FORT90

GDC Day 4

I got a late start to the morning, due to being up most of the night, thanks to fucking Jollibee.

The first program for me was a presentation from Masafumi Takada. In addition to being the primary composer for all of Grasshopper Manufacture Inc’s games, Takada also serves as their fire prevention supervisor. But anyway, he was there to talk about his line of work, which is basically translating visuals into the language of music, and that not only includes all of Grasshopper’s titles, but for various other clients as well (Takada is actually a full time freelancer, with Grasshopper being his primary client).

Takada went over various games he’s been involved with, and how he approached the task at hand. Sometimes he’s given instructions, like for Umbrella Chronicles; Capcom wanted to preserve the music of the previous Resident Evil games via simple re-arrangements. But given the completely different tempo of Umbrella Chronicles, which is a fast paced, action packed on-rails shooter, when compared to the rest of the series, which for the most part are slower, more quiet then all of a sudden explosive, the tunes had to be tinkered around a bit. So rhythm instruments were used to maintain the original melody, while liberal use of guitar helped to increase the tempo and help compliment the action.

Meanwhile for God Hand, Takada went for a slightly different approach, while still doing the same job of complimenting what players saw with what they heard; since the game was designed for hardcore players in mind, who are well used to witnessing and being involved in massive amounts of high-intensity action, why not try to balance and chill them out with music meant to relax? Also, after finally seeing what the game is all about, I am going to actually pop in my copy of the game and give it a shot (as silly as it sounds, Select Button’s constant fawning over the game has been the reason why, even though I’ve had a copy since day one, I haven’t bothered).

Takada noted that Shinji Mikami’s stuido is located in Osaka, whereas he’s based in Tokyo, and found working remotely on this particular game lead to him hitting the wall creatively, so he packed his bags to “breath the same air of the developers” which can often be beneficial, plus to try out the awesome food they have there. In the end, he tried imagining what Miakami would be if he was a piece of music, and went from there. Again, fairly standard procedures did the tricks: for one boss battle, a motif was created, something catchy yet nostalgic, and when the same boss shows up later even bigger and batter, so is the music.

Killer 7 was next. Because it was difficult for him to wrap his head around the game itself, it made finding a starting point almost impossible. In such an instance, instinct kicks in, but with that comes a fear of inconsistency. So instead of worrying about keeping the music unified, Takada realized that special attention to sound effects would be key, especially for actions that happened throughout, like enemies getting hit, windows in the menu being accessed, etc. And once again, the gameplay SUCKS, but Christ, the art direction and especially the sound design is still tops.

Takada’s most latest work, as most folks know, is No More Heroes. The first thing he wrote was the music for the trailer, which he literally had one day to do, thought at that same time, he had just come up with a melody while messing around the piano. That tune worked so well that it became the main phrase. Funfact: it was Takada’s idea to use the Wii-mote as a cell phone! Once again, pure genuius. Also, a remix album is on the way, featuring a number of notable names in the game music biz! And his next project? A new Steel Battalion game. I had no idea one was in the works. Plus if you go to his site (which I can’t find btw), you can listen to the ending of Yoshi’s Story, so he did the music for that game too? Man, talk about variety.

On the side, he likes to get together with other game musicians and play in a band, and also organizes something called Hopper, which is a yearly game festival run by Grasshopper.

Afterwards was a brief Q&A session between Takada and Tommy Tallarico, who is the guy who brought Takada in as guest in the first place. Most of the questions dealt entirely with the business end of things, such as how the salary structure is in Japan, though two not so technical bits of insight and info were revealed: apparently “crash and build” is the slogan everyone related to the creative process uses in Japan. Like everyone else, Takada will often create a completely realized piece of music, and if someone says “nay”, it gets thrown onto the scrap heap and he has to start over. Takada noted that he’s depressed that he has created so many interesting pieces, but only for himself, and that as much as he’s like to share them, it’s not possible due to legal reasons. He also admitted to trying to re-use castaway pieces from the past for some new project, and that usually never works. Also, when asked about his tools, Takada confessed that he was a Mac guy all the way, and in fact, considers himself a Mac evangelist.

Next were questions from the audience; I asked him how he got involved in composing game music, and the answer was simple: he was studying music in college, and when the time came to graduate and choose a job arrived, realized that video games was a good field to get into. Plus, he had always had a thing for game tunes, ever since the music of Xevious and Mappy “grabbed him.” Some dude asked him if it was true or not that he was doing the soundtrack to Fatal Frame 4, so Takada looked at some woman in the audience and spoke to her in Japanese, who gave crossed her arms, which how they say “no” over there. The final answer was “No comment!”

