toomuchimagination

YUL->LAX

2011-09-07T05:35:00.001-04:00

With some time to kill. Anyone I know in LA wanna meet up?

A Dance With Dragons #dancewithdragons

2011-07-27T19:14:00.001-04:00

So far, about 300 pages in, and DWD is indeed far superior then Feast For Crows. My only complaint so far is Daenerys. When is she gonna get her Dragon on?

How hot is it??

2011-07-19T20:23:00.001-04:00

Google+

2011-07-15T07:49:00.001-04:00

How is it I still don't have a Google+ invite? I feel so incredibly inadequate. Please - socially networked gods of the internets, won't you smile upon me and share an invite? I beseech thee!

Latest iOS addiction

2011-05-26T22:56:00.001-04:00

So after finishing Army Of Darkness I needed a new game to sink my teeth into and believe I've found it in DUFUS: Battles (http://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/dofus-battles/id420352842?mt=8). Think FF: Tactics meets Tower Defense with a beautiful art direction and level of production polish. Highly recommended.

Testing Posterous

2011-02-28T17:15:00.001-05:00

So I love the idea of Posterous given that over the years I've signed up to just about every social networking service imaginable. I'm intrigued to see how multimedia posts are managed across the different services (ie: if I post a picture, does it update my linkedin?).

ProtoLaunch - Training the future of our industry.

2009-10-17T23:42:00.000-04:00

So it's been a long time since I've updated (again) but this is just too interesting not to share. I had an experience this weekend that opened my eyes wide to the fact that our industry is going to change very fundamentally in the next few years. There is a storm brewing, and it's good!

A few weeks ago I was contacted by an old colleague of mine named Dwayne Hammond (he and I worked together for a very short period at gameloft). Dwayne, it turns out, has been working as a strategic advisor for the last two years at Algoma University in Sault Saint Marie Ontario, a relatively small city of 75000 in northern (ish) Ontario with huge ambitions to become a significant player in the game development industry in Canada.

When Dwayne first asked me if I would fly out to SSM to do a talk and a workshop with some highschool students I didn't know what to expect. At the very least I thought it would be another chance to pimp Ubisoft and maybe motivate a few kids to think about getting into game develoment. I had no idea just how serious things were...

As the date approaches Dwayne explained that the second day of my trip would he dedicated to a workshop to kickstart something called 'ProtoLaunch' and would I do another talk to a smaller group of kids about the Game Pitch process. Again - not sure what to expect, but I hammered out a 5 point talk one afternoon based off of my ideas on the 'art of the pitch'.

On the Friday morning I did a talk to about 30 small business owners and university students interested in game development. I used my GDC talk from last year on the evolution of POPs art direction as a basis to explain the Stage Gate philosophy of game development (conceptin, then pre-prod, then production). Standard fare. I thought to myself "this weekend will be a breeze".

Then in the afternoon I had to do the same talk in front of about 300 visiting high school kids who had come to the university explicitly to hear me talk as an initiative of the Algoma Innovation Lab. Now, I've presented POP at PAX in front of thousands. I've been on the same stage as Steve Jobs at a recent Apple event. I've done a fair share of public speaking and I promise you - a room full of 13-15 year olds who are too cool to laugh at my jokes is the hardest presentation I've yet done. I was scared...

I must have done something right as the crowed had loosened up somewhat by the end. I thought for sure, though, the next step would be a failure...

The 'protolaunch' program is funded (quite well it turns out) by a grant from the Trillium Foundation with a variety of provincial community building mandates.

Dwayne and his group propose to run 7 weekend classes over the next 7 months on game development. At the end of the courses several groups of participants win the right to enter a game development competition. The best part? For the entire duration of the 5 weeks they have to make their game they are all paid! Best. Summer. Job. Ever.

Winners get scholorships to Algoma in their newly created undergraduate program in game development, material (books, etc) and various other significant prizes.

But - and I thought this would be a deal breaker - the kids have to really work for it! Giving up a full weekend each month seemed to me too much to ask. I didn't think many kids would be interested.

I need to learn to have more faith. We had spots for 24 participants in saturday's session. We recieved about 60 applications!! After we had chosen the luckly winners I figured some wouldn't bother to come - they had signed up on a Friday afternoon for an event starting early Saturday morning. Surely some would drop out.

By 9am. A full 30 minutes before the starting point, almost 90% of the 'class' had arrived, chomping at the bit.

As we went through the morning's lesson on game pitches (I put them into groups after asking them their area of interest and finding we had a pretty balanced mix of artists, programmers and designers) I started to worry about how we would fill the whole day. These kids immediatly took to concepts like 'start with your hook' and 'define your "X" using recognizable references) and were putting together some cool concepts for games. Things way beyond the scope of what they could possibly develop in a weekend, but cool! How was I going to fill the afternoon? We weren't set up for, nor am I in any position to, jump into lessons on Photoshop or c++.

So I thought about paper prototyping. This lot obviously wanted to make a game and this was the best I thought we could do in the few hours we had left. So we bought some dice, post-it notes, flash cards, pens and rubber toy animals and I explained my idea: take one element from your game and try to find a way to map the mechanic of it to the analogue world of the tools in front of you (it was a little more long winded then that, but that was the gyst). I crossed my fingers, held my breath and hoped for the best. And every single group knocked it out of the park!

One group accidentally stumbled upon a rich combination of a skill-based strategy system (a variety of cards you hold in your hand to play when you want) on a multi-path board (where different paths benefit from certain powerup cards) and the randomness of dice rolling for movement and 'community chest' style status effect cards. The result was a game with surprisng depth and strategy for something made in a little over an hour.

Another group wanted to make a cops and robbers MMO - '24' meets 'capture the flag'. They came up with a setup whereby two identical game boards were played on by each group (cops on one board, terrorists on the other) with a 'DM' player monitoring player positions to inform when the cops had managed to find the terrorists and a fight was to ensue - think a 4 player team-co-op battleship with a DM to ensure action is frequent.

This from a group who had never made a game of any sort. Ever. Not even a LBP level.

If any of these teens follow through with 'protolaunch' all the way and end up taking the undergraduate program in game development they then have the option to follow that up with one of the few masters level game programming curriculums in the world (at least for now).

"The Sault" may be small but they are making incredible moves with serious funding. Montreal and Vancouver (and of course Toronto) may soon have some unlikely competion in the form of a small city previously known primarily for it's steel and paper mills.

And that I may have played even a tiny part in that makes me more proud then I ever thought possible.

Dwayne is on the lookout for industry proffessionals willing to run a weekend course for this group in the coming months (and yes, it's a paying gig). If you want to meet an incredible group of passionate future game devs and help shape something special I highly encourage you to get in touch.

Forums - To Read, or Not To Read

2009-08-14T11:41:00.005-04:00

In thinking about how I wanted to structure this post over the last few days, my original idea for the subject has evolved.

Originally I wanted to write about how much 'access' to the development team players should rightfully expect - I planned to cover subjects such as trying to 'Friend' developers on Facebook, send them emails to their work accounts, etc.

I've decided against that angle, though, because frankly I don't know if there is much to say there. Only a small minority of players have any interest in getting such immediate access to a developer and really I don't have any insight to share (fyi - I've yet to accept a friend request on Facebook from someone I don' t know but have answered every Facebook mail or email I've received with questions).

More interesting, I think, is the question of whether or not developers should read the forums for their games. And, if they do read the forums, should they participate. And if they do participate, should they open the doors to players making recommendations about the in-development game. These are very loaded questions with a lot of room for debate.

Before I get started, though, my usual disclaimer: I'm obviously drawing on my own real life experience for this post, which is colored by my current position: working for a major publisher on teams of hundreds making AAA titles. Certain assumptions I make below don't hold true for all developers (independent developers, in particular, can and do have very different schedules for releasing marketing material then we do at Ubisoft).

First Question - Should a developer even bother reading the forums?

Generally speaking I've always felt comfortable monitoring the forums during and after a game's development. For POP:T2T and the latest POP I would usually check the boards (the official POP forum and the IGN POP board in particular) a few times a week. I always find it very interesting to see what the community thinks of assets we release, conjecture they have about gameplay/story elements, etc.

I'm certainly not alone in this - many people from my team would monitor the same boards, and I would guess developers around the world probably all start by wanting to see what the community thinks about 'their baby' as its being made.

This is where the first 'culling' always happens, though. In any development team there will always be those (in significant numbers, I believe) who can't handle the inevitable negative posts they read after the release of some marketing material. It is generally Game Developer nature (in my opinion) to put more weight and emphasis on the negative comments then the compliments. Combine that with the fact that (at least on the net) people are more likely to complain then they are to compliment and you create a depressing environment for those reading the forums who can not 'let go' of the negative feedback or extract any value from it. For these Developers all they can see is the hate and the choices are simple: become demotivated by exposing yourself to that negativity, or stop reading the boards. Most choose the latter.

To the community participating in the boards this may be frustrating - contained in those 'negative' posts are undoubtedly suggestions as to how the game could be made better - how things could change so that the game would evolve to suit the poster's tastes. By refusing to read the boards these developers are missing out on an opportunity to 'fix their mistakes' (at least, that's how I imagine some members of the community might see it).

There are two obvious problems with this way of thinking: first and most obvious, not everyone on the boards will agree with the poster in question. Something one person may hate (even if they express their hatred very eloquently) may be fine for, or loved by, many others. It is an absolute universal truth that you cannot please everyone, so if you start second guessing every time someone complains on the boards the project will change directions very frequently.

The second issue is that in many ways the developer reading the board might not have any power to make any of the suggested changes. Generally speaking by the time marketing assets are being shown to the community the development of the game is at a very advanced stage. Changes of any type are expensive, risky and simply put not likely to fit in with the game as a whole.

So, powerless to do anything to change the game to suit the needs of those complaining, these developers decide there is nothing to be gained by reading the forums and they stop visiting.

Many can and do continue to read through to the end of development, though. The followup question is why do they so infrequently post? Why not engage in the community discussion and explain why feature 'X' has to work just so, or why character 'Y' looks the way they do?

Second question - should a developer post to the forums?

Games cost tens of millions of dollars to make now and there can be hundreds of millions of dollars of profits to be made (or lost) with a successful title. This isn't something to be taken lightly so a respect for discreteness is generally encouraged and appreciated amongst the development team. Were team members encouraged to participate freely in online discussion about the game there is always the risk of saying something they shouldn't about the game, getting caught up in a debate and saying something that could make their employer look bad or giving away proprietary information.

This is why the trend in larger projects has moved towards Community Managers whose _job_ it is to interact on these boards. These team members know very clearly what can be said, what secrets Marketing is still trying to keep, and how to participate in debate without putting either their game or company in a bad light. They literally are paid to "speak for the team".

Third Question - why can't the community have a greater influence on the creation of the game?

Which leads to the final question - why don't these community managers more frequently solicit feedback on the forums to help give direction to the game? Why not let the true fans have a louder voice in shaping the product they are so passionately awaiting?

To me this is obviously the Holy Grail of community interaction with the development team. There are a few examples of this level of rapport (Valve certainly springs to mind) but it is definitely the exception rather then the rule.

First, as I suggested earlier, the game genre matters a great deal in how involved the community can be in shaping things. On a linear, story driven single player game (such as POP) there simply is not much room to allow community to drive game design or story decisions without giving away much of what will attract people to the title in the first place. How excited would you be to see the next JJ Abrams movie if you had spent hundreds of hours debating over all of the pros and cons of various plot twists and narrative arcs, spoiling the very mysteries that are key to the experience?). Games with a heavy Multiplayer focus, on the other hand, benefit a great deal from extensive playtesting and discussion with the community to keep things fair and balanced.

Second is the very important reality that the opinions expressed on forums are not always representative. Forum members, it could be argued, are more 'hardcore' fans who often have very specific expectations of what a title should or should not be. There is a risk that in trying to cater too directly to this one subset the developer would alienate others. Of course the opposite is also true, and thus the quandary. On POP we tried very hard to make a game that would not frustrate people and so would be open to the mass market. In doing so we eliminated too much challenge for the tastes of the hardcore, including many of the forum participants - the most vocal 'fans'.

So if you've read this far (first I congratulate you!) my personal philosophy regarding the POP forums should likely become clear. Throughout development I monitored them, took the good in with the bad, made sure our community manager was as engaged with the community as the game allowed him to be, but never felt I was in a position that I could post myself to elicit community feedback on a particular direction we were taking the game. I was a 'Fly on the wall' from day one (and still to this day read the forums regularily - although not as frequently as when we were in development or close to launch).

Moving forward I don't necessarily plan to change my attitudes to forums. If the game supports it I'll be the first to open things up to the community to give as much feedback as possible throughout development through the use of a Community Manager. I'll continue to answer emails, facebook messages or blog comments when I can and will continue to encourage my team members to stay quiet when sensitive subjects are at play.

I want a community for the games I work on - I want the players to feel the sort of connection to the property that encourages passionate exchanges of views, excited discussions and endless debates about tactics, strategies and tips. I want to do so in a way, though, that doesn't depress or demotivate me, or open up the door to promises I can't keep.

The balancing act isn't necessarily easy, but I'll definitely try again.

Comments

2009-08-10T20:42:00.001-04:00

So in the name of openness and transparency I've decided to let through all of the comments I've been holding back the last few days. I certainly don't want to censor anyone.

That said I do not want this blog to become an extension of any flame wars taking place on the official POP forums (or other). This is a one time thing - I'm letting everything through in order to get it all out into the open, but if the bickering and subtle personal attacks continue, they'll sit unposted.

That said this whole experience (read through the comments of this post to get caught up) has inspired me to write my next blog post on the whole subject of 'availability to the community'. I think it is a very interesting subject and one I think could spark some interesting debate.

This post will contain some apologies (because in retrospect I can admit I did some things wrong in terms of my presence on POP) and some steadfast stubbornness (because while it could have been better, we had very good reasons for the type of presence we - the developers - had). Hopefully it will encourage structured debate from the POP fans/haters and others alike.

Hope to have it up in the next few days.

We interupt this program...

2009-08-06T22:10:00.002-04:00

to bring you this very important announcement. I've finally joined the 21st century and gotten an iPhone.

Anyone have any suggestions for must have apps?

I've got Twitter and Facebook covered.

Thanks!

Life as a Videogame Producer - Part I

2009-07-13T09:49:00.005-04:00

I want to start this post with an important disclaimer - in no way do I mean to suggest that the route I followed to get into game production is the route. I know many game producers and almost all of them arrived in their current position via a different path. Given that there seems to be a small amount of interest in it, I'm going to detail mine and then in a future post extract some of the key lessons I learned at the various stages in my career and compare these to the skills and competancies I see in the most succesfull producers around me. For those of you interested in getting work as a game producer, you may find a few nuggest to extract from these posts that help you along the way.

