Low Fierce

Capcom community and its aversion to updates

2011-06-10T15:45:00.000-07:00

Many competitive games ranging from Star Craft to even Virtua Fighter get updates all the time and with a community that welcomes these with open arms. The exception seems to be the Capcom community. Street Fighter inherently has not and is that a good thing or a bad thing for the community? Lets take a look as to why the community is not open to them like others.

Arcade Culture
Street Fighter II: World Warrior was released in 1991 to a bunch of teenagers that were competitive enough to spend a quarter at a time trying to be the best in their arcades. Capcom actually patched World Warrior at least 3 times that I know of – mostly fixing bugs with a slight hint of balance tweaks. Remember this was for the arcade so there was no real advertising of this or what the tweaks were – let alone getting arcade operators to install them. These updates required swapping out the entire board! And remember at this time World Warrior was everywhere - no donut shop owner is going to swap out a JAMMA board so that the game crashes less often.

The most important thing to remember though is that this was a brand new genre of game being explored for the first time by not only the developers but the community as well. Just because Guile was really good and only person got to pick him at a time, didn’t mean there was anything ‘wrong’ with the game. Just pick Dhalsim.

The main people attracted to Street Fighter were teenage boys that were full of testosterone and welcomed all kinds of challenges. Be it a certain number of wins, beating the people from the rival mall that had come to challenge them or beating people with only one button.

If you look back at where the first real Internet discussions started regarding Street Fighter – Alt.Games.SF2, you will find example after example of people yelling at one another. Including heated arguments with Tom Cannon, Seth Killian and even myself.

Patches or Sequels?
On top of the machismo that exists within the Street Fighter culture, Capcom actually gave us patches…or sequels. Depending on how you look at it:

1991 introduced World Warrior with 8 playable characters.
1992 introduced Champion Edition with balance tweaks and 4 extra playable characters.
1992 (late) introduced Hyper Fighting with balance tweaks.
1993 introduced Super Street Fighter 2 again with balance tweaks and 4 extra playable characters.
1994 introduced Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo with balance tweaks, new mechanics and more playable characters.
As you can see Capcom was giving us balance tweaks (aka patches) but also packaging it along with new playable characters and lots of other small things.

This also lead to franchise fatigue as people got tired of playing the same game every year and competition was heating up from Killer Insinct, Mortal Kombat, Virtua Fighter, Tekken, etc.

I’m not even going to go into the detailed nuances of the differences between the Japanese and American releases and how the console versions are based on the Japanese versions and the differences that can be found there. Suffice it to say, Capcom has actually patched Street Fighter 2 a lot, whether or not people think about it. Let us not forget Remix Edition.

Alpha Series
Alpha series is where things actually start to get a little more interesting. The fighting game community embraced patches/sequels such as CE and HF. SSF2 killed the franchise where I lived and in a lot of other places as well.

Capcom took a small break and tried to bring old players back and make the game more accessible to new players with the Alpha series. While not as big of an impact as previous games, Alpha 1 had its share of success.

And like Capcom had previously done, they quickly released a sequel – Alpha 2. This game however reignited the spark and the community began to grow again. Depending on who you ask, there is a lot of ‘cheap’ stuff in Alpha 2. From Chun Li to Custom Combos themselves or even Alpha Counters. Capcom actually tried to patch this game and released it as Street Fighter Alpha 2 Gold.

Street Fighter Alpha 2 Gold arguably had some good changes along with a few new characters but was immediately dismissed by the fighting game community. People were too set into their ways by the time it came out and offered nothing new and or exciting to players. Alpha 2 Gold was a complete failure.

Street Fighter Alpha 3 was soon released and again sparked the fighting game community and it began to grow as well. There was even the now infamous exhibition with Japan vs. America. There are a few versions of Alpha 3 that I know of – fixing an infinite with Guy for example, but that’s about it – just bug fixes.

Capcom did release a ‘patched’ version of Alpha 3 though – known as Alpha 3 Upper and again was immediately dismissed by the fighting game community.

The Capcom community gravitates towards their game and figuring it out. It seems that when Capcom tries to tinker with it, it has been met with hostility.

Street Fighter 3: 3rd Strike
I’m going to quickly talk about the SF3 series as the history echoes what has happened so far. Sequel after sequel but then Capcom did patch 3rd strike. Capcom decided to ‘fix’ 3rd Strike by removing Urien and Oro’s unblockables. Once again, this was met with hostility and tournament players refused to play this version.

Capcom VS SNK 2
If there is any game that Capcom turned its back on – it was CvS2. And this may not have been a bad thing. A glitch, commonly known as Roll Cancel, was found early in the lifespan of CvS2 where every special move could be done and the player was invincible! No meter was required, simply executing the special move command as you normally would combined with a little bit of finger kung-fu to make it invincible.

Now for some, this ruined the game completely. A lot of people refused to play the game with this glitch. But for some, including myself – this glitch actually led the game to be more playable.

Prior to Roll Cancel being found, the tournaments were dominated by a small selection of characters. Now that the weaker characters had access to invincible moves – it leveled the playing field. Granted as the years went on, a top tier was solidified but it definitely expanded the lifespan of this game far beyond what Capcom had intended.

There was a console version that removed this glitch and once again, the Capcom community turned its back on it.

Street Fighter 4
Before we dive into SF4 we need to take a look at where we have been and how we got here. Capcom was making arcade fighting games for competitive people for the most part. Not only that but when a new version did come out, there was no release notes or anything. People had to figure changes out on their own and one of the reasons why things were met with such hostility is because people thought, ‘well if they changed this one thing…what else did they break?’ type of mentality. Or a lot of it was misunderstood such as, ‘The arcade Wolverine and Cyclops both have easy infinites, but the home version only Wolverine does’ for Xmen vs. Street Fighter.

By the time SF4 finally came out, not only had Capcom taken a long break but the competitive gaming scene had changed drastically with everything from Quake to Call of Duty or even World of Warcraft.

SF4 came out during the era where people expected patches and games were easily to do so. People were quick to complain about Sagat in the arcade and while he did receive some slight changes in the home version, he is still a strong character.

This is where things get interesting and I feel this is actually where Capcom excels at making popular games. They don’t go for balanced games, they strive for playability. Not only that – but by not going for balanced gameplay, they actually appeal to 2 key personalities.

First is the personality that sees an overpowered character like Sagat and says to themselves, ‘I’m going to be the best in the world with this cheap character’. Think Tokido or even Mago.

The second and equally as important personality is the one goes, ‘Fuck that…I’m going to do everything I can to NEVER play that cheap character and beat everyone who plays that way’. Think Clockw0rk or Daigo.

By appealing to these 2 drastically different personalities – they not only get the extremes, but the middle ground personalities as well.

And just for the record, Street Fighter series as a whole has been really well balanced and Vanilla Sagat may be the weakest top tier character in the history of Street Fighter. WW Guile, CE Bison, HF Ryu, etc were all much better.

Sales and Spectacle Matter
So another piece of the whole puzzle is that at the end of the day, Capcom needs to sell units and have their games displayed in exciting ways so that people want to play them and their sequels. There is nothing inherently wrong with companies wanting to make money.

One of the key ways Capcom goes about doing this is making Ryu Strong. People naturally gravitate towards picking Ryu either in the arcade or at home and if he sucks, people are not going to have fun. Now I’m not saying they intentionally make Ryu the best or anything but there is a reason why Ryu is competitive in almost every version.

Capcom isn’t alone in this – look at Virtua Fighter or even Tekken for what characters are consistently the best in their games.

The Dogface Show Ep 1, Part 1

2009-03-03T10:53:00.000-08:00

I promise I won't keep doing this. But I just wanted to update now that we have the first segment of the first episode up. Hopefully everyone finds it as fun as we had making it.

The Dogface Show

2009-02-20T10:21:00.001-08:00

This is what I have been working on for a while now. So if you are wondering why I never update my blog anymore, it's because I have been hella busy with The Dogface Show.

So what is the Dogface Show? Dogface aka Victor Ratliff has been a friend of mine for a long time now. We met playing Street Fighter and we did a podcast not too long for another friend of ours, Ryan Gutierrez aka gootecks.

I believe Maj was the one who had the original idea - but the idea is that Vic has such a great onscreen personality that we should put together a show of some kind. I came on board as executive producer - recruiting James Chen to edit and even Yanbing to do the logo.

Here is the first trailer that we put together to highlight what the show is about:

Our first guests are Ryan Gutierrez and Mike Ross and focuses not just on Street Fighter but the culture of Street Fighter - hanging out, having a good time while also talking strategies and stuff.

It's our first attempt and we'll continue to iron out the bugs. If all goes well we should have our first segment live next week. Hope everyone enjoys it!

First You Runa, Then you Stopa!

2009-02-07T09:36:00.000-08:00

I don't know what it is - but I loves me some Street Fighter songs. Last year Turbo2k5 made me smile nonstop with Gigaton Punch and now Lil Shoto has been bringing the heat with this sick El Fuerto song:

El Fuerto

He also did a great Chun Li one also.

He even did a great Blanka one.

I really hope this guy does the whole cast.

Evo2k dates and lineup for this year

2009-02-02T11:22:00.000-08:00

Evo this year will be July 17th - 19th, 2009 this year. Will still be held in Vegas, but will be at The Rio.

The Games:

* Street Fighter 4
* Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix
* Soul Calibur 4
* Marvel vs. Capcom 2
* Guilty Gear XX, Accent Core
* SF3, Third Strike, 2v2 team tournament

As usual, we will hold exhibition events on Friday and Saturday night.

* Tatsunoko vs. Capcom Invitational Finals
* Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix 5 on 5 Regional Team Tournament

The TvC event will actually be the final 8 players of a 64 man invitational tournament that we will run before hand. The TvC finals will run just like any other Evo finals.

If you have any questions feel free to head over to evo2k.com or shoryuken.com

Combat Systems

2009-01-26T14:30:00.000-08:00

A little over 5 years ago, me and Eric Williams were bored at Border's and discussing the various systems found in fighting games. Specifically Capcom 2D games. We generated a long list of what each game brought to the table for the first time. I was having a problem at work trying to remember how certain games handled things when I stumbled across this. I figured I would post it up, in case anyone else finds it helpful. This is by no means all inclusive or perhaps even accurate. More or less a brain dump we had one evening.

Unfortunately I don't have time to screen cap or vid cap what all of these things are and if you don't follow the Capcom fighting game scene I'm not sure how helpful this will be since there is a lot of jargon but if you have any questions I'll do my best to answer.

Street Fighter 2: World Warrior
2in1's
Links
Special Moves
Kara Cancel
Negative Edge
Meaties
Dizzies
Mashing
Projectiles
Short+Fierce
Breakable Objects
Bonus Stages
Cross ups
Air Throw
Block Damage

Street Fighter 2: Champion Edition
Button Charging for special moves
Vega's Wall Climb
Evade
Get up Animations
Same Player vs. Same Player

Street Fighter 2: Hyper Fighting
Joystick Controllable Movement Specials
Air Special Moves
True Reversals with Specials
Teleport
Air 2in1's

Super Street Fighter 2
Dizzy particle right away
Text Messages (Combo Meter)
Rekka Ken
DJ's Uppercut Punch
Projectile Absorption

Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo
Throw Techs
Overheads
Supers
Juggling
1st game with playable hidden character(?)
Character Variants (old vs. new)
Controllable Limbs
Weapon Loss and Pickups
New Joystick Motions - Fei Long, Cammy
Throw Whiffs

Street Fighter Alpha 1
Chain Combos
Alpha Counter
3 Part Super Meter
2 on 1 (Ryu/Ken vs. Bison)
Command Roll
Friends Super
Hit Throw
Rekka Ken Options (Guy)
Taunts
Character Intros
Rival Fights
Mini Launchers (Rose's Scarf)
Fireball Reflect
Air Block
Block When Landing (Trip Guard)
Auto Block

Street Fighter Alpha 2
Tech Rolls
Custom Combos
Combo-able Alpha Counter (Rose)
Stance Changes
Poison Super
Timed Button Input Specials (Gen's Kick)
2 Hit Air Jumping move (Gen)
Super Jump
Fake Special Moves

Street Fighter Alpha 3
Counter Hits
Air Techs
Every Move Has Potential To Juggle
2 Button Throws
Can Combo After Throw
Guard Crush Meter
Blue Blocking
Damage Reduction
Command Counters (Karin)
Pushblock
Dodge
Crouch Cancelling
Can Be Thrown While In Block/Hit Stun
OTG Command Grabs
System Variants (X vs. A vs. V)
Command Dash

Capcom Vs. SNK
Rolls
Ratios/Teams
Running
Prolonging getting up Animation
Command Charging of Meter (S Groove)
Immobilizing Supers (Iori)
Healing
Infinite Low Life Supers
Mash Inputs to change animation (Yamazaki)
Bird Interaction (Nakoruru)

Capcom Vs. SNK2
Level 2 Cancels
Low Jump
Parry
Just Defend
Raged
Command Activate Meter (N Groove)
Counter Roll
Roll Cancelling
Helper (Chang)
Auto Guard

Street Fighter 3 (all of them)
Special Into Super
Parry / Red Parry
Universal Overhead
Variable Supers / Meters
Dizzy Meter
Unblockable supers (Denjin)
EX Specials
Kara Throw

Marvel Series (all of them)
Super Jump
Double Jump / Triple Jump
OTG
Flying
Flying Screen
Air Combos
Gems
Air Dashing
Back/Forward Dashing
Combo Into Throw (Air and Ground)
Super Armor
Vertical Scrolling Stages
Healing
Tagging
Assists
Team Supers
Snapback
Shuma - Super/Eyeballs/Time Gem
Normal Move Projectiles
No Continue If Hit
Block Damage
Status Upgrades
Stealing Of Moves

Darkstalkers (All of them)
Pouncing
9 Supers
Dark Force
No Update On Rounds
Cursing

2D Misc
Lying Down
Command Dodge
Weapon Clash
Disarm
Unthrowable
Slow Down
Suicides
Destroys
Anti Chip Damage
Jump Cancelling
Roman Cancel

facelift

2009-01-20T22:35:00.000-08:00

So I got sick of how everything was looking and decided to update tonight. Not 100% sure this is the final look either, but I like it better than how it was. So we'll see. In the interim, I'll be re-arranging some stuff and re-organizing some stuff. Let me know if you like it!

Was in Madison all of last week working on Wolverine. You may have seen the last issue of EGM ever with it on the cover. The Raven guys have been a blast to work with. Gustavo, who I worked with on God of War 1 is on the game and has been doing a fantastic job. I can't wait for everyone to see some more footage, let alone get their hands on it. I'm sure there will be some exciting things in the months to come.

Have you guys had a chance to play Prince Of Persia yet? I hope so because my next post will probably be about that game; as I think it very well is my personal Game Of The Year. I'll spoil the hell out of it next time I update.

Talking with your animators

2009-01-19T15:30:00.000-08:00

Eric Williams wrote up a great blog post about animations, talking with animators, etc. You should definitely go check it out.

Click here to read what I'm babbling about.

Kitchen Sink Brush (Gold Tooth)

2009-01-04T18:21:00.000-08:00

I don't know why - but I kind of like this. Definitely not worth $100 though.

Found via BetterLivingThroughDesign

Double Damage is not your friend

2008-12-16T16:10:00.000-08:00

So I meet a lot of designers these days – from seasoned designers who have shipped more games than me to designers whose first game is the one I’m working on them with. One thing that they all have in common, they all suggest giving Double Damage as a mode, attribute, attack, etc for the player or an enemy, boss, etc.

Double Damage – the concept of an attack doing twice the damage compared to normal. For Example – if an attack does 5 points, then with this ‘AWESOME!’ attribute – the attack does 10 points!! Note: Double Damage always comes with 2 exclamation points, that’s how double it is.

So why bother writing up something about this? Well I for one think that it’s a terrible idea 90% of the time. I’ll go into details about that here in a minute, but the main reason why I hate it is because it’s very ‘designery’ solution. It deals with knowing how the details work and playing around with the numbers. It’s not something that is easily understood nor appreciated by the player.

Double Damage is almost always the first thing thought of when a power up is activated, a mode is turned on, etc. Let’s break down a little bit as to why I hate it so much.

Why Double Damage Is Bad
In most games these days – enemies don’t have health bars. Because enemies don’t have health bars, the player really doesn’t know how much damage they are doing with their base attacks. Because they don’t know how much damage their base attacks are doing, how in the world are they ever going to know they are doing Double Damage?

Let’s break it down by math a little. Let’s say an enemy has 35 points of health. Each attack from the player does 5 points, so it takes 7 attacks to kill one enemy. We now double that to 10 – so now it’s 4 hits to kill the enemy. Is that really all that noticeable to the player?

Using the same math example from above – what usually happens is that the player gets surrounded by a group of guys. No one is remembering how many hits they have dished out so far. Let’s be honest – most people are just mashing on buttons and don’t notice that 1 guy died faster than normal out of a big group.

The other down side to Double Damage is when meeting new enemies for the first time. The player has no idea how much health they have or how much damage the attack’s from this new enemy does.

When Double Damage Is Good
Like I said before, I hate it 90% of the time. So what is the 10% of the time I like it?

I think it makes a shitty power-up on its own. I do like it when it gets coupled with something else. Such as adding effects to the weapon and now the enemies explode when killed. Something that is more obvious to the player that something ‘cool’ is happening.

Obviously in situations where the player does know information – such as how much damage their attacks do or how much health the enemy has. This usually works out well in RPG’s since this information gets conveyed more often than in modern day action / adventure games.

Double Damage can be a good thing but it needs to be used properly. Don’t treat it as something ‘cool’ that the player can have and that’s it. If you are going to use it – then really use it. We used it a lot in God of War – but never as a sole attribute. We bundled it along with 900 other things that the player could appreciate: Fire Particles, Super Armor, whole new set of animations, blah blah.

self pimpage

2008-11-12T20:08:00.001-08:00

A few projects that I've been involved with here recently have been released so I figured why not spread the Derek love today.

I did a podcast with Victor 'Dogface' Radliff the other night with Gootecks - a famous Street Fighter 3: 3rd Strike player and now an up and comer in the world of SF4. You can find the podcast here. It was a lot of fun and hopefully you guys will find it fun as well. Note for those that visit my blog about videogame design and stuff - this is purely Street Fighter.

For those of you who do visit here for videogame design - then you may be interested in this:

This book written by Steven Swink can be found here at Amazon.

Steve came into LA a while back to interview me for the book - which talks about 'feel' in videogames, something that definitely piqued my interest. If you pick up the book and look at the book - I have this lovely quote:

"Steve has demystified what separates good games from great games, in a way that everyone can understand. Steve has written the very first book that deconstructs and examines the concept of why certain games feel better than others. Have you ever wondered why a simple action such as jump feels different in all video games? So has Steve, who has explored this and other actions to help everyone create better video games."

So go out there and support Ryan 'Gootecks' Gutierrez and Steve Swink since they are awesome people.

I <3 Castlevania

2008-11-08T10:10:00.001-08:00

I finished my annual obsession with a new handheld castlevania game. Me and the other 200k people since these games barely sell. Sadness.

While a lot of people see it as one of the best 'metroidvanias, I'm not sure if I would call it that. I had a lot of fun for sure but something is definitely missing. For me it was the lack of exploring and backtracking. They decided to have a lot of smaller maps like how Portrait Of Ruin was - but some of the maps I ran through once and never went back.

Anyways, that's not what I wanted to talk about today. They have a couple of interesting mechanics, specifically for the more hardcore players. All of the bosses are really hard this time around. What makes them hard is simply how much damage they do to the player. They are all really pattern based - having 3 or 4 attacks at the most usually. With the limited number of attacks, the bosses become pretty easy to 'read' but one mistake and you are losing 1/4 of your health.

So the interesting thing is they built a mechanic where if you beat the boss without taking any damage then you get a 'medal' which is just a reward, does nothing but says you beat the boss without losing health. Sort of like an achievement. On top of this though, they give the player a ring called, 'The Death Ring' which boosts all of your stats (maybe even doubles them). The 'gimmick' of the ring is that if you are hit once, you die instantly.

After you beat the game, you are allowed to start the game over and keep all of your stuff (including this Death Ring). So you are able to achieve all the medals that you didn't obtain the first time through. So the game gives you this awesome ring - but one hit from the boss and you die. But you are trying to make it through the whole battle without being hit so it all works out.

There are a few other interesting things in the game (such as the character you play after you beat it) but I'm out of time this morning.

Tomb Raider Demo - oh how you broke my heart

2008-11-05T20:14:00.000-08:00

I unfortunately don't have a lot of time but I want to talk about the Tomb Raider: Underworld demo real quick. It's a gorgeous game for the most part and I'm definitely going to pick it up when it comes out. I enjoyed Tomb Raider Legend and wasn't a huge fan of Anniversary but I managed to finish it nonetheless.

Tomb Raider has always been one of my favorite franchises and I was super excited when Crystal Dynamics took it over. That being said...there is one part of the demo that drove me nuts.

They introduce this new mechanic where you pick a stick up off the ground and they teach the player to look for holes in the wall (or columns) to place the stick in. Once placed - it becomes a horizontal pole that she can climb which lets you explore the environment more and move on to the next puzzle or whatever. This is a welcome addition and seems like it could open a lot of things up.

So step 1 in all of this - is seeing the stick on the ground. Step 2 is finding the proper place for it and Step 3 is putting it all together. Simple, clean and elegant.

After doing all that I climb up and around and find the same type of stick ALREADY placed in a hole. So naturally they teach the player to remove the stick and now Lara can walk around carrying the stick.

This is where Step 4 comes into play and this is what drove me nuts. Step 4 in ANY other videogame would be to remove the stick and find a new hole to place it into. So...I walked around for about 5 minutes looking for somewhere to place my new found stick. When Lara does any action such as jump she lets go of the stick. The worst part is that the stick has physics - so I'm up on this ledge, I let go of the stick and kick it off the ledge and immediately think, 'Oh no!! Now I have ruined the puzzle and must restart the game'.

Turns out...all the player has to do is remove the stick from the hole that it was in to solve the 'puzzle'. There was no step 4!! Maybe because it's a demo and perhaps the middle part of the game and none of this really has context but I really did wander for a good 5-10 minutes looking for that 2nd layer of the mechanics that were just taught to me.

Also - please tell the player what they have picked up. Again - this may just be a 'demo' thing but I picked up all sorts of things off the ground and she just put them in her backpack without ever telling me what they were.

More missing time

2008-11-02T16:04:00.000-08:00

So I made a promise to myself to try to update this blog more often and boy have I sucked at keeping that promise. Some days I wonder if I should stop updating at all. Not sure what I'm getting out of it let alone you the reader. I guess I'll just babble and see where this post leads to.

Playing through Castlevania: Order of something or other on the DS right now. The DS is pretty much my favorite Next Gen system. Although I fucking lost mine on a plane trip here recently (with my coveted Soul Bubbles!). Thanks to an awesome person - they sent me a replacement. I was thinking about holding off and picking up that DSi thing - but that thing might as well be the Gameboy Color of DS's. Of course we all know what's going to happen - Nintendo is going to come up with some way of using the Camera in Animal Crossing and sell 9 million more units just like that.

Castlevania is pretty damn hard this time around. I'm a huge fan of the route that Castlevania has gone since Symphony Of The Night - the whole Metroidvania route. This one doesn't seem to have a whole lot of exploring to it which bums me out, but it's still fun - when I'm not using Magical Tickets to escape back to the village so I can heal myself.

I've been a traveling fool here lately. I've been in Madison, WI twice, Vancouver and Albany all within the last month or so. I have a stack of receipts scattered through out my laptop bag, bedroom and office that I need to collect and turn in. Anyone have a good method of keeping all that stuff organized? I definitely suck at it.

The trips were fun though - I always enjoy going to visit the fine folks at Raven (madison). Something about making videogames in the midwest speaks to me. Plus I get to see an old co-worker of mine, Gustavo. Vancouver was fun because I had never been there before. Visited Radical now that they are part of the huge Activision Blizzard umbrella or whatever. Super Super nice studio - the main meeting room is a log cabin. It's completely out of control. Albany was also a brand new city for me - super cold but a lot of fun as well. I can't remember what projects have and haven't been announced so I'll just shut up now.

I went to Universal Studios this year for their Halloween event. Wow - that place was amazing. Definitely hollywood level of makeup and gore combined with people jumping out and scaring me nonstop. There was one event where you take a tram to another part of the park and there is a huge plane crashed on the ground, broken in half, etc. Totally looked like the set of Lost or something.

I went to the 1st halloween screening of Dr.Horrible here in LA on halloween night. That was a lot of fun as well - Joss Whedon himself was there along with Nathan and Felicia Day; no Doogie Howser but what do you expect. The movie was subtitled so everyone could sing along - plus they sold a bag of random interactive items. These were really random things like little 'curtains' so the crowd could lift them up when Dr. Horrible says, '...you're curtains.' or some nonsense like that.

Oh yeah - started playing Dead Space (told you I was going to babble). Hrm...Need to play it some more to really form an opinion. The presentation is off the chart but I feel like I'm doing a lot of fetch quests so far which is getting a little annoying. I'm only on chapter 3 or 4 right now so hopefully it gets better.

I'm downloading the demo's for the new Tomb Raider and Mirror's Edge - I'll go check those out when I'm done updating.

