Is Hitman's Next Target Assassin's Creed? 
Why Kotaku Australia Should Never Work With Children... Or Robots 
Three Words I Said To The Man I Defeated In Gears Of War That I'll Never Say Again 
New Doom 3 For Xbox 360 And PlayStation 3 Supports Head-Mounted Displays 
Far Cry 3 And The Stranger In A Strange Land 
Why Robin Makes Batman Better Gamasutra has a piece up by Andy Robertson on what the game industry can learn from the film industry – at least in terms of fostering a sense of community. Game companies, you see, are apparently falling down on the job of giving their fans some “ownership” in the final product. It’s transparency of the design/production process that makes the hit! Who knew? Lord of the Rings wouldn’t have been as successful a film without the rabid community surrounding the films (hasn’t Tolkein always enjoyed a mass following of dedicated fans)? Halo 3 is a hit because of relative transparency between company and fans? The Playstation blog is turning around years of crappy PR for Sony? Maybe it’s just the fact that I’m on my last nerve after a week of fires, declining air quality, and more fires in San Diego, but my gut reaction is ‘You’ve got to be kidding me’:
As the games industry takes innovative steps to communicate with and involve the wider public in their process, there is a lot that can be learnt from the films industry. It is clear that, just as with films, it is essential that it enables its audiences to feel a sense of ownership of the media they purchase. We can achieve this with transparent and honest communication — be it a blog, podcast or video.
It’s nice that people like Joss Wheedon and the actors involved in Firefly were all about ‘going to the people,’ but writing a book – or making a movie – or designing a game are creative processes that belong to someone else. ‘Lack of ownership’ has never bothered me when it comes to the media I consume – just because I like it a lot doesn’t mean I have any role in it than ponying up cash (and I’m OK with that). Lack of transparent process hasn’t stopped a frighteningly rabid fan base from springing up around Square Enix or a million other examples that are probably more representative than Firefly. So, dear Kotaku readers, what do you think? Does transparency in process make any difference to you? Or were those of you who were combing Bungie forums for Halo 3 news going to buy the damn game anyways?
Gamasutra has a long (long) interview up with Raph Koster (lead designer of Ultima Online and founder of Areae). It’s long. But Koster touches on a ton of stuff – the shift in game design, the ultra-casual market like Habbo Hotel vs. WoW, this idea of ‘game grammar’, why patents are a necessary evil, and is ‘single-player gaming dead’? – and it’s an interesting read. Even some interesting ideas on the us vs. them mentality present in the industry (or is it?):
I love when you chided everyone [at GDC Austin] . I watched Sulka Haro [of Habbo Hotel]talk, and … I could feel this slightly electric vibe of tension between the MMO guys in the audience and Haro. I don’t want to overgeneralize, but… I got this “We don’t like you, and you don’t like us,” kind of feeling, because they feel like he’s doing something different.
RK: Sulka has been coming to GDCs for years! He’s a guy who has been bridging the gap all along. Honestly, it’s more cases like… Nexon never comes out and talks, because they really do think that they’re just a different industry, as far as they’re concerned. I don’t want to ascribe motives — I don’t really know — but they just don’t do the talks! Because honestly, how relevant would many of the talks here this year be to them? Not very! I think it’s really, really, really important that people in any industry get out of their village and go anywhere else and check out what’s going on. Travel is broadening.
It’s an enjoyable interview to read with some different ideas on a number of aspects of the industry.
Defining Games: Raph Koster’s Game Grammar [Gamasutra]
The CMP Game Group, the bigger company behind sites like Gamasutra and GameSetWatch, as well as the Games Developer Conference…(the list goes on), has launched the new website IndieGames.com. To those who don’t really follow independent media, just know that attaching “indie” to any art form implies depth, importance and loads of subsequent associated personal worth. Because let’s face it: Gears of War is a great game, but playing it won’t get you laid by an intellectual chick (though if it does, please hit our tips line asap, photographic proof preferred).
We recommend IndieGame’s Top 50 Game Guide, which includes plenty of free downloads to heal your currently blockbuster-violated pocketbook. Want Games? An In-Depth Indie Game Guide [via gamasutra]
We mentioned Keiichi Yano earlier this week with the announcement that iNiS is working on a 360 title, but Gamasutra has an interesting interview up with him touching on topics ranging from the success of Elite Beat Agents, to the advantages of the Live Arcade format, to the East-West divide (or lack thereof). A sampling on his thoughts on the flow between East and West in terms of game design:
There needs to be more insight from a technical vantage, and just more of a game design sampling, I think. I know that Western developers are interested in Japanese thinking in terms of game design, so that’s why I think a lot of game designers are called to GDC this year, including myself. I think it’s really several things, but those two are probably the major reasons, I think. Hopefully, that’ll continue to grow and Japanese developers come to the States or Europe more to gain information that we wouldn’t be able to gain just being in Japan.
It’s an interesting interview with some nice perspectives on a variety of topics. We’ll be waiting for the next update on exactly what iNiS is working on for the 360.
Feeling The Elite Beat: Keiichi Yano On Crossing Over [Gamasutra]
The flap over the portrayal of Manchester Cathedral in Resistance: Fall of Man has long since settled, but Ian Bogost has an interesting take on the significance of including such a structure within a video game in his Gamasutra column. The depiction of the cathedral shows off the PS3′s capabilities, but the inclusion of such an important landmark is not simply a standard of the apocalypse genre or something that serves to cement the time and place of the setting, but a homage – not a desecration – of a site:
Manchester Cathedral was ransacked during the English Civil War in 1649, half-destroyed by German bombs in 1940, and bombed by the Irish Republican Army in 1996. It survived all these attacks. Its patrons rebuilt it.
And it stands still today. Resistance adds a fictional homage to the church’s resolve, this time in an alternate history fraught by an enemy that neither understands nor cares for human practices like religion. And it survives this as well. The Church of England sees their cathedral’s presence in Resistance only as a sordid juxtaposition, the sanctity of worship set against the profanity of violence. But when viewed in the context of the game’s fiction, the cathedral serves a purpose in the game consonant with its role in the world: that of reprieve for the weary and steadfastness in the face of devastation.
The Manchester bishop obviously didn’t agree, but Bogost points out that this flap provided yet another platform for ‘concerned citizens’ to rail against video games and perceived links between virtual and very real violence. Would the flap been as big if there hadn’t been some religious angle to foam at the mouth about?
Persuasive Games: The Reverence Of Resistance [Gamasutra]
Some academics get all the fun: five members of the Ivory Tower were interviewed by Gamasutra, and their topic was migration in virtual worlds. What’s the MMO landscape going to look like in a few years? What about single player games? And why do people give up their level 80 Night Elf to go grind in another playground? Neils Clark digs in with some PhDs and PhD candidates to examine the shift:
I started each interview out with a simple premise: that gamers were moving in tribes. World of Warcraft, in my mind, wasn’t the ‘king of the mountain’ because it was the best world out there, whatever our criteria might be. It was prominent because the right people played it, giving it a kind of social gravitational mass. The social bonds, whether forged in or outside of a game, influenced when gamers would move, and for how long they would stay. Some of these interviews dug deeply into this idea, while others carved out their own intriguing territory.
It’s an interesting set of interviews from another side of the gaming world: the people who are eyeball-deep researching this stuff.
The Academics Speak: Is There Life After World Of Warcraft? [Gamasutra]
