ONE SHOT: CHARLIE BROOKER’S IN GAMES
Our UK readers and a select few otherwise will know Charlie Brooker from his Screenwipe TV series (and even more should know him for his hipster-eviscerating Nathan Barley and his excellent Big Brother/zombie apocalypse mashup mini-series Dead Set), but he’s someone you’ll probably be hearing much more about soon as he announces that his new series Gameswipe has officially been completed.
See more posts about: Offworld Originals, One Shot
Q?’PID’S ARROW: LUMINES, METEOS DEVS CREATING IPHONE LOVE-PUZZLE
Edge mag recently ran a report from Rez, Lumines and Meteos developer Q? Entertainment’s press conference, which in general showed the art-house developer keeping up with changing times as best it can, primarily with partnerships for free-to-play microtransaction-based MMORPG games like the PS3’s Angel Love Online.
The developer hasn’t totally given up on its roots, with an iPhone port of Lumines due in the near future, and a video message from Rez designer Tetsuya Mizuguchi promising that work is continuing with Ubisoft on the still un-detailed (and possibly Rez related) ‘Project Eden’, but the biggest and most unexpected surprise of the conference was Q?’Pid Finger Puzzle.
Described as a “brand new type of ‘Touch Communication’ application”, Q?’s iPhone app sees two players using the device’s multi-touch capabilities to trace lines on the screen to ‘un-fuzzify’ “titilating photos”, with an undercurrent of compatibility/love-testing between the pair made clear with an end-level Diagnosis that “gives you all the information you need to take it to the next level. Q’pid’s got your back!”
Arch one eyebrow at more screens and info via Q?’s official Q?’pid site.
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See more posts about: Offworld Originals
AUSTIN INDIE SUMMIT: THE SUCCESSFUL CONSTRUCTION OF FANTASTIC CONTRAPTION
Watching Fantastic Contraption creator Colin Northway speak, you get the sense that he’s discovered the magic formula, and despite the confidence that his undeniable success allows (he’s converted, he figures, about 0.5% of the 3.1 million players he’d gained by the end of October 2008 into $10 paying customers [basically: cut those millions in half, move the decimal point one to the left, and put a dollar sign in front]), you get the sense that that success came as a surprise to him as much as anyone.
In what was easily the most entertaining session of the first day of GDC Austin’s Indie Games Summit, Northway guided his audience through the rise and rise of the construction-puzzle game’s development and near-instant user-crush in the form of a literally-bug-squashing timeline platformer, with his own mutton-chopped mug perfectly pixelated by I Wish I Were The Moon/Today I Die‘s Daniel Benmergui, and offered a number of guidelines for other developers hoping to mirror his accolades.
1.) Make your game in Flash
Northway draws a fine distinction between ‘Flash games’ (games where you “launch kitties into a spiky thing”) and ‘games written in Flash’, but he’s an evangelist for the platform more than anything because “the content discovery problem has been solved” compared to consoles, the iPhone, etc. Forums, emails, all pre-existing internet communities will do the work of keeping your game’s name in front of other people, whereas, say, with the iPhone, “making money is hard to do if Apple doesn’t spray the money hose on you.”
2.) Make your game “live online”
All of those user good graces will be short lived, though, if your game doesn’t make it easy for them to spread. Northway repeatedly conjured the idea of letting your game “live on the internet”, something he’s done by keeping user-made creations in a database accessible by a friendly URL, rather than 10-line encoded data URLs, that can be passed easily from player to player in emails and forum posts. But also, he notes, you get “no grace from people on Flash, versus a downloaded game” — because they have no time invested in your game other than loading it in their browser, you need to “spoon feed them for the first five minutes” to ensure they don’t leave as soon as they’ve arrived. “Take people who hate you and put them in front of your game,” he said, “and write [those first five minutes] specifically to them.”
3.) Leverage “pride based marketing”
Here’s where Northway’s advice gets more genre specific, or perhaps where it can urge designers to expand their designs to capitalize on what he’s found: because Contraption lets users pass their intricately built puzzle solutions to each other, and because he’s made that easier with his advice above, his players are “really keen on sharing something they’ve built”. Using this “pride based marketing” to your advantage will “pay off so well for you in the way your game spreads.”
