NY Games Conference
Justin Fic, Keynote Presentation: NY Games Conference
Updated site get.
I’ve been going OCD on themes when it comes to the site. They’re either too narrow and claustrophobic or they’re too open and have no structure. Anyway I dig this one for now; I just need to whip up a background graphic. If I can keep the momentum going I’ll have something by the end of the weekend. In general, it’s been hard to stay focused on things outside of work lately. Even taking the time to play games has become a much bigger undertaking than it should be. (It should be NO undertaking.) I noticed I had the same problem while working for Petroglyph in Las Vegas- my time management skills are complete rubbish when I’m scheduling around a full time job. Weekday nights I’m basically worthless, and weekends feel horribly rushed. Something I have to figure out, because this is how mid-life crises happen.
In other news, I just gave a Keynote presentation at the NY Games Conference here in Manhattan on Thursday, “iPhone Games: Bum Rushing New Platforms For Fun and Profit.” I think it went quite well, despite only having about 24 hours to prepare something. The younger folks especially seemed to dig on it, and the suits (by which this conference was primarily attended) not so much, but with stills from the movie Predator, David Bowie, and comparing the launch of the iTunes App Store to a Zerg rush, that was to be expected. Could this lead to future public appearances? If so, god help you all.
I couldn’t get to see much of the show (half of Day 1, and none of day 2) but I hope it takes off. The east coast needs more game conferences. I’d love to see it bigger, and expanded past the company bigwigs. Personally, I’d also love to see E3 come back in all its circus-sideshow glory, but that’s a topic for another post.
Braid is brilliant.
If you own an Xbox 360, you WILL buy Braid. That’s an ORDER.
As you should already know, this game is brilliant. Inspiring, even. Jon Blow just showed the entire gaming industry that two guys with a lot of talent, a clear vision, and a lot of tenacity can tangle with multi-million dollar AAA titles. And Braid just showed the gaming industry that gameplay design, direction, and artistic statement can stand proudly against the most expensive 3D engines, squad AI, and bouncing-tit-physics.
If you are one of those people who won’t buy it just because it’s $15, then you’re an asshole. For $15, I had more fun with, and got more out of Braid than anything else I’ve played recently, including every 360 game I shelled out $60 bucks a pop for, and including the total fucking steamers I’m playing through courtesy of Gamefly just to quench my insatiable thirst for achievement points.
When I reached “Closure” I was already calling Braid one of my favorite games, ever. And it wasn’t even fucking done yet. I won’t spoil anything, but all I will say is keep playing. Which you should do anyway, because it’s awesome. Braid is so unbelievable that every game that ISN’T Braid sucks a little bit more now that Braid is out there.
If Braid doesn’t change the entire gaming industry from here on out, it won’t be Jon Blow’s fault. It’ll be ours.
Arcade Cabinet Get!
If there be any of you who still doubt my awesomeness, let ye now be silenced. I was walking home tonight from Freeverse HQ, and at one point look up, and staring right back at me was this beauty. Me and Mr. Bruce Morrison have been kicking around setting up a game cabinet, and I thought this would be perfect. Really, the majority of the work goes into sawing the wood, putting it together, and making it look cool and/or authentic. And if Bruce’s woodworking skills are anything like mine, that would have ended in tears.
So with a little planning with Bruce, a handtruck loaned no charge from the nearby 24-hour Rite Aid (the only thing that’s open), two passers-by, who I will call Dude One and Dude Two, who helped me navigate some tricky gates, and finally a lovely local gal by the name of Jenna, who steadied this beast while I handtrucked it all the way back to my building, up the stair, through the door, up the elevator and into my apartment. It was a night of heroics that will not soon be forgotten.
That aside.
The cabinet is an interesting creature. It was originally a Mortal Kombat II machine, but has since been altered: if you look close, there are two light guns bolted to the front of it. (The guns themselves are in the cabinet here.) And since then, it’s been gutted. Which makes it perfect for us. What’s crazy is that this machine was going to be trashed. Cabinets are endangered enough as it is. I’m hoping we can give this baby a little love, bring it back to life, and it will preserve the classics as it rightly deserves.
Finally, while I was hauling this fucker around, sweat stinging my eyes, I was thinking how awesome it would be to make a coin-op game. It’s such a tiny niche that it would probably not be profitable (if you’re going for the old stand-in-front-of-cabinet-with-a-joystick-and-buttons approach) but I’ve always wanted to do it. When I was a kid, arcades were the height of gaming. You had your NES, but the arcade was where all the heavy shit went down. That’s where you went when you needed your mind blown.