Oh yeah - so a lot of games have been released (or about to) that I worked on the past year or so. Spider-Man: Web of Shadows, Quantum of Solace and Guitar Hero: World Tour. Where to begin? Spider-Man seems to either click with people or not. Never been involved with a game that is all over the map as far as review scores are concerned. Usually they are super bad or decent.

All the games seem to suffer from a little nostalgia (Guitar Hero a little less but it's there) - Web of Shadows vs. Spider-Man 2 and Quantum vs. Goldeneye. In both instances (SM2 and Goldeneye) people seem to remember these games being perfect 10's or something. I'm not making excuses as I'm proud of both games but, damn - nostalgia is a motherfucker.

There is good stuff in both games and it will be interesting to see what happens with both.

Guitar Hero was definitely interesting. The only part I was involved with was multiplayer and it was interesting due to competing with Rock Band and trying our best to not straight up copy for fear of litigation. Now that the game is out - I see where a few mistakes were made and this is more of a mental reminder for myself to email some people on Monday. In all honesty though - both games (RB2 and GH4) have issues when it comes to multiplayer, both parts have good things but neither is perfect. Maybe next time out some issues can get ironed. But if you hate the multiplayer in GH4 then feel free to yell at me.

Let's see - I finished reading, 'The Art of Learning' by Josh Waitzkin. Josh is the main character in, 'Searching For Bobby Fischer' - the child chess phenom. He talks a lot about how when the movie came out - for a variety of reasons he lost interest in chess and took up a type of taiwanese martial arts. He then went on to become world champion in that as well. Discusses how he conquered both a mental game and a physical game and the process of learning both. Super interesting and I definitely recommend it. Although his writing gets worse as the book goes on IMO.

I think both demo's are finished so I'm going to go check those out.

Beasting The Daigo Is Super Simple

2008-09-20T09:49:00.001-07:00

I really hate to 'link and run' but this video is pretty damn epic to say the least. My friend BAS sent it to me this morning and at first I didn't pay any attention to the song but then realized it was a 10 minute song about the Legendary Daigo. I asked BAS what the end says - he says something like, 'We didn't see you at SBO2008 - we missed you and please come back." Something along those lines.

It's fun to see Daigo over the past 10 years - from coming to America for the first time to play Alpha 3 with all of us. To watching him play Darkstalkers which I heard he was super good at but never really followed to be honest. All the way through CvS2, Guilty Gear, ST and 3rd Strike. It's been a fun 10 years to say the least.

Developers everywhere are in pain

2008-09-09T11:16:00.000-07:00

Eric Williams sent me this, so I'm not 100% sure of its origins. I get the feeling that it's not about game development but it still applies and makes me laugh. Enjoy!

Lego's and ramblings

2008-09-08T19:41:00.000-07:00

This thing is so damn adorable. Big ups to Fredo for making this and all the other awesome stuff on his site.

So what have I been up to these days? Not talking about vice president milf's thats for sure. I've been playing a lot of Newtonica here lately. In case you haven't heard or played - Newtonica is an iPhone game made by 2 famous people - Kenichi Nishi and Kenji Eno. Nishi worked on Chrono Trigger and Chibi Robo, where as Eno who is a musician worked on D and the sequel. It's only $5 totally worth the money. Hopefully this is a sign of the future - the iPhone being a viable platform where small and unusual games can be developed and released.

I spent a Saturday awhile back with another downloadable game - Ratchet and Clank Quest For Booty on the PS3. I don't know a whole lot about the development of it - how long it took, how much $ or what but this is totally what I want from games - spend $15, play for about 3.5-4 hours, beat it and move on with your life. The game is a little weird for sure - you spend $15 and you download the whole game and it looks and plays like a $60 game! In fact the $60 game I just got done playing not that long ago. This is a plus and a minus - I think it's a great value but I think psychologically a lot of people forget they only paid $15 and want a 20 hour long epic. However the value works out to be around the same - $15 for 4 hours = $3.75 and $60 for 20 hours = $3.

I thoroughly enjoyed it though - was great to get back to platforming instead of just shooting everything like how part 3 was. I did miss clank with all of his banter and the weapons could have been new or at least upgraded but hey I had fun and didn't feel like the game owed me anything. I've been wanting them to do something new with the wrench since part 2 and I'm glad they finally did. Definitely an enjoyable game.

I was also watching a lot of bad Smallville. Yeah yeah yeah, I know the show is no good but I somehow managed to watch all of seasons 1-4 and I noticed via Netfix that Season 5 was on HD-DVD so I figured I should put that thing to use. Man...it's like the show never goes anywhere! Anytime something does happen, the characters always mysteriously forget everything and the story resets itself back to zero so to speak. Season 6 is on Blu Ray but I just don't know if I can manage to do it. Does it get any better? Even Spike couldn't save the show.

I'm going to go peep out Shirley Manson of Garbage and her acting skills on that Terminator show since it is returning to TV tonight. The fact that I'm excited to go turn on a show with Brian Austin Green frightens me.

Sega slaps one of their developers

2008-08-12T20:32:00.001-07:00

So in all honesty I kind of avoid those really long interviews that involve CEO's and what not. But this came to my attention today. This is from an interview at GamaSutra with Simon Jeffery who is now the CEO of Sega of America. When asked about Secret Level (developer of Iron Man and Golden Axe) if they would ever be an AAA studio, he had this to say:

I think the design side of the studio... they don't have world-class designers, but they do have world-class technology and world-class art.

Keep in mind that Sega owns Secret Level!! It is this guy's job to be like, 'Iron Man sold the #'s we were looking to sell and Golden Axe is going to be a huge hit!" or some other PR nonsense.

Instead he compares them to another studio and talks shit about their designers. I've played Iron Man and trust me - design was not the single factor that made that game rank below the 50's on Gamerankings.

It's very easy to blame design as to why things went bad but I'm sure he didn't bother to check the tools pipeline to see how long it takes to re-iterate on stuff or how often the game kept crashing right before Alpha, and the other 9 billion small things that make developing a game harder then it should be.

I also love how this whole thing unfolds - he talks more about Secret Level by saying:

"We acquired them for a pretty small amount of money and built them out."

So they buy them for cheap knowing what they were strong and weak at and when Iron Man doesn't pan out he finds the easiest escape goat. Not only that but supposedly this 'design weak' studio is now in charge or re-booting one of their classic franchises. Not a great decision if thats how he felt in the first place.

All I know is that if I was a designer at Secret Level I would be looking for a new job immediately. Don't put up with that type of abuse.

There are a lot of world class CEO's in the video game industry and you Simon Jeffery are definitely not one of them.

Catching up with the world

2008-08-06T21:35:00.000-07:00

I feel like I do a lot of these whole catching up posts which is really a sign that I need to update more. Yeah - I suck.

So E3 came and went and I'm sure everyone has an opinion as to why it sucked. Like Eric - I didn't go to E3 this year either which was a little odd. I did however attend way too many parties including the Rock Band party so I got to see the Who. I also got to meet Stephen Totilo in person for the first time which was a lot of fun. Got to meet N'gai which was a highlight for sure. Now that I think about it I didn't get to meet a lot of developers - only journalists. Not sure what that says but it seems like it could be important! Ok...maybe not.

I should have gone to Comic Con and I didn't. There are a lot of reasons why I should have gone - the most important being to see my friend Jeremy from Dark Horse but I can feel myself getting old and after being out til 4 a.m. every night during E3 I needed the whole week to rest and Comic Con was just too intimidating.

Evo is coming up this week - I am attending that though. A really good friend of mine, Tommy Ho - an animator on God of War 2 is getting married this weekend so I'll be running a little late getting to Evo so I couldn't enter Super Turbo but thems the breaks.

Speaking of God of War - I read the new issue of EGM this week. While not only being one of the best issues of EGM that I have read in a really long time - God of War gets name dropped like 900 times - 700 in the Diablo 3 article alone. So the new issue, which as Soul Calibur 4 on the cover, focuses on interviewing a lot of Jpnese developers and getting their opinions on the state of videogames and dives into how western developers have not only caught up but surpassed them in a lot of respects. It's cool to have them interview Kamiya (Lead on DMC1, RE2, Okami, blah blah) and when he answers with a controversial answer - you turn the page and there is an interview with Itagaki bringing up that controversial answer.

I really like when when developers talk about games other then their own. I understand from a PR standpoint it is a bad thing - any mention is free publicity for said game but thems also the breaks.

So back to the new EGM - there is a conversation with Rob Pardo from Blizzard who I have never met although I feel like I should have by now and he talks a lot about how they are taking cues from GoW to use on Diablo 3. I will fully admit to have never played Diablo 1 or 2 (I *hate* grinding in videogames) but it makes me want to play Diablo 3 haha. Hopefully that doesn't come across as arrogant because thats not my point. I want to play it to see what parts they thought were cool and were inspired from.

The best part of this issue hands down was the interview with Hideki Kamiya. As I mentioned earlier he was lead on Devil May Cry 1, Resident Evil 2, Viewtiful Joe, Okami, and is now spearheading a new game called Bayonetta that I'm dying to get my hands on. I bug Seth every chance but he's a hard nut to crack. They asked Kamiya what he thought about all of the bigger action games such as Shinobi, Ninja Gaiden, etc and he had this to say about God of War:

"My impression is that it's very carefully made, the details are all carefully made. So, Devil May Cry was a bit rough, but there's no roughness in God of War. I think that it's very well made. I feel a bit bad about talking like somebody who is evaluating the game, but I felt like they created the game very well for attracting new users. They give you a huge impact right in the beginning and just draw you into the game. I'm very impressed that they made the game like that. "

There are so many moments in this paragraph that make me gush like a little school girl but the most important one is him talking about how we made the game very well for attracting new users. This was such a huge push for all of us on the project and for it to be recognized by someone like Kamiya...makes me want to send him internet chocolates or something.

Other then that I have been very busy at work as Activision loves to put out 900 titles for the holiday season and all of those games are ending around now. I'm rather proud of the work that I did on Guitar Hero 4. After the project ships I'll try to talk about that a little bit more as it was an interesting experience. I've been very busy with Bond - working on it almost every single day for a while now. I didn't really touch any of the ingame stuff - just a small part but I'm proud of what was accomplished. For better or worse - everything that I worked on was already there in some form. I just showed up late and tried to help the team put it all together in a fun way and it seems to have worked out. Hopefully the people who buy the game will think so as well. There is one part in CoD that I *really* want to touch but I don't know if I will have the chance. I need to bug the people that be about that tomorrow actually.

I've been going back and watching all of Buffy again. I'm on the 5th season and I'm so envious of how much Joss Whedon had accomplished by then, let alone now with Dr. Horrible. In fact...I'm being called to go start Buffy. Talk to everyone later.

Midway LA to close

2008-07-22T21:15:00.000-07:00

I saw this headline on Gamespot today which I knew was coming for a while but kind of shocked at the same time to know that is reality. I believe as soon as they are done with TNA! Impact they are moving to San Diego.

However before Midway LA ever existed there was Paradox - creators of Thrill Kill, Wu Tang, the Xmen fighting games, MK Shaolin Monks and the infamous Backyard Wrestling series. In all honesty the Paradox that I worked for has been gone since Midway came in and bought them out. In fact the office of the Paradox owner had been converted to a gym once Midway showed up. So it's a little weird for me to reminisce about this now but hey..thats the way life works sometimes. The picture above was taken when it was Paradox - I'm not even sure what the inside of Midway LA looks like.

Looking back at all the talent that came out of there is beyond crazy. This is where myself, Eric Williams, Cory Barlog, James Che, Bruno, Gilley, Tommy Ho, Todd Piperi, Adam Puhl all basically grew up and figured out how to make video games.

There was an amazing part of the warehouse we all sat in - with what may have been the greatest concentration of designers that I can think of. Mark Acero who is now working on Golden Axe, John Edwards who is basically like ...i forget his exact title but hella high up on the MK vs. DC team, Omar Kendall who is at THQ working on the next UFC game, Mike Bilodeau who is at Neversoft still I do belive, plus myself, Eric Williams and Adam Puhl. We all sat basically right on top of one another in the middle of a warehouse. This doesn't even count all the other great designers that came through there such as Ben Cureton (rainbow studios i believe), Ben Kutcher (turned programmer early in his career but worked on the nail a trick stuff at neversoft and is still there), Jason Cole, Paul Edwards, Fernandez, etc We had the equivalent of doors turned into desks but back then we didn't know any better and made due with what we had. We also had crazy external producers from Sony come and break our producer's leg. Ahh - good times.

It was a great place to work especially if you were into combat games since basically all Paradox made were fighting games. This is where we got to try out various ideas and see what worked and what didn't. We also got to work on such quickly cancelled games/demos as He-Man, a Fight Club demo, a Kung Faux demo...Im sure there were a ton more but nothing is coming to mind.

Once Mystic Monks got picked up by Midway and turned into Shaolin Monks, Paradox was quickly bought out. This was around the time I left so like I said - it hasn't been Paradox for a long time and while I never did work at Midway LA I will still miss it in some weird way. I wish everyone the best of luck when it comes to finding a new job or moving to San Diego.

Where The Hell Is Matt?

2008-07-08T18:31:00.000-07:00

I don't know the whole story but I do know that Matt used to work in the video game industry, specifically Pandemic.

I've heard conflicting reports but the story I heard was that Matt got rather burnt out as it seems most video game developers do. He decided to travel the world and started making youtube videos doing it. He seems to have gathered a rather huge following on Youtube and now Stride sponsors him as he travels around the world. What he is doing aside from dancing...I don't really know.

What I do know is that this video really does bring a smile - it touches my soul in some weird way. I hope you enjoy it as well.

HD Remix - 1st day of release video

2008-06-25T10:38:00.000-07:00

This video is brought to you by Neil 'CigarBob' Atkin. I've known Neil for about 12 years now. We first met via AGSF2 and me sending him a B3 tape on VHS and him sending me some 2nd Impact footage from Southern Hills Golfland that Eddie Lee went to. Over the years me and him exchanged a lot of videos and a lot of excuses (oh man - the package got returned, wrong address - my bad!') but I still heart the Neil. While I am sad that he didn't send me this video in the mail I'm glad that it does exist.

I'm not sure if that is Neil's laugh or not but that very well may be the best laugh on the planet.

NOTE: To be fair to Sirlin this juggle with Ken has been removed for a while. Made it into the beta though. Don't expect this to be in the final version that comes out.

Dear Sony - Please update your PS1 games on the PS Store

2008-06-25T07:47:00.000-07:00

So last night I turned on the old BBQ to play some Conan (more on that after I beat it...) and of course I had to update the damn thing. While I am sick of pointless updates I hit OK and agreed to the 1.1 user agreement (don't they need to update that thing one of these days?). After the update I decided to hit up the PS store since I never use that thing.

I got all excited since I've been playing my PSP here lately (the 2nd syphon filter game if anyone is curious) and thought maybe I'll grab some new PS1 games to put on the PSP. While I am excited for R-TYPES (seriously - who came up with this name? Terrible) I'm so fucking sick of seeing the same 9 games that filled up the PS1 section for the last 12 years. I get it - Jet Moto and Crash 2 are good games but damn I swear these are the only games that have been on sale in Best Buy and now online for what feels like over a decade.

Quickly scanning the 21 titles for sale (exhausting...I know) it's obvious the majority of the library is limited to Sony titles. However with stuff like Tekken 2 and Symphony of the Night (something I did buy and played through like 3 times on a trip to Shanghai) it gives me hope that maybe some more are coming. But damn...when!?!? Where is Tobal 2, Final Fantasy, Tekken 3, Street Fighter Alpha 3, Metal Gear, etc? I'm sure there is probably some problem with games that had multiple discs but if the PSP scene can figure out a solution then I'm sure you guys can also.

While I'm on the subject of PSP - seriously STOP PORTING PSP GAMES TO PS2!! Ratchet - Size Matters on the PS2 is a mess.

Spider-Man: Web Of Shadows

2008-06-21T08:09:00.000-07:00

When I first started working at Activision this was one of the many games I worked on (I obviously can't talk about them all but I did mention Kung Fu Panda earlier) and this trailer has really blown me away.

Tom, Tim and Shaheed have done a really good job of elevating Spider-Man to a new level never seen in previous Spider-Man games. It's really weird looking back because before when being involved with video games I would be knee deep in the day to day stuff and implementing and bug fixing and all that. With WoS it was a more hands off approach and a lot of documentation and just meeting with them face to face. It's kind of cool to see how far those 3 (and I shouldn't forget the animators either - Alex and James) have come given all the obstacles that have been in the way.

So yeah - disregard those screen shots that got posted earlier. Those things don't do the game justice what so ever. In fact I'm not sure if any screen shot really does a game justice. What a weird concept huh? Taking something that is moving and selling it with a static photo? Eric and myself used to always joke that one day we hope when you turn videogames over in the store to see the back of the box that instead of a photo it would somehow show a video clip of the game. Totally off topic tangent here but when I went to go see Indy 4 the theater had taken plasma screens and turned them vertical using them to show off video of up and coming movies. Was way more impressive then a traditional movie poster.

Back to Spider-Man though! Hopefully everyone will check out the trailer and get excited - I know it's been rough for Spidey fans - the 3rd movie, Kirsten Dunst in general, and the 3rd game wasn't so hot either. Stay strong true believers!!

Oh! And screw all those haters on Spider-Man: Friend or Foe. That game was a lot better than anyone gives it credit for. It was a fun Lego Star Wars type of game but somehow the press just didn't see that at all and slammed it. Time to stop rambling.

Interesting look at Star Wars Galaxies from an insider

2008-06-17T08:42:00.000-07:00

So I know nothing about this game what so ever aside from what friends have told me about it. All I really remember was a lot of drama about who could be a Jedi and what it took to be one. Plus compared to WoW every MMO seems like a failure to me so I don't know if it really was or not. However I stumbled across this and found it an interesting read.

Ruben Field has this to say:

"So we were given the directive to make Galaxies better.

Not just make Galaxies better, but make it succesful. Not the 200k subs it had, but really succesful. The idea was that we had the most valuable IP in the entire world, and we fucked it up to the point of having 200k subs."

Like I said - I gots no real knowledge on this game, had to look up what in the world NGE (New Game Enhancement) even meant but I found it an interesting read. Not often do you find such a detailed look at what went wrong with a game.

Click here to read the rest.

GBA Micro

2008-06-13T20:42:00.000-07:00

I believe I have talked about one of my favorite devices but if not, allow me to indulge.

The image you see to the left is my famicom gba micro that I bought from NCSX when they were first announced. Of course I bought the Japanese version thinking there is no way it would come out in America and of course it did haha. Oh well - I think mine has a mario or something on the back and the American version does not.

I don't know what it is but handheld gaming definitely speaks to my heart a lot of times over standard console games. I like the immediacy (usually) of turning something on and playing for a few minutes then turning it off. The GBA Micro may very well be my favorite handheld of all time. The D-Pad is one of the if not the best D-Pads on any console regardless of size. In face I play Super Turbo nonstop with this thing. Of course I don't play single player but the training mode in that game is surprisingly fun and accurate. I've spent way more time than I would care to admit doing stupid stuff like cross up, overhead, low forward into super with Ryu vs. Gief or jump in fierce, low jab x2, standing jab into Guile versus Fei Long.

While I definitely love my DS and even my PSP on occasion I keep coming back to my GBA Micro. Not only do I never charge the thing and it lasts for an eternity but the GBA catalog makes me smile as well. Both Metroid games are good - ok so the first one sucks a little but the second one is amazing, Aria of Sorrow, Drill Dozer, Zelda, Wario, Rhythm Tengoku (best game on the GBA?), Mario & Luigi, etc are all phenomenal games. Even the GBA Wario sequel which I didn't like all that much at first - Wario Ware Twisted is a billion times more fun on the GBA Micro.

What really made me remember how much I love my Micro is this thread on NeoGaf. That guy makes me want to run out and buy 3 more to say the least.

I know the Micro got a bad rap when it first came out - if I'm not mistaken DS Phat was already released and the screen was considered too small by a lot of people (something i completely disagree with) and the shoulder buttons being a little whacky (something I will sheepishly nod my head to) but it has been one of the best things I ever bought. While I don't condone piracy I did buy a flash cart so I could play NES games on it and let me tell you - having a portable NES was truly gaming nirvana for a while. Every time I was sitting in the boyfriend chair at the mall I could get some Mike Tyson's Punch Out going on. Yeah - it's totally being a geek but oh well. 007-373-5963 FTW.

*I don't know how readily available they are in America these days but play-asia is still selling the famicom version for reasonable.

Radiohead covering Portishead

2008-06-10T08:21:00.000-07:00

I don't normally do this but I found this cover by Radiohead this morning and figured I would share it with everyone. The original is by Portishead and is called, 'The Rip'.

God Of War 2 Combo Video

2008-06-07T15:00:00.000-07:00

Combo Maniacs (tm) Majestros and Magnetro came out of the woodwork with what may be one of their best videos ever. Of course I'm biased since it's based on a game that I poured my heart and soul into but the creativity and the editing on this thing is some of the best I have ever seen them do.

Check out Magnetro's Page where a higher quality version can be found.

Check out the Transcription explaining what is going on with every combo.

Check out Majestros' page of his craziness.

Last but not least thanks to SleazyC from GAF for posting this on Vimeo and letting me jack it without asking first ^_^

The last combo is INSANE!!!

I suck at this whole updating thing

2008-05-23T20:33:00.000-07:00

So yeah I haven't updated in like 900 years so I figured I better do it now before another 900 years go by.

Iron Man came out and was rather entertaining. Sorta felt like 14 small different pieces placed next to one another but the 14 small pieces were all well done that I didn't care a whole lot. I ended up watching it twice in the movie theater and one of the things I realized on the 2nd viewing was that this film and the 2nd Marvel movie coming out this summer (Hulk) both have the same 'bad guy'. The bad guy in both movies is basically a variation of the hero in the movie. Not sure if it means anything - just something I noticed.

I really need to go back to playing GTA. Ohh! I never updated with my hatred for this game. HAHA - not really the game - but the initial experience was terrible. Someone had it at work so I borrowed it during lunch time and played it on the 360. After like 20 or 30 minutes I turned it off with the intention of buying it. The people I go to lunch with are all about multi player games on the PS3 so I decided to pick up on the PS3. I bought a PS3 at launch so I have a launch 60 gb - in case you can guess where this story is going. I loaded it up and paused it to grab laundry or something menial and when I came back like 5 minutes later the game grashed on me. No big deal - I load it back up and it won't load the saved game that I had. So I read online and there are all these crazy snake oil solutions which I try - deleting the install, deleting the saved game, etc. So I re-install and play the game for about 2 hours having fun. Turn it off to eat dinner or whatever and turn it back on - and of course it won't load up. I just ejected it and took it back to Best Buy and exchanged it for the 360 version.

So I get home with the 360 version and start the game back up but this is like...the 4th or 5th time I have seen this damn beginning and I can't really take it anymore. I turned it off and play it from time to time but I really need to get back to it. BTW - the melee in this game is absolutely fucking terrible. The counter system feels wretched. Please rockstar - poach someone who has a clue before doing the next game. Make sure whoever you poach brings an animator with them as well.

Since leaving Sony Santa Monica I've been working at Activision in their Central Design department. We sort of take a look at every game that Activision puts out and try to help where we can. The first game that I focused a lot of time on when I got there is about to come out - Kung Fu Panda!! The demo is on Xbox Live and it's worth checking out. It's a kid's game for sure but I am pretty proud the way the game came out. I wasn't part of the team so to speak so my involvement was very hands off compared to previous games and the team (luxoflux) did an amazing job on it. I think it might be the best looking kid's game I've ever seen - the art is fantastic.

Oh yeah - Guitar Hero 4 got announced! I can't wait til you guys get to check out the drum kit for this game. It's soooo nice! I know I know - a lot of you have been bashing it for 'copying' rock band but trust me on this one. I'll try to post up more when I can but it's such a huge title with tons of stuff that can't be talked about so we'll see.

When I was in Shanghai I did what all good American's do and bought some bootleg DVD's. I picked up Six Feet Under because I had never seen it. While I was amazed at the cost ($2 at the most if i remember right) the quality has been pretty damn bad. I've been really enjoying it but I think I'm going to netflix the rest.

I'm getting up early tomorrow morning to go watch Indiana Jones at the bridge here in LA. They have a 'director's hall' with reserved seating and all that stuff. It is slowly turning into my favorite movie theater in LA. Not to mention it's also the closest to me since I moved.

Have a good memorial weekend everyone.

OH!! I'm SUUUUUUPER excited about the new capcom game - Capcom vs. Tatsunoko. Yeah - I don't recognize half the characters either but I'm super Japan felt the same way when they first saw Xmen vs. Street Fighter. The peeps in the know say this is the tag team and basically MvC3. I am calling right now - this game will be better than Street Fighter 4.

What a strange year 2008 will be. Street Fighter has gone from being basically the equivalent of Star Trek (something everyone on the planet knows but no one cares about) to having 3 great games coming out. HD Remix will be awesome, SF4 hopefully will be great and now this crazy Tatsunoko game. A good time to be a fan for sure.

New appreciation of LA

2008-04-27T14:15:00.000-07:00

First of all I definitely suck since I really had the best of intentions to post more often. Sometimes life just gets in the way.