The real surprise of the hour was when Masahiro Sakurai came up to ask a question…

… For those who don’t know, Takada worked on Super Smash Bros Brawl, and Sakurai noted how amazed he was that Takada knew so many different styles. The best part of all this is, because the session was bi-lingual, all us English-speakers had to wear these headphones (there was a woman in the back translating everyone on the spot), so when a question was asked, there was a pause for the translator to explain it in Japanese, and then another delay as we got the answer in Japanese. Well because Takada and Sakurai were both speaking to each other in Japanese, and quickly back and forth, the poor translator woman had a hard time keeping up, as did the rest of us. But in the end, I believe it was said that game music is a lot like jazz.

After lunch, it was time to swing by the IGF pavilion! One of my faves was easily Fret Nice, a platformer controlled by the Guitar Hero guitar…

… You walk either right or left with the fret keys, and you the tilt the guitar to perform jumps…

… Like all platformers, there are enemies to dismantle, and you do that by blast tunes (actually, musical notes that you collect as you walk around, which act as ammo) by hitting the strum…

… It took a bit to get used to the controls, but not too long, plus the sights and sounds, as well as the concept was fucking ace. Hopefully it’ll be coming out commercially very soon!

Here’s Audiosurf. It’s music based game, and I know it sorta looks like Frequency or Amplitude, but it’s much deeper than those two titles…

… It’s kinda like Vib Ribbon: you load in an audio file from you computer, the game analyzes it, and then creates a level based upon the it. As you go down the track, there are colored blocks that come towards you (with the color based upon the tones and beats of the song). The object is collect/run into blocks of certain colors and in certain combinations; as you can see, underneath the vehicle is a bunch of slots, where the colored blocks are collected…

… So basically, a combination of racing game, music game, and puzzle game! And it all works together superbly.

Here’s Goo, a action/strategy game that is more or less the game Go. But with slime. It was VERY pretty…

… I didn’t spend too much time on the game, so I never really got a good feel for the game, but it sure was pretty.

And here’s Flipside, a platformer that has you playing as one character but with two distinct, polar opposite personalities, so you’re really controlling two characters at once. And as one might expect, you have to constantly switch between the two to figure out puzzles and the stuff…

… Though the wackiest part of the game is how it runs on the Half Life 2 engine!

And here’s Noitu Love 2: Devolution, a good old-fashioned hyper action-platformer, in the vein of Gunstar Heroes…

Other neat games that I unfortunately did not get pictures of were The Path, a wonderfully atmospheric video game take on Little Red Riding Hood, Triachnid, which is almost like a combination of Shadow of the Colossus and Sodaplay in my mind, Gesundheit, which some might recall me talking about years ago, and Poesysteme, an arty-farty poetry game from France. Oh, and Clean Asia was present as well; which I tried playing, but totally sucked at. And of course, the guy after me totally blew the game away. That being the creator. Still, what a show off.

Anyway, the highlight of Thursday’s programming, and of the entire conference for most people, was the two hour experimental gameplay showcase, as orchestrated by Jonathan Blow. The program was separated into several sections, with games illustrating a certain approach or hook.

I found the first section, covering games that toyed around with the concept of time and multiple play-throughs, to be the most interesting, primarily Cursor*Ten…

… Here’s how it works: you move the cursor around a room, clicking on stuff to get points, but mostly to trigger whatever mechanism to open a path to the next room, whether it be hitting a switch once, multiple times, or holding it down. There’s a time limit, and you WILL run out of time during the first play through. So immediately the game starts over… but every action from before is repeated. So in a sense, you will be playing alongside yourself. Which is super important when it comes to places where you have to hold down a switch to activate an opening… which you yourself cannot utilize, but your future self can. Some triggers require hundreds of clicks to activate, which is too much for one cursor to handle, but if others from other timelines are there to help.. The game is simply BRILLIANT. It, alongside The Night Journey, simply blew me away. Best part is, everyone can give it a shot right here.

EDIT: Oh, and like a total idiot, I completely didn’t notice how it was already passed along on my very forum over a month ago!

Next was Time Bot, which was the same basic idea: you perform an action to set something up so you can go further the next “time” you play. In this instance, actions are contained in loops, and the puzzles are a lot more slower paced and cerebral. It was explained that one of the later puzzles is so difficult that it took about an hours worth of tries to get the timing right in order to set up the proper path, which involved hitting switches to create blocks that in turn form a path. Just check YouTube to see what I mean.