Anyway, I’ve been kicking around a coin-op version of Kill Monty. It’s a perfect match for coin-op: quick games, killer difficulty, lots of smoke and eye candy. I would just need to turn all the menus into a looping attract mode, throw in my supremely awesome joystick code from the FicEngine, and tie it to some X-Arcade sticks. I’d also love to play around with my beat-em-up prototype more, drop it down to two players, and make it a new game for our cabinet. I would love like a Golden Axe type game, or maybe Narc. But first thing’s first! Now I just need to get this thing out of my place and into Freeverse HQ. That said, it does look kind of awesome just sitting in my apartment. I’ll miss it for sure!
Fic out.
Humble Beginnings, the Loot: Part 4 of 4
At long last, the conclusion to my epic 4 piece blast-to-the-past featuring games I created when I was between 7 and 8 years old. It’s fitting that I stumbled on all of these, right before starting work as a designer/programmer for Freeverse. Deciding between staying as a pure indie developer and taking a full time gig was a very difficult decision for me, and seeing these really reminded me of why I do what I do. I sincerely believe this is my artistic purpose… I’ve written and designed games on whatever medium I had available to me, whether that be in C++ code, pencil drawings, action figures, for as long as I can remember. There’s no way I could do anything else.
Anyway, enough ego stroking. On to the games.
Humble Beginnings, The Loot: Part 3 of 4
Yo! So here’s the third set of games from my library of old-ass games I made as a kid. It’s been awhile in posting- I’ve been busy beginning work at Freeverse and finding an apartment in NYC. That’s a whole different rant, but the end result is I found a sweet place in the Upper East Side and I move in June 1. Woot! Anyway, on to the games.
Humble Beginnings, the Loot: Part 2 of 4
Some time ago, while preparing to move to NYC I dug through a pile of old Mac floppy disks and found a bunch of old “games” I made as a kid (7-8 years old, almost twenty years ago) by drawing their title screens in a paint program called Modern Artist. This is the second of four five-game-set where I share the best with all of you. You can find the first set here.
On XBLA trends and Emotion in Gameplay
I’m noticing a trend- I wouldn’t call it disturbing, just disappointing, on XBLA. I’m talking about games that really should be awesome, but for some reason or another, they’re simply not. I first noticed it with Assault Heroes– it’s still a fun game, but it falls flat when you compare it to the other arena shooters on XBLA (Geometry Wars, Mutant Storm 1 and 2, Robotron, Smash TV come to mind immediately.) Then I noticed it big-time with Small Arms, Band of Bugs and Arkadian Warriors. All these games should have been awesome. Small Arms is a Smash Bros. type brawler featuring animals with guns, Band of Bugs is basically Final Fantasy Tactics, and Arkadian Warriors seems like the closest thing XBLA has to Diablo. But they’re all boring as all hell. More recently, I tried out Rocketmen: Axis of Evil. Same deal: should be a fun game, but it just sucks.
I have a theory- I’m tempted to call it Academia Syndrome. This is when a game is done “right” by almost every standard: super high production values, superb art direction, use of a good engine, an impressive bullet list of features and unique selling points, and they seem to be by gamers for gamers, but when it comes to actually having fun with the game, it’s flat as coke that you opened months ago. The game is the sum of all these parts, yet there’s that little-something-more that just didn’t make it in. You could call it the heart & soul of the game, but it’s not gameplay… but yet it is. It’s weird. You could read the design docs of these games and easily tell that they have great gameplay. Smash Bros with guns? Casual FF Tactics? XBLA Diablo? All awesome. I could have fun for tons of hours with any of them. But there’s feeling and, believe it or not, emotion, that needs to be conveyed along with that gameplay.
This is really not something that can be taught formally, and I would say this is the single biggest thing that would qualify games as art (which is territory I’m not going anywhere near today.) Gameplay can evoke emotion, the same way music or movies can. And, in my opinion anyway, it’s our responsibility as designers to ensure we convey that emotion. You can’t just say “My game is Game X meets Game Y with Twist Z” and leave it at that. Sure, that’s a great way to get the idea on paper, but once you start programming, you need to keep the following in mind. How did Game X make you feel when you played it? How about Game Y? You need to evoke those EMOTIONS as well as just combining the game mechanics of Game X and Game Y, or your game will be flat.
I think this is also why it’s crucial for designers to have an active role in development, and also need to be able to do some programming and art assets. Consistency is more than just art direction- the designer needs to make sure that the appropriate feelings are conveyed by the game at all times.
Got a Diablo clone? Feelings of exploration, feelings of Gauntlet-style, one-on-many combat, the strategy of planning the development of your character, and the feelings of triumph when those developments allow you to slaughter your foes.
Got an arena shooter? Feelings of intense adrenaline, with some claustrophobia thrown in for good measure. Feelings of incredible, jarring impact from gunfire and explosions. You’re not just spawning a bullet object. You’re firing a cannon. Your enemies aren’t playing their death animations and being removed from gameplay, they’re getting fucking slaughtered. Convince me of that, or your game is flat.
Edit Fuck Beaten by Bruce Morrison
I’m back in Las Vegas now, after bookending 12-13 hours of walking around NYC with redeye flights. One thing that’s painfully obvious (literally) is that I’ll have to get used to walking everywhere again. My legs are complete mush. Wads of cookie dough.
And, as Bruce Morrison so effectively predicted, I got some bitching to do. Two major points, and if you read Bruce’s post (and you should) you’ll know what’s coming.
So apartment wise, I struck out in NYC. I had an apartment all scoped out, and finally saw it (the neighboorhood is okay, the building is a dump, but the apts themselves are REALLY NICE.) However, I come to learn that they don’t have anything open, which I’m trying not to be furious about because my fucking mongoloid of a broker (yeah, I’m talking to you) explicitly told me that YES, there would be units open and ready to move in to on May 1. What the fuck? It’s also worth noting that I have not had any contact with this broker in weeks– the person to actually show me the place was a mook of a mook of this actual broker. Seriously, what a fucking racket. They were happy to show me other buildings though, which were consequently all shit. Bruce introduced me to another broker though who is actually really nice and helpful, so hopefully fortunes will turn around soon. I can also check out the original building I was looking at again after May 1, as units will almost definitely open up, but I almost want to find something else just on general principles after being jerked around.
Not only that, but a quick desperation search on Craigslist revealed a few nice places in the Lower East Side, and even a few in East Village. I’d have to see what I’m sacrificing in terms of space and convenience, but it would be really cool to head back to that same area. I do like the constant bustle of Manhattan. Brooklyn in comparison feels really quiet, residential, and suburb-y. I also realize now I haven’t given uptown the look it deserves either– Harlem and Inwood/Washington Heights probably have some nice places, too.
But because of all this, I definitely need to rethink my plans for departure. Originally, I would be getting a truck on Thursday and beginning the drive over the weekend, but that obviously isn’t going to work. I may need to fly out and secure some temporary housing (either mooching people’s couches or finding some sort of motel) so I’m able to search New York without any time constraints, and then when I find something, go back to Vegas, get the truck, THEN drive out all my shit. It’s a way to go that doesn’t involve me putting my eggs in the basket of a moronic realtor.
Humble Beginnings, the Loot: Part 1 of 4
So as promised, I’ve selected the 20 best “games” out of my childhood stash. These were created by me– the dates of creation are all in ‘88 and ‘89, which means I was 7 or 8 years old. I didn’t know how to program at the time (I picked up Pascal a few years later) so to make a “game” I’d draw a picture of it in a program called Modern Artist, which was basically a 256-color MacPaint. Some of them are just too funny to not share, so here we go, just five out of my selected 20:
Humble Beginnings
The past week or so I’ve been slowly going through all my stuff, trying to cull off everything that won’t have some definite use or purpose in New York. I’m scheduled to move in about a week, so I really should be hauling ass but it’s always an emotional process and I’m kind of lagging.
In my cleanings, I found a stash of old floppy disks, and had to share them with everyone: (click for big)
From left to right, top to bottom: A Guided Tour of Macintosh (This came with the original Macs, and taught you how to move a mouse, how to click, drag, double click, etc.) SimCity, SimCity 2000, Minotaur: Labyrinths of Crete, SimLife, SimAnt, Where In Time Is Carmen Sandiego, Wolfenstein 3D, MS Flight Simulator, Kid Pix, SimEarth, Hypercard, and Battle Chess.
These defined my gaming youth almost as much as my NES tapes (which have also been found.) Not all my old diskettes are making the move- I mostly kept gaming disks, and a few game related disks, like Hypercard (which is where I cut my game dev teeth.) A find that made me happy is The Rodney Caper, which is a game I made in Hypercard as a kid, where you played a dude named Rodney who had to fight and jump through 9 levels to kill some jerkoff so you could get out of a speeding ticket. I’m not kidding. Every level was split up by commentary by Beavis & Butthead. I can’t wait to dive into it again, but it will probably take a Carbonized Hypercard Player, and I’ll need to get the game out of the .sea (self extracting archive. Oh, the memories.)
Also of note, I found a treasure trove of “games” I made as a kid by drawing their title screens in a program called Modern Artist (essentially a 256-color MacPaint.) They’re all dated ‘88-’89, which would put me at 7-8 years old. It’s actually amazing to see how much I put into it- I had games, a few of which had sequels. I had a “company” called Mac Master Games, a magazine called On The Air (kind of like my own Nintendo Power) and even pictures of my own arcade and restaurant. I even had fucking catalogs. I was going to put the best ones up here, but I was trying to pick out my favorites, and there are so many that I’ll have to put them in a separate post. First one’s coming later tonight, but here’s one to whet your appetite:
I really hope you’re ready for this.
