E3 2011 Review
Posted on Aug 6, 2011 in Events and attached to E3 2011 Predictions
Well, E3 was a few months ago, and I promised that I'd post a follow-up to my predictions - so here it is! E3 wasn't totally amazing, but it was better than last year, in my opinion. Of course the biggest news was Nintendo's announcement of the Wii U and its touch-sceen controller, but there were a few other interesting bits of information released as well. Let's take a quick look at the big three's keynotes and the news contained within them. Then I can match them up with my predictions to see how many I got right!
Japan and the West
Posted on Jul 14, 2011 in Rants
There is a reasonably obvious trend with most Japanese games, and that is the intended audience. Many Japanese games never get any exposure outside of the country of origin, as it is believed that the target audience of these games is exclusive to the land of the rising sun.
Games that do get western translations (or just simply releases) only come out after a significant delay - two years is a very common waiting period for a lot of games. But at least it's better than no release at all, which happens all too often.
I find this extremely annoying for several reasons.
Genre Wars: Fantasy and Sci-Fi
Posted on Jun 22, 2011 in History
Since I'm really awful at keeping these posts regular, I may start writing shorter posts. I'll probably start talking more about programming (since I find it easier to write about), but I'll try not to stick to one topic for too long.
So let's talk about genres. News and general excitement from E3 has started discussions about some notable games in both the fantasy and sci-fi genres: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Fable: The Journey, Final Fantasy XIII-2, Dust 514, Halo 4, and too many others to mention here. These kind of games allow me to springboard into some discussion about the two genres, similarities, and differences.
E3 2011 Predictions
Posted on May 14, 2011 in Events
Well, I can't seem to keep up the weekly posts, and missing three weeks is even worse! It's been a combination of being really busy, being really lazy, and having complete writers block. Tried to write a post up two or three times in the last few weeks, but couldn't seem to get past a sentence or two before I realised it was rubbish, and tossed it away.
Next month we have an exciting event (for gamers, anyway): The Electronic Entertainment Expo, a.k.a. "E3", for this year is happening next month! June 7-9, to be exact. Mark your calendars! Ever since I've been able to (back when I started university), I've watched the E3 keynotes (conferences held by Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft a day or two before the start of E3) streamed live from the web (which, due to timezone differences, air at around 2AM in Australia). There's something genuinely exciting about watching new game announcements and trailers live as it happens.
I always like to speculate and make predictions about what's going to happen at the keynote speeches. Each of the big three always have something up their sleeves, even if information gets leaked quite a bit in the lead up to the conference. So, I present to you my predictions for E3 this year.
Long post ahead!
Linearity Part Two: Final Fantasy XIII
Posted on Apr 24, 2011 in Gameplay and attached to Linearity in Games
Well, I managed to finish Final Fantasy XIII - and what better way to celebrate than to post a blog about it! This is partly designed as a follow-up post on the 'Linearity in Games' post - but also a way for me to express my opinions of the game itself.
My Thoughts on Unit Testing
Posted on Apr 16, 2011 in Programming
I've done it again - skipped a week. Final Fantasy XIII has a habit of shortening the length of my day. No idea how. So I have no choice but to write in a slightly "bloggier" style, because one of my usual articles will take me too long! Anyway, let's ramble on about programming for a bit.
Often I think about why I work on my own programming projects. I'm not paid for the work, and it's likely that they'll never actually get a release anyway. The reason is pretty straight-forward: experience. Same answer as any other passionate programmer, I'd expect.
The Quality of Game Sequels 3: Sequel Harder
Posted on Apr 1, 2011 in History and attached to The Quality of Game Sequels: The Sequel
Oops, skipped a week there. I've gotten addicted to Final Fantasy XIII! It is actually relevant to this blog post - however, this is the first Final Fantasy game that I have played, so I cannot really comment on how it improves on previous iterations of the series. Anyway, back to scheduled programming...
Following on from the last two posts on game sequels, we can see that there are plenty of good sequels out there in the game industry. When compared to the movie industry, for example, games seem to have a higher success rate than movies. That said, we have plenty of bad sequels, as well. There's also plenty of sequels that the game world is crying out for, but they have never been made.
Phoenix MVC 0.2 Released!
