First let’s check some numbers. Big winner in MMO world is still, undoubtedly, World of Warcraft. Last announcement (2008) from Blizzard reveals peak number of 11.5 (yes, almost twelve) million subscribers.
World of Warcraft census currently shows about 5.6 million active players. Certainly not a peak now, but for a 5 years old game with overgrowing competition in all possible dimensions, it still impresses me. If you consider their business model and potential revenue stream, it is a lifetime worth your envy. I filtered the census’ numbers and have found that European servers have gathered about 2.5M subscribers. Quite a slice from the overall number! Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think it is close to 1/10 of all Xbox 360 consoles in the UK.
Mentioning business model I started wondering it this genre is a good pick for consoles (if developed by third party like Blizzard). If Microsoft released one or Sony released one (or lets say they already have it with Home) it should not a problem. They both have engines to run subscription model and micro payments and the rest is described at the end.
But if 3rd party did one. If Blizzard ported WoW to Xbox, I’d not be so sure MS or Sony were happy. Reason is simple. First, if you imagine massive amount of console gamers playing WoW -> other games would not be purchased and played that often. Retail revenue would have become cut on hardware vendor’s and developer’s charts.
How hardware vendor could possibly react? For example, through smart revenue sharing deal. That would have balanced hypothetical loss. If so, there is a risk for developer, deal would become unprofitable, unbalanced and unfair, good reason to back off. Having only these conditions on mind I rather doubt if we can see in any possible future a successful (in WoW metrics) MMO example on game consoles.
The only possible exception I can imagine would become 1st party development, but only if included carefully in long term strategy. As for long term strategy I rather see that both MS and Sony are focused to chase Nintendo with equally unknown Wii phenomena, and Nintendo is just happy selling massive amount of their hardware. Another reason to doubt in good MMO game on game consoles in reasonable future.
Summarizing my MIX10 experience, main thing I was focused on is of course Windows Phone Series. This is huge thing for Microsoft, long expected inside the company to show that we haven’t overslept the deal totally. Device and OS shows some opportunity and I can’t wait to see how it will it shape and break into the market.
For developers it’s another chance to shine. As I recall, I think one of Capcom’s managers said that new platforms’s begining of the lifecycle is the best time to introduce new brands, IPs and products. Best time for Indies if we reffer it to game development. Best time to introduce new crazy apps if we say – any application is at stake. Microsoft promises to reveal some tools for apps promotion on its marketplace but let’s be honest. Looking at Xbox Live and PSN stores, looking at Apple’s Appstore, when you have countless number of applications it’s just not that easy to highlight yourself as at the beginning.
If you consider to start coding a few things may be important to you. First, hardware specification can help you estimate Windows Phone’s capacities:
Symmetric multi-touch of Capacitive type with at least 4 or more contact points.
Sensors – A GPS, Accelerometer, Compass, Light, Proximity
Camera with 5 megapixel or more , flash and a camera button
Multimedia – Codec acceleration
Memory – 256 MB RAM or more , 8 GB Flash or more
GPU – DirectX 9 acceleration
CPU – ARMv7 Cortex/Scorpion or better
Optional keyboard
3 Hardware buttons – Back, Start, Search is a must and other buttons like buttons for Volume and Power.
Phone will support two native screen resolutions:
If I understood the message correctly it seems that MS and its partners prepare to launch two types of devices. Full with 480 x 800 and some mini/small (and presumably cheaper) device with 320 x 480. That still has to be confirmed.
Screen resolution is important for designers and graphicians. As you can easily measure screen proportions are not standard, that’s what you have to mind while preparing graphical content. Zune HD for example supports 240 x 320 and 272 x 480 which means 16:9 and 4:3 proportions (just like TV sets support). On Windows Phone it’s equivalently 5:3 and 3:2.
