corgi.

Darksiders

The original Darksiders wasn’t exactly a perfect game. War, the most badass of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, spends most of his time overcoming contrived puzzles that would make Nathan Drake scoff. However, after the final boss battle, War openly challenges both Heaven and Hell. The archangel Uriel asks, “You would wage this war alone?” “No. Not alone,” War grumbles, just as three meteors plummet from the sky heralding the arrival of the three other Horsemen. It’s the moment players have been anticipating for the entire game, and its execution is handled perfectly.

The BioWare version: Darksiders itself remains untouched, but Obsidian Entertainment replaces BioWare to develop the now-inevitably inferior and “hella buggy” sequel.

The feature continues on the next page.

Filed under: Games, Video

Pages: 1 2

Technically disastrous Skyrim is Bethesda’s “most solid release” yet

Sebastian Haley — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 03:24:42 +0000

Bethesda Game Studios’ Todd Howard has finally broken his three-month-long silence regarding The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim’s notorious technical issues.

“Statistically, it is not nearly as bad as it seems,” Howard told IndustryGamers. ”Meaning, by all the internal and external data, this is our most solid release.”

Bethesda Softworks’ games have a long history of being released with countless bugs and glitches, often rendering certain quests and content impossible to complete. The PlayStation 3 version of Skyrim in particular suffered from tremendous slowdown after a couple hours of play.

The PlayStation 3 “lag” also occurred in previous triple-A titles from the studio, including Fallout 3 and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, so the whole “Oh man, we totally didn’t expect this” line is a little hard to believe. A member of Obsidian Entertainment, who developed Fallout: New Vegas (also published by Bethesda), acknowledged the issue and explained why it keeps popping up.

“[Skyrim is] also our most popular by a large factor,” Howard said, “so we do have a lot of people on the PS3 who play the games a lot, and their games are at a state that the game is just taxing the PS3 enough. That’s a fact; so, it really wasn’t until we were able to get save games from the users — because, literally, how they play the game over 100 hours — some of it, very little of it, we were able to reproduce and take care of on our own and a lot of it that you’re seeing now, we weren’t. So over the course of, like, December, the community helped us. We got their save games. We’d literally have to look in and say, ‘What quests do they have running, what order? Oh, he’s doing this. He’s got these dragons here. This script is running. Why is it kicking out this many things?’”

For those not familiar with game development, what Howard is referring to is also known as “quality assurance,” and is usually done before a game releases.

Howard gave the opening keynote at last week’s DICE 2012 conference in Las Vegas, Nev. and curiously did not take the opportunity to address Skyrim’s issues. Instead, to kick frustrated customers while they were down, Howard obliviously teased a number of highly desirable features (such as dragon mounts, new weapons, graphical enhancements, etc.) that the development team had created in one week.

The Bethesda Blog post announcing the 1.4 patch (which allegedly corrects nearly 60 major bugs including the PS3 slowdown) quickly became overrun with users listing many more outstanding issues.

I understand that Skyrim is an extremely ambitious title, and for those unaffected by the PlayStation 3 lag effect, the game is quite enjoyable, even despite many of the technical issues. But the fact that unfinished, untested retail releases have become a seemingly acceptable signature of Bethesda, all while selling upwards of 10 million units, is concerning. It fuels what is already a dangerous mindset of many publishers who believe a product can be released now and fixed later — and ultimately diminishes the overall quality of new games. This is in direct opposition to companies like Valve (Half-Life, Portal) and Blizzard (Warcraft, Diablo) who are known for the tagline: “It will be done when it’s done.”

The silver lining is that Howard also stated downloadable content for Skyrim will be far more substantial than in Bethesda’s previous games and will feel more like expansions. Luckily none of the DLC has been tied to an arbitrary marketing date like 11/11/11, so there’s a better chance they’ll be given more rigorous testing before being sold.

Filed under: Games