self pimpage

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Sega slaps one of their developers

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

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

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.