Flexibility is part of the job

That's one thing you can say about working in the video game industry, things never get stale.

For one, projects have a fairly short lifecycle. Production might last 6 months and is rarely more than 3 years. Starting a new project is like starting a new job, it keeps things fresh. One thing people often state that they enjoy about it is that things never get dull because they're in a constant state of flux.

Well, my project just fluxed. We've been put on hold. That used to be the kiss of death around here. On hold was a kind way of saying cancelled, but recently a bunch of those projects have been resurrected, so there's hope yet. We know that our product is a good on, it's fun and has good potential to be profitable.

Like a bad breakup, we were told it's not you, it's us. There were significant licensing issues from Day 1 and just 3 days before beta they decided that we need to put everything on hold until those licensing issues are finally resolved. It's not unexpected, I've been waiting for them to say that since we learnt about that speedbump.

Regardless, I've been assigned to another existing project, one that had also been resurrected after being put on hold. It's a fun Wii project that takes me outside of my comfort zone. This pony is going to have learn a whole boat-load of new tricks. Here's hoping I can keep up with the demands!

Force Unleashed: Dev Team were the Jedis, Managers took the project to the Dark Side

Dammit. I wanted to like it. Just another major release to add to the pile of disappointments this year.

The gameplay is still fun, don't get me wrong. Slicing through crowds of stormtroopers, throwing Wookies off cliffs, exploding TIE fighters, that's all pretty awesome and it'd take a whole lot of awfulness to make that kinda stuff NOT fun. You start the game feeling powerful. You don't feel crippled or weak. It'd be pretty hard to feel like you're a badass if you didn't start out with at least a few cool powers. The designers and artists and programmers did a fantastic job with this game.

The ones who fucked it up and made it disappointing are the people who decided it'd be a smart idea to let all those talented people go before they could finish up the project. There are just some absolutely BAFFLING bugs left in the game! The most obvious one I saw was a major FX bug in the very first opening level, where this gorgeous vista off a cliff, where you see destroyers and TIE fighters battling and exploding in the distance, is marred by the smoke FX being large blue squares in the sky. It's ugly and obvious and it's likely very easy to fix. There are no excuses for leaving something like that in a finished game.

And that's saying nothing about the floating characters, clipping and other issues I've seen, nevermind some of the game-ending bugs I've heard about elsewhere.

That's exactly why you need to keep a team around, to give a game polish, to make it look like it was a loved and cherished project. This could have been a great game if they'd had a chance to apply those little finesses. But as it stands, it's certainly not up to level of quality that most people would expect from a powerhouse like LucasArts.

I do have to say, one of the things I love most about working in the industry is working with tons of other passionate gamers. Lots more trading opportunities! I traded my copy of No More Heroes for my Lead Artist's copy of The Force Unleashed. I'm so happy I didn't have to shell out $60 for this game. The gameplay is fun and all, but I really don't want to support a company that treats its employees like that only to release a half-finished product.

Sims, a game most popular with teen girls, is made into a movie for teen boys

Sorry, I keep forgetting, girls aren't supposed to be interested in video games right? I mean, that's why Hollywood is taking the world's best selling IP and are making it into yet another teenage boy movie. It's not like they actually looked at the marketing numbers behind the game that shows that the majority of players are female, most of those being teenaged girls. I mean, it's a video game, girls would never want to see movie made out of an icky video game!

[via Level Up]

Castle Crashers soundtrack for free!

When I was talking about the Castle Crashers game the other day, did I mention the music? I should have mentioned the music because it's completely awesome! In any case, you can download all the tracks for free from the Newgrounds site! The music is just as fun and quirky as the game, they did a really great job making use of the user-generated content on their, perfect use of the creative commons licence!

Deciding your fate before you even start playing Fable 2

This is interesting...

Molyneux claims that the Pub Games "hack" was intentional and that people who exploited it will see the effects when they play the game. I love that idea! What a great concept:)

Castle Crashers = t3h awesome

I know I've been hating on a lot of games lately. There have a been a bunch of highly hyped games released recently and it's rare that anything ever lives up to the hype (maybe games marketing people need to let the game speak for itself a bit, and auteur game designers need to spend more time designing and less time presenting keynotes at conferences). But there is one game that's had a lot of buzz lately that really needs a lot more attention...

Castle Crashers is everything that a hack-and-slash game oughta be. It's fun! You get crazy weapons! There's tons of enemies! It's fast-paced! Neat puzzles and weird stages are thrown in to break things up. And it's fun!

The graphics seem to be one of the turn off for people, unfortunately. They see the cartoon-y style and dismiss it as some kiddy or girly game. The style is adorable, sure, but it's also insanely wacky the deeper into the game you get.

It's not all cutesy! There are deers shitting themselves so much they zoom across the screen! There are gigantic weird cat type things that take up the whole screen and shoot laser beams at you with their eyes! LASER BEAMS!!!!

It's more than the cute graphics though, it's the level of polish in the game, it's the details that are there. It's the hidden word on the main map screen, the picture in the castle of the big bad boss holding up a prize-winning fish, it's aliens dropping the top on the pyramid in the background of the desert, it's the dev team in stasis on an alien ship.

As for the combat, it's easy and gratifying. You can play any character any way you want, focusing on strength, agility, magic or defence. There are weapons to collect that add to those stats. And better yet, some take away from other stats, so choosing a weapon isn't just choosing between good and good, it's deciding the way you're going to cripple yourself too. It's really tough to play well-rounded. You get weapons like sticks, axes, swords, maces and light sabres. Oh yes, you can be a castle crashing badass defeating aliens and laser beam-eyed cats with a LIGHT SABRE!

The main reason why you can specialize in certain things while crippling yourself in others is because this is primarily a co-op game. Local or online you can play up to 4 people. And that's so awesome! If one of your comrades falls in battle, you can revive him. You can juggle beasts back and forth. And then, you all turn against in each other when it comes time to vie for the affection of the princesses.

One of the other cute features is the animal orb you get as a companion. You can switch between them throughout the game as you collect them, each one with a special ability like finding food, finding loot, hurting enemies, etc. Some are easy to find, but others you have to search for...

It's addictive and silly and rewarding and oh so much fun! Especially on a market where great co-op games are few and far between.

In other words, Castle Crashers is everything that Too Human should have been. And they didn't need 10 years to achieve better quality and more fun for those 10 hours of gameplay.

Akoha - Making the world a better place through games

Ok, so they've officially launched, so I can freely blog about the awesome project that Akoha have been working on so hard for so long.

I went to their pre-launch party a few weeks back, thanks to my buddy Simon who's been working away on the project forever. The party was a blast, but what I find even more exciting is their idea.

You've all seen the movie Pay It Forward, right? Well, this is a game where you play it forward, where you can make a difference in the world just by playing. You take on missions online that need to be completed in the real world. Missions include things like, making someone smile, inviting someone out for coffee, donating an hour of your time.

Those of us at the party received packs of cards with missions on them. Each card has an individual ID on it, so when we complete a mission, we give that card to the person who helped us achieve it so that they can go on the site and confirm that we did it.

The best part is that *they* now have the mission in their possession, so they can pass along the good deed to someone else. You can track the history of a mission on the site just to see how many people have been affected by that one good deed you did.

They were offering free starter packs to the first 50 people who requested them, so what are you waiting for? Learn more about how to play now!



Congrats on the launch at TechCrunch50! And good luck with winning Best in Show!

News RSS feed - see what I'm reading

I may not post every day, but I follow a ridiculous amount of feeds everyday. If you want to see what I think are the top stories of the day, you can check out my Google Reader page or subscribe to the feed for it. I include the top gaming news stories along with a few really random and weird tidbits:)

Spore: Life is unbalanced

I spent yesterday playing Spore. I've been waiting for this game for so long! It had all the makings of a masterpiece! All this year with games I've had such high expectations. And nearly every time I've been completely let down. I was really hoping Spore would break that streak. Unfortunately in continued it in spades.

The game, overall, is still pretty fun. You can create, destroy and mold all kinds of creatures and civilizations. Each individual part is fun in its own way. As a whole, though, the quality of the pieces seems to vary.

The first 4 stages can each be played in under an hour (according to the achievements), most will probably take 2 if you want to spend more time exploring and less time chasing goals. And it's nice to have that flexibility. However, the goals are always present and in-your-face, which makes it a whole lot less of a sim game, which are generally defined by the sandbox nature of them games.

While I can understand that different play modes will need different controls, it really seemed as though they weren't as consistent as they should have been throughout the levels. I found myself often trying to use some controls from a previous level and screwing up my pov. That kind of thing just shouldn't happen.

Maybe it's because I'm a civ-geek, but the civ mode of Spore seemed really weak. There was so little you could do. You collect spice, build any of 3 building types (houses, entertainment or industry), one unit each for land, sea and air...and that's it. It's really hard to fuck it up which means there's no challenge. There isn't even any fog of war. Really, it seems like a stop-gap while you're trying to get to space.

As for space, yikes. Talk about unbalanced! Some how, your civ only manages to build a single space craft! You have no fleet, no support, nothing. It's YOU against the rest of the galaxy! This means you're running fetch quests, kill quests, trading spice, trying to take over other worlds all while defending your home planet from the hungry hordes.

And your home planet is the most useless piece of crap out there. Really, it's a wonder that you were able to make to space at all! Every time you leave the solar system, they get attacked. And they have ZERO home defences, regardless of whether you were a peace or warmongering people. You, and your one lonely ship, is all that could save them from this fleet of a dozen heavily armed invading space crafts.

I was playing through the first round on easy just to see what everything was like. And if you have one, much less two, war-like civs near you, forget about playing unless you wipe them out immediately. Otherwise, your helpless little home planet will be calling on their saviour every 5 minutes.

I got so frustrated at this level that I had a rage-quit after a few hours. Really, it shouldn't be that difficult. I had it on the easy settings, all the other stages had been appropriately easy. Why were they making it so damned frustrating? I checked online to see what the forums were saying in the first 24 hours. And it turns out I wasn't alone in my frustration. Many players had the exact same issue. One ship against an entire galaxy is unthinkable. How could this have made it through play-testing?

I'll probably end up playing through several times, playing different types of critters. But I think my game will end happily when we build that first one spaceship. We don't need an epilogue for that story.