In addition I'm going to cater these posts towards getting a Producer job at a major developer/publisher on a large console title since, for many (not all, of course) that is the holy grail. I, in no way, mean to suggest that people who serve as Producers on "smaller" projects are any less accomplished (in fact, I've found from experience its often the opposite).

The first inkling I had that I might actually be able to build a career in videgames was when I founded and led an online MMO guild called 'OSC'. In the summer of 1996 I created this group in order to ensure I had people to play Diablo with, and the guild grew in size and organization through Ultima Online, Everquest, Dark Age Of Camelot, and basically every MMO of significance to come out since. Much has been written about people learning leadership and management skills from running an online guild and I second all of these findings - through running OSC for 5 years I learned organizational skills, how to mediate, how to motivate and how to keep a large diverse group of people with often diverging interests and priorities focused on a single goal. I never necessarily focused on these learnings when applying for jobs after school but I also never hesitated to list this achievement on my resume. If you play (or played) an MMO and ever assumed a leadership role (on raids, etc) you'll know this first hand.

Around the same time I began to become increasingly interested in computers and programming and pursued a degree in computer science thinking my path into the game industry would be as a programmer. While in University I took advantage of a few 'project' courses (3 credits to do a programming project of your choice, assuming you can find a supervisor to monitor and approve of your workload) to work on some game projects that further cemented my interest. I was going to be a game programmer...except for one small detail: I was a horrible programmer, and no one ever bothered to tell me.

Both the MMO experience as well as the game projects I developed in and out of school combine for my first 'lesson' for would-be game producers: find extracurricular activities that allow you to practise and hone relevant skills.

Around the spring of 2000 I got my big break. I had just returned from a 4 month trip to South America (my "travelling days") and was looking for work in the height of the dot-com bubble bust. My limited programming skills meant I only felt comfortable applying for web development jobs and the market was crashing all around me. On a whim I contacted a casual aquaintance who I knew was in the gaming industry and asked if he knew of anyone looking to hire. As it happens he had, just that morning, had a meeting with a wireless entertainment company called Airborne Entertainment who were looking to increase their gaming presence. They were looking for someone young (read: willing to work cheaply), hungry (read: willing to work a lot) and who knew games. I applied, got the job, and suddenly found myself in the unpredictable position of having to program videogames (for cellphones grant you) much sooner then I ever thought possible.

When I had imagined myself working in the gaming industry I always imagined I would design the next Ultima Online or help program the next Diablo. Making a 'Rock Paper Scissors' clone for cell phones with no color graphics and screens hardly an inch tall was hardly the most glamorous introduction to the industry. In fact when I told all of my friends and guildmates about my glorious introduction into gaming, few of them were impressed. They would never play the games I made and had certainly never heard of the company I worked for.

But did I ever learn a lot! I had to design the games, program them, work with the artists to create the (limited) artwork for them, work with the writers to get the scripts done, test them, debug them, help marketing try to pitch them to carriers, etc. One time I even got to help promote them.

Simply put - I would not have become a game producer in the time that I did had I not taken that job at Airborne. In the two and a half years there I was forced to wear many hats and cut my teeth in some crucial areas that it might have taken me many more years to be allowed to explore at a larger company. Airborne was small enough and agile enough that a young, hungry (and ambitous) gamer was able to attract the right kind of positive attention rather then fade into the background.

So my second lesson for this post is this: if you are trying to break into the industry, seek out the backdoors. If you are fresh out of school (or in another industry, etc) you are not going to be hired as a AAA producer at EA (or Ubisoft, or Activision, etc). The stakes are too high for any hiring manager in their right mind to put that much money and control in your hands. But there are many opprotunities to get that requisite leadership/management experience in the industry in other ways. Indie games, iPhone/Downloadable games, Mods, Flash games, etc. Many of these 'smaller' games are still extremely complex to bring together and require the collaboration of multiple contributers. Someone needs to lead the charge, bring people together and keep them on task and a few Producer credits on these titles will definitely add up.

Next time - my days at Gameloft and Ubisoft and the lessons learned there.

Still Alive

2009-07-10T15:30:00.002-04:00

*...that was a joke, ha ha, fat chance...*

So I've decided that I want to start blogging again. A lot has happened in the last year (shipped POP, had a baby girl, started a new project) that has kept me distracted and away from the blog, but things seem to be settling into a rhythm again that should allow me to spend a little more time thinking and a little less time jumping from fire to fire - a prerequisite to writing anything worth reading, in my opinion.

Likely the most interesting news for the majority of people who visit here is that my new project is not in the Prince Of Persia universe. After four years and four POP games (The Two Thrones, Rival Swords Wii, Rival Swords PSP, and the latest POP) I've decided its time for new challenges and new themes. Myself and a small core team (made up almost entirely of my favorite guys from POP) have started work on a new IP.

Of course I can't say anything about it yet (and won't be able to do so for a long time) but I can say that I love the new challenge so far. Ubisoft is a company that embraces and rewards innovation within its production team and they are encouraging us (and all teams really) to really try and push the limits of what people have seen in games from a combined technical/creative standpoint - to literally do something that no one has seen before and that competitors will find themselves scrambling to copy once we set the new trend. Its a pretty exciting mandate and one my team is embracing with arms wide open.

In thinking about what subject (of substance) I should blog about next I'm currently leaning towards a question I'm asked often: how does one go about getting a job as a game producer. I've got a few points on this matter that I've repeated often enough at conferences etc that I figure it might be worth noting it all down here. Anyone out there have any specific questions on the subject? I could try and answer them in my post.

How to get your partner into gaming

2009-02-07T19:23:00.003-05:00

I think the last couple of years have been very interesting year in terms of changes in the gaming space. There's been the casual thing, but most of what needs to be said about that can be said better by others. Then there is the continually increasing quality and scope of hardcore titles, but that's not what I want to talk about. The biggest change for me is the arrival (en masse it seems) of casually accessible hardcore games - titles that aren't just playable by both extremes but also _fun_ for both.

Last year my wife never played games. For a few special titles, she would humor me and watch me play for a while, and occasionally something would come along that would peak her interest (she really enjoyed some parts of RE4).

When POP came out I proudly showed it off to her expecting a few minutes of "wow Honey, very pretty" and that would be that. Instead she wanted to play. I didn't have to push or prod - she just picked up the controller, followed the tutorials, and was away to the races. Quite honestly after she made it about half way through the game I ended up kicking her off (Fallout3 was beckoning).

Seeing some potential in her POP interest, I kept an eye out for other titles I thought she'd like with the hope we'd find something to play together (so I didn't have to sit bored while she played, to be perfectly honest). Surprisingly I found it in Castle Crashers. A super violent hack and slash is not at all the type of game I would have expected her to get into, but the accessibility of the controls totally won her over.

What was great about CC is how the game appealed to us both for different reasons. For her, just mashing X and occasionally Y allowed her to more or less keep pace with me, doing her fair share of damage. I on the other hand was constantly changing weapons, changing animals and trying new combos trying to figure out how to do the maximum damage. It didn't hurt that we were both able to appreciate the wonderful art and animation.

Now we're trying LittleBigPlanet together. Of course the aesthetic of the world was an instant hit with us both, and what developer _hasn't_ lost a few nights sleep thinking of all the possibilities the level creation tools allow (a subject for a future post, I think). She's struggling a little bit more with the controls moving in and out of along the z-axis while jumping takes some getting used to) but last night, after dinner (and the baby asleep) I asked: "so what do you want to do? Watch a movie, or..." and she said "Lets play the skateboard level some more and try to beat our score in LBP".

For years I've been trying to find games that could interest me and my wife and to get her into my life and failed. Now in the space of two months we've played through three. Something has changed in the way games are made for the better.

Maybe POP isn't challenging enough for the hardcore - but it might just be the sexiest gateway drug. :) If you're significant other hasn't yet tried it, put the controller in his/her hands and see if they can't get a sense of satisfaction from the game.

Stephen Totilo on POP ending

2008-12-24T16:23:00.003-05:00

Earlier this year I was in New York for a Ubisoft press day to show POP to 'Mainstream media' (ie: anything that isn't Gamespot or IGN). On the list was Stephen Totilo of MTV Multiplayer (very much worth a bookmark).

I remember being disappointed when Stephen whisked by my stand, heading straight to Clint Hocking and the incredible, newly-unveiled FC2 map editor. I read MTV Mutliplayer a lot, and along with N'Gai, there weren't many journalists I was more looking forward to a grilling from then Stephen (although if I could have sparked even a minute's interest from Brian Crecente during our preview stage, I would have considered that a coup). When he left that day without spending any time with POP, I basically resigned myself to the fact that POP would not be able to attract Stephen's attention - probably ever.

Last week, I saw a post on Multiplayer about POP. Then a couple of days later, another. Then another. POP has featured several times in the last week or so, and in very positive ways. I'm happy that we finally managed to get Stephen's attention. :)

Nothing, though, could prepare me for his most recent (and last, I think) post about POP and, more specifically, the ending. A quote:

I believe Ubisoft Montreal identified the potency of forcing the player to commit an action that requires minutes of premeditation, internal conflict and pending regret. This moment is a triumph, because it assumes the player will think about the gameplay and will ponder what they are perpetrating.

There were few elements of the game that were as fixed in our mind from day 1 on POP as the ending. It was literally one of the very first things we knew we wanted to do with the game, and stayed 100% fixed in our mind throughout development, despite its rather unorthodox nature. Last week, in fact, I met with JC (the game's creative director) for a coffee and asked him if he was monitoring the boards - he said he was with the single-minded intention of seeing if people 'got' the ending. Stephen most certainly did.

Some people have asked why we didn't give the player a 'real' choice as to how the game should end (other then just turning off the console, that is - something we predicted during development that 5% of the players would do). The easiest and simplest answer to this is because of the 'Warrior Within' issue. On WW, there were two endings. One 'normal' one and a second 'special' ending. When we started work on The Two Thrones, we needed to decide which ending to support as the official ending. It wasn't easy, and a lot of fans were upset at our decision because the ending we started from was not the one they saw - the continuity was lost.

As I've said several times, this POP is designed with the potential of a trilogy in mind (and to be a stand alone experience as well), so it was very important to us that a theoretical POP sequel would not have this same narrative incongruity to deal with.

Finally, on the off chance that Stephen reads this - SoTC was a big inspiration for us, but mostly with the intention of making the boss battles epic and emotional - something they succeeded in masterfully and that we only touched the surface of (in terms of emotional connection on the part of the player). Many of the similarities you pointed out are coincidental, but I certainly don't mind the comparison. We've always been very open about the huge influences that Ico, SoTC and Okami had on us during our development.

Okay, for real this time, Merry Christmas.

POP, Death, Frustration and Challenge, part 42

2008-12-24T13:49:00.004-05:00

During development of POP, JC (the creative director and I) would often wonder aloud why so many journalists who were previewing POP chose to focus on the 'no death' element of our game. We were always very careful to explain our philosophy regarding frustration in games and our desire to eliminate it from POP through, amongst several design choices, the save-me mechanic, but many journalists just translated that into "you can't die" and left it at that.

I remember one day after reading yet another article covering POP with our accessibility philosophy summed up in 3 words, JC sent me a one line email: "Death != Challenge. ARRRGGGH!".

In a nutshell, we believe (and the philosophy is shared by many at Ubisoft) that a game can (and in some instances, should) be fun, rewarding and challenging _without_ being frustrating - the key to a truly accessible game, in our opinion. This is what we tried to create in POP.

Ludwig, an editor over at Joystiq, wrote a very interesting piece yesterday on POP and our save-me system and really hit the nail square on the head. He summed up perfectly three years of discussions within our team in his article and I highly recommend it. I particularly like this line:

If you've ever had to repeat a devious segment numerous times, you'll agree that "another go" brings with it the real punishment for failure: your character's life may be infinitely expendable, but your time is not

And with that I will wish you all a very merry Christmas and a happy New Year. I'll be on the road for the next two weeks without much access to the net so won't be posting.

Best Reading of 'A Night Before Christmas' you'll ever hear

2008-12-21T20:38:00.001-05:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27jV1iqXYRc&feature=related

POP Difficulty Controvery

2008-12-16T18:05:00.003-05:00

So - first off - apologies for only ever blogging about Prince Of Persia these days. I do indeed plan to one day return to more general gaming subjects but - understandably (I hope) - I've still got POP on the mind.

Being a frequent visitor to Game|Life I waited anxiously to see what Chris Kohler et co would have to say about my game. I was a little disappointed that we failed to capture Chris' imagination, but found his arguments against the game well expressed. Those who simply dismiss the game as a casual PopCap wannabe because you 'can't die' have always frustrated me too much to respond to, but Chris' statement of 'because I don't feel the lows, I can't feel the highs' (paraphrased) makes sense to me.

I was very interested today to find a video feature on Game|Life comparing two of 2008's more controversial titles - POP and Mirror's Edge. Chris Kohler takes the side of Mirror's Edge and Chris Baker argues for POP (the embedded video is included below).

One thing CBaker said that really made me smile was (paraphrasing again) that even though he found the game easy, he still felt a sense of disappointment in himself when he needed Elika to save him - effectively that he internalized the sense of failure. He did not need the game to remind him he failed.

This was something we talked about a lot internally when trying to convince ourselves that the Save-Me mechanic would not be universally despised by the hardcore gaming set. Our rational, simply put, is that people who play a lot of videogames are good at them and generally don't fail a given sequence very often. When they do fail, they likely punish themselves for said failure ("oh you lame n00b! This game is so easy, why can't you pass this one stupid level! dj00 suxjirz") and would likely prefer to not have to see a loading screen upon each failure (I don't think anyone can argue that loading screens add to the enjoyment of a game).

The fact of the matter is very few people can win POP without failing (we have an achievement for those who manage to win without having to have Elika save you too often, and our stats are showing us that very few people have gotten this on a first play through). People fail in POP all the time - those who are able to take something from that failure seem to be the ones who enjoy the game the most. Those who can't feel a sense of failure without a dripping blood-red 'game over, you suck' screen - less so.

The reviews are in, let the controversy begin

2008-12-08T18:01:00.004-05:00

I'm glad most of the big reviews are out of the way and plenty happy with the ~85 we META-ed at.

Now the real interesting part starts - the debates. I've read some very thoughtful arguments for and against the 'accessibility' of the game but thought I would start off tonight with one that particularly grabbed my attention.

TheGameReviews.com isn't a site I usually frequent, but their 'analysis' (not a review) of the 'easiness' of Prince Of Persia was very well put - I could hardly have argued the case better myself...but that doesn't mean I won't try. ;)

I'm still enjoying the sun in Florida on vacation but when I'm back in Montreal I expect I'll be drawn to some of the POP discussion and offering my own thoughts on the matter.

If nothing else I love the fact that people seem to be playing the game all the way through to the end.