Then you had Blow’s very own Braid. It was introduced for “the ten of you in the audience that have yet to see it.” Which, naturally, included me! And for those who still don’t know what it is, Braid is an action-platformer that constantly “remembers” what you are doing (again, its a 360 game, so the hard drive obviously is in use here), and at any point can you create loops of whatever action took place, then break away to do something else to compliment it…

… One example had Blow trying to open a locked door, with the key across a spiked pit. Both the door and key (which btw are the only objects that are “independent” of the constant time fluctuating) are accessible via ladder, but if you’re character has the key, he can’t climb them, meaning a jump across the pit. But when Blow gave that a shot, he came just a hair too short and landed on the spikes to die, with the key falling below and reappearing at its original spot. So the action was rewound then replayed, and just as he was again landing on the spikes and dying, Blow had position another guy, this time standing on the other side, right on the edge. Who was able to catch the key just as the first one lost possession of it. The entire set-piece was really something amazing, getting nice “oohs” and “aahs” from the packed audience. There are apparently a lot of puzzles in which you have to off your parallel self to advance.

The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom takes that formula even further; again, you advance by taking advantage of actions and creating loops of them to be utilized by a later self. Like standing somewhere to allow yourself to be a platform for a later version to stand on… who can then form another step for yet a third version of yourself. But what if the third guy knocks out the first guy, which would cause the second guy to be unable to set up the third guy… the game allows and to a certain degree encourages the creation of these time paradoxes. The games uses a lot of Rube Goldberg-type set pieces, plus has awesome art direction (its supposed to feel like a silent film, so when you rewind and replay, there’s plenty of film tricks). Again, superb.

The next series of games dealt with that tries to be confuse, yet also be transparent. Such as Lost in the Static. It’s your average platformer, but absolutely everything is static. One can tell what something is, or what’s going on due to the type of static the object has (there are 17 different kinds in all). It’s nothing brilliant, just a cute idea. One that is TOTALLY not marketable, since screenshots are impossible to produce. Yet, I still tried taking a picture…

Then you had this…

… Which was conceived as part of a contest to create the worst game possible. So the creators came up with an idea of a game in which you control a huge monster. An invisible monster, even to the player. Occasionally environmental elements will help to show where you are, but for the most part, you are completely blind…

… To enhance the effect, the whole thing is set up like a movie once again, but a D grade, Ed Wood flick. Like how the UFOs you fight are on strings. There are also boss fights, with other monsters, and they too are also invisible! Another primary goal was to create a game in which people would play with absolute intensity, but anyone watching would be completely confused because nothing is going on.

Here we have Space Giraffe, by Jeff Minter. Some might recall me being super psyched for it during development, as were many other folks. After-all, his re-envisioning of Tempest was beloved by all. But when his latest game finally came out, it received a pretty cold reception; most were confused by the new game, to the point of anger and disgust. People hated it, and told anyone who would listen to avoid it like the plague. Which was advice I heeded since some of the folks echoing such a sentiment were those whose often knew what they were talking about. But after seeing it in motion, I want to play now more than ever…

… The graphics for each passing level become brighter, more colorful, flashier, louder, more abstract. Which makes knowing what the hell is going on pretty damn difficult. Then again, according to Blow, it’s meant to be confusing, but the true source of confusion lies with how its played; this is not your dad’s Tempest, and the rules of old absolutely do not apply. Just leaving your finger on the shot button is actually the last thing you want to do in some instances.

But if there’s one person who has certainly figured out the game, it’s Blow, cuz he was whipping through level after level with absolute ease, and we’re talking about level 64 and above, the really hard (i.e “good”) shit. Also, sorry Rez, but there’s a new druggies? game of choice in town. Blow actually blames Minter, for not properly explaining the game to the rest of the world. He’s all up for doing whatever the hell he wants, conventions be damned. But Minter also needs to see where the player is coming from and give them at least a shot.

The last game in the “obfuscation” series was Stars Over Half Moon Bay, by Rod Humble, creator of the much talked about game from last year’s GDC, The Marriage. Like the Marriage, there are no real instructions, and believe it or not, this latest one is even more esoteric (though Humble did offer an explanation, which was mostly a reaction to his frustration to not being able to come up to a “worthy” follow-up of The Marriage).

