THE WASTELAND GETS A LITTLE WIDER
The most devastating part of reaching the level 20 cap in Fallout 3 is losing that Paper Planes-like cash register ka-ching that punctuates each kill and discovery, but there’s always been something alluring about the way your Pip-boy experience meter continues on to 21 that lets you know that you’re not quite done just yet.
Which is true: Bethesda have announced the first round of downloadable content for the 360 and PC games, which will be spread throughout the first three months of next year, starting with “Operation: Anchorage” in January, which will let you “enter a military simulation and fight in one of the greatest battles of the Fallout universe – the liberation of Anchorage, Alaska from its Chinese Communist invaders.”
Next will come “The Pitt,” a “journey to the industrial raider town called The Pitt, located in the remains of Pittsburgh,” and finally, the first round of content that will extend the main quest, “Broken Steel,” in March, in which you’ll “join the ranks of the Brotherhood of Steel and rid the Capital Wasteland of the Enclave remnants once and for all.”
December will also see the release of the G.E.C.K., the “official editor for Fallout 3,” which will open up the game to the modding community, which I believe means I’m going to have to start the game anew there to reap the rewards, and I’m honestly not sure I mind.
Fallout 3 [Bethesda, photo courtesy Duncan Harris’s postcard-pretty set of images]
See more posts about: Offworld Originals, Xbox 360
FLASHBANG OPENING THE MINOTAUR CHINA SHOP
One of the most charming things about indie developers Flashbang is their no-nonsense approach to both game design and game titles. Both Off-Road Velociraptor Safari and Jetpack Brontosaurs deliver exactly what they say on the tin, and both extremely adeptly, using 3D browser plugin Unity for a near console-like experience (obligatory achievements and all) from the comfort of the web.
Following a brief diversion to the iPhone, Flashbang says its latest 3D browser game — Minotaur China Shop — is nearly ready for beta testing, and again looks from the above trailer to be — brilliantly — exactly what it sounds like.
All of Flashbang’s works available on their portal Blurst are based on playful physicality — Splume‘s physics-enhanced Puzzle Bobble-alike play, Velociraptor‘s vehicles, Jetpack‘s jetpack, and Minotaur‘s precariously placed racks of valuables.
Plus, huge bonus points to Flashbang for scoring Minotaur‘s trailer with blip-maker E*vax, one half of the excellent duo Ratatat and a perennial Offworld favorite.
Minotaur China Shop, Twitter Reminder [Blurst via IndieGames]
See more posts about: Blurst, Flashbang, Offworld Originals
ROCK BAND, EYETOY ADDED TO UK’S NATIONAL VIDEOGAME ARCHIVE
I’ve done a bad job at mentioning this thus far, but, prompted by the most recent news via GamesIndustry, I note that new submission videos have been uploaded for the UK’s National Videogame Archive. First announced in September, the founders explain:
The National Videogame Archive is a joint project between the National Media Museum and Nottingham Trent University, which aims to celebrate that culture and preserve that history for researchers, developers, game fans and the public…
The Archive is working to preserve, analyse and display the products of the global videogame industry by placing games in their historical, social, political and cultural contexts. This means treating videogames as more than inert, digital code: at the heart of the National Videogames Archive is the determination to document the full life of games, from protoypes and early sketches, through box-art, advertising and media coverage, to mods, fanart and community activities.
At the Save the Videogame site, you can see celebrity submissions from a number of noteworthy developers, including Jon ‘Lego Star Wars‘ Smith, Media Molecule’s LittleBigPlanet team, and Uncharted‘s Richard Lamarchand. As GamesIndustry points out, both Sony and Harmonix have announced new hardware submissions, with prototype versions of the EyeToy and Rock Band guitar.
Save the Videogame [National Videogame Archive]
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SPACE INVADERS ABOUT TO GET EVEN ON WIIWARE
It’s been a harrowing past two weeks waking up to the Monday morning press-release deluge and realizing that, no, it’s still not the week that the U.S. gets Space Invaders Get Even, after its European WiiWare debut. Square Enix was kind enough, though, to cut the tension and announce that December 1st will be, err.. SI-day.
Why the excitement? Long overdue (30 years!) for some payback, Get Even, as the name suggests, finally breaks from the past and this time justly plays from the vantage point of the fluorescent invaders themselves, wreaking havok on the world and the defense forces it’s assembled, and serves as a fantastic light hearted and comic-book-colorful counterpoint to the slickly retro-futuristic DS/PSP/Xbox Live Arcade’s Space Invaders Extreme.
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RODNEY ALAN GREENBLAT ORGANIZING ZEN TEMPLE FUNDRAISER
Parappa, UmJammer Lammy and Major Minor artist Rodney Alan Greenblat — now often going by his newly bestowed Buddhist name Musho — is coordinating a December 13th holiday market for his New York City Zen temple, The Village Zendo, including a table of his own prints, postcards, posters, and “a few unreleased product items too, including some funky little ceramic flower vases made in Japan.”
Greenblat’s own web store has a preview of much of that artwork, as well as a slew of import only and original Parappa and UnJammer goods, and fantastic Buddhist statuary done in his inimitable style.