Posted on Mar 18, 2011 in Projects and attached to New Features in Phoenix MVC 0.2
Phoenix MVC 0.2 has been officially released! This version includes a bunch of bug fixes, as well as a load of new enhancements. I still want to keep the minimalistic feel of the framework, but I also want to extend the functionality. It's a bit of a toss-up between the two in a lot of cases, but I'm happy with the current state, and I'm already getting some more ideas for future releases of Phoenix.
Read on to see the list of changes. The documentation will be updated in the coming weeks.
The Quality of Game Sequels: The Sequel
Posted on Mar 14, 2011 in History and attached to The Quality of Game Sequels
After a discussion I had on the topic of last week's post, I want to talk about what makes a great sequel. Last week I talked about some good sequels, but never really went into much detail of what makes a sequel a good sequel. There are several different types of sequels, and each type has different conditions to work right.
The Quality of Game Sequels
Posted on Mar 10, 2011 in History
Sequels are popular in the game industry - even more so than in the movie industry. It's understandable why they are so popular: If a game sells well, it almost guarantees that a sequel will sell just as well, if not better. I'm not really all too fond of this situation - let's call it "sequelitis" - because constant sequels tend to reduce creativity and innovation from developers.
Some sequels are done well - improving on the mechanics of the previous games, while, at the same time, expanding gameplay and introducing new concepts. This is the focus of the post this week. But, we also have the bad sequels - quick cash-grabs by greedy publishers trying to churn out content to make as much profit as possible. And then there are the ridiculous examples that don't really have any right to be called sequels at all. Those will wait until next week's post.
A Case Against Console Hacking
Posted on Mar 1, 2011 in Rants
Well, nice work, Nintendo. Flash cartridges work on the 3DS without any hardware or software modifications required. Admittedly, they're only running DS games, but it's already a step towards the whole system going under. After one day, a significant part of the console has already been hacked. I can only hope that the 3DS part of the console will remain locked down for a long, long time. Unfortunately I doubt that's a likely scenario.
As an owner of a DS flash card myself, it's understandable to ask: why do I not want this console hacked? Firstly, I'm not a pirate. I only play games that I own on my flash card. Secondly, I'm a huge fan of the DS and want to see the successor to it succeed in places where the original did not.
Linearity in Games
Posted on Feb 23, 2011 in Gameplay
Open world games have become increasingly popular over the past ten years. They're hardly a new concept - Wikipedia cites open world games from as far back as 1984. It has become an increasing trend for games to become less linear and more flexible in terms of plot progression and gameplay. Nonlinear gameplay isn't only in sandbox games, though - you can see elements of it in many different games. It's very common in RPGs and other genres that focus on replayability, but it can be seen in almost every genre.
The driving factor behind nonlinear gameplay - and open world games in general - is choice. To force players to make a choice is to help immerse them more into the game as they grow attached to the combination of choices they have made - this helps them feel that they're in control of the game as the story progresses. But, on the other hand, lack of choice can also assist the game in driving a point across, increase variation in gameplay, and help progress the plot and characters of the game at a faster pace.
Lesson Learnt: Secure Your Website
Posted on Feb 16, 2011 in Programming
An interesting thing happened to me recently: A small security hole in my website was exploited. It was hardly a big deal, but someone managed to submit content to some of my project documentation pages and fill them with generic ads and spam. I've since plugged the hole, but it's a bit of a reminder that I have to be very careful about keeping my site secure and safe from brute-force attacks.
Since I find this kind of stuff rather interesting, let's have a look at what happened, how it happened, how it could have been much worse, and how to prevent these kind of things in the first place.
Rant: "Game Design" Degrees
Posted on Feb 9, 2011 in Rants
This is one subject I talk about a lot - university degrees in "Game Design". These courses have become extremely popular over the past few years - and why not? Everyone loves games, and a lot of people would love to make them as a profession. Why, you could be in the credits of the next Uncharted, Gears of War, or Mario game! This is a dream that many gamers have had - I know that even now, I would love to work at a popular game studio. And you would too.
I want to talk about people who have gone the next step from thinking about it: actually studying games design at university. These people have good intentions - they hear about these degrees, they like the sound of them. Unfortunately they're going about it in the completely wrong way.
Developer Cash Printers
Posted on Feb 1, 2011 in History and attached to Fall of the Independents
Last week I looked at several development studios who were bought out by larger companies. Some of them faded away, some of them got screwed over, and some of them were successful and retained creative control over their projects. As a follow-up post to this, I want to take a look at independant studios which have created a 'safety net' of sorts to prevent themselves from disappearing into the mouth of one of the publisher giants.
