I really liked Urban Dead – until I spent weeks as a corpse waiting to be resurrected, that is. Once that happened the shine basically wore off. I still think it’s a remarkably fun virtual world, but I think that it’s unfairly weighted towards the undead – that you can’t kill them permanently (even with a headshot!) makes it less interesting as a massive simulation of a zombie infested city than it could otherwise be.
The Lepzig Games Convention is certainly a sight to behold – roughly five full aircraft hangers full of rabid German gamers salivating over not only displays for the latest games but also (I kid you not) the latest in fancy PC cases, mice, and CPU cooling fans. Really. I never had a chance to visit E3 in its most decadent heyday, either, so the sight of roaming “booth babes” at the Leipzig GC was quite remarkable.
Anyway, I didn’t actually spend very much time at the GC at all, instead covering the Game Convention Developer Conference in-depth. Much like my opinion of the Edinburgh Interactive Festival, I really felt this show wasn’t especially good, but unlike the EIF, I’m not to sure there’s much more they could do to make it better.
Perhaps if it moves to Cologne to be part of the new GamesCom it will improve; getting to Leipzig was so irritating (and the town itself so unwelcoming) that I seriously doubt I’ll return if it chooses to stay there (not that it’s particularly likely that it will.)
GCDC: Epic’s Four Strategies For Winning The Industry ‘Arms Race’
GCDC: Epic’s Capps On Designing The ‘New, Better, More’ Gears 2
GCDC: Connors On Telltale’s Episodic Move To Consoles
GCDC: What Determines Developer Acquisition Values?
Crytek’s Yerli On The Road To A Graphics ‘Renaissance’
Meretzky Lets Loose On Stagnant Creativity
Devs And Pubs On Pitching Game Ideas: Be Persistent, Specialize
The Edinburgh Interactive Festival actually only ran from the 10th to the 12th of August, but with the 10th being a Sunday and Gamasutra’s tendency to stretch show coverage out across weeks, I thought I’d wait until now until I posted my coverage. There might still be more to be put up, of course, but in that case I’ll just update this post.
Anyway, this was rather a nice conference to go to because covering the first “Edinburgh International Games Festival” (as it was known then) was my first foray into games journalism. It was perhaps bittersweet, as the conference really hasn’t improved or grown any in the intervening five years.
It’s a strange one, really. If anything, the competition from Develop as an industry event is far too strong for it to really compete unless it really goes all out, but if it did so I think it would miss the most obvious possibility – which is to concentrate on the events which are open to the public.
After all, the festivals in the month of August the Edinburgh is world famous for are all open to the public, and are part of what make holding a games festival in the city at that time attractive, so why don’t they run with that? This year they barely advertised the festival around the city and still managed to draw thousands of people to the public screenings and the Dare Protoplay event, so a properly run event (perhaps run across weeks, with events every evening) could really be something special – unique, even – and much preferable to the current festival.
EIF: Deering Says Only 3 Of 10 Games Recoup Costs
Halo 3 Wins Edge Award For Innovation, Online Integration
EIF: Codemasters’ Cousens On Why Britannia Rules
IGA’s Bartlett: ‘We Are Not Spyware, We Are Not Evil’
EIF: Guitar Hero, Nintendogs Better Educational Tools Than ‘Serious Games’
MUD Co-Creator Bartle Criticizes Gaming And Academia Divide
Nokia’s Foe: Marketing Is Warfare, Consumers Are Bullets
CCP Economist On EVE Online’s ‘Pure Capitalist’ Market
I really liked Ikariam. I liked it so much that I was playing it constantly, just slowly improving my cities and civilization in aim of… what?
Which is why I stopped playing. I couldn’t see any “end-game” or point where I’d feel a great satisfaction (you can continue to improve your cities to a near infinite degree) so I just deleted my account straight away – after finishing this article, of course.
I do almost wish I’d come to that realisation before finishing the article, though. Because it kind of strikes at a classic MMO problem – they want to keep you playing, so how do they make sure you are rewarded enough, but not enough (or too little) that you stop playing?
