My Portfolio: For a summery of my past work click on the portfolio link above. For more detailed information about individual titles and videos click the individual game links next to the title at the top of any page.

5/11/2011

Brink: I picked up Brink yesterday because I have to admit I got a little caught up in the hype. Hype appears to be what it was all about because so far I'm having buyers remorse. It starts with the fact that I usually would have bought the PS3 version of the game. However since it's mainly multiplayer and the PSN is down that would have been pointless. So I grabbed the Xbox version instead.

I played the first 3 campaign missions, 3 challenges and did some online play to get a feel for it all. I must say I was very disappointed in the experience. The game has so many design issues it's hard to know where to start talking about it so I'll start with the obvious...I've already played Team Fortress 2. Same exact classes doing the same exact thing. However unlike TF2 Brink has terrible level design. The maps are dark and confusing. Everything looks the same and there are few landmarks to give yourself any bearing at all to figure out where you are. The texture all seem to muddle together and pop to further disoriented you and worst of all it's damn hard to tell if they person in front of you is friend or foe. They look similar except for a red or blue outline that only appears if you point your gun at them which by that time you're dead.

One of the big draws to the game was the parkour style of movement allowing you to seamlessly jump around the environment. This sort of works in that it doesn't annoy you during multiplayer but it's short comings become obvious in the parkour challenges. Using the game's movement system it's constantly shoving you forward and more often than not shoving you off objects you wanted to stand on top of. For instance lets say you want to quickly climb to the top of a crate stack. With the system you very quickly get to the top however as you reach the top and let up on the controls the game's "momentum" keeps you moving and right off the edge. Extremely frustrating!

My multiplayer experience was bad bad bad. The game ran terrible in a full match. Loads of lag which doesn't surprise me considering it's id Tech. Multiplayer hasn't been id's strong point since the Doom 3 engine.

There is some good in the game however. Another thing the game boasts it a high level of customization of your character and weapons which you unlock while playing the game. This part is good because we all love loot. There are loads of choices and ways to make you're character stand out. There is also a small level of ability customization however it's limited and most likely all the other players have the same ones as you do.

Splash Damage has always been a company that helps the big AAA developers stay one schedule and haven't really created their own title. Brink doesn't really give me confidence that they are ready to get out there on their own just yet but maybe some of the issues can be corrected in a few patches if they recognize the problems.

2/14/2010

Innovation: Recently I had posted that I’d be interested in making a racing game. Shortly after a co-worker replied that racing games were dead. He mentioned how even Gran Turismo (arguably the most successful racing franchise ever) was suffering because the sales of GT5 while good were not as good as GT4. I said that the racing genre just needed some innovation for which he replied, “It's racing, what exact innovation are you looking for in a non-arcade racer?” For me this statement culminated a big problem that is happening in the gaming industry today and that is an extremely shortsighted vision from not only the devs and publishers but also the customers that buy them.

I’ve been in the industry a long time and have watched it change from small basement based indie devs studios to multimillion-dollar publishers and franchises. During that time there has been a lot of innovation not only in technology driven by gaming but also in genres of games. Games started falling into categories such as real-time strategy, first person shooters, third person shooters, etc. This became so ingrained that we are now of the mind that games need to fall into one of these genres, especially if it’s development is to get funded by a publisher and in doing so the title is pigeon holed into a definition of what it is dooming it to follow the rules of the genra and often compete with the top title within it.

I once pitched a game to a publisher that was a little hard to categorize. I had a lot of excitement so it wasn’t a bad idea, just different. As the idea moved up the cooperate ladder it stopped at a producer near the top because he said, “For us to approve a game it need to meet the following requirements.

- It cannot have more than one risk.
- It needs to be able to be described in one sentence.
- That sentence needs to say it’s like (X) successful title.

What room does innovation have in those requirements? Certainly not all publishers are like that but it’s the perfect example of shortsightedness. Imagine trying to innovate racing games when people already have in their minds what a racing game is.

The big problem is that it is all people; not just publishers and developers but the people that buy games have the same frame of mind. They look at a title and see it involves racing and assume they know all about it. There really needs to be buzz behind the game to let them know what’s different about it that way they will give it a chance. To generate the buzz it needs a publisher behind it that believes in the product, which requires that it not be too innovative and the cycle continues. Happily there are some indie developers out there bucking this trend. Titles like Stacking from Double Fine are taking huge risks to push gaming forward and I certainly applaude them but they are the exception and the main stream follow the rules.

