September 2009
Monthly Archive
LITB Gaming News – The Case for a Game Developers Guild.
In a Gamasutra article by Tim Carter, CEO of game producing company Core Talent Games Ltd; Tim gives his case for why the gaming industry (or at least, the developers and the producers) would benefit from a strong Game Developers Guild. He expresses how hard it is for any developer not already well-routed in one of the giant publishing houses to get their idea passed and turned into a suitable product for both the developer and the producer.
He brings up the fact that every major entertainment industry has guilds of their own, and that having a GDG would bring stabilization and opportunities to the free agent game development world.
It would seem that a Guild for the Gaming Developers would be a worthwhile venture, maybe not for the Cliffy B’s of the world who already have it made but for the up and coming new talent that, by the time they’ve climbed the corporate ladder high enough and are in a position to see their dream project come to fruition, the passion just isn’t there anymore. That or the project was green-lighted yet twisted so out of shape during development that it hardly resembles the project first visualized by the fresh up-and-coming game developer.
Maybe Double Fine wouldn’t have had to take so long with their games if there was a sturdy Developer’s Guild already there to back their projects so that Schafer wouldn’t have had to keep shopping his game around to publishers he hoped would see his point of view?
Hell, maybe the saga of Too Human wouldn’t have ended the way it did if the title had been backed by this hypothetical GDG, helping the project get out on time and in a state that didn’t seem like the title was constantly falling apart after being worked on for over a decade. Guild funded time and money could have turned that project into something more than decent, maybe even up to a standard resembling that of greatness? Maybe? No? Not even a guild would have been able to-? Well, the industry has been young for decades now, and the onset of game developer guilds may be the next big step in it’s evolution as a unique entertainment medium. – The Ben
LITB Gaming News – Creating your avatar in a whole new and uncanny way.
Sci TechBits reports on how face synthesis software could become the next big step in mainstream avatar association. With two cameras focused on the edge of the person’s TV or computer screen, capture and analyze the data that the cameras capture, and try best to fill in any missing gaps, then synthesize that date and match it to a library of pre-existing facial expressions that would best compliment the character’s reaction on screen to the person sitting in front of the cameras.
There are a few roadblocks this technology has that the site acknowledges on. One is that with this technology, usually you can’t capture the emotions of the player as quick as it would like, simply because of how fast the person might change their stance during gameplay, which is why the latest revision in this genre of facial recognition technology relies on having the person input specific facial commands ahead of time before putting the technology to work so that it has the previously mentioned library of expressions to recognize and employ.
Second, as noted in the comments of the story is that any sort of generated facial avatar would still look pretty damn cartoony and uncanny. Technology is still trying to find a way to eliminate that uncanny valley look that the faces generated would mostly be finding themselves in. One such solution put forth by Daniel Floyd is to stay on the stylization side of the uncanny valley for all it’s worth and the benefits that not taking the jump into photo-realism entails. Because seriously when I first looked at the photos of sample faces on the site I was like “GAH!” Either that one on the far right is trying to be stylized and succeeding, or trying to be photo-realistic and ending up looking like the love child of a Shrek Character and a wrestler. – The Ben
Life Inside The Box28 Sep 2009 12:00 am
Life Inside the Box – 061 – Orbital Drop Shock Podcast
This week, Brian, Kyle, Stephen, and Kevin make sure that people know their stance on ads preceding free games, before moving on to talk about Microsoft’s plans for project Natal. They also touch on NPD’s plans to cover downloadable games, and Nintendo’s plans to develop a new Wii console. Also in the news this week is a reported shift of Netflix from Xbox exclusivity to the Wii and PS3.
Weekend Deals: 09/25–09/27
LITB Gaming News – Looking at the 60-Buck Dilemma.
David Thomas of Crispy Gamer recently looked at one of this generation’s more indigestible features that we’ve simply learned to just live with, that of almost any and all new games costing sixty dollars for next generation machines. He dissects the reasoning behind every high-profile (whether it be good, great or garbage) next-gen game costing this same amount and poses some of the hypothetical reasoning as to why sixty bucks has become the welcomed norm.
One such idea stemming from blog Law of the Game’s Editor in Chief Mark Methenitis is that of conscious parallelism, wherein he describes a scenario where one developer believes it’s game is so good that it should rightly charge more for it, considering the hefty development costs the game entailed. Other developers, believing their product is just as good as the first developer’s game, see no reason not to charge more for their titles as well, bringing the industry standard to that sixty dollars we know today.