With Ikariam specifically, I think the problem is a flaw deep in the design – it either needs to be possible to destroy cities or to reach a point where they are completed and expansion is the only option. I imagine they don’t allow players to destroy cities as then especially powerful players could run roughshod over new players, but the difficulty of balancing that would have led to a richer game, I think. The other option (ability to “complete” cities) seems too likely to make a lot of players stop playing once they’d “completed” their first city unless resources were much harder to come by, which could possibly make the game even less rewarding!
MMO designers – I don’t envy them.
This article has been quite well received, being picked up on sites including Wired, which I found very pleasing.
A great interview (in my humble opinion, of course) on a generally unexplored factor of MMO games – fraud. Gene Hoffman’s insights are invaluable.
Ahem, yes. For the second year in a row I am the Content Director of the Independent Games Festival Mobile, an honour that I’m incredibly pleased to have. I’m really looking forward to working on it across the year, seeing all of the games (particularly on iPhone, I expect) that break new ground or are otherwise just great to play.
It’s my suggestion that if you are a mobile game developer (and remember, in our eyes that’s on anything from PSP to the most basic of handsets) that you seriously think about entering the contest with whatever you’re working on right now. The form is here, and entry is completely free, so you have nothing to lose. Good luck!
This isn’t the kind of article that people would usually get excited about, really, but I think it’s really useful to read about the development communities in countries that you wouldn’t think of otherwise. The global view is important!
I think little to nothing of Virtual MTV, but this article is remarkable for the fact that I admit publicly that I’ve seen nearly every episode of The Hills. Can my career survive such a shocking revelation?
Plus, an interview:
Interview: Henrique Olifiers on Jagex’s Procedurally Generated MMO, RuneScape HD
By sheer happenstance, I went to Develop! Well – the last day of it, because I was visiting London, and thought a trip down to Brighton might be a pleasant way to spend a day. And it was!
While I was there I covered this session, because I thought I might as well give myself a reason to be there (other than “networking”) and I think I picked well, because there were a lot of good insights in this talk, I think.
“In Urban Dead, players create a character, either a zombie or a survivor (and if a survivor, from a number of classes, including consumers, firemen and army privates) and is dropped into the city of Malton either to cause as much destruction as possible (as a zombie) or to survive by an means possible — most usually by banding together with other players in barricaded buildings (if a player.) Players have a limited number of action points each day, but are forewarned that even if they have run out of action points, the rest of the world goes on around them, while they ‘sleep’.”
“In Ikariam, users create a town on a randomly assigned island. On their island are up to 15 other players, plus a sawmill and a unique resource. The aim of the game is for the player to create the largest and most prosperous city by accumulating resources through production, trade or warfare, and developing new technologies and buildings as a result.”
“As the casual game biz gets more complex, and the mainstream game biz examines complexity – where to now? To investigate this growing industry, Gamasutra talks to some of its leading lights: John Welch, CEO of PlayFirst (Diner Dash); Jason Kapalka, CCO of PopCap (Peggle, Bejeweled) and Russell Carroll, director of marketing at developer and (via Reflexive Arcade) casual games distributor Reflexive Entertainment (Wik and the Fable of Souls) for their unique takes on the importance of the casual games industry — where it’s headed and what that means.”
“Submissions are now open for the second Independent Games Festival Mobile, celebrating creativity and innovation on handheld platforms from the iPhone through the cellphone, PSP, and DS – with finalists being showcased at GDC 2009, and a new ‘Next Great Mobile Game’ live pitch category added.”
“In Virtual MTV, users choose a generic avatar to start with and select the brand they (at least initially) wish to explore. Each of the brands is an MTV reality property — such as ‘soap opera’ The Hills or car modification show Pimp My Ride — and the user can take part in an experience tightly related to the concept of the show. So in Virtual The Hills users are expected to socialize, care about their appearance, and can create and sell items. In Virtual Pimp My Ride, users can play games and perform challenges to earn vMTV ‘bucks’ to spend on customizing their car.”