IGN Love

2008-11-27T07:38:00.003-05:00

It was very hard to concentrate yesterday because IGN US and UK went live with their POP reviews of 9.3 and 9.4 respectively. It is hard to contain my excitement.

This quote from Hilary Goldstein (the US reviewer) almost made me cry:

In every console generation there are one or two games that, regardless of any flaws, hold tight in my memory even years later. I can still picture scenes from Chrono Trigger on the Super Nintendo System as if I just played it the other day. Despite a flurry of great games released in the past year, I still get the itch from time to time to play Jet Set Radio Future on the Dreamcast. Your beloved games may be different, but I’m certain most long-time gamers have a few titles they treasure – the games they can never trade in. Ubisoft’s relaunch of Prince of Persia may just be such a game for me from this generation.
It’s not the best game ever released on PC, PS3 or Xbox 360; it’s not even the best game released this year. And yet Prince of Persia is that rare game that has managed to tap into that part of me that would die defending Chrono Trigger or JSRF. It has its shortcomings, but I already sense that Prince of Persia will be one of the few games from this generation that I carry with me for the next decade.

He just got our game so fundamentally. Yes we made mistakes, yes there are parts that are weaker then others, but when you sit back and let the experience wash over you while you play, there is magic there. I still get caught up in it when I play - three years in.

Passionate response from reviewers is so incredibly rewarding. After giving this game my all - my life - for the last three years, to see people talk about it in ways I only dreamed about when we first started development is incredible.

Testing, Testing, 1, 2, 3...

2008-11-10T19:10:00.002-05:00

*ahem* is this thing on?

wow - its been a long time. Amazing how much time finishing a project and having a brand new baby girl can take. :)

POP is _done_. Our PS3 and 360 versions are submitted and should receive GM status by the end of the week.

For the last month I've been focused almost entirely on promotions. I went to Tokyo for the TGS, Australia for some interviews etc, Paris for the Micromania show as well as some more interviews, and this week I head to San Francisco for some more demos/interviews with ign, gamespot, etc.

In the coming days I plan to write a big long post about the previews POP has been receiving so far and the areas I think journalists are getting right (and wrong) and how I expect the reviews to differ.

For today, though, as a baby step back into this whole blogging thing, I want to post an interview I did with a french gaming site called Gamersyde. I really liked this interview because they asked some tough questions and seemed to come out of the interview with a much more positive attitude towards the game then coming in.

And yes, I am aware of the level of narcissism in posting a link to an interview with my big mug taking up the screen, but I think the points brought up are important enough to warrant it. I hate the way I sound, I hate how much I use my hands to articulate my points, but hey - I'm passionate about my game and have a lot to say.

Prince Of Persia

2008-05-02T11:58:00.003-04:00

So first a huge apology. It has been ages since I have posted anything here. Needless to say, I've been busy.

For a couple of years now I've been coyly alluding to the fact that I'm working on an action adventure game for Ubisoft. Some of you who cared enough to dig might have put two and two together and guessed what title I'm working on. For those who didn't (and yet care) I can now officially announce it.

Coming out this holiday season on 360, PS3 and PC is the next-gen Prince Of Persia. I'm really really proud of how this game is shaping up and am exstatic that the first magazines have finally come out covering it! Now I can finally tell the world. ;)

I won't link to the magazine articles (for obvious reasons) but if you're interested I encourage you to find a copy of Edge magazine for May 2008 (english) or Joypad (french). Both magazines did excellent articles about the game, really helping to validate (for me) all of the hard work myself and the team have invested in this game over the last two and a half years.

I won't be using this blog to talk about any specific POP features or items not already reported elsewhere, but I may on occasion use it to draw attention to articles etc that I find particularily interesting. If you're a fan of the game and want to get an occasional idea of what I think of the press and coverage, hopefully you'll find something interesting here in the coming months.

Star Wars: Force Unleased

2008-02-06T22:24:00.000-05:00

If Star Wars: Force Unleashed isn't on the top of your most anticipated lists for 2008, you need to read this article (from Vanity Fair, nonetheless).

I remember seeing Euphoria (one of the two key technologies in Force Unleashed) in action at GDC 2005 and being thoroughly impressed. I can't wait to see it in a game to see just how far they push the technology.

In case you haven't already seen the recent trailer online, check it out here.

Other then my own title (naturally) Force Unleashed is top of my list for this year.

Time Stops - Excellent Performance Art

2008-02-01T13:57:00.001-05:00

Everyone once in a while something comes through an email forward that is just too cool for me _not_ to pass on. This is one of those times.

A performance group (flash mob?) all simultaneously froze in mid-step in the middle of central station in New York in the middle of rush hour. The look of confusion and awe on the faces of all the passers-by is priceless.

This is what the internet is made for. :)

XO Laptop - Part II

2008-01-20T09:48:00.000-05:00

Some more news from the XO front:

A friend from the US who has had an XO for some time now recently wrote me to see if I knew of any interesting 'tips'. I'm not much (read: not at all) of a linux hacker, so I had only managed a few pretty basic modifications, but they happened to be exactly what he was looking for (which made me feel good). I guess these two 'issues' are things people are pretty routinely frustrated by, at least in the North American market.

So in case you have an XO and haven't already figured these out, here are a couple of tips:

The XO has a feature whereby the 'desktop' will automatically be partially displayed whenever the cursor is at any extreme of the active window. I guess the rational behind this is to allow users to quickly tab between windows, but the effect is that it greatly minimizes the 'safe' screen real-estate on an already wonky touchpad (see point below). The solution for this is simply to comment out the two lines in the source that control this feature. Detailed instructions can be here: How To Disable The Auto Frame.
As mentioned above I also had problems with the touchpad being really finicky. Every time I lifted my finger from it the cursor position would reset. I fixed that with the 'Four Finger Salute'.

Als0, the XO has been in the news a lot lately and I found this story about how much of a difference 50 laptops are making in a remote Peruvian village particularly warming. If I see more such reports I'll definitely give serious thought to a second donation.

Finally one of the 'activities' (the XO equivalent to an application) that I was most excited about is called 'Turtle Art', a simplified version of my first computer love - Logo. While Turtle Art is very limited (only the most basic support for parameters, no incrementation, etc) one really interesting element of it is the graphical interface for the 'programming'. It is all done with a very intuitive 'puzzle piece' interface that limits the sequence of operations to those that (more or less) make sense together. See below for a screenshot.

XO Laptop

2008-01-15T21:42:00.000-05:00

I came home today and found my XO laptop waiting for me on my front doorstep. Very exciting. I'm writing this blog post from my XO right now. I plan to post more about this amazing initiative once I've poked around with it a little more, but for now I recommend anyone who isn't already familiar to climb out from under your rock and read up on it! Negroponte and Co. have created a great piece of technology with a truly noble ambition and, in my humble opinion, they deserve all the recognition and support they can get.

In case anyone out there already has an XO, I came across this interesting blog of someone who is exploring their XO's featured and blogging about it. Pretty decent starting resource.

More soon.

Merry Christmas

2007-12-24T16:30:00.000-05:00

Merry Christmas, everybody! If you find yourself close to a computer tonight or tomorrow, do yourself a favor and play The Night Before Christmas as read by Louis Armstrong. I garuntee you you've never heard it read like this before.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

2007-12-16T17:39:00.000-05:00

For a few months now I've been slowing picking my way through a book that my wife got for me over the summer called 'The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay'. The premise caught my attention right away, given that I've always been a big fan of comic books and she, having read it before she gave it to me, was raving about how much she loved it. Of course, the fact that it won the Pulitzer Prize in 2001 was certainly intriguing as well. I started out only reading a few pages each night before going to sleep, but lately it has grabbed a hold of my attention and I can't put it down.

I'm about two thirds of the way through the book now and while I normally would wait until I was done to do any sort of review or recommendation, this one is just too good to hold back. If you're reading this, and you haven't already read the book, please do yourself a favor and pick yourself up a copy. It is one of the most fun books I've ever felt good about reading!

The core premise (from Wikipedia):

The novel follows the lives of the title characters, a Czech artist named Joe Kavalier and a Brooklyn-born writer named Sam Clay—both Jewish—before, during, and after World War II. Kavalier and Clay become major figures in the nascent comics industry during its "Golden Age."

On top of being an excellent yarn with truly fascinating characters who are richly developed - strong and talented, yet fallible and human - one really exciting element of the book is picture it paints of the world of comic books in the 1940s. Originally pulp fare marketed only to children, the story of their evolution into a more popular and artful medium is intricately woven into the pages of this book. There is a chapter about half way through that directly tackles the subject of crass entertainment evolving into art forms and when I finished reading I had to put the book down to write down the names of everyone in the gaming industry who I wanted to read this book.

I've never read anything quite like it so have a hard time drawing comparisons, but there are elements of 'Understanding Comics', some of the whimsical Hero fantasy of 'Soon I Will Be Invincible' and some really interestingly integrated real-world history.

David, Kim, Patrick, Clint - if any of you are reading this, make sure to put Kavalier & Clay on your Christmas wish lists.

Fun With Physics

2007-12-16T17:11:00.000-05:00

Not much to say about this other then it really makes me wish I had a machine powerful enough to run Crysis at home. I think I could lose hours in a playground like this... :)

Study finds that the Human Brain changes when viewing violent media.

2007-12-06T17:04:00.000-05:00

How long before Jack Thompson latches on to this one?

A quote from Slashdot:

"Scientists at Columbia University have used Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to show that a brain network responsible for suppressing inappropriate or unwarranted aggressive behaviors became less active after study subjects watched several short clips from popular movies depicting acts of violence. These changes could render people less able to control their own aggressive behavior. Although research has shown some correlation between exposure to media violence and real-life violent behavior, there has been little direct neuroscientific support for this theory until now

I would guess that if/when people debate whether or not this study applies to video games, we'll find several camps: in one group will be the people who latch on to the fact that the study showed "[that]...these changes in the brain’s behavioral control circuits were specific to the repeated exposure to the violent clips" -- that the repeated and concentrated exposure to the violence is to blame, not the actual depiction of violence itself.

In the other camp, though, those who will claim that because violence in video games is interactive, the player is in fact encouraged to (and rewarded for) creating sequences where they are repeatedly exposed to violence and that therefore the neurological impact would be even greater.

Any thoughts on the matter?

Raising Smart Children

2007-11-29T09:50:00.000-05:00

I just read a fascinating article from Scientific American on how different mind-sets regarding intelligence (innate versus earned) can have a great deal of impact on a child's performance at school.

Reading through this was a real eye-opener for me because it forced me to come to terms with the fact that, as a child, I fell fully into the mindset that intelligence was an innate trait. Once school started to become more challenging for me my drive to excel and learn tapered off. This has been something I've had to struggle with ever since.

Read the article and I'm sure you'll find yourself thinking back to your own formative years and questioning whether your accomplishments were driven by a confidence in your intelligence and or a desire to learn and improve. Perhaps more importantly, though, it may make you question whether or not you have a 'growth' mindset in your adult life.

Game Design 'Demo Reel'

2007-11-20T11:39:00.000-05:00

A few weeks ago while I was in Vancouver I was asked by some students what I looked for in the demo reel of a game designer. Their challenge, clearly, is how to make an impression that stresses their creativity, solid mastery of the core vocabulary of design, and a million other important elements _without_ taking up a week of the hiring manager's time to review.

At the time I proposed using small flash games as a means to showcase some of these critical elements (as well as the ability to prototype, a critical skill for game designers, imo) along with some other key support material. I wasn't particularily satisfied with my answer, though, because clearly not every game designer is going to be able to do the programming and artwork necessary for pulling together a flash game single-handedly.

A week or so ago I read an excellent article by Brenda Brathwaite on exactly this subject entitled The Game Design Portfolio: Is There Such a Thing?. The article is concise and well written and answers the question much better then I did during my talks.

I really recommend the entire article, but here are a few choice quotes:

"Make games. Any kind of games. Flash games, board games, card games, collectible card games. Use whatever you have at your disposal and make a game out of it."

"...the person with the prototype is going to win every time."

"...don't start in January for your May job search. Start now for the job you want four, five, or 10 years from now. Seriously. Set up a blog and start writing about games intelligently and regularly."

"...if it's not good, don't show it."

I could go on, but really I'd just be quoting the entire article. If you are reading this blog and attended any of my talks in Vancouver, please do yourself and your career a favor and read Brenda's article. It could make all the difference in your attempts to get your foot in the door.

so apparantly i dropped out of university...

2007-11-17T12:42:00.000-05:00

it says so here, and we all know that print never lies.

grr...

You Can't Buy That Kind Of Publicity

2007-11-08T21:46:00.000-05:00

Montreal is home to a local independant game store called GameBuzz. They have a great selection, excellent central location and are generally my prefered shop for all things gaming (I have head some complaints about their customer service, though, but have never suffered through any hassles myself).

Penny Arcade just have Gamebuzz the best publicity they'll ever get by giving the _concept_ of the store a huge thumbs up in their latest news posting (scroll down to the bottom of the page). With the readership numbers that PA gets, my best is that our little homegrown Gamebuzz is going to get some franchise inquiries soon. :)

A Good Sign

2007-11-08T21:09:00.000-05:00

Last week while I was in Vancouver speaking at various schools I was showing some early prototype footage of Assassins Creed as part of the presentation. Unsure of just how ubiquitous the anticipation for this game was I would usually start out by asking "so how many people here have heard of Assassins Creed?". Perhaps it was naive of me to even bother asking given that I was talking to people who wanted to work in the gaming industry...I don't think I saw more then 10 hands not raised in the entire three days I was doing talks.

The buzz around this game is deserved and I love the fact that our CEO is willing to go out on a limb so bluntly and state very matter-of-factly the scores we're expecting for it.

Vancouver Bound

2007-10-29T11:24:00.000-04:00

I'm heading to Vancouver this week as part of the official Ubisoft 'TooMuchImagination' campaign. During the week I'll be talking at a few schools outlining the production process at Ubisoft and answering students' questions on the gaming industry and the game development process.

Anyone live in Vancouver?

ActionPants Games

2007-10-19T15:15:00.000-04:00

So for the last year or so I've been hearing more and more about a Vancouver based developed named ActionPants. I don't know anyone who works there, nor do I have any idea of what sort of games they're working on, but they have an employment perk I haven't seen before so I thought I'd blog about.

If you visit their website and click on the 'Art Portal' link you are brought to a page talking about their 'External Art Space'. From their photos and descriptions this appears to be a multi-disciplinary studio space for many forms of non-digital artwork (painting, sculpting, wood working, etc) open to any ActionPants employee looking to keep their creative juices flowing even while away from the computer.