So let's see what has been going on? I finally beat Devil May Cry 4 - yeah I know I suck for taking forever to beat that as well. Definitely not a bad game but I'm not sure if it's as good as DMC3. DMC3's combat system was able to sustain that whole game. While Nero is awesome I'm not really sure if I could have played all 20 missions with just him. Although Dante really added nothing new to the game he was a good break up. Playing the same enemies with both really highlighted the different playstyles with both. Nero controls space soooo differently from Dante (Trickster being the closest to playing as Nero) that they really feel like 2 different characters. I rarely used the guns with Nero and with Dante I use the guns nonstop. Aside from the game breaking down here and there (fuck a bunch of their routing) and having to play the bosses 3 times I really enjoyed it.

Next on my list is Conan. I remember playing the demo but I'm gong to give the whole game a chance. Something to kill some time with before GTA comes out I guess. I still haven't decided which system to buy it on. Knee jerk is to buy it on 360 and even though it's not - GTA really feels like a Playstation franchise to me. I hella doubt I ever finish the game so the idea of DLC doesn't really appeal to me and I'm still on the fence about GTA Multiplayer. Shrug - we'll see I guess.

On a personal level life has been really hectic here lately. 2 friends of mine from Nor Cal came down to LA to hang out. We all ended up going to a Korean booking club which is umm...interesting haha. It's sort of like the Korean version of speed dating. The girls get in for free where (these are normal girls, not some scandalous girls hired for the club) as the guys have to pay for a table. The table usually comes with a bottle of alcohol and some random food like fruit to eat. The table isn't cheap either (the amount of money paid that night was obscene). The guys sit down and tell the waiter what kind of girls they like - short hair, long hair, blah blah. Then the waiter goes and find the girls on the dance floor or whatever and brings them to your table. The girls usually stay for a few minutes - have a shot, talk about whatever then take off or stick around. Basically the guys and girls get to meet a lot of people in a short amount of time. I guess it's something you gotta experience.

My parents were in town not too long ago as well. We were supposed to visit Nor Cal but couldn't do to a lot of random reasons. Ended up going to Sea World in San Diego - I had never been there before. Not too bad at all. Visited a lot of new places in LA that I had never been before such as the Bergamont Station in Santa Monica, the Greystone Mansion in Beverly Hills where like EVERY movie is filmed. The list was ridiculous - blood will tell, ghostbusters, spiderman3, witches of eastwick, x-men, etc. Unfortunately you can't go inside the house but the grounds are pretty nice to walk around. Also visited the Will Rogers state park not to mention the LA Zoo.

I'll try my best to update more often these days.

I <3 Jason Rubin

2008-03-26T18:07:00.000-07:00

As some of you may or may not know I travel a lot these days. Specifically I've been traveling to San Francisco once a week for work. As I was flying back to town the other day I looked into the seat back pocket and found an issue of Star Magazine. As everyone knows I'm a sucker for gossip so I got all sorts of excited and started thumbing through it when I found this:

"Just three days after confirming that she had split with her rocker fiance Benjie Madden, Sophie Monk was spotted having brunch with video game director Jason Rubin! The Aussie singer, 28, and Jason "looked like they were having a good time" while eating al fresco at Griddle Cafe in West Hollywood on Feb. 15, an eyewitness tells Star. "It looked like a date."

So it's official. Jason Rubin has won the war to be the first Video Game Designer to be in a gossip magazine. He even got an exclamation point after his name. I'm a little bit jealous, I won't lie. Oh well. I guess I dropped the ball on creating crazy websites like he did.

GoW: Chains of Olympus

2008-03-10T22:06:00.000-07:00

Over the weekend I got to play this great little game called God of War: Chains of Olympus. This is the first God of War game that I have never worked on. Like...at all. haha. I liken it to watching your kids go off to kindergarten for the first time. Of course I have no idea what that is really like but you get the idea. As you can guess when I went to go play the game the battery on my PSP was dead so I had to recharge it.

I must say that I think RAD did a really good job with the game. It has all the ingredients from a typical God of War game. It also has what might be the best subweapon that Kratos has ever had - the gauntlets. Me and eric argued a lot over hammer in God of War 2 - I'll say it straight out I think we dropped the ball by not having the soul at level 1. As a player you get this crazy new weapon but then your evade is taken away from you. The design goal for the hammer was to be a slow weapon but the souls were the setups to let you use the slow weapon. Enough of Gow2....

The art looks fantastic and they managed to stream everything in which I was really impressed with. The sounds are all spot on (it sounds like a gow game!) and the music is great as always. There is a mini-game at the end that has the potential to go down as another great example of interactive story telling.

Although not everything is perfect in this PSP world. Level design was kind of a low point for me along with a lot of the combat scenarios - I think there are more 'demon doors' in COO then GoW1 and 2 combined. Back to level design - I'm not really sure if it was a tad bit weaker then previous GoW games or if that I just didn't know where to go like I normally do. Hard to tell without bias thats for sure. Either way - weak level design in a GoW game is definitely better than the greatest level design in DMC4.

There are some things I would have done differently (like more health chests!) but it's a fun roller coaster ride on a system that hasn't had one in a really long time. If you own a PSP and are a fan of God of War you should definitely check it out.

Now that my PSP battery is charged up it is time to go check out the Jpnese demo of Echochrome.

P.S. Sorry El Jaffe but the story left me a tad bit confused this time around.

Mac Air or how Apple Cheats

2008-02-29T14:31:00.000-08:00

So this very well may be Industrial Design 101 and if it is, my apology.

Apple decided to introduce the Mac Air here recently. The first thing they showed wasn't the computer itself but a common every day product that it resembled, the manila envelope. To me this has been one of the keys to Apple's success - having their products remind the user of items they are already used to. Same with Nintendo - it is no coincidence that the Wiimote looks like a TV remote. It's inviting and doesn't scare away anyone from using their products.

The Mac Air isn't the first product from Apple to look like an every day item either. Remember the 1st Shuffle that they released?

It resembles a pack of gum so much that there were plenty of images online to choose from to post:

Instead of posting a 100 more images just think about the new Ipod Nano and its shape - much like a post it note. Even the original Ipod resembles a pack of cards.

So what does this have to do with videogame design? There is definitely something to be said about being innovative but there is even more to be said about familiarity. I don't think it's a bad thing to give the player something immediately to attach to - be it the shape of the character, the weapon, color, controller commands, etc.

Captain obvious warning here, but: the opposite of familiar is unknown and most people fear the unknown...even in video games, that instant familiarity with the player or player's weapon, attack, etc breaks down that survival instinct to flee, so to speak.

Eric and myself always sort of had an unspoken rule - if we couldn't explain something to someone and give them a reference that they understood then the idea sucked. It was a good first step in self editing.

I'm sure the Mac Air won't be the last Apple product to be released that reminds everyone of a shape that has nothing to do with computers.

Mario Galaxy or how Nintendo Cheats

2008-01-09T18:01:00.000-08:00

I finally got around to playing Mario Galaxy after the break. I wasn't allowed to buy it before xmas since it was on my list but then no one bought it for me...so I had to do the honorable thing and borrow it from someone who had already beaten it.

I'm 68 stars in and I'm not sure how much further I'm going to go. I feel like 70'ish is the sweet spot for the game. I feel like I've seen almost everything the game has to offer and after this I'll just be OCD and torturing myself to collect 100 purple coins within 2 minutes. Once I got 60 I went straight to the final boss which definitely could have been better. Instead of adding any new mechanics he's just more or less a homework test. You just do the same thing you did earlier in the game but multiple times in a row. Shrug.

My real problem with the game is I kind of feel like Nintendo cheated with this game. When you make a modern 3d action platformer game there are ALL these problems - camera, level design, level pacing, cohesion, blah blah. With Galaxies I feel like they said, 'ok - instead of trying to solve all these problems lets just remove as many as possible!'

Camera? Well - what are the problems with camera? Walls, collision, etc so lets just get rid of those problems by making the play space spherical! Anytime the world isn't spherical the camera breaks down SUPER fast. The bootleg go into first person mode to look around was a crutch that didn't even work 1/2 the time for me.

Level Design? I could make some comment about how the small worlds keep the fun focused but in all honesty this game has pretty damn good Level Design. Especially the 2d'ish worlds with the gravity going all crazy.

Level Pacing? I think they did kick this one out for sure. Usually going from point A to point B requires keeping the trip fun for the player. Sometimes it's just having level 1 dudes to kill along the way. Mario Galaxy totally gets rids of this problem by jumping from one plane to the next via a star. The problem I have with this is most of the time I really don't know where I'm going - I just jump in because there is no where else to go. In some instances it's really hard to go backwards also - in case I didn't have enough star bits for the first section and needed to collect more.

Cohesion? This one is a double edged sword. I really do like this game since you are doing something new all the time. At the same time - this game is kind of exhausting because you are doing something new! Galaxy feels very much like Mario and Wario Ware combined. Maybe this design choice was more telling of how popular the DS is and how to make this game feel like a portable game? shrug. While I was excited to get the next star it was only really my curiosity that made me push on. I felt like I could have stopped almost anywhere in the game and not have regretted it. Maybe thats part of the charm? Not sure.

The biggest problem I have with the game is the overall lack of exploration. In mario64 you could enter a world and maybe have immediate access to 4 of the 6 stars. In Galaxy I felt like I deviated from what they wanted me to do maybe once...maybe twice. I'm no longer exploring the level that they have given me - I'm just along for the ride. I hella forget how Sunshine handled this to be honest.

After that it really bums me out that Nintendo can't figure out how to do swimming in 3d. The swimming were by far the worst fucking levels. That and 'spring' mario. The flowers - ice and fire sucked being on a timer also. There was really no need for it.

There are a couple of other nitpicking things I didn't like about the game - how long it takes after you get a star to get back to the same level to get the next star. Along with why are there even lives? I played once for about 4 hours straight and had 40'ish lives saved up. Saved the game for dinner and when I started back up I only had what is it? 4 or 5? Whatever you start off with. Thanks....

That being said I think they did a really good job of taking complex shapes in 3d space and really simplifying it and while still making it fun. I think the game is a definite must play but I wouldn't give it 10 out of 10.

Uncharted

2008-01-01T10:47:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year everyone! Hopefully everyone reading this has played Uncharted or doesn't plan to play it at all because I'm going to spoil the hell out of the game. Read at your own peril! Haha...

During the PS2 years I treated Naughty Dog and Insomniac much like Pepsi and Coke. I am definitely a fan of Coke (Mexican Coke FTW) and Ratchet was my addiction. I fell in love with Ratchet and finished all of them - aside from that terrible Dead Locked one that should have never come out. I tried to play every Jak game and could only stomach them for an hour at the most. I don't know why - they just didn't grab me.

With the PS3 things have definitely changed. While I still <3 the Ratchet (absolute must play if you own a PS3) I couldn't stand Resistance what so ever. I played it long enough so that it became a modern shooter (health regeneration) but quit after that. A lot of people tell me it's a great game and they very well may be correct - but the game isn't for me and I'll probably never finish it. Uncharted on the other hand - is the first Naughty Dog game I've completed since umm...Way Of The Warrior I'm guessing? Uncharted offers everything I want in a videogame - good story, good acting, fun platforming, short game time, good feeling main character, etc.

BTW, avoid the demo of Uncharted that you can download on PSN. I downloaded the demo and never wanted to play the game after playing it for some reason. I was having lunch with 2 of the sound guys from GoW2 (Chuck and Todd) who had both played it and told me how good the game was - if it wasn't for that lunch I would have never played the game. In fact...almost all demo's I download off of PSN turn out to be not fun for some reason - Simpson's, motorstorm, etc.

Anyway, after beating Uncharted and barely just starting Assassin's Creed I must fully admit that 'next-generation' character interaction is upon us. These 2 games have completely raised the bar on how a character interacts with the environment. And I'm not even talking about super technical things like how Uncharted has IK on the feet and AC's doesn't - just the small things that really help sell the world. Drake walks down the German boat and blends from his normal navigation to putting out his hand and stepping over something in the way then going back to his normal nav. All the while I never let go of pushing nothing more then 'forward' on the controller. Knowing how much work is needed to get all of this to work I was definitely impressed. (Animation, level design, collision, detection, blending, etc)

Not all is perfect with Uncharted - thats for sure. After playing this game and Resident Evil 4 I'm pretty convinced that Jet Ski's should be banned from all videogames. Including Wave Racer. There is this great chase scene where the chick drives the jeep and you get to shoot fools nonstop. It's all fun and exciting and you wanna do it again when you finish. Then you get on a jet ski and Drake is all, 'I'll drive!' The problem is that you control Drake for driving and the chick for shooting. So you have to come to a complete stop to shoot then drive some more. Rinse, Wash, Repeat. Not to mention going up the waterfalls and what not. Definitely the lowest point in the game.

I'm slowly starting to get sick of achievements - especially in 'real' games. My friend Nate says they should be removed from all games except for arcade games or maybe just in multiplayer. As I'm playing Uncharted and blowing dude's heads off it rewards me by saying, '20 kills with the handgun' or whatever it says. Even though I like the handgun now I start feeling the need to get 20 kills with all the guns that are in the game. Which *may* have been OK if all the guns were drastically different or classed out but it felt like there was a lot of overlap. I couldn't really tell the difference between the AK and the M16. At one point I stopped the game and thought to myself, 'man - I'm just playing the game of kill X dudes with certain guns and not playing Unchrated.' At that point I just finished the game with the guns that *I* liked.

The melee definitely feels tacked on as well. They try a few mechanics such as if the enemy is killed with a special combo (square, triangle, square) then they drop twice the normal amount of ammo. This combo feels messy to say the least and I could never tell when to push the next button or if I had really performed it correctly.

The kills on the other hand are really well animated and feel rewarding. I like the leg tackle and some of the other ones. However I think I went through the whole game and used melee maybe less then 10 times total.

While I had a lot of fun with the story - there were too many bad guys. They could have easily cut one or combined 2 of them into one to clean things up. Speaking of bad guys, the final battle definitely could have used some lovin'. To the ND guys - I'm not hating - I worked on a game with Hades and Ares so I fully understand how these things happen.

All in all though - everyone should check out Uncharted as it is definitely in my top 5 favorite games of 2007.

One of my New Year's resolutions is to try to blog more. So this is an attempt. Hopefully it was somewhat entertaining.

Thanksgiving and SF Trip

2007-12-01T16:22:00.000-08:00

Over Thanksgiving I got to catch up on a lot of vidoegames that I had been wanting to play. I got to sit down and finish Ratchet and Clank: Future Tools of Destruction! Great game like many have said for sure. No stupid racing that requires me to get 1st, no spherical planets that make me feel nauseous and no giant clank levels that aren't all that fun to control when it's all said and done. Just straight up Ratchet stripped to the core with fun weapons, fun platforming and humor to keep the action all tied together.

That being said - I think the game is about an hour or 2 longer than it should have been. Many times I felt like I was at the last level when it turned out I wasn't. The camera feels like it's a little bit worse than before but maybe I'm just remembering the previous ratchets with rose colored glasses as they say. I don't remember the crates having physics before but this time they do which made them feel really ghetto to me. Too many times they fall off ledges, collide with one another, do that 'video games physics shake', etc. The story - while it made me laugh confused me really bad. I never knew Ratchet was a Lombax so it took me like half the game to realize they were talking about him. The level design is top notch as usual although maybe I have a bad memory. For some reason I remember the levels looping back on themselves more - a lot of times I just got to the end of the road and a teleporter had to take me back to the beginning.

The first level is totally fantastic though. The ratchet team definitely inspired us on GoW and I would like to think that we inspired them with this game in particular. I unfortunately don't know anyone from the team so I have no way of confirming this but thats how it feels. The first level and the Dinosaur level are amazing. I love in games where you think to yourself, 'oh my god - I hope I can do this....' then you actually find out that you can. Thats how I felt when I figured out that I could climb up on the dinosaurs.

The weapons are fun as usual even though nothing really stood out to me as amazing this time. I almost wish the game only had one currency instead of the 3 that it has but at least I never felt like I was short on bolts. A much better job of juggling the economy compared to the first one. The Six Axis implementation starts off really good - but at the end of the game I was tired of that Electric Ball minigame. The Pirate Dance game totally felt Rhythm Tengoku which made me smile. I think there's something similar in FF7 if I remember right.

Even with all the hiccups the game is totally worth playing and I suggest everyone checks it out.

I also played a ton more of Rock Band. Going through solo mode with the drums on both Easy, Medium and some of Hard. I absolutely fucking hate World Band Tour mode though. Me and my girl were trying to go through it and she is playing Bass on Easy and I'm playing Drums on Medium and we simply can't get enough fans to go further. Everyone that I talk to about this game say the same things, 'terrible fucking menus and WBT could have been better'. A good 1st start that either can be fixed with some upgrade loving for part 2.

I went to SF for the past week for work and got to meet up with a lot of old friends. Granted certain people suck and were at the Montreal Games Festival but I had a ton of fun seeing everyone that was there. Got to meet up with not only the usual suspects - Choi, Seth, Peter, Sirlin, etc but also the amazing 1up crew. Had dinner and drinks with Jason, Cesar, Kathleen, Patrick, Mark and celebrated Shane and Alice's bday for a minute. Even got to play some rock band with Cesar, Hannah, and Garnet even though we couldn't hear anything in the bar. It was good to see everyone and look forward to next time - either in LA or in SF.

Still trying to make my way through Zelda on DS. I just got the hookshot but I'm soooo dreading going back to that damn dungeon. In fact every time I stop is when I have to go back there. Oh well - amazing game though. I love watching Link's face when he slides on the ice and what not. The art style they went to for WW and PH is a 100 times better when compared to Ocarina and Twilight Princess. The cell shaded style really makes me feel like it's Link in an adventure where as the grown up Link seems very out of place.

Oh yeah! A lot of things happened while I was out of town. The craziness that is Jeff Gerstman and Harvey smith. I haven't read up enough on the Gamespot thing but if it's true it seems like the whole editorial staff almost has to quit. The reason why I say it has to be this extreme is because it really does open up the door for many many worse things to happen.

The Harvey Smith thing kinda disappoints me. I've never met Harvey but he's been in this industry long enough to know when to stop babbling. On the other hand - Kohler and the rest of the Wired staff should have also known better and not ran such a sensationalist article. From my understanding what Harvey said was mentioned at the end of the interview and it sucks that someone lost their job over the whole thing. Area 51 never really looked like a "Harvey" game from the beginning so maybe it's best for everyone involved so we'll see. Speaking of Area 51 whats up with Midway banking their whole company on such big titles like this and Stranglehold? Maybe it will payoff but seems like a scary business tactic from an outsider looking in.

The main reason why it disappoints me though is because this is the 2nd time someone has said something at a conference and been fired for it - the first being Chris Hecker and his comment about the Wii being nothing more than 2 Gamecube's duct taped together. Developers definitely have more to say than just the games they work on and there isn't a good avenue of expressing anything beyond what the PR department will allow. It sucks that as developers we can't even talk about the games we did work on let alone start talking about other games. This week has shown us that game reviewers allegedly can't openly speak about how they feel nor can developers.

Sorry for babbling so long.

Ninja Edit: While digging up some handy URL's to attach to this post I found this - a story where the 1up walked over to CNET to show their support for Gerstman. Makes me love the people I know from the Ziff Davis family even more.

I've seen a million faces - and I've rocked them all!

2007-11-22T14:32:00.000-08:00

Been playing a lot of Rock Band for the past couple of days. The UI and Menu Flow are some of the worst I have ever seen which makes me think that Harmonix did the 'game' part but EA or someone else did the shell. I could be wrong but I've played a lot of Harmonix games (not just guitar hero) and I don't remember any of their games being this odd. To put into perspective - me and James Chen who both have played a ton of DDR, Beatmania, Pump It Up, Guitar Freaks, Drum Mania, Guitar Hero, etc and we were struggling for like 30 minutes to figure out what was going on.

We also joked that there should be an option when you turn the game on: Are you busy? or Do you have a job or a girlfriend? If you pick yes then all the songs are automatically unlocked. The one company who I thought would never change finally has - Namco with Tekken. Even they realized unlocking characters is boring and just give the player the option to play everyone right away (at least with Tekken for PS3). I understand the need for single player to have a 'game' where you unlock songs but don't punish me when playing multiplayer. I hear there is an unlock all code but that feels like too much work also.

It's definitely a fun experience when it all comes together - no doubt. The only part I'm not a huge fan of is the guitar itself. While it definitely doesn't look like a 'toy' guitar like the Guitar Hero one does - the GH3 Les Paul is a hundred times better.

There are some interesting design choices for sure though - World Band Tour being offline only is absolutely terrible. Not to mention the concept of the, 'leader' which people everywhere are complaining about. While online - the microphone can be used but everyone else hears the original vocal track for the song that is being played. At first I thought this was a bad idea but in general I think American's are shy when it comes to singing (as opposed to Asia where Karaoke is a religion) so it sort of works.

It's thanksgiving break so I'm going to try to finish Ratchet and hopefully start on either Mario Galaxies or Assassin's Creed. Have a good holiday everyone.

Return from Shanghai

2007-11-13T20:29:00.000-08:00

I just returned from my 2 week trip to Shanghai. I've been to Tokyo a few times, Seoul once and now Shanghai - I feel like I have Asia pretty much covered at this point.

Tokyo is very much a 'boys' city - ninjas, robots, porn, etc where as Shanghai is pretty much a 'girls' city. Lots of shopping, eating, shopping, more shopping and more eating. In fact I'd say the girls over there run that city more than any other city I have been to. From seeing guys holding the girls purse to watching all the guys getting yelled at by their women nonstop. All the guys looked very tamed to say the least. My girl - her uncle, he told his wife that she cooked food too slowly and she hasn't cooked since. That was 20 years ago. He asked me if I knew that the nickname for Shanghai girls is cows? I'm all...you think they are fat? He said no, 'they are tough like cows'. I told him it hella doesn't mean the same thing in English.

The city definitely has a lot of energy though. I always describe LA as being one suburb stamped over and over and over to make up the city. If thats the case then Shanghai is definitely a downtown stamped over and over and over. The city just stretches out in every direction as far as I could see. Although there are a lot of foreigners over there (and I do mean a lot - they have a section called, 'California Town' with strip malls and stuff) I still got asked by random people if they could take their picture with me. That and I got approached by a lot of younger kids wanting to speak English with me. Yeah, I don't know why either.

As far as gaming goes in Shanghai - I'm afraid I didn't get to see a whole lot. I only saw one arcade which had no fighting games - just Initial D for miles. I only saw one dedicated store that was a videogame store which sold almost nothing but hardware. You could buy GBA Micro bundled with a flash cart. I saw a few other random stores selling mostly DS and PSP's though. Pretty sure that Nintendo makes money on every DS sold so I guess it works out for them over there. Saw a ton of bootleg GBA / DS carts with 50+ games on each cart. Pirated games were more common to see than real games, thats definitely for sure. I only saw one PC Cafe (I don't read chinese so maybe there were a ton more?) which was packed with kids playing the standards - counter strike, wow, etc. The trains, subways, etc are advanced enough where people can still talk on their cell phones so instead of seeing people playing Tetris on their phone like in Tokyo or something - people just continued to talk on their phones. I'm sure there are a ton of people playing videogames in shanghai but I didn't really see a whole lot to be honest.

My girl's cousin is a professional flute player for the shanghai orchestra or something like that. She entertained us one night after dinner by playing the flute and the last song she played was the SMB theme so the kids definitely know some history of videogames. I just couldn't get a good grasp of how much more they knew.

Since I was gone for 2 weeks I missed a lot of the random news that happened. I saw that EA Chicago is closing - that really sucks and I hope everyone makes it through this rough point in their life. I saw that Cory left the GoW franchise. I need to go pick up Mario since that came out while I was gone I guess. I still need to finish Phantom Hourglass. I brought in on the plane with me but to be honest I really didn't feel like playing a new experience - I wanted something where I could turn my brain off and just zone out. So I beat Symphony of the Night 2 times total (once on the way there, once on the way back). God damn I love that game, still. I noticed that this is the 10 year anniversary for it coming out. Maybe I'll try to write something about why it's so great. I tried to play Rondo and maybe I'll lose my cool kid card but I just couldn't get into it. It's not that it's hard it's that I just don't feel any reward for doing anything in the game. I never played it when it came out and maybe I've just played too many of the 'Metroidvania' series to go back at this point. I still go back and play Castlevania 1 from time to time though, shrug.

My Uncharted demo just finished downloading (btw - gone for 2 weeks and come home and have to update all my fucking consoles - god damn I hate turning on my ps3 sometimes) so I'm going to go check that out. Can't wait til that last sentence gets used out of context.

Random Update

2007-10-04T09:59:00.000-07:00

After I left the god of war team me and my friend Eric were talking about who they should hire to replace me. We joked around that every one who is capable of doing the job we already have on our aim list. It was around the time of the 'fake' E3 that me and Eric came to the same conclusion oddly enough - the people were actually on our aim list. Jason De Heras and Jason Cole were both hired shortly afterwards. Both have a ton of industry experience and understand games on a very technical level. I won't go about listing all of their videogame accomplishments but lets say it runs deep - Evo Championships, etc.

Jason De Heras has written a really good article about one of my favorite games of all time, "Mike Tyson's Punch Out". In fact secretly some of the bosses in the God of War universe were designed around some of the mechanics found in that game. Even after leaving the GoW team I've even referenced this game in many meetings haha. I go back and play this game maybe once a year or so. 007-373-5963 has been etched into my memory since I was a kid. I thought about downloading the Wii version but I can't betray my boy Mike and play against some random white guy that they threw in. I digress - go check out Jason's article about one of the greatest games of all time.

