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Comic-Con 2011: LucasArts and Microsoft talk development of upcoming motion-controlled sci-fi game; podracing confirmed.
Who was there: Kinect Publishing head Jorg Neumann, Terminal Reality developer Seth Hawkins, LucasArts lead producer Greg Derrick, and USA Today‘s Mike Snider moderating.
What they talked about: At a pre-E3 2010 event in California last year, Microsoft gave Project Natal its official name: Kinect. Also at the event, the company showed a teaser trailer for Kinect Star Wars, a new motion-controlled title based on George Lucas’ enduringly popular science fiction franchise.
The panel kicked off not with developer commentary, but rather with a new trailer for the game that showed two-player gameplay, boss battles, familiar characters C-3PO, R2-D2, Anakin Skywalker, and more. Additionally, podracing was shown in the trailer, confirming that the game mode will appear in the title when it ships later this year.
Derrick said work on the game started in 2009. He said Project Natal was an “abstract” technology and that Star Wars games had “classically avoided motion control.”
Derrick also noted that the development team wanted players to not only use a lightsaber, but also to experience what it felt like to use the Force. He said when he saw a demo of a character using the Force to knock over a bunch of droids, he said “OK we’re in.”
As for where Kinect Star Wars is set in the overall Star Wars storyline, Neumann said the game takes place a year after the Phantom Menace fiction. Instead of controlling one of the series’ protagonists, gamers will start as a Padowan and will work through a string of adventures to become a Jedi. Neumann said gamers will travel to many planets on what he called a “whirlwind adventure.”
As for who the game is being marketed to, Derrick explained that Kinect Star Wars is for “families and kids.” He also said that the game “needs to be accessible and light. And we didn’t want to go too stylistic like Clone Wars. [We] wanted to push the power of Xbox, but still be familiar.”
Neumann described Kinect Star Wars as a way to tap into the demographic of people who might not be inclined to play games.
“There are 100 million Star Wars fans, but not all of them play [video games].” Neumann elaborated, saying Kinect Star Wars is the answer to this problem and that playing games can be “too hard.” He also explained that Kinect Star Wars is “not at all a dark game.” Continuing the theme of accessibility, Derrick explained that Kinect Star Wars allows for jump-in/jump-out gameplay in both the adventure mode and in podracing.
Terminal Reality’s Hawkins said that while the game may be accessible, it will also offer a “deep” Star Wars experience.
“Early on, we imagined what the experience would be and wanted to capture that experience,” he said. Hawkins elaborated, saying, “It was fun to wield a lightsaber, but [Terminal Reality] wanted to go deeper.”
Though Kinect Star Wars does not require a controller, Derrick said he anticipates gamers using their own lightsaber peripherals to play the game.
“You can absolutely use a peripheral; we expect people to. Just be careful not to destroy your television,” he said, gathering a rise from the audience.
Neumann also spoke about the effect the Kinect has had on game development. He said Kinect has “changed the way games are made,” further noting that developers making Kinect games need to approach development in a very different way.
He said a traditional controller can be “limiting,” and that Kinect has the ability to replicate an “infinite manner of expression.” He offered a question that developers need to think about when designing a game with the Kinect: “What is the player thinking about when he is playing this game?
The panelists also talked about the in-game lightsaber, with Hawkins saying that the weapon is “really an extension of your body.” He expanded on that point, saying “We want to reward you for being more like a Jedi when you play [Kinect Star Wars].” He also joked about the health benefits of the game, saying it is not being marketed as a health product, but “that might be the result.”
Derrick also chimed in on the matter, saying “Most of us are going to just swing our arms around and go nuts.” He said this isn’t a problem, as the game will teach players how to best control their character and that “no heightened skill is necessary.”
As for how the just-confirmed podracing will work in Kinect Star Wars, Neumann said players will use their hands to steer the vehicle and can “punch” forward to increase thrust. Additionally, players can jump up and throw items at opposing racers with their hands. In total, there will be over 20 pods to control and multiple characters to race with, though Anakin will be the only racing human.
Hawkins explained how the Pod racing went from being a “mediocre experience” to being “fantastic” over the course of its development. In order to achieve a greater design, Hawkins noted that Terminal Reality focused on three pillars for podracing: a sense of speed, a sense of danger, and a “Star Wars feel.”
Neumann explained that the core component of Kinect Star Wars is its Jedi story, with podracing taking a secondary seat. Additionally, Neumann said there will be “other modes” in the game, but he can’t talk about those yet. He did, however, say that these new modes will be “nontraditional” and “things you’ve never seen in a Star Wars experience.” He said hints for these new game modes are embedded in the game’s trailers and that more details will be unveiled “this summer.”
In a short question-and-answer session, a fan asked, “When will the game come out?” Neumann replied with a smile, “This Christmas.”
There was also a special announcement during the panel. Microsoft is bringing out a new Kinect Star Wars Xbox 360 Kinect bundle this fall. Star Wars fans can grab the bundle–which boasts a biggest-ever 320GB hard drive–for $449.
The bundle also boasts R2-D2 sounds when the Xbox 360 is powered up and when a game is ejected from the console. Additionally, the bundle comes with a gilded C-3PO controller and a first-ever all-white Kinect sensor.
Quote: “No, there won’t be a ‘Lightsaber On’ command” – Derrick.
Takeaway: It’s clear that LucasArts, Microsoft, and Terminal Reality have high hopes for Kinect Star Wars. One of the most esteemed sci-fi franchises ever, Star Wars is a series with rabid fans that likely won’t be too happy if the game does not deliver when it launches later this year. The pressure is on.
Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot
“Kinect Star Wars blasts off at Comic-Con” was posted by Eddie Makuch on Thu, 21 Jul 2011 14:39:29 -0700 -
Comic-Con 2011: A panel of indie developers discuss what it takes to break into the industry on their own.
Who Was There: Thatgamecompany founders Jenova Chen and Kellee Santiago (Journey), Minority cofounder Vander Caballero (Papo & Yo), Mike Burns from Fueled Entertainment (Sideway), and Ulf Andersson from Overkill Software (Payday: The Heist).
What They Talked About:One of the first panels to kick off Comic-Con 2011 was about creating meaningful indie titles in a climate where shooters sell and everyone else talks about social gaming. What the panelists had in common other than the fact that they were independent was that their publisher was Sony. The games that they are working on are all extremely different, but they all approached their projects with specific goals in mind.
Thatgamecompany’s upcoming title Journey is its first online game, focusing on the player’s purpose in the sandy universe and discovering the world’s history. Papo & Yo is about Caballero’s love/fear relationship with his father, who struggled with alcoholism. Burns explained that Fueled actually comes from a background of online advertising, so their approach is a more business-oriented one, focusing on creating an IP for a target audience. Andersson from Overkill just happens to enjoy the ever-popular shooter genre, but after coming from a large company that likes to hold too many meetings, his approach is fewer meetings and doing what he wants to do.
After the initial introduction, the developers talked about how they started their own studios. Santiago and Chen come from a background in film, having studied the medium at the University of Southern California. Santiago was originally in theater, but after taking a course on the history of game design and going to the Game Developers Conference, she started working in games. Chen’s student project, “Cloud,” was an unexpected hit on the Internet, and he explained that after receiving so much fan mail it was like a calling to go into game design and continue creating. He also highlighted the fact that you can start a game company without anything, but as long as you have a good idea and passion, you can convince people to give you money.
For Caballero, he worked at EA initially and acknowledged the perks in working for a corporate giant, such as large teams and good pay, but he added developers there can’t create the games they like. Having come from Colombia where violence hits a bit too close to home, he didn’t want to spend his days creating violent games and instead wanted to focus on storytelling by making it a deeply personal experience–a painful one, but also liberating.
Burns focused more on the business side of creating games. At the end of the day, a game has to sell if the studio hopes to continue to make more. Passion can get a developer only so far, he said. His focus was figuring out what kind of audience he wanted to target and then developing an IP for that audience in hopes of branching out the property later on. He stressed how important it was to have a viable business model and that there needs to be an audience to consume it.
Andersson has been working on games since he was 14 and has spent time working for bigger game developers. He joked about being in meetings and having smaller meetings within those meetings to the point where he said that everything “turns to s*** pretty fast.” He lamented that even though developers work on bigger IPs and even good IPs, they still can’t really do what they want to do and make it great within five months.
“Doing your own stuff and owning your own IP is your way to go,” Andersson said. “The market today is really good with that.”
He also doesn’t lose sleep at night knowing that he’s in control of his own project.
Burns touched upon (multiple times) how Sony has been an incredibly supportive publisher that lets indie developers stick to their original ideas. Not all publishers provide the same courtesy.
The panel later touched on Journey, and the audience was shown early paintings by Chen, who initially wanted to make a massively multiplayer online game without the verbal communication. They acknowledged that an MMO from That Game Company is likely never going to happen, but Journey takes some of those nonverbal communication ideas and puts them into practice.
Takeaway: All it takes to start a company is to have a good idea and know how to pitch it.
Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot
“Creating a AAA Indie Game” was posted by Sophia Tong on Thu, 21 Jul 2011 14:22:07 -0700 -
Might & Magic spin-off due later this year.
Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes HD, one of the finest downloads to grace PSN and XBLA this year, is launching an attack on PC users’ wallets soon, Ubisoft has announced.
The release listing popped up in the publisher’s sales report yesterday and has since been confirmed to Eurogamer by developer Capybara Games.
It’s a straight port of the console version so don’t expect any exclusive content for the puzzle/RPG hybrid.
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Comic-Con 2011: Eidos Montreal reveals the real science and thought process behind the augmentations in its Deus Ex prequel.
Who was there: Eidos Montreal’s community manager moderated a panel that featured Mary DeMarle, lead writer on Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and Will Rosellini, the CEO of MicroTransponder and technological consultant on the game.
What they talked about: The crux of the panel was highlighting how the development team behind Deus Ex: Human Revolution (with the help of Will Rosellini) wanted to create a believable world that was grounded not only in present-day events, but also in a world that made sense in relation to being a prequel to the original Deus Ex. DeMarle started by talking about how the original Deus Ex involved nano augmentations and how it hinted that mechanical augmentations were something that preceded it. So they took the mechanical augmentation idea and ran with it as a basis for the prequel, but DeMarle also said that focusing on the mechanical augmentations gave more opportunities to create more visually diverse characters. She then said that they wanted to look at how these mechanical augmentations would be perceived via issues that society deals with and what prejudices spring forth as a result.
But to make it all feel relevant, DeMarle stressed that the team needed to make the science real, and that’s where Will Rosellini came in. His company, MicroTransponder, is working on an actual implant that uses RF energy to combat various neurological diseases, but Rosellini is also a big fan of games. While he was disappointed in Deus Ex: Invisible War, he contacted the development team because he felt that a new Deus Ex game could make some interesting predictions about the future of implants and the technology surrounding them.
DeMarle continued by saying that the development team built out an entire timeline that traced the history of augmentation and then predicted where it would go. She used Oscar Pistorius–a double amputee sprinter who uses special carbon-fiber prosthetics to run–as an example of a predicted turning point where those with implants integrate with those who do not have them.
She then went into an explanation of how the augmentations were developed for Human Revolution. The development team started with augmentations that naturally fit within the gameplay pillars of stealth, hacking, combat, and social abilities. For stealth, as an example, the team wanted to make sure that there was a cloaking augment. But for other abilities, DeMarle said that the team started off with ridiculous ideas, like a bungee augment that let Adam Jensen (the game’s lead character) jump from any height and safely land on the ground, but by tempering the idea and making it work within the universe, it eventually became the Icarus Landing System.
Rosellini then explained how augmentations are already a very real part of society. Surprisingly, he cited his own experience as a pitcher for the Arizona Diamondbacks as an example of people already using augments as a means for getting an edge over others. In this instance, he said, the edge was a drug (or steroids) as opposed to something more physical, but the intent was the same. He then referred to the iPhone, not only as evidence of how quickly technology advances when funding is behind it, but also as an augment in itself. More people are carrying around smartphones than ever before, and oftentimes people wouldn’t even think of leaving the house without it.
There was also a discussion about what happens in the world of Deus Ex as a result of mechanical augmentations being introduced. DeMarle explained that a whole new middle class springs up as a result of new opportunities being offered to those who are able to work more difficult jobs because of their augmentations. Problems arise when the mechanical becomes better than the real, according to DeMarle, and that creates the friction in Human Revolution’s world. And that’s just skimming the surface of the debate. There is also the question of drugs used to keep bodies from rejecting the implants and how people get addicted to the drug itself. Rosellini addressed how this is based in reality, because the body does whatever it can to reject foreign objects (for example, the inflammation that occurs due to a splinter), and people generally don’t like wearing things that exist on top of the body, but rather are a part of it.