There are no pictures because, well, none of them came out, and they’d make zero sense anyway (even more so than Lost In The Static), plus it might be best to not saying anything and just let the game be played. Though I will say that, I don’t think its anything profound, like The Marriage, but then again, I don’t think its trying to be either. I am curious though to see how people will react to it… primarily from those that both loved The Marriage and hated it.

One game that fell under the category of “two spaces” was simply titled Shadow. Again, sorry for the lack of visuals, but they too would have made very little sense, as well as make the game look extremely boring. After all, you’re just trying to move a very plain looking ball from one plain looking platform to another (the lack of detail is in part due to the fact that it’s just a prototype for the moment). The thing is, the distance between platforms are often too wide for the ball to get to via jumping, and that’s where the title comes into play; you have two viewpoints, looking at the object and looking at the shadows they cast. In somewhat the same vein of Echochrome, perspective is everything, and if the shadows of two objects look close together, despite their actual distance, then that’s all you need to get the ball, or at least it’s shadow, along the way. Yet another game that really impressed the crowd, and one to look for.

Another two spaces title was Shift, an action platformer that also deals with shadows, but in an entirely different manner. There’s not much to say here other than it?s a game that plays around with perception, and well worth checking out!

And finally, for the “user generated” category was Crayon Physics Deluxe, which could be considered the game of the show, simply because it did manage to nab the top honors the previous night at the IGF awards, the $20,000 Seumas McNally Grand Prize. Basically, the entire world as one can see, is in crayon. And to make things happen, you use… a crayon! The object of the game is to get the red ball to touch the yellow star. And to do that, you create shapes, even simply machinery, all via crayon, which are governed by the law of physics. It?s so amazing, that one absolutely has to check it out…

… Most puzzles involved creating a shape that moves, to propel the red ball, or to push it along. And to make the boxes move, pulleys and hinges are created. Again, everything behaves precisely how they would work in real life…

… It was a fine example of a game being made with one specific solution to a problem in mind, and others going completely wild with their totally crazy, yet totally working, concepts. All of which illustrates how fantastic and robust the concept and execution is. The only limit to the game, and I hate to sound so cheesy, but it’s so true in this case, is one’s imagination. And you know a game has totally hits its mark when everyone looks on eagerly as a person is laying everything out, nice and slow and deliberate, and when the moment of truth happens, and it all works out, you get thunderous applause.

And that was it for day four! Yet plenty more was in store that evening, quite a bit more actually, but perhaps it?s best to wait for that next time…

1 comment

GDC Day 3

… Which meant the expo floor was open, and the convention was finally in full swing…

It felt a bit like E3, at least from what I?ve seen, but a bit scaled back. Actually, it felt like DigitalLife, but with, you know, actual names you recognized and gave two shits about. Like Nintendo, who had a fairly big presence, built almost entirely around just two things: Super Smash Bros Brawl and Wii Fit…

Sony had perhaps the biggest booth. It’s kinda funny how, out of the big three, Sony of all people appears to be the most indie developer friendly. Aside from already having flOw and Everyday Shooter, the former haven of smaller, more independent fare, Xbox Live Arcade, is now overrun by major publishers, while Nintendo… well, there is the upcoming WiiWare, which absolutely no one knows about (though I would finally hear the details later on; more on that later)…

But Sony being Sony, in addition to showing off their authoring tools, took the opportunity to show off the hottest game for the system at the moment, Devil May Cry 4, on their gigantic plasma displays, with couches for those to kick back and play. But on one of the TVs was Echochrome, that MC Escher-esque game that I once went ga-ga about in these parts a while ago. So the chance to give it a spin was a real thrill…

… The gameplay, for those who don?t know already, is all about perspective, as in playing with it. You have a dude, that basically looks like a wooden drawing model, that moves around a path, going back and forth, and to get him to go places you have to shift the camera around, to give the illusion that the separate parts of the backgrounds have merge, which then actually translates in the game space. It was fantastic, though unfortunately the demo was super short. Plus, I asked the Sony rep demo-ing the game a bunch of questions, and he clearly did not give a fuck. I was then passed along to the head-PR lady, who was also kinda clueless. So typical of Sony. By the end of that first afternoon, Ectochrome was gone, replaced by, you guessed it, Devil May Cry 4!