I think this is an amazing idea not only for employee retention (creative hooks like this certainly help a studio stand out in the mind if its employees as unique) but also as a vehicle to promote ideas that could end up benefitting the quality of the games. I think of it as being in a similar vein to Google's "20% time" perk. I can certainly see employees exploring through clay character designs they've had in their mind for ages and using such a work to help convince others of the appeal. If nothing else a deeper (physical) mastery of 3d space and physical form can never hurt...

If you are in Vancouver and know more about ActionPants, and in particular this studio space and how it is percieved by the employees, I'd love to hear about it!

SF4

2007-10-17T18:17:00.000-04:00

So today Capcom announced Street Fighter 4.

I'm sure there is some interesting analysis to be made about why now is the right time for a true sequel in the SF brand (rather then a Hyper-Turbo-Ultimate-Remix-Puzzle-HD-Redux) but I'd rather just sit in awe at this teaser trailer.

Portal Flash Game

2007-10-11T16:49:00.001-04:00

Update 2: The link to the original makers of the Portal game isn't working -- no idea how long this has been the case. I suggest using the following link (confirmed working) if you're looking for this excellent game.

Update: Not that I necessarily mind, but a huge proportion of the traffic I've been recieving in recent weeks comes from people googling for 'Portal Flash Game' and ending up on this blog entry (for some reason I'm on the first page of Google's search results for this search string eventhough not a single page links to my actual blog entry, from what I can tell). For those of you visiting for the first time as a result of this Portal post, I'd certainly be happy if you poked around a little to see some of the other things I've talked about in the last year.

A colleague just directed me towards this excellent flash title seeking to port the 'Portal' game experience to a casual flash title.

The Portal concept, for those of you not familiar, is another excellent 'radical innovation' from our friends at Digipen and is amazingly sticky. The second you see it in action lightbulbs go off and the possibilities start to explode in your imagination.

Orange Box can't arrive soon enough for me.

Movies

2007-10-10T19:53:00.000-04:00

First quick point -- the 'FPP' in France last week went very well. For those of you waiting for more news on what I've been working on the fact that we passed this extremely important milestone means I'll probably be able to start talking about the game as early as the winter or early spring. After two years I'm anxious to break the silence. ;)

And now for something completely different...

Early this week my wife and I went to see "Across The Universe" (trailer) and really liked it. It was her choice (they always are -- *sigh*) but, being a huge Beatles fan, I was happy to go. It is a musical, a love story, and hardly anything explodes or catches on fire, but it was the most interesting use of music in a movie I've ever seen. If you've ever listened closely to the lyrics in a song (or a group of songs by a single artist) and tried to create a story in your head of what sort of characters could tie it all together, you'll like what they do in this movie.

Secondly though (and perhaps a little more accessible) is the incredible trailer for 'Jumper'. I'd never heard of the book but from what I can tell its about a guy (or guys) who learn they have Nightcrawler-esque teleportation powers. Obviously the lure of using these powers for selfish gain is hard to ignore. Looks great.

Crunching In Gameland

2007-09-25T21:00:00.000-04:00

It is 9:00pm on a tuesday night and myself and some 30+ members of my team are crunching. For some tonight is one of the first nights they've had to work overtime on the project so far. For others it is just one more in a long chain of late nights.

Next week I'll take a small team with me to France to meet the executive management of Ubisoft and show them what we've spent the last 22 months working on. The meeting is called an 'FPP' (or First Playable Prototype) and is meant to showcase a 'vertical slice' of the final game. Final graphics, sound, gameplay, etc. It is the single most important intermediary milestone in a project's production (second only to the Gold Master) and has consumed my team for months.

I know I'm supposed to look at the fact that we're still here so late as a failure of planning or of improper management. There is an increasing number of developers who will say that making a AAA game doesn't require overtime crunch but rather an intelligent management of internal and external expectations coupled with smart (agile) project management at every level. I don't debate the truth of this, and yet when I look out at my team, joking together while they sprint towards the 'final' finish line of this important milestone, I can't help but feel pride. Pride in them and pride in what we're working towards.

I honestly feel like the demo we'll take to France next week will make us all proud, rekindle some waining passions within the team and serve to maintain the respect that my team and my studio have worked so hard to earn within the company and the industry as a whole.

Is that wrong?

Focus Groups

2007-09-11T20:28:00.000-04:00

So I'm back from Brazil and must apologize for not posting sooner. Things are pretty busy at work right now as we're pushing towards a major project milestone.

Right now I'm sitting behind a 2-way mirror in Cincinnati assisting in a round of focus group testing for our marketing team. I've done this a couple of times before and will never get tired of hearing consumer feedback - a group of six guys walk into the room, sit down and all describe themselves as little more then 'Madden' fans, but within a few minutes of poking and prodding by the moderator they open up and give some really surprising feedback.

I wish I could write more about the types of questions we're asking them but, of course, I can't until the game is announced. I'm sure we'll do at least a few more of these tests post-announcement and I'll write a follow-up then.

Focus Groups

2007-09-11T20:26:00.001-04:00

Sabatical

2007-08-23T12:24:00.000-04:00

I leave for Brazil today and will be spending a few days in Paraty (see below).

No email access or updates for two weeks.

BEST TRACKLIST EVAR!11!

2007-08-22T13:02:00.000-04:00

I am so proud of my company right now, because the just-released track-list for our upcoming 'Jam Sessions' totally kicks ass. Whoever chose the music for this title has great taste in music.

Rock Band and User Generated Content

2007-08-20T16:25:00.000-04:00

I've talked about EA's Rock Band before and do not hide the fact that it sits proudly upon my list of most anticipated upcoming titles, but I've been hesitant to blog about it with any depth in the past for fear of disappointment (as a player). Simply put, up until now I've seen very little mentioned of any 'user generated content' for Rock Band. I know they'll have online multiplayer (certainly a plus) but without the ability for players to craft their own songs and share with friends I'm worried it might feel crippled.

Now, obviously there are serious legal issues to be considered here and I'm guessing EA will ship the title without a feature that would allow players to create their own songs knowing full well that doing so would immediately open the doors to Copyright infringement issues. Clearly this is something EA wants to avoid given how closely they are working with various rights holders.

Whether Rock Band supports it or not, though, the fans will eventually find a way. I've recently come across this tutorial for uploading your own custom songs to Guitar Hero II (PS2 only, I believe). You can see an example of this in action in the video embedded below.

Copyright issues here are obviously less of a concern given how complex it is to upload one's own songs. Only the most dedicated players would invest the time and money to do so.

Its a pity really -- I'd still like to see a way for players in Rock Band to be able to easily create their own content in order to get the true 'band' experience in a way the copyright holders could accept. What do you think? Is it even possible? Or would user generated content in Rock Band be a Pandora's box of legal issues and/or crippled functionality?

Brazil Bound

2007-08-17T20:01:00.000-04:00

Late next week my wife and I will join five friends from Montreal in Brazil to help celebrate the wedding of a very good friend of ours. We'll be there for a little under two weeks, with the majority of our time spent in Rio and Sao Paulo.

Many in the group are planning to content themselves lounging on the beach during the day but sitting idly soaking up cancer rays doesn't rank too high on my list of favorite past-times.

So I'm putting out a call in case some of you have been to Rio before and can suggest some attractions worth visiting.

Any and all recommendations are most appreciated. If you suggest something, I'll make sure to take photos and post them on this blog.

Megaphone

2007-08-15T13:50:00.000-04:00

A good friend of mine (who also happens to work at Ubi and maintains a french language blog about the gaming industry) Sebastien Ebacher recently pointed me towards a very cool cellphone app called Megaphone.

In short, megaphone allows people to turn their cellphones into game controllers but is network and device agnostic because it does not depend at all on cellular data. Instead players use their phones to dial a number and a computer on the other end of the line interprets the key tones (beep beep boop) as controller inputs, in real time, and updates the game state accordingly.

I think this is just brilliant and can't believe it wasn't done before. I spent over four years working in the wireless gaming space and can honestly say that neither of the companies I worked for ever thought of this (or, if they did, it certainly didn't trickle down to me).

Steampunk 4 t3h win!!

2007-08-05T21:15:00.000-04:00

Grand Theft Auto Delayed

2007-08-02T17:31:00.000-04:00

GTA4, it has just been announced, will be delayed until Q2 2008, missing the "Murderer's Row 2" window that is this christmas' shopping season.

If you play theSimexchange (or better yet, have some money IRL to invest in Ubisoft) now would probably be a good time to get behind Assassins Creed, as they've just become the main open-world/sand-box game of the year.

I expect this news to work heavily in our favor.

Update: Analysts, it would seem, at least partially agree. I haven't seen any specific guidance on Ubisoft as a result of this delay but several have gone on record as saying EA should benefit.

Croal: 1, Ebert: 0.

2007-08-01T13:10:00.001-04:00

Lengthy but very much worth a read, particularily if the 'Games as Art' debate interests you, or if you just feel like reading N'Gai Croal run circles around Roger Ebert's continued assertion that games cannot be 'high art'.

Who To Blame? - A story about lousy customer service

2007-07-29T09:31:00.000-04:00

I recently had a horrible experience trying to get my hands on the last Harry Potter book (yes, I'm hooked and proud) and it opened my eyes to some of the complexities of modern commerce, customer service, and the problems this can raise when things don't go right.

Pre-Order

Several months ago I was making a multi-book order on Amazon (one of which was The Culture Code by Clotaire Rapaille -- a book I highly recommend, but that's another post altogether) and I decided to pre-order the 7th Harry Potter. As all the hype built over the early summer I was confident I would have my copy thanks to a well-publicized special service Amazon had for the release -- day-of delivery to any major center in Canada even though the release date was Saturday, July 21st (no postal services in Canada on Saturdays).

Absence

Unfortunately, I had other more important things to do on that day then sit at home waiting for the mailman. I had assumed that the book would be left in my mailbox or, worst case scenario, a slip directing me to my local post office (one block away) would mean I could pick the book up Monday morning on the way to work.

The slip was indeed there and first thing Monday morning (on the way to work) I went to the post office to pick it up. The guy at the counter scanned the slip and told me the package wasn't at his post office - it turns out that scrawled onto the slip in nearly illegible writing was an address of another post office in Anjou. For those of you not familiar with Montreal, that's far - a 40 minute drive by car for me.

Confusion

That night I called the Anjou office to ask if they would transfer the package to a post-office closer to me or try to re-deliver it. They said they could not because it was a special package and Amazon wouldn't let them (finger pointing the first).

My next step, obviously, was to call Amazon. They said that since the package had been delivered it was out of their hands and that I had to deal directly with Canada Post (finger pointing the second)...of course they "Appreciated my Business" and "hoped they had helped to resolve my issue today".

To make things just a little more interesting Amazon further confused matters by giving me the address of a different post office where their records showed the book had been delivered. I double checked on the canadapost website and, sure enough, the address where the book was apparantly waiting was not at all in Anjou but rather just a few minutes from my house. Naively hopeful I rode out one night after work only to have them tell me that no, in fact, they did not have it and that I really truly needed to go out to the Anjou location. The chicken scratch of one postman, apparantly, trumps the canadapost website and tracking system.

Finally I called Canada Post directly. They had obviously fielded more then a few similar calls because the woman I talked to had a speech prepared: It wasn't the fault of Amazon nor Canada Post but in fact Amazon's Canadian partner in this endeavour -- Chapters. It was they, apparently, who had mandated that the package not be allowed to leave this one particular post-office in order to guarantee that their customers who missed the Saturday delivery could pick it up on Sunday (it turns out that this Anjou post office is one of the few in the city that operates on the weekend). The third and final finger pointing in this love-triangle of confusion.

Conclusion

Finally, having abandoned all other options I had no choice but to drive out to Anjou and back to pick up my book that Canada Post was so considerate to imprison for me.

The logic behind the operation seemed sound -- if someone is going to go through the hassle of pre-ordering a book it means they want to read it day of (or at least weekend of) and therefore restrictions needed to be imposed to ensure the packages stayed available at the most accesible (in terms of hours of operation) post office possible. What they neglected to factor in was the relative remoteness of this post office and the fact that once the initial launch weekend had passed, customers like myself cared much less about reading the book on the first day and much more about actually getting their hands on the book they had purchased. Time became less of an issue and was quickly trumped by convenience and, quite simply, customer expectations about how a package delivery experience should operate.

Moral

The interesting lesson for me in this experience is that it isn't enough to try and think like one's customer if said mindset is restricted to a very limited window of time. Amazon/Chapters tried to think like their pre-order customers, knowing that early access was important, but failed to factor in how quickly a pre-order customer becomes a frustrated customer when the initial window closes.

Resident Evil 5

2007-07-26T10:14:00.000-04:00

Just watch.

This is game trailer magic. An evolution in use of the trailer as a communication and promotional tool. It starts out very cinematic, setting the stage, focusing on drama and tension more then actual gameplay, but then seemlessly blends into footage that anyone who played RE4 will immediatly recognize.

The action-shot 2:23 seconds in looks straight out of hollywood and yet is that much more powerful because I know I'll be able to play that experience.

I could have done without the cheesy dialogue ("I have a job to do" -- *gag*) but other then that this is easily one of my favorite game trailers. Resident Evil 5 has just jumped right back onto the top of my most-anticipated list.

Jordan Mechner Interview

2007-07-25T17:39:00.000-04:00

Gamasutra has a nice interview up with Jordan Mechner, the creator of the Prince of Persia franchise.

As you can probably tell (I've been involved in three POP games in the last two years: The Two Thrones, Rival Swords, and Classic) I have a vested interest in all things Price Of Persia so I found it a real pleasure and honor to have the opprotunity to speak on the panel with Jordan Mechner while at the Hollywood & Games summit. It was very kind of Jordan to name-drop me in this interview of his with Gamasutra.

Thanks Jordan! ;)

The Magic of LittleBigPlanet

2007-07-19T11:29:00.000-04:00

The PS3 has a couple of upcoming 'killer apps' that will almost certainly make me fold and finally pick one up: If Heavenly Sword or Lair don't do it, Metal Gear Solid 4 almost certainly will. None of them, though, are as 'must have' for me as LittleBigPlanet which has been at the top of my watch list since it was announced at this year's GDC.

If you're not yet familiar with LittleBigPlanet and its online-multiplayer-collaborative-level design process, take a look at the embedded video below.

Update: I Hate gametrailers.com embedded video because it always causes problems with the formatting of this blog. Anyone else have this problem? Regardless, please follow this link to watch the video.

There are a lot of special things about this game (gorgeous graphics, multiplayer, intuitive looking physics based gameplay) but one thing stands out for me more then anything else - they've made 'creating' fun. The game is basically one big playable level editor and an absolute core part of the experience will be working with friends to build one's own maps, playing them on the fly to test out the experience before setting said map free out into the world for others to download, play, and rate (insert customary Youtube and Longtail comparison and analysis).