As you see keyboard is optional so definitively prepare yourself to design touch-screen supported user interface. The only buttons you will have are below three (Back, Start and Search):
Sensors have their equivalent APIs accessible from Silverlight and Xna frameworks. These two technologies are the only ones you can pick up for your development. Positioning is as follows: Xna – strong focus on gaming, SL – any other type of application. Screens and sensors can obviously be used for application control, but interesting thing is that WP7 will have speech recognition module that you can also consider in your development. WP7 will have Push notitication service that will allow you to communicate and send messages to Phone on battery consumption efficient way. As for APIs mentioned already, Windows Phone will support Silverlight 3.0 and Xna 4.0. For gaming, if you invested your time in WritableBitmap based engine written in Silverlight and targetting Web – you can easily port it to Phone without any Xna consideration (as this feature is in SL3).
After Shawn’s lecture I found that most of buffers important in graphics (Xna) are 16bit. So we can predict how many colors will WP7 support and how big structures we can render (as for vertex/index buffers in 3d world). It also matters for texture size so putting it all shortly how much detail we can show on the screen. Xna 4.0 on WP7 will be DX9 compatible but at initial stage and release timeframe we won’t be able to develop shaders freely in HLSL. Instead Xna exposes five customizable Effects for Shading, Environment Mapping, Alpha Testing, Multi Texturing and Skinning. It’s said that future versions of OS/Xna will presumably support HLSL but it’s not said when. Shawn has released very cool demo from his MIX10 presentation where all these effects are presented (with source code). I recommend to check it out, and generally to follow his blog, currently it’s best updated and most accurate resource on anything new in Xna 4.0
Last week I spent in “The Fabulous” Las Vegas. It was my first trip to the Sin City. I believed it might become crazy and it was, both in my private time as well as on MIX10 conference.
I’m quite often attending major Microsoft conferences (those that attract global audience). I thought that PDC is the place to go. MIX is definitely an equalizer. Major announcements and keynotes not to forget long is one thing, huge content as for sessions and topics covered is the second. Add great people both from Microsoft and partner + customer space. Head can literally blow up, add Vegas to it – first trip of mine and here we go with my memories
(learning a lot from my friends whispers I didn’t take a camera. “Whatever happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas” they said :>)
I’m used to perceive huge events by its major theme. PDC08 was about Visual Studio 2010, Windows Azure and Windows 7. PDC09 was little bit unclear to me, but with great Silverlight 4 announcements that made the conference worth its time. MIX10 all about WP7 at least for me, second message worth coming was IE9. These two products showed that even though Microsoft overslept many years in Mobility and Internet standards now was the time to show that it was just because dreams were huge and company showed truly that it can provide features audience demands. It’s not a victory yet but good pair of trainers to run after all again at full speed.
As for technologies behind products, Silverlight and Xna grow really fast to become a mainstream focus for Microsoft oriented developer. Both started as some tiny projects with portable aspirations in their specialties: Silverlight in RIA space, Xna to become the gaming primer. Both still have to win their developer audience but with extension to Windows Phone Series and features coming in version 4.0 of these two technologies I’m expecting fast reach and aspiration growth for other application types and scale utilizing these technologies.
To add more, Scott Gurthie and his wolf pack announced that tool-set to address these apps will be free and stay free forever. This includes SL and Xna projects and also (most importantly) includes Blend to keep designers busy with the company. That’s really great move.
Second day showed that under good and strong reign weak performers can go back to the good track. Most sessions I remember with Dean Hachamovitch speaking were rather subtle arrogant rather a visionary. Since Steven Sinofsky took the team over I see what I’d seen with Windows 7: a reasonable path from unfinished Windows Vista to Windows 7 we all love.
IE’s Platform Preview is first touchable proof that Steven has meant what he said during PDC keynote. Four months later and we have CSS3 selectors test passed and Acid3 at the mid point. Still much more to do but Html5 and CSS3 looks indeed like a priority. IE’s Platform Preview is in fact a technical demo to show current stage of IE’s rendering capacities. It’s hosted on an developer ready rather a consumer ready window, which suggests also (but it is only my assumption) that maybe they have rewritten IE9 from the scratch. If they switched only renderer from IE8 to IE9 version why not to use host windows, tabs and all else from previous version’s architecture. IE9 PR dropped it all, I hope for a reason. If all that’s true and 8 weeks release promise will be kept we should expect IE’s comeback very soon.
I had a discussion with one of my friends on methods how Internet works for me. This discussion started with thesis that URL is more for technical people. That was in consequence answer to a question: why people start browsing from search engine even for known pages and relatively known addresses.
Somewhere in that conversation I shouted that I almost do not use search engine, only occasionally when I definitely need to search for something I can’t find the other way. Never on a regular way to find “anything”.
This triggered big questioning mark on my friend’s face and big “How?!” reply.
Well short and quick answer I could provide was that I’m a power user with very well defined needs. Search is one of them but only on-demand basis rather than regular access point to the Internet.
So how can I marginalize search engines while browsing and live these days?
It started with a dramatic reflection that Internet is full of garbage and 99% of it is just useless crap I don’t need. I started to split my needs into categories like: looking for knowledge (educational), looking for recent news in areas I’m interested, communication and participating in communities then undefined, occasional search for a keyword that for any reason popped up in my mind.
With that exercise I eradicated “just to waste some time” need, so “I’m feeling lucky” feature is not for me anymore.
For communication and communities it’s easy, Facebook simplified the thing to the very end. Adding Twitter and additional clients for both I have my connections and chasing for news managed.. somehow. Getting recent information cannot be solved at its full extend as it only depends on your contacts recommendations. It’s incomplete.
So for my areas of focus I have I found 9-12 top sites that are my news and new knowledge hubs as information on web sites is very well connected, usually I can follow one site after another without any single try on search. After a while I’ll be rather bored or completely happy with the information already gathered. These sites are speed dialed and thumbnails to these pages appear on my browser’s main window.
Not to get overwhelmed, sites like tweetmeme.com and techmeme.com are blessings more powerful than Google itself. With these sites I realized that in 2010 information stored in the Internet is much better connected by communities than Index Servers maintained in big data centers of Microsoft and Google.
I also found that for community-driven information that’s connected, search engine like Ice Rocket seems to be more attractive than anything else.
This way I surprised that friend I have mentioned, because usually I find myself free from Google and free from massive search usage on my daily browsing routine.
It’s really fantastic experience because when you start feeling it, then on a question “what can possibly kill Google’s dominance in the Internet” you find simple answer – that what has created the Internet as we see it. Which is us – the communities.
With information so well connected outside search engine, I find Twitter and Facebook as the biggest threat guys in Mountain View probably perceive and they should. These relatively new services in Web 2.0 sphere have already marginalized my search usage and I assume that they can only grow.
As for Game-Dev heat map I can easily find three strong regions: US (and Canada), Europe (mainly represented by UK, France, Germany and Scandinavia) and Japan. Some talented studios and people also live and work in Australia but as for number of titles and teams, it has not that impact as those three I have already mentioned.
Trend in the industry is to cut costs and many managers look for countries that are lets say more cost effective to outsource there more and more work. Common to other industries, but as well for game development we have China where I see Ubisoft like good example of huge investment. India is also worth a notice. Many local companies there offer their creative services to western studios. I also perceive my region worth some comment.
CEE which stands for Central and Eastern Europe hides many AAA ready studios. Some countries like POLAND, Czech Republic, Hungary are now in European Union which makes us predictable and reasonable business partners that are still much better considering cost effectiveness than the core, old Union. Also countries from former Soviet Union (Ukraine and Russia) are more and more visible abroad. Just to mention title I’m expecting to play soon – Metro 2033 – is developed in Russia. Great, atmospheric first person perspective shooter called Stalker was made in Ukraine.
Summarizing game development in Russia and Ukraine I see that my eastern neighbors have found their specialty in shooters and strategy games. It’s little bit different in Poland. As for the biggest studios I wanted to highlight in this post, I see that we do of course great job in FPS space, but we also dare to challenge one of the most difficult genres – role playing games (like The Witcher and Two Worlds).
Current strength in Polish Game Development comes from PC development and current state of these studios is to break in or sustain and grow in console markets. This is fantastic achievement considering the past where I had a feeling that we all the time chase global trends being still late for at least 5 years with skill and experience. Now observing current growth I’m amazed in genre, scale, platform and project’s type diversity Polish companies address.