Gran Turismo 5 was another game that was being heavily pushed, but not just Sony, but Logitech, who has a new fancy-schmancy steering wheel. Which meant plenty of opportunities to suck on the virtual fast lane (sorry, but that game is too hard for someone weened on Daytona…

The PSP was also represented. The clear winner for me was Patapon, though I was also super impressed by the new God of War…

Here we have my new pal Phil, along with his creation, in the indie games pavilion…

Aside from games, you also had all sorts of wacky hardware, like this three dimensional, haptic mouse, called the Novint Falcon…

… Basically, you use the ball to navigate the game?s space in three dimensions, by moving along the X , Y, and Z axis?s. Furthermore, it can transmit feedback depending on the environment in the game. For example: the device?s demo has you moving a virtual hand and touching balls of varying surfaces, like liquid, molasses, rock, sandpaper, etc. The effect was surprisingly convincing.

Along with the controller are some games tailor made for it, plus there?s an SDK for other game makers out there to take advantage of it in their titles (there?s already a Half Life 2 mod, of course). The one original game that caught my eye was a Katamari rip-off; one level takes place in some character?s dream, and you have to collect all these letters…

… It was really awesome, but unfortunately, the rest of the game is simply a shameless Katamari clone, nothing more, nothing less, though with none of the aforementioned level?s creative spark (well, there was also a Tron-looking level, that also seemed kinda neat).

And here’s controller by NeuroSky that allows you to play games WITH YOUR MIND!!!

… The lifting of the x-wing was, more than anything, cute. I didn’t get a chance to try out the PC controller, due to the very long wait and my tight schedule, but (unsurprisingly) the wait for the cell phone version wasn’t nearly as long. Once again… say it together now: you can read all about it over at Zedge!

Hey kids, why play Guitar Hero or a stupid old HD flat screen, when you can play it on a dome!

Why? I have no idea. Actually, the tech is for big events, like concerts. Which they decided to show off at the GDC for some reason. Next.

There were tons of different software packages on display, though a large percentage of them were related to motion capture…

Oh, and here’s Half Life 2 via third person, a mod created by a DeVry student…

… Why? Because not everyone likes, or can even play, games via first person, due to motion sickness. Like me! It’s not perfect though. First off, as you can see, you’re not playing as Gordon Freeman. Even though you are still Gordon in the game. Why? Valve never made a Gordon character model! But the grunt you play as still moves just like him, since all movement is based on physics, so you move along silky smooth. Except when going up ladders… you kinda just float up and down. Reason? Valve never bothered to do a walking up or down ladder animation.

And here’s some demo for some software for the Wii featuring a very slick looking corridor shooter. Too bad it?s not a real game…

Around mid-afternoon was my appointment with SNK, who like D3 the day before, was in a remote location, at a hotel suite. I went in hoping to maybe check out KOF XII, which they sadly did not have, aside from a video (but HOLY SHIT DOES THAT GAME LOOK FUCKING AMAZING), though did have something I totally could not have ever expected: Metal Slug 7!

Yes, it?s for the DS, and I only played a little bit, but what little I played was pretty damn awesome! It simply felt like Metal Slug, for lack of a better descriptive term. The game was not only a surprise to myself but SNK USA as well; they had no idea that they would be demo-ing the game, so they had zero information, such as what team worked on it and the like. But the action was fast, fluid, and over the top, as a Metal Slug game should be!

From what I could tell, you had the standard side-scrolling missions, but there were also shorter object oriented missions that took place during portions of already completed levels. It was hard to tell what was what since everything was in Japanese. BTW, for anyone who has seen gameplay video of it in action, over at snk-capcom.com… that’s me playing it.

Another shock was hearing that KOF 98 Ultimate Match is actually coming out in the US! Who would have thunk it! Though I still say the title should be King of Fighters 98: Dream Match REALLY DOES Never End…

The Samurai Shodow Collection was also on-hand, which I knew would be in advance, which is why I also planned on asking why in the hell Samurai Showdown Zero or X, whatever the heck the one Joe Salina has, is not included. But on the box it stated a Samurai Showdown 6 in the line-up. Yet when I mess around with the game, it was nowhere to be found. WTF. The SNK folks were also confused (they had simply assumed 6 would be part of the package and never actually checked to see it was there). But after some messing around, it was? in the options menu or something. I hate it when they do that. But yeah, its there, so finally Americans can play as or against the sexy samurai maid or the weird robot/puppet show.

Also met JC Flecher, the dude who runs WiiFanboy.com and DSFanboy.com. Really nice guy. As well as Jason Napolitano, plus another dude, whom I forget, but I do remember him wearing his GAF name, avatar, and tag, screen captured and printed, alongside with badge. It was then revealed that all four of us are GAFfers, and that there was going to be a NeoGAF meet-up later that evening. I was originally going to the Game Developers award ceremony that night, but the chance to actually meet GAFfers in the flesh, especially since I?ve already done so with Insert Credit/Select Button and YayHooray was too good to miss.

