GameSetWatch, RIP-ish, 2005-2011 :/

Posted on by
Reply

[You'll find the full set of farewells on this over at my company's alt.video game blog GameSetWatch, including notes from current site editors Eric Caoili and Danny Cowan, but I wanted to crosspost my comments as we put the site into comfy but sad retirement. Already seeing _lots_ of tributes on Twitter, which we greatly appreciate - means a lot to us.]

OK, if you’re reading GameSetWatch, prepare for some bad news. I’m afraid we’re putting the site on semi-permanent hiatus, as of, uhm, this very post, after 6 years (wow!) of reporting the best, brightest and weirdest in alt.games news.

I’ll let current editors Eric Caoili and Danny Cowan have their say after I contribute a few words, but first, I’mma let myself end things out with a brief eulogy to the site, which I founded back in November 2005.

And here’s the kickoff post, revealing launch contributors including current IGF chairman Brandon Boyer, Kotaku/MeatBun and now GameTrailers stalwart Michael McWhertor, Gamasutra news director Frank Cifaldi, and the ever-awesome Alice Taylor, as well as Game Developer mag EIC Brandon Sheffield (and yep, Insert Credit, which I also contributed to sporadically, was def. an inspiration for GSW.)

Although that initial line-up was kinda awesome, and they certainly contributed _some_, a look through the early years revealed mainly boundless OCD-like enthusiasm for me in terms of finding _weird video game stuff_, including Lil Jon’s crunk golf game and lots more. Did I really check 500+ RSS feeds _daily_ for GSW? Apparently…

Continue reading →

Vaulting The Bar: Two Mini-Updates

Posted on by
Reply

Unfortunately, due to the pressure of work, the official longer-form write-ups of ‘Vaulting The Bar’, my concept in highlighting important GDC Vault talks, went on hiatus after a grand total of, uh, one post.

However, I rolled my next two Games Developers Conference lecture video picks into an official Vault update which went live a few weeks ago. So you can still see the next two lectures I was going to talk about there, joining the Shadow Complex talk which I already highlighted in more depth.

The two underappreciated talks (both now available for free on Vault!) are:

- The GDC Europe 2011 talk, “Game Content Rating Systems Must Change,” is a fascinating trawl by French developer Quantic Dream’s COO Guillaume de Fondaumiere (Indigo Prophecy, Heavy Rain) through the maze of European video game age/content ratings.

Along the way, de Fondaumiere deftly contrasts relatively censorious video game ratings to those of film and other media. He argues that video game ratings are far more strict than they should be, and these restrictions are hurting the industry, in a great and underseen talk.

[UPDATE: A long-form interview with de Fondaumiere, conducted by my colleague Christian Nutt, just went up on Gamasutra talking further about this very subject - good timing!]

- The other underappreciated gem of a talk comes from Game Developers Conference 2009, and features Ubisoft Montreal’s Jonathan Morin, as he outlines the ways in which the critically acclaimed Far Cry 2 strove to support player expression in its game design.

The session, dubbed “Player’s Expression: The Level Design Structure Behind Far Cry 2 and Beyond?,” explores the game’s wide-open design and explains how lessons learned from this surprisingly influential, naturalistic Clint Hocking lead-designed project could apply to other games.

So there you go! Hopefully I’ll get a chance to dig through more archival goodness soon – and I know for a fact that Jason Scott is about to unleash a LOAD of great older videos onto Vault that he’s scanned from videotape. So watch out for that…

Indie Royale: My Part In Its Upfall

Posted on by
1

I’m guessing that a few of you spotted this already, thanks to a few frenzied Tweets from me, but I wanted to introduce (and talk about) something that I’ve been working on for the past few months – Indie Royale.

The folks at IndieGames.com (which is run by the UBM division that I oversee) launched the independent game bundle site on October 26th as a joint venture with Australian game download store Desura. And to say it was a bit of a surprise hit for us is an understatement.

In the few days since we launched, the website has had 200,000 unique visitors, over 30,000 email newsletter signups, been covered on a host of top websites, and most importantly, has sold almost 40,000 independent video game bundles as part of the first, time-limited offer.

And with a new game bundle offer every two weeks (and the next one kicking off on Thursday!), it looks like it’s going to be a force in indie game distribution for a while to come. And to explain Indie Royale itself in more detail, seems like this Wired article written about it is a good way to start: Continue reading →

The ‘New Age Of Curation’ Interviews: The Quietus’ John Doran

Posted on by
Reply

Following an initial post on the importance of so-called ‘princemakers’, and an interview with Twitch’s Todd Brown, we’re continuing a series of interviews with media-centric websites that do an amazing job of surfacing great art.

Further food for thought since last time – a  brilliant talk/post from Topspin’s Ian Rogers that very much feeds into my discussions of trusted brands online. And, happily enough, Rogers is talking about music, which is the theme of the new ‘new age of curation’ interview, with The Quietus‘ John Doran.

