#02 Also in this issue: Virtual Sex Financial Frontier Long-form Games Playing Together Event DMing Zombie Shopping Mall Rogue Warrior
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010 _ NEWS
EXPERIENCE IS EVERYTHING For what was once the beating heart of the digital entertainment scene – video amusement arcades, the arcade sector has all but vanished from the public consciousness of the average player BY KEVIN WILLIAMS
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or many players, the reality is that most will only touch the coin-op scene these days through the purchase of Arcade Fight Sticks for their PS3 and Xbox 360 – unaware that the latest home versions are modelled on the popular layout of the current Taito ‘VEWLIX’ arcade cabinet configuration, a mainstay amongst the still strong gaming elite. It is the continuing appeal of arcade gaming that drives a subculture in the conventional consumer game scene, but also fuels the multi-million dollar amusement and attraction trade internationally. Not as popularized as its consumer equivalent, the digital out-of-home entertainment (DOE) sector that encapsulates the traditional video arcade sector is a transitional industry, attempting to embrace new methodologies and technologies to appeal to a new audience of gamers. The placement of the modern video amusement piece is one aspect of the changed environment of publicspace gaming. Where the dingilylit shopping mall arcade use to be the traditional habitat of the video machine, the modern systems sit in a wide variety of locations; the machines now ‘supporting acts’ rather than the ‘main attractions’. This demotion has not diminished
the popularity or interest, the modern DOE machine now having to offer unique appeal to keep the players coming back for more. One of the unique locations where the modern amusement piece has made their own is the tavern or bar environment. The mixing of food, drink and fun is not a new idea, the application of the latest video amusement pieces in these
venues, continuing the marriage of intense audience-based gaming in an environment that includes alcohol (harking back to one of the first video games, PONG’s début in 1971 at the ‘Andy Capp’s Tavern’). It is the popularity of tavern and bar-based gaming that has seen the recent launch of one of the most
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This is an extract from the full story. Read the entire piece and all the news in the full issue of Continue #02.
JANUARY
far-reaching developments in the video amusement scene. Launched in March, the latest in the illustrious Big Buck Hunter series of sports shooting games took the genre to a brand new level, matching – and surpassing – the consumer game equivalent. Since the launch in 2000, Big Buck Hunter has become a firm favourite with players, supporting leagues and tournaments, paying real cash prizes and offering compelling competition (the nationally-connected systems have driven the application of prize video gaming like no other title). In 2011, over 18,000 machines situated across the North American bar scene drew thousands of regular players. The success of this application of sports shooting and tournament prize gaming has seen thousands of dollars paid in prize money and has built a loyal player base. The developer, Play Mechanix, has raised the bar of traditional public-space gaming to create the brand new release Big Buck HD. The game marks a number of firsts in the amusement scene, including being the first nativelyrendered 1080p video arcade title – boasting a level of graphical realism unsurpassed by consumer or amusement titles alike, (over 2,000,000 pixels per frame all at 60 frames per second). Eugene Jarvis, President of Play Mechanix says the new title “represents a major development in the way players will interact with the game, but also offers a major opportunity to socially interact with other players across the country and increase competition.” Along with ultra-realistic graphics, the game plays heavily on its...
TUESDAY 17TH
●●The Official Video Game of the Olympic Games is announced. Sega will release the tie-in for the 2012 event on PC, 360 and PS3.
WEDNESDAY 18TH
●●Across the internet, protests against two proposed US laws, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) see websites ‘going dark’, including Wikipedia and a large number of videogaming sites. Within two days, the present form of the bill is shelved.
THURSDAY 19TH
●●After twenty-eight years of covering videogames, Japanese magazine Gemaga (which began life known as Beep) announces that it will close in April.
FRIDAY 20TH
●●Capcom finally confirms that another Resident Evil title is currently in development. ●●After analyst Todd Mitchell says he has “creeping concerns” about the profitability of Star Wars: The Old Republic, in light of its recent issues, EA’s stock drops by a stark 3%. Rival analyst Ben Schachter says the concerns are premature.
SATURDAY 21ST
●●Despite the various criticisms it has received, Star Wars: The Old Republic wins the AbleGamers’ award for Accessible Mainstream Game of the Year.
MONDAY 23RD
●●Ofcom, the UK media regulator, rules that ITV has misled its viewers after screening footage of the military simulator ArmA 2 and claiming it represented a real-life recording of the IRA. ●●Details posted in Blizzard’s job listings indicate it is considering in-game advertising or product placement for its next MMO.
