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High Scores And Egos: There's Always A Bigger Doodle Pro Tip: Don’t show up for the Resident Evil: Degeneration panel at Comic-Con less than 30 minutes prior to it happening or you won’t get in. With the San Diego Con at capacity, getting into the Capcom helmed panel required serious Resident Evil dedication. We were covering Jordan Mechner’s panel instead, but thanks to GameTrailers, we have the good stuff — the trailer itself. Enjoy!
A number of Chinese companies are nothing if not shrewd — in a smart business move, FerryGame has hired former EA executive producer and Heavy Iron founder Steve Grey to oversee their product lineup and future forays into the MMO/’advanced casual’ market. Ranging from typical MMOs to a music/dance/’catwalk’ game, FerryGame looks like they’re ready to take on some of the big dogs of the domestic Chinese market, and Grey will surely be an asset:
While the majority of Jordan Mechner’s talk at Comic-Con earlier today focused on all things Prince of Persia, some fans veered slightly off-topic, picking the programmer’s brain on his other titles — Karateka and The Last Express.
The former, Mechner’s first commercial game, an early 2D fighter published by Brøderbund and known for its fluid animation, is planned to get an update (of sorts). Details on the Karateka project weren’t provided, but Mechner teased the crowd by saying “I can safely say it’s not going to be the way that you expect”. He did, however, say he would be directly “involved”, a claim he didn’t make about Ubisoft’s recent Prince of Persia releases.
Mechner also let the crowd in on the particulars of a hilarious Easter egg in the original Karateka.
Ngamer has rolled out Scatfest 2008 — “a celebration of all things shonky and cheap” — with reviews of eight titles that Nintendo gamers here can all smugly and securely say, no goddamn way did we ever play, much less buy, these turds. They’re all bargain-binners, and come on, who the hell shops there (/stashes copy of Driv3r).
Leading the list, unsurprisingly, is Jumper, whose own trailer made it look like a pile of self-regarding dung. So a game adaptation, that’d be like dining on the turd of a turd. Others include Cruis’n, Orbs of Doom, Kawasaki Jet Ski, Monster Trux Arenas, Action Girlz Racing, Myth Makers Super Kart GP and Kidz Sports Ice Hockey. They’re all designed to fool clueless aunts and relatives into thinking that’s the cool game all the kids want, and giving it to you for your birthday, a development strategy pioneered strategy by Hollywood.
“There are plenty of more worthwhile things to push your finger against. Rusty thumb tacks, for example”, Ngamer writes. Quite.
Scatfest 2008 [NGamer]
The idea that crafting a compelling game involves multiple parts — narrative design, graphic elements, sound — is so obvious that it’s a shame an article even needs to be written expounding upon that fact, but Sande Chen (The Witcher) has an interesting piece over at Gamasutra on just that. The real take away point is ‘attention to detail,’ I think — paying attention to visual intensity and how visual elements play into each other and the game; thinking hard about emotional intensity as it waxes and wanes throughout a game; really paying attention to sounds. It seems so basic, but a little attention goes a long way:
“We kind [of]like the Blizzard business plan in that we don’t release a game till it has reached a certain high level of quality”, Bill Tiller, CEO of Autumn Moon Entertainment, told Kezins, “because we want to have the reputation of putting out a few games, but of high quality”. Know what I like about that strategy? You’re already assured of achieving half of its objectives.
That said, A Vampyre Story is showing progress toward being a good game. It’s visually appealing — a prerequisite for a point-and-click SCUMM-based game — as this exclusive pic Bill gave Kezins certainly shows [more at the link] . And the story, another must-have for such a game, starts in the right place: An undead opera singer with dreams of performing in Paris someday. Tiller also worked for LucasArts on SCUMM classics like The Dig, The Curse of Monkey Island and Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. So he knows the capabilities of the engine and how to make it useful to a game.
Apparently, Autumn Moon is working on not only A Vampyre Story, but also A Vampyre Story 2, and an unannounced third game. They’ve been so busy they haven’t had time to update their Web site. Tiller says that’ll happen around August or so.
Exclusive: ‘A Vampyre Story’ Progress Report with CEO Bill Tiller [Kezins]
We mentioned Arden, the university-design MMO, a few times; a working paper has just been released that looks at economic behaviour in MMOs using the game. The interesting thing here isn’t so much the fact that people replicate real-world behaviours online (in this case, they purchased less of an item when it was more expensive), but that it’s yet another piece of a growing literature explaining the utility of virtual worlds in actual research:
IGN heavily qualifies what it heard at Comic-Con ’08, and it isn’t confirmation. But any idiot can look at Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe, especially the fact it’s getting positive response, and figure that Marvel and Capcom have some kind of response.
Anyway, IGN reports that at Comic-Con, Kevin Feige, Marvel Studios President of Production (wotta title), was asked if a new Marvel vs. Capcom game was possible someday. His reply: “Yes. And maybe sooner than you think”.
IGN goes on to say that a Capcom under-production title, probably for Japan release only, could provide the guts for the game, allowing it to be turned around in a relatively short time. New Marvel vs Capcom Game On the Way? [IGN, via Scrawl]
So, we mentioned that the English-speaking world is getting its own version of Perfect World, so it can stop piggybacking on a couple of servers on the Malaysian version; along with another launch comes another closed beta, which will be starting on August 19th. The news page has more information on giveaways and the like, or you can just register on the game’s site.
I’ve been galloping around the test servers for the past week or so, and I’ve been having a reasonably good time (especially considering I usually abhor actually playing MMORPGs). It’s pretty, it’s free, and if you haven’t already, may be worth checking out.
Who says the Wii isn’t for the hardcore gamer? Seems a third-party retailer has been pumping out Wii Balance Board covers that depict casual drugs and/or teh booby. Gamesindustry.biz went tattling to Nintendo about it and got a predictably corporate response. “These are not officially licenced products, we always recommend the use of official first or third party Nintendo products to ensure 100 per cent compatibility and reliability with our hardware. We always closely monitor new products entering the market to ensure that they do not infringe on any of our IP”.
