Substance not style

Just been reading A Gamers' Manifesto and there is some really excellent thoughts and ideas wrapped up in there. Much of it can be boiled down to, give the gamers substance instead of concentrating on empty style.

"the next generation of games will likely play just like this generation. Only shiny."

That's a really depressing thought.

"If the new consoles are built with a graphics-first mentality, how easy is it going to be to make games that stretch the boundaries of game logic and player freedom? And if so, can we at least have our damned adventure games back?"

Yes please. :)

"Developers will be shocked one day when they notice that the world is full of women. It's true! More than half of your potential customer base are penisless. They have money. They like doing fun things."

I think that inclusivity is very important. Why design a game that's going to potentially shut out half the population? Or if you do go down that path, why not also create games that specifically cater for that half?

"Don't show my character casting magic meteors that smash mountains in one scene and in the next send me all over the dungeon trying to find a single key to a rickety wooden door that looks like it could be knocked in with a strong shoulder. Make it a magic door, a huge door, fine, but don't make it an arbitrary door that only remains closed because that's what the plot requires."

It's amazing how illogical game logic can be at times. Or is it just laziness...?

"Also, remember that these cutscenes have to be dubbed in several languages (English and Japanese at the very least) and it's done with ONE set of animated lips. They don't re-draw the whole damned thing just to dub it. So you get the awkward situation where the poor voice actor is trying to match the lip movements to a line that was animated in Japanese and that's probably even harder than it sounds."

If anyone is still doing this they are crazy. Games shold have conversation systems where you have real-time lip-synching and each language has it's own set of phonemes that synch to the character's visemes. This way, each language can be the best possible because the natural rhythms of that language are incorporated into the game. If any big time developers want to know how to do this, just drop me a line. :)

"Speed Cheating. That miraculous burst of catch-up speed from your opponents. CPU tacklers and recievers do it in Madden. I'm also looking at you, every racing game ever made."

I REALLY hate this in racing games, particularly if I know that I have the fastest car and there's no way anyone should beat me down the last straight. This, to me, is driven by the "us against them" mentality - designers who feel they need to beat the player.

These are just some highlights. Do check out the article.

A New Screenshot

I've just put up a new screenshot from the game, Juniper Crescent - The Sapphire Claw. I hope you enjoy seeing it.

Games Market Europe

According to this piece on Gamasutra, ELSPA have decided that it's going to support a new trade show in London that coincides with GDC Europe. This seems a little strange considering it was only a few days ago that they announced that EGN was no more.

While I think that it's good that London has such an event, particularly with GDCE taking place, I can't help but wonder about the timing of it. Only a couple of weeks earlier we have the Leipzig GC and associated developers conference as well as the Edinburgh Interactive Entertainments Festival. Perhaps both GDCE and GME would have been better pushed back by a month?

I'm going to have to wait until much nearer the time to decide which of these events I'm going to attend...

Project Delta - E3 announcement

There is a piece on IGN about a forthcoming PS3 game called Project Delta. I worked on the story, backstory and character profiles for this game in the three months leading up to Christmas last year, but was unable to mention it at the time.

This was a really great project to work on as the development team and I really worked well together to develop and enrich the story.

Come the Revolution

I've been thinking about the three new console announcements over the last couple of days. While I think that the XBox 360 and PS3 are going to be wonderful machines that will give us some fabulous-looking games, I actually think that Nintendo may have been very clever in not joining the power race.

Because they are concentrating on making the console more accessible to developers, it may be the console of choice for developers who want to concentrate on gameplay as a priority. For those who want substance over style, it could be that the Revolution will offer much more in the way of variety.

We all know that development costs for games appearing on the 360 and PS3 are going to shoot through the roof, so for many developers and publishers it might just be more cost-effective to put money into developing for a less costly, but still very powerful, system.

One thing you've got to ask yourself is, how much of the PS3's power is the average gamer going to see when they're playing their games in their bedrooms on a 15-inch portable TV? I bet you're going to have to look really hard to tell the difference between the PS3 and the Revolution. :)

It's E3 next week...

A large portion of my spare time this week has been preparing for E3. Not that I'm attending, but my business agent, Laura MacDonald is going to be there, talking with publishers and being enthusiastic on my behalf. So a lot of e-mails have been flying back and forth, along with documents for the game and other little bits and pieces that are going on. We're approaching the whole E3 extravaganza with an air of cautious optimism - we feel good about what we have to show the publishers and are sure that perceptive publishers will feel the same way.

I've also been talking with artists and animators in the hope that they will be able to kick into gear as soon as the project gets the green light. There's always that period at the beginning of any project when you're not sure who's going to work out or who will settle into the style in the best way, but with the right talent and clear communtication there is always a way to move towards the project vision.

It's a shame that I'm unable to go to E3. With no ECTS this year and EGN looking increasingly doubtful it means that London is going to be devoid of a trade show. Now I'm torn between Edinburgh and Leipzig in August. Any thoughts on which would be the better one to attend?

Interviewed again

For those who are interested, there's a second interview over at the Just Adventure+ site.

It might just be me...

Okay, I'm trying Firefox and want to know what the big deal is with it. The Bookmarks system is virtually unusable as trying to organise the bookmarks is a nightmare, particularly putting in separators which seem to be placed almost at random. The order of the bookmarks and folders in the left pane bears no resemblance to the order in the right pane. When I'm browsing a site, such as a comic site, and wish to save a new page as the bookmark for the site it doesn't over-write the old one but creates a new entry which means that I either end up with multiple entries and have to delete the old ones by hand. The help file is no help at all.

Can someone please explain what I'm doing wrong or why the world thinks they can see the emperor's new clothes?

Interviewed

The Adventure-Treff gaming site asked me for an interview almost as soon as the Sapphire Claw announcement was made. It's now been posted on the site and you can read it in English or German.

Game pages updated

I've updated the pages for Juniper Crescent - The Sapphire Claw.

You know how it is when you've been living with something for a while and suddenly, what appeared perfectly good when you created it, becomes annoying and makes you wonder what you were thinking of at the time. That's how it was with these pages, so I brought them more into line with the main Juniper Games pages.

Juniper Games

The last few weeks, especially the last couple of days, have been more than a little strange, but very exciting. When my empoyment with Revolution Software came to an end a year ago, my only thought was to get another job and simply continue as I had been. If you'd have said to me that I'd be launching my own game company within a year I would have thought you mad.

But here I am, Juniper Games has been launched along with the announcement of our first game, Juniper Crescent - The Sapphire Claw. So, what prompted the change of direction?

Rather than taking a new job when I left Revolution, I became a freelance writer and designer, something that took off very well after a shaky start. Like many freelance lines of work, there were periods when I had downtime between jobs and rather than simply sitting back with my feet up, I decided I would work up some ideas of my own into something more substantial. So I began to develop those ideas into formal game proposals. It wasn't until I discovered the Wintermute Engine that I realised I could put together a game prototype that would complement the proposal.

Suddenly I was seeing these ideas as something more concrete and began to think about how best to proceed to bring them into the light of day. Talking with other, very helpful developers and my business and marketing agent, it seemed a natural progression to come up with a plan that the launch of both the game and Juniper Games at the same time.

Launch day itself couldn't have gone better with an excellent preview piece on Adventure Gamers (I couldn't have written it better myself) and lots of positive comments appearing in a number of locations, from Sweden to Germany to Russia to Australia. I'd like to thank everyone who took time to say nice things and to wish the project success.

Thanks, too, to all those people who said very kind things about the original Juniper Crescent when it first appeared years ago. Without that positive encouragement this game would likely have never have even been considered.