Ever since I found the site a few months ago, I’ve been blown away by its eclectic, journalistic take on music in all forms. For example, on the front page right now there’s everything from a Wayne Hussey interview through a fascinating profile of Bjork and Jamie Vex’d talking name changes. Oh, and  Suggs’ favorite albums.

So I caught up with Doran via email to discuss the site’s genesis — and for him to refute some of my presumptions about his excellent endeavor:

Simon: What was the original reason and context for setting up The Quietus, and how would you describe the website?

John Doran: [Back in 2008] my friend Sean Adams at Drowned In Sound asked me to pitch a website idea to him for a “classic rock” website. I said I already had a better idea if he wanted to see that.

Continue reading →

Passing The Ball – Making An Advocacy Game For Web Wise Kids

Posted on by
Reply

Having a lot of fun – and doing a lot of work – this week in Austin, TX where we’re running Game Developers Conference Online 2011 to some significant degree of success, woo.

Along the way, we recognized that GDC Online was a place where a lot of those who make the world’s top social video games (The Sims Social, Cityville, etc) congregate. And a lot of children and teens have opportunity to play video games as part of their regular use of the Internet.

To get across the message that kids need to be educated on some of the dangers of interacting with people and content online. So we partnered with The Majesty Of Colors indie creator Gregory Weir and non-profit Web Wise Kids to make an advocacy video game for charity – just for them. (We also donated $1,000 directly to them.)

Passing The Ball, which anyone can play if they have Flash installed on their browser – is much more of an short allegorical video game than anything else. But it promotes Web Wise Kids as an organization and a place you can donate, and specifically pushes the message that no one party can be responsible for a kid’s safety – it needs to be the joint responsibility of both parents and children.

The game also fits into one of my goals – that video games be seen as something beyond purely mindless entertainment, This is a stereotype that our industry has been fighting for a while. All creative industries go through this (see: previous panics over ‘penny dreadful’ books and 1950s comics) – and everyone needs to do their part to ensure games are seen in a much broader context.

And I’m delighted that the game is now up on NewGrounds, and is getting some really nice comments from people who seem to ‘get’ it.

(And if you want to know more about GDC Online, check out the coverage on Gamasutra and the Game Developers Choice Online Awards streaming on GameSpot/YouTube.)

Vaulting The Bar: ‘Designing Shadow Complex’

Posted on by
Reply

So, you may know that the Game Developers Conferences – which I oversee – have a related site called GDC Vault. We spend a lot of time and effort digitizing almost all of the conference content presented at a GDC show.

By doing this, we’re capturing some wonderful content for posterity. Plus, we’re allowing GDC speakers to get their talks seen by hundreds or even thousands of extra viewers who can’t be in the room during the event.

So, Game Developers Conference All-Access Pass holders, speakers, and studio/individual subscribers get access to the entire multimedia database. But we’re making more and more videos available in the free section of the site alongside slides and the classic videos that digital historian Jason Scott is digitizing for us.

And because I’m lucky enough to have a GDC Vault admin login (heehee!), this post series, ‘Vaulting The Bar’, is me choosing a favorite GDC lecture every couple of weeks, and making the video free to everyone for the first time. And my debut pick is ‘Designing Shadow Complex‘, from Chair Entertainment’s Donald and Jeremy Mustard, from Game Developers Conference 2010.

This lecture from the Chair co-founders is one of the shorter Vault talks out there, at 29 minutes. While it’s quite high-level, it has some really important lessons for developers – and significant interest to fans. The title itself was one of the biggest Xbox Live Arcade hits of 2009/2010, and one of the first $15 (1200 MSP) games to really resonate with gamers. Continue reading →

The ‘New Age Of Curation’ Interviews: Twitch’s Todd Brown

Posted on by
Reply

My original post about what I opted to call ‘the new age of curation’ sparked a lot of really interesting discussion, both in the comments and separately.

In particular, game designer and Lost Garden blogger Daniel Cook composed a very thoughtful response over on Google+ which laid things out in infinitely more clinical, less fuzzy style.

Along the way, it uncovered some truths I was perhaps hiding from myself – that it’s ambient word of mouth, rather than any particular outlet, that really makes a piece of media blow up in today’s market.

However, in my reply to Daniel I think I inadvertently coined a phrase – ‘prince maker’ – that applies quite well to some of today’s most interesting niche blogs.

No one media outlet or blog is able to singlehandedly ‘break’ something into a media phenomenon nowadays. But with the kingmakers gone, there sure are a lot of websites – in video games, music, film, and beyond – which can provide a spark that helps fan the flames of notoriety.

And the best of these niche sites provide curation that can help illuminate art you would _never_ be able to find otherwise. So I’ll be conducting a short series interviewing some of the princemakers I admire the most, starting with Todd Brown of excellent ‘international, independent and cult film’ website Twitch.

I’ve been dipping into the site – which has regular columns on larger sites like Ain’t It Cool News – for a good few years now, and I think it exemplifies the curation and tastemaking that allow us all to find and enjoy the art that we all enjoy, day to day. Continue reading →

Welcome To The New Age Of Curation

Posted on by
7

nathistI’m guessing that a lot of you think that now – right now – is a golden age of creation. And in many ways, it is. It’s never been a better time to make art of all kinds, from video games – my own art of choice – through books to filmed entertainment and beyond.

Sure, the massive media disintermediation spawned by the Internet has spawned a golden age for creators, at least for touching audiences directly. But finding great, sometimes underappreciated art is the thing we consumers need the most help on right now – especially because there’s so much of it out there, and so much of it that can be easily accessed.

That’s why, in many ways, this is the ‘Age Of Curation’, not the age of creation. And here’s five reasons why:

1. What people value the most is their time. And many of us have ever less of it. Those dashed-off hours in between school or work and family demand a certain focus. We need to know what’s good – and not necessarily just popular – out there.

2. A few decades back, you might have one to five choices each for newspapers, radio stations, TV, or films. Now you have millions for each medium. All of your spare time could be taken up with arranging your collection, or working out what art you might want to consume – let alone getting on with enjoying it!

3. Once upon a time, your taste in art was – to a certain extent – shaped by your limited choices. Now you can go MUCH further down the rabbit hole with complete ease. For example, there’s a website purely about English-language versions of visual novel games. This – while actually fascinating – is a compilation of other sources in a niche so narrow that wider websites may not ever mention it.
Continue reading →

Eureka: Design Inspiration From 5 Arcade Classics

Posted on by
2

irobotI’ve just returned from California Extreme 2011 – the pre-eminent West Coast ‘gather hundreds of rare arcade and pinball machines in a room and put ‘em on free play’ gathering. (Incidentally, it’s still taking place tomorrow, Sunday, in Santa Clara, CA, if any Bay Area folks feel like making an appearance!)

Although a lot of similar titles turn up year on year, CA Extreme is a gold mine in particular for early American arcade cabinets of the Atari and Midway ilk, from vector-based titles to limited-distribution prototypes. (The game list is semi-accurate, although there’s about 20% slosh in there of titles that didn’t make it, etc – since it’s all volunteer based.)

Some of the rarer titles on play have really got me thinking about the interesting experiments of the early arcade period — and what we can learn from them from a design perspective. So, here are the less obvious titles I played today that really spoke to me, and just why:

- Space Dungeon (Taito, 1981 – YouTube video)
Apparently created before Eugene Jarvis’ seminal Robotron 2084, this is a frantic, Rex Battenberg-designed dual-stick shooter. And it’s a blast, once you work out which are the enemies and which are the pickups in the game (seriously, not that obvious!) There’s an interesting game design counterplay in going out of the way to grab pickups versus heading straight for the exit. Frenetic and unexpected.

- Major Havoc (Atari, 1983 – YouTube video)
One of a pair of absolutely mindblowing – and somewhat lesser-known – Atari titles from the prodigously talented Owen Rubin. Major Havoc is consecutively an interesting-angled Galaga style title, a swift Lunar Lander-style mini-game and a physics-heavy platformer, all using super-attractive vector graphics. Design lessons? Multiple genres in one game can really work, spinner-controlled physics is fun _and_ frustrating. And the main character has an idle animation!

Continue reading →

Got A Sense Of Wonder?

Posted on by
Reply

Just wanted to give a shout-out to this September’s Tokyo Game Show and the current call for submissions for Sense Of Wonder Night, which I’ve been associated with for the past few years.

As a Gamasutra story about last year’s SoWN (which I sadly missed!) explains, the showcase is to “discover new and unconventional game concepts that “catch people by surprise and give them a Sense of Wonder — a sense that something will change in their world — right at the instant of seeing or hearing the concept.’”

There are up to ten Japanese, Asian and Western games showcased yearly. Previous notable Western games that have also been Sense Of Wonder Night exhibitors –  with onstage presentations simultaneously translated to Japanese and English — include Shadow Physics, PixelJunk Eden, The Misadventures Of P.B. Winterbottom, and Moon Stories.

And for those wanting to check out previous honorees for the innovative games showcase taking place in Tokyo during September’s Tokyo Game Show, here’s the list of 2010 finalists and my write-up of 2009′s SoWN (there’s also YouTube videos) and of 2008′s event.

Inspired by GDC’s long-running Experimental Gameplay Workshop in highlighting innovative concepts in gaming, I think Sense Of Wonder Night is a bright spot for Japan in highlighting alternative genres.

And after last year’s SoWN got scant Western media coverage, I’m planning to both judge and cover the honorees this year – the titles shown there are genuinely interesting, and the showcase format is a lot of fun. (There seem to have been some changes in the SoWN judging committee, with new ‘Company Awards’ and some higher-profile companies like Hudson and Microsoft judging, so we’ll see how that shifts things up this year.)

But most importantly, the call for submissions is open until July 11th, so if you’d like to submit to SoWN and can get yourself over to Tokyo on your on dime to present at Sense Of Wonder Night in mid-September, go ahead and put your game forward.