Lara Croft is this generation's John Rambo. "Shoot me," screams Ana, "and my men will cut you down in seconds. " Ana, a middle-aged woman with a pixie cut and Hillary Clinton’s wardrobe, makes the case for her life at roughly the midpoint of Rise of the Tomb Raider, the follow-up to 2013’s reboot of the iconic action game franchise. Ana is the villain. The heroine, Lara Croft, has a pistol to her head and a finger on the trigger. Because this is only the second act, Croft’s upper hand is undercut by Ana’s soldiers and their heavy weapons. Ana doesn’t beg; she threatens. "It’s the one thing they're better at than you," says Ana. Lara winces at Ana’s words — as if Lara somehow doesn’t have the chutzpah in her to pull the trigger. Meanwhile, Ana and her and henchman are, at the least, efficient in their quest for an ancient, uber relic, constructing dig sites, using tools rather than bashing holes the size of Volkswagens through tombs with whatever’s on hand — a Lara Croft specialty.
Fair! I say, embrace her as a killer. Destiny's animators studied boxing to keep you from getting sick. David Helsby, senior animator at Bungie, shared for the first time publicly some of the secrets behind the first-person animations in Destiny. His talk at this year's Game Developers Conference in San Francisco provides new details on how that game's graceful characters and elegant weapons feel so good to inhabit from the first-person perspective. The secret, Helsby says, is all in how the camera — essentially the cone of vision that player sees — moves in relation to the rest of the avatar's body.
If the camera remains still as a avatar moves through the world, the game can feel light and floaty. But if you are too agressive with the movement of that camera, people will get motion sick. "It's one of the reasons you really have to be careful with camera animation," Helsby said, "because even if your camera motion is going to make just 10 percent of the population sick, if you're selling a million copies of the game then you just lost 100,000 people. " Tony Hawk got bad when it got big. The first Tony Hawk's Pro Skater game had nine levels with five objectives per level. You were given two minutes per level to do as much as you could. There were 45 things to do, at least officially, and you had to play in two minute chunks. That was it. It was sold for full price, of course, and people loved it.
This situation would never fly in a world where bullet points and pure numbers rule. A modern version of the first Tony Hawk game, with that number of levels, objectives and skaters, would be seen as something akin to a betrayal. The second Pro Skater release was bigger, with ten objectives per level and more levels overall, competition events where you were judged on your performance, and create-a-skater options with a leveling system that allowed you to purchase skill points to beef up your abilities.
Losing the plot The fourth game in the series introduced an open world, because every game needed an open world. The series was burned down, in other words. So here we are. How to create a game in the middle of a civil war (and why I hate Oldsmobile) Long ago, in a far distant galaxy called Ukraine, three guys retired to make The Game. They knew that The Game would be finished, but none of them could ever imagine that after more than two years, one of them would become a father, the second would live in another country and a civil war would start in Ukraine. This is the story of how we went from kids dreaming about making games to adults who made it happen, and then how we were forced to finish the project in a time of war.
Where it started We grew up in the '90s, a dark hour after the collapse of the USSR. The plans were much too ambitious, as is usually the case with beginners. The MMO idea was always doomed to fail, but it left us with some important things: Modesty and a more realistic outlook on our skills Knowledge of the Unity 3D engine Our name, Interbellum The MMORPG itself was to be called Interbellum. Our next project was simpler. To madness of the brave we sing a song We had almost everything we needed. But the deed was done. Want to make toxic League of Legends players more pleasant? Limit their chat. Riot Games is committed to making League of Legends as pleasant for new and struggling players as it possibly can, and it's not exactly an altruistic goal: The more people sign up and play, the more people there are to buy content and expand the success of what is arguably the most popular game in the world.
The efforts have been ongoing, and have yielded some interesting strategies. Science journalist Jeremy Hsu wrote a great look at some of the company's efforts in making the competitive scene a bit more welcoming, which is a daunting task. League of Legends, and other games in that genre, are known for their aggressive players and often borderline abusive chat logs. A single player who is unsure of their strategy can sink a team, and you'll hear about it if that player happens to be you.
The article focuses on the work of Jeffrey "Lyte" Lin, a designer with a Ph.D. in cognitive neuroscience. Sunset Overdrive perfected checkpoints by putting fun above logic. Sunset Overdrive is a game that focuses on the enjoyment of the player. Just moving around the in-game world can be a joyful experience as you grind and jump and string combos together to unlock in-game bonuses. It’s a game that knows how to cut out much of the bullshit that can hurt the enjoyment of that sort of game, and one of the things Insomniac Games handled nearly perfectly are the checkpoints.
