It might look pretty...

...but they're not pushing game play forward if it solely consists of quick time events. It seems like Quantic Dream, who also developed Indigo Prophesy, may need to start directing actual cinema instead of tacking on button presses and calling it interactive. At least it isn't porn.

The Overlord Will Return!

I loved the original Overlord. It was a fun mix of action and strategy, with a lot of humor mixed in. I'm glad to see that sales weren't as bad as I feared and we'll look to not only get one sequel, but also Wii and DS versions as well. I guess that goes to show that when a developer releases a decent game in the summer months when there is little competition, people will buy it. Hmm, imagine that.

Besides, this game allows me to act out my deepest desires to order around my own little minions and have them do my binding. Oh, I may have said too much.

Three Overlord Titles Announced for 2009 | Game | Life from Wired.com

Holiday Season Bloodbath

While it's good for my wallet, I'm sad to see that Afro Samurai has been pushed back till January 27th, 2009. While an official release date may not have been announced, many retailers had it pegged for an October or Fall release, a long with just about every other title we know about.

I will never understand our industry's continued dependence on the holiday quarter for release schedules. Firstly, with the escalating costs of development and vast number of choices all competing for limited funds out there, makes little business sense to me to force a game on the public. Then, year after year, quality but lower profile games get over looked by the masses further enforcing the downward spiral of publisher reluctance to produce original IP.

I also see a drastic effect on overall quality as well. We have just over 70 skus in test right now. And that is just Nintendo platforms. With a nine man team, every game is not going to get the test time that they need. Granted we aren't testing the functional stuff, but those teams are stretched thin as well. The rush to hit dates is on and quality is the first to be sacrificed. Instead of pacing ourselves for the year and bringing more quality to store shelves, we burn ourselves out in the summer to get anything we can to Fall shoppers.

But, obviously, we aren't the only publisher with this mentality and I wish a few would start seeing that there are other months throughout the year. Especially when we almost always go from January to August with high profile releases very few and far between.

October was already going to be expensive with Fable 2 and Fallout 3 coming out. There's also Guitar Hero World Tour and Dead Space. Afro Samurai looks like a very fun game but it would have probably been relegated to a game I borrow from someone instead of full purchase. Being released in January may be the best decision their publisher has made.

Dead Rising Announced for the Wii, Neutered

Dead Rising is in my top five games for the Xbox360. Its blend of action and story were very engrossing. It also made some surprising and polarizing design decisions. Many people either hated it or loved it. I was definitely in the latter.

The game was structured in a very open, non-linear fashion; allowing each player to forge their own path through the zombie infested mall. It allowed you to choose which bosses you wanted to take down and which people to try and rescue. Each subsequent play through could play out as a an individuals own mini zombie cinematic experience.

The save system and leveling up the character were a bit odd at first. In time, it all came together for me and made the game that much more enjoyable. By limiting the save locations and creating a very difficult decision upon death (start from the beginning with all of your accumulated stats or reload your last save), the game ramped up the stress put on the player. Some found less overwhelming and frustrating, I just like it heightened the experience. I had to weigh my options; should I save the couple with the wounded husband or the brothers who can defend themselves better? The leveling system adds another layer to the game that is not normally seen in action games. As Frank learns new moves and becomes more powerful, the game really becomes fun. And setting up crazy pictures for big points was good too. Since the experience carried over from game to game, it really encouraged multiple play-through.

Now we get word that Capcom is bringing the game to the Nintendo Wii. Only instead of a faithful, low-resolution homage to the original, we get a watered down, "casual" experience that wreaks of cashing in on the success of Resident Evil 4's outing on the same console.

They taken much of the flexibility out of the game by creating a very linear path to plot points and eliminating Otis's side quests. Apparently, the save system has been made "less frustrating" to appease the new herd of gamers on the Wii. The camera angle has been changed to the over-the-shoulder RE4 style which caused the developers so much problems they took the photography out of the game completely. Frank is a photographer, it's the whole reason he's in the mall! Not only have the elements that make Dead Rising what it is have hit the cutting room floor, the graphical power of the Wii buckled under the weight of hundreds of zombies on screen on once. This number has been significantly decreased, but I guess will have to wait to see the final game.