Think back to when you were young (especially true, perhaps, if you are male and played with G.I Joe or Transformers as a boy) and how a typical 'play' session would unfold. For me, it would go something like this: a friend would come over with his box of G.I Joe, I would unpack my box, and we would spend 2 hours constructing the scenario to be 'played'. I would set up my base, he would set up his, we would argue about tactics and positions and strategy and what our world was supposed to be ("this pillow is a huge cliff").

Then, when we had everything set up just perfectly, there would be 15 seconds of "bang, kapow, I shot that guy with this guy" until, ultimately, everyone of our soldiers was dead and the 'play' was over.

Two hours to set up, 15 seconds to 'play'. Rinse wash and repeat. For us it was always the building and set-up of the scenario that was fun. The actual actions that said scenario was supposed to permit were only a small fraction of the total enjoyment of the experience.

The developer of LineRider understood this very well. This 'game' is 99% about the experience of iteratively building one's level - drawing a line (building and setting up), 'playing' (watching your guy on the toboggon slide down the slope) and then returning to the building phase (draw more lines). This loop continues until you are satisfied with the 'play' output and the final video is generated to be shared with friends.

LittleBigPlanet takes this same philosophy -- make the 'work' part truly fun -- and adds the extremely appealing multiplayer (multibuilder?) component. I'm convinced that this mentality is absolutly critical to avoid the 1% rule and allow user-generated content within videogames to reach the critical mass it needs to become mainstream and mass-market. Game 3.0, as it were.

E3 2007

2007-07-13T12:57:00.000-04:00

I'm not at E3 this year, but man do I ever wish I was. The quantity and quality of exciting news coming out of the once-mighty behemoth is staggering. We all knew that this was going to be the year that 'Next-Gen' became Current-Gen and came into its own, but even with my already high expectations I'm finding this a very exciting time to be in the game development industry.

A bunch of games caught my attention as particularly exciting this year. I don't claim that my list below will be particularly unique or uncover any hidden gems that you haven't already heard of, but I'll endeavour to explain a little why I think these games are special from both a player and production point of view.

First off I have to tip my hat to the Assassins Creed team for a truly impressive demo. I had the good fortune of playing through the E3 build myself (one of the perks of working just down the hall from them) and can honestly say that they nailed the free-running, open-world feel. There is an incredible sequence in the demo where you're chasing an NPC through the streets, avoiding the crowd, using the buildings and rooftops to your advantage to take shortcuts, all in the name of catching up to and eliminating him with a satisfyingly dramatic assassination. I played the demo three times and the chase sequence unfolded differently every time. This game deserves the hype and the team deserves all the accolades they're sure to receive!

I've never been the largest Halo fan (although I've purchased, played and won both games) but a lot of attention is being given to one particular aspect of Halo 3 that I'm very excited about. The User-Generated content that is being called 'Halo 3 Game Films' is an idea whose time has come and will revolutionize competitive gaming, meta-game participation and community building in general. One important detail about these films is that they are recorded entirely in-engine and so are only playable by those who have the game as well. This will be important for some of the advanced features (pausing an explosion, rotating around 360 degrees to capture the perfect angle then sending a screenshot to your victim) but will cut out some of the more mass-market appeal of easily uploading one's user-generated videos to YouTube. I'm anxious to see how long it takes for someone (maybe Bungie themselves) to come out with a simple tool that will allow players to feed their video files into an application that outputs a non-interactive video. With that we will see a true explosion of Halo3 content on YouTube.

I'm excited about EA's Skate for many of the same reasons as Halo 3 -- in that Skate is also going to feature a very robust Game Film feature (likely even more so then Halo3) to try and attract the significant culture that revolves around distributing real-life skateboard videos. This talk by Skate producer Jason Balmer doesn't focus on the user-generated content but is an excellent example of how anyone representing a game should act when confronted with a question regarding their competition. Jason is gracious, humble and gives plenty of credit where it is due. I would not at all be surprised to see someone from Activision making it a point to return the favor, giving reciprocal praise to Skate due in no small part to the grace Jason shows here. Oh yah, and Skate looks sh*t hot, too!

I can't pass up Rock Band because I'm pretty sure it will come out of E3 as a front-runner for Game Of Show. I defy you to watch the embedded video without dreaming of all the fantastic parties you'll have while playing Rock Band, your pile of Mario Party games sadly gathering dust in the corner. EA and MTV have lofty ambitions to change the way the world looks at the distribution of and participation with Music entertainment (the way MTV did in the '80s with music videos). It is not yet clear to me how succesfull they'll be in this endevour but I'd bet money that no game will come close to the party appeal. Rock Band is going to help make it cool to play videogames!

I'd really like to know what games coming out of this year's E3 most excite you and why. Are there any titles (*ahem* Bioshock *ahem*) that you're surprised to see not recieving much press? Any 'must-play' titles added to your list because of this year's E3?

Brittany Aubert

2007-07-10T14:56:00.000-04:00

I just saw over on Penny-Arcade that Brittany "my husband is the most romantic geek ever" Aubert is a contestant in this year's PAX Omegathon.

I finally have someone to root for in the most insane competitive gaming competition the world has ever known. Sweet. Steve -- you must be very proud!

Profile:

Brittany Marie Aubert aka baubert
Hometown: Bellevue, Washington
Age: 20
Favorite game: Ocarina of time.
Favorite genre: Action/Adventure
Worst Game: Superman 64
Best gaming moment: “I made a pretty cool football strategy game called Gridiron Tactics while attending DigiPen.”

John Riccitiello

2007-07-09T17:57:00.000-04:00

John Riccitiello, EA's new CEO, has been talking a lot recently about the dangers our industry faces. The games we make are too hard, we've counted on sequels for too long and innovation in general is lacking -- in short, the failings of our industry to reach critical mass and mass market acceptance is our own fault.

For many people this is likely music to their ears - validation of a message they've been screaming from the top of soap boxes for years. To have EA's CEO echo these points surely must feel like vindication.

I wonder, though, could this strategy backfire? EA, like the rest of us, is 100% dependant on the talent of the game developers it attracts to make their product and profit. Many developers will be attracted by this message, perhaps seeking out positions at EA (a company they might have sworn they would never work for) if they believe that doing so will allow them to work on something truly innovative. Could others, though, be turned off by the finger-pointing of Riccitiello? Does anyone out there feel slighted by these comments? Surely we've done something right as an industry or we would have stopped with E.T...

So -- a question for the readers out there in the industry. Do John's comments make you more or less inclined to someday accept an offer at EA (assuming you don't already work there)?

Rock Band

2007-07-05T08:05:00.000-04:00

Penny-Arcade's Tycho has some interesting analysis of the video:

...the way that a kick drum note is represented by a glowing bar on the staff. Or that the drummer is given fill sections to extemporize after sections. Or that there is a huge freakout at the end of a song that feeds into a universal bonus. [...] it's nice to see normal, bonus, and atonal sections in play

I've already called Drums in the band my wife and two friends are forming. I just hope and pray they've done justice to online band competitions.

Chicago

2007-07-04T19:30:00.000-04:00

I'm going to be on the road for the next four days without access to internet - my father and I are taking a trip to Chicago to celebrate my birthday. During this time I don't expect to be struck by a flash of inspiration relating to this blog, so please accept my apologies for the extended silent period. I'll be back on Monday and, hopefully, ready to jump back into things.

Points From The Road

2007-06-27T22:30:00.000-04:00

So I'm sitting in the Chicago airport heading home from the Hollywood & Games summit (flight delayed, of course) and I thought I'd throw up a bunch of points floating around in my head over the last couple of days. In no particular order:

Clive Barker's keynote was extremely interesting. Almost surprisingly so, given that I had no clue what to expect. Some of his most important points have already been written up by Next-Gen, Gamasutra and Joystiq but there were three quotes he gave during his talk that I loved and wanted to note here:

"Let's take our imaginations back from the guys who want to sell it to us with a happy meal" -- in discussing how everyone needs a creative outlet and should allow themselves the freedom of creative exploration, even if its messy.
"Make your own laws or be a slave to another man's" -- A central theme to his talk was this idea that we (game developers) don't need to do things the 'old' way.
"We need to be able to dream with our eyes open" -- Explaining one of the reasons he likes and believes in videogames.

Also on the Clive note there was some talk of a series of books he's done that I'd never heard of called Abarat. I couldn't find a copy in my short time in L.A but the few people I talked to who had read books from the series raved about it so I'm adding it to my 'Must Read' list.

Segueing on the Book line I want to thank Kim for turning me on to 'Soon I will be Invincible". If you are any kind of Geek at all, you'll love it. I'm only a few chapters in but the characters are rich, the writing is sharp and the author clearly spent ages researching every single super-hero cliche out there, across all mediums, and finding ways to stitch them all together in a cohesive way that is smart, funny and genuinely cool! If, like me, you're halfway through a bunch of print books already and can't bear the thought of starting another I recommend the audiobook version (I subscribe to Audible).

As a final point I'd like to offer up a little posthumorous credit to Patrick Redding for giving me the excellent point I brought up at the conference re: videogame - vs - film production heirarchies. Thanks again Patrick.

100

2007-06-19T22:29:00.001-04:00

This is my 100th Blog post. I wanted to save it for something special -- a sneak peak at the game I'm working on or some deep insightful analysis of the Hollywood and Games summit...

but I just saw this article on BoingBoing and found myself remembering a wonderful line from the movie Sideways (which, by the way, only sort of means something to me because I don't know very much about wine):

"You know, the day you open a '61 Cheval Blanc … that's the special occasion."

So with that I decided to make my 100th blog post this. Just because its cool.

Was it something I said?

2007-06-18T15:59:00.000-04:00

For a few weeks now I've been hovering comfortably around the '28' mark in terms of Feedburner subscribers -- people who subscribe to have this blog pushed to them via an RSS reader. 28 isn't a huge number but considering the relatively niche subject matter of the blog and the fact that I don't promote it at all, I was pretty happy with it.

Today, unexpectedly I dropped by 50% -- to 14. I had thought I had almost that many people subscribed at Ubisoft alone.

So either there is a problem with Feedburner or I've really lost people's interest and need to make some radical changes around here to keep reader's attention.

Have I jumped the shark?

Hollywood and Games summit

2007-06-16T17:52:00.001-04:00

Next week I am likely going to participate in the Hollywood and Games summit on a panel entitled:

"How Talent Can Successfully Cross the Digital Divide"
Kim Libreri, Vice President Advanced Strategy, Digital Domain
Yuri Lowenthal, Actor, Afro Samurai, Gilmore Girls, Prince of Persia
Susan O’Connor, Game Writer, Gears of War
Moderated by Jordan Mechner, Creator, Prince of Persia
If film, television, animation, and games are converging on a production, marketing, and retail level, where does that leave the individual creative talent that make these industries work? A film and game director moderates this discussion between a TV voice actor, a film visual effects artist, and a game writer.

I figured some of you reading this might have a thought or two on on this subject and I'd be interested to hear your comments as I prepare myself.

Bioshock

2007-06-08T10:10:00.000-04:00

"From the least anticipated to the most wanted"

Wyclef Jean

I'm really looking forward to Bioshock. At least year's E3 I managed to con my way into a closed-door viewing and was floored. It immediately became my personal 'best of show' and sky-rocketed to the top of my most-anticipated list. When I heard it was coming out for the 360 and PC simultaneously I rejoiced because it meant I wasn't going to have to upgrade my PC just for the game (something I haven't done since, I think, Dark Age Of Camelot launched).

Bioshock is everywhere right now. The buzz is reaching a fevered pitch. There were three excellent sources of Bioshock news this week that deserve some attention.

First, an excellent 'preview' piece over at Gamers With Jobs (such a great name). Two choice quotes:

“…Levine's trying to do the same thing with BioShock, while still delivering a game 16-year-old cheese eating high school students will want to play. "We have these philosophical notions, but you've got to deliver. You gotta bring home the monsters. You gotta bring home the superpowers." In short, he's become a commercial realist.”

"You don't elevate the discussion by saying 'listen to me!'" says Levine. "You get it by saying 'look this is awesome, oh and by the way we're also talking about being a human being. We're also talking about power.'"

I like to call this 'The Simpsons' model. To me one of the brilliant accomplishments of The Simpsons is that it manages to appeal to those looking for base humor (Homer drinks beer and burps) but has another layer of humor that will appeal to those looking for something a tiny bit more cerebral. They 'lure' you in with the easily accesible but every so often manage to squeeze in an issue or two when you're not looking.

For more Bioshock goodness check out the latest episode of the 1up show. One of these days I want to write more about the 1up show. If you aren't subscribed to their podcast, you should be. Games journalism meets soap opera is not a hybrid I thought would work -- but it does.

Finally hit up Joystiq for a slew of videos, some of which may or may not come from the 1up show itself (I didn't watch them all).

Brash Convergence

2007-06-04T17:35:00.000-04:00

So the industry has been buzzing since yesterday over the news that Brash Entertainment has secured 400 million in funding. That can buy a lot of convergence. ;)

Just a couple quick points on this subject:

In March when I first learned of the existence of Brash and their business model, I was admittedly skeptical.
Brash must be doing something right, though, as they seem to be attracting some impressive talent, including a designer aquaintance of mine whose skills I respect. I'm willing to suspend a little my judgement of their business model and 'convergence' ambitions until I see their first titles.
If they fail -- if they fall into the trap of making shoddy movie-licensed knockoffs -- I'm worried about the impact that will have in the rest of the industry, in particular others looking to attract VC.

Picnik - A WebApp that deserves your attention

2007-06-03T10:11:00.000-04:00

So this morning I woke up early to try and get some browsing time in. I had been feeling relatively uninspired in the blogging front all week and was hoping I'd find a topic that motivated me to write. As is my usual habit I started bouncing from link to link in my blogroll and after a couple of hours had 8 tabs open in FireFox and still no 'eureka' subject. Discouraging to say the least.

Not wanting to consider the entire experience a failure I started looking into Google Notebook as an app to help make future blogging easier when I'm still in the information collecting phase. That lead to a LifeHack article on 10 Firefox extensions that make life easier where I found my eureka -- the app called Picnik which in the 10 minutes I've been using it has already made me a convert. I will sing Picnik's high praises here with the aim of turning you on to it as well -- it deserves all the attention and users that come its way.

In a nutshell, Picnik is a fast, free, online photo editing tool. Photo Rotate, Crop, Resize, as well as the ability to modify Exposure, Colors, Sharpen and eliminate red-eye are all a single click away. A long list of 'creative tools' from Sepia to 'Gooify' are also included and, while the product is in beta, are all available for free (some of the more advanced tools will likely fall within the premium service only when the beta is over).

If you participate in any sort of online community, chances are you deal with images and photos frequently. Facebook, Myspace, Flickr, message forums, running your own blog, etc. If you are anything like me then you probably have accounts and photos hosted across several services. One of the first things that struck me about Picnik is how easily it integrates into all the above listed services. Within 30 seconds Picnik had connected to, been authorized on and was displaying my photo albums from around the web.