There has been a lot of interesting videogame news here lately - particularly Free Radical's decision to pay their employees overtime. All I can say is about fucking time. There are a billion problems with this industry and this is definitely one of them. So many young kids get into the industry and are so happy to have a shot at doing what they love that they will do anything - including working 90+ hours a week. When I first got into the industry I almost thought it was 'cool' that I worked 20 hours in one day to get a ton of things done. Then I realized I was stupid and barely got anything accomplished for the rest of the week. Not only that but I missed a lot of social events such as friend's bday's just so I could get some bug finished that could have been fixed the next day.

It's also a sign of holding producer's more responsible for their job which I think is a good thing. If an artist says it will take 5 days to do something and they don't get it done in 5 days then they are usually yelled at, etc. If a producer says the game will be done in X months/years and if the game can't be done on time then they should get yelled at. The solution shouldn't be one of just working more hours which is what has been forever. Plus working that much just burns everyone out - something that I don't think enough people talk about.

While not directly related but on a very similar note the rumors about Bungie and Microsoft are very exciting. As of today with nothing being announced officially - the unofficial rumor is that bungie/ms are breaking the bonds from one another with bungie being more independent but ms still publishes their games. This is somewhat similar to the plan that Jaffe set up with Eat, Sleep, Play.

This doesn't surprise me at all - Halo3 comes out and makes $170 million in just one day! I don't enough about their situation but I know after God of War 1 and 2 - I still can't afford to buy a house. I have an apartment in the fucking valley for crying out loud. Is it all about $? Most definitely not but I bet Sam Raimi had no problems buying a house after Spiderman 1 let alone 2 and 3. Good luck to everyone at Bungie and I hope you guys get what you deserve.

Hopefully these 2 things are a sign of the industry as a whole growing up and will be a better place for everyone to work. I hear EA is a much better place after the whole EA Spouse thing. Sometimes all the crazy muckraking leads to something good.

Yup Yup Yup

2007-09-19T11:17:00.001-07:00

I don't know who this guy is but he's quickly turning into my favorite thing on youtube:

We need to get this guy at Evo or something.

Evo2K7 Pictures

2007-09-04T15:51:00.000-07:00

The rest can be found here.

Pictures taken from the recent EVO tournament - finals were held in Las Vegas this year. Featuring top players from games such as Smash Bros, Tekken, Virtua Fighter, Street Fighter 3: 3rd Strike, etc.

my gigaton punch

2007-08-13T11:56:00.001-07:00

The feel of games part 4 – posing

2007-08-05T15:09:00.000-07:00

This is a weird topic to talk about simply because it crosses over into animation. However as designers it is important to keep it in mind. A move can look more or less powerful based on the way it is executed. This is something you might argue with over the animators – but it is important that design drives the game and not animation. When animation drives the game you end up with something like Mark of Kri.

So what is posing? Posing is the way the character looks during a move – this could be as simple as where the arms are located or how far away the legs are spread or how the back is arched, etc. With good posing you can almost define the character in certain situations. Everyone in the world who plays videogames knows exactly what Ryu looks like when he throws a fireball or when he does a dragon punch.

I think it was Walt Disney (my google skills are lacking today) who said that people should be able to tell which character it is just by the shadow/silhouette. People seem to only remember shapes of characters, not necessarily what color they are or adornment, etc. In God of War 1 – the undead skeleton character, there were 3 different variations with huge differences – all gold armor, all red armor, etc and most people just didn’t pick up on those things. One of the things that might have helped is grouping them together in a fight (at least 2 – not all 3, that would have been overkill). So that people could see the differences instead of trying to remember what they looked like 30+ minutes ago (or even more if they haven’t played the game in a few days, weeks, etc).

So when you have characters that share the same shape – such as humanoids, it boils down to having really good posing to help sell the character and the motions. When working on the subweapons for Kratos (Sword, Hammer, etc) we had the concept artists just do silhouettes of Kratos standing with each one to help define the idle pose and the overall character of the subweapon.

Capcom used to have a really great pose with Zangief when he did his Spinning Piledriver from too far away:

Here is a good screenshot to convey what I’m talking about:

Zangief has his arms up and he is coming to chase yo’ ass down. Coupled with the fact that he ran really quickly – this move is damn scary still and it’s been over 10 years.

When Capcom decided to do the Alpha series they changed his pose which just doesn’t have as much of an impact:

Here is a good screenshot so you can see the pose I’m talking about:

His arms are by his side and it just doesn’t seem as scary. He is also moving a whole lot slower which basically made this move suck compared to how it used to be.

So while it is up to the animators to make a move look all badass don’t be afraid to offer up some advice on how to sell the overall ‘design’ of the character. It’s the little things that count and that go a long way.

Ueda discusses God of War in new Famitsu

2007-07-28T09:30:00.000-07:00

Andrew 'Reno' Alfonso was kind enough to pick up the new issue of Famitsu (July 6, 2007 issues) and translate everything for us. I really like it when developers discuss games that they didn't make and wish people would do it more often. Unfortunately everyone feels like they might get in trouble either by their PR group or whatever. Oh well. Below is the translation:

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Q: Have you finished God of War 2 yet?

A: Yes, of course I have. However, at first when I was playing God of War 1, I thought "This kind of game is rather cool". The player's character is on the screen, and he can move on both the X and Z axis. Also, it's the type of game where you have to be up close and personal with your opponent, and it's quite interesting but there have been so many games that have the same style that I was sick of it. So, I had kind of a negative image about the game to start off. But as I progressed through the game it really opened my eyes and I was like "wow this game is pretty cool!". The guys who developed this game have such enthusiasm that I really felt like they were saying "dude I want you to see all of this awesome stuff!" on purpose. Usually with sequels the tension and excitement goes down but I felt with God of War 2 that was the complete opposite, and the excitement factor was definitely higher than the first game.

Q: What was your first impression of God of War 2?

A: The way the game first grabbed me was pretty awesome. The way the game started off, it made me think about how in Japanese games that would never happen. It wasn't a matter of "how many explosions can we have on the screen in a short amount of time", but it definitely felt like a Hollywood movie. The way that everything was changing and expanding, I had never thought of that, I had never gotten tired of it, it constantly pulls in the user into the game's universe. Everything from the combat, to the programming, to the way of thinking is totally different from a Japanese game. For example, when you see the stage where you're flying (ed. note flying pegasus stage), and you see another stage, the more someone says they're two different games, the more varied the game becomes. The game's contents change, and if too many elements are thrown into a game you can quickly lose the interest of gamers, and it'll end up costing you. When I talk about Wanda and the Colossus (Shadow of the Colossus), the whole game is consistently based around the system of "the climb and the battle", and if you really say that we only made that kind of system, then it really was a success. However, when making God of War 2, because of the ideas, the programming of the stages and the numerous ways of capturing gamers, it became something really different. Each part was specially created, and the parts were all consistent with each other. That's a really extravagant way of creating things. But having so many different elements in a game makes me feel a little uncomfortable, and it's expensive too. If it was me, I guess I would use things multiple times.

Q: Perhaps the amount of volume kind of opens your eyes, right?

A: Even more than before, the modulation, and even though you push, it's still advantageous, I think. However, I think the service is a little excessive. However, talking about the flying stage I mentioned before, it's a little bit hard to put into words but I got this really old feeling when I played it. You can't really fly around like you could in newer games, and you could only attack on the Z Axis... But, even though the game design isn't totally new, the powerful imagery doesn't make me feel like it's an old game. With the CS Attack, the tension and the imagery's power is vast, I think. You could easily say that it copies a game like Made in Wario with its numerous mini-games, but it's a type of game where you can enjoy the varying tempo. Not only that, but the game also has a wonderful sense of direction.

Q: As for the graphics, from the way it looks like it's done by hand, did it surprise you?

A: I think the way that Japanese people handle it is a little different. It's only my impression, but perhaps Japan would say it's a little low poly? It's a minute detail of course, but usually in Japan we use textures to cover up for the low poly, I think. The edges of the polygons aren't all that conspicious so it has that soft look to it. On the other hand, God of War rather than use textures they use polygons to represent their characters, so it seems very hard to Japanese people. So, like a rock's hardness, that's how God of War looks. So in God of War II, even if you arranged ICO or Shadow of the Colossus' objects in that game, they wouldn't match at all, since the way we made all three games are different.

Q: Do you think there's a relation between the way the game looks and how late it came in the PS2's lifetime?

A: Yes, perhaps. With PS2 games, right now you can get a lot of power out of the system. In God of War 2, there's almost no loading time, and how fast it reads your save games is really fast. That's because you only have to look for procedures on one hardware, which makes things easy.

Q: So everything rests on a higher foundation then, and that's why everything looks so good, right?

A: As for the ideas, even though they are very common, the way everything is represented makes it interesting and fun to play, I believe. And yet, the action, puzzles, graphics, everything was realized on a higher foundation, that was my impression. From the start, everything was put in with care, and nothing was really neglected. Basically, like how a Japanese game carries itself. But with japanese games, the really interesting parts are kind of sparse....

Q: It's not fresh but...

A: That's right, the attacks, system and ideas have been done before, I think. However, when you try to play the game, you have a usual sense of tension, but the graphics and the reactions become better and better. Perhaps, starting now, Western games are advancing quickly, you know.

Q: Has God of War 2 inspired you in any way?

A: Well there are certainly a lot of ideas and such in the game, and they're all really fun things. I haven't had a lot of time to think about it though. If there are things that I can really absorb from the game I think I will absorb it, but God of War 2 is such a high value game (ed. note: I don't know if it means that it's valuable or if it was expensive to make.) that I don't think I can really copy it. Perhaps with this kind of game, we'll leave it to the Western designers to make htem, hah.

Q: Why would you do that?

A: Well, I think it'd be kind of difficult to do things like that. The reality is that costs to develop a game is different between Japan and Western studios. One year ago I observed how things were going with God of War 1, and I was really surprised by the number of people on staff. With one team they made a lot of programs that couldn't be used more than once. It's the kind of trouble I hadn't thought of. Also, everything took a lot of time too. Perhaps they were implementing a lot of elements into their game. When you have a lot of stages, the player won't get bored and it's really interesting. However, with Japanese style, when you apply that kind of thinking, I don't think it'd be cheap at all. I don't think our schedule or budget would be enough for that kind of project. However, budgeting and scheduling is difficult, but more than that, focusing on the scope of the game is important. Within our team, and within a workable scope, the best ideas will eventually win out and be something we can work with. Up until now I've held that idea and I've made games with it. However, right now when I play God of War 2, I think that if I don't think things clearly and with a level head, I may create something that's only halfway finished. That's the kind of impression I get.

Playing To Win now free!!

2007-07-21T10:08:00.000-07:00

David "Combo Maniac" Sirlin AKA David "Low Strong" Sirlin aka David "The Robot" Sirlin has posted his great, 'Playing To Win' book online, free for everyone (although you lazy bastards should really donate!)

It's a great read and I cannot recommend it enough. In fact the entire Combat Team on God of War 2 were required to read it before finishing the game. Not only did the Combat Team read it but so did a lot of the Level Designers!

Click here to pick it up.

Catching up

2007-07-17T21:44:00.000-07:00

Sorry I haven't posted in forever, just been really busy with the new job and all. I feel like I get more done during an 8 hour day then I ever did on God of War. One of the worst things about working crunch so damn much is that you push off work into later in the day because you know you will still be there.

Enough of that though - everyone should vote for God of War 2 at the G-Phoria awards. Head on over to Eric's blog to check out the links. Mostly because I'm too lazy to copy and paste all of that.

Life has been going well - E3 sucked but whatever. The only part I got to visit was one of the hotels here in Santa Monica - the Shutters. Had the Capcom, THQ and SOE booths if I'm not mistaken. Was pretty damn depressing to say the least.

BUT! I did get to hang out with a lot of friends, so that was awesome. Ran into Jane who thought it was a good idea to hop into the ocean after we had $28 worth of mojitos (in case you are wondering...that is only 2 drinks total, welcome to so cal hotels bitches). With all of her clothes on I might add. To say that there was a lot of sand in Seth's hotel room after the 3 of us walked around is an understatement.

Also ran into Ryan, Cesar, Jason and Patrick of the Ziff Davis / 1up family. Met up with them and had some drinks later on that night. Was all of them plus me, eric and nate from sony santa monica and a bunch of other really random people - nothing but good times though. Hopefully we can do it again soon without having to wait another year.

Prior to that hung out with the Destructoid family and they really are a family. Like 900 deep to every bar that we went to. If you are reading this Alex - hit me up.

Totally off subject but I found this thing on the internet today talking about the colors used in movie posters and comparing them to the top 5 grossing films of each rating - R, PG13, etc. Pretty interesting in all honesty, can take a look here

Also does anyone know what this is from? I had never seen it before until last weekend when I was looking up something completely not related:

Totally seems like a commercial or something but I can't imagine Sony's marketing department being that cool (aside from the people who do the Bravia commercials which are amazing) so maybe it's just some bored kid. Either way I'm a huge fan.

Last but not least...I sold out and picked up an iPhone. For those who claim it offers nothing new to the smartphone world (in fact...I think it's the first smartphone that's actually useable) then all I can say is that it succeeds much how WoW brought nothing new compared to EQ, Guitar Hero over Guitar Freaks, etc.

P.S. Congrats to Hevad from SRK/Evo for placing #6 in the World Series of Poker!!! Save that money fool!!

It's pronounced "COE-ven", man. What else could it be pronounced?

2007-06-18T21:23:00.000-07:00

First let me say thanks to everyone who posted and or sent me an email. Really does mean a lot, I swear. Even if I suck and never respond or write anyone back haha.

So life has definitely taken an interesting turn since I quit Sony. For one reason or another, I don't feel 100% comfortable in saying where I am or what I'm doing, but lets just say I'm now working for a Publisher and I help out where I can on projects. It's fun because I'm seeing new things all the time.

Right now it's a really exciting change of pace - instead of being so completely focused on one thing - I can sort of take a step back and look at multiple projects. God of War 1 was 3 years in development, part 2 was 2 years in development. Doing the same thing for that long can kind of get to you - or I should say it got to me, haha. I'm sure what ever that team is working on next, it will be amazing though.

So a funny thing happened during my first trip to a developer, not only did they discuss God of War but they also loaded up a video to show me something and it happened to be Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks, a game that I had worked on briefly and I do mean briefly. It was really the love child of John Edwards and Adam Puhl though so that part made me feel good. It's rather funny - when we were all at Paradox we had no idea if we were any good at making games or not. Since those days I think we have proven ourselves and may even be a little bit unique in the industry as a whole.

Going to leave you with this little gem:

Moving on

2007-05-31T22:26:00.000-07:00

I keep trying to come up with some witty line but I’m failing so here it is – I’ve quit Sony.

Before we get to any of the how’s, why’s, etc let me recap a few things first. A long long time ago in a state very far far away lived 2 kids with big dreams and ambitions. The first is Ryan Downey who wanted to work for MTV and the other is myself, who wanted to make video games. We lived together in Indianapolis, Indiana in a stereotypical punk rock location – next to a KFC, Liquor store and a DIY space known as The Sitcom. Not wanting to turn this into a laundry list of who is who but the amount of people that stayed on our floor is amazing. Early Vegan Straight Edge warriors such as Petey Wentz called our couch home when he was in town.

In late 2000 (November, December’ish) me and Ryan both realized that for us to continue growing as humans and to even think about reaching our goals we had to move to California. He moved to Nor Cal around February of 2001 and I moved to So Cal in March of 2001. My original plan was to join a startup (they were all the rage back then) with David Sirlin, Tom and Tony Cannon which was funded by the guy who funded Napster. Metallica sued Napster around this time and the startup quickly went bust. Quicker than I could even move out to California for haha. The Cannons had left Microsoft for this startup but they went on to go do probably even more amazing things like VMware.

So here I was stuck with no place to live in Indy and no place to live in California. Tommy ‘Waterb0y’ Ho of Tekken fame (/ducks) offered me up a space on his floor in West Covina, CA. So I packed up my 2 bags and 1 pillow and moved to Southern California. Southern Hills Golfland (an arcade with the best competition in America) was going super strong at this point so I hung out there more than I should have. I already knew most of the top players like Valle and Watson but I got to become friends with almost everyone there, some I still see to this very day.

Around this time a videogame designer named Mark ‘FlipMeign’ Acero who was part of the SHGL crowd who worked at Paradox Development along with Ben ‘Tragic’ Cureton and fighters.net crowd – Eric ‘Gouken8’ Williams and Adam ‘Three11’ Puhl. They let me know of an opening, which I was immediately hired for. I packed up my 2 bags and 1 pillow and lived with Mark and the amazing animator James ‘Liu Kang’ Che in the middle of fucking nowhere LA aka Moorpark. Boy, does not having a car when you are in LA suck when you live that far way.

So I finally made it! I’m making videogames! I’ve lived on someone’s floor for like 6-9 months and now I’m living on someone’s couch!! Hella upgrade in life!

The first game I’m involved with is none other than He-Man! I’m so excited, coming up with moves for He-Man and Skeletor. The original plan was going to be like Guardian Hero’s and make every character playable, including all the enemies. I learned my first hard lesson in videogames very shortly – most games get cancelled, including mine. I hear some of what we did was eventually given to a European Developer but I never saw anything since it wasn’t released in America.

So thinking that my career in videogames was over with I was moved on to the Xmen: Next Dimension project along with John Edwards and Omar Kendall. Ben had left a little before I go there and Mark had switched from Xmen to go work on Backyard Wrestling.

After Xmen finished up – the company tried to have 3 teams going – The Backyard team, a team doing a new IP for Sony and my whacky 3rd team that no one knew what to do with. My whacky 3rd team actually landed a project that we were all super excited for – there was a core team that worked really hard on it – me, Eric, Cory Barlog (back when he was an animator ^_^) Romalis and Richie. The project turned out to be none other than Kill Bill! Here I was, still young in the industry (relatively) and I’m getting to work on this amazing game!

Well….I learned another hard lesson a short while later, most games get cancelled. It was around the time Quentin went crazy and announced it was going to be 2 movies and I’m guessing most of the budget went to that or something. I don’t really remember that well at this point anymore.

The new IP for Sony was going well and Mark left to go work on The Incredible’s down at Heavy Iron so Omar, myself and Eric finished up Backyard Wrestling 1. After the game finished Cory took off to go work on a game called A Dark Odyssey for Sony, which none of us had heard of.

So we did what most developers do – we worked on the sequel, Backyard Wrestling 2. I forget the exact timeline but I know this around the time we hired Jason Cole who was a big help. About 6 months into the amazing 9 month development cycle, Eric left to go work on A Dark Odyssey with Cory. I still knew nothing about this game except that it sure did look pretty.

After Backyard 2 finished to stellar reviews and somewhere along this timeline is when the new IP for Sony got cancelled Midway started doing Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks with Adam Puhl and John Edwards as the main leads.

It was during an Evo Street Fighter tournament where Cory and Eric showed up to watch the best of the best go at it when they invited me to join A Dark Odyssey. The name had changed to God of War and I guess it did ok at E3. BYW2 had finished and I really couldn’t add much to MKSM that Adam/John and now Omar/Cole couldn’t add so I took off. This was a very scary thing for me, almost as scary as moving to California. I really knew nothing about the project (aside from some crazy guy working on it who had made Twisted Metal which I won’t lie about…I was never impressed with – come on…small brawl?) but I really liked working with Cory and Eric so I said fuck it and went for it. The first combat designer who in all honesty laid a lot of the ground work on the game – Richard Foge left to go work on Socom. Without him leaving I would probably be making Backyard Wrestling part 9 by now.

I think it was during God of War 1 when I caught up with my good old roommate Ryan Downey on AIM. He landed his dream job of working at MTV writing the news and some other things. However, he was almost afraid to admit something to anyone – how do you strive to achieve something for years and when you do, you still aren’t happy. I told him to follow his heart and fuck everyone and everything else. He quickly quit soon after that and is now happier than I have ever seen him.

Fast Forward to now. Everyone has gone their separate ways – Omar and a gang of others from Paradox work at Neversoft on Gun, Tony Hawk and Guitar Hero. John left to go join Midway in Chicago and is like hella high up in the Mortal Kombat franchise. Adam joined me/Eric during God of War 2 when things were getting out of control. Cole is still at Paradox now Midway LA working with some of the most amazing game designers ever to be in the industry – Sal Divita.

The ‘team’ of myself, Eric and Cory have released 2 amazing games – God of War 1 and the sequel. There are a ton of other people that are sooooo responsible – especially the rest of the animation team like Bruno, Gilley, Kang and Tommy Ho. Without them me and Eric would have nothing but ideas barely written down on post it notes. Nor can I forget the most amazing sound designer in the industry - Todd Piperi.

So why am I qutting? I’m just as scared as when I moved to California and when I quit my first videogame job but I just feel like it is time to move on. The combat team at Sony Santa Monica is absolutely amazing, perhaps the best in America – Eric, Adam and Jason McDonald. I can’t imagine leaving the game in anyone’s hands besides theirs.

I’ll post where I’m going and what I’ll be doing next in a while but I just wanted to let everyone know. Here is something to watch and laugh about.

EVO2K6 DVD's for sale

2007-05-14T12:31:00.000-07:00

As many of you already know - I also help run a fighting game website called shoryuken.com and I'm also involved in a yearly tournament that we run called Evo. We record all of the footage then sell it on DVD to help cover a lot of the costs and to give everyone a chance to see the highlights.

The trailer was done by James Chen and you can purchase the DVD's here.

*Sorry for the blatant advertisement, but I know a lot of people visit this site that aren't into the fighting game scene as much but might be interested in watching the DVD.

Pro Keds releases some Arcade inspired shoes

2007-05-08T14:37:00.000-07:00

I gotta admit...I'm kind of into these. Not sure how they pulled it off but they have a whole line featuring inspirations from Pac-Man, Ms. Pac Man (too bad a Billy Mitchell action figure doesn't come with them), Asteroids and Galaga.

Their website kinda sucks so head over to where I found them to make navigation a lot easier. Click here to see what I'm babbling about.

Where the hell have I been?

2007-05-01T21:28:00.000-07:00

So yeah, I haven't updated for a while. I have been rather busy just trying to enjoy life in general. Life has been heading in crazy directions here lately.

After gow2 finished we got to have some time off to enjoy life. I spent the time trying to learn various things - I bought an electronic keyboard trying to learn how to play the piano a little bit. I suck at trying to read music but some days are better than others. I was doing really well there for a while - playing like 30 minutes every day. However I have been slipping and not playing every day. I kind of hit a mental block with the book that I bought - there is just some weird concept that I can't grasp and there is not enough text explanation to help me through it. I totally don't want to jump to the next section though in fear of not grasping the basics.

I also bought a new camera, a digital SLR. I have been a fan of photography for a while so it was very exciting. Living in LA gives a lot of great opportunities to photograph some amazing things. I have been hitting up the Getty a lot taking pictures of flowers and hitting up some crazy roads, one day there was so much fog that I couldn't even see more than 10 feet in front of me. It was the first time I had driven on that road so it was kind of scary! Like 4000 feet in the air climbing a mountain. I went back the following weekend and it hella wasn't as exciting as that first time, oh well.

I had a birthday, you know it goes. A year older, feel kinda down for a day or two then move on. My mom came out to visit the weekend of my birthday so that was fantastic. I hardly ever get a chance to see my family anymore living 9 billion miles away but it works out. We went to disneyland - she had never been there so that was a lot of fun.

I went back to Nor Cal to visit some friends - specifically John Choi and Seth Killian, 2 people who I have known for like 10+ years I think. While there I also got to meet up with Julien Beasley which was super random but a lot of fun. His mom is french so they were all in town at the French Embassy to vote for their president. We stopped by this cafe where they were and we saw this line of like 500+ french people all standing in the rain waiting to vote. I totally felt like I don't vote enough in America haha.

While I was up there I got to hang out with a lot of other friends and new friends - something that is always fun. You know who you are. I <3 Duy.

So I started playing a game that falls into a genre that I really really fucking hate. I hate turn based combat. I hate collecting. I hate random encounters. I hate games that use day/night simply to make things harder to do. HOWEVER! Dear lord...I can't get enough of Pokemon Diamond for some reason. I don't even know why haha. The game is ugly, slow and hasn't really improved a whole lot since I played it last time which was Blue/Red back in the day. Like I said...I don't know what it is but it's grabbing me this time around.

Oh yeah...so I turned on my 360 to play some SotN (after I had only paid for it) and bam! 3 red rings. It's a launch system, so those sons of bitches don't want to repair it for free. I have even tried calling them 2 different times hoping I would get someone nice who would be a team player but so far I just want to throw the thing out the window. I think I might just buy the retard version and move my harddrive over.

2006 Average Game Salaries

2007-04-04T20:38:00.000-07:00

Every year these come out and every year it gets me all fired up for one reason or another. Supposedly the average salary actually dropped compared to 2005. I'm sure profits for games probably went up though.

According to Game Developer magazine - it breaks down like this:

Business & Legal: $95,596
Programmers: $80,886
Production Personnel: $77,131
Audio: $69,935
Artists: $65,107
Game Designer: $61,538
QA: $37,861

So as you can see - testers have it the worst off. I think this is pretty much widely known and if not, sure in the hell should be. Testing is a terrible job.

However - a game designer, such as myself - I am the 2nd lowest on the food chain. Sweet!

Also according to the same survey - only 1 out of 3 can afford to own a home.