Hello Zen! holiday market 2008 [Village Zendo NYC]
See more posts about: Musho Rodney Alan Greenblat, Offworld Originals, Parappa
KODYKOALA’S MUSHROOM KINGDOM CUSTOMS
Sitting (quite uncomfortably) somewhere between Japan’s Tom of Finland-esque muscle-bound Nintendo parody comics and dollar-store action figure knockoffs, the most disturbing part of ‘KodyKoala’s “custom Mario figures” might not be Toad’s icy gaze or Peach’s frozen grimace (which Kody calls ‘just right’), but Mario’s left hand just seconds away from clutching at her skirt.
KodyKoala’s Custom Mario Figures [via theBBPS]
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THERELATIVITY GOES INSIDE SUBJECTIVE REALITY
With Sony due to release a major update to its PSP/PlayStation 3 Escher-esque echochrome, an update that will bring both the requisite Trophies and a massive 1000+ new user-created levels to the game, it reminds me that I haven’t yet mentioned theRelativity.
echochrome, as you may have already seen, is a game developed on the back of Jun Fujiki’s OLE Coordinate System, a proof of concept PC demo that lets users not only construct the impossible objects Escher helped make famous, but make them interactive playgrounds for its monochromatic artist models. Stripping out all awareness of object permanence, gaps can be bridged just by shifting perspective and covering the hole, dead ends can be extended by realigning elements: it’s a perfect example of the things that only games can accomplish.
Fujiki’s extended that idea, then, with theRelativity, which, as you can see above, takes place not on top of the objects but from inside, giving you vantage into an added impossible dimension and further breaking down all common knowledge. As with OLE, it’s not a game per se, but at least an opportunity to play, and if nothing else: a perfect starting point for echochrome 2.
theRelativity [Jun Fujiki]
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THE GAMER-IN-CHIEF
Tom Armitage has updated his site with his recent GameCity festival talk on what it means to have our first generation entering public life who’ve grown up playing games. Waxing on how that familiarity might inform their approach to resource scarcity, the complexity of an ever more — and data-rich — connected world, and ‘an end to colocation’, Armitage says:
So what does a future run by gamers look like? Well, if they can handle complexity, and they’ve stocked up all the magic item chests ready for when scarcity hits, and they’ve failed enough times at the low-stakes games that they know they can make it at the high-stakes ones, and if our environment is one carefully planned out for effective growth rather than rammed together for efficiency, and if they understand how to handle the ever-more complex forms of communications necessary to deal with the large, distributed teams of people necessary to understand complexity – and if they can create a world that supplies and consumes the data necessary to make smart, informed, decisions – then they might just make it awesome…
And even if we don’t get that, maybe a fraction of that will trickle through, that’s still a start. Games are wonderful things, and people who get games are wonderful people, but they don’t just have to make more games, you know. You could change the world.
The ideas here share a happy overlap with the Superstruct ARG being run by Jane McGonigal and the Institute for the Future. McGonigal has been tirelessly championing the idea of bringing more game-like interactions to all aspects of everyday life to make it more engaging and generally increase happiness.
Specifically, Superstruct itself is her attempt to do just that as it relates to future public policy debates: the game that attempts to “chronicle the world of 2019–and imagine how we might solve the problems we’ll face. Because this is about more than just envisioning the future. It’s about making the future, inventing new ways to organize the human race and augment our collective human potential.”
The talk is also, of course, prescient following news that Obama’s FCC transition team co-chair is a dedicated World of Warcraft player.
If Gamers Ran The World [Infovore]
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NCSOFT BRINGING TABULA RASA TO A CLOSE
Following earlier word that creator Richard Garriott was leaving the company to pursue presumably more directly space-related interests after an inspiring visit aboard the International Space Station, NCsoft has announced that his epic sci-fi MMO will soon be shuttered as well:
Last November we launched what we hoped would be a ground breaking sci-fi MMO. In many ways, we think we’ve achieved that goal. Tabula Rasa has some unique features that make it fun and very different from every other MMO out there. Unfortunately, the fact is that the game hasn’t performed as expected. The development team has worked hard to improve the game since launch, but the game never achieved the player population we hoped for.
So it is with regret that we must announce that Tabula Rasa will end live service on February 28, 2009.
Message from the Tabula Rasa Team [NCsoft]
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MECHNER TALKS FILM, GAME, GRAPHIC NOVEL STORYTELLING
Prince of Persia creator Jordan Mechner has uploaded an opinion column recently published in Game Informer magazine, detailing how he’s varied his approaches in creating games, movies, and graphic novels based on his same property.
As much a filmmaker as a gamemaker by trade (having filmed a documentary on the controversial buy-out and razing of Los Angeles Mexican American neighborhood Chavez Ravine, and wrote the screenplay for the upcoming Jerry Bruckheimer/Disney-produced Sands of Time film), Mechner has an innate sense and talks well on letting each medium do what it does best, rather than shoehorning content from one medium to another.
Take note, too, if you haven’t already, of Mechner’s “old journals,” where he’s reprinting hand-written diaries from the time when he was just getting his start in the industry, featuring guest appearances by a little known game coming out of Russia called Tetris, and early rotoscope reference video of the Prince’s animations.
jordanmechner.com » Blog Archive » Game to movie to graphic novel
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