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Many gamers who take the hobby seriously scoff at each year's Spike TV Video Game Awards. There are numerous reasons for this, the most prominent being that the show is often filled with gags, skits, and seemingly anything that does not consist of awards being handed out and accepted. You need only look at the show this past December where certain awards were given out beforehand and others were announced so rapidly they were gone in the blink of an eye. But about what the awards themselves -- are the selections, too, put to shame by other award shows?
Last night, in the midst of the 2012 DICE Summit in Las Vegas, the 15th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards (the IAAs) took place and were hosted by who else but comedian and BlizzCon frequent Jay Mohr. DICE (which stands for Design, Innovate, Communicate, Entertain) is an event geared towards those within the industry and thus has a much different focus than a trade show like E3. Whereas the nominees and winners of the VGAs are chosen by a select group of those in the videogame press, the IAAs are "decided by a peer-based voting system," as the organizers, the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences, put it. One might therefore expect the awards to end up in the hands of different nominees than the VGAs.
The DICE conference in Las Vegas is good for a lot of things, but one thing it's great for is bumping
into people. People who work in games and have opinions, even. So at this year's event, I posed two
questions to many of them: what's the one thing you want to see most in next-gen consoles, and why
are game budgets so secretive. (And perhaps notably, many of them said they'd heard the former
question a lot in the past few days.)
This story, if you're playing along and read the headline, contains the answers to the first of those two.
Head over here for the budget talk, read on to see what people in the industry had to say, and if you feel
inspired, offer your own take in the comments below.
Before asking the question above to a bunch of people at this year's DICE conference, I assumed everyone would agree with me that the game industry doesn't like talking about how much games cost to make. It turns out I was mostly right, but not entirely -- some weren't aware of what I was suggesting, though almost everyone had a unique take on why things are the way they are.
Check out all the replies below, and we won't complain if you want to offer your own take in the comments at the bottom of the page. Promise.
Last November, Valve revealed that hackers gained access to sensitive Steam user information, including user names, billing addresses, and encrypted credit card information. Via a message from company founder Gabe Newell, the Valve informed users of the security breach but added, "We do not have evidence that encrypted credit card numbers or personally identifying information were taken by the intruders, or that the protection on credit card numbers or passwords was cracked."
Nearly three months later Valve is still attempting to assess the damage, which, according to a second message from Newell received by Steam Users today, was more extensive than originally thought. "Recently we learned that it is probable that the intruders obtained a copy of a backup file with information about Steam transactions between 2004 and 2008. This backup file contained user names, email addresses, encrypted billing addresses and encrypted credit card information. It did not include Steam passwords." writes Newell.
During a keynote address at the DICE Summit yesterday, Bethesda's Todd Howard described an activity the developers of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim participated in after finishing up work on the game last year. Game Jam, as they called it, saw everyone on the development team work on anything they wanted for a week, with the only restriction being that it had to be made for Skyrim. After laying out the premise, a sizzle reel was shared with a selection of some of the concepts that were come up with. Contained within the video were a variety of crazy and/or awesome ideas: kill cams for magic and ranged combat, epic mounts, dark dungeons (that players have to manually light), an enormous mudcrab boss, the ability to become a flying vampire lord or werebear, Kinect-enabled shouts, and more.
Howard prefaced the video with a caveat, which is that none of this is guaranteed to ever make it into the hands of gamers. "How much of this stuff sees the light of day? To be determined," Howard said before rolling the footage. "Could it be in a future DLC? We don't know. Could various parts of it just be released for free? We don't know."
As if the creator of Minecraft funding a dream project from a veteran game designer was not crazy and exciting enough of an idea, Double Fine may have just topped it. One day after Markus "Notch" Persson proposed Mojang help to make Psychonauts 2 a reality, the developer of Psychonauts is turning to fans to bankroll a new, old-school adventure game.
Using Kickstarter, a fundraising platform that has been employed by independent game developers and documentarians alike, Double Fine is looking to raise $400,000. $300,000 of that will be used to fund the PC game's development, while the other $100,000 will be used to document the entire development process. 2 Player Productions, the same group that produced a documentary on the early development of Minecraft at Mojang, has already been tapped to create the documentary, which will be made available in monthly installments for those who back the project. Any money raised beyond the $400,000 will be used to pay for things like extra voiceover work or bringing the game to additional platforms like Mac and iOS.
What do you think of when you read or hear the phrase "casual games?" Long considered a dirty word amongst a vocal minority of "hardcore gamers," casual games are undergoing a transformation thanks to new distribution models that make gaming on PC easier than plug & play consoles. A newly leaked list of games available on the upcoming "Consumer Preview" version of Windows 8 provides a glimpse into the future of casual games, and it's a lot more "hardcore" than you'd expect.
Similar to the Mac and Google Chrome app stores, Windows 8 will offer its own software portal for easy to install applications. Called the Window's Store, it will carry the following 10 games during the preview period:
Feature
By: Jeremy Parish February 8, 2012
Love it or hate it, the latest Elder Scrolls epic, Skyrim, continues to hold gamers' attention. Almost three months after its release, people are still trading tips; sharing their confessions of how they love Lydia (even though she doesn't quite grasp the importance of moving out of the way of massive swinging doors covered with spikes); and creating viral videos featuring startlingly accurate sports predictions and lamentations of knee-embedded arrows.
We can all agree that Skyrim is hardly perfect. In fact, it could use a lot of improvements. The Skyrim lovers may never convince the game's detractors of its greatness, but at the very least we'd have an easier time selling others on the game's greatness if Bethesda would take the time to fix the following issues -- and we'd welcome your input, too.
"Let's make Psychonauts 2 happen," tweeted Minecraft creator Markus Persson (AKA Notch) yesterday to Double Fine CEO, and designer of the original game, Tim Schafer.
Notch's Tweet alone would pique the interest of Double Fine fans. Pychonauts' retail performance was so poor that mentioning it at this point, after Double Fine has produced so many other excellent titles, seems kind of cliché, meaning that all hope for a Psychonauts sequel died years ago. However, Notch didn't just tweet, Tim Schafer responded, "Oh wait. Hm. This is interesting."
Respawn Entertainment and Electronic Arts alike have been very quiet regarding the former's debut title. We're now almost two years removed from the founding of Respawn and we still know almost nothing about the game aside from the fact that it will be a sci-fi shooter of some sort. With EA likely to release a new Medal of Honor later this year, it would make sense for Respawn's game to come no sooner than 2013. That's precisely what's suggested in an alleged EA marketing calendar that points to a March 2013 release. Whether it comes then or sometime later, such a large project is very risky given the current state of the industry.
Heading up Respawn are Jason West and Vince Zampella, the former bosses of Infinity Ward. The two played a significant role in turning Call of Duty into the massive success it is today, but their involvement in a new game -- even if we assume they won't make a bad one -- does not guarantee a commercial success. Games are not sold on the names of their creative leads, and the vast majority of Call of Duty fans are unlikely to know the names of either West or Zampella or the fact that they are no longer employed by Activision. The inevitable campaign pointing out how Respawn's new game comes from many of the key people behind Call of Duty isn't about to cause those fans to drop CoD in favor of the new title, particularly when post-West/Zampella CoD games have continued to deliver the experience they want.