One thing I hate is when people bring up the “Well the N64 and SNES had 70 dollar games last decade!” during these kinds of arguments. Yes, 70 dollar games weren’t uncommon back then, but even though many gamers remember the N64 and SNES as these great systems of old, they weren’t exactly as mainstream as many gamers might remember. The Playstation got a lot of traction for a variety of reasons, one of them being cheaper formats for both the developers and the consumers to work with. Developers didn’t have to charge seventy dollars for a PSX game to recoup the cost of ordering cartridges to put their games on.
This argument will probably get brought up again over the fall period as many of the new releases, while a lot of effort is put into them, might not resonate with the consumer concerning their sixty dollar price tags. Most notably gamers who aren’t that into Halo multiplayer for whatever reasons they have are taking issue with Halo 3: ODST at the moment. The game that was originally supposed to be a reasonably priced side story to the main Halo games ended up becoming a package of things that the majority of potential ODST customers weren’t exactly looking for. So when the credits roll for the first time after completing the single player portion of the game, some gamers might feel slighted by having this experience set them back more than half a Ben Franklin. – The Ben
LITB Gaming News – Wii getting a price drop? We had no idea!
Fresh off of the Nintendo’s PR site effective this Sunday the Wii is getting the old price drop to 199 dollars. This comes as a surprise to absolutely nobody as leaks ranging from in-store memos to newspaper ads were already running with the news.
So yeah that’s, really all there is for this news story. Wii’s fifty dollars cheaper, the NPD’s getting another Mario entry in it’s Top Ten on November 15th the PR also states.
Oh, and while it’s not related to the story in the least, today is the 120th birthday of Nintendo. Nice to see the whole video game venture worked out for them, after successful ventures like card games and toys could only bring them so far into the modern commerce mindset while other ventures like Taxi Businesses and…Love Hotels…weren’t as successful for them in the long run.
Of course the Wii now, for better and worse defines the company now a days, and it’s a wee bit cheaper as well, just in time for that all important Holiday Shopping Season. – The Ben
LITB Gaming News – SEGA accidentally leaks meeting info and the juicy tidbits therein.
Early this morning news broke via a SEGA Fansite concerning a file containing notes from a meeting held as recent as this past August between SEGA and Sony Computer Entertainment America that could easily be accessed from SEGA’s own PR site.
Of the interesting bits of into (note that none of these are confirmed to be in development in anyway) is that Sony is still quietly working on a solution to PS2 backwards compatibility with the PS3 of the downloadable variety, with the notes stating that Sony is trying to figure out ways to sell all (and the note does state all) PS2 games on the Playstation Network.
Other SEGA related info suggests that SEGA does in fact believe that money can be made off of old Dreamcast titles and would be interested in selling them digitally on the PSN if an agreement could be reached. A little late on capitalizing on the DC’s 10th Anniversary celebration but later is better than never right?
Speaking of downloadable titles, the leaked notes also suggest that SEGA is also interested in putting import-only titles onto the PSN such as Yakuza 3 directly. That means no need to spend money on having to come up with a good English Dub. Though the notes do state that the menus at least will have to be translated in order for the title to not be completely lost on us who do not speak the native tongue of the Yakuza.
Most of the notes aside from those are simply ones concerning game releases and development notes about hypothetical games. One such game being a collection of every Sonic the Hedgehog game for 99 US dollars. Now they state every Sonic game on the Blu-Ray disc would be on the collection but does that include the ones from the last decade? Do those have to be on a compilation disc? They do? Or else it isn’t a full complete compilation? Dang. – The Ben.
Life Inside The Box21 Sep 2009 12:00 am
Life Inside the Box – 060 – Grand Moff Kotic and the Deathstar.
This week, Brian, Kyle, and Stephen talk about the slow decline in popularity of music games, and how the industry will respond. They also touch on Valve’s involvement with their community, including a pitch to sell Half-Life mods over Xbox Live Arcade, and Gabe Newell’s trip to see a Left 4 Dead mod spurned on by nothing more than a few joke emails. The guys also once again debate the viability of the PSP in this market, and cover the possibility (or impossibility) of a Fallout MMO.