4.) Make a free game that gives players ‘a tote bag’ if they pay
While Contraption asks for money as soon as you hit its home screen, the game’s spread more easily because it’s always been reviewed as a free game, with some 10 hours of play given away. What Northway does is give players a thing when they buy it — in this case, access to level editors and its library of 40,000 user-made levels for that $10 fee (likening it to a PBS model of watching 9 hours of Red Dwarf, but getting spurred on to pay for that content by getting a tote bag). And while he has only converted that 0.5%, that’s not far off from piracy numbers he’s heard quoted elsewhere. Surprisingly, only five percent of the people who’ve paid have gone on to actually use the level editor, even once.
Northway saw his game go from release (with zero spent or expended in the way of PR or press outreach) to 20,000 users in his first weekend (spent lazing around on the couch) to 1.1 million in its first month (spent still working at his ‘real’ job, watching the first PayPal emails dinging in and saying “some human being thinks you’re worth $10”) to that 3.1 million before publisher inXile (also currently operating similarly viral web-diversion Line Rider) assumed control of the operation.
There seem to be other factors he doesn’t mention that have aided in its success (taking something as daunting as physics-heavy construction kits and making it friendly with its flat, bubbly thick-vector interface), but, as was echoed by a number of indie devs following the session, Northway’s model and story seems to be precisely the way that indie development should, as in, is meant to work.
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See more posts about: Offworld Originals
AUSTIN INDIE SUMMIT: MY SHOW AND TELL OF THE NEW INDIE HOTTNESS
This was the surprisingly large, warm and receptive crowd that turned out for my early-morning session at the opening day of GDC Austin’s debut Indie Game Summit, and the reason they’re all smiling will be clear by the time you reach the end of this post.
My task for the session was to give the attendees here a snapshot of the best of what indie gaming’s currently got to offer: some old and unmissable, some never before seen, and some seen, but never before played live. Here’s the run down — for reference and further research and download — of everything I showed off.
1.) Spelunky
By far the most widely played and important indie game of the past several years (even in prelude to its upcoming Xbox Live Arcade port), I found out quickly just how hard it is to play live and talk in front of an audience, in a quasi-Game Center CX series of embarrassing failures.
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2.) Glum Buster
Too few people have still taken a trip through Austin-native Justin ‘CosMind’ Leingang’s fantastically surreal world — hopefully playing it live gave everyone an even more compelling reason to.
3.) Alpinist
Even just the tiny shred of a teaser for Craig ‘SUPERBROTHERS’ Adams’ indie debut was enough to impress, with his inimitable graphic style, and the promise of its simulated grueling mountain ascension.
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4.) Time Donkey
The inherent charm of Flashbang’s latest made it one of the most popular playthroughs of the session, judging by audience reaction. I very regretfully haven’t had the time yet to do it justice here, but will surely do when GDC Austin madness dies back down.
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5.) Captain Forever
As I said before, this will probably end up topping a lot of best-of-2009 lists when word reaches out further, and a round of applause rose as soon as the name was dropped. Creator Farbs was kind enough to drop off a debug build of the game for the session, which meant that I could cheat my way into demonstrating the jaw-dropping muted disco-dance-rain-of-destruction that you’re ultimately fighting to build toward. Expect much more on this game here soon.
6.) Tuning
The first surprise of the show was the latest game from oft-mentioned Offworld favorite Cactus, with a rare sneak preview of his previously blogged and yet to be released “game about killing everything you love”, now titled Tuning. Even with early warnings from Cactus about playing through it ahead of time to be sure I could do it justice live (which I did, I swear, and I got so far), with its constant, progressively more sadistically perception-warping, it was the second time of the morning that proved how embarrassing public play can be.
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7.) Fez
And the session’s biggest surprise: Polytron’s Phil Fish made a guest appearance to give the first live demonstration of what the studio’s been cooking up for the past few years.
The game’s grown even more rich and complex than I’d expected since I last saw its 2007 Indie Games Festival debut, and impressed the crowd enough (see: the photo at top) that we cut well into the planned coffee break to hang on main star Gomez’s every dimensional shift.
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Thanks to everyone for coming out and putting up with what I can only imagine was a rambling, too-early, caffeine-addled, ranty awkward set of playthroughs!