Why some games feel better than others - part 3

2007-03-21T01:58:00.000-07:00

The importance of hit pause

In videogames there are often times where you want an impact to feel harder than it really is. There are a lot of variables that can be used to achieve this. Obviously sound is really important as well as blood, screen shakes, controller shake, etc. One VERY important ingredient to this is the use of hit pause.

Hit pause is when the game pauses for a second when something ‘big’ or ‘important’ happens. For God of War we use hit pause everywhere! When Kratos makes contact with the enemies or during the complex throws and all sorts of other sneaky places. Hit pause and slowdown are 2 different things and sometimes we use them together. I define slowdown as slowing the action down so you can take it al in. Hit pause is when the game pauses even if it’s really minute and you barely notice it. Sometimes the pause can be used even longer for different effects.

To help explain what I’m talking about, I’m going to show a video of Sakura in Street Fighter Alpha 3. Street Fighter is a great game to show off basic concepts like this. Not only do most originate from fighting games but also they usually have a great training mode so I can capture really quickly : )

So first you see Sakura doing her standing Fierce (Hard Punch) attack which she hits no one with. I wanted to include this so you can see how the animation behaves normally with none of the goodies on top. Then she makes contact with Dhalsim on what is known as a ‘clean’ hit or a ‘normal’ hit. Alpha 3 has a major counter system where if you interrupt the opponent’s attack with your own you get a ‘counter’ hit. What you are seeing with the last attack is Sakura landing the same standing Fierce but this time in a counter situation. We get a great sound and even a 1 frame white flash, some particles around her hand and the whole game coming to a stop for a few frames before continuing with the action. This last attack feels vastly different and you really feel like you put the hurt on someone. While this pause is going on none of the players have the ability to move which also helps sell the overall feel of a hard hit.

Here is a still shot of all that action, including the hit effect:

Also note how you can see how much damage the attack did by looking at Dhalsim’s Health bar. For more information on health bars seeing a previous article I wrote here.

Street Fighter also uses hit pause in another great situation – to exaggerate the final attack one player does to another when they win the round. Capcom is great at having really fantastic poses during their animations so when the pause occurs you see the characters and think, ‘damn!’

Below is a video clip of Sagat killing Blanka on the first hit of his dragon punch. Everything really comes together – the sound, effects come flying in, text is flying everywhere and there is even a slight echo effect on Blanka’s final scream.

Now I also included a clip of when things don’t quite line up as well in my opinion. Sagat’s dragon punch has the ability to hit up to 5 times. In this video the third hit is what kills Blanka. Granted you get a nice pose of Sagat all elongated but it doesn’t have the same impact, at least to me.

I prefer seeing it like this:

Even though it’s a really simple concept, the skill comes from where and how to use it. Same with slow down. The ability to change an animation from something that doesn't feel very powerful to something that is just like, 'damn...that hurt!' is just massaging the animation with all the right goodies until you get something good.

God of War 2 Metreon Event

2007-03-14T10:05:00.000-07:00

Monday night at midnight Sony put on a launch for God of War 2 at the Metreon in San Francisco. Seeing as how I never make it up to Nor Cal I was trying to squeeze everyone and everything into that 24 hours I would be there. The biggest problem was that 1/2 the people I wanted to see were at SXSW in Texas for either Evo South or for SXSW itself. Screw those hippies because I still had a ton of fun.

Mark MacDonald from the 1up/ZiffDavis family was awesome enough to meet up with us and grab a drink. Here we are first meeting up and him actually showing us the God of War setup for the first time.

After meeting up with Mark we met back up with the rest of the team to join the rest of the festivities. There was a small break where we all met up in a theater where Cory got up and gave an awesome speech to everyone in the crowd. I've known Cory for a really long time now and moments like these are why everyone loves him. Big ups to the kids from the midwest!

The photos below are him talking. The first one you can see the back of the heads of TC Carson and Michael Cheng. Second one is him bringing everyone up from the team and introducing them one by one. Last one is with him and Mr. Aaron Echolls - Harry Hamlin!

After this quick moment we went outside for some more zany antics.

After me and John Choi finished taking crazy pictures on the chariot we met up with a whole bunch of awesome people from the 1up family - Karen, Cesar and Jason. They got a lot of great footage but hopefully none of me babbling haha.

As the event was winding down Cesar and Jason took us to another bar called Kate O'Briens that turned out to be pretty fun. Here you can see Nate Gary, Stig Asmussen and Joel Taubel hanging out.

What I thought in all honesty was going to be a pretty terrible event turned out to be a lot of fun. Thanks a lot to Mark, Karen, Cesar and Jason for showing us a great time!

God of War 2 Strategy Guide

2007-03-09T16:06:00.000-08:00

Eric Williams called me this afternoon to say he picked up the strategy guide. So I called like 3 or 4 different Gamestops (oh I how hate that store) until I found one. $30 for the limited edition version which includes the art book. Brady Games did a great job with both the art book and the strategy guide itself.

Of course the strategy guide has hella spoilers so pick up at your own risk. But everyone should really pick it up for the art book alone. The amount and quality of concept art that goes into making a God of War still amazes me.

Subliminal messages in videogames

2007-02-28T21:27:00.000-08:00

I ran across 2 interesting things today. One is about Konami supposedly flashing winning images in their slot machines while the game is being played:

"The games flash winning jackpot symbols at players for a fifth of a second, long enough for the brain to detect even if the players are not aware of the message, some psychologists told CBC News."

I guess the machines are being pulled. You can read the whole article here.

While searching for other subliminal messages in videogames I also came across this one which supposedly exists in Wario Ware for the DS. This one is kinda strange but you can see for yourself here.

Does anyone know if subliminal advertising really works or not? Or if anyone has some other examples in videogames please let me know.

Interesting design - good and bad

2007-02-23T17:04:00.000-08:00

So since we have been on break and I've been trying to catch up with some missed games I've been playing a lot of random things here lately. The Wii is getting some play so is the PS2, PS3 and the 360. Not to mention the good old standby of the DS. So I saw this system sitting over on the side and figured I would turn it on again.

So lets get this right out of the way, I'm not bashing the PSP nor am I praising the DS or vice versa. The PSP has some great games that I've been going back and really enjoying. Tekkken is always fun to go back and play and I'm starting up on Syphon Filter and Every Extend Extra. Lets not forget the PSP sold an obscene amount in the month of December - a million units I think it was in America alone.

HOWEVER - there are 2 things that baffle my mind as to why they were done in the first place. First is the volume controls. They are these 2 really small buttons that I can never find when I need them but why are they buttons in the first place? My car has the same issue when it comes to temperature controls. I hate turning the heat on and it's at like 60 and I gotta mash the up button all the way to 80. A slide control for the volume is always a much better route to go. Why Nintendo decided not to do this with the GBA Micro baffles me.

Although what annoys me more than these 2 buttons is how the volume controls are handled. When you don't have a game in you get this great on screen display of how loud/quiet the volume level is at:

This thing is super great at telling the user how loud things are. Unfortunately when you are playing a game this overlay doesn't appear when you press the volume buttons. Not sure if they felt that it was a bad move to have it interfere while playing a game or what but I hate it and wish I could somehow turn it back on. Maybe there is a way and I just haven't been able to figure it out.

The 2nd thing that drives me nuts is the power light which normally looks like this:

Yeah I'm aware of having to plug it in because the battery could be better but thats now what we are here to discuss.

So what happens due to the placement of the battery light, when I'm playing a game I NEVER see the damn thing because it gets covered up like this:

As you can see my thumb completely covers up the light. The battery has ran out many times without me realizing that it was low. I have no idea if they will ever redesign the PSP but I hope someone fixes my 2 complaints.

Enough complaining! So I'll admit I like to peruse the area of the internet known as GAF from time to time. Setting up an account seems way too hard so I've never got around to doing it so I never chime in on the conversations going on. However one that caught my eye was this guy talking about how everyone should play Kim Possible: Whats the Switch? He even included a video that he had uploaded to youtube to show off the gameplay:

As you can see it looks completely awesome! She even has a grapple hook which for some reason speaks straight to my Bionic Commando lovin' ass when I was a kid playing it in the arcade. The game is totally Viewtiful Joe but done right. Has really great level design and interesting gameplay mechanics. You have you standard enemy and he takes like 3 or 4 hits to die and you have this gum that you use to hold levers into place. If you throw the gum at the enemies it will keep them in place and only take 1 hit to finish off. She even has a divekick which stuns enemies. Not only that! But she has both of Wolverine's dive kicks - the angled one and the straight down one which you can use to break through weak floors and find hidden secrets and stuff.

Oh yeah - I wanted to comment on the pole swing that she has. When she reaches the apex of her swing she changes direction in the anim. This was a really smart move because they force the player to only jump forward not having to deal with jumping backwards and all that silly nonsense. Whoever decided this - good job. You can see what I'm babbling about in the video - like 30 seconds near the end of it.

My only real complaint about the game is that it really is too hard for what the target audience should have been. Not only that but it's probably a little too long for what it is. Some of the later levels go on for what feels like forever and you can only save once you've completed the level. I picked it up new for $30 and had a lot of fun with it. You get to find hidden tokens that give you new outfits throughout the game and the cut scenes even have you in the outfit you are wearing - was rather impressed. Thanks to the GAF forum member who suggested this game.

Ghost Ride The Whip!!

2007-02-16T15:31:00.000-08:00

Wow, where to begin. Well since I am on holiday I decided to get back into the swing of things and play some videogames. Of course the first game I had to pick up is Ghost Rider. I had played a little bit of it during E3 so I knew what to expect. Such great things as him going into the pose to pull a lever just like Kratos then deciding to kick the lever instead.

The game has been getting terrible reviews and it's really *not* that bad. It's not a great game by any stretch of the imagination but something about it makes me smile. Mostly because I know what it's like to work at a 3rd party developer and some publisher comes in and is all, 'make this really boring license that no one cares about and these games are really popular (gow and dmc) so make it like them!' Trust me, I was in plenty of those meetings with games that fortunately ended up getting cancelled. Every damn meeting for like 2 weeks after MK5 came out wanted blood just like that game.

So the opening starts and it has decent presentation done in a comic book style. I beat the whole game and I still don't understand the story so bleh on that one. Something about my motorcycle leaves fire trails and the path i was forced on opens up a gate to hell!!

Back to the beginning of the game - you get introduced to wayyy to much at once: these 2 different meters that took me about 2 hours to really process which one is what. L2 seems to do a lot of damage at once where as L1 is sort of like Devil Trigger mode where you do more damage on all of your attacks and take no reaction and everyone gets circles above their heads and if you throw someone you drain the rest of your meter but kill that monster off right away. It's not a bad system but for some reason it's all sorts of confusing in the beginning. Mostly because they are like - these orbs do this and blah blah and never really explain how it works. Either that or I just skipped the whole damn thing.

The controls...are strange. He has neutral jump attacks and running jump attacks. Why? I'm not really sure - seems like a waste of animation space to me. It was like neutral jump triangle was good and running jump square was good - i would have removed the other two personally. Going from stand to run is a frame or two laggy but nothing terrible. There are a ton of small problems that drove me nuts like holding R1 for block then still holding R1 and pressing square to do an attack but not going back to block even though I never let it go. Although...doing the same thing with triangle and I do go back to block.

Although not the worst idea but maybe the worst presentation is how they have a combometer just like DMC with words that say how great you are doing and it going from D to C to B to A to S. Enemies show up with a shield around them that actually have the text to indicate which level you need to be at. So if you need to get your combo to 'Brutal!' level the enemy will have a shield of 'Brutal!' floating around them. It's not a bad idea but seems like there could have been a better way to convey it.

The motorcycle parts are..interesting. The motorcycle gets double jump even though you don't! Haha, not really sure why - something about Earth Magic makes the motorcycle double jump. They do one decent idea - Square attacks fools on the left, Triangle attacks fools on the right. It's a nice mental divison so the player doesn't get too overwhelmed. Although I upgraded my motorcycle attack really early on (triple homing shot!) so all I did was spam that button and never had a hard time what so ever. Besides not being able to see due to how dark the levels were and I even turned my brightness all the way up.

It's a short game (4 hours on normal mode) and I think every level is re-used twice - once forwards then backwards. The upgrades unfortunately don't keep the game interesting long enough. I maxed everything out so early that i was getting bored near the end.

There is a documentary on the game that you can unlock that left me a little bummed. Just comes off as instead of saying dmc, ninja gaiden, etc have good combat ideas he just makes fun of them. Oh well - i'm fucking sick of arrogant european developers trying to say everything else is 'rubbish'. This one goes out to Alex Ward when I say, "I beat Ghost Rider!'

God of War 2's first review

2007-02-12T00:44:00.000-08:00

EDIT -- So it seems that a couple of websites have put up their reviews - IGN, then 1up and most recently Gamespy. IGN's review is a little odd - talks about how they think the game is better than part 1, yet we get 9.7 where as first one got 9.8. Fucking 0.1 tax for either being a sequel or for being on 'old' hardware. Bitches.

Game Informer put their review up...9.75. Man, these hookers just need to round up or something! Oh well.

Enough nitpicking. This time around feels very different for some reason. The studio so far has done Kinetica (yeah, i never played it either) then God of War 1 and 2. This one somehow feels like we have cemented Sony Santa Monica into being an AAA studio, not just a fluke. For better or worse we are now the God of War studio - much like Bungie being the Halo studio.

I think part of it was that I joined the GOW1 team pretty late, a month or so before Alpha. Cory kept telling me to join some team making Dark Odyssey but I had no idea what he was babbling about. But this one...this one was with all of us from the very beginning. This was our shot and I think we did a really good job. I'll leave it at that.

Hibernation is over

2007-01-27T10:36:00.000-08:00

Quietly about 6 months ago we just put our heads down and worked nonstop on God of War 2. While there are a handful of things left to finish up the end is completely within grasp and I feel like when a bear wakes up from hibernation. I'm starting to see the sun again, leave work at a normal hour, starting to eat healthier and hell, I even went running the past couple of days trying to work this crunch weight off.

The insanity of this project came with a lot of laughs though, I can't lie. Such terrible ideas as, 'babies by may' and 'pancakes and pie' where all we did was go to those old people restaurants for lunch such as denny's, carrow's, coco's, norm's, marie callendar's, etc and just ate nothing but obscene amounts of breakfast food then finished it off with dessert. Which is why I need to start running again. Watching Eric/Todd battle over the norm's breakfast challenge and Eric getting hives immediately although was fucked up, was pretty damn funny at the same time.

So now I need to figure out how to rejoin life - how to interface with my girl again (I don't know why but that totally feels like a Sirlin line right there), how to eat healthier, enjoy the small things and even get back to playing games. I haven't touched Zelda since November so I'm hoping it will be easy to get back into. I have a stack of games all in shrinkwrap that I would love to start playing as well - such as Lost Planet, Call of Duty 3, Tony Hawk Project 8, Hotel Dusk, etc. I also have a few books that I want to catch up - I recently got Geek Mafia which was written by a Game Designer.

Speaking of Game Designers - what is arguably one of the best threads ever on SRK is going on - one of the designers from Street Fighter The Movie is talking about making the game and what not. Definitely worth checking out - click here to go to the link. For some reason I can totally relate to this guy. Him and the peeps making Ghost Rider.

Young NKI is in LA this week, so i'm going to try to hang out with him. It's funny - now almost everyone I grew up playing SF with in the midwest is gone. Even Seth Killian is in Nor Cal wearing big boy clothes working for Capcom. It's like our little community of players who set out to take over the world are slowly doing it. Proud of all y'all.

Time to go do some 'normal' things that i've been neglecting to do - get a haircut, fix my glasses, get my car washed, etc.

Checking in

2007-01-01T21:26:00.000-08:00

In all honesty it's probably going to be a while before I update again. I will try my best so that it won't be this way, but as Cory Barlog's blog let the world know - we hit beta. Which means the next 2 months are going to be 2 of the most important months as we try to polish EVERYTHING and make it fun. Lets hope in 2 months we are all still alive and that videogame magic has once again returned to Sony Santa Monica.

Over the holiday break I thought I would play a ton of games. That really didn't happen. Although I played 2 really great games. The first being Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin. I played it on the plane going back home to Indianapolis then played it there while adjusting to the time change - aka being up at 4 a.m. when no one else was. Castlevania at this point has become Cheese Pizza for me. It's completely and utterly my comfort food. I know exactly what I'm getting when a new one comes out, I know it's going to be good - sometimes even fantastic but most important I know it won't be terrible. As I sit there playing I'm always amazed by how much love goes into these games and the latest did not disappoint. I'd say it's better than Dawn of Sorrow but not as good as Aria of Sorrow (which to me was the best GBA version).

I also got a chance to play Rhythm Tengoku - a Japanese import of a GBA game, yup a gba game. I'm almost willing to call this my favorite game of 2006 and thats not a joke.

I *think* it's made by the same team that made Wario Ware. I really suck at keeping track of which internal Nintendo team makes which game. Paging Omar as I'm sure he will know.

Basically imagine the art style of Wario Ware but instead of playing a one second micro-game you instead push the A button based on the rhythm of the song that is being played. Of course what they have you pressing the A button to is absolutely insane and half the fun.

2006 was amazing for rhythm games - Elite Beat Agents, Guitar Hero 2 to a certain extent and now Rhythm Tengoku. Hopefully 2007 will be just as exciting.

I was hoping to finish up Zelda but I didn't touch it at all. Instead I just played a ton of SF with Peter, James, Vic, Eric and Maj which was far more therapeutic.

"Got beat by something called a Wii"

2006-12-19T09:43:00.000-08:00

I know a lot of you out there that not only like design, but industrial/product design as well like me. Check out some early prototypes of the Wii Controller that never made it.

Obviously the Star Controller wins hands down. Here is the original link where I found it.

Also while we are talking about Nintendo products, be sure to peep out some of these buttons:

You can find the rest here.

Now is a good time to be a geek

2006-12-03T17:05:00.000-08:00

I was walking back from UCLA with my friends Eric and Victor when he mumbled that line to me yesterday. While not only is it super accurate but we were returning from one of the most amazing things I have ever seen - Kevin Smith moderating a discussion with Stan Lee and Joe Quesada. The overall topic was a look at Marvel - Then and Now.

Some of my earliest memories regarding comic books is reading my fathers. But he had 'dad' comics like Conan and other semi serious books. I remember he gave me a copy of X-Men #207 that he found on a bus if I remember right. From there that got me super hooked. I went back and collected from #200 all the way up to #300. Unfortunately that was around the time that comics were going crazy with 10 different covers all polybagged with 900 individual collectible cards and other nonsense. I collected a lot of stuff during then but my main love was always the marvel universe - Mutant Massacre, Fall Of The Mutants, Inferno, etc were some amazing storylines. After #300 I decided that was the end and basically stopped collecting. I still go back and read trade paperbacks from time to time but I doubt if I will ever walk into a comic book store and buy individual issues. It's simply just too much damn work.

So I was super familiar with Stan Lee but not so much Joe Quesada. I knew him as an artist for sure but didn't even realize that he is the Editor in Chief for Marvel these days. So to hear him talk was super interesting to say the least.

The evening started with a ton of technical difficulties (aka feedback from the mic's for some reason) and it started off with a really superfluous slide show. It began by showing what I believe to be the first cover appearance of Captain America. Kevin asked Stan to go into detail about Captain America and handling American ideals and what not. Stan remarks with as you can see back then Captain America's shield wasn't always round and busted out laughing. That pretty much set the tone for the rest of the night with everyone being laid back.

Now I'm not sure if Stan Lee has just been going through the motions of answering the same questions for the past 900 years or what but his answers make it sound like anything was possible back then and somehow everything worked. Simply hearing him talk about the possible names for Spider-Man and going through the list of Arachnid-Man, Insect-Man, etc and saying, 'SPIDER-MAN!' makes it sound completely magical.

They talked about The Hulk for a while and Stan offered up an explanation of where the name came from. He admitted to liking another comic book at the time called, 'The Heap' and how it made for a really great sounding name. Obviously he couldn't steal that directly so he went through other words that started with H and settled on The Hulk. They also talked about the first appearance of The Hulk and how his skin was grey. Stan admits to printing problems and getting the color grey to be consistent from panel to panel. So he said, 'screw it - lets make him green!' Just like that, no super indepth detailed rationaliztion but a great answer nonetheless.

There were a lot of great moments like this. From Joe Quesada to making fun of Kevin Smith for liking Green Arrow (a character that Joe thinks is boring and flat) to Kevin Smith making fun of Stan Lee for not coming up with Wolverine. Stan making fun of Kevin calling none of his movies funny was damn entertaining as well.

They also brought up Director/Comic Book writer Reginald Hudlin who directed House Party and writes for Black Panther. Everyone kept making fun of how he can turn in a book every month and Kevin Smith takes like 3 years.

All in all a great evening. While walking back we just discussed how comics and other 'geek' things are completely mainstream now. From Lord of the Rings to World of Warcraft to Spider-Man being one of the highest grossing movies of all time. It's weird too because I don't think comic books themselves will ever reach mass market. Trade paperbacks have a better chance but even then I'm not sure if it will happen. Things like Heroes on TV are definitely improving the landscape of geekdom though. Almost all of those owe a slight deb to one of the most amazing people on the planet, Stan Lee. Like Joe Quesada said last night - the people who created Superman or Batman only created Superman/Batman. The characters that Stan Lee has created is a laundry list of who is who in pop culture.

Kevin Smith asked both of them who was the last great character that Marvel created offering Wolverine as the answer. Joe declined and said maybe either The Punisher or Elektra which I would have to completely disagree with. I think Kevin nailed it with Wolverine which has been around for quite some time now. Even more of a testament to Stan Lee's greatness - he's no longer churning out comic books and great characters are no longer being created as often.

Sorry for this being so damn long but it really was an amazing evening and I just wanted to share it with everyone.

Zelda Twilight Princess – my first 10 hours

2006-11-26T13:25:00.000-08:00

NOTE: Some spoilers about the game so if you haven't played it yet or wish to remain spoil free then this isn't for you.

It has been a very Zelda festive thanksgiving weekend here at the house. First I picked up Zelda for the Wii (still a dumb name) the first day it came out. Then my girlfriend decided to start making Link out of pixel art. She took a mario pixel art (which can be found here) and re-arranged it to form Link. He came out a lot better than I thought he would.

Then my friend Victor came over last night talking about how he decided to pick up Ocarina of Time yesterday (gold cartridge!). Which was completely random because that guy only really talks about X-men Vs. Street Fighter. We started discussing how going back and playing Ocarina is a little rough because it really doesn't hold up visually. Thats how I kinda feel about Twilight Princess - I think 10 years from now this game will be hard to go back to. Don't get me wrong it does some really nice things visually (damn you Nintendo and my lack of component cables!) but it reminds me a lot more of Ocarina than Wind Waker. I think 10 years from now Wind Waker will completely hold up visually. Too bad it might be the most boring Zelda of all time.

I had my Wii for a couple of days prior to picking up Zelda. My and my girlfriend had spent all weekend playing Wii Sports and making Mii's. So on Sunday when I picked up Zelda I was looking forward to playing a 'real' game. The game does a good job of introducing the controller to you and some of the nuances. However, the first hour and a half or so is absolutely terrible. You are in this village with no real objective. You sorta just hang out and talk to the same 3 people trying to figure out what to do next. Not to mention trying to fish which for some reason I completely suck at and can never catch a fish.

While the controller does feel good it also feels tacked on. The sword swinging stuff is a little annoying. If you are running around with nothing in your hands and you see a monster you wish to attack, you first have to swing the controller to pull the sword out then do the same motion to attack. Kinda wish there was almost a, 'pull out my sword' button or something.

There also isn't 1 to 1 representation of how you are swinging your arm to what Link is doing. The combos he is doing for the most part are canned out. So you kinda lose the feeling that you are controlling him to attack. Fortunately he also has attacks that don't require you to swing your arm around like a mad man.

While walking around if you swing Link stops to perform his combos. However if you are running around and swing then he will keep running and perform 2 slashes back and forth. This part is actually fun as it lets you run around and chop up grass and other boring stuff to keep you entertained as you trek through Hyrule.

The slingshot and all other projectile weapons that you get however don't feel quite as good. The main problem is that you aim with the Wiimote and half the time you really aren't pointing at the screen. So when you go to target someone the game grinds to a halt and screams at you, 'Point the Wii Controller at the screen!!' Not really sure how they coulda fixed this one though although I'm sure something could have been done. The cursor as a whole is annoying though. It makes this terrible sound every time you move it while not in targeting mode.

However the worst thing in the game so far has to be the Camera look around mode. By pressing the Camera button you enter into a first person mode to look around. Standard, nothing new and revolutionary. However there are 2 things that control how you look around - the wiimote cursor and also the nunchuck controller. The wiimote seems to take priority though. So the way I play is by having the wiimote on my leg not really pointing at the screen then I enter Camera mode and the cursor goes absolutely crazy and I end up looking at either the sky or the floor. Then I try to move around and it just gets worse. I really wish there was a way to fix this but I haven't been able to find anything to suggest so.

So...once you do make it out of that damn village you end up getting transformed into a dog. You know, I kinda forgot I had to play as a damn dog. Not sure why Japan thinks people want to play as dogs (Okami, Zelda, etc) but here I am, playing as a damn dog. They do some cool stuff with senses but the thing I really hate is this dumb attack where you hold down the B Button and a gigantic circle forms underneath. When you let the button go you attack all of the enemies inside the circle. They force you to do this (even with a dmc door!) but maybe I just skipped over the text but it took me forever to understand this attack. The problem is that you aren't invincible the first few frames of the attack when you let the button go. So you get everyone in the circle then let the button go but get hit and the circle is now gone and you are taking massive damage waiting for your invisible meter to recharge so you can do this attack again. Yeah, I'm not a big fan of this attack what so ever. It sucks just as much as looking around in camera mode.