Weekend Deals: 09/18–09/20
Life Inside The Box14 Sep 2009 12:00 am
Life Inside the Box – 059 – I’m boycotting this podcast
This week, Brian, Kyle, and Stephen get together and wonder why exactly they’re being deprived of the things other game journalists are enjoying – including money from EA for Dante’s Inferno reviewers, and free trips to Valve for Left 4 Dead 2 critics. They also once again touch on Apple dipping their toes into the gaming waters, and from there discuss a few happenings at PAX, including an outbreak of H1N1 and a panel meant to define exactly what a “gamer” is.
Deals11 Sep 2009 09:04 am
Weekend Deals: 09/011–09/13
LITB Gaming News – August NPD Sales Results of :/
Fresh from NeoGaf and the NPD Group, it’s August’s NPD results!
Data care of NPD Group
PlayStation 2 105.9K
PlayStation 3 210.0K
PSP 140.3K
Xbox 360 215.4K
Wii 277.4K
Nintendo DS 552.9K
MADDEN NFL 10 360 ELECTRONIC ARTS Aug-09 928,000
WII SPORTS RESORT W/ WII MOTION PLUS WII NINTENDO OF AMERICA Jul-09 754,000
MADDEN NFL 10 PS3 ELECTRONIC ARTS Aug-09 665,000
BATMAN: ARKHAM ASYLUM* 360 SQUARE ENIX INC Aug-09 303,000
BATMAN: ARKHAM ASYLUM* PS3 SQUARE ENIX INC Aug-09 290,000
MADDEN NFL 10 PS2 ELECTRONIC ARTS Aug-09 160,000
DISSIDIA: FINAL FANTASY PSP SQUARE ENIX INC Aug-09 130,000
WII FIT* WII NINTENDO OF AMERICA May-08 128,000
MARIO KART W/WHEEL WII NINTENDO OF AMERICA Apr-08 120,000 9
FOSSIL FIGHTERS NDS NINTENDO OF AMERICA Aug-09 92,000
And…everything’s doing okay. Not great, not horrible, not bad or anything just, okay. Like all three are on the level it’s a pretty okay month all things considered. Madden’s still a big selling franchise, Sports Resort is still up near the top, almost everything in the Top Ten is above 100K.
I mean the numbers are nothing compared to what we’ll get this fall starting with the Sept NPD and the PS3 Slim, but for August the numbers are…fine really. – The Ben
Editorial&News09 Sep 2009 01:10 pm
LITB Gaming News – Oh dang it, Apple’s bringing out the portable trash talk.
Hot from Apple’s It’s only Rock and Roll Event, GDGT.com has live-blogged the entire event, and when it came to the success of the iPhone/iTouch as a gaming platform they had a few fighting words when comparing Apple’s service to the PSP and DS offerings.
On the subject of how many games are available and the buying experience via Phil Schiller:
“Games are expensive — $25-35 per title. Worse isn’t the price, it’s the buying experience, going to a store is just not a lot of fun. Built into every iPod touch is the App Store… you’ll see a big difference.” Chart time. PSP: 607 titles. DS: 3680. iPhone OS: 21,178 titles.
Okay, the buying experience isn’t exactly perfect, but that’s no reason to stop buying games that come on physical media. Having a store on your device is great and will eventually be the standard for all devices but again, that’s not going to put the brick and mortar stores or the physical media out of existence.
Phil again, on the iPod Touch in general:
“It’s a great portable game player as well. … when the PSP and DS came out, they seemed so cool. But once you play on the iPod touch, they don’t stack up anymore!”
I don’t know, they’re both still cool to me. I know most of what he’s saying is just standard press conference chest beating that every company does when they’re on stage, but while I’ve seen the Apple App store become successful, at the same time I haven’t seen the PSP and DS suffer as a result. I know there have been people who only play portable games exclusively on their iPod Touches and iPhones but I haven’t seen the other platforms drop in notoriety. Both are still coming out with games all year round and have both been successes in their own right. It’s been pretty balanced in terms of success for all the portable platforms this gen, each with their ups and downs and revivals again.