Warsaw, Cracow and Wroclaw are top three places to live if you consider game development career
We do have great example of promoting own, new IPs (Two Worlds, Call of Juarez, Painkiller). We are good at customizing existing IPs to the gaming medium like in Witcher, which originally was a fantasy novel with a super hero story created by a local writer – Andrzej Sapkowski. We’ve got some recent experience with AAA title conversion and porting (Gears of War PC port for Epic Games). Leaders have already realized potential in on-line communities, Web 2.0 and digital distribution learning fast how to market it globally as well as locally.
New players are establishing their position on the scene but in this article I wanted, indeed, focus on fantastic four of biggest veterans in Polish Game Development that have already presented themselves as high quality developers attractive for a global player.
Company started in 1991 in small Polish town. It’d started as a publisher and software localization company. At the end of 90-ties they broke into gaming industry as well as developer opening a studio in Wroclaw. Crime Cities was first title I considered worth checking at the time. It was something like Quarantine meets Fifth Element as I remember. Not a bad start. Then they made Chrome – FPS with quite a decent engine which has become a base for their further developments. Techland still refers Chrome Engine as technology used in their games.
Most important achievement in their history is named Call of Juarez. Game obviously designed to focus on American gamers. At the end of last year they have released sequel called Bonds in Blood. With this title I’m pretty sure that they received proven track in console space and growth warranty. I’m not surprised then looking at their job openings that they have Dev teams not only in Wroclaw (original location) but also in Warsaw (capitol city). Looks like they have opened a second development studio. Good Job!
CD Projekt is also a veteran in Polish publishing and distribution market. They have started in early 90-ties pioneering CD-ROM based games in the world dominated by floppy discs. In 2002 they opened a branch office called Red Studio with one purpose – to investigate game development opportunities for the company. Brave and important investment in huge team that has learned effectively how to make complex role playing game based on IP that is very well known in Poland – The Witcher. Because of novels’ popularity, expectations in Poland were very high. CD Projekt’s aspiration, though, were even higher. They licensed Bioware’s engine – Aurora – used in Neverwinter Nights and planned to sell that popular Polish IP to the world.
Development was long and many started disbelieving in CD Projekt’s skill to produce complete product. Finally two years ago Witcher hit the stores and got critical acclaim in Poland and worldwide. At the end, Team proved that they were worth consumers’ trust and waiting.
Witcher - Major landmark in Polish Role-Playing
Unfortunately, then some troubles started. Company outsourced console port of the original Witcher focusing its core forces on new initiatives. It failed big time in this effort (porting), I presume from lack of experience in such a process. This is a part of bigger issue which I’ve noticed. CD Projekt looks like they’ve overestimated its new investment capacities (my subjective opinion, I hope to be wrong).
They first presented themselves as big investor and gaming innovator. They acquired another old game development studio – Metropolis, they started on-line store (gram.pl) and digital distribution service (Good Old Games). On Xbox360 launch they started distributing Xbox games (deal with MS), and many more. Then they started closing some of its businesses. They shut Metropolis, stopped Witcher’s Xbox 360 development with French developer (as I already mentioned). Finally they have merged with former Polish stock market giant – company named Optimus, on unclear conditions looking for new funds, I presume.
Regardless of these issues (mainly generated by some troubled time we used to call the crisis) this company has great potential and foresight ability. They quite recently announced that they work on The Witcher second installment, no details up to date on platform and game-play specifics.
With this studio I have personal memories. Somewhere between 1999 and 2001 I wanted to join their ranks. At that time I lacked experience they wanted, but the conversation was very interesting and I still recall it with big grin smile on my face. On their pages you can find that they started operations in 2001. Might be true, but the team existed even before and was known in Poland from strategy games like Polanie and Earth ****. These RTS games have continuations already branded by Reality Pump.
Two Worlds - Oblivion's little sister
These games were offered worldwide but I’m not sure if they (and how) were recognized. For me, first title they have made and that should have not been ignored is role-playing game Two Worlds. Reality Pump took different approach than CDP-Red in their RPG efforts. They have created their own IP with open world trying to compete with such RPG giants like Elder Scrolls or Gothic series. They released the game on PC as well as on Xbox 360 which makes them another studio where developers can learn how to make games for current generation video games consoles. Now they also work on a sequel.
Last but not least – People Can Fly. Behind this company’s scenes you can easily reveal true Polish game-dev legend – Adrian Chmielarz. This guy has very much a similar story to say as Peter Molyneux. he’s just not used to be the same charismatic in old English way as Peter has during his speeches. Adrian started developing games as programmer and was pioneering high quality games development from the very beginning. At the beginning of 90-ties where Amiga, PC established their position as home computers and Nintendo fought its eternal war with Sega in consoles space, first Polish game dev companies were discovering true masterpiece ideas but for 8bit Atari and Commodore and starting to make some old-looking and rubbish titles for PC and Amiga. We were definitely behind the time (thanks to the bloody communism) but not Adrian Chmielarz himself.
With his first company Metropolis Software House (mentioned earlier in CD Projekt’s story) in 1992/1993 he developed adventure game – “Secret of the Statue” – that was not worse than so called “Western” counter-parts. Adrian was experimenting with many genres and sub-genres. Secret of the Status was a first person perspective adventure game with digitized pictures (like Myth). His further adventure game, Prince and Coward, had traditional point and click interface.
In late 90-ties he started moving toward shooters. First was Catharsis, a scroller shooter with 3d pre-rendered environment (below movie):
Then he resigned from Metropolis and in 2002 started new company, People Can Fly. This company quickly marked its existence in the gaming world with Painkiller, true masterpiece horror-like FPS for PC and first Xbox.
With such a proven track People Can Fly was later acquired by Epic Games as its internal development studio. Their first project under Epic’s patronage was to port Gears of War to PC. They succeeded and now they work on new yet to be announced big title. Can’t wait for news!
SUMMARY
Polish game development studios as I already wrote have diverse experience and interests. These companies are leaders in my subjective opinion but not the ony ones in the country. New and not so new companies climb the ladder. Some other examples worth mentioning: company called Farm51 and their game – Necrovision. Tate - scene’s long-timer and I think first Polish company that broke into console development with Kao the Kangaroo, ages ago. Another long-time runner is company named City-Interactive. This studio for long was focused on smaller titles for PC and handheld now according to their strategic shift want to make less titles but with higher budget. I’ve got some pictures from their first Xbox 360 production they’re developing
Yet to be announced City Interactive X360 development. Looking good aye? You can find more pictures.
Poland is definitively growing in game development space and it is more visible worldwide. Being born here I’m personally proud of that.
Just short off topic note to have you informed. I’ve got feedback, several times, that reading white text on black background may not be the best option to keep readers focused. It may be true, so I decided to experiment little bit and change it. Some little details on these pages may disappear and appear for a moment. Not text obviously, rather some details like RSS icon on the bottom (which I think should be better on top) and other layout elements. Sorry for your inconvenience, at least it’s no more white text on black background.
Latest creation from Quantic Dreams cannot be ignored. David Cage presented himself as great storyteller in his previous game – Project Indigo (Fahrenheit outside US). While playing Heavy Rain, I could hardly avoid comparisons to that previous title. These two games come along with Cage’s redefinition of adventure game with cinematic glamour. Cinematic experience in Heavy Rain popped up another question I asked myself: is still Heavy Rain a game?
In Fahrenheit we had several characters to play with through the story. All of them had some purpose to the main plot and it’s similar in Heavy Rain. Major difference in game play I found, is that in snowy precursor game mechanics were bound to traditional action adventure controls. Balance was only pushed little bit more toward adventure rather action. Action in Fahrenheit was strictly related to some arcade elements blended in and between puzzles and dialogue. Still I had a feeling that I was free to do whatever I wanted at limited stage of scene. In Heavy Rain I have a feeling, that it’s mostly all about the story. I’m not even surprised to see YouTube version of the game. That’s good example of how limited game playability is. My reflection from playing: controls over characters were only a necessary waste of time to trigger new dialogue and choice of action which I rather watched than played. After a while I found no sense to walk around, lurk for some hidden spots.. somewhere. The only exception is one character who makes real investigation with tools that even CSI folks should be envy at.