So to get back to the question “what exact innovation would I be looking for in a racing game” I answered this, “Current racing games are very one dimensional, you get cars, race cars, upgrade cars. Pretty much that is the extent of a racing game. However only a rare few add storyline, character development, and a sense of adventure driven by racing. In action/adventure games the player generally interacts on foot through a basically liner path and I see no reason that path couldn't be in a car at high speed and the cars don't need to have guns mounted on them to make that entertaining.” Cars are a mode of transportation just like walking, flying, riding a horse, etc.

In Red Dead Redemption you ride a horse and it was a big part of the allure of the game but it wasn’t all about horse riding. There was a storyline and game play that happened on and off the horse. In some movies the focus is on the vehicles such as Smokey and the Bandit, Dukes of Hazzard, Bullitt, etc but there is also storylines and characters. So there is no reason a game couldn’t have cars and a story line as well. NFS: Most Wanted did that very successfully in my opinion. The recent Test Drive Unlimited 2 does it very loosely and I feel with some innovation racing could be mixed with a story and action that could be unique and make something very exciting. I’ve even drafted a few ideas if anyone is interested.

10/24/2010

Costume Quest: Gimmie MORE! I played the entire Costume Quest game in one day and my thoughts are ......MORE! I actually upset my kids by not allowing them to play until I was done. The game has one of those designs that makes game designers say, "Duh, why didn't I think of that?" Of course leave it to Double Fine to think of it. Every kid that trick or treats imagines being the costume they are wearing and that is what it's all about. Well that and candy.

In Costume Quest you play a little boy or girl that is forced to save Halloween (oh, and your sibling) from some monsters stealing all the town's candy. So how do you do this? With the power of your costumes of course. While you collect candy you also collect costume patterns and pieces. When you're costume is complete you can wear it but these are no ordinary costumes. When you encounter a monster you enter a turn-based battle arena and actually become a costume with it's special abilities and powers. You can also tweak the kids in your party using Battle Stamps that you buy with candy. These can add various things such as Witches Brew (damage over time) to your attack or more HP and AP.

The game has so much more room to grow and I can easily see more costumes, stamps, enemies. They hardly scratched the surface of possibilities but for a titles that is only found on PS3 Network and Xbox Live expansions could easily be added. My fingers are crossed that Double Fine is thinking the same.

If you haven't given it a try get out there and do it. For $14.95 what have you got to lose other than about 400 megs of hard drive space?

10/19/2010

Modnation Racers Is Not Little Big Planet: A while back I picked up Modnation Racers. My thought was that my kids and I had such a good time with Little Big Planet that this is the same thing only kart racing. Since I've had some spare time lately (ahem) I've decided to start looking at it and I went into it thinking I knew what it was about. However I was wrong and I found that my misconception totally altered my opinion of the game. I kept wanting it to be a racing Little Big Planet and it kept not being that which in turn kept disappointing me. So I thought it might be fun to break that down a little.

What I Expected: In the game under your PS3 profile you create a custom character and car. You can really tweak these things a lot which is great! You then get attached to your little guy as you play and follow the storyline. My kids did the same thing under their own PS3 profiles. So of course we wanted to race each other just like playing our custom Little Big Planet (LBP) characters.

What I Got: Unlike LBP when you race split screen the other players are never asked what profile they are playing under so the only player that gets to load his custom character that they spent hours tweaking is the current logged in profile. Everyone else gets to choose character the game has available. So immediately your feeling is, "I don't care about this racer. Whatever just start the race." which isn't a way you want to start playing a game.

What I Expected: In LBP you pick up items that allow you to customized your character. These are found playing alone as well as in multiplayer and everyone playing gets to keep them once they are found. There are even areas that require two players to collect the items for a fun team effort. I was expected the same in Modnation but maybe in a more racing competitive way such as you having to use your racing skills to be the first to get them and perhaps they are not shared among all players.

What I Got: As you race with your character you pick up tokens and these can be used to "buy" more items to customize you cars and characters. These items are available only through single play so there is no team effort or competition to get them between multiplayer players at all. I also found the spending of tokens to be a bizarre design decision. Depending on the number of tokens you've collected you can spend them on different priced roulette type vending machines. So say you want to spend 5 tokens, it spins and you get whatever it stops on. To me this totally sucks the motivation out of token collecting if I can't choose the item I'm going for. For instance say I want an indy car body that costs 5 tokens so I go out and race for those 5 tokens with the goal of getting that indy car body. But since it's random I could just end up with total crap so who cares. Sure it's fun to do when you notice you have a lot of tokens piled up but I don't race to get them.

The Misconception: So does this mean my opinion of Modnation Racers is bad? No not at all. If I throw out all the things I wanted Modnation to be and look at what it actually is the game is really fun. It is a multiplayer title but more so using the PS3 network rather than a split screen among people in the same room. It has a fun online community where you share your creations. Online you can be your character and it's only misfortune is that the PS3 only allows one profile to connect to the PS3 network. The game has a great track editor that is a blast to use and really caters to all levels of track building skills. The racing style is typically kart racing with the expected fun power ups and weapons.

