Reality Panic

Have been playing quite a bit of Dead Rising recently. Wow, it’s gotta be one of the hardest game’s I’ve ever played. Fun, but hard.

In part, the funky approach to save games make you feel like you are reliving the same nightmare (ie, the beginning of the game) over and over again. Moreso, it comes down to the sheer intensity of “scoops” and “cases” that you need to pursue in order to fully complete the game. And, I suppose, the somewhat frustrating NPC AI that you have to drag along.

Anyway, once you get past the hardness (ie, buying the official guide book is a huge help), the game is just super fun to play - in the beat-up-hordes-of-zombies-with-your-bare-hands kinda way. Joy.

Makes me think of some of the game research into the idea that what makes games fun is not always the “fun” but the hardness/challenge of it all (ie, the frustration is part of the value).

On a related note, those crazy boys from Mega64 gave their treatment to Dead Rising. Not necessarily their best work, but pretty funny if you’ve played the game!

Kudos to Chris Pfeiffer and Max Garber for breaking free from the burn and churn game dev approach of many game studios. Kotaku has a great run down of their story, fleeing to China to set up a new studio.

What’s most distrurbing, beyond the general “game industry quality of life still sucks” aspect, is that they are leaving Insomniac Games (Spyro, Jax, Ratchet, Resitance, etc).

So?

For the past several years, Insomniac has won awards for being one of the best places to work in America! Not sure what the Society for Human Resource Management is measuring/evaluating, exactly, but you’d think that 6-7 day work-weeks of “working around the clock” would factor negatively…

Max and Chris would do well to learn from Relentless’ approach, for example.

Was recently chatting with Ben Sawyer (the “serious games” guy) about playing games with our kids - we both have two kids, all under the age of five. I was commenting how my 4-year-old son was struggling to grok game interfaces, joypad manipulation and navigating in a 3D space (he does somewhat better in a 2D plus mouse type environment).

Also, I was lamenting the fact that there aren’t many good games (or, more appropriately “software toys”) for very young kids. For example, a big pile a dirt with a big bulldozer to dig it up would be hugely entertaining. And, the simplicity would likely enable my son to slowly “learn how to game”.

Ben mentioned similar challenges and noted a project he and some industry friends were working on: First Games, an initiative dedicated to research, development and advocacy for simple, fun, quality games for kids ages 5 and under, AND their parents.

The hidden agenda here is that these “first” games would serve as tools to teach gaming literacy to young children, enabling them to play more complex games sooner.

Connect the dots to Ben’s serious games efforts, and we can envision the power behind the concept. That is, the motivation is NOT to produce ever younger consumers for the mainstream game industry, but more digitally literate youth that can learn/do more via serious games.

Imagine, there will come a day when game playing will be taught in kindergarten! Crazy? Well, I can only guess at the interesting discussions that happened when the idea of literature/book literacy was introduced into academia so many generations ago… (Anyone got a good reference?)

Also, makes me think of Ken Perlin’s efforts to evangelize procedural thinking and programming as a form of literacy that should be taught to kids.

Tangentially related, Erin “ea_spouse” Hoffman wrote up a great article on being a parent in the game industry and the value/perspective it brings to the development process. Case in point, refer to Gas Powered Games’ Chris Taylor discussing his career re-prioritizing after he became a father.

Rumors are swirling in Montreal regarding the potential arrival of Eidos.

Seems like there is a lot of interest, in part because my blog is getting many Google hits for “eidos + montreal”. Presumably this is due to my pic of Julien Merceron, Eidos’ tech director, during the Montreal Game Summit.There’s been some info/discussion in the IGDA forum. Also, folks have been emailing me with questions.

Sadly, I don’t have any concrete info. When I pinged Julien for the scoop, he simply sent a :) in reply…

Update: It’s official. Eidos is setting up shop in Montreal.

While I can claim to only personally knowing a few of them, here’s the best the game industry has to offer:

Akihiko Yoshida, Alistair Lindsay, Andrea Pessino, Atsushi Inaba, Brendan Ferguson, Brian Sullivan, Charles Beirnaert, Chris Perna, Christiane Meister, Cliff Bleszinski, Crispin Hands, Dag Scheve, Dan Houser, Daniel Vogel, Dave Gilbert, Dave Grossman, David Swinerd, Didier Malenfant, Don Wurster, Drew Dunlop, Ed Bryan, Eiji Aonuma, Eric Brosius, Eugene Foss, Florent Sacre, Gregg Mayles, Gregg Stephens, Hideki Kamiya, Hideo Minaba, Hiroshi Minagawa, Hubert Chevillard, Ian Thomson, Isamu Kamikokuryo, Istvan Pely, Izzy Maxwell, Jacob Krarup, Jacob Van Wingen, Jeff Allen, Jeff Goodsill, Jennifer Lewis, Jerry O’Flaherty, John Johnson, John Tennant, Joshua Glazer, Justin Cook, Karl Gallagher, Keigo Tsuchiya, Keizo Ohta, Kemmei Adachi, Ken Rolston, Kenichirou Yoshimura, Kenta Sato, Kouji Niikura, Kyogoku Aya, Mari Shimazaki, Matthew Carofano, Michael Capps, Michael Maidment, Michael Skupa, Michel Ancel, Mike Peaslee, Mitsuhiro Takano, Naoki Katakai, Nate Bihldorff, Nobuyuki Shimizu, Paul Chieffo, Ragnar Tørnquist, Ray Davis, Rod Fergusson, Ru Weerasuriya, Ryan Stevenson, Sam Thibault, Satoru Iwata, Sawaki Takeyasu, Shelby Hubick, Shigeru Miyamoto, Shinya Ikuta, Steve Purcell, Steve Reed, Takayuki Shimamura, Takeshi Miyamoto, Takuhiro Dohta, Ted Carson, Tian Mu, Tim Sweeney, Todd Howard, Tomofumi Ishida, Tomohiro Ueda, Tomonobu Kikuchi, Troels Folmann, Tsutomu Kouno, Wil Paredes, Yasuhide Sawada, Yoshiaki Yamashita

Those are the nearly 100 individuals attributed to the finalists of the 7th annual Game Developers Choice Awards, which were announced yesterday. Forget about the games for a moment, they are why we are here to celebrate!

The Choice Awards remains one of the very few industry awards that actually credits the specific people behind the games being nominated (ie, the designers for Game Design, the artists for Visual Arts, the programmers for Technology, etc). In fact, if a studio does not provide attributions they are disqualified and removed from the running…

During the ceremony at GDC in early March, I hope to get to know more of these awesome and deserving creators.