TUESDAY 24TH
●●The London Toy Fair begins. Game announcements are thin on the ground, though LEGO announces four new titles including strategy game Star Wars: Battle of Hoth, while Hasbro extends its Monopoly, Battleship and Connect Four brands yet further.
026 _ NEWS
MALL OF THE DEAD
An abandoned shopping mall and a dedicated group of ‘experience junkies’ makes for a very British zombie apocalypse… BY EMMA BOYES
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t was the demise of ‘high fashion’ clothing chain C&A that sparked the zombie apocalypse. The German retailer closed the last of its UK stores in 2001, including the one in Reading town centre, the flagship store of the Friar’s Walk shopping centre. Friar’s Walk opened its doors in 1976 in a prime location directly opposite Reading train station. But in 2004, when Reading had become home to not one but three separate shopping centres, Friar’s Walk was forced to retire. It sat there, abandoned, for years, a haven for vandals and urban explorers, although notoriously difficult to sneak into due to its town centre location. Recently, though, there have been strange noises coming from behind the shuttered shop fronts. People who’ve gone inside to investigate or on a dare have never come back. There are rumours of something being very, very wrong inside the abandoned building. Survivors report seeing impossible things – that the dead don’t stay dead and that they come back with an insatiable desire to eat the flesh of the living, that corpses are standing up and shuffling about the old retail units. Zed Events Ltd took over the lease for the derelict shopping centre in 2009, and have been running LARPing (Live-Action Role Playing) events there ever since – minus the undead. The ‘Zombie Shopping Mall Experience’ brilliantly combines the two and has proved so popular that when it was first announced it was solidly booked for months. The
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NEWS STREAM MARCH THURSDAY 1ST
MARCH
● Development studio Another Place Productions is formed by several ex-Lionhead head staff members formerly connected to the Fable series. ● Gaming website Kotaku publishes in full a letter sent to Prince of Persia creator Jordan Mechner by an excited 17-year old John Romero.
FRIDAY 2ND
● Social games developer Zynga opens a web portal that allows users to play its games directly, rather than through Facebook. ● To showcase Kojima Productions’ new Fox Engine, the company releases a series of photographs alongside ultra-detailed, photorealistic screenshots and tasks gamers to tell the difference.
SATURDAY 3RD
● Apple’s App store prepares to pass 25 billion downloads.
SUNDAY 4TH
● The 2012 Games Developers Conference begins in San Francisco, featuring the Independent Games Festival Awards and the Game Developers Choice Awards.
MONDAY 5TH
● Developer Stainless reveals screenshots of its reboot of controversial ‘90s racing videogame Carmageddon.
CLEARLY, I’M AN EXPERT IN KILLING ZOMBIES AND WHAT THE LOCALS OF READING NEED IS MY HELP organisers have since tried to open up more time slots on weekdays, but a ‘zombie’ shortage is proving something of an issue. I’ve completed the videogames Dead Rising, Dead Island and Typing of the Dead. I’ve watched Dawn of the Dead, both the remake and the original. I’ve been on
TUESDAY 6TH official zombie walks and attended a seminar on How to Survive The Zombie Apocalypse. Clearly, I’m an expert in killing zombies and what the locals of Reading need is my help. The experience starts in a ‘holding pen’ where a heavily armed police...
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● Gabe Newell, co-founder of developer Valve, is confirmed as a billionaire, and is listed by Forbes as being worth $1.5bn.
WEDNESDAY 7TH
● “With mixed emotions” Peter Molyneux departs Lionhead to join the development company 22 Cans, formed by yet another ex-Lionhead staff member. ● Warren Spector receives a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Game Developers Choice Awards, while The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim wins Game of the Year. ● A musical based on the classic boardgame Cluedo starts a short run off-Broadway.
