Videogames are fixated upon corridors, be they literal or otherwise. But why, and is it a problem? As I wandered thirsty as a cloud round this year’s Eurogamer Expo show in London, I was struck by how many of the games on show were, fundamentally, games about moving successfully through corridors.
Postmortem: Arrowhead Game Studios' Magicka. [In this candid and thoughtful postmortem, Arrowhead Game Studios CEO Johan Pilestedt describes the haphazard "process" behind the Sweden-based development of the PC game Magicka, showing how lack of experience can lead to pitfalls, even when you have the best advice.]
As I enter the office, I notice the couch in front of the TV is still out of place from the video interviews we did last week. On the wall hangs a spoof Magicka poster, and in a glass display near to the door is our first big award -- the "Swedish Game Awards 2008" trophy, and beside it is Extra Credit's "Most Unbelievable Awesome Fun" award. Programmer Peter Lindgren and CFO Robin Cederholm are discussing their weekends -- it's Monday at Arrowhead Game Studios and I can't help but think how we got to this point, much like Frodo and Sam must've wondered as they returned to the Shire after their long journey.
Mighty Vision: Maturity. A young artist's work looks different to that made by someone older.
Gaming Sequels: A Developer's Headache. Hitman: Absolution has ended a six-year long wait for another sequel in the much-loved stealth franchise.
Despite scoring what can be described as very strong scores across most reviews (it’s currently sitting at 81 for Xbox on Metacritic, one less than its predecessor) it has greatly upset some fans of the series due to slightly changing the formulae of the previous four games. “Hitman is dead, Police suspect Blood Money isn’t involved. Remember that beloved Hitman series? From Torment to Eternity: Chris Avellone on RPGs. The Kickstarter phenomenon that swept the industry in 2012 has been dominated by projects from established figures who made their names in the 1980s and '90s.
These projects trade on nostalgia from fans of genres and game design styles that major publishers have since come to regard as too risky to fund. Obsidian Entertainment creative director Chris Avellone is revered among RPG fans for his work on Fallout 2 and Planescape: Torment (among many other credits). Wii Feature: Revolution: The story of Wii. In 1998, a journalist for The New Yorker asked Bill Gates which of Microsoft's competitors he feared the most.
"I fear someone in a garage who is devising something completely new," he replied. Gates's belief was that there is no greater disruptive force than innovation. The biggest business rivals continually smash against each other in a war of attrition, but nothing has more potential to upend the entire system than a bold new invention. Zoom Three years later, just months after Gates handed control of his software empire to Steve Ballmer, one such unknown garage inventor was knocking on the company's door with an idea that would change videogames forever.
His name was Tom Quinn, a serial inventor based in California who, in certain obscure corners of the internet, is described as "the man who invented the Wii". Endless Space: When Triple-A Developers Go Indie. From its start in a fourth floor apartment (no elevator) in Paris in early 2011 to its final release on Steam on July 4th 2012, Endless Space was both a work of passion and an unexpected adventure for our small team.
The entity now known as Amplitude Studios was the brainchild of Mathieu Girard and Romain de Waubert. Unhappy at the existing crop of space-based 4X games and desiring more creative freedom than they had as executive producers at Ubisoft, the two of them decided to strike out on their own. As Romain later said, he wanted to "...fill bookshelves at home with all the games I wanted to play that were never developed. " Postmortem: McMillen and Himsl's The Binding of Isaac. How did a game destined for failure become a cult smash?
In an article originally written for Game Developer magazine, Edmund McMillen (Super Meat Boy) discusses how he added religion to The Legend of Zelda, mixed it with a roguelike, and came out with a surprise hit. On paper, there is simply no reason for a game like The Binding of Isaac to have become as huge as it has. It makes no sense -- and this is coming from the person who believed in it the most. I knew Isaac was special, but if you asked me to bet on whether Isaac would sell over one million copies in less than a year, I would have bet against it. TEDxKids@Brussels - Gabe Zichermann - Gamification. Features - Postmortem: Humble Hearts' Dust: An Elysian Tail. Why We Love Persona 4. My adoration for Persona 4 is less about escapism and more about the positive messages it enforces.
Acceptance, courage, friendship, selflessness, all those important things and more that are encouraged. I also think Chie and Yukiko are extremely positive representations of ordinary teenage girls. Chie is an easy example because she represents that constant concern so many young women struggle with over ideals. Mario’s Film Folly: The True Story Behind Hollywood’s Biggest Gaming Blunder - Features.
In honor of the 20th anniversary of the Super Mario Bros. movie (released on May 28, 1993), we wanted to share with you this piece from October 10, 2011 about the troubles plaguing the film.
For all their absurdity, the Super Mario Bros. games follow a straightforward template. An Italian plumber adventures in a magical land, fights evil monsters and rescues a princess. It’s simple, but Nintendo’s vibrant fairy tale could have been fertile ground for a Hollywood fantasy epic. Instead, when Super Mario Bros. released in 1993, it portrayed a version of Mario that was worlds away from Nintendo’s vision. The Mushroom Kingdom had been turned into a neon-lit cyberpunk city where dinosaurs had evolved into humans. Fire Flower SaleBy 1990, Super Mario Bros. was one of the biggest intellectual properties on the planet. Death March: The long, tortured journey of Homefront. It was a holiday party, but it hardly felt like a happy occasion for many of the Kaos developers and their partners. Mid-December of 2010 was a fleeting break in the middle of a brutal crunch as the studio tried desperately to finish Homefront, publisher THQ's most ambitious stab at breaking into the alluringly lucrative AAA military shooter market.