Now any image I upload to Flickr, Facebook or Picaso can be edited using Picnik and then automatically uploaded back to the host site for sharing. As an added bonus I can send the modified image to all three services should I desire.

If you haven't heard if Picnik before I highly recommend it. Give it a try.

Prince Of Persia Movie

2007-06-01T23:56:00.001-04:00

I just saw today on Joysti q that latinoreview.com has gotten their hands on a preliminary draft of the Prince Of Persia: Sands Of Time script.

They seem really pleased with what they've read, calling it 'almost perfect, giving it an A- grade and saying

Disney has got a monster hit and another potential blockbuster franchise on their hands. Prince of Persia can be as fun as Pirates of the Caribbean.

Their review of the script is long so as way of an executive summary, here are some choice quotes:

One of the producers said in the trades that Prince of Persia is a 9th century Indiana Jones and it reads and feels like one.

One noticeable change from the SOT trilogy I worked on is that The Prince is named (Dastan) and the Farah character (ie: The Prince's love interest) has been replaced with someone named Tamina.

This line clearly points out that they'll bring back the 'rewind' power from SOT:

THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE WRAPS! Time slows to a stop and REWINDS!

Finally, to whet all of our appetites:

Prince of Persia is one hell of an action adventure script which will be sure to thrill general audiences and fans of the game. I can’t wait.

A final point of note is the image that LatinoReview uses here in the form of a movie poster. My memory is a little hazy but it seems to draw a huge amount from The Two Thrones and various promotional images used for that game around the world (note the 'Daggertail' chain -- the weapon of the Dark Prince -- wrapping around the image). For those of you hoping this was a first peek into what the SOT movie was going to look like I'd suggest you don't get your hopes up.

Starcraft II

2007-05-27T20:51:00.000-04:00

It is hard to imagine a game getting more advance buzz and hype then Starcraft II. Announced just last week (in case you're just waking up from a 28-days later style coma, you can watch some footage here) SC2 is almost guaranteed to smash all sales records when it finally launches.

Just how many copies will it sell? Difficult to predict, of course, but the simExchange (I mentioned it earlier) is going do its best to try and guess. The current futures estimate is in the neighborhood of 10 million copies worldwide. Based off of the insane hype already surrounding this game the stock price on the SimExchange rose nearly 25% in one day. Obviously a lot of people have big expectations for this game.

One point to note, though, is that the SimExchange does not seem to be international yet (that is, English is the only language of information and comments) and the bulk of games listed are those with western appeal. Given SC2's huge important in the Asian market (in particular Korea) I'd be curious to see what would happen to the futures estimates if the fanatical Koreans started 'buying' shares. Something tells me the sales expectations would quickly inflate to astronomical levels, not because the game will necessarily sell 50 million copies (or some other absurdly large number) but because the hype is so strong that 'purchasers' would abandon all logic and just get swept up in the frenzy (*ahem* -- tech stocks circa 1999 anyone?). Clearly, though, its a good time to be Blizzard.

On a slight tangent, Joystiq today posted a video of a matchup between two Korean Starcraft gods which you can find embedded below. An interesting video, to be sure, but unless you are a huge fanatic you'll likely want to let the whole thing load then skip around to the exciting parts. Even though the whole thing is in Korean and I'm not a SC guru it is clear there are some very advanced strategies at work here but I can't help but feel I'd appreciate it so much more if someone could give me a running analysis of whats going on (and why it is so impressive) in my own language.

Which brings me to a point I've made a few times in the past re: meta-data for games (and, in this case, game movies). It would not be an impossible task for someone to take this YouTube flash video, export it to a .avi, open it up locally and overdub their own match analysis, replacing the Korean commentators (perhaps a lengthy process, but surely there are those willing to make the investment) widening the potential appeal of the video to a large English-speaking market. There are thousands of fan mashups of videogame trailers released on YouTube but I haven't seen much 'meta-analysis' (for lack of a better word). Are they out there? If so, how does one go about finding them?

How nice would it be to be able to visit a YouTube movie's page and click on a link called: "Find Mashed-Up Media" that would search YouTube for all of the other videos uploaded that share certain digital fingerprints (ie: the same video track, or parts thereof, but different audio tracks). Can someone get to work on inventing that already? :)

Somethingawful

2007-05-25T20:56:00.000-04:00

I noticed in my traffic logs today that I significant amount of traffic was directed this way from forums.somethingawful.com today.

I'm ashamed to admit it, but I don`t have SA forum account so can't find the post that led to this traffic.

If anyone reading this came from SA, would you be so kind as to post said thread in the comments? I'd appreciate it.

Thanks

Emotion In Games II

2007-05-24T22:11:00.000-04:00

Sorry I've been so quiet of late everyone. I took the week off of work last week to focus on my neglected home and patient wife, and fell a little out of touch with the goings on of Our World as a result. I'm just starting to get back up to speed.

This one will be short but I might build upon it tomorrow. I read on next-gen today that Lionhead has released the first of their development diaries focusing on fable 2. This first installment talks about the now infamous dog giving even further details and promises regarding how emotionally connected we'll be to our canine friend in this game. I've blogged before about my thoughts on Lionhead tipping their hand somewhat with all this talk about how much we'll care for the dog, but I do like some of the things Peter has to say.

“We give you no control over the dog. Just think about that for a second. No control over the dog. You haven’t got a dog button… You control the dog by worrying about you as a hero"

Download and watch the complete video here. On another note, does anyone else find Peter Molyneux has a very soothing voice? I think he should do some voice acting in fable2. ;)

Prince Of Persia Classic

2007-05-15T10:11:00.000-04:00

I've been itching to talk about this title so I'm very happy that Ubisoft finally announced it. Sometime this summer (hopefully sooner rather then later) a Ubisoft/Gameloft production (Ubi publishing, Gameloft developer) entitled 'Prince Of Persia Classic' will hit XBLA.

The most credit I can take for this excellent title is of development broker and part-time consultant so when you play it and love it, I'm sorry to say I won't be able to accept your heaps of praise. :)

Watching this game be developed made me really miss my team back at Gameloft Montreal as it was a wonder to see (1) how quickly they managed to get something functional (especially given that they created all the technology from scratch and had never developed for the 360 prior) and (2) how far they were able to push the signature 'Gameloft Polish'. There are a few little touches (more evident in the high-quality version) that are a real treat for me to see given my involvement on POP: The Two Thrones. For example, notice that in that wonderful scene when The Prince sees himself in the mirror and jumps through, releasing his evil counterpart, said doppleganger has been 're-imagined' to be The Dark Prince from T2T. I love it.

'Classic' titles are going to continue to find a home on XBLA because (1) publishers have the large back catalogues of titles they'd love to re-monetize and (2) consumers seem anxious to play favorite titles from their past. Given this, though, I really like the way we treated this title with the upgraded graphics and small (mostly cosmetic) gameplay tweaks. Fans who would cry foul if we changed the original too much should be very happy while those who never experienced the Jordan Mechner classic will play something that stands on par with the level of graphical polish and experience they would demand of a modern ('casual') title.

I'm not supposed to, but I'm chomping at the bit to buy up as many shares as simExchange will allow me to. I have high hopes for the sales of this game.

Puzzle Quest

2007-05-12T22:36:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago I found myself uninspired by my existing games library and decided I needed a new fix. I wanted something casual so my attention focused on the PSP and DS -- the platforms I generally look to for shorter game sessions.

I remembered reading the above linked Penny-Arcade comic for a game called Puzzle Quest and being intrigued. It sounded like Magic The Gathering married with Bejeweled -- not the two games and genres I would most expect to combine well. I was happy to see that not only is the game available on both the PSP and the DS but that a relatively rich PC demo version is available for download. I grabbed it and was quickly hooked -- one afternoon quickly shot.

Puzzle Quest is, as far as I am concerned, the 'Killer App' for the PSP. I have been playing, literally, all day. I woke up, started playing, ate, played, and will likely be up to the wee hours of the morning -- it is that addictive.

The core game mechanic could not be simpler. Match gems in groups of three, four or five ala Bejeweled. The hook, though, is that the different colored gems correspond to different types of Mana which in turn is used to cast spells. It is uncovering the powerful spell 'stacks' that makes this game so meaty. Any RPG fan will find plenty of tweaking opprotunities as they fine-tune their spell arsenal inbetween battles.

Puzzle Quest is soon to launch on Xbox Live Arcade where I'm sure the multiplayer component (which I haven't tried yet so I can't comment on) will help make this a top Live title. I know I'll be purchasing it.

Do yourself a favor -- check out the PC demo and see if you can resist the siren call of this excellent title. 'Casual' accesibility and mechanics combined with 'hardcore' story and depth. Truly a special game.

Articles Of Interest

2007-05-10T12:59:00.000-04:00

A lot of gaming related news tidbits have caught my attention in the last couple of days so I figured it was time for another link dump.

N'gai rented out his 'soap box' to Midway's Chief Marketing Officer Steve Allison. Steve uses the opprotunity to discuss, amongst other things, the art and importance of the 'Vertical Slice' in game development and makes the arguement that a truly well developed represenative sample of final gameplay (what we here at Ubisoft generally called a First Playable Prototype) would help solve some of the complaints of the Dyack Debate. My personal opinion is that this is a lot of text about what I feel has become a common-sense practise. I don't know of any developers who tackle projects of significant size without focusing on an FPP/Vertical Slice.
An 'MMO' based off of one of my favorite movies in recent memory (Kung-Fu Hustle)? Where do I sign up? Gamasutra has an interview with John Smedly talking about some of SOE's upcoming initiatives and the discussion about this MMO has me giving serious thought about getting back into the habit.
Finally some of you might remember from a previous post of mine that I have a thing for the convergence of location based services, wireless devices and gaming. This new LBS solution from HP, then, is understandably exciting to me. One quote I like:
"So, depending on where you are, you can play games, listen to music or watch videos, all of which are relevant to where you are. It’s already been tested at the Tower of London, where people could play games relating to the site (presumably involving beheading royalty)".

Service Question

2007-05-07T21:46:00.000-04:00

Is anyone having problems accessing this blog using Internet Explorer?

Periodically when I try to access my blog at work I get a very strange error message when using IE.

I guessed the problem was localized given that no one has emailed to complain, but I just want to verify. If I was mistaken, please let me know.

Red Faction ++

2007-05-03T09:31:00.000-04:00

Not much to say other then: "Nice". LucasArts is on a tear!

The SimExchange

2007-05-01T22:15:00.000-04:00

I can't believe I haven't heard of this before today.

If you have even a passing interest in the business of video games then you've certainly tried your hand at least once trying to predict the potential sales of a game you felt convinced was going to do particularly well (or poorly).

The SimExchange creates a free virtual futures market to allow the would-be Warren Buffet's of the videogame space to safely try their hand at predicting top-selling titles.

Publishers, I'm sure, will also be keeping an eye on this service to see how closely the Wisdom of The Crowds mirrors real life for actual shipped titles and invest their trust in the future predicting capabilities of the service accordingly.

For now some titles' sales projections seem to be woefully exaggerated (as much as I'd like to believe it I don't think Rival Swords for the PSP will sell 400k+ units) so I'd take the whole thing with a grain of salt.

A very cool service nonetheless! Worth checking out.

And now for something completely different

2007-05-01T20:22:00.000-04:00

Via Engadget - this has nothing to do with game development but is just too cool not to post.

Anyone out there remember the 1986 movie 'Short Circuit' ("Number Five Is Alive"). Does anyone else remember having their imaginations sparked as children by that movie and thinking robots were not only the future, but the COOL future?

Well Daniele Benedettelli, a (I'm guessing) masters student in robotics, has used Lego's awesome Mindstorm NXT product to create a faithful reproduction of the infamous Johnny Five and it simply blows my mind.

Watch the embedded link to see Number Five in action and join me in hoping against hope that our children will love the 'new' lego as much as we loved the old. Not much would make me prouder as an eventual father then having my son/daughter get into constructing robots as 'play-time'.

The Lucifer Effect

2007-04-29T21:16:00.000-04:00

My reading list is getting very long. I add books to my 'must read' list much faster then I pore through my backlog.

Today, reading through my blog roll (perhaps one reason I don't get through my book list quick enough) I came across this very interesting sounding book by the psychologist who ran the 1967 Stanford Prison Experiment called The Lucifer Effect: Understanding how good people turn to evil.

If you, like me, think the book sounds interesting but worry you won't have a chance to read it for a while I encourage you to read the interview Guy Kawasaki did with the author here.

A question for you all, though: how do you decide what book to read next when your queue starts to get long? Do you choose chronologically?

Education Through Gaming

2007-04-27T10:56:00.000-04:00

A while back I wrote an entry called the 'Wikipedia of Gaming' where I talked about divergent political views being communicated through videogames and how I thought this was a good thing for our industry.

This morning on Next-Generation I saw this article entitled: "Understanding Conflict Through Games" which focuses on a new title being released by Serious Games called "Global Conflicts: Palestine".

I really want to try this game. From the NG article it sounds like the developers recognize the importance of Fun when trying to use games as a vehicle to educate without necessarily compromising on the actual merit of the title as a vehicle to challenge the player intellectually. Too often when I read about 'serious games' I get the feeling that they are so focused on the high-brow that they risk losing our on the potential of the medium to engage, or compromise too much and that the actual 'learning' elements are surface layer at best.

I also like the fact that this game seems to mirror an important reality of the world -- that in many cases, both sides of any conflict worth fighting over have grievances that deserve recognition and can rationalize (if not justify) said party's stance. There is no 'right and wrong' in the Israel-Palestinian crisis and the game seems to do a good job of reinforcing this by making 'staying neutral' the hardest objective to achieve.

Jack Thompson vs Jason Della Rocca

2007-04-26T08:57:00.000-04:00

Another very interesting item that came out of the event last night came from Jason Della Rocca, IGDA Executive Director (and Montrealer). Jason runs a blog at Reality Panic and had, a few days ago, used his blog to call out Jack Thompson for, predictibly, immediatly pinning the blame for the VT massacres on the video game industry.

Jack, it seems, didn't take too well to being called a 'Massacre Chaser' (which, it turns out, might have been a prophetic term) and issued a public challenge to Jason to a debate about whether or not not videogames truly teach children to kill.

Jason 'took the bait' as it were, in that he contacted Jack to find out more about how such a debate would work. The entire email exchange between Jason and Jack is posted unedited here and I think you'll find it extremely informative and well worth the read.

In short, Jack's interest in the idea of a debate seems intrinsicly tied to his expenses for the trip being paid and the ~$3000 speaking fee he would expect to take away. When asked if he would do the debate for free, he responded:
That isn’t how it works and I can’t justify leaving my family to go to Montreal on a freebie. Sorry. Have to pay the bills.
I expect to see news of this exchange spread quickly around the gaming industry as it gives us all one more feather of hatred to stick in our collective cap of Jack.