A couple of tourist-y pics, after the SNK thing, and on my way to lunch; some shots of Union Square…

… Sorry, but San Francisco’s Union Square totally kicks the ass of New York’s Union Square. Not to be a hater and all, but…

As for the IGDA VIP luncheon, the topic of parties came up. I explained that I was going to abandon the awards later that night for the GAF-get-together and was strongly advised against such a move by the boys from Jersey, Coray Seifert and Nick Smolney. I was told that it was am absolute do-not-miss affair; aside from supporting the scene, the ceremony itself is always supremely entertaining, either in a good way, or in a ?holy shit, this is horrible? way, often in the form of cheesy sketches and in-side jokes, which if you get will make one feel even more grossly uncomfortable. Never mind how jokes are rarely funny at award shows; what passes off as “humor” these days in games, as well as the massive proliferation of shitty game related web comics out there has more than proven that video game folks, God bless their souls, are not necessarily the funniest people on earth.

Though the reason why I had to go was because, apparently, it?s the last year in which CMP was handling the ceremony. The word is next year G4 will be taking it over, where they will surely fuck it up like everything else they touch. They were already on-hand this year covering the entire event, and the feeling was not so good. Imagine next year when they somewhat run the show? its hard to believe anything worse than the ultra-shitastic VGA that Spike TV does, but anything is possible (plus G4 did single-handedly destroy Tech TV). Oh God.

Then someone mentioned the White Wolf party scheduled for the next evening. Pretty much every press person got the email invite, and almost everyone rolled their eyes and some of the claims, that it was supposed the talk of the town afterwards. But because I wasn?t there, I would find out that it sorta was; there were naked women all over place, including one of the game designers Okay… I like train wrecks and all, but even I have my limits.

Afterwards was a talk by Jonathon Blow, the creator of the upcoming time-shifting platformer Braid for the Xbox 360, and a rather vocal, as well as somewhat controversial, member of the indie scene. Originally his topic was called “Design Reboot” and would have offered new ways of approaching design, but because he did that once before and doesn’t like doing the same thing twice (drat), instead Blow decided to tackle a question that was somewhat posed in a Halo 3 review in the recent past, in which the author stated that games were on the cusp of being something big, and almost on the level of other respected forms of art and expression, such as film or literature, but for that to happen, it needs to “stop pandering to the player’s demand for mastery in favor of enhancing the player’s intellectual and emotional life.” But how?

In Blow’s opinion, games should… actually, need to be more meaningful, to have more emotion. Unfortunately, the current idea of idea of making a game more “engaging” is by adding dynamic story elements, such as in Half Life 2 (the “you are IN the story!” approach, with shit happening to you all around and you’re expected to keep up… other games have done the same thing, even before HL2, but most will agree that it had done it the best, thus far). Well, unfortunately, that’s really not the way to do it. On a basic level, telling a story in such a manner is extremely disjointed; the key to good storytelling is in its pacing, which has to be tight, yet flow seamlessly, which is impossible to in a game without constricting the player to a large degree, that in turn hinders the gameplay. In any movie, there’s never a scene in which the main character is stuck doing the same thing, over and over again, or even dying and coming back to life, and once he or she has figured what is up, goes back to business, as if there was no real set-back or disruption to the narrative flow. Half Life 2 has thus far been the most successful at achieving a balance, but it still suffers from that later example, and that’s simply not good enough. Also, the story is still far from brilliant, and the acting, still pretty lifeless and robotic.

Though Blow also questioned the intent of most games, Personally, I don’t find pandering to one’s desire of mastery such a bad thing. After-all, what are games if not a means to explore one’s desires and live vicariously through one’s virtual self, as he blows someone, or something‘s head, clean off? But Blow clearly has real issues with such a motive.

Well, we play games to have fun, obviously, but what exactly is fun? There are different kinds. Blow gave two examples and compared them, which in this case was sports vs. slots. In sports, we engage in a physical activity that has very clearly defined rules. There’s elements of interaction and ability, to name a few. In the end, sports are ultimately a positive form of fun, because, again among many other reasons, you’re getting exercise! Now how about slots? There’s no skill, no strategy, no real interaction, it’s all chance. It’s basically gambling, which inherently is not such a positive thing.