And regarding what Phil said about the tribulations and horrors of shopping for games at stores;about the stores, fuck it I’m just going to go ahead and say it I like shopping for used games (both portable and console) at places like Gamestop. It’s fun. It’s cheap and it’s fun. I like digging through the used games, seeing the crap and the gems that span almost an entire decade now. Stores might get smaller, hobbyist shops might get put on the chopping block, but just like how music and books have managed to survive for the last decade or so as physical media, so will video games as long as there’s a market that still wants to buy their products that way. – The Ben
Editorial08 Sep 2009 03:05 pm
LITB Gaming News – Ten Years of Dreamcast
Tomorrow will be the tenth anniversary of the Dreamcast’s North American Launch. It’s hard to believe that the last generation of gaming consoles that began with SEGA’s last console is reaching the ten year cycle. When we were at this point last gen it seemed reasonable that ten years had past between the bulky polygonal games of the Saturn, PSX and N64 era in comparison to the shiny, next-gen graphically enhanced games that all the magazines were going on about. We were comparing games where Solid Snake had no face, to a game where you could see a visible difference between his shaven and unshaven models.
The Dreamcast was an interesting connector of a console, bridging the first true 3D generation and the generation of maxing out those models with depth, complexity and emotion (according to the developers of the time at least). While most ten year anniversaries for games are generally met with an “Eh, it hasn’t aged that well” type of response, the games that the Dreamcast offered while not very impressive technically now a days, seem to remembered more for their value of fun in the memories of those retrospecting those days when SEGA was still in the hardware business.
While the Dreamcast’s time may have been short, that might work in it’s favor when you’re talking about retrospecting. Unlike other systems where you have pauses in between great releases and the universal lull of titles following a system’s release, most of the best memories surrounding the Dreamcast were at that time of release, all in one condensed package of launch title greatness. While it had it’s own dry period that ended up never recovering, the system’s life was so short that the lull doesn’t seem as bad compared to it’s elder brother the Saturn, which was still “Alive” up to the Dreamcast’s release, but nobody really thought of it as such in America. The Dreamcast came and went just as fast, and the industry’s memories of it seem to be all the more better for that reason. I think the industry may have soured on Sonic Adventure after it’s initial launch game hype wore off though. – The Ben
Life Inside The Box07 Sep 2009 12:00 am
Life Inside the Box – 058 – Two’s Company.
This week Brian, and Kevin have a back and forth about universal game ratings, the viability of MMO’s on consoles and more. This week’s elevator pitch comes from EA’s Rachel Bernstein to talk about MySims Agents.
Expert Mode06 Sep 2009 01:26 pm
Money, its a gas
When you envision how awesome it would be to do something you love for a living, you also anticipate earning enough to at least live comfortably and not having to worry about monetary problems. While such things are nice to think about, the reality of the situation is that entry-level positions for almost any job are unsympathetic toward your need to pay the rent; however, as your proficiency grows with time, it is natural to expect more satisfactory emolument. With this in mind, why is it that even with years of experience, QA in particular suffers from being the lowest paid of the game development disciplines?
The most obvious answer to this very important question is that Quality Assurance is often seen as an austere entry-level position into the video game industry, thus making entry-level QA a binate entry-level position. It’s a double negative that does not resolve to a positive. Imagine you are in a D&D campaign and your character is trying to haggle with the leader of an adventurer guild on the price of services rendered, but you fumble your diplomacy check then critically fail when you roll to confirm. This is what being paid as a novice game tester is like.
Practically all entry-level positions on the market have basic prerequisites and Quality Assurance is no exception. Looking at the Blizzard Entertainment Employment Opportunities page, every qualification for their Night Shift Game Tester gig is simple and rudimentary. For example, some of the requirements listed include having a passion for games, willingness to work long and odd hours, and possessing good communication skills. Companies can get away with paying QA minor duckets for a thankless job because almost everyone who becomes a game tester has no prior experience with the profession or the industry. Starting salary is very low, with reports showing the average income sitting solidly in the range of 20k-30k for less than three years of experience in the industry.
Being underpaid isn’t just a stigma of the entry-level game tester either. No no, for even lead QA positions earn less than their counterparts from other game development disciplines. According to Game Developer magazine’s 7th annual salary survey (April 2008), the average income for QA Leads with 3-6 years of experience was barely under 42k while an equivalent position with comparable experience in Production made nearly 56k on average. That is quite an alarming difference in compensation for two similar occupations that are so closely connected to one another; especially considering how often QA will move into associate producer roles. This leads me to my final point…
It all boils down to the amount of time spent in Quality Assurance and the video game industry itself. It’s no secret that QA is frequently seen and used as a stepping stone to bigger and better positions. This proclivity to alternative advancement facilitates an existing “revolving door” syndrome: Fledgling QA join specifically to learn the ropes of the industry and then generally transfer out to other branches in game development. The same survey from Game Developer magazine also disclosed that only 38% of all QA total had between 3-6 years of experience in the industry. Sadly, this means there are not enough experienced game testers that stay in QA long enough to substantiate higher salaries.