IGDA Meeting

2007-04-25T09:47:00.000-04:00

Update So the GameCafe event was last night and it went relatively well. It took longer then expected to get started as most people ordered food and we didn't want to start the discussions until everyone had eaten and paid their bills. Hopefully for future meetings we'll find a way to have people fed and ready to talk in a more timely manner as more then a few (myself included) had to skip out before the end.

I think the quote of the night has to go to Alex Parizeau (Ubisoft Producer) who was moderating a 'Team/Studio' table. The big take away for him and everyone at his table for the night was the fact that we, as an industry: "have no idea what we're doing" and are only taking the smallest baby steps towards maturity as an industry.

---

If you live in Montreal and are involved in the game development industry, I hope you'll attend tonight's IGDA event.

The GameCafé concept is a fresh spin on the old roundtable discussion format, with a greater emphasis on intimate interactions in a more casual setting. For our next GameCafé we will explore the future of work in the game industry at three different levels:
Personal Career Level (eg, professional development, credit/trackrecord, quality of life, etc)
Team/Studio Level (eg, corporate structures, team dynamics, production methods, outsourcing, etc)
Industry Level (eg, business models, economic forces, impact of globalization, etc)
Each participant will have the opportunity to explore and discuss all three topics, as well as participate in a group-wide "debrief" at the end.

I'll be moderating one of the two tables on 'Industry Level'.

Hope to see you there!

N'Gai and the Art of the Interview

2007-04-19T08:09:00.000-04:00

N'Gai Croal is, in my opinion, one of the best gaming journalists in the industry today. His questions are incredibly insightful, penetrating and give his subjects an opportunity to promote their work in deeper and more interesting ways then simply harping on their feature set for the thousandth time. If it isn't already, his blog, Level Up, certainly belongs on your roll. In the short period I've had it in my RSS feed it has quickly joined the ranks of Joystiq and Game|Life as absolute daily must-reads.

Anyone familiar with Croal knows that lately he has been on a huge God Of War II Kick lately. His latest is a series of interviews with members of the core creative team behind GoW2 under the catchy heading: "Team Assault". So far he has interviewed Corey Barlog (creative director), Shannon Studstill (Executive Producer), and Tim Moss (lead programmer and CTO). I recommend them all as examples of excellent questions, but also excellent responses. These people are professional, composed and yet clearly extremely passionate. There is just the right combination (for my tastes) of controlled corporate speak and passionate exuberance that makes for really interesting reads.

I already respect the team at SCEA a great deal for putting out ground-breaking games but the way they've been handling themselves (and handled, I guess) post GOW2 launch has given me a whole new level of admiration. They're making our industry look good.

An offer you can't refuse Pt. 2

2007-04-18T10:39:00.000-04:00

This post from a few weeks ago on a highly creative recruiting strategy attracted significant attention so I'm gambling there are more then a few people visiting this blog who are interested in a follow-up to the post.

Todsy Next-Generation published a piece discussing one game designer (Scott Youngblood) who recieved the infamous FedEx package and was indeed lured away from his comfortable position at Sony to join the Red-5 team.

War Against The Sun

2007-04-17T20:00:00.000-04:00

Like me, my brother-in-law works in game development and is a huge gaming geek. Also like me he has much less time for gaming these days then he once did (his time is even more precious since he and my sister are new parents). As such we make it a point to try and get together at least once a year for a 'War Against The Sun'.

The point of these WAtSes is to simply shut out any and all potential disturbances from pure and unadulterated gaming goodness (ie: wives, children, and yes, any and all consciousness of time) and lock ourselves away in a basement with tinfoil on the windows so as to most appropriately get 'in the zone'.

There will be food and drink on hand, a killer home entertainment system (his, not mine --*sigh*) and, finally, God Of War 2.

For more then a month now we've both resisted not only the urge to play to play, but have also avoided any discussion about the game that might contain spoilers or even to allow ourselves to watch trailers or previews. We aim to go into this weekend with the most virgin senses possible. It would have been nice to have Heavenly Sword or Lair on hand for the 'War' (as we'd like to kick the tires on his as-of-yet unchristined PS3) but the timing was not to be. From the tidbets on GoW2 that I have been unable to ignore, though, I'm expecting that the PS2's swan song should be able to make us forget that we're playing on 'old gen' tech.

If you work in an industry out of passion (as most people in the game development industry do) you owe it to yourself to have your own form of the WaTS to maintain the fires of passion the drive you to do what you do.

Prince Of Persia: Rival Swords

2007-04-15T21:07:00.000-04:00

Both the PSP and Wii versions of Prince Of Persia: Rival Swords have been out for a little over a week now and a few reviews have popped up for both. So far on this blog I've only talked about my work on POP games once and it seemed to generate some interest, so I thought some of you might like to read my take on the reviews I've read so far and a little sneak peek behind the development of the titles.

Rival Swords on the Wii

The Wii controls worked for some and not for others but I think IGN was the harshest with their critique of our camera system:

As a result, Ubi has been forced to sloppily map camera controls to the motion-tilt on the Wii remote; twist it in a turn-key motion and the camera will swing left; twist it right to go in the opposite direction. It doesn't feel good and the response time on the camera is imprecise, so you may sometimes overshoot your desired camera view
IGN

I'm surprised, really, because the camera control system tested very well during development. Allowing a player to control movement with the analog stick on the Nunchuck while tilting the remote to change camera angles created, we thought, a physical manifestation to the act of looking around that people usually adopted very quickly to. We had wanted to map the vertical camera access to the up/down tilt on the remote too, but doing so caused complications in combat given that we used this movement for sword swings. Ultimately by biggest regret about the camera control is that we couldn't find a way to make vertical and horizontal panning consistent.

The game is currently averaging 75% (down from around 84% for The Two Thrones) which is right about what I was expecting given the lack of new content. I still feel that the Wii controls add a huge amount to the game and very much consider the project a success, if for no other reason then to have validated the potential of the franchise in a motion sensitive controller environment. Ubisoft can now safely argue all the way up the management chain that the gameplay of a POP game can translate well onto a Wii (or potentially SixAxis) control system. If Rival Swords at least breaks even in sales we could potentially convince executives to invest in the development of a POP title from scratch that makes even greater use of the unique control systems.

Rival Swords on the PSP

Unlike the Wii version, Rival Swords for the PSP featured a significant new amount of content: Nine new levels integrated into the story (three long levels, three short, and three that were really just upgrade rooms); three all-new chariot races; and an asynchronous ad-hoc multi-player race mode (that is, you have to be in the same room as your opponent and you don't actually see their avatar during your race but rather you are impacted by their actions, and vice versa).

One thing I'm pleasantly surprised about is that reviewers aren't being harder on us given the difference in content between the PSP and Wii versions considering they share the same name. I had expected people to develop expectations re: Wii functionality based off of the PSP feature set and then be very frustrated at its lack. Clearly there is a desire for more unique content in the Wii version but exact feature parity between the two doesn't seem to be important - this is an interesting lesson for me.

The new single player levels were ignored completely by some reviewers, but Gamespot, at least, thought enough of them to offer the following:

Much of Two Thrones/Rival Swords is spent navigating to and then knocking out sand portals to disrupt the Vizier's supply lines. Instead of giving you the free ride you got in other versions of the game, the PSP version has you delving inside these portals to implode them. The challenge here ranges from maliciously difficult to overly simplistic, though they all provide more background on the story.
Gamespot

We made a lot of tweaks to the difficulty of these levels to try and keep a good flow and in the end I thought we did a good job considering the team that developed this version (Pipeworks software) hadn't been involved at all in The Two Thrones and therefore had an extraordinary challenge in trying to create and inject levels that fit in properly in our difficulty curve.

The biggest complaint about RS on the PSP (pretty much across the board) are audio bugs and a general down-grading of texture quality in some areas.

The audio has its problems as well. The soundtrack offers strong orchestrations and decent voice-work, but can sometimes be out of sync with the on-screen action.
GameDaily

The Two Thrones had a huge amount of data (both art and audio) and so the fact that we managed to fit it all onto a UMD without cutting levels or creating abhorrent loading times was a feat of significant engineering. I think it is still a toss-up whether or not the reviewers would have been harder on us had we made more drastic cuts to ensure less noticeable bugs (ie: cut music payback during dialog) given the fact that we were starting from a well known experience (ie: The Two Thrones).

Ultimately I think both versions will probably settle around the 75% mark. They both have their fair share of problems but, I think, both also have some unique value for fans of the franchise and particularly those who didn't get around to playing The Two Thrones.

The rise of the game development documentary

2007-04-11T15:26:00.000-04:00

I'll keep this short because I'd prefer you to use your time watching the actual documentaries in question rather then read my thoughts about them. I'll simply say this: documentaries about the making of video games are getting really good and, you guessed it, I think this is a great sign for our industry. To wit:

Recently released Halo 3 Multiplayer Gameplay documentary:

God Of War 2's 'Greek Mythology' documentaries. Note that I haven't yet seen the net explode with references to these which perhaps makes sense given that Kotaku just posted them today. I wonder whether or not they wouldn't have been more valuable as a pre-release marketing campaign then a post-release buzz maintainer, but I'll get into that another time.

Wikipedia of Gaming

2007-04-09T10:53:00.000-04:00

Warning -- some might find this blog post politically charged and perhaps controversial. If the muslim/christian middle-east/west conflict is sensitive for you, you might want to skip this one...

A few days ago I was reading the Globe And Mail and an article on Syrian video game developer -- Afkar Media -- caught my attention. The article spoke about how Afkar Media's games were top sellers throughout the middle east and dealt with subject matter of particular impact for people suffering through the strife of the region. Their most popular title right now is called 'UnderSiege' and "focuses on the lives of a Palestinian family between 1999-2002 during the second Intifada". From their site:

When you live in middle-east you can’t avoid being part of the image, as a development company we believe that we had to do our share of responsibility in telling the story behind this conflict and targeting youngsters who depend on video games and movies (which always tell the counter side) to build their acknowledgment about the world.

I wasn't necessarily drawn to play the game but was very excited by the fact that such a game was being made because, I believe, videogames need the perspective that comes from global collaborators in order to break through some of the limitations that currently plague the industry.

Very few of my friends are still satisfied getting their news from a single source. CNN and the CBC have been replaced in our bookmarks by Google News and Wikipedia. One simply cannot be truly informed about current affairs while limited by the biases and perspectives of a particular news corporation/editor/journalist. Wikipedia gives a less biased view on current events encouraging the democracy of events reporting (still not perfect, but certainly a far deal more fair then Fox News) and google news pulls from so many sources that one can easily cover multiple angles on any given story.

While searching for a link to the Globe and Mail article, I came across an excellent piece on 1up from last September entitled 'Looking for videogames in the Muslim World'. The piece does an excellent job of summarizing the history Islamogaming, videogames developed with a middle-east perspective sharing a common goal:

...to subvert the typical gaming stereotype of Arabs as bad guys by replacing the typical American or European action hero with a recognizably Muslim protagonist.

If videogames are the next Hollywood then we need to be aware of what sort of influence the messages we inject into our games can have on consumers who may be easily manipulated and disassociate their entertainment from fact. I don't think any of us want to see Muslims turned into the one-dimensional token enemy from so many past hollywood movies (thanks to my lovely wife Danielle for the link).

I am not a political person by nature and I'm certainly not one to preach. This topic is much too controversial or complicated for me to change anyone's opinions on through a simple blog post but I very much like the fact that there are those who understand the value of videogames for a communication platform to help spread their own point of view. I especially like it when the message focuses on the dual-sided nature of the conflict at hand and how difficult resolution truly is.

As more 'Game 3.0' services launch and we give more power of expression and authorship to players, we are likely to see more and more instances of both conflict and education within these worlds.

Games in movies -- A New Hope.

2007-04-03T23:30:00.000-04:00

Update: This very funny blog entry via boingboing points out a related subject -- the use of computers in general as plot devices within movies. As a proud geek I happily admit that I enjoy a movie much more if their treatment of computers is at least semi-realistic (Trinity in Matrix: Revelations comes to mind).

I've been meaning to blog about this since I read about it two weeks ago, but I had a hard time finding my 'angle' - what exactly did I have to say about it?

Executive Summary: In the recently released 'Reign Over Me' the excellent 'Shadow Of The Colossus' features heavily. Not as a product placement or promotional device, and not as a 'cheap' way to give credibility to a youth character (look, this guy must be a young geeky outcast, he plays videogames) but as a key plot device that serves as a metaphor for the core message behind the movie -- a survivor's attempts to deal with his life post 9/11:

Refusing to accept the death of loved ones. Seeking out an escape from that truth. Giants falling in slow motion. "You could see where someone who was dealing with 9/11 would be engrossed by a giant that keeps collapsing over and over again," he says. Charlie's therapy was Shadow of the Colossus. - Kotaku

The article finishes with this line: 'Reign Over Me' must be one of the first Hollywood films, if not the first, to deal with games thematically and intelligently.

The movie, unfortunately, doesn't seem to have done very well at the box office (yet to break even) so it is debatable how much positive impact it will have on sales of Shadow. However I think the real value here is the evidence of growing recognition from Hollywood that some games can touch people in important ways, carrying layers of meaning and eliciting emotions in consumers (particularly those who have played said game) rather then simply fill time. If you are a Hollywood director making a movie and wanting your audience to feel nostalgia for idyllic carefree summer days of their youth, you might license 'Brown Eyed Girl' (depending, of course, on your target demographic). The fact that directors who grew up with videogames might start to treat the placement of games within their movies in a mature and thought-provoking fashion is very exciting to me.

This isn't to say, though, that I think we ought to be pushing TV and Movies to over-intellectualize games and look for meaning and messages where they weren't meant to be found. Ideally movies would give screen time to a game to reinforce a sense of fun, adrenaline and accomplishment - all key motivating factors for many people who play games.

I shudder to think that the future of game placement in other forms of mass media will all look like this:

What do you think? If a movie gave significant screen time to a character defeating Sephiroth in FFVII, chances are you would be able to identify with their sense of elation, but would a non-gamer?

World Tour Of Game Development

2007-04-03T08:33:00.000-04:00

Patrick over at King Lud Ic has written an interesting 'world tour' of the cities where most game development is done (with a North American focus, but certainly some lip service to the international scene as well).

Interesting reading, if only to test yourself to see if you are aware of where all the movers and shakers are based (I, for example, wasn't quite as well versed with Boston and New York developers as I would have liked).

Seems to me like the type of article that Next-Generation might publish. ;)

Trend Watcher

2007-03-30T18:06:00.000-04:00

Update: Via 'How To Change The World' (Guy Kawasaki's blog) a link to a new Trendspotting site called TrendHunter. I haven't played around with it yet, but adding it to my ToDo list. :)

One of my earliest blog posts was about trans-media trend watching. I noted:

I have a pretty good idea of where to look to track these trends as they apply to games. For movies, TV, books (etc) I have less of an idea. Harder still is to track trends across multiple mediums.