Arcade elements in Heavy Rain are close to beat-em up mechanics, which is really tough. There is no time to learn these “combos” as next button to press shows up on the screen and you have like a second to push the right one. Honestly, it was really frustrating. This game is about a story. Limited freedom of game-play replaced with really tough control in some “magic” moments is first serious risk I perceive David Cage has taken. People who are not accustomed to gaming but who will like to test current stage of interactive storytelling & drama may fail to finish it because of difficulty. People who seek a game with rich story may actually not find a game in Heavy Rain. Not by their (and my definition). I don’t mind, but I believe many will do. I really appreciate the story. In my humble opinion it is so strong that I dare to compare it to David Fincher’s “Seven” movie.
In one of my previous articles, I described story structure based on a single, main character development from mundane folk to a hero. It’s barely the way David Cage chose for its games, and it’s really fantastic. I have no other examples in gaming, but Fahrenheit and Heavy Rain where you are put in some moment of time, dense with dramatic events and many characters who are involved and engaged almost simultaneously to that plot. In both games terrible crime is chosen to bind characters to the story. Major difference between these games, is that in Fahrenheit player-character roles were competitive to each other. Playing cops and a murderer was a real challenge because they had quite opposite goals. Culmination point was when these goals had blended to a common one. In Heavy Rain, from the beginning, all characters we play have the same goal: solve the riddle and find the bad guy. Shock and culmination point is at the very end when the truth is revealed.
Maturity is another aspect that differs David Cage’s games. In Fahrenheit beginning was really dramatic. Nothing that could not happen in our world was described there. I could easily explain all unreal situations by drugs or psychology, If I only wanted. I didn’t. It was fun to see all those strange moments inspired something where Matrix meets strange cult conjured by Multi-Personal Disorder known very well from dozen of famous movies (like Lost Highway or Fight Club) taken as an inspiration. Dense atmosphere ended fast when I got some jumbo-mambo sci-fi for which even Matrix looks authentic. It’d built a distance to the thriller side of that story and then I started enjoying it as an action game (fight on the roof, what a pace!). Heavy Rain is mature and for adults only story about grim world where terrible crime simply happens. There is no magic, aliens and other stuff that kills the atmosphere of Gotham City’s social failure, but in rainy not dark metaphor. Rain brings sadness not fear, and it’s a feeling that you can’t stop thinking about during the game. As a victim of a serial killer you have occasion to feel how it’d like to get through whole that psychological trauma, you start believing how it could be. Psychological impact on what’s happening on the screen is indeed comparable with “Seven”. It’s first game where I didn’t want to do something which game was expecting me to do to go forward. It was that terrible like in those movies where you moved your head away because you didn’t want to watch something drastic. Power of this story is there just because Cage does not escape from such situations. They make Heavy Rain even more authentic. It’s interesting to experience it, as it’s totally different from all controversial aspects in games we’ve already had. Having sex in Mass Effect or playing a terrorist in Modern Warfare 2 is like eating peanuts comparing to that one scene in Heavy Rain, I don’t want to spoil.
As for hard decisions in game, I found two situations where I wanted to have more time to think of. While playing I killed twice. In both scenes it was so fast that I had no time to reconsider my decisions. In both situation it was not like “kill or be killed” 1sec moment. Game mechanics helped little bit where you have options to push some button and you don’t exactly know what can happen. In both situations I was shocked how fast pressing the trigger was. Then, when it was done and dead body laid on the floor, my first thought was that I didn’t want to do it.
It’s very interesting from social perspective. I strongly believe no-one playing that game is a killer and then you’re put in a situation so strong and serious from story perspective to do so, with exact feeling. I’d not be surprised the find moral questions like what should and what should not be put in games coming from the Press once again. Media like challenges like this and put gaming controversy on the front page. Usually they fail to bring correct message. I presume Heavy Rain is so hard to comprehend, that it will never be covered. If killing in games is a problem considering silly shooters and other games that ignore almost all real aspects of what real death is, then Heavy Rain shows all possible physical, ethical and moral aspects of such. Hard decisions in Heavy Rain bring questions like this often. Playing it and replaying I had one on mind pretty often: “is this really necessary?”. In many cases, for the story, it was.
David Cage has invented very powerful tool to present dramatic and even traumatic stories. For me, Fahrenheit has built very high expectations for the next game from Quantic Dreams. Heavy Rain is even more interactive movie than a game. At the beginning failed to meet expectations built in my mind, I expected game. I changed my opinion and I exactly know why. Maturity and power of the story presented in that game is so tremendous, that with my own high expectations to the game based on Fahrenheit nostalgia, I for sure didn’t expect to see something like this. It’s simply a different thing. Expecting that Heavy Rain will be Fahrenheit 2, new sequel but better was wrong and misleading.
I had a very interesting discussion yesterday. I want to summarize it below.
There is a fresh new group of developers who want to start making games. They have quite a decent (but various) programming experiences with different platforms, different project types and scale. All outside gaming of course. During my discussion I heard two very interesting questions, I’ve tried to answer then and will answer also here.
1) Which platform choose for casual indie games.
2) What if we choose wrong platform, how about portability?
Questions seem to be academic and I have a feeling, that I answered quite academically. As for first problem, I asked more questions to better understand it. I was curious what games is that group aiming at and for what audience in specific.
Answers I’ve heard were not clear which I understood as the group is rather looking for certain ideas, than have a complete vision of a certain title. Sounds like a pitfall, right? In further discussion we agreed that first goal is rather to better understand technologies and possibilities potential platforms can offer.
Fair enough. Knowing what you can do and binding it together with some assessment on who usually has such a platform and what games that player expects can help to work on realistic ideas and innovations that have better chance to work. It is good to know though, that it’s not real game development. Rather a technological training, which later can help to better discuss differences and potential on platforms like Facebook, iPhone, XBLA, XNA, PSN and Steam, just to mention a few different examples.
Answering to the second question: what if we choose wrong platform, how about portability?
In this case I believe that sticking to basic programming principles can help. Most programming platforms have for sure one thing in common -> objects and object oriented mechanisms. Syntax may vary and language specific elements can trick out porting efforts. Avoiding them should be part of that best practice, I think. Having objects on mind, in front I’d design abstraction layer with objects that share common elements. Any specific platform just should expose it in its implementation.
Simplified example: If I want to develop 2d sprite based scroller shooter, I need objects like screen that supports pixel-by-pixel redrawing, sprites, some routines for clipping, collision detection for sure. Those should have interfaces which are platform independent as much as possible. Then adding DX, GDI, Silverlight with WriteableBitmap, Xna support or whatever technology should become a task bound to platform but not breaking game features themselves.
This approach is implemented in Unity and Unreal Engine too.. what we see there is a common interface (even including WYSIWYG editors) and platform related implementation that we don’t care much designing game at its basic level.
Sounds very much obvious, yet question like this is really fantastic, because it reveals inexperienced developers or developers who have been bound to a single technology stack for long, if not forever. No big deal, good moment to start learning as many different technologies and languages as possible to push the perceptional horizon further.
From these obvious truths in answer, I suggested to these guys a task, challenge for the team of five as I heard.
I suggested them to develop some short game which isn’t time-consuming as for development. Let’s say it’s Tetris.
In this challenge each team member has to pick a technology and/or platform, different to the rest. When everybody finishes, then each developer should take somebodies else code and port it with the thought and structure of the original concept to another platform&technology. Take C# or Flash port of Quake (originally in C) as good example of similar task.
When everybody finishes group should meet and discuss what was the biggest pain and if somebody failed, why?
Conclusions taken from that final discussion should help them to avoid practices that are potentially dangerous in such migration.
Interesting porting paths (to and back), I can recommend are:
Direct3d to OpenGL
Xna to DirectX
WPF Xaml+C# to Direct2D based 2d vector graphics and sprites
From HTML5+Canvas+Javascript to Silverlight and WritableBitmap
Even with Tetris complexity, above examples should be good to reveal some bad habits.
Dreams have powerful impact on many things from our real life to mediums we used to play with as entertainment. From psychological drama to mindful refresh and relax, lucid stories while dreaming, we barely remember them in the morning. That terrible loss and potential hidden meanings were inspiring philosophers, psychologists and entertainers for many years, if not centuries.