Lastly, they've thrown in the mandatory "because we can" motion gestures. I'm sorry, but dare I say it, increasing the player's stress and anxiety creates a better sense of immersion then waggling the controller to swing a baseball bat. The weight and pressure put on by my nervous system is much greater then wild flailing ever could be.

Nintendo Must Be Stopped

When I saw the Wii Remote "Motion Plus" announcement first thing Monday morning boasting "more comprehensive tracking of a player's arm position and orientation.", I was angry. Then, as more information rolled out today, I became sick. This is why Nintendo is losing my favor. They are releasing peripheral after peripheral, packed in with "casual" games and making a killing. Not only should the Wii Remote have been doing this from the start, but not even Nintendo themselves have proven motion controls to be a reliable substitute for a standard controller. It did not improve Twilight Princess nor Super Mario Galaxy; the GameCube controller is better suited for Smash Brothers and Mario Kart Wii.

I see Wii Remote motion controls everyday, all day long, and have yet thought, "wow, I think we've finally got it." Motion controllers are a case of just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should. If anything, more sensitive equals more programming headaches, as the developers are going to take all kinds of flailing about into account when they program what motion they hope their player will perform.

Then again, maybe I'm just bitter that they didn't announce Kid Icarus Wii.

Neversoft: All Does Not Seem Well

Today we saw some images from the most current issue of Game Informer regarding the upcoming release of Guitar Hero IV. The pictures reveal that Neversoft have been developing their own drum set to accompany vocals and bass guitar as new additions to the franchise. This move is odd and I'm concerned for a company I truly care about since first playing the Tony Hawk Pro Skater series almost ten years ago.

Previously, we heard through Activision's earnings call, that Neversoft's yearly iteration of the Tony Hawk skateboarding game was dropped. Despite being a long time fan, my interest has been waning and I'm not surprised by this decision. The series was it's absolute best around THPS3 and proceeded to pile on feature after feature until the original spirit was crushed under the weight of unnecessary features and story. Skate ollied right over the competition, crushing Tony Hawk Proving Ground's sales. It was fresh and lean, and gamers bought it up.

Now we see a similar situation where a competitor has stolen the limelight a bit with Rock Band, and forced Neversoft to react. Unfortunately, their response has been an overzealous overreaction in both cases.

Guitar Hero is about pretending to be a rock God. Tony Hawk Pro Skater is about pulling off insane tricks and combos that are impossible in the real world. Both game's motivations rely on achieving and pushing the boundaries of a high score. Adding more instruments dilutes the Guitar Hero experience and as does increasing the realism in a THPS game. I have a hard time seeing why there is not room for both types of games on the market. Guitar Hero can appease the hardcore crowd with an ever increasing line-up of rock anthems and face melting solos while Rock Band allow those who want to get together with a couple of friends and emulate their rock band karaoke fantasies all while having a few drinks. By the same token, skate can exists for purists while the Tony Hawk series can indulge those with a looser attitude towards what can and can't be done on a skateboard.

Although there may be some suits at Activision sitting back and dictating Neversoft's direction, I urge them to take a step back and return to these series' roots. If everyone integrates their competition's features by saying "we can do that too, only bigger and better," games become homogenized. We need diversity and we need competition. This is what should be driving developers, not trends and marketing focus groups. If everything is the same, what's the incentive to by any of them?

Why Do People Still Shop Here?

I hate GameStop and all that they stand for. They make all of their profits off of the used game markets and collecting preorder money. There is no incentive for them to carry new games and have treated walk in business as lower class for years now. Going into the store to attempt to pick up a copy of a hot, new game without a preorder is usually answered with a condescending stare and “sorry - no preorder, no availability.”

Seems all that has changed with the release of GTAIV. The higher ups are encouraging the sales staff to sell to walk in customers even if they have only preordered copies left. Now, there’s the possibility that someone who put down money months ago won’t be able to get their copy until another shipment comes in. First they train shoppers like sheep to drop cash early for a “guaranteed” copy on launch day and then they pull the rug out from under them by offering the copies to first come, first served.

In all likelihood, this won’t affect many people, but it further proves to me that GameStop cares only about making a buck. They don’t care about their customers and they definitely don’t care about the industry.

Dexter to Grace Consoles

My wife believes I have a very, very unhealthy obsession with Dexter. It’s not that I identify with the questionable morals and rules developed by a cop who moonlights as a killer serial killer, I think the acting and writing are top notch and is one of only three or four shows that can actually keep me engaged for long enough to sit through them (Lost, Heroes, and my guilty pleasure, NCIS, are the other ones). It’s dark and demented for sure, but it also deals with some very real issues of how people deal with relationships and what is right and wrong. Now, Mark Ecko is teaming with Showtime to make a game based on the series.

In a clear sign that people are running out of ideas or feel the need to make a game out of everything, I can only ask, why? There is no way a good game can be made from the source material here. I can see it now: the game play revolves around stalking your prey and gathering evidence in order to prove his or her guilt of evil, somewhat reminiscent of Assassin’s Creed. Then, after a quick mini game of covering a room in plastic, the mark is stealthily tracked until an opportune moment arrives and you bury a needle in their neck. This is followed by another mini game in which a blood sample is taken from their face for a collection and then the body is systematically chopped up into little pieces. Each level is completed with a jaunt on Dexter’s boat to dispose of the body in the Atlantic Ocean. Dexter then brings donuts to all his coworkers to celebrate his successful night! The only problem being the furor that would erupt from a certain unscrupulous lawyer who would see the inherent murder simulation and a news channel that has less moral ambiguity than Dexter himself.

No details are known at this point but it’s probably a safe bet that it will fall somewhere between The Sopranos game and the new Lost: Via Domus game. Showtime should go back to what they do best; producing one of the best shows on television (and bring us a new season sooner than later). Mark Ecko should go back to what he does best; I don’t know what that is but it’s not making games.

Parenting, Gaming and Addiction

In less than two months (eleven weeks to be exact) I will be a gamerdad. Needless to say, I have done a lot of thinking about what to do once my boy is here and I'm responsible for (mostly) shaping him and his values. I also read just about everything I come across about parenting. One of the websites I have stumbled upon is ParentHacks and more specifically an article titled "Video Game Addiction. Talk Amongst Yourselves." The author's family owns a Wii and the family loves it but is a bit nervous about the "addictive personality" that has emerged in her kids.

It's a good topic that spurs a decent discussion of the numerous methods employed to manage gaming time. It's all very fascinating for me because as a pre-gamerdad, I didn't have to think about this stuff. Now I now have to think about not only how I'll manage my own gaming time, but my kid's as well and what he can pay. While at the same time, I take a bit of offense to the addictive qualities that the mainstream puts on gaming, categorizing it in the same ghetto as smoking and alcohol.

Then one comment caught my eye and directed me to an essay by Henry Jenkins about the validity of casting gaming into this negative light.

A few highly publicized stories, particularly around Massively Multiplayer games show that some people do let their gaming get the best of them, forgetting (or refusing) to sleep, shower, eat, or take care of loved ones. Of course, any activity from work to working out can have an adverse impact on our family, health, and relationships.

Most pleasurable activities stimulate the release of brain chemicals.We don't know how, say, playing a highly competitive game of basketball affects the brain because you can't sit in an MRI while playing point guard, but we do know that working out also leads to increased dopamine. So does eating food. Basically, if we banned activities that lead to changes in brain chemistry, the species would die out from starvation or a lack of procreation. Maybe just plain boredom. And once we start asserting that some activities are simply more meaningful than others, we are back in the business of making cultural, rather than "scientific," judgments and in that space, it is hard to justify why the AMA should have any more say than, say, professional organizations devoted to studying the cultural impact of media.

If I fail at everything else as a father, I hope at least one things sticks with him: diversification. I'm a gamer and I work in the video game industry, but it's not who I am. I am also soccer player and a mountain biker. I like to go out with my wife and friends or stay home with a book, movie or a select few TV shows. I dabble in game design and obviously I blog. All of these things combined make up who I am and yet I am not addicted to any of them (well, maybe Lost).

On a side note, it still amazes me how crazy the "casual" market is eating up the Wii. I guess that's why Nintendo is making billions of dollars and I'm not.

Halo 3’s Theater: Where're the Videos?

This week at GDC, Ninja Gaiden 2 was announced to include a Saved Film feature that is similar to Halo 3. Even though I’m interested in the game, I really like this feature and think this is where Halo 3 really innovated. I’m sure we all expected a flood of cool and exciting videos from the game. I even posted a few videos myself thinking that I had done something cool and that others might enjoy it. Turns out, it wasn’t that exciting to other people.

There were a couple of hits: it started with an spectacular grenade stick, an improbable sniper suicide, death by a traffic cone,and finally a wrong place at the wrong time barrel kill. Since then there have been no videos of late that have reached the same level of interest on the Internet (if I’m wrong, let me know). The game is still the first or second most played game on Live, by sheer volume there should be exciting and humorous videos being released all the time.

Forge had a lot of promise as well. The first amazing thing that came out of it was truly a work of art. Then we saw an amusing Mario tribute before degenerating to an over the top suicide competition.

Did gamers lose interest in these features? Did they forget about them? Maybe they’ve found it to be too time consuming to play with when they’d rather be actually playing the game. Maybe the community isn’t as creative as we hoped. Either way, it’s a shame.

Bungie should have implemented an easy export feature. Taking screen shots and the ability to share with other people who own 360’s and Halo 3 was not enough. There needed to be an easy way to either get the videos on your own computer or YouTube. This is where real editing can be done and peer review escalates exposure into the mainstream.

I fear that Ninja Gaiden’s feature will probably suffer the same fate, especially since there has yet to be some kind of competitive multiplayer mode announced that would, in my opinion, inspire the best videos.

You've Been Reduced to the Game with Sex Mini-Games

The first God of War was pure gaming delight. It took some mythological origins and forged a compelling narrative around a new character who can be placed in the pantheon of greek myth. It told this story through engaging game play and artistic flair while single-handedly normalizing the quick-time-event. Now we have further proof, after God of War 2 felt like more of the same, that the developers have run out of ideas, as the first footage of the game since the demo was released is what has become a series staple: the "sex mini-game." I wonder why Fox hasn't jumped all over this yet?

Yes, the first time I encountered the menage-a-trois in the original, I was mildly amused by the offscreen debauchery. It felt forced into the second game, more of an obligation to the first game, but now that it's confirmed for the PSP version, the series has hit a low point. If this game has nothing new to add to the series, and since it's missing a second analog stick, I'll be skipping this one and looking forward to the PS3 version and the end of the story. In the mean time, I guess this means we still not maturing in terms of sex and intimacy in our games, are we?

Thank You, EA

It shouldn’t bother me as much as it did, because it is expected from Fox News to disregard fair and honest journalism, but they went way too far this time. In this clip, from a segment called “Se”Xbox, the host, an “expert” psychologist and a panel of ill-informed reporters spout off on a number of blatant inaccuracies regarding Mass Effect. I give a lot of credit to Geoff Keighley, for whom I also have new found respect, as he attempted to get a few words in edgewise. The words he did get in were to the point and achieved the desired effect of pointing out that they had not played the game and were in no place to make hearsay judgments about the game. The gaming community responded the best way possible by spamming the reviews of the psychologist’s book on Amazon and venting in forums.

However, in a move that I’m not sure that anyone expected, based on the reaction, EA stepped up and defended Bioware’s work in a letter to the show’s producer asking that the inaccuracies be addressed on the show.

The resulting coverage was insulting to the men and women who spent years creating a game which is acclaimed by critics for its high creative standards. As video games continue to take audiences away from television, we expect to see more TV news stories warning parents about the corrupting influence of interactive entertainment. But this represents a new level of recklessness.

It’s encouraging to see EA, who is usually cast in a malevolent light, sticking up for not only their newly acquired IP but for video games in general in the mass media. Our medium is a threat not only because it is an unknown to them but because it takes away viewers and therefore advertisers. We’re still waiting for that apology and I hope they take legal action if needed since they’ve used the word “slandered” to describe the hard working folks at Bioware.

The worst part of the situation is that Fox News clearly neglected to do any research on the topic or game itself. It appears as someone caught wind of this rant on the conservative Townhall Blog (which, curiously, is no longer available) and ran with it. If they had done a quick search on their own website, they would have seen it was “one of the best-written and best-looking games in a long time,” earning three and a half stars out of four, and one of their top ten games of the year.

Update: Cooper Lawrence, the psychologist on the show, admitted that she received bad information about the game and has since seen someone play the game for a couple hours, saying that she has "seen episodes of Lost that are more sexually explicit."

Gamestop, For Better or Worse

Gamestop is evil. At least that is the premise of a recent article on Next-Gen by Colin Campbell. While I don't agree with everything he has to say on the subject, I have been more than frustrated with the franchise in the recent past, leading me to personally boycott the retailer. From becoming the last , "lucky" person to get a copy of Halo 3 on day one without a pre-order and not being able to get Guitar Hero III, only to walk into Best Buy and see palettes of them throughout the store, I couldn't understand why people still shop there. Apparently, many people still do if their holiday season is anything to go by.

As someone who works at a publisher, it is very easy to get riled up by their practices. We get the short end of the stick when they base their entire model after the used games market. This allows them to keep their initial orders low while reaping the profits off of every resale and no incentive to place future orders once the initial rush for a game dies down. Since they do place such small orders, consumers have been trained to ensure that they've given them their five bucks months in advance in order to reserve their own copy. This all but kills niche and risky titles as they stick to the safe bets of franchises and licensed games.

My coworkers aren't making things any better. In QA we get all of the games we work on. Usually, these copies are instantly traded in for credit or a new game. For the local Gamestop, there is probably little to no incentive to place orders for our games if they know that they are going to get numerous "new" copies that they can sell as used. We are hurting our own company. Although there is probably nothing that will change in the near future to alleviate this problem, I have taken it upon myself to only buy new and from big box retailers who have a tendency to keep things in stock and have sales that make new games cheaper. And I call for others in the industry to do the same.

On the other hand, while at lunch with some friends the other day, one of them was complaining that Gamestop essentially lost one of his five dollar pre-orders. As it is, there is no way to manage your pre-orders unless you go into the store and have the clerk print out a list of your pre-orders. I thought, that in this era of MySpace and FaceBook, that Gamestop should have some kind of social network where you could create wish list, manage your pre-orders and share those lists with friends. Seems like it would be fairly easy to implement and would be kind of cool. But I still won't shop there.

Gamestop seems to be a necessary evil in the industry as the continue to garner more strength and clout in the industry, even if it is only in their best interest. The only thing that we, the content creators can do is go on the offensive. We can shift our buying habits and encourage others to do the same. All the while looking for alternate means of getting our games into the hands of gamers, either through digital downloads or demos that they can try before forking out for a game that he or she may want to quickly return, which is the subject of my next rant.

When Did Sports Games Forget to Add the Fun?

I used to play a lot of sports game back in the day: Tecmo Bowl, Double Dribble, Blades of Glory, Genesis versions of NHL, Joe Montana Football, International Superstar Soccer on the Nintendo64. But for my taste, the genre has gone down hill. In an effort to make the most realistic simulation of sport gaming, developers has consistently piled more and more features and controls on the player. They also seem to build off of each other forcing a player to master last years iteration before he can move on to the newest game.

Luke Plunkett at kotaku made this observation while playing NBA 2k8 a while back and then Zack Hiwiller expanded on the idea by pointing out the ridiculousness of the compounded complexity of sports games.

Your friend tells you about this movie he is really excited about and he convinces you to buy a ticket and see it with him. The theater is mostly empty when you sit down, except for a few kids in the front row holding those big foam #1 fingers. Before the previews start, your friend tells you it his ninth time seeing the movie. It starts and immediately you find it incomprehensible. There are dozens of characters whose origins and motives aren’t explained, you have a rough understanding of the plot, but the movie seems distracted with minor plot points and half the movie seems to be overwrought establishing shots.

When the credits roll, your friend applauds but you sit there confused. He nudges you and tells you, “Don’t worry. I didn’t start really “getting it” until the fifth time I saw it. Hang in there!” You are a bit dumbstruck: “Five times? I’m not wasting my time and paying to see that mess again!”. Your friend then gets angry with you: “Whatever. You just don’t want to put in the time to struggle for something sophisticated.”

That’s basically the game industry’s sports genre.

He goes on to say that there is "a push each year to add new features" which really just translates to "complicate this for the reason of depth." FIFA has done the same thing as the Madden franchise in an effort to catch up to Pro Evolution Soccer, which has been held in higher esteem for its "realism."

The developers may have eliminated aspects that took away from the purity of the game, adding layer after layer of complexity to create the most realistic sports sim ever, but the sacrifice has been too great. Gone is the debauchery of high-scoring, rowdy gaming encounters with friends and family. I still play competitive soccer when I need my fix of "realism" and I watch Manchester United with fanaticism. In much the same way the racing genre lost me when RC ProAm and Out Run gave way to Gran Turismo, the sports genre lost me when they cut the most appealing feature of all: fun.

Nintendo: You Were Bored Before the Wii

The blogosphere has already pointed out the cogency, or lack thereof, in the recent statements from the outgoing Nintendo VP of Marketing, Perrin Kaplan. She, as well as Nintendo, saw that before the Wii was released, "gamers were getting bored, even though they didn't know it yet." Well, I'm sorry to say that, as a gamer, there has been plenty of games that have kept me quite entertained. Unless of course, she was referring to the GameCube. Only three titles were able to keep me entertained long enough to play through them: Wind Waker, Metroid Prime, and Resident Evil 4.

What many gaming news outlets didn't really comment on was the further statements by Robert Matthews, Nintendo's senior director of consumer marketing.

Just look at the way people consume entertainment today. The idea that you would spend hours playing videogames is just not real anymore.

While I do agree that people attention spans are shrinking and, as I get older, my time is split among many things, this blanket statement doesn't seem true in light of media in general. Movie times have steadily lengthened over the last few decades. The hour long drama is increasingly dominating the television line-ups as the sitcom seems to wither away. The Internet is absorbed in smaller chunks, but mostly due to the sheer volume of information out there.

On the other hand, epic games of forty hours or more are also diminishing. These are being replaced by the moderately paced ten to twenty hour campaign. So while there is a market for short attention span gaming, it is not the industry's savior. Games are adapting, allowing players to jump in and out of the game at any time with better save systems and level design. Besides, my 360 is played on a near daily basis. From what I understand, many people are starting to notice that the Wii may be collecting dust. At least until something better than Wii Sports comes along.

Feed the Dog, Take Out the Trash, Collect Trinkets?

While playing a game, gamers are asked to do many things. Some of those things are fun, others are not. Juuso Hietalahti, at Game Producer Resource, posted a quick article suggesting seven simple elements that can be added to your game can make it more fun. I agree with six of them.