"We wanted them to be forgiving. We knew pretty early on that this was a game centered around fun," Drew Murray, Insomniac’s game director, told Polygon. Checkpoints can be very hard to do well, and the technical challenges of enjoyable checkpoints are many. "I think the truth is most people won’t come back later. "" Murray talked about instances where even cutting away 30 or 40 seconds from the beginning of a checkpoint added to the game’s sense of fun.
"You’re always looking for the awesome parts of your game, but you’re also asking yourself: What are those quit-moments? " Breaking the rules. Civilization: Beyond Earth's creators are fixing their biggest mistakes. The first problem with Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth is that at no point in the game does Gandhi show up to nuke anyone. That stumbling block has to do with psychology. David McDonough and Will Miller know that's related second problem with Beyond Earth: The strategy game didn't have a a beta.
That's a decision that Miller characterizes as "unfortunate," because the beta could have offered a bit more insight into how players would react to its radical departure from previous Civilization titles. These are problems that the co-lead designers hope to fix. The duo detailed their triumphs and shortcomings in a 2015 Game Developers Conference presentation — and discussed their plan to fix their shortcomings by being bolder where they were once more timid. Not long ago, developer Firaxis Games gave the young designers a chance that few get: To create a radical new entry in the venerable Civilization series. Beyond Earth wasn't all bold new frontiers, though. "It just fell flat" This War of Mine and the puzzle of remorse. This War of Mine was one of the most significant games of last year, mostly because it made players feel really bad about themselves.
Set in a war-torn city, the game tasks players with staying alive, by securing food and medicine, while protecting themselves against bandits, depression and other dangers. It requires difficult moral decisions. At GDC yesterday, Pawel Miechowski, lead writer at the game's developer 11 bit Studios, talked about how much work went into drawing emotions like remorse out of players. "Did a movie ever make you feel remorseful? " he asked. "You can feel compassion and sadness and lots of other emotions watching a movie, but some emotions can only come from inside. " In his talk, "This War of Mine: Raising Emotions from Unique Narrative," Miechowski shared some of the lessons the team learned. First and foremost, he said, it was important to avoid shaping the game around a particular genre. Early observations of tester reactions also proved useful.
They wanted to make a phenomenon. They made $10 million. The story of Crossy Road. Indie games often aspire to be different, and Crossy Road did, too. Hall and Sum wanted to create a free-to-play game that would sell well at first and then drift away. To do that, Hall figured, it needed two things. First, Crossy Road needed "retention," which just means the game gave players several reasons to enjoy and play the game as long as possible. Free-to-play games tend to be good at that, offering incentives that reward players to come back. Done well, the incentives and gameplay would create what Hall calls "virality," to which the developers add elements that make payers want to share and talk about the game. A template exists for games like these with hooks like these, but Hipster Whale didn't want to copy anything. The point is, Crossy Road's oddities were deliberate and focused.
"It wasn't like throwing darts at a dartboard and spinning around three times," Hall told Polygon with a laugh. "Crossy Road, I think, feels a lot like a premium game, in a weird way. " A defense of Binding of Isaac from a former fundamentalist Christian. Why does The Binding of Isaac need a "defense? " It’s already wildly popular, and the biggest fans on the game's subreddit would laugh at the mere 70 hours I’ve logged on The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth.
I would have logged more if I didn’t have articles to write to pay my bills. Its creator, Edmund McMillen, is one of the most successful gamedev graduates of the dark Flash-based underworld of Newgrounds. There have been numerous think pieces already published about The Binding of Isaac, including the controversy over its religious content and including people desperately trying to make sense of its surreal backstory and ending.
The Binding of Isaac is credited with being one of the games that ignited the neo-roguelike revolution, paving the way for the current wave of innovative "roguelike-likes" like FTL, Don’t Starve and Risk of Rain. And yet I feel the need to "defend" this game because of the reactions I get whenever I bring it up among my friends. This is how I grew up You get horny. Don't read the comments, or: How we went insane but made our game better. "Don't read the comments, man. " The first time I heard that was from Rasmus Wedin at Boston Airport when we were preparing ourselves to get back to Valencia, Spain, after PAX East. We were reading what the press said about Gods Will Be Watching and found some unpleasant commenters on an article.
