The New Game Teaser Site and Video

Here is a new site and teaser video for the new game I’m working on, Mass Effect 2.

http://masseffect.bioware.com/teaser/index.html

2009 and Half Finished Thoughts

I’ve started this post several times now centered on a variety of topics. Halfway through writing each conceivably brilliant epiphany I’ve had in the last couple weeks, I become nervous that the smarter-than-me folks out there might find my ramblings quaint or old ground already covered. So instead of properly fleshing out each topic, I’m going to post a few things I’ve been thinking about recently and see what sticks.

Games and the Recession

Games are not recession proof as evidenced by layoffs at many of the publishers and developers in the industry. As an employee of EA, I can’t talk much about our company. What I have to say on this website is a general observation of the industry as a whole.

While the industry can blame the economy to some extent, the industry is at fault for deciding to place all of it’s cards on the table during the same time. I believe that games like LittleBigPlanet would have fared much better in a release window it could have had the spotlight. Spring and summer should be considered for high quality games that don’t have the license or sequel advantage over the other highly anticipated titles. There was simply too much amazing content to play through in the game I wanted to play.

The Designer Hubris

I know of Designers who don’t trust the Programmers, Artists, Producers, and Testers on their team to quickly try out their own ideas for a game. They see themselves as the sole vision holder and most qualified to make creative calls. Some go so far as to mandate visual styles for Artists, naming conventions for Programmers, or restrictions on allowing Testers to give suggestions.

It is important as a Designer to take responsibility for fun. I see my role as a collector and sorting of the team’s collective, holistic vision for the game. My solutions to problems are only as effective as the people doing the actual work. Often, the best ideas come from those on the team with their hands on the building blocks of the game.

As a Designer, it is vital to the success of the game that I always keep an open door to everyone on the team and make a sincere effort to respond to every piece of feedback. Using ideas and feedback that are not your own often leads to making the game better. That is the most important part of what I do. If the game is fun, then my personal goals generally take care of themselves.

Game Interview

Today I read an interview with Richard Garriott. I can’t bring myself to type out his banner nickname. The interviewer asks some pretty general questions about what he is up to now and if he plans to make any new games.

I feel like this interview is representative of most other game industry interview. The interviews don’t go far enough. Did Garriot leave NCSoft or was he fired? Where did Tabula Rasa go wrong? Does Richard still feel relevant to an industry that he hasn’t had a successful game in for over a decade? How do you handle the high of success in Origin’s golden days followed by the struggle and inability to repeat that success? Was Tabula Rasa underscored by reviewers? I want to know these things.

This is Garriott’s life work and his identity is wrapped up in it. There are lessons to learn and experiences to empathize with as fellow creative types. I want to know that even this industry’s founders and legends struggled and do struggle the way I do for relevancy and credibility. This industry isn’t run by robots. There are people with real lives and real stories who can help inspire and encourage others who chose to follow in their footsteps.

What to expect in 2009

I am considering a variety of personal projects. At the top of my list is to start work on a book. A lot of people have been interested to hear about the globetrotting journey I took to breaking into this industry. I am thinking of it as a semi-autobiographical behind-the-scenes look at the industry with it’s people, events, and politics as I struggled to break in and establish myself as a Game Designer. I am deciding whether this should be autobiographical, a compilation of stories from a number of developers, or if it’s even safe for me to write it at all.

Is this just some conceited desire of mine for attention or is this something people would be interested in reading? My real desire to write this book comes from having wished there was something like it when I was looking to break in. Then again, maybe you are better off not knowing what you are getting yourself into.

Tale of Despereaux Review: Variety

Variety has published a combined review for the Wