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Jet-lag

March 12th, 2007 by Troy Goodfellow · GDC, Industry, Me

I just flew in from California last night, so I have some serious jet-lag. I never used to get it, but I suppose I am at that point where I can’t just do anything I want to anymore. So the content will be light today.

I will have more to say about GDC later, but I had a good time. Nice to meet people I had never met, re-connect with people I had met once or twice, and exchange good conversation with long time conversationalists, either from work or from a forum. I had an hour long play session with the MMO Pirates of the Burning Sea, and a good fifteen minutes seeing the animation and artwork that is going into the cross-platform sequel to Sacred.

The conference seemed to be in a bit of a Next-Gen hangover. After years of looking forward to what the new consoles could provide, developers and publishers have to spend the next five years developing for a known quantity. It’s not about hope anymore, it’s about planning.

I remain optimistic that the PC can recover to become a solid gaming platform, and not just for independently developed titles or Sims type games. I believe that Spore can and will open the way to new gamers since it has a strong cross-audience appeal, potentially drawing in both casual Sims fans and hardcore gamers who like to build badass monsters. I may be in the minority though. There wasn’t a lot of PC specific stuff going on, and even the panel discussion on the future of the PC had an air of resignation about it, as if the only place for the PC to go was the MMO, or full user created content.

More coherent thoughts once I am caffeinated.

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Chris Taylor on SupCom

March 8th, 2007 by Troy Goodfellow · Gas Powered Games, GDC

This morning, in a mostly rambling speech about the development of Supreme Commander, Chris Taylor came out looking like one of the most optimistic game designers out there. He once again talked about how the crunch-time/overtime filled development cycle is an unnecessary evil that produces worse games and bitter employees. He ridiculed the idea of limiting the camera in real time strategy games, since, as he put it, “Why should I tell you where the camera should be? You don’t want to zoom out, don’t zoom out.” And, predictably, he said that the RTS is a genre with a huge future ahead of it.

“The RTS is modern chess, and we’ve only just started,” Taylor said. Real innovation can be done, he argues, if designers let their creativity take over. That’s hopelessly vague, of course. Creativity and a nickel will get you a piece of candy. But Taylor did say things that could almost be considered real advice if you listen to the lessons he drew from the Supreme Commander experience.

Remember your audience: “Supreme Commander isn’t for your mom. It’s aimed at hardcore gamers.” Why try and make an RTS for everyone? What many people see as a lack of variety in the genre could be traced to everyone trying to hit the so-called general gamer. Not every RTS should be hardcore, and there is probably a lot of room for newbie RTS games, or ones designed entirely around single player.

Small changes, big effects: “When I have a group of tanks, I want to see the targets each one is tracking, their weapon ranges, their ETA. What if I could slow them down to quarter speed so that they mulch along into a base? That sort of thing would completely change the dynamic of attack and defense.” He also said that this sort of thing doesn’t sell games, but a little variety in how combat is executed could draw even further distinctions between military and economic focused RTSes.

Everybody has a job: “If you design your game from the start with balance in mind, you’re just constraining yourself. The balance guys and playtesters will work it out. And then you go live and find lots of stuff you missed.” While it sounds counter-intuitive for a genre that so heavily relies on keeping sides even, this sort of makes design sense. First build what you want to see in the game, what gives the game life and power. Then worry about how it will all wash out.

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Ranting from the top

March 7th, 2007 by Troy Goodfellow · GDC

GDC seems bigger than it was when I was last here in 2004. And my mailbox continues to fill with news from middleware developers with whom I have little in common. The two are probably connected somehow.

This morning I went to the so-called “rant session”. This time it was the publishers holding forth about things they want to change in the industry, and there was a lot of diversity in what they want to see. Richard Hilleman wants more leadership in development. Lee Jacobsen wants simple honesty. Nichol Bradford channeled some of that old time religion to call for an industry more active in schools and the wider society to inspire children into math and engineering; it has the added benefit of being a grassroots way to remind people of the place of games in the contemporary media scene. And, in a developer intermission, Chris Hecker countered conventional wisdom by saying that the Wii is bad for innovation in the game industry since it is underpowered and Nintendo has no real vision of games as anything other than playthings.

In what almost a eulogy to PC gamers, Manifesto Games founder Greg Costikyan warned that the closed production/distribution console gaming industry would eventually make both developers and publishers into serfs of the console makers. Only the fading PC has the open architecture that really allows developers and publishers to make and distribute the games they want to make.

I’ll post opinions on what I’ve seen and heard when I have both more time and fewer hungry journalists waiting for one of the too few public terminals.

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March Strategy Preview

March 5th, 2007 by Troy Goodfellow · Preview

This will be my last post before I start packing and do all that other stupid stuff to prepare for my flight. I had some hassles pop-up over my arrangements, so if I look a little pissed off tomorrow, you can guess why.

March is shaping up to be the month of “Weren’t you on an earlier list?” titles.

March 6 – Great Invasions (Strategy First/Nobilis)

March 13 – Sparta: Ancient Wars (Eidos/Playlogic), Making History: Calm and the Storm (Strategy First/Muzzy Lane)

March 16 – UFO: Extraterrestrials (TriSynergy/Chaos Concept)

March 20 – Genesis Rising: The Universal Crusade (Dreamcatcher)

March 23 – Frontline: Fields of Thunder (Paradox/N-Games)

March 26 – Command and Conquer 3 (EA Games)

Pacific Storm: Allies (Lesta/Buka) has also been scheduled as a first quarter release, but so far no firm date. The latest GFW podcast said that I shouldn’t mention how we get yet another trio of WW2 games. Apparently that’s not original enough.

This list, as much as any, shows the problems with release dates. Ancient Wars and Great Invasions have been in earlier monthly round-ups, and I’m pretty sure that Making History has been here before, too.

And Making History is the title I’m most interested in. It started out as a Serious Game project, a strategy title for educational purposes. You would play as a leader of a great power in World War II and try to achieve certain historical goals. Somehow this would teach you something about the period and help you retain knowledge through fun.

But now Strategy First is publishing it, and they aren’t exactly known for serious anything. Few of the recent previews have mentioned Muzzy Lane’s original design purpose, and it looks like it will be marketed as a grand strategy title like Hearts of Iron or World at War. When I get around to giving the game a whirl, I wonder if there’ll be a story here. Maybe time for another interview.

I played Great Invasions when it first came out two years ago, and have zero desire to try it again. This is just SF padding its release calendar. I’ve played a little Ancient Wars: Sparta but will have to hold my commentary for a while.

Command and Conquer 3 is, of course, the big title of the month and the second biggest title of the strategy winter (Supreme Commander was much more anticipated.) C&C is not my bag, but FMV is apparently back. I’m one of those who skips through videos all the time, so I don’t know if I care that they aren’t terrible.

Hopefully I will get a chance to post a hello from the Bay tomorrow afternoon.

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Blog Management

March 4th, 2007 by Troy Goodfellow · Blogs

I’ve added a plugin that list recent comments to the sidebar, but removed the category listing. There are still categories, but they aren’t on the sidebar, mostly because the list was too long. The search function should help some people, and the tags at the bottom of each post will still refer readers to similar posts.

I’m still configuring the comment plugin to make it a little clearer which post is getting commented on. But this should help people engage in conversations that have moved off the front page.

Eventually I’ll work up the courage to upgrade WordPress to the latest version, but all this talk of backing up, deleting and the like on a remote server gives me the heebie jeebies.

Oh, the latest Carnival of Gamers is up at Virgin Worlds. I submitted my post on “The Napoleon Complex”, and there is the usual variety in entries. Thanks to Brent for hosting this month.

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Apologies for lack of content

March 3rd, 2007 by Troy Goodfellow · Me

Just a brief note to acknowledge that my posting has been on the light side lately. More substantial commentary will be on the way once some upcoming work is published and once I get back from GDC. I’ll try to update some from the press room at the conference next week, but we’ll see what happens.

For the past week, I’ve been finishing a wargame review, trying an indie strategy game and bringing peace to the Middle East. I’ve barely had time for World of Warcraft.

Not that there hasn’t been news on the strategy front. Take Two Games hinted at a new Civilization franchise title in the future, so there has been the usual pointless speculation about what it could be. (It won’t be Civilization V, at least not soon. I say this not because I have any trade secrets – I don’t – but because it doesn’t make any sense yet.) All the words spent on trying to guess what Take Two/2k Games and Firaxis are up to is pretty silly since, first, 2008 is still a long way off, and, second, there is zero information to go on. It’s like one of those police advisories that tell you to be on the lookout for two young men. 2K will release a new title based on one of its most valuable franchises? SHOCKING.

There have also been updates for Galactic Civilizations II: Dark Avatar, The Operational Art of War III, Company of Heroes and Hearts of Iron II: Doomsday. I have tried none of them yet.

My most recent acquisition is Close Combat: Cross of Iron. I’ve heard that the title is doing very well for Matrix Games since its release, so I may dig my teeth into this pretty soon. I still haven’t bothered much with Forge of Freedom, and I may not for a month or so. With no deadline forcing me to play it, I have to pretend to be interested for professional education and I’m not.

But why am I explaining why I’m not updating? Life gets in the way. I will have the March Strategy Preview on Monday, though.

Now back to the Gaza Strip.

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