See more posts about: Blurst, Cactus, Flashbang, Offworld Originals, Spelunky, Superbrothers
HEY LA: GO SEE NIGHT GAME MUSIC PLAYED LIVE SEPT. 17TH
Chris Schlarb — the man behind the gorgeous lullaby score for Nicalis’s Night Game, the latest from Knytt creator Nifflas — has written in to let us know that he’ll be playing 30 minutes of live music created for and inspired by the game as part of the Slow Sound Festival, this Thursday, September 17th.
The show will be accompanied by, says Schlarb, “projected footage from the game. It’s possible that some of that footage is heretofore unseen.” The Slow Sound Festival will be taking place at 2226 E. 4th St., Long Beach, CA. 90814, and starts at 8pm, with a $5 entry fee.
For more details, check the Festival’s Facebook event page.
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See more posts about: Nifflas, NightSky, Offworld Originals
BUY IT NOW: ATTRACT MODE’S ATTRACTIVE SHOP OPENS ITS DOORS
Long teased since the earliest days of Offworld, Attract Mode’s Adam Robezzoli has officially opened the doors to the games/culture site’s web shop, which is already spilling over with indie/art game accoutrements.
Apart from the Harvey James Game Girl T-shirt I’ve been pining for for what seems like a year and a half now, Robezzoli has curated a collection of goods including 1″ button sets for games by Auntie Pixelante and Cactus, Tetris ice cube trays, and Anamanaguchi, YMCK, Leeni and :( CDs.
Best of all, though — and still not quite ready for shipping, is the pair of prints by Offworld-favorite illustrator SUPERBROTHERS: man-sized pixel-art works that I’m just about desperate to have hung in my office.
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BLOCK LIFE: FROM SOFTWARE SHOWS PIXELCRAFTING ADVENTURE 3D DOT GAME HEROES IN MOTION
Images of From Software’s PS3 exclusive adventure 3D Dot Game Heroes have been floating around for a few weeks now, but I’ve held off on mentioning it until now — until we got a better sense of how exactly it’d play, and now’s that time.
You’ll grasp almost immediately what to expect via the video above: it’s essentially precisely the game I called for last December, Tibori’s 2-plus-one-D Dotter Dotter pixelcrafts come to life in what looks to be as close to a Zelda tribute (straight down to the rhythms of its theme song) to ever land on a Sony console.
On top of that, the game will feature a full 3D pixel editor for your hero — Qblock style — and the massively oversized weaponry you can catch a glimpse of above (which andriasang shows off in better detail, alongside its low-bit vistas), in what could be one of the best next-gen tributes to first-gen gaming.
The game’s due for release in November in Japan, and while it hasn’t been officially announced for the West just yet, the stilted English intro in the trailer is a good sign that From has its sights set for wider release in the future.
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DIRECT FROM FROLIC: ROBB WATERS’ SANDER COHEN BIOSHOCK FIGURE
I’ve honestly never been able to get my head fully around the inner-workings of on-demand toy manufacturer Patch Together, but what I’m pretty sure of is that with enough “likes”, Robb Waters’ official Sander Cohen figure (easily the most unforgettable character in 2K’s original BioShock) could be put up for sale in limited numbers.
That, or the site’s simply showing a gallery of the limited run 2K Boston head Ken Levine had created as gifts for studio staff in early August.
As I try to work this all out, just know 2K/Patch: I would very much like one of these on my desk.
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See more posts about: BioShock, Offworld Originals
A BETTER MARIO BUILT: ROBIN BAUMGARTEN TOPS MARIO AI COMPETITION
The very first entry into Julian Togelius and Sergey Karakovskiy’s Mario AI Competition 2009 — Robin Baumgarten’s A*-enhanced agent previously featured here — has emerged the winner, barely scraping ahead of second place.
Above is a slow-motion run of Baumgarten’s agent that shows you second by second the mindboggling array of potential moves the agent cycles through in working out what I’m almost positive would be a pretty instantaneous death for me.
Find Baumgarten’s source code and further details here, and see the competition’s final presentation notes here.
See more posts about: Offworld Originals
ONE SHOT: IGGY POP, PLASTIC PASSENGER
Sporting a heroin-chic-weathered ‘body’ decal that likely won’t be working its way backward into the company’s toy line, French game news site JeuxVideo gets the first look at Iggy Pop’s appearance in TT/Harmonix’s upcoming Lego Rock Band — click through for the full plastic performance of The Passenger. [via mbf]
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See more posts about: Harmonix, Lego, Offworld Originals, One Shot, Xbox 360