I think many titles suffer from a misconception of what the player expects it to be and what they get. This is extremely true in MMOs where everyone what's similar controls and game play as World of Warcraft, but then boils down to the fact that if you wanted WoW then go play that instead. Really any title suffers from being compared to the current top seller in their genera. As designers it would be nice if we could wipe the player's mind clean and have our creations judged on their own merit but that's not the case. We need to be extremely aware of what the customers are playing and anticipate what they will expect from our title. There is a fine line of balance between being new and fresh and being a copy cat game. You have to be different enough with out being foreign. I think Modnation could have benefited a lot from following LBP's lead but still ended up being a fun title that didn't leave me totally lost.

09/27/2010

Minecraft: Gameplay is King!: Holy Crap!! I just found my latest obsession and so has thousands of others in a tiny little game called Minecraft. Well tiny might not be the right word for it because the game is far from that, in fact it's an entire world. Minecraft a simple first person sandbox game where you are basically "plopped" into a world that you can alter through crafting. Everything is made of blocks from the ground and landscape to the animals that inhabit it. You can build just about anything you can think of out of the various raw materials the world provides however you quickly learn there is a modivation to build as night falls. Here was my first simulated day in Mincraft.

I started standing on this bizzare looking block landscape with nothing but my block shaped hand in front of me. Click the mouse, okay the hand moves. Point at the ground, oh I dug up a block of dirt that went into my inventory. Ran up to a tree and hit it, oh, I got a block of wood. Hey a block pig, I'll go hit it. Things went on like this until the sun started setting. Then it started getting dark. It was getting VERY dark. Man, I can't see anything. Hey I think I see a guy over there.......Grrr....smack! SHIT, it's a zombie!!

I spent the rest of the night running from zombies. I thought this game sucks! What do I do just run from zombies the whole time? Then the sun came up and they all burst into flames and died. Suddenly it all became very clear. I need to build, and frantically build I did to prepare for the next night.

Soon however you get quite a home established and the monster that come out at night are less of a problem so as the name says you start digging down, mining into the ground discovering more and more materials, caverns, and dark places.

As a game designer I see Minecraft as a big win. Notch (the game's creator) focused on the game's game play rather than worrying about the dirt looking like the best high rez dirt a computer game ever created. Because of this the game runs at a great frame rate and he could put more power towards creating fun which is why we all play.

In the game industry there is a constant struggle between art and design and here is what Minecraft proves to me and I'm going to highlight it. Even the best graphics in the industry can't save a bad design but a good design can work with any graphics. This is not to say Minecraft doesn't have good art, in fact I've often heard the landscapes described as beautiful which is a testament again to the simple design.

So get over and download a copy now! There is a single player and multi player modes if you want to build with friends. You can start mining at www.minecraft.net.

Updated the Wolf page: Added the trailer and a little explaination of what I worked on during the project.

09/15/2010

Dragon Age First Thoughts: Finally got a chance to play Dragon Age. At work I'm usually making FPS of some sort so when I'm on my own time I often enjoy playing something different. Usually it's an RPG and BioWare's Dragon Age seemed like the best choice since it got such great review and is so popular. I enjoyed Neverwinter 1 &2 so I was really looking forward to playing it. But so far I'm not as into it as I had hoped. Here are some quick thoughts I had from playing.

The Good:
- I really liked the character creation tool because you can tweak it all you want or just say whatever and continue.
- I liked that choosing different races changed your starting location and back story.
- Also I really enjoy the very involved task of getting to know someone, in where you carefully talk to your allies to opening up their stories or more.

The Bad:
- I played many hours of NWN and it immediately felt the same which I guess shouldn't have surprised me but I was tired of it right from the start.
- The location transitions were really bad. I dislike loading from one area to another, turning around and not seeing a place that looks like where I came from. It's very disorienting and is just plan lazy.
- The jarring cut scenes yank me out of the game and worse they completely screw up my intentions. I rolled a Rogue so I often set my party up to stay behind while I scout ahead. Then I hit a trigger for a cut scene and me and my party are forced to stand there and get ambushed no matter how I set them up.
- Which leads me to the combat. 90% of the time I feel I win the battle by screwing with the AI rather than fighting as intended. If I stand and fight I often get pummeled as a Rogue, but when that fails kiting them around the dungeon I can pick them off with whatever character was last standing. Very unsatisfying.

I'm really surprised Dragon Age got the good reviews it did because it's not that great. I'm going to try and continue but there are some very shiny games coming out that may easily distract me. Gran Turismo 5 for instance.