A few days ago my friend Ken pointed me towards a site called PSFK. It has quickly earned a place on my daily 'must visit' list. An excellent way to keep your finger on the pulse of whats new and cool around the world and across a variety of media. Highly recommended.

Exploring 2.0

2007-03-30T11:39:00.000-04:00

A while back I blogged about a great youtube video that explained the core concepts behind 'web 2.0'.

I find it interesting that some of my most technology savy friends -- people who grew up using computers, surfing the web, and even programming -- still are in the dark about some of the best and most fundamental features of '2.0'. (RSS feeds, for example, seems still to confuse).

Today I read this article on wired that led me to this very interesting initiative -- 'learning 2.0'. From the site:

Listed below are 23 Things (or small exercises) that you can do on the web to explore and expand your knowledge of the Internet and Web 2.0.

I think this 23-step process should be required reading (or, really, required 'doing') for any aspiring bloggers and could be a good way to introduce your parents to 2.0.

What is wrong with this picture?

2007-03-27T18:42:00.000-04:00

You have to read this to believe it.

A new would-be game publisher called Brash Entertainment has started talking about its plan to take the gaming world by storm. I must be missing something, because so far they have what seems to me like the perfect recipe for disaster.

To wit:

Executive team includes "Thomas Tull, executive producer of the new blockbuster movie "300," and dot-com pioneer Bert Ellis". A 'movie guy' and a 'web guy' does not a killer games executive team make.
They plan on "producing 60 to 100 [branded games] over the next five years." Even with 100% outsourcing I have a hard time imaging they'll be able to scale up to that level of project management and find enough solid, consistent development partners.
Shovelware is basically written into their manifesto. "Even a bad video game, paired with a good movie, can be very profitable...The safest, most lucrative way to sell a video game is in tandem with some kind of movie that is already heavily marketed". Take everything negative that has been said about our industry in the last 5 years and you'll see two major themes: games are too violent, and sloppy branded fair that is rushed to market to cash in on a license gives the industry a bad name. These guys seem to be building their business plan around one of the most loathed realities of our industry.

In their defense, Gamasutra has posted an update to this initial story that would seem to lend them a little more credibility.

Apparantly, though, I'm not the only one who thinks this whole thing has the potential to become another Phantom. If nothing else I would say Brash should have been more careful in how they chose to first communicate their existance and plans to the public. The MSNBC article is hardly generating the sort of positive buzz that I would imagine they had hoped for.

"Hiring with your heart on your sleeve".

2007-03-23T15:11:00.000-04:00

One idea I've had for a while now is to open up my personal blog-roll a bit for the world to see. I don't have the largest roll in the world, but I feel I'm developing an interesting collection of blogs that might appeal to visitors of this blog for a variety of reasons. Of course I have a lot of gamedev/gamebizdev blogs that I frequent (some of which I've permanently linked to on the sidebar) but I regularly visit some others that are less connected to my work yet very interesting.

Given the relative popularity of my last post I thought I'd start by pointing you all towards an article called 'Hiring with your heart on your sleeve', the latest from Austin Hill on his blog: BillionsWithZeroKnowledge. A few choice quotes:

The number one job of any leader is talent development

Hiring top players, who have the intelligence, passion and are a cultural team fit in the right positions is the single biggest leverage a management team has in building a successful company

Top talent is never looking for jobs. Jobs need to hunt out top talent.

First and foremost I like this blog because Austin often talks about subject matters that are important to me - a would-be team leader with a desire to truly be worth of my title. He has some excellent posts on leadership, business and entrepreneurial spirit in general and a few innovative talent-attracting strategies of his own.

Additionally his is one of the most visually pleasing blogs I frequent. He uses videos and images liberally, but they are very profesionaly integrated and really give value to his posts rather then try to cover up a lack of meaningful content. His blog inspired me to try and use images and video on my own blog more, I'm far from his level of polish, but its amazing what an embedded youtube video can do to make a post feel more rich.

Finally, Austin is a native Montrealer with a strong focus on the Canadian entrepreneurial scene, and given that the chance is good if you're reading this you too are from Montreal, you should check out his blog if for no other reason then to support one of your own!

An offer you can't refuse

2007-03-19T09:16:00.000-04:00

Update: This post is in no way meant to imply that Red5 contacted me with the recruitment campaign described below. I read about this, thought it was amazing, and am blogging about it -- nothing more.

Update 2: Kim Pallister read this blog. Seth Godin reads Kim's blog. Seth's blog gets a lot of traffic (and rightfully so -- man does he ever have a lot to say!) and he linked to this post of mine yesterday morning. I've recieved more visits in the last 24 hours then my accumulative traffic log for the life of the blog. Hopefully some of the new visitors will find the musings of a videogame producer interesting.

Update 3: I'm ashamed I neglected to link to this in my initial posting, but you can read all about Red5's campaign direct from the horse's mouth here. Check it out, and remember to support them when they release their WoW Killer.

So imagine you are sitting at your desk one day and a FedEx parcel arrives for you. Depending on what you do, just this fact might already have you excited, but regardless of your position, if you aren't expecting any deliveries the scene from The Matrix when Neo recieves the cell phone from Morpheus has to spring to mind. "What life-altering adventure awaits me when I open this up?".

So you open the box and find inside a series of 'Russian Doll' type nested boxes, each more beautiful then the last. Written on each box a section of what appears to be a riddle.

Of course, as you open each subsequent box the attention to detail in this package is sure to start to attract attention. Some of your coworkers would certainly be drawn to the affair and hover around to know more.

So finally you reach the fifth and last box, open it up, and find an iPod shuffle. But not just any iPod - this one is custom engraved with your name! There is also a small note informing you that a message is waiting for you on the iPod. Red Pill or Blue Pill?

So, turning the iPod on reveals a single track -- a personalized message that starts out: "(insert your name here), this is Mark Kern, President of Red 5 Studios and former team lead for World of Warcraft..".

Mark Kern is talking to you personally telling you why he thinks you would be the perfect fit for his new company, Red 5, and asking you to get in touch to discuss a potential job offer. And he is doing so in a way that has made you feel like the most valuable developer on the planet, worthy of significant investment in terms of time and energy to do nothing more then get your attention. Finally he has done it in such a way that makes no attempt at hiding his interest to your colleagues and bosses at your current place of employment.

So, what would you do? Would you contact him back to discuss further, even if you were extremely happy at your current job?

If you answered yes, you aren't alone. A recruitment campaign like this is undeniably flattering and powerful and is likely to have a near 100% response rate (at least in as far as getting in touch, if not necessarily accepting the position). The people at Red 5 who developed this campaign took everything they knew about developers in the game industry (likely to get and appreciate matrix reference. Check. Likely to be impressed by WoW credentials. Check. Likely to be intrigued by the enigma of the whole package and try to unravel the meaning of the riddle thus getting more absorbed in the total package. Check) and wrapped it all into a package that would be impossible to ignore. I am floored by the ingenuity and creativity of it all.

Read here for an account of one recipient who, interestingly, seems not to have taken the bait.

Question on Emotions

2007-03-12T20:56:00.000-04:00

At GDC this year, Peter Molyneux presented Fable 2 publicly in a talk focused on his ambitions (player feels unconditional love) and innovations ("the dog") for the game. There is plenty of coverage available in case you are not up to date with the details of his presentation, and you can get a pretty good idea of the specifics of his talk by watching his pre-GDC presentation on gamespot here (or watch it on gametrailers here).

One thing that comes up in all the coverage of this talk is the emotions that this dog elicits. What an amazing choice for emotional manipulation -- who can resist the sad whimpering cries of a dog injured to protect his master? Is there anything more heart wrenching?
...his animations were solid enough to endear him to everybody in the room. The way he limps towards you whimpering after a fight is heart wrenching and not just to those watching the game being played. If you leave your injured dog and head off for a drink at the pub, the dog will scratch its way to the front door and look pitiful as the rest of the folks at the bar react to the bloodied pooch.
...You are going to love this dog, promises Molyneux, and then he's going to die. That's right, at some point in the adventure, in service of the story, your pooch goes to the great beyond. Think about the potential rage in your own heart. - ign.
One often quoted line from his presentation: "If you care about the dog, I've got you."

Peter's ambition here is an amazing one, and I think the Lionhead team have made a very smart decision in choosing something they can 'easily' manipulate the player with. They may well succeed in their ambitions. I'm rooting for them, because I'd love to allow myself to be manipulated in games the way I have become accustomed to being manipulated with film. I like having strong emotional reactions to entertainment -- it makes it more fun.

However, my fear (and herein lies the question) is simply that in having Peter tell me that I'm supposed to feel emotion and have him explicitly state that the developers are trying to manipulate me with this dog, I will unconsciously harden myself when playing Fable2 thus weakening the experience. I'm not complaining about the over hype potential either (for which Mr. Molyneux is somewhat infamous for). I don't think this is an issue of over-exposure but rather Peter 'tipping a card' that should have remained hidden.

What do you think? When Fable2 comes out, do you see yourself being able to be absorbed by the experience and allow yourself to forget that the emotions you may be experienced were predicted and publicly communicated months in advance?

2007-03-09T08:52:00.000-05:00

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you probably know that (1) I really like Toblo (2) the team lead of that project, Steve Chiavelli, is a friend who occasionally drops by and leaves comments to some of my posts.

If you didn't have the good fortune to attend GDC this year, or were there but didn't attend the GDC Awards, please take a minute to watch the recording of the ceremony. Jump to the 10 minute mark and watch Steve represent the Toblo team in accepting the award for best student game.

But then be prepared to have your geekiest heart strings pulled as Steve takes the opprotunity to propose to his girlfriend, Brittany Aubert, live on stage in front of something like 5000 people.

Steve -- that was awesome. Congrats on what must have been one of the best nights of your life!

Warren Specter Interview

2007-03-06T11:49:00.000-05:00

Gamasutra recently published a very interesting interview with Warren Specter, head of Junction Point studios.

I read a lot of developer interviews and this one is easily one of my favorite. Warren speaks intelligently and passionatly about advancing the state of our art in realistic ways that really speak to me.

Some choice quotes:

The end goal for me now isn't for me to allow players to play a movie, ride a roller coaster ride or provide a sandbox so they can do what they want, but is to find the compromise where I can have a dialog with each player virtually. That's what's exciting to me.
Then there's what the audience buys. One of the big reasons I'm such an advocate of games education and university programs about game development and analysis is because I think we need to change the way our players think. [...] I want players that demand more of us.
Another point is that if you're going make a game that allows players to make significant choices that puts them in control of a narrative or of a character in a simulated world, you do have an obligation. You have an obligation to show the consequences of choices.

and my personal favorite -- one I believe very strongly in:

...but what really needs to happen is that the universities, the writers, and the critics have to pick up that ball and say “look, games can be more than they are now. Here's how games work. Here's how games can be more, better, or different now.” I think 10, 15, or 20 years from now you'll see people graduating from game development, analysis and study programs all around the world with an understanding of what games can be and they'll start demanding things from the industry that it had better provide.

And now, as a way of reinforcing just how far our industry has to go before it reaches this holy grail, I offer up these two commercials for game design programs currently being offered (note, I don't believe these to be representative. These are clearly extreme examples but too humorous not to post) :

The Restaurant

2007-03-02T11:00:00.000-05:00

When I was first starting on my current project over a year ago I was looking for a Lead AI programmer. When I'm finally able to start talking about this game I'll be able to explain some of the development challenges we've faced and why having someone with a strong background and track record in AI was paramount.

One of the candidates I contacted was Jeff Orkin, refered to me by David Edery. Jeff is credited as a 'Senior software engineer, AI' on F.E.A.R and spoke about the very impressive AI of that title at GDC (the material from his talk can be downloaded here).

Jeff recently contacted me to try and help spread the word for a research project he is currently doing called 'The Restaurant'. Ripped from his site:

The Restaurant Game is a research project at the MIT Media Lab that will algorithmically combine the gameplay experiences of thousands of players to create a new game. In a few months, we will apply machine learning algorithms to data collected through the multiplayer Restaurant Game, and produce a new single-player game that we will enter into the 2008 Independent Games
Festival. Everyone who plays The Restaurant Game will be credited as a Game
Designer. It's never been easier to earn Game Designer credentials!

I love this idea. I love the 'google image match' feel to it (when you connect, you are randomly paired with a partner and each give goals that help teach the AI); I love the '2.0' element of it, both in terms of collaborative tuning of the AI and collaborative play testing. Finally I love the communal credit idea -- making a meta-game out of the game's credits since only one player will be credited as the 'Lead Designer'. So smart.

Please download 'The Restaurant' and help spread the word. Digg it, Bookmark it on Del.ico.us and help spread the word. This project deserves the community's support.

Turning Off The Talent

2007-02-28T21:14:00.000-05:00

Earlier this week I did an interview with a Concordia student who was doing research on Montreal as a hub of game development and what contributing factors I thought were leading to this growth.

Of course I rattled off the usual suspects. I focused on our ethnic diversity creating a melting pot of cultures and a strong mix of North-American and European cultural sensitivity; a good mix of both creative and technical schools and, of course, the infamous government subventions that make setting up shop here financially attractive for new studios.

As I was giving these points, though, I found myself wondering whether or not they would have the desired effect on me were I considering a move from California to Montreal. Are these the things we should be reinforcing to try and attract foreign talent?

I wonder if the Montreal development community repeats this rhetoric so consistently (creative and cultured) that we risk alienating talent due to a perception of ego and elitism. Sure Montreal has an excellent development climate, but so to do many other cities. I wonder if this message isn’t losing some weight in our quest to add new blood and new perspectives to our ranks.

As an aside, we then covered some of the issues I thought prevented people from wanting to work in Montreal: the perception of the city as being predominantly francophone; the hard winters and the effects on morale that an absolute salary drop can have (that is, it is hard to attract someone making $75,000 USD to Montreal with a salary of $55,000 CAD even if their actual standard of living would go up).

The next time someone asks me what I think makes the development industry here special, I'm going to try to answer the question without implying that Montrealers have some sort of cultural and creative superiority over other major hubs in our industy. I don't think its true and worry that in implying this during the interview I may have helped to reinforce a message that is driving away the very talent we need to attract to bring fresh perspectives to our wonderful development community.

Tower 8

2007-02-25T15:01:00.000-05:00

A friend at work recently directed me to a site called 'Tower 8' as an amazing example of mixed media art on the web.

I don't think the 'group' tower8 lends itself very well to pigeon-holeing -- they are musicians, visual artists and web geeks all roled into one. Check out one of their two 'music videos' by going to tower8.net, and clicking on 'video'