Each of the game development disciplines is indispensable. While Quality Assurance is paid far less than their counterparts, this does not mean the job is any less important, relevant, or fun. It is awesome to do something you love for a living, even if the stipend is meager at best. Wade Tinney, CEO & Co-Founder of Large Animal Games, once said to me that, “Good QA are worth their weight in gold.” It’s just too bad that they aren’t traditionally paid their worth as well.
Athena Anderson is the writer of the ExpertMode blog, and professional games Quality Assurance Lead, with over 5 years of testing experience with companies like Sony Online Entertainment, Neopets, and Worldwide Biggies. For more insight into the QA world, visit Expertmode.net. Opinions expressed in this column are her own.
Weekend Deals: 09/04–09/07
LITB Gaming News – The flight sim genre didn’t die, just evolved.
Well okay, maybe the flight simulation genre as we know it hasn’t become a mainstream success like other genres of the PC gaming world have in recent years, but more interestingly is the popularity of flight control simulations.
In a PR statement today Flirement’s CEO Robert Murray announced that their iPhone game Flight Control has reached over 1.5 million in sales on the Apple App store. The Press Release goes on to note the growing popularity in the “Control” genre, one that’s not exactly new if you’ve been playing games for a while now, but has been given new life thanks to the renaissance of portable gaming that we’ve seen in the later half of this decade.
Interesting how as simulation games become more complex and advanced both technically and graphically the interest in them from the gaming public dropped, but when a new type of simulation game that didn’t rely on being top of the line, just intuitive and fun was released, that interest in that brand of simulation game has grown so much in such a short time period.
Most of the buyers of Flight Control probably didn’t even know there was a flight sim genre, but they’re most certainly aware of the flight control sim genre now. – The Ben
LITB Gaming News – FCC looking into a universal ratings system for all forms of media.
With a report on parental controls, rating techniques and media blocking released a few days ago, news is being made now that the FCC is looking into a universal ratings system that would cover all forms of media, Bloomberg reports.
Bloomberg states that the FCC will perform an inquiry to decide whether or not devices should be able to accommodate more than one rating system, and hopes to give parents more control “to pick and choose” what their child sees and hears according to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski in the article.
This of course is being picked up by gaming sites due to the fact that, well for the past two decades or so the gaming industry has been trying to construct it’s own rating system to the best of their abilities. We’ve gone from self imposed ratings from Sega to forced censorship by Nintendo before the ESRB was formed and all games released in the U.S. could have a standardized rating system to let parents know how appropriate the game they were buying for their child was.
The ESRB rating system though hasn’t been perfect. An M-rated game can easily be bought by a kid clever enough to goad their parents through sheer force of will. It’s not like an R-rated movie where the ushers can deny a kid entry because their parents don’t accompany them to the movies. Games are more often than not played at home without anybody to enforce any standards once the game’s out of the disk and in the machine. And the industry has taken steps to help confront that in recent years as well with parental controls on almost all consoles this generation and companies like Microsoft enthusiastically promoting the parental control features of the 360 in order to make the online component of the 360 seem less intimidating to parents who feel hesitant to let their child play along with the rest of the 360-owning world.
This issue will never have an easy answer, but at least the industry hasn’t simply forgone doing anything about parental controls or the ratings system as the industry itself changes and matured. – The Ben
Expert Mode03 Sep 2009 11:22 am
In the Trenches
Since the invention of the electronic game, who hasn’t dreamed of playing them professionally? I can only assume that even those who have everything would still love to get paid real money to play video games all day long. It seems like the perfect job after all! You sit around all day, having lots of fun, exerting little to no physical or mental effort and rake in the dough, right? I don’t want to come out all bubbles burstin’ and say that everything just mentioned was wrong, because that would be false. It would also be just a tad on the cruel side but as the song goes, you’ve got to be cruel to be kind.
I’ll be covering all of these points over the coming posts, but first, let’s take a quick look at the biggest myths behind being a fabled game tester.
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