It's one of the wisest pieces of advice I ever got in gamedev, and heard it again and again after that day. There's even a Twitter account that reminds you periodically to not read the comments. But I did. I've been reading every single comment about our work, and I can confirm that doing so is a guaranteed source of madness. After several hours of reading wild and astonishingly creative insults, I just got out of my home and spent until 2 a.m. sitting under a streetlight watching people and traffic, just trying to figure out how to overcome that. I can tell you this is going to leave scars on me for the rest of my life.
But then the good vibes came. A lovely comment on Steam We've all been there No. What BioShock's creator learned from Shadow of Mordor. Monolith Production's Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor tells a story "that could never exist in another medium" and, more importantly, has a lot to teach, according to a recent post from BioShock creator and Irrational Games co-founder Ken Levine. Shadow of Mordor allows players to pursue enemies and narrative threads as they wish with its Nemesis system. New enemies spring forth as you defeat the old ones, and they'll remember you from previous battles. It's a constantly evolving system that creates a different story each time. Although Shadow of Mordor includes its own traditional story, Levine writes, that tale "pales in comparison" to what players themselves can create with that system. "By breaking down the elements of character into small chunks and re-combining them based on randomness and, more important, responses to the player's choices, Shadow of Mordor tells a story that could never exist in another medium," Levine writes.
Ken Levine and the Infinite Idaho. God is real, and it wants us dead: The religious terror of BioWare's biggest games. Games are often better at conveying horror than most other mediums, due to our direct and real-time responses. This year, we've experienced the constant dread of Alien: Isolation and the grotesque physicality of The Evil Within. Overlooked, however, is the cosmic horror in BioWare games. "We impose order on the chaos of organic life. You exist because we allow it, and you will end because we demand it. " These are the words of Sovereign, the first Reaper you encounter in Mass Effect.
At this point, you discover that all life has been essentially created and guided by these godlike creatures. Now the Reapers are coming to end what they created. The entire Mass Effect trilogy is preparing for war against beings who are more powerful than anything in existence because they, essentially, created existence. Here, all of life is told their creator wishes it to end. BioWare's love of cosmic animosity toward creation found a new twist in Dragon Age as well. Dragon Age at least gives some hope. Why Beyond Earth can't top Alpha Centauri. One of the most common criticisms levelled at Firaxis’ Civilization: Beyond Earth is that it fails to live up to the narrative grandeur of its spiritual-predecessor, Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri; but why? Simple nostalgia? Certainly the grass is greener in the 1990s for many gamers, but I would argue there’s more to this discontent, something which goes to the heart of good game design.
Narrative feels even more pretextual for your average 4X strategy title than it does for most games, where it’s a threadbare excuse upon which to hang the actual gameplay. But the best strategy games go farther, using what critic Rowan Kaiser calls "transparent mechanics" — mechanics that work to express a game’s core ideas, imbuing gameplay with meaning. Alpha Centauri’s strength can be found in its use of aptly placed flavor text, fully voice acted in many cases, to give events in the game — such as researching a technology or building a city improvement — added significance.
Flashes of Narrative Light. Ten Years of World of Warcraft. Ten years of World of Warcraft. Well. So many thoughts. WoW has always been a contradiction of sorts: not the pioneer, but the one that solidified the pattern. Not the experimenter, but the one that reaped the rewards. Not the innovator, but the one that was well-designed, built solidly, and made appealing. It was the MMO that took what has always been there, and delivered it in a package that was truly broadly appealing, enough so to capture the larger gamer audience for the first time. Don’t get me wrong; that’s not a knock on it.
After a decade and a half of refinements that didn’t do the trick, Blizzard came along and did what it does best: cut to the essence, capture the core fun elements in a game system, and make them accessible and appealing to the broadest possible market. These days, so many more people have passed through the gates of Azeroth than ever played its antecedents that many don’t even know the deep wellspring sources from which it came. The Sims Online Newsweek cover. Call of Duty: Press X to feel something. Call of Duty's single-player campaigns are selfish, decadent, and way too much fun. Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number – 'We're going to do things … differently' | Technology.
Nintendo nostalgia gets creepy in this text adventure. Alien: Isolation is a stunningly realistic locker simulator · Game Review. Jeux d'horreur. NaissanceE. A tale of two translations in Mars: War Logs. Black market Pokemon, hacking Dittos, and one man's quest for the perfect landshark. The theism of Goat Simulator: the surprising metaphysics of the year's goofiest game. Loot caves are a lie: Why Destiny's item system isn't as broken as you think. How The Swapper created horror out of clay and found objects. Rami Ismail's Blog - Why Hotline Miami is an important game. Kissing vs. killing: How Shadow of Mordor fails at explaining the difference.