Once you are done being a dog and return back to Link with the sword and shield the game returns back to being awesome. Exploring the first dungeon you are reminded of why Zelda is such an amazing game. I'm around 9.5 hours into it and I just finished the first dungeon and I'm making my way to the 2nd one. I'm really not looking forward to playing this for the next 70 hours or whatever (especially since I will have no free time starting tomorrow) but I have enjoyed it a lot so far. The game definitely reminds me of Ico for some reason.

Off to find the next dungeon.

Fun with Mii

2006-11-18T21:40:00.000-08:00

Derek-----------John Choi-------Tommy

Todd ----------Eric-------------Omar

Holiday shirts

2006-11-14T17:57:00.000-08:00

**Tshirts for sale here

Damage Presentation

2006-10-27T12:34:00.000-07:00

When it comes to conveying damage in videogames there are many ways to go about doing it. The most obvious is to show a reaction of the character being in pain, along with some blood and possibly even a screen shake or a controller shake. Depending on the move some slowdowns in good places can really drive it home as well.

The most obvious place after that is with the health bar. Depending on the move and how many times it hits sometimes that can get a little lost if the player is not paying direct attention to the health bar. Some games have tried to compensate this for having a number float off the character indicating how much damage was done. This definitely works for some games better than others.

While playing Street Fighter Alpha 3 the other night at a friend’s house I noticed they do something that helps reinforce how much damage was received. Before we get there though lets take a look at what I consider to be a normal health bar and how the energy is drained.

Now with Street Fighter Alpha 3 (I’m pretty sure this did not start in A3 but this is the game I noticed it so therefore this is the game I’m showing) there is a layered power bar of a different color that lags behind showing the player how much damage they received. This works out especially well for big hitting moves. You think to yourself, ‘damn…my health is still draining!’

Basically the same amount of damage but with the presentation of the layered power bar you really feel like you got hit harder.

Last but not least the damage that is being done doesn’t have to be equally distributed amongst all the hits. While a horrible game, SNK Vs. Capcom they do one really nice thing with Guile’s Flash Kick Super.

The first 3 hits feel EXTREMELY powerful but then the rest looks like normal hits. If you sit and stare at how the whole thing looks then it’s kind of dumb. However when you are playing the game most people either look up at their health bar either right when they get hit or at the end to try to figure out how bad they got hurt.

There are many ways to convey damage and many more ways than my examples of health bars. Virtua Fighter does a really great job also of having 2 different shades of the layered power bar – showing how much the last hit did as well as the overall combo. I couldn’t find a good video showing this so maybe I’ll try to go back and add one. Other games like Tekken Tag where you can regain health also have some really good examples of displaying how much you lost and how much you can regain. In all honesty I could probably write a whole article on just the intricacies of health bars. Maybe some other day.

NOTE: If you are having troubles viewing any of the vids - especially the SvC one, you can find an mpeg version of each here.

The end is near....

2006-10-23T20:11:00.000-07:00

Or The End Begins depending on your point of view. The God of War 2 team achieved Alpha this past week which is a huge huge step. Although I am completely exhausted I look forward to finishing up the game. We are sort of in the eye of the storm right now though. We just finished doing our big push for Alpha and next will be the big push for Beta. Cory has been posting a ton of great pictures of everyone on the team and an inside look at Sony Santa Monica so make sure to head over to his page to check everything out if you haven't been already.

Enough of all that though. Lets see...I bought some ice cube trays! Yeah...I know my life isn't very exciting but I really do like these:

I also picked up some of the salt and pepper shakers because they looked fun also. Just wait til my next post where I have pictures of dope buildings made out of Lego ice cubes.

Basically this is just a completely random post to let everyone know that I'm still alive. I've been working on a more technical game design post that I'm going to try to put up this week. It's not quite there but hopefully will be before the week is up.

By the way if you own a 360 you should check out the Tony Hawk Project 8 demo. A lot of great people worked really hard on it and it looks to be the best Tony Hawk game in years. A so cal Street Fighter player who used to place top 10 in tournies during HF worked on the new nail-the-trick mode. So yeah try to support everyone on that team because they did an awesome job this year.

Helping the player out

2006-09-23T21:01:00.000-07:00

Fellow game designer and long time friend David Sirlin wrote an article talking about the difficulty in balancing single player games. I recently re-read it the other day and it got me to thinking about some of the tricks that we as designers do to help make the game more enjoyable. I’m sure that a lot of people don’t even pick up on these subtleties. Not realizing them is usually for the better though as it helps keep the player within the game space.

Wunderkind Nick Inabnit aka “NKI” also posted a translation of a throwing chart for Street Fighter 2 the other day. Not only does it have how much damage each character’s throw inflicts but it also has a great column entitled, ‘Behind’. Which confused me at first because I thought it meant throwing the player from behind as opposed to toward.

However since the first version of Street Fighter 2 (1991) if a player had lost the first round, during the second round they would get a slight damage boost when throwing the opponent. Unfortunately I don’t know if that damage boost gets applied to normal attacks or special moves but it looks like if you lost the first round – time to start throwing the opponent more than usual!

Click here to read the chart and other various tidbits that NKI has translated – it’s all really great stuff.

I find it amazing that even back then designers were thinking about how to help out players – regardless of single player or multiplayer. It got me to thinking about some of the things we have done on God of War to help the player out which I’m sure most people never even realized.

The Low Life Health Orb
Normally when you kill a creature you get a predetermined set of orbs based on how you killed the creature. However when Kratos is low on health when the creature dies, the game will also create a health orb. It’s not a huge chunk of health but it helps the player from dying often.

Health boost on Restart
This was a controversial decision but one that I’m ultimately glad we put in. What would happen is that the player would enter an area and have X amount of health. If that area was a certain challenge such as a hard fight or whatever, the player could potentially have been checkpointed with 5% of health and arguably never complete the challenge. So when the player dies and they restart we bump up the player’s health just a tad bit.

These ‘tricks’ are not unique to God of War as I can think of a ton of other games that do these and more. Some games have the player unable to die at all or give them so many extra lives the player doesn’t feel penalized so bad for dying. The Super Mario Bros series immediately comes to mind when I think of having a ton of extra lives for no real reason. When implemented well, such as the Street Fighter example, I think they help keep the game fun for everyone involved.

Toyota Yaris banner ad minigame

2006-09-23T17:54:00.000-07:00

As a fan of videogames as a whole I get excited when I see new areas where games can be found. Last week was the iPod and this week is something new to me at least - Ad Banners.

Even though the Toyota Yaris was involved with the recent success of Evo I somehow completely missed this. They came up with an idea of having a game inside of a normal banner ad that pops up on websites. However the game is multiplayer and it can be played from any website that is displaying the ad banner. So lets say for example this ad was on cnn.com and i clicked on it and someone else saw the ad on yahoo.com and clicked on it - we would play against one another.

Unfortunately I don't find the game super fun as I think it's a little hard to control. But I really like the idea and look forward to what people do next with this sort of technology.

Here is a direct link to the game itself as I'm not sure if the ad is still in circulation:

HERE

Ipod Games

2006-09-14T00:36:00.000-07:00

As probably most of you are aware - Apple debuted the very lackluster 'new' ipod (although the new shuffle is damn sexy) this week as well as announcing games. Granted they already had one of the best games ever in my opinion - that music one where it would play 4 songs from your library then asked you to name the song. A really great example of a game taking advantage of the hardware that it was meant for.

However with this new announcement they have a bunch of new casual games for moms to download at $5 a piece. Tetris, Pac-man, Zuma, etc.

I decided to download Pac-Man to see how it controls. The first thing they make you do when you start it up is to input your name. I thought this was a nice touch so that you could get comfortable with the interface. The first game I died very quickly as I was fumbling with the controls. I was hoping that they would make it work by pressing up/down or left or right. However 'up' is Menu and that pauses the game. So you have to actually control with the scroll wheel. That took some time to get used to but I was able to actually play the game within a few minutes.

I'm not sure if I'll ever get around to playing it again - much like I really don't watch movies on my ipod either, I simply listen to music but it's exciting to see that there might be a 'new' platform for casual games.

Anyone working on any of these?

Random Labor Day Update

2006-09-04T20:46:00.000-07:00

I usually try my best not to do things like this but in all honesty I have just been super busy the past 2 weeks. The first week was getting ready for a God of War 2 playtest. The 2nd week was my parents being in California for a week. My mom's been here before but it was the first time that both of them came out here to visit me. It went really well and hopefully they will visit more often (since this is the first time in almost 6 years they have been here).

I took the day of the playtest itself off, but I heard it went well. I think Cory posted some stuff about it so head over there and check it out.

I don't know what it is...but I can't stop playing Tekken on the psp. I don't even really like Tekken or the psp but put them together and i'm a fan. Sorta like JayZ and Linkin Park or maybe peanut butter and jelly. Although I gotta admit to liking JayZ more and more as time goes on.

I did an interview with Faith Naked not too long ago. It went live this weekend so make sure to say Hi to her and check it out here.

This week life should return back to normal so I'll try to write something. Hopefully everyone had a good holiday and we can get back to discussing game design.

20 random questions with SaiTong Man

2006-08-23T22:32:00.000-07:00

This year during E3 me and the Lead Programmer on God of War were standing in line for the most impressive game at the show - Heavenly Sword. While standing in line the Lead Programmer was talking to the person standing next to the game. Turns out that person happens to be SaiTong - the lead combat designer on Heavenly Sword. After playing the game me, Sai, and 2 other combat designers on GoW2 went outside to escape the madness that is E3 and to talk. Quickly realizing that Sai got 'it' and was one of 'us' I have tried my best to keep in touch with him even though we live 9 billion miles apart and are both trying to finish up projects. So I thought it would be kinda fun to interview Sai with a bunch of random questions that barely have anything to do with Game Design.

Twenty Random Questions

1. Is there a connection between food preference and game preference? Do you find vegetarians only like certain games?

Do vegetarians play games?? I like most types of games, any genre as long as it plays well. I also like pretty much any food with the exception of, salty tasting foods, cheesy badnesses and coffee (simply one of the greatest smells in the world only let down by its bad taste). The three great food badnesses in the world. Sultanas and Raisin almost fall into the category of food badness but not quite. I find it strange how many people would consider my three great badnesses to be the three food greatnesses of the world, bonkers the lot of them. Only joking about the vegetarians, I know several great guys who are veggies and are gamers too, bonkers.

2. Which game/genre started your obsession with videogames and is it still your favorite?

My first true game obsession was Street Fighter 2 as you may have well guessed, many years spent playing that game ant its iterations, but prior to that I would play any type of game. Currently the only games I really spend any time on are the pure top down shooters, roaming action RPGs like Zelda and the 3rd person action/combat games like Ninja Gaiden so I guess the traditional 2d beat em up is no longer my favorite genre but I would always chose a 2d fighter over a 3d fighter. 3d still doesn’t really work as a 1on1 in my eyes, at least when you compare them to traditional 2d fighters.

3. What is the biggest insecurity you have about your job?

It is when you have a solid game, or the possibility of a solid game, and just a few poor decisions can jeopardize the whole thing. Basically uncontrollable external influences that screw up your life that you have no control over. But then again, isn’t that life as well?

Click here to read more

4. What’s your favorite feature in Gamecube Animal Crossing that is not in DS? Vice Versa?

I never picked up Animal Crossing. I’m too afraid of certain types of games. It started with Pokemon. Playing that for a day solid and realising I hadn’t scratched the surface got me scared that the rest of my life would vanish in a pixilated mess. Animal Crossing sends out the same warning signs, as does any Bioware games after playing through Bulders Gate 2 for the third time.

5. Do you like to use cheats in videogames? Do you have a line you don’t cross and can you put that line into words?

I hate to use cheats ever in games to further my progress. I have never used a cheat to complete a game. Either I complete it or I don’t. There was one game that I did use to walkthrough when I was younger. Solstice on the NES, one of the most rock hard massive games that was basically impossible without help. But playing through it with my sister reading out what I had to do was still thoroughly enjoyable. The only time I use any cheat mode is just to have fun with the game, never to learn about sections I haven’t seen yet or to progress further than I would otherwise, unless I have already given up on the game and want to see what else there is.

6. If you could have any designer work on a completely different genre – who and which? For example Kojima working on a Madden game?

Tetsuya Mizuguchi mixing his rhythmic music oriented games with a vertical scrolling shmup from Cave. I always wanted to create a shoot em up with musically generated enemies and attack waves like how Vib Ribbon auto generated levels with any music you wanted to play. I would like Mizuguchi san to apply his touch to a DoDonPachi esq, Vib Ribbon game.

7. Do you have any other hobbies that compare to playing games? Such as cooking, playing music, sports, etc

I have three major hobbies that compare or dwarfs computer games.

One hobby is the world of photography, art and graphic design. I just love the visual world and the identification of ourselves through the things that stimulate us or the things we capture as an essence to understanding ourselves.

I love rock climbing. I love its technical and physical requirements on our bodies. I find rock fascinating, how a piece of rock can create a puzzle so addictive, so hard but yet so knowingly withing my grasp.

Above everything though is my love to design and build things. I have spent most of the year woodworking, building my friend a coffee table, myself a new type of chair, studying Japanese joinery to construct tables and fixtures. I build books and write short stories to fill them. I want to learn how to make tools, swords, knives, chisels, anything we use to create things or learn things or use things to make things.

8. Do you have a ‘comfort’ game that you always go back and play even if for a few minutes?

I have had a few comfort games in the past. I guess the most prominent of them is Street Fighter. This stayed with me for many many years but more recently it is the vertical scrolling shooter that has been my fall back game, DoDonPachi being the notable one.

9. If the videogame industry collapsed tomorrow what would you start doing instead?

I would do one of many things, work my way into the film industry as a camera operator or trainee cinematographer, work with friends in product or graphic design, become a carpenter, or retire from work altogether and be a bum for as long as possible enjoying the world by climbing, photography and building stuff for people.

10. Do you find being an Asian male has advantages or disadvantages (stereotypes?) in this industry?

I think people automatically associate you as some ninja geezer, either in a potential fight or gaming ability. It seems to me that people assume that Asians have innate abilities with the understanding or the creation of videogames, maybe we do, maybe I actually am a ninja.

11. What is your favorite non-video game?

I love poker, especially Texas-Hold-Em. I’m not very good but love it totally. Chess is another game I adore and am not very good at either but probably the most played game I play is Snooker. It is the most amazingly concentrated game I do that requires utter calm, concentration, tactics and above all, skill. But I’m no good at that either.

12. Is ‘Rundown’ the best movie either The Rock or Stifler will ever be in?

Haven’t seen that. Gonna check it out.

13. Who is your favorite fashion designer?

I don’t have any one favorite. I see fashion like I see music. Even the shittiest band can actually produce a tune that is amazing. All fashion designers produce great things and really bad things, some make more good than bad. Other make more bad than good. But finding the good stuff regardless of label is the most important thing. Recognising the bad stuff and learning from it is also good.

14. Do videogames have an, ‘Evil Dead’ – a game that is so bad that it is good?

I don’t know if you can call it the ‘Evil Dead’ of the videogame world but Nintendo World Of Soccer back on the NES is terrible but was one of my absolute favorite from the past. I just loved to walk the football over a rock and watch the AI trip up trying to get the ball, over and over again.

15. Do you have a favorite puzzle from any game you have played?

Playing the board game boss battle in Banjo Kazooie was an inspired piece of video game design. Maybe not my favorite puzzle, they go to the plethora of puzzles from the Zelda series, but the one that stands out head and shoulders being different.

16. What is the first section you go to when you walk into a book store?

Mostly the art and photography magazine section is my first port of call in Borders et al. Or maybe the new releases in the children’s picture book section, I love good illustration and gather a lot of inspiration from these picture books for graphical styles and emotional texture.

17. What do you listen to when you work out?

I tend to listen to rocky/dancy beats. Bands like Unkle or the Prodigy although they aren’t my first choice of music. I mostly love the more depressing music like that from Damien Rice, Snow Patrol, David Ford and orchestral music from the likes of Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov.

18. Any book that has nothing to do with videogames that you would recommend to journalists to read?

Haruki Murakami. He is my favorite author by far. I would recommend The Wind Up Bird Chronicle, Hard Boiled Wonderland And The End Of The World and Norwegian Wood. His novels seem always to separate you from your space and turn you into an observer in the world, free from everything, as if you are in a tangent space watching yourself and the world breathing. Not many authors can inspire you to lock yourself in a completely dark confined space for a entire weekend with no food, only water, just to see if you can find that lost part of your soul.

19. When is the last time you cried?

When I dream. Dreams take you and extend you to places where you can not hide. They make you aware of the things you care most about and sometimes dreams takes you to situations that you wish never to occur but you live them, for that moment. We dream and we fine meaning from nothing, we wake and we nothing from everything.

20. If you could go back in time and see any band live, which band and what time period?

I would so much love to see Pink Floyd live, either when they released The Wall or The Dark Side Of The Moon.

21. You run into a friend shopping – which store is it?

W.H.Smiths. One of the UK’s largest newsagents/bookstore. I have a friend who works in New York and one day I got a missed call from his parents. Tried calling back but no answer. I proceeded to have an idea that my friend was back home from the US so I had the idea to go into town and walk into W.H.Smiths on the off chance I would bump into him.
Not knowing if he was even in the same country, after walking an hour into town, within five minutes of getting inside the shop, guess who I bumped into, bonkers.

22. Does your family understand what you do?

They know I make computer games but I don’t think they quite comprehend what it takes to make one and they especially don’t have a clue what my day to day tasks are and I don’t think I could ever explain without showing them over the course of a few days or weeks. My boss’ father once commented that we did not build Kung Fu Chaos very well because the environments would fall apart, not that we actually animated the arenas to crumble.

23. Do you think it’s time for Tigra and Bunny of L’Trimm to make a comeback record?

I just googled them and listened to a few previews and OMG!!! Kinda like a mixture of Mel and Kim and Daphne and Celeste (check them out). L’Trimm never made it over here, I guess it’s a bit of a blessing. Comeback record? Erm, I’ll rather lock myself in a pitch black hole for a weekend.

24. Is there a worse way to interview someone besides email?

I don’t think e-mail is a particularly bad way of interviewing someone. Torture I guess would be quite harsh, not in the spirit of getting to know someone. Although I have always wondered how much I could endure before breaking down and gibbering out anything a pressing torturer would ask for.

25. Someone comes up to ask for your autograph, which body of work do you hope they are not asking your autograph for?

I think I am still a bit too young to be ashamed of anything I have done in the past. I can’t actually think of anything that I have done that I would be really embarrassed by. I’m really just a good boy.

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SaiTong Man is a Games Designer located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. He has this to say about himself:

"Worked in the games industry for four and a half years at Ninja Theory, formally Just Add Monsters. Only worked on one previous game Kung Fu Chaos (Xbox) and now currently Heavenly Sword (PS3). My current job focuses me on the general playability of the core player mechanics, e.g. combat. Game name Jeff all because of Jet Force Gemini N64 (Jeff and Barry Racing), but MaWoStMo is my new found tag."

Evo2k6 is coming!

2006-08-16T23:59:00.000-07:00

This weekend marks the annual gathering of Fighting Game players from all over the world. This year also marks the return of the event happening in Las Vegas!!

With this year's lineup I am curious to see who will walk away victorious. Will the Koreans dominate in Tekken? Will the Japanese flex their muscle once again by winning CvS2, 3rd Strike and GGXX? Instead of the mainstay Super Turbo this year we are trying out Anniversary Edition which could create some amazing upsets. So far with Evo West and Evo East - ST Balrog has won both. Will Justin return to his throne of Marvel dominance? And who in the hell is going to win Mario Kart? So many questions which will be answered this weekend.

Aside from seeing all of the old faces I really look forward to meeting new people. So to everyone reading this who will be there this year make sure to say Hi!

Check out evo2k.com or shoryuken.com for details.

America's love affair with Japan

2006-08-06T19:05:00.000-07:00

You remember when most of us were little and Japan was considered, 'the enemy’? Much like how Russia was going to bomb us all in the middle of the night. Maybe you don't and I'm really just letting everyone know how old I truly am. Oh well. However somewhere along the way America came to huggle Japan and really started to become interested in their, 'kawaii' culture. Maybe it was, 'Gung Ho' since that movie rocked.

Whatever has happened (nintendo, pokemon, anime, etc) there seems to be a certain group of hardcore gamers and journalists that do nothing but rally about how great Japanese games are. The odd thing though is that most of the games that they are celebrating Japanese consumers are ignoring. Games like Katamari, Ico, etc are talked about how great they are and yet they are failures in Japan also. I think Ico saw its greatest success in Europe. Unfortunately I honestly don't know if hardcore gamers/journalists in Japan talk about how great these games are or if it’s just an American thing.

The latest example of an original Japanese game that got the old message boards excited is Loco Roco for the PSP. I downloaded the Japanese demo as soon as I could (even upgrading my PSP to do so) and while I loved the artwork, the music, etc the game itself felt like it could have been better. I still have yet to play the full release but I hear it's already selling for a discounted rate in Japan (1980 yen).

I think games like Loco Roco and Katamari seem so exciting to us is because they are an example of a different style that is unfortunately very common in Japan. This style has infected everything in Japan - the whole damn country has been saturated with this stuff. Japanese consumers have become acclimated to it where as American consumers think it's the greatest thing ever. While Loco Roco and Okami are not out yet in America I am willing to bet they will both sell more in America than they have so far in Japan. I've already heard people consider Okami a flop in Japan.

And it's not even just these games - Viewtiful Joe's anime has done much better in America than Japan. Hell, I think the games have also (has anyone actually played part 2? I own it and have never even turned it on).

So here in America where most of our games are nothing but gore and violence having something different is a welcomed change. However...the same cannot be said for in Japan. You would think that with Japan's love affair of America - everything from Hollywood to Starbucks to Hip Hop to Fashion have taken over Japan. I read somewhere that Vice City is the best selling game in Japan with only like 400,000 copies sold. Maybe one of these days I’ll do some real research before writing a blog post, but I guess that’s what keeps this as a blog post and not a real article.

I won't even attempt to try to figure out why American games don't sell in Japan cause i have no idea either. However the games that are being touted as the greatest thing ever by fanboys aren't selling in Japan as well. Although it seems like nothing outside of Square/Enix and Nintendo DS sell in Japan so maybe it's just their market right now.

Will Wright = Jenna Jameson

2006-07-30T23:10:00.000-07:00

The reality of being a videogame designer

You remember that part in Boogie Nights where Don Cheadle says, "I'm not a pornographer. I'm an actor." That is exactly how I feel some days.

I’ve been a videogame designer for going on 6 years now and I’ve slowly started to realize that I now have a skillset that cannot be applied to anything else in life, much like being in porn.

Let me elaborate a little more on why being a designer is akin to being in the porn industry. You know how in the porn industry there are a handful of really famous porn stars that make a ton of money and get to dictate which movies/scenes they are doing? On the other hand there are a ton of girls doing some downright nasty things for barely any money thinking that one day they might be the next Jenna Jameson?

In the videogame design world you have Miyamoto, Kojima, Will Wright, David Jaffe, and a handful of others that have risen to the top that have a little more control of their future. Then you have the other faceless designers that no one knows working on games doing some downright nasty things that I’m sure their mothers do not want to hear.

I love my job and I love doing what I do but when I look to the future and think about if I ever decide to leave the videogame industry I’m going to be like Buck.

“If there's something I didn't fill out correctly on this...or if there is something I left out...or something maybe you want me to write on there...just tell me what to write.”

I read somewhere that the lifespan of a videogame designer is only 5 years. I can only imagine the lifespan of a girl in porn is around the same. I imagine the lifespan of a designer is a little bit longer simply because games take so damn long to make. But being a designer is a young man’s game and promotes a very non-balanced lifestyle. At least I haven’t figured out how to balance it yet.

I don’t want this to come off super negative because I’m not complaining about my job at all – more like an observation of the videogame industry as a whole. A designer that I barely know posted on a forum about how he left the industry and it was the healthiest thing he has done. There has to be a better solution and I believe one is out there. The industry as a whole is young and we are still going through our growing pains. Design as an actual profession is even younger than videogames and we are still trying to figure out our career path. It will be a rocky road but I have faith that we will figure something out.

To continue with the analogy David Jaffe is totally Tera Patrick. <3

Design is all about details

2006-07-15T18:37:00.000-07:00

I suppose there is a place out there for a designer who does nothing but dream up great ideas that some one else gets to implement but every designer I know spends all of their time going over the fine details of a problem. No matter how simple or complex the problem is or the solution what you are really dealing with is the details of all that.

One of the reasons why I love Street Fighter so much is their ability to pay attention to these small details. Granted Sega probably does it better these days with Virtua Fighter but Capcom used to be the leader of it all. You have to be especially when you are creating games that people are playing against one another. Overlooking one small detail makes a character completely broken and if not caught in time can completely ruin a game (see Tekken 4 as an example).

When releasing various versious of Street Fighter over the years Capcom usually tweaks the characters in efforts to fix problems from before. I hate to say balance but thats the best word I can come up with. You can read a wonderful article that my friend David Sirlin wrote to see why I hesitate to throw the word balance around.