As a kid, I collected all kinds of crap: baseball cards, Star Wars figures, soccer pins, comic books. Eventually I grew out of it (except for a resurgence of Star Wars figures around 1999) except I still have what I consider collections, like my video games, books or DVDs. I always had fun while I was doing it but I never really got too crazy.

However, I hate when a video game asks the player to collect things. In my opinion, it is not fun. It's busy work, a chore. It distracts from the game at hand. It has become one of the worst video game clichés and a crutch to synthetically lengthen game play.

While playing through Gears of War, I could never suspend my disbelief that Marcus would stop and look for COG tags while the Locust are bearing down on him or while he's in a hurry to save humanity. The same goes for Master Chief and the golden skulls. It seems that every platforming game to has the player collecting hundreds, if not thousands, of random, shiny object all in the name of meeting some goal of 100% complete. It has also become quite fashionable to create achievements around collecting. I hate collecting achievements. Which is saying something because, in general, I love achievements.

At least in the original Mario games, collecting 100 coins would earn the player an extra life. In Grand Theft Auto, collecting secret packages makes items spawn at your safe house (although, I usually stopped actively searching for them once the body armor was unlocked). These days, collecting things nets you a few gamer points and some concept art. If I'm going to be collecting something, it better be necessary to advance the story line and provide my character with new abilities. When a game play mechanic is no more important or as enticing as chores around the house, I'm not really have any fun any more.

Puzzle Quest Postmortem: Required Reading

Puzzle Quest developer, Infinite Interactive, posted a postmortem for their surprise hit in the September issue of Game Developer magazine. Of all the postmortems that I have read in this magazine, I was most impressed, and inspired, with the philosophy and wisdom the developers shared in the article. While many postmortems seem to spout the same "what went wrong" and "what went right" issues while creating a game, Infinite Interactive touched on many things that I have seen, and have been bothered by, during my short time in the industry. I have yet to play the game, but now that it is out on Xbox Live Arcade, that will be remedied soon.

This is the first postmortem that I can remember that stated that taking their time to finish the game was one of the things that went right. The game may have only been released on the DS and PSP, but polish is what seems to separate the quality titles of the current generation from those that are hoping to make a quick buck. I know that most publishers have quarterly goals to meet and that developers are usually working on tight deadlines and even tighter budgets. The problem is that it shows in the number of quality titles that are released throughout the year. Infinite Interactive spent nearly two and a half years making the game the best it could possibly be. They were rewarded by not being able to keep the game stocked on shelves.

Of the things that went wrong, "underestimation" is something that is not exclusive to Infinite. Every new developer we work with, and even ones that we've worked with a lot, seem to make the same mistakes. Something that I have suggested and pushed at work is echoed in the sentiment of Puzzle Quest's lead designer, Steve Fawkner.

My advice to any teams just getting into Xbox Live Arcade development is to read the TCRs over and over until you have them committed to memory. You may even want to run your design documents (especially the UI designs) past an Xbox Live Arcade Q/A team before implementing anything.

He talks about Live Arcade but I think that would be useful for anyone developing on the DS all the way up to PS3. It never fails that a game will come into test with only about two months till submission, but every Guideline fails. It then becomes a test of wills on whether or not to fix the issues or wait to see if they're found in submission. I can only imagine the time that would be saved if games were built around the guidelines for a particular system as opposed to throwing it together on one system and then attempting to shoehorn it onto another.

Lastly, he gives props to his "two excellent test teams." Being the lowest rung on the pole is not easy. At the best of times we can feel under appreciated and at the worst, seemingly blamed for everything. There is no glory to be had in Q/A and even the best teams are fallible as Fawkner points out that a heinous, if not serious, bug made it into the release version. It makes me happy to see developers chalk it up to an enormously complex game and not lazy testing.

Developers like Infinite Interactive seem to be few and far between. They have tremendous passion and the will to succeed, and it shows in their success.