Books, movies and games go into dreamworld occasionally and as in first two examples its mostly another art form hard to perform well and so easy to ignore in games I perceive the biggest power of dreams for interactive usage.
I’m not the first one who observed that, in fact I have found many interesting examples of dreams in games already developed, mostly in two scenarios:
SPLITTING WORLDS: DREAMS AIN’T REAL
Dreams by its nature are perfect to give hints and formulate breaks between acts with some important summary and new points in plot yet not revealed fully to give us a reason to stay and ask questions when awaken. In this example role-playing games seemed to be perfect to put dreams in game as specific cut scene in most cases rather to read than watch. Take a look at good&old Baldur’s Gate where without any interaction we were given some clues about the story going forward:
Not so impressive even those times of its origin. Main reason: dreams in BG were only a summary of current achievements. Told well by an intriguing voice of narrator, but completely non-interactive and without any mystery dreams should have.
It’s little bit better in quite a new (comparing to BG) Lost Odyssey, but still has the same flaws even though presentation, including visuals and sound effects, is really well balanced:
In Lost Odyssey, through dreams, we can try to discover some hidden memories from the past. Stories are really well written, but confusing not valuable for the main story at all. After a couple of dreams, I stopped reading them because of schizophrenic lack of useful content. In jRPG I really respect my gaming time. Dreams in their formula inspired me personally only to dwell for new techniques how to present text on screen (as a programmer).
Role-playing games have no monopoly for dreams and fuzzy memories presented in quite a somnolent way. Action games also presented them in many examples. Take Max Payne and its comic book heritage.
Different approach but still passive, unfortunately. Action game like above is really good to show much more interactive usage.
LIVING THE DREAM THAT HAS COME TRUE
How about utilizing dreams not to cut scenes or acts and summarize something with blurred memories and reality hardly real? From previous examples and Max Payne as a bridge take a look at Darkness. Main character is dead, undead, not dead, hard to say. Monsters helping him, all strange things bound to the story and especially alternative worlds in different time and dimensions. That’s all what we could easily call dreams, not an idyllic one. Darkness has them, one of the reasons I love to come back to this game:
Game mood like from famous The Crow movie, but with much more dark magic and horror – dreamworld in Darkness is closer to terrors of Lovecraft’s prose than sissy stories full of banality told us literally in Baldur’s Gate and Lost Odyssey.
Writing so, I may sound ignorant, no point in that. Dreams may vary from joyful sex dreams through, “I don’t need to wake up” and “I won a lottery” relaxations, to “My grandma visited me and warned me” and “I died in accident” or “Somebody killed me”. These different settings and atmosphere of dreams can be used in games, but by its interactive nature it’s much easier to expose fear, drama, regret and other not so clear and positive feelings for which as players we rather like to dwell deeper and ask more questions than stay and relax doing nothing. Sometimes as in the best up to date Call of Cthulhu game, we not only didn’t want to wake up, we hadn’t wanted to fall asleep first place. (WARNING FOR BELOW MOVIE: IF YOU DIDN”T FINISH THE GAME, IT HAS OBVIOUS SPOILERS, WATCHING IS SPOILER FREE UNTIL 1:40)
Great escapes full of drama and not possible in real world I found also in one of my favorite games – Fahrenheit (Project Indigo in US). This game and interactive storytelling offer it has, is one of the best usage of dramatic dreamworld as a game-play medium.
All these examples show, that for this medium visuals and music have to get married fast and furious. I’m waiting for tomorrow’s launch date of Heavy Rain. I presume I’ll have more examples from Quantic Dreams, who named themselves perfectly for this article.
But narration shown in Fahrenheit and Heavy Rain with atmosphere where music, visuals and story come together is not Quantic Dream’s invention. They put a lot of innovation in their games for sure, still I find their precursor from mid 90-ties. I mean game called Dream Web. Take a look at intro where setting is already established:
All above examples remind me only one last thing – my dream. I wish to see more games with interactive dreams blended into game-play. I’m also glad for games that have already showed these dreams coming true.