050 _ GAMING SCIENCE
> THE GAMING SCIENCES
SOCIAL DYNAMICS BY CRAIG MORRISON, FUNCOM
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MOs are entering somewhat of a generational crisis when it comes to the fundamental tenants underlying modern design. Early MMOs brought with them all kinds of new, exciting, and previously uncharted, motivations for players. They were also obtuse, inaccessible, and required a degree of patience and dedication not always associated with gamers. In many ways the early titles failed to fulfil some fairly basic needs; the need for accessible, understandable progression and rewards. The current generation has managed to mitigate those old issues in many ways. The gap has been bridged, largely by incorporating more of the lessons that have been learned from single player genres. This hasn’t come without a cost though. In seeking accessibility we have run the risk of losing what first appealed to gamers about this genre. In a world that is ever more connected and online, we are,
almost perversely, removing the need for real interactions in the name of accessibility. A lot of what we do, and what we will be trying to address in future generations of virtual worlds, will be identifying how we balance between the benefits of meaningful social interactions and the personal need for progression. The very process which has opened up the genre and introduced more people to it than ever before, has also lead to a situation where many players feel like they are playing alone in a multiplayer world. All of that isn’t necessarily surprising however, in particular when you take a deeper look at the motivations of players, and factor in a little psychology. The key to future MMO designs may well be understanding those basic psychological factors that drive human behaviour, and more importantly perhaps, figuring out how we can apply that to our designs. Players motivations in their MMO gaming are not that different from those that
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influence our real lives. A deficiency in any of the basic needs that we fundamentally need as people, and as members of any given society, can weigh just as equally on our virtual lives as they can on our real lives. Self-esteem, confidence, achievement, and a need to both give and receive respect, are important drivers in our lives. Here is where the first generation of MMOs struggled, but have since come to excel. A lot of the design that has gone into the current generation of MMO titles has focused on fulfilling those needs, and rewarding players, allowing them to earn the respect of their peers in very easily identifiable and achievable ways. If we were to continue down that road design-wise, we risk ending up distilling otherwise important social elements down to the level of ‘friendship’ as a pure progression commodity, as you see in social and Facebook gaming. In that sphere, the relationships you have with others are translated purely into bite-sized gameplay advantages that simply speed up the reward cycle in your proverbial skinner box. We also value friendship, family, intimacy and belonging, all things that come from meaningful social interactions. This was the primary strength of the first generation of MMOs, and while it is still an important glue for many online communities, it is also something that has been a lower priority in MMO design during the last generation. Seen more as simply a fringe benefit of being an online medium, rather than being something that design must actively encourage. In chasing the higher need, for progression, achievement and self-esteem, we have lost sight of that bedrock of community that also contributes significantly to a human’s satisfaction with any activity.
Now those of you who might have studied a little psychology might start to recognise the tenants of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs here, and in many ways that is exactly what you see in an MMO community, and can explain that odd disconnect that many players experience with the current generation of titles. Once they are done with the more linear content on offer, they haven’t necessarily developed the social ties that support an attachment to the world itself, and the community around it, because the design has often made that purely optional. That means they miss out on an integral part of the community experience. The need for belonging is a deeper rooted, more basic need than achievement or self-esteem... i.e. without someone to share it with, that understands the context, an achievement feels a little more hollow. Now all this might sound like I am knocking on the current generation of MMOs. That’s not the case at all. I feel the genre has needed this evolution and had...
This is an extract from just one of the Gaming Science articles. Read the full piece and the other views from our experts in Issue #02 of Continue.
We risk distilling important social elements down to the level of ‘friendship’ as a pure progression commodity
056 _ VIRTUAL SEX
IRTUALLY Y URS Will they? Won’t they? Actually, what are they doing? Why sex and games have yet to find the right way to hook up… BY EMMA BOYES
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’m all for virtual sex in games – games aren’t just for children, whatever politicians and muckraking newspapers believe. The problem is no one has ever managed to incorporate sex into a game in a way that doesn’t make me feel completely awkward. Take Fahrenheit (Indigo Prophecy) for instance. First of all we’re controlling Lucas Kane’s thrusting movements while he’s in bed with his ex-girlfriend after about five minutes of playing the game. Next thing I know, the ex is dead and he’s so sad he’s getting it on with Carla Valenti, the police detective that was investigating him for murder. They might both be fine with that, but I felt distinctly creeped out. Then there’s Heavy Rain. One of the main characters, Madison Paige, is a sassy, resourceful photo journalist investigating the twisted ‘origami’ serial killer. Single dad Ethan Mars is
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on the run from the police and is their number one suspect. Momentarily losing all her brain cells, Madison finds something about ‘he’s probably a serial killer’ just does it for her and suddenly, seemingly without any kind of build up at all, they’re dancing the two-backed beast in a motel room? I’m so not feeling it, even though the scene itself was well done. Lots of other games signify sexual relations by cheating and making the screen go black – what a let down. Call to the stand Fable II, which had a massive amount of hype concerning your ability to marry anyone and have a family and how this would make you feel attached to them and the game world. Sadly, the reality was that as all the characters were essentially caricatures whose affections were ridiculously easy to gain, in the end one partner was almost identical to another – it didn’t make me care about them at all. Sex was signified by the aforementioned black screen, a feature Peter Molyneux once attributed to the fact that “there’s something about nipples you [Americans] hate.” Other games, like The Witcher, are obviously ridiculous – there are about 26 different, super hot women desperate to jump the bones of possibly one of the most unattractive and uncharming characters we’ve seen in games ever. Yeah, right. Dream on, boys, because videogames (and certain porn films) are the only place where...