Moving on I still find it interesting as to what Capcom decides to tweak going from one version to another. I recently picked up the Yoga Hyper Book which I HIGHLY recommend to anyone interested in Street Fighter nuances like hit boxes and frame data. You can order it here. While only really covering Super Turbo they have a few pages showing the hit boxes/frames for 'important' moves from World Warrior (the 1st version of Street Fighter 2) to Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo (the 5th and final version to actually be called Street Fighter 2).

One of the more annoying moves in that game happens to be Guile's Low Foward (it's a low hitting move that comes out really fast, has great range and quick recovery) which in the hands of great players like John Choi can win an entire tournament alone.

The book includes pictures of hitboxes/frame data for Guile's Low Forward for all 5 games so I'm going to post each one and give comments for them.

Let me explain a few things about the picture before we go into details:
The blue is the hitbox for which the character can be hit
The red is the hitbox for which the character can hit an opponent

OK - lets look at the 1st one aka World Warrior

8 is the number of frames of 'startup' - how many frames before the move can hit
5 is the number of frames it can hit
7 is the number of frames of recovery where it no longer hits but can be punished
14 happens to be the damage it will do to an opponent

Notice the blue area goes around his arm and where it stops - before the boot. Notice how the red area stops at the end of the boot. This move was incredible in World Warrior and it is easy to see why - his whole leg is a gigantic hit box!

Champion Edition
Rumor has it that Street Fighter 2: World Warrior got a sequel due to how popular it was in America. The rumor talks about how competitive Americans were at the time and Capcom wanted to satiate their fans and decided to release a 'sequel' with 4 new characters and improved balance. Lets break this picture down a little bit:

The startup, hit frames and recovery are all the same. But notice how the blue and red boxes get shifted around. Guile now gets the ability to be hit in the back of the move as well as a little closer to his boot. However - the red box (the hit box) gets pushed out a little more than the graphic indicates. This was their first attempt at balancing the move out. An interesting choice of decisions.

Hyper Fighting
Capcom was taking a while to come out with another sequel (which would be Super Street Fighter 2 featuring once again 4 new characters) so in the meanwhile urban legend has it that 2 American designers (James Goddard and Dave Winstead) came into to release a minor update to combat all the bootleg rom versions that were coming out (such as Rainbow Edition where you could do all of your moves in the air). This version alone I could probably write a whole article on as it features not one single new frame of animation yet the game was tweaked and is considered by some to best version of Street Fighter. It is also the one that is coming out soon for Xbox Live Arcade (some day...).

For their 2nd attempt at trying to figure out what to do with this move it looks like they left it completely alone from Champion Edition but toned down how much damage it does to the opponent (from 14 to 10 points). Keep in mind that many people consider Guile to be the best in not only World Warrior but also Champion Edition and Hyper Fighting.

Super Street Figther 2
If you can look back at any game that killed off the Street Fighter franchise it is definitely this game. Hyper Fighting was very fast compared to its predecessor and players got accustomed to it. SSF2 however was around the same speed as CE and it admittedly turned off players who were tired of more of the same old and moved on to other games like Mortal Kombat. History lesson aside lets take a look at how they decided to tweak this great move one more time:

They brought the damage back up from 10 to 14 but they also added a frame of recovery. Notice the red box and how it gets pushed back inside Guile, no longer going past the graphic of his leg arguably having the shortest attack range out of all versions. This also happens to be the first game where Guile is not considered one of the best.

Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo
Another sequel but this time they brought the speed of HF back along with a ton of small changes. However it looks like they decided to leave Guile's Low Foward the same as it was in SSF2.

Final Thoughts
Small changes can have very huge effects throughout your game. Simply adding one extra frame of recovery can alter how a character can compete. Granted there are way more variables than just this one move but thats just it - you need to keep track of them all and realize how they all interweave and what impact they have upon one another. Even if you aren't making a sequel or a competitive game you should still try to keep everything in mind, one small error can result in an infinite combo or getting the character stuck in an animation loop because the exit frame is longer than the animation itself.

Hopefully this wasn't too boring or too Street Fighter-centric but I felt more comfortable using SF as an example to convey the larger topic since I know that game better than most games.

Note: Images hella used without permission. Sorry Daigo.

Chimps play not only marvel but also Pac-Man

2006-07-12T23:27:00.000-07:00

Not sure if everyone saw this or not but this is one of the more amazing things I have seen in a while. I think the first chimpanzee is definitely better, it really seems like he (she?) can tell the difference of when to eat the ghosts or not. I would love to see a followup story to this like a year from now to find out if they develop any better skills.

Evo east is this weekend. Good luck to everyone, I unfortunately can't make it but I'm sure it will be awesome.

There is an Evo lite event at Comic Con in San Diego this weekend. Hopefully that goes well and we can do more stuff like that.

Can you believe that when Jaffe updates his blog every major videogame website makes a news item about it? Amazing. So yeah...go read what El Jeffe has to say and be part of what the cool kids are doing.

On a painful note I am getting all 4 of my wisdom teeth taken out on Monday. Pain Pain Pain.

Evo has come and gone...

2006-07-05T00:31:00.000-07:00

I had a relative from Indiana (my home state) come out to visit me this week. So I tried my best to show her around. One of the hard things about living somewhere for so long is that you forget what is interesting to show someone. So I took her to the beach, rodeo drive, chinese mann theater to watch superman (brandon routh looks like a man child when he is superman, decent clark kent though), malibu, san diego zoo, etc. I didn't get a chance to make it to Evo until late sunday to watch the finals.

James Chen wrote a ton of great stuff about it as well has posting some pictures, so go read about it or something.

One of the great parts about Evo is playing people in casuals, which i did none of - haha. However I got to grab dinner tonight in KTown with John Choi, Bronson Tran and Petah Kang. Went back to Petah's place and played some ST for about an hour or so. Bronson beat me like 9-1 or something stupid like that, Vietnameeee is just too strong sometimes. It was fun and glad I got to see everyone. Petah told me some exciting stuff about Bang The Machine so keep an eye out for that.

Germany/Italy made me sad. I owe my girlfriend dinner tomorrow.

Nothing too exciting - time to get back to the grind of god of war 2.

Kojima admits defeat?

2006-06-23T14:45:00.000-07:00

"If you talk about the war between Japanese developers and those overseas, I acknowledge that we have already lost. The Japanese creators have lost to the European and American creators. Therefore, I always say to my staff, Don't look at the Japanese creators. Look toward the Europeans and Americans when looking at development". -- Hideo Kojima in the newest issue of Game Informer (I hear it has Need For Speed Carbon on the cover but I haven't personally seen it yet).

I personally think Kojima's statement is completely blown out of proportion. I don't think anyone has won the war so to speak but I think it's a good idea for everyone to be aware of what each other is doing. Discuss.

MTV acknowledges game design

2006-06-18T19:49:00.000-07:00

I'm sure a lot of you have seen this by now, seeing as how I'm like a month late in posting this. But I was talking with a friend of mine the other day and he hadn't seen it so I figured why not post it. MTV's Gideon Yago meets up with Will Wright, Harvey Smith, David Jaffe and Cliffy B to discuss games during E3. Definitely worth checking out. Just click on the picture itself or click here. I hear it's not very mac friendly or likes to cuddle up with anything else besides IE so don't shoot the messenger.

Since it's summer time me and the lady have been going out and playing in the sun more. I have been bringing the camera along so I decided to add a new section - Random Gallery. I'll probably update it when I update a new post or something unless some knows of a better way to have it automatically update itself. I couldn't think of a great place on the blog itself to place it, so off to the right hand side it went. If anyone has a better idea let me know. Also let me know if you hate/like the idea.

Why some games feel better than others – part 2

2006-06-07T00:56:00.000-07:00

Jumping

I chose jumping for this article as I think it’s one of the most basic functions
that has been in videogames since the beginning that is still being used today. Games as old as Donkey Kong and as new as GTA all feature jumping. It has gone from the main gameplay focus in games to one of many options that your character can perform.

Games have changed from 2d to 3d and jumping has remained a constant. Even as games shifted view from 3rd person to 1st person, jumping has hung around no matter what the current trend in videogames. Something so innate to videogames and yet read any videogame magazine and I’m sure you’ll find a review of a game where people are complaining about the jumping. A basic functionality of videogames and developers are still getting it wrong.

I don’t claim to have the perfect answer but when studying jumps in as many games as I could find, I noticed one common thing. How long the character was in the air regardless of 2d or 3d, this determines if a jump feels good or not. How long the player is out of control as their character floats around is very important. Oddly enough good jumps were around the same time and bad jumps were around the same time length.

I fully admit that my tests are not the most accurate in the world but it’s a starting point for a conversation. A conversation that hopefully developers can have with one another as they have their character jump and try to nail that elusive feeling of ‘good’.

My Testing Methods
I took a stopwatch and pressed start as soon as I pressed the jump button. I then pressed stop right when the characters feet touched the ground again. I did not account for any settling that the character may do in the animation. Most games allow for the player to navigate out of this settling animation so I discounted it completely. Also since I have only 2 hands I only tested the character jumping straight up while standing still. Some games have different animations for jumping straight up or jumping toward an object and I did not test those. Since it is a very imprecise way of measuring I repeated the same jump around 8 or 10 times and what you see is my average of those attempts.

Note that a lot of games which I consider to have great jumps have controllable jumps depending on how long you hold the jump button down, such as Super Mario Bros. When testing those I tried to take an average of how long the average jump is performed. Yeah, not the most precise thing in the world but like I said I want this to be the beginning of the conversation, not the end.

My Testing Results
Time is measured in seconds.

First lets take a look at some NES games

Super Mario Bros 1 – 0.75 seconds
Super Mario Bros 2 – 0.65 (I only tested Mario)
Super Mario Bros 3 – 0.75 seconds

Castlevania 1 – 0.72 seconds
Castlevania 2 – 0.68 (looks like they removed the slight hesitation at the apex of the jump)
Castlevania 3 – 0.72 seconds

Contra – 1.03 seconds
Ghosts and Goblins – 0.7 seconds
Ninja Gaiden – 0.9 seconds
Rush N’ Attack – 0.9

Now with just a quick look at these results I think you can see a pattern emerging. Good jumps fall within the 0.7 category, anything longer and you start having a jump that no longer feels good.

Now for some Playstation 2 games
Devil May Cry 3 – 0.75
God of War – 0.69
GTA3 – 1.10
Jak & Daxter 1 – 0.72
Psi Ops – 1.10
Ratchet & Clank 2 – 0.75
Shadow Of The Colossus – 1.10
Shinobi – 0.85
Sly Cooper 1 – 0.8

I won’t lie, I was kinda shocked to see that going from 2d to 3d a good feeling jump remains the same as far as time in the air is concerned. Personally I think that a good feeling jump outweighs any real world animation or scenario that your game is trying to present. Who cares if it feels or looks “arcadey” – players expect and need immediate response when it comes to jumping.

My numbers aren’t the most accurate thing in the world but I think it’s safe to say that somewhere between 0.70 and 0.80 is what most people consider a good feeling jump. Anything longer than this and the player starts to really notice how out of control they are during a jump. Anything less and either the jump serves no purpose or feels even worse than being out of control.

MTV, old friends and new friends

2006-06-04T16:45:00.000-07:00

Yesterday me and Victor Ratliff aka the worlds sexiest Xmen Vs Street Fighter player headed down to MTV to meet up with a new acquaintance name Dave who I hope turns out to be a friend. Super rad guy and thanks to Ryan Downey for introducing us. MTV is filming for a new videogame show and this was for the pilot they are trying to put together. They asked us to do a lot of silly things - such as showing off your game face. I had my tongue out to the side and they were all, 'whats that?' I couldn't believe they didn't get the Michael Jordan reference. It was fun and who knows what they end up doing with it all, maybe i'll get turned out like my brief appearances in Bang The Machine.

While we were there, ran into another SF player named Rotendo and one of the fragdolls, Brooke.

We all grabbed lunch down in Santa Monica showing her the way to the beach. We got back to MTV in time to see the guys from The Mario Opera which were simply amazing. I had never heard of them before but I wish them the best as they were fantastic!

I'm a self promotional whore

2006-05-30T21:30:00.000-07:00

But you guys all knew that by reading this site.

Sorry I haven't updated in what feels like forever but after E3 my desire to talk about videogames has dwindled a tad bit. Give it a day or two and I'm sure it will pick back up ^_^

For those of you who didn't notice, I expanded some of my links.

Cory Barlog, head of God of War 2 has a great blog these days. Make sure to check it out.

James Chen, who I said before needed a blog has actually gone and got himself one. Everyone should stop by and show him some love.

Chris George, who worked recently on Gun has a personal site showing off a lot of his artwork through out the years. Definitely worth checking out.

During E3 I got to meet up with an old friend of mine, Andrew Alfonso, who sat down to interview me and Eric Williams for IGN talking about God Of War 2. You can read the article here.

The fine peeps over at Got-Next including Chris 'Bahn' Scantleberry posted up an interview I did with them during E3 also. You can read it here.

Go read some of these things and rejoin our normally scheduled programming soon.

Why some games feel better than others – Part 1 of a gazillion

2006-05-14T22:20:00.000-07:00

Before we dive into this lets just get this out of the way – this is a very long and complicated subject to tackle. When I talk about feel – I’m trying to describe how a game plays. When you first pick up the controller and you move the character around or jump – does it feel good? Does it feel like you expect it to?

This isn’t even relegated to jumping or moving around but those are very basic functions that I think most games get wrong. One of the worst things about making videogames is that you have to re-invent the wheel with almost every new project you work on. So even though Mario jumps like a champ, when you go to make your game it’s very hard to reverse engineer Mario’s jump and port it into your game. Many games spend months on just getting their characters navigation down – going from idle to walk to run, etc. Seems like a simple thing that you should just be able to plug in some middleware entitled, ‘good navigation’ and throw your character model on top but it doesn’t work that way. I heard a story about a certain coin-op developer who did a lot of racing games in the 90’s, they had a completely separate engine for all of their racing games (which I think was around 4 different series) and none of the teams spoke to one another.

Because you have to reinvent the wheel each time out, you get people who either don’t care or simply don’t have the knowledge of what it takes to have their characters feel good when a player first picks up the controller. I completely admit this is a huge task but I think it’s one that most developers gloss over. One of my favorite Shiggy Miyamoto stories is him coming to America to play an early build of Excitebike 64. He asked the developer for an empty track with no hills, jumps, curves, etc – basically a blank road on which to drive the bike around. He picked up the controller and within minutes threw it on the desk and probably mumbled something in Japanese about how all American game developers suck. His point was that if you can't have fun in an empty room with no toys, then nothing you layer on top of it will salvage the game. I liken it to construction – if the base isn’t solid then the rest of the building will soon collapse.

So when it comes to building the foundation one of the easiest ways to measure things is the amount of frames that they take up. How many frames total is the animation or how many frames are there in the startup, hit window or in recovery. Any professional fighting game player will tell you the importance of frames, a move with 3 frames of recovery is vastly better than one with 6 frames of recovery. Things get more interesting when the move with 6 frames of recovery has 1 frame of startup.

The importance of frames isn’t relegated to only fighting games though. I think this is where most game developers let things fall apart. Either by not knowing the importance of frames or letting the animators dictate what looks better over what feels better. Animators will always opt for the animation that looks best.

With everything being said I am going to use 2 different fighting games examples to convey what I'm talking about. The first one is the same character in 2 different modes and how those modes play off of one another and the second is 2 different characters but with the same special move command and why one is easier than the other.

Capcom Vs. SNK2
It is not important to be well versed in this fighting game but either playing it once or twice or downloading a match video would not kill you. The important thing to know is that in this game when the player picks their character they are presented with another screen to select their ‘groove’. Groove dictates how the character will play – can they run, dodge, or how will they best use their special moves, etc. For the purpose of this post I want to talk about one important aspect that changes from some grooves to others: Low Jumping. Low Jumping is the ability to do a small jump as opposed to the normal jump that happens when the player presses up on the controller.

In a normal jumping groove, Ryu will leave the ground in 2 frames. In a Low Jumping groove, Ryu takes 6 frames to leave the ground. The game adds 4 extra frames to the same character to allow for controller input (Low Jumping command is Up then quickly tapping Down on the controller). Although at high level play these 4 frames don’t really make or break a game but when you first play the same character in multiple grooves it stands out and makes the character feel slower.

Here is a quick video of the Ryu in both grooves jumping up and down. Notice how they become off time from one another.

Zangief Vs. Thawk
Again with a Street Fighter reference but this time with a much older game, Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo. There are 2 characters that both have a complex controller motion known as 360 – you must spin the joystick 360 degrees then press the punch button to perform. Even though both characters have the same command many players have a much harder time performing Thawk’s. The reason again boils down to frames and in a very similar reason:

Thawk jumps faster than Zangief meaning that he leaves the ground faster. So when the player presses Up on the controller as part of the 360 command Thawk jumps faster than Zangief. Most players who have a hard time doing the same move with both characters will attest to the fact that Thawk ends up jumping a lot when they try to do the move and that is why. Let's look at the frames behind the problem:

Thawk leaves the ground in 3 frames after pressing Up
Zangief leaves the ground in 5 frames after pressing Up

2 frames is all that is needed for players to have a hard time doing the special moves for their characters. Here is a quick and dirty video showing Thawk and Zangief both jumping. Although this isn’t as accurate as Ryu Vs. Ryu in the previous example (since I don’t know how many frames they stay in the air) I think you can quickly see them getting off time showing the importance of 2 frames.

For the next post I want to discuss more mainstream games - such as why Mario's jump feels better than Lara Croft's and some other gameplay mechanics that are common.

Thanks for reading.

Pre E3 Babbling

2006-05-04T21:09:00.000-07:00

Sorry that I haven't been updating much lately but we have been really busy trying to get the game ready for E3. Last night me, Cory Barlog and Nate sat down to tune most of the battles in the game. This is by far my favorite part of creating a game. Its like up until now we just have a lot of enemies and or events but everything is flat. There is no pacing, no consideration to where you are going to next or where you just came from or anything. So we spent a lot of time placing chests, checkpoints, tuning how frequent the enemies attack, block, what they do when they block, etc. Since this is the first time the public will be able to play God of War 2 - we are going over everything with a finetooth comb. Even though I was exhausted last night as I was driving home I was happy because it finally feels like the game is coming together as a game, not just a bunch of artwork and design ideas thrown together in a room.

Unfortunately I haven't been able to play many games since last time I updated. I tried to play some more Metroid for the DS but that game is evil and doesn't let me save until i get back to my ship. I hate save points, esepcially on handhelds. BTW, does this game have anything to do with Metroid besides the name? Metroid Prime Pinball feels more metroidish then this game.
I have been so busy having tunnel vision with our game that I don't even know what to expect for E3 this year. I kind of like that though - everything will be new and exciting. Although E3 is usually a depressing time - you get to see all these new games and they look great and amazing then you realize you have to go back to work and now work twice as hard. Lots of, 'why didn't we think of that' or, 'damn...that looks good and we are doing something similar so now we have to make ours look even better'.

Oh yeah! So I sent my moms a copy of Brain Training to go along with sending her my DS heavy earlier in the year. I sent her Animal Crossing and while liking it I think she had a hard time with it. Simple game-ism stuff that we take for granted she wasn't grasping very fast. But this game...she hasn't stopped talking about.

I tried to play this game with my girlfriend, let me just tell you she is a cheater being an asian programmer. First time she played she was at 20. It's like...damn, she beat the internet or something.

Who is looking after designers? and Wiii!!

2006-04-27T11:28:00.000-07:00

From the recently announced EA Settlement:

Software engineers have won a $14.9 million settlement from Electronic Arts, in a settlement of a California class-action lawsuit over unpaid overtime, following a similar $15.6 million settlement reached in October with graphic artists.

As far as I'm aware, this is the end of the class action lawsuits against EA for unpaid overtime. Which leaves me wondering who are protecting the designers in all of this? Unpaid overtime is nothing new to the industry - more of a standard than I really wish it was. I worked 50 some days straight on a project before with no compensation what so ever besides keeping my job. And companies wonder why people leave so much and the lifespan of a designer is so short (5 years i think?). I've yet to figure out where designers go to die aside from being producers. As I get older I think more about job security than ever before, leaving on time (8 hour day) is looked down upon and there are 3 or 4 kids fresh out of school lining up to take my job who will work more hours, work for less and complain less. The industry needs to change and hopefully I'll still be in it to see it happen.

On another note, Nintendo changed the name from Revolution to Wii. My knee jerk reaction is that everything Nintendo has been trying to accomplish with the DS Lite and the Revo controller - making games more massmarket and appealing has been completely eradicated with this name. Only time will tell and maybe it will be like the Palm Pilot - which is no longer called that, has been just Palm for over 10 years now but people still know it as that name.

'why did it have to be tanks?!'

2006-04-23T07:54:00.000-07:00

So this has been a weird week. Started off with me getting older (emphasize on old these days) then woke up on Wednesday morning in more pain than I have been in my life. It all started off with a pain in my side at 5 a.m. and the thought I should just roll over. The pain didn't go away and became so unbearable that I had to wake my girlfriend up. Since we just recently moved to this area we had no idea where a hospital was. Finally getting to the hospital and feeling the closest to death I ever have - being in a wheelchair with a blanket wrapped around me as i get wheeled to the xray machine. Turned out I had a kidney stone (i thought only old people got those?? grr) which lasted all day wednesday and most of thursday.

On the plus side, my girlfriend got a DS Lite (white) on friday. That thing is indeed sexy. They changed the 'feel' of the buttons and the dpad, for the better I think. The strap did drop that weird thumb thing that I think only James Chen uses. Oh and the power supply is different from the GBA SP/DS and the gameboy micro. Cause seriously, this is what I need in life - another power supply dangling from a wall. Speaking of DS - Mario Kart DS got added to evo this year. Oh you know it, the 'kids' are going crazy over having something new added.

So as I was slowly waking up from death this weekend i tried to play some Call Of Duty 2 on the 360 that I've had forever. I don't know why I bought it - I got caught up in the hype of it being the killer app to own/show off for the 360 but also I met a few of the guys from Infinity Ward and figured I would support them. Rumor has it that they have an Alpha 3 cabinet there and they are close to where I live so maybe I'll get in contact with them to play one of these days. The game starts off with my favorite part of World War 2 - the russians beating the germans due to their winter. Maybe it's because I'm from the midwest and our winters are no joke either.

So the game starts off and i'm like, 'wow - this is one of the most amazing games I've ever played'. Then I stop being the russians :( whack. So then I gotta be the british and I can't even discern the badguys from my teammates immediately and I have a shitty gun. whatever, i'm still having decent fun. Then...they put me in a damn tank!! Maybe thats what the 'kids' want but damn you all to hell for making me drive a tank. Reminded me of when I was having fun playing Ratchet & Clank then they made me race a car...and get 1st. Grr. I'm done with the tank mission at least and I'll keep playing it - but another tank...and ggpo to COD2.

random musings

2006-04-15T13:10:00.000-07:00

Sorry that I haven't been able to update much here lately. We (as in the GoW2 team) have been working nonstop for E3.

The few free hours I've had I've been trying to play some of the 10,000 games that have been coming out. When did March become the new Christmas anyways? I stole that line from James Chen who should have his own blog. I should post his phone number on here so everyone could call him and tell him so.

Anyways, I picked up Tetris for the DS. I played online a few times which was pretty fun. I played once against someone named, 'Kratos' which made me laugh. Too bad Nintendo won't let me use the microphone thats built into the DS to talk to the person I'm playing against.

Also picked up Metroid for the DS. I am one of the weak humans who can't play FPS -- I get dizzy for some reason. If there is a character on the screen to stare at, doesn't happen but take that away and I need some dramamine. However Metroid for the DS doesn't really do that to me, which has made me want to play the game even more. However...that first level is HORRIBLE!! At first I thought it was just my inexperience with FPS's but I would enter a room and there would be 2 doors (the door I came in and the door i need to go out) and after shooting some enemies I would be turned around as to which door was which. I would go through one and see a curved hallway so I would go back into the room and try the other door and I would see a curved hallway that looked the exact same. I think I'll keep playing it though. Maybe one of these days I'll try online for it when my girlfriend isn't owning up the DS with Animal Crossing.

Speaking of DS - I really want a DS Lite.

Downloaded that Tomb Raider demo for the 360. I won't lie, I had a lot of fun. Everytime a new Tomb Raider comes out I get all excited about how this one won't suck and for the first time I think this one won't suck! There were a few things I didn't like about the demo - mostly the controls such as tapping R1 to grab onto an object and tapping R1 to release holding onto the object. I wish they would have just done hold down R1 the entire time. Oh well. There are a few really good things in their controls though when you are platforming. They have this mechanic when you are doing the ledge shimmy you press Y rhythmically to move faster. It takes what is usually a boring a slow/boring mechanic and keeps it interactive for the player. Well done.

Finally got around to playing Ghost Recon for the 360 also. I have never played any of those Tom Clancy games before, I love how that man has a whole genre - buff. Anyways since I never played any of those games before I didn't know what to expect. I hella didn't expect to have Geometry Wars rendered on top of the game but I gotta admit that calling a Black Hawk to shoot fools down is pretty damn entertaining.

I don't know why anyone wants replayability in their games, I can't even play all the damn games that are out right now. I'm still trying to finish up Daxter on the psp and I have yet to play Syphon Filter, open up MegaMan Powered up or even buy Oblivion. I love how people complain about how games are only 10-12 hours. At this point I wish all games were like 7 hours. I want to get in, experience it and get out.