Blow feels that it is important to give “natural” awards, not “artificial” ones. One example of an artificial award is stupid crap that fills the screen if you do something correct or something. Whether it be number on screen, or an explosion of bright colors and sounds. Blow’s definition of a natural award is the moment of realization, like when you solved a particularly tricky puzzle, that rush of “holy shit, I KNOW NOW!!!” Needless to say, its far earlier to deliver the flash than the substance. Blow noted that none of the puzzles in Portal took that long to solve, but each time when he did, it was extremely satisfying.

For Blow, the key issue is how games need to be less fun, but more interesting. And designers need to have a better idea of their intent, or at the very least, be honest, be “pure” about it. All food for thought. BTW, anyone interested in the full rundown of his presentation can simply go here.

Afterwards was a presentation on Wii Fit. Unsurprisingly, it was tough getting in, being Nintendo and all, everyone wanted to check it out. But it was worth the hassle; the hour long look at the development of the hardware and software was pretty fascinating, though unfortunately, again it being Nintendo, everyone was expressly forbid to take any pictures. Granted, I’m pretty sure most folks, even diehard gamers might be bored to tears by pictures of a controller in development, one that is basically a glorified bathroom scale. But still.

Easily the most interesting aspect of the Wii Fit board’s development is how at one point they tried using the innards of the Nintendo 64′s controller as a key element, as a means to reduce cost (Nintendo is all about trying to make shit as cheap as possible, for obvious reasons). In the end, they had to do away with it, but still, its the kind of outside the box thinking that gets gamers’ wangs nice and hard. Though the real visual highlight, the one that made everyone at least think about sneaking in at least one snapshot, was at the very beginning of the presentation, in which speaker Takao Sawano, who served as project manager, presented this ultra detailed diagram for what would be Nintendo’s new system at the time, one that detailed all the things Miyamoto wanted to address. The three key areas were activities that allow players would be able to athletic competition, which became Wii Sports, activities that allow the player to just enjoy playing simple, not necessarily competitive, games, which became Wii Play, and activities that allow the taking care of body management, which is what Wii Fit would become.

That last part came from Miyamoto and how he actually enjoyed weighing himself, and monitoring his health, which he felt could be turned into a game, or at the very least a fun activity. Problem was, his team was no necessarily convinced, but you know, if Shiggy says it will be, make it so. The first real challenge was figuring out the hardware, which as noted earlier, had to be cheap, but also durable. Numerous versions were created for testing purposes, with features constantly being added and subtracted, such as rumble (in the end, not powerful enough to be worth the bother). At one point, the Wii-mote was used in tandem, like how the classic controller has to be connected to one to work, but they realized that most folks would be afraid to have it on the floor, where it might easily be stepped on. At a certain point, the team went to the service center, where they receive and repair broken Nintendo products, to figure out why stuff breaks and to prevent it, to avoid unnecessary hassle for the player (hear that Microsoft?).

Ease of use was always key, hence why one really neat feature is how the game has a basic calorie/weight counter that is supposed to be used everyday, but so people don’t have to go through the hassle of taking out whatever was in the Wii before, then popping in the Wii Fit disc for just a few minutes of use everyday, the software installs a lite version that just does the quick and dirty thing, in the form of a channel. Neat! As for the issue of whether people would actually want to weigh themselves in the living room, naturally, well there’s also a bunch of neat games that are basically exercise that really brings the package together. My fave might be the jogging one, where you run in place; the board is not even used, and instead you simply hold onto a remote, and as you swing it around, it translates to running in the game. You basically run around an island, and the length of each run can range into the miles, so… like it is in most gyms… you can actually change the channel and watch something else on TV while the game keeps running. It’s little things like that which makes you realize that Nintendo thinks of everything! Even though it?s not necessarily true. One final factoid (Seriously, is any of this of any interest to anyone?): the Wii Fit board has a maximum capacity of 1320, so there’s no reason why any fattie out there shouldn’t get this thing! Yes, believe it or not, I am legitimately excited for this thing.

The presentation ended with a look at some possible other applications for the board, which was the whole point of the presentation, to inspire other designers out there, but we all know that hardly anyone will touch the thing, or do anything truly interesting with it. Which unfortunately is the case for the Wii in general…

Anyway, after the Wii Fit presentation, I went to the expo floor to conduct some interviews, and after munching on the free hamburgers some booth was giving out to all the attendees (Christ I gained so much weight from last week alone), it was 6:00, end of day three. Which meant a trip to Moscone South, for the award ceremony…

… Time for another bit of random name-dropping: before the show began, I met Mike McWhertor, from Kotaku, who apparently reads this site! Awesome!