Lesson Learned: Motion Control's Big Assumption

The summer before second grade, I fell out of a tree on a camping trip and broke both bones in my left forearm, the ulna and radius. Ever since them my left arm has been slightly more "bowed" than my right. It's nothing crazy. I'm not a mutant or anything, but if you compared my two arms side by side, they would look a little different. However, it wasn't until very recently that I realized that my left arm has a minor limitation as well.

We have a racing title on the Wii in test now that switched up the controls from last year's version. Last year we went with holding the Wii Remote horizontally and steering like a real steering wheel. It seemed to work fine, but in this year's version, that's a secondary control scheme. The new default scheme has the player holding the Wii Remote in one hand and the Nunchuk in the other. So far, there are no problems. However, while racing, if the player wants to powerslide around a sharp corner (which is somewhat necessary throughout the game) they have to twist the Nunchuck from left to right, or vice versa, to powerslide in that direction while turning with the Control Stick. For most people this would probably be no problem, except it has been for me.

Due to my injury sustained about twenty years ago, I have trouble twisting my left arm outwards, away from my body, making left turns while powersliding nearly impossible. Since it is not a motion I do very often with my left arm (even my right for that matter), I never really put much thought into my own limitations. And my own issues are not even a real problem, as there are people out there with far more severe limitations.

As motion controls become more and more the norm and game designers look to eagerly implement them into their games, this is hopefully something that they take into consideration more often than not or risk alienating a segment of our gaming brethren. Not to say that all motion controls are bad, I just hope that they aren't shoehorned into games and then forced upon the player.

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.

Following the Eyeballs: Advertising in Games

In this month's Wired Magazine, in which Martha Stewart graces the cover with a Wii cake that oddly looks more like a 360 to me, is a brief article on a study which implies the utter failure of advertising in games. The article states that spending on such endeavors is set to increase from $56 million in 2005 to approximately $732 million in 2010. This seems insane, but publishers have been lining up to take advantage of this new revenue stream. And advertisers are quickly losing people like me, who are in the most coveted demographic, as we switch our time from channel surfing to gaming.

This trend seems to be a knee jerk reaction to a declining industry. Advertising has been struggling for years. As people assimilate new technologies into their lives, such as TiVo and high speed Internet, commercials and traditional advertising methods become less and less relevant. Mitch Davis, a software executive, noticed that gamers where already glued to the video output device in front of them and that there were built in locations for advertising. While he became $200 million richer by selling the resulting company, Massive, to Microsoft, advertising groups have been flocking to deliver profitable in-game ads to no avail.

Maybe I'm impervious to advertising, but I could not tell you the last billboard I saw. The medium is quite ineffective in general practice, let alone in a game where the player can be more engrossed than if he or she were actually driving. In Luke Sullivan's Hey Whipple, Squeeze This (a marketing book I had to read in college) he describes the approximately 4,827 billboards left on the highways as "4,827 too many." He further quotes famous 50's copywriter, Howard Gossage:

An advertising medium is a medium that incidentally carries advertising but whose primary function is to provide something else: entertainment, news, etc.... Your exposure to television commercials is conditional on their being accompanied by entertainment that is not otherwise available. No such parity or tit for tat exchange exists in outdoor advertising... I'm afraid the poor old billboard doesn't qualify as a medium at all; its medium, if any, is the scenery around it and that is not its to give away.

As gaming is an interactive medium and we have a modicum of control on the direction most games take, and therefore, scenery that's not the advertising's to give away. Advertising will have it's place in gaming. It will and should be used to flesh out and create a more believable environments under the right circumstances. In the end, though, the ads will mostly be forgotten as soon as it enters the brain. There is too much going on for the player to internalize any advertising in games. It is a shame how much money will be poured into these game ads, interrupting our experience, in an attempt to wrestle our money away from us. Create a quality product that meets a need and we'll find you.

(illustration: Eddie Guy)