I don't know if it's cause we are in LA or what, but a favorite guilty pleasure of many of us here on the GoW team is celebrity gossip. When a new issue of US arrives, we all take turns reading it. We've also been reading Pink Is The New Blog. Keeps me entertained when I'm here nonstop.

Speaking of entertainment, is everyone watching The 1up show? Its my new favorite thing and I've been going back and watching all the episodes during dinner time here at work.

Last but not least I'll leave everyone with a video someone sent me when I posted about Brice the blind Mortal Kombat player. Here is a video of him versus the game's creator - Ed Boon.

Five Fighting Games - Part 3

2006-04-08T21:07:00.000-07:00

Sorry that I haven't updated in what feels like forever. We have been really busy trying to get God Of War 2 ready for E3 and what not. I decided to post the last of this random article that I had to write for a publisher at one point. I wrote it so long ago that I barely even remember why I had to write it.

Since this is the most complex games of all time I figured I would tell a story about when I landed the most complex thing for the first time ever. I was in Japan at More arcade which has perhaps the best players in the entire world. It was during the middle of a week day and Daigo himself was there practicing for SBO. I asked my friend to ask Daigo if I could play him a couple of games in every Street Fighter game they have - ST, A3, 3S, and CvS2. Daigo laughed and said sure.

So i got beat up in CvS2 cause I suck at that game, held my own in ST, actually won a game in 3s (this was before he started to beat everyone up in that game) and the final game was Street Fighter Alpha 3. He picks VRyu and I picked VZangief. I suck more at A3 than any other SF game. I don't know why but that game just doesn't click with me. On top of that, I'm white and suck at doing VC's.

However! On that day I actually landed the full Gief VC (including the OTG) against Daigo, something I hadn't landed in years. Even though I got beat up by Daigo going from one game to another, somehow landing that one combo made me smile. Anyways...here is the final part of this series.

5 most complex fighting games of all time:
A. Street Fighter 2: World Warrior. The grand daddy of fighting games and arguably more complex than some of the current games that are coming out (Dead Or Alive for example). Having moves that no one had ever attempted before - Spinning Pile Driver and Dragon Punch motions, World Warrior had depth that stemmed beyond Paper Rock Scissors. Different character classes - fireball characters, grappling characters, sonic boom characters, zoning characters, link combo characters, there was something there for everyone and they all played off on a meta-relationship that didn't allow one to rise to the top of being the best. This game really did set the bar for complexity that few games have even come close to reaching.

B. Virtua Fighter 2. While at first appearing to be easy with the 3 buttons, Virtua Fighter took those 3 buttons and created some of the most complex game play ever seen. Requiring the player first to spend weeks just learning how to activate their different moves, while some moves take even longer such as Akira and his Stun Palm of Doom, weeks were required to master situations on how to land those moves. So much time is spent on learning a character and fleshing the character out, that it is often unheard of that anyone masters more than one character at a time.

C. Super Street Fighter 2: Turbo. Being the 5th incarnation of the same engine, Super Turbo introduced new elements to an engine and created arguably the best Street Fighter to date. Overheads (standing moves that had to be blocked high), Air Juggles, Super meter, Throw Techs, were all introduced for the first time to bring out a whole new world of depth to an already complex world. Being released in
1994, the game still has a strong following where people travel all over the world to play each other.

D. Tekken 3. Namco wanting to break away from being, 'that other 3d game' decided to re haul the Tekken engine and created one of the best fighting games the world has ever seen. People soon realized that 10 strings were not good with all the parrying, countering and holes that they left, so soon players moved on to bigger and better things. Advanced techniques such as light stepping, wave dashing, crouch dashing, etc allowed for players to master more and more things to win with. Combined with the fact that characters were time released - strategies that were good one week could potentially be obsolete when a new character was unlocked.

E. Marvel Vs. Capcom 2. Having 56 characters and teams of 3 characters per team - the team combinations went through the roof. Not only that, but the teams were built around a helper subsystem, so that when you were playing as the point character you could still call out one of your teammates - and the helpers each had 3 different things they could do. So once players even got past which helper subtype is good for each character and what characters make up a good team, then the concept of counter teams were introduced and everything that goes along with that. But not only is there that level of depth, but also the techniques that each character could do. Flying, Air Dashing, Fast Fly, Push Block canceling, etc all became common words that people used as a language to communicate with one another over the various techniques that they were discovering how to do and how to win with.

GDC and God of War ramblings

2006-03-27T22:28:00.000-08:00

GDC has come and gone this year. And for the 10th billionth time I have not gone. I suppose it's a weak excuse but it just happens to be at a bad time of the year, right before E3. With so much going on for E3 I feel guilty taking time off for GDC. Oh well.

Before GDC we had some amazing people stop by the studio - the Shadow of the Colossus team! I got up to get something to drink and all of a sudden saw 20 Japanese people in the kitchen. I said good morning to one of them in Japanese and all of a sudden they thought I spoke Japanese and started speaking back. My bad. I quickly said I don't speak Japanese (muri!) and went back to my desk. Later on in the day, Cory Barlog brought over the whole team to check out what we are doing with God of War 2. Figuring I would have a little fun with them - I took a script that we have to scale characters in real time (we used it with the Cerberus puppy transforming into the adult in part 1) and applied it to the skeleton creature. I scaled him 15 times bigger over the course of a few frames. Fumito Ueda asked me what I was doing and I told him we were making our own Shadow of the Colossus. Everyone laughed. It was really amazing to meet all of them and I wish I could have had longer to talk. The translator said how everyone was a big fan of God of War and I told him that all of us were big fans of Ico/SotC also and asked if I could take some pics:

Don't hate on american cell phone quality.

Anyways...There was a lot of cool stuff regarding God of War at GDC this year. Part 2 got announced!! If you haven't seen the bootleg video showing the trailer and the crowd reaction, make sure to check it out!

Tim Moss, the lead programmer for God of War, gave a really excellent speech about how the programmers came to grips with what the designers were requesting and how both camps came to work well with one another. For those of you who didn't make it to GDC, it looks like they have made his power point presentation available here (I think it's around 5mb or so).

Looks like David Jaffe and Lorne Lanning got together at GDC to talk a little bit about GOW also. Again for those of you who couldn't make it - looks like IGN transcribed it here.

Finally - if you guys haven't seen this video - you need to download it now. A blind kid goes to Japan to play Mortal Kombat against some of the worlds best fighting game players of all time. I'm talking about Chibita, Nuki, Kenbou, Tokido, KSK, etc. He plays 25 matches and only loses 3. Insanity. I put it up on yousendit for now so first come first serve. Click here to download it.

EDIT: I heard the url died so you guys might be able to try another one here

P.S. If anyone has a copy of Brain Training from GDC and doesn't want it - kick down! ^_^

Five Fighting Games - Part 2

2006-03-23T22:24:00.000-08:00

The previous article we talked about the 5 most successful games - ok it was mostly me talking. This time I'm going to talk about the 5 most accessible fighting games.

With the success series we had a lot of great stories where people gave out their secrets to what they did to play these games. This time lets see if we can get any good stories about people you thought you would NEVER play against - simply because these games were so accessible everyone was playing them.

I remember one time when MK2 was popular, I had about 50 some wins and it was the middle of winter. To say that the arcade I was in was ghetto would not even begin to describe it. The places I went to play fighting games amazes me even to this day. Anyways I had a good win streak going when a new guy walked up with a big ass Starter jacket on. He opened it up and showed me the gun he had hanging out of his jeans and was all, 'so I'm going to win next right?' Of course he won and all of his boys laughed at me.

5 most accessible fighting games of all time:

A. Street Fighter 2: World Warrior. Being the one that started it all, people were drawn into the world of Street Fighter easily. It had a cast of cool characters that people wanted to play along with a list of special moves that people wanted to master. Taking the time to practice and learn everything the game gave you no longer applied to beating someone's score or anything, you could now defeat the person that was standing next to you and force someone else to spend their money trying to beat you. The adrenalin rush was something everyone was addicted to at the time.

B. Mortal Kombat 1. Mortal Kombat came out right around the time that Capcom started releasing sequel after sequel. By this point, the divisions between master and beginner in Street Fighter were drawn and drawn deeply. MK gave people an easy way out, if you weren't good in Street Fighter then go try your hand at Mortal Kombat! Combining this fact with the easy to perform moves and the eye candy at the end, people flocked to MK to rip off all of their opponent's heads.

C. Tekken. People grown tired of 2D fighting and the limitations on it, saw a new world to try to conquer when Tekken came out. Tekken requiring different skills than were necessary in traditional 2D fighting games, saw their chance to rise to the ranks of masters in this new world. Combined with the fact that just by pressing buttons, different moves came out, people quickly dropped SF and MK to try to master Tekken.

D. Soul Calibur. Building upon the success of Tekken, Namco developed a weapon based fighter known as Soul Calibur. With the Sega Dreamcast just having been released, Namco brought home one of the most beautiful conversions from arcade to home ever. Populated with mini games and missions for the player to win and achieve, people around the world couldn't stop talking about how great of a game Soul Calibur was.

E. Xmen Vs. Street Fighter. Combining two of the biggest franchises of the 90's - Street Fighter and Xmen comics, Capcom created a game that anyone could approach and see results. Fireball+2 punch buttons resulted in 30 hits for some characters!!! By dumbing down motions and upping the number of hits for moves, people were playing this game in arcades for years.

GOW2 gets announced

2006-03-22T15:07:00.000-08:00

Fuck EB and the videogame industry

2006-03-18T11:17:00.000-08:00

There are 2 things I truly hate about the videogame Industry: EB Games and Tuesday.

Me and my co-worker, Eric walked into an EB the other day and were horrified at what we saw. Nothing but horrible looking yellow boxes, stickers and a collection of games that were in no order what so ever.

I wanted to look for Stubbs: The Zombie and I couldn't even truly figure out where 'S' started and ended. I'm not even sure if I was in the Xbox section - the sign said so but the games on the shelf didn't.

Thats just the beginning of my hatred for that damn place. I bought a copy of Eternal Darkness from there a little while ago and this is what I came home with. I'm not sure if you can tell from this pic or not, but there are actually TWO get 10% off today stickers - one on top of the other one. And no, I didn't get 20% off. Hookers.

What I hate even more than that damn horrible place is Release Dates. I thought about buying Tetris and decided to see when it came out. According to this page on EB it says it ships on Monday. Does that mean I can buy it on Tuesday? Wednesday? If you continue to look at what else is coming out this week - they all ship on different dates!?!?!

If you have ever bought a cd or dvd recently, you know that new releases come out on Tuesday. Each new Tuesday the shopper can go into Best Buy or whatever store and pick up what they are looking for. But NOT for videogames! On Tuesday I might get Tetris but if I want Katamari for PSP I have to wait until...Thursday maybe? I just have to randomly visit the store hoping they have it in stock.

Which brings me to another thing I hate about the videogame industry: Pre-Orders! I really don't enjoy having to tell someone that I want a certain game and paying money in advance for it. If the videogame industry could get their act straight and let me pick up the game on Tuesday like every other form of media we wouldn't have this problem.

Five Fighting Games - Part 1

2006-03-16T00:02:00.000-08:00

Decided to throw up a series discussing fighting games. I figured I would pick the 5 most successful, accessible and complex fighting games of all time. Today will be the most successful.

Seeing as how we are talking about the most successful fighting games, I'm curious if anyone has some great stories about things that they did as a kid to play them. I had a friend who would go through the mall parking lot pulling up on car handles looking for cars that were unlocked and seeing if there was any change to steal just to play Street Fighter. I remember trading copies of games (old sierra games) with the local guy who worked at my arcade for all of the foreign tokens (tokens that were for a different arcade that people tried to use in that arcade).

5 most successful fighting games of all time:

A. Street Fighter 2: World Warrior. Often heralded as the 2nd Pac-Man, Capcom quietly released a bomb into the arcades in early 1991 that rescued arcades and revolutionized the world. Names such as Chun Li and Blanka are now household names that everyone is familiar with. Capcom succeeded where others had failed for three reasons. One is that for the first time teenage males had something to compete with besides just score or time, they had one another. Second is that for the first time someone came up with a way to read in complex joystick motions correctly. Attacks went from just being a button or a direction and a button to now Down, Down/Toward, Toward+Punch (known through out the world as the fireball motion). People were given a new skill to attain and everyone across the world wanted to be the first ones to master these new skills and use them to win. Third, whether by design or by chance, Street Fighter succeeded because there was never one strategy that dominated the game. As soon as you thought you had found the perfect strategy to win with your character, there was someone there to prove you wrong.

B. Mortal Kombat 2: In the harsh weather known as Chicago, 2 guys were busy trying to get in on the craze that were fighting games. After having decent success with Mortal Kombat 1 - nothing more than an experiment with gore and real actors for their graphics, Midway did the unthinkable and actually injected some game play into MK2. Characters had actual strategies to employ and tier rankings were formed. The success of MK1 was largely in part due to the 'sekrets' that the game had (fatalaties, hidden character) and Midway created with MK2 with this in mind. Even going as far as releasing upgrades that changed the commands of not only some moves but also all of the fatalaties that were in the game. It was not uncommon to see players in the arcades with towels or even boxes over their hands to hide their inputs from fellow players. Midway seemed to be in tune exactly with what the players wanted at this time and delivered in full force.

C. Tekken 3. After having lived as nothing more than a shadow of Virtua Fighter, Tekken grew wings and sprouted into a franchise that no one could touch when Tekken 3 was released. People were tired of playing Street Fighter rehashes and Mortal Kombat became too silly, when along came Sony touting how 2D was dead and 3D was the future, and in walked Tekken 3 to prove that the future was here. Building upon precepts that people were familiar with, Tekken 3 learned from its mistakes and nailed the magic that is making a game that looks easy to play and provides years of depth. Having a story line that affected the characters throughout the series, having chars that were time released, having home releases that were often better than their arcade counter parts all added up for Tekken dominating the console sales figures for years to come.

D. Killer Instinct 1. After seeing that Midway could put a dent into the armor of Capcom's Street Fighter, Nintendo and Rare teamed up to carve out their slice of the fighting game pie. Once again, building upon the concepts that everyone were familiar with (6 buttons, 1 joystick), Killer Instinct came out brawling and succeeded. Boasting high resolution 3d models that were using the Ultra 64 hardware, (along with advertisements of how it was coming home to the Ultra 64 hardware) Rare knocked a home run with it's easy to perform combos and ease of play. Prior to KI, 4 hit combos were seen as the echelon of combos where as KI introduced a complex system that resulted in the player being able to use different subsets to create 40+ hits. Also since Rare were a UK company, they used what was then a burgeoning soundtrack of electronic dance music and introduced many Americans their first taste of quality techno music.

E. Marvel Vs. Capcom 2. Fighting game companies having alienated most fighting game fans by sequels that no one could understand the differences or were too complex that required people to read 100 page manuals written in Japanese, Capcom released a gigaton bomb on the fighting game community with Marvel Vs. Capcom 2. This was a new Street Fighter for a new generation - people were no longer settling for one on one and Capcom answered with the first real team based game that consisted of 3 players per team and could have potentially all 6 characters on the screen at once. By using a cast of 56 characters, mostly from previous titles - anyone who had ever come into contact with a Marvel comics book or a Street Fighter game prior would recognize half of the cast. Capcom once again pulled out their magic and created a game that is easy to get into and at the same time leaves enough room for talent and skill to be blossom. Released in 2000, this game has celebrated more tournaments and bigger tournaments than any other fighting game in the history of the US.

Honorable Mention:

Street Fighter 2: Hyper Fighting. Capcom knew they had a goldmine with Street Fighter 2 and wanted to cater to their fans. America at this time was the bulk of their audience, being more competitive by nature than Japan. With that in mind, they also wanted to provide an upgrade to counter the bootleg versions of Street Fighter 2 that were floating around. So Capcom of USA brought in 2 of their employees and asked them to fine tune what was already there. Possessing not one single frame of new animation, they took what they had and produced arguably the best version of Street Fighter 2 to date. Fans quickly flocked to the tweaks in droves and once again reminded everyone in the world why Capcom was #1 at this point.

Virtua Fighter - genius or insanity?

2006-03-11T00:30:00.000-08:00

"If we ever wanted to do an online fighting game, it would have to be called something besides Virtua Fighter," Kataoka says recently in an interview with EGM. One of the most popular fighting game series of all time and yet refusing to join the online foray. Which seems like an odd choice with arcades being all but extinct in the world outside of Japan. Games like DOA4 are enjoying a whole new level of success never seen before by being online.

Games since the dawn of time have been about 'multiplayer'. Until videogames, most games were not single player games. Granted you will still be able to go to the arcade to play VF, however people outside of Jpn soon won't have that option. Maybe Sega just wants to focus on their Jpnese market only which would be an odd decision at how well VF4/Evo have sold in America.

Humans by nature are gregarious creatures - we seek one another out to have fun. Look at things like QuakeCon or Evo2k where thousands of people come together from all over the world. Some of these people bring huge equipment including monitors and joysticks. People want to get together and play games and when they can't their next option is to play online. Limiting that may very well limit the appeal that the game will have in the future, especially to those who have grown up with online games such as Halo.

Sega before has done other fighting games such as Fighting Vipers which wasn't met with that much success. However the gameplay wasn't as precise as VF and could very well be a good candidate for online play.

So how does everyone think - sega is playing it smart by staying offline or missing out on moving into the next realm of gaming by not bringing VF online?

The importance of first levels and the 80/20 rule

2006-03-02T00:04:00.000-08:00

The very beginning of a videogame is arguably the most important part. People are willing to dismiss all the hard work that has been done immediately if the game doesn’t immediately grab them. I know I’ve done it and I’m sure everyone reading this has as well. The true beginning of a game for me starts with the front-end and if that sucks, I’m already not looking forward to the game. However the first ‘level’ is what we are going to concern ourselves with. Some games don’t have levels in the traditional sense but I think what I am going to talk about can still apply in the general sense.

Vilfredo Pareto was an economist who is credited with establishing what is now widely known as the Pareto Principle or 80/20 rule. When he discovered the principle, it established that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population. Later, he discovered that the pareto principle was valid in other parts of his life, such as gardening: 80% of his garden peas were produced by 20% of the peapods.

There are tons of examples of where this holds true if you want to know more. A simple search on google will yield more results then I’m willing to babble about.

For some reason I find this number fascinating and have tried to inject it into game design. I’m sure the number could easily be applied to what games sell – 20% of games amount for 80% of the revenue or whatever, with games like GTA, Madden, etc being part of that 20%. But to be honest that only interests me for about 10 minutes and then I get bored and think about something else.

After I got bored, I started thinking about flipping it around and saying that 80% is necessary and 20% is not. Talking at random with Eric Williams, one of the other combat designers for God of War we both agreed this number has some merit. A rule of thumb that we came up with on God of War for the combat was, “Anything a pro can do a button masher can do but only 80% as well.”

Thinking more about this number and how it could be applied to game design – I noticed something about first levels of games, a good first level involves 80% of what the game is about. By this I mean that in the first level you are going to do 80% of all the things you will be doing in the rest of the game. There are many great examples of first levels that do this but I’m going to talk about 2, mostly because I know these levels inside and out. One from playing so much as a kid and the other from playing so much while working on it.

Super Mario Bros world 1-1
One of the greatest games of all time also happens to have one of the greatest first levels. There are a lot of things that go into making a first level great – artwork, sound, ‘fun’ things to do and being accessible. For the time when this game was released, this level had it all. Play the first few notes to this level and everyone can finish the rest.

I’m sure we all recognize this screenshot as the very beginning of the game. This beginning tells us much of what the game is about: Jump on creatures to kill them and jump and bump your head into blocks. The ones with question marks give out goodies – such as coins and mushrooms which make you grow bigger. The ones without questions marks can be interacted within the game world: small Mario can hit them and big Mario can destroy them. The fact that normal brick blocks can hide goodies is saved for later on in this level.

80% of what this game is about is done in this first level – from discovering how to attack creatures to destroying blocks to finding hidden section and hidden 1ups. The list goes on though: hopefully becoming fiery Mario, becoming invincible, tricky jumps to barely make to completing the level by landing on the flagpole to receive the bonus and maybe some fireworks if you are lucky.

This level does a good job of exposing the player to what the game is truly about while holding on to surprises such as swimming for later on.

God of War – Hydra Level
I was not involved at all with the level design of this game, let alone design for this level. Although I feel weird talking directly about a game I’ve worked on – I feel distant enough from this aspect to discuss it. Plus I played this level so much that I know it intimately enough to write something about it.

The game starts off with you fighting enemies with enough of an opening movie to pique your curiosity. This alone does a really good job of summing up what the game is about! From here you mash on R2 to open up a door teaching the player how to open up doors. Then a quick boss encounter happens where you are taught how to perform mini-game kills with the gigantic button prompts. From there you cross the chasms with balance beams. The player is then quickly introduced with a few more boss encounters, a simple puzzle (the box push puzzle), wall combat, gaining magic, and ending with a boss encounter that includes a puzzle as well. Eighty percent of what is done in God of War is done in this first level.

Conclusion
I’m sure there are plenty of ‘bad’ games where you do 80% of what the game is about in the first level. I think what games such as SMB1 and RE4 do so well during their first level is keep presenting you with new tasks to hold your interest. First levels are really hard to get right and there is no magical formula to making one.

Game Designer's TAX

2006-02-22T23:21:00.000-08:00

As a videogame designer there are certain games that you just have to play. They are the tax that you have to pay for having such a cool job. You are forced to play every new zelda game for a little bit at least to see what new things have been done. You are forced to play half-life 2 to see what everyone is talking about in regards to their cut scenes and what cool puzzles they did with their physics engine.

Recently I have been playing a lot of games just to see what everyone is talking about - such as Black and Full Auto. I don't really play FPS's for the most part so when playing Black I'm having a really hard time figuring out what is 'cool' about it. It looks great but after playing Call of Duty 2 on the 360 I am having a hard time going back and appreciating a FPS on the ps2. Full Auto on the other hand I have enjoyed way more than I thought I would with all the bad reviews/hype going on. It's not the greatest game and arguably burnout looks better but I am still having fun playing it.

On the flip side of Game Designer's tax - you are also forced to play really bad games which is where you can learn a lot. Hopefully you can figure out why the game is bad and maybe even take notice of some of the good things and use them in your own game. Some games are just bad no matter what, but I find there is often more to gain from playing a bad game than a good game.

Before going to bed the past few days I've been playing Rub Rabbits, the sequel to what I felt to be the strongest DS launch title - Feel The Magic. Both names are just downright awful and I have a feeling they changed the name from Feel The Magic to somehow get people to see that Rub Rabbits is a way more appealing name - thus buying 3 copies at once. I had to go to around 3 or 4 different stores to even find a copy. Most of the time it was me walking into the store and mumbling, 'do you have rub rabbits?' and the clerk not having a clue as to what game I was asking for - probably thinking it was code word for me trying to buy animal porn.

Which is a shame because I think this game definitely falls into Game Designer's tax - but on the good side. There are a lot of cool elements that they do - including gimmicky things requiring the playing to turn the DS 90 degrees or even 180 for some of the mini-games. Beyond that though there is actual good game design - when bad characters come on screen they make a noise and when the good characters come on screen (the ones you aren't supposed to kill) they make a different sound helping you as the player react besides with just visual cues. I could go on forever about the nuances of this game but I hope everyone out there reading this may go a little out of their way to find a game that it seems like Sega doesn't want anyone to know about and or buy.

New Ocean?!?

2006-02-15T22:55:00.000-08:00

I don't know about everyone on here but I had NO idea there was a new ocean, the Southern Ocean. I asked a few people I work with and no one heard about this either, somehow 6 years ago someone snuck in a new ocean and none of us realized it. Amazing.

I started re-reaidng, 'The Design of Everyday Things' by Donald Norman this week. A wonderful book about industrial design and how things in general are designed poorly and how they could be improved upon. He has this whole chapter where he is talking about phone systems and how confusing they are and there is a wonderful paragraph that I thought I would share with everyone:

"It is interesting that things like the "R" button are largely determined through examples. Somebody asks, 'What is the "R" button used for?' and the answer is to give an example: 'You can push "R" to access loudspeaker paging.' If nobody can think of an example, the feature is dropped. Designers are pretty bright people, however. They can come up with a plausible-sounding example for almost anything. Hence, you get features, many many features, and these features hang on for a long time. The end result is complex interfaces for essentially simple things."

I couldn't stop laughing and was just thinking about this is completely the case with videogames - especially sequels. Things keep getting more and more complicated and the developers don't even bother to notice/care. The returning users usually don't care but the new users are completely blown away with the complexity - look at any new version of DDR or any fighting game released this year for that matter.

As a quick addendum to my previous post about why some games have communities and some don't - me and Omar, a designer from Gun, had a long discussion about this before I posted and one of the conclusions that we came to were: games need something interesting to talk about. Take that for whats its worth.

Videogame Communities

2006-02-12T20:53:00.000-08:00

Me and a friend of mine the other day were discussing this - why do some games have a community and other don't? By community I mean people gathering to either play the game or gathering online to discuss the game. Some games sell amazing numbers (Virtua Fighter for instance) yet virtuafighter.com has only 8053 registered users - compared to the almost million sales that VF4/Evo have sold in america alone.

So why do some games have huge communities and some don't? Anyone have some ideas? BTW - this is not relegated to only fighting games, I would love to hear why one FPS does versus another or MMORPG's.