Anyway, the ceremony itself was pretty neat, rather straightforward and to the point, with some bits of humor, though some of it was pretty decent! It was actually two different awards put together; the Independent Games Festival ceremony and the Game Developer’s Choice Awards, with Mega 64 doing vids for the IGF (like this one… and Secrets of Bird Island btw is the tits), and various Zero Punctuation segments being used all throughout the second half (though none of them were new, for all you Yahtzee fans out there, sorry).

As for the games that were nominated, man, there was a ton of cool shit in contention for the various prizes, at least on the indie side of things (some of which I’ll be going over in my next post), though I was mostly rooting for Fez, which did nab excellence in visual art! Yeah!!!

… The top prize went to Crayon Physics Deluxe, and if you haven’t check out for yourself already, I will be going over it next time once more, so prepare to have your mind blown.

The second half, the Game Developer’s Choice Awards, on the other hand… eh. Some of the nominees were excellent, and some were questionable, and the awards went to a few of the latter, which was total bullshit in my book. First off, instead of flOW or Everyday shooter getting best debut game, the award went to… Crackdown?! WTF. Best audio should have also gone to Everyday Shooter, no fucking doubt; the winner was Bioshock, which like all the other nominees, like God of War 2 or Mass Effect, is that same lazy, boring, wannabe Hollywood score that we’ve heard over, and over, and over again.

Oh, and Ralph Baer was recognized with a pioneer award, which was pretty awesome. So overall, a decent affair. One that was also filmed by G4 for broadcast in the coming week. I’ll be shocked if they get a solid 10 minutes that’s suitable for their brain dead audience. Either that or they’re going to have to add a heavy dose of Carmen Electra in postproduction.

… Okay, not to go off on a tangent, but Christ does G4 suck! I know I’m overstating the obvious, but I watched a solid week’s worth of their programming while Washington, since again, I didn’t have shit to do, and man…. aside from the also aforementioned Ninja Warrior, and another similar show, the Unbeatable Banzuke, all their programming is horrible. I think Attack of the Show is the worst; aside from being a televised version of Wired Magazine (okay, from back when it sucked… I’ve been told its not so bad now, though I wouldn’t know, since I haven’t touched an issue in years… actually, I did check out that anime/manga issue from a few months ago, and refuse to go back, due it being so fucking stupid), they clearly do not have their finger on the pulse of jack shit. They did a story on Anonymous vs Scientology and they seriously had no fucking idea where Anonymous comes from! Hello? 4-chan?!?! Holy shit is that retarded. As for their viewers, when they asked them if they would go back to network television now that the writer’s strike was over, a whopping 60-something percent said yes! So they were watching it in the first place?!?! Alright, rant over…

After the show, I went over a bar to meet some new folks… the NeoGAF meet-up. Why the hell not, right? And I met a few cool folks that I have somewhat forgotten about, since I really don’t frequent the place anymore, even though I really should; all major gigs have originated from being noticed there, and the same was the case with pretty much everyone there that night! Anyhow, finally met Roberto Garcia-Lago, who writes for Gaming Age proper, and Cameron Davis, who works for Krome Studio, the makers of the best Transformers video game to date (which I know is not saying much, but still). And that was pretty neat. Anyhow, I bought them a round of beer, in exchange of them mentioning my site on their nightly podcast, and I think the sudden influx of hits to my site the next day is indicative that it was money well spent.

Didn’t stay long since I was starting to get a bit worn out from all the show and the constant socializing after-wards (cue “I’m getting old” comment), plus I was getting a bit hungry. So I decided to finally check out the Jollibee that was across the street from the convention center…

… Now, I had learned about Jollibee from Joe Simko’s trips to the Philippines. It’s an American styled fast food joint… from the Philippines… with a happy bee as a mascot. Sold!

I had both one of their hot dogs, the original JollyDog, and a burger, or the YUMMY BURGER WITH CHEESE! HOORAY!!! Both items had this weird sauce that I cannot put my finger on as to what it was. Maybe its better that way. Anyway, they had this TV monitor that had these weird commercials featuring that was a mix of English and Filipino (though all the actors were Mexican for some reason). They also served spaghetti that’s angel hair pasta covered with tomato sauce that has, get this, hot dog slices! You know, I love hot dogs and all, but again, even I have my limits.

And was less than ten minutes after this meal in which I had the sudden sensation/fear that I was going to shit my pants. I would find out later on from Raina, as well as Slonie, that pretty much everyone has the same exact reaction. So much for night three.

2 comments