This is an extract from the full feature. Read the entire article in full in Issue #02 of Continue.
060 _ THE FRENCH CONNECTION
I
THE FRENCH
loved French games from the moment a laser bolt appeared from off-screen and broadsided the black alien beast pelting after me through Another World. I loved then when I awoke on the planet Twinsun to discover myself incarcerated in an asylum, strait-jacketed by an autocratic regime of bunnies, spheres and elephants in Little Big Adventure. I loved it when a police officer from the city of Omicron reached out through my computer screen and asked me to possess his body as he investigated murders in the oppressive society of The Nomad Soul. They used to call it ‘the French Touch’, but during my tender gaming years I never truly grasped what that meant – or indeed the common strand that bound these games together.
CONNECTION David Cage, Michel Ancel and the French game design revolution BY WILL PORTER
They were all so different, yet they shared an independent mindset and stylistic bravery unparalleled elsewhere in Western gaming. What’s more, that seemingly indefinable seam of brilliant ‘Frenchness’ still echoes through games like Rayman Origins or Nadeo’s lovably bonkers ‘Mania range… “It’s definitely something to do with the culture, but… I don’t know!” laughs Quantic Dream’s David Cage when my love for his country’s early gaming produce surfaces. “It’s just definitely something to do with being French! They were bold games, they...
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090 _ THE FINANCIAL FRONTIER
THE FINANCIAL FRONTIER As digital distribution lowers the distance between game makers and their audience, a growing number of developers are tearing free of the shackles that link them to big publishers and finding new ways to fund and release their games... BY JOE MARTIN
091
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im Schafer and Ron Gilbert have changed the way the entire industry looks at adventure games. Again. It has become something of a habit for the pair, who since 1990 have been creating hilarious games in an industry typified by chest-beating soldiers and sorceresses in nipple armour. The Secret of Monkey Island, Grim Fandango – these are Schafer and Gilbert’s love letters to gamers sick of Call of Duty and Medal of Honor. This is the first time the pair decided to use their adventure games to challenge the business of making games, however. It all started earlier this year, when the duo decided to extend their legacy as the masters of the point-and-click. Fans had been begging for a new adventure game for years and the pair, reunited under Schafer’s Double Fine Studios after time spent working apart, were finally ready to satisfy demand. The only problem was that
nobody would give them any money; publishers and critics had held the adventure genre as dead for years now, so nobody would offer up the cash the team needed to get started. Here, the project stayed stuck for twelve months – fallen at the first hurdle until Double Fine noticed the increasing ambition of crowd-funded projects. Kickstarter, a site where members of the public contribute money to new ventures in exchange for eventual rewards, started to seem like a viable option. Schafer and Gilbert wondered about an adventure game funded by the people who would play it, rather than the people who would sell it. Double Fine Adventure was born. Unveiled publicly on February 8th, Double Fine Adventure was aiming to raise US$400,000 in one month – a small budget even for a small, old-school adventure game, and yet still one which Double Fine was sceptical it could achieve. As the Kickstarter went live, the staff
of Double Fine stayed glued to their screens, as uncertain of what would happen as they were about what they should expect. Eight hours later, Tim Schafer tweeted to his thousands of followers that the project had already raised the full amount. He said he was about to cry with happiness, but it was doubtful anyone was listening – everyone who might be interested was too busy pledging yet more money. It took Double Fine Studios less than 24 hours to raise $1 million. Within two weeks the company would double that and still have a fortnight to spare before the clock ran out. “It’s been an amazing experience,” said Greg Rice, producer for...
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098 _ THE SOCIAL TOUCH
THE
Social TOUCH
Redefining ‘party games’, developers are putting their players in the same room and seeing what happens BY PHILL CAMERON
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f you squint, it wouldn’t be so hard to imagine a bead of sweat trickling down the side of the faces of the two men. There’s so much concentration and focus held between their gaze that it wouldn’t be surprising. They move cautiously – almost gracefully – in a slow circle. No sudden moves and nothing aggressive. Not yet. One feints, his left hand moving forward in an attempt to put the other on the back foot. It almost works, but his opponent quickly recovers and makes a lunge of his own, only to be foiled by a quick parry. They retreat a step, and continue to circle one another, eyes locked, feet moving in step. There’s a soundtrack: Johann Sebastian Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto, that plays in slow motion. Each note is drawn out to a sinister degree, the kind of sinister this abstract knife fight needs. It’s not just a soundtrack, though. It’s also a signal, and a warning; something to keep the two on their toes...
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