Layoffs Suck

This is too bad. It appears that Sandblast Games (formerly Cranky Pants) will be closing after massive layoffs. Evil Dead: Regeneration was my second project as a tester. The game was fun if a bit repetitive. I haven’t seen much from them since, which might explain their situation, but it still sucks.

I was talking to one of my coworkers (a test lead) about this and he commented on how it seems like there are always news stories about massive layoffs at developers but that he feels safe in QA because that thing doesn’t seem to happen to us. Maybe it does happen and we don’t hear about it as much, but since I’ve moved beyond the level of a temp three years ago, I have yet to worry about my job security. I guess I should consider myself lucky.

Free Street Fighter 2 HD Beta (Commando 3 Purchase Required)

Capcom will be providing an eight week, online beta for the highly anticipated Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix. Sounds awesome, what's the catch? You have to purchase Capcom's other upcoming XBLA title, Wolf of the Battlefield: Commando 3 for $10.

You remember Commando on the NES, right? I still have my copy. It was a top down, vertical scrolling shooter (I vaguely remember it being fun, but it has been a while) that is also getting an upgrade in this new age of digital distribution gaming.

I can think of two other high profile instances of this tactic: Crackdown with the Halo 3 beta and Zone of the Enders with the Metal Gear Solid 2 demo. This tactic of packaging demos of highly anticipated games with second tier games is an intriguing one. On one hand, the full game sells really well. On the other, despite the game's critical and fiscal reception, the series usually dies pretty quickly. Usually when games sell as well as these, sequels are usually in order. Crackdown doesn't seem to be getting one any time soon and, while Zone of the Enders 2 did arrive, it sales were much lower. Wolf of the Battlefield: Commando 3 will probably suffer the same fate, as I don't think nostalgia is as strong as many other Capcom properties. Now, if they packaged this with the Bionic Commando remake, I'd be sold in a heartbeat.

We're Doing Smoething Right

Next Generation beat me to it with an expose on whether or not this has been the greatest year ever for games released. They have fancy charts and graphs and came up with the hard fact that, overall, this is the second worst year since 2001 in terms of actual reviewed games. They go on to point out that while this seems to contradict the feeling that we have had a great year, we have other cause to celebrate. The industry has been able to sustain a four console race, bigger games and sales, and the presence of online across most platforms is all quite admirable.

The only thing I would add to their in depth report is what I noticed as a trend on Metacritic. On all current generation consoles, their top ten list has been dominated by new releases in the last four months. With the exception of Gears of War and Oblivion, the Xbox 360 has eight new titles in the top ten since August. The PS3 top ten list includes five games from the last few months. Super Mario Galaxy is the second highest rated game of all time.

Next Generation speculates that the last generation had a similar spike about a year after their release only to peak three or four years into the life cycle. If in two years, we have another peak in game quality and the top ten lists are all replaced with new games, gamers have very bright future. It also means that someone is probably working on possibly the greatest game of all time right now.

Does One Game Make a Franchise?

On Friday Evening, I finished Bioshock while saving all of the Little Sisters. By itself, it was a very emotional and powerful ending but the themes of fatherhood hit particularly close to home. The game was phenomenal from start to finish and it will easily be the game of the year.

Earlier today, Take Two held their earning call and praised their hit title. Take-Two chairman Strauss Zelnick said of the game's success "Clearly, we have a new hit franchise on our hands." This stuck me quite odd. While the game is clearly a critical and financial success, I don't see one game as a "franchise." Zelda and Madden are franchises, long running series that have been successful year in and year out.

I understand that this talk came from the people responsible to the shareholders that want a promise of more success to come. Games that transcend the banality of our industry are not immune from the franchise mentality that plagues this industry. Shareholders want high returns on little investment, they want sock prices to go up. Unfortunately, they want to capitalize on this success.

But it has not always worked out. Great games are not always the launching pads for viable franchises. For many reasons, consecutive titles in a "franchise" fail to meet expectations: KOTOR, Maximo, Prince of Persia. On the other hand, the major franchises have all started all small, developed a cult following and progressively improved from year to year: GTA, Final Fantasy, Tony Hawk, even Halo. Bioshock set the that first franchise step pretty high and its going to take quite an effort to maintain that level of excellence.

This is not just another Guitar Hero post

The internets have been all aflutter today with video of Guitar Hero III in action, presumably, on the Xbox360. Joystiq made comment in their post that caught my attention:

It's hard to blame the team from Neversoft if the game's playing a little differently at the moment, as they didn't have access to the code (created by Harmonix) from the original two games.

While I know that when Activision acquired Red Octane they also received the Guitar Hero publishing rights. It seems odd that they didn't get any of the code in the process. It stuck out in my mind because it seems to mirror some of the things that go on at my own company.

Strictly speaking about only titles on Nintendo platforms, with all the developers under the wing of THQ, there appears to be little in the way with sharing of resources and ideas. Throughout the test cycle, some developers will continue to struggle with functionality that our other developers code with ease. Instead of communicating with each other, there seems to be more interaction with support at Nintendo. It seems like a case of one hand never talking to any of the other hands. We seem to have a system in place that should help with this but that our developers are still trying to figure out how to use it. Hopefully in the future, as they become better acquainted with helping each other, the test cycle will go smoother and the end product will be of a higher and consistent quality.