The takeaway: Sometimes, people take sci-fi for granted. Audiences may not really appreciate the amount of work and research that goes into creating a world that is not only fantastic, but also realistic and relatable. By incorporating real science and sociology into its universe, the development team of Deus Ex: Human Revolution hopes that people will be able to instantly understand its message and what the implications are of Adam Jensen’s actions in the game.
Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot
“At the crossroads of steroids, baseball, and Deus Ex” was posted by Giancarlo Varanini on Thu, 21 Jul 2011 13:49:58 -0700 -
R2D2/C3PO-themed bundle coming.
A limited edition Star Wars-themed Xbox 360 bundle goes on sale in the US later this year to tie in with the launch of Star Wars Kinect, Microsoft and LucasArts have announced.
The set, priced at $449.99, sees the main 320GB console unit get a R2D2 skin, while the controller gets the C3PO treatment. The 360 has custom Star Wars sounds built in for when you turn the power on or open the disc tray.
You’ll also get a white Kinect sensor, a standard wired headset, a copy of Star Wars Kinect, Kinect Adventures and access to “exclusive downloadable content”.
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CEO Bobby Kotick confirms new studio working on prototypes, acknowledges misstep with the “passion project” DJ Hero.
Activision has started getting the band back together. In an interview with Forbes, Activision CEO Bobby Kotick confirmed that the publisher is using a new studio to reinvent the Guitar Hero franchise.
When asked how the publisher plans to spark innovation in the series, Kotick explained, “[It’s] a very rigorous process, but we spend a lot of time talking to different customers in different customer ranges and different demographics, different audience interests, and that process takes a little bit of time. Then we also let the studio–there’s a studio that’s now assigned to this project–we let them explore technology pathways, and so they’ll do a variety of different prototypes.”
Some of the requests Activision’s customers make may be easier to fulfill than others. Elsewhere in the interview, Kotick explained that the most frequently made request for the Guitar Hero franchise was to include the music of Led Zeppelin.
“But we couldn’t get Led Zeppelin to consent to give us the rights,” Kotick said. “And there were a lot of instances of that, a whole host of artists who just didn’t want to give rights to Guitar Hero. And it was hard to get around that. And then there were other things…we put things out there that were not ready for primetime and that today actually would resonate very well with audiences.”
One of the things Activision put out that Kotick acknowledged was a mistake was the “passion project” DJ Hero. He explained that the company had overestimated the number of people who would be interested in re-creating a DJ experience in the context of a game.
“[We] created this critically acclaimed, highly rated game,” Kotick said, “and these are the hardest failures, when you put your heart and soul into it and you deliver an extraordinarily well-received game, and nobody shows up to buy it. So that’s what happened with DJ Hero. At the same time, we were so excited about going down this new direction with DJ Hero. I think we abandoned a bit of the innovation that was required in the Guitar Hero franchise.”
Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot
“Activision ‘reinventing’ Guitar Hero” was posted by Brendan Sinclair on Thu, 21 Jul 2011 13:35:28 -0700 -
As work on Minecraft’s massive “Adventure Update” continues onward, the game’s creator is teasing more tidbits about some of the new features being planned for the next big game-changing update. A new Beta screenshot posted on Notch’s Twitter feed earlier this week shows interesting additions to the user interface, including one indicator that appears to track hunger and another mysterious meter that hinted at an experience system in the works…
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Controversial Edge Games man has his say.
Edge Games man Tim Langdell has hit back at allegations that he’s a “trademark troll”, speaking publicly for the first time since losing a legal tussle with EA over the Mirror’s Edge title.
A lengthy character defense handed to Eurogamer sets out to correct a long list of “misconceptions” about Langdell and Edge Games.
“Previously Edge Games and Tim Langdell have made virtually no public statements about the various Edge disputes over the past two years since it seemed clear any statement they made would not be reported fairly,” the document begins.
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The time has come! The Last Stand: Union City is available to play on Armor Games. Scavenge, shoot and survive your way through Union City in this sprawling zombie action RPG. Play in Survivor mode for a more realistic experience where the need food and sleep will be added to your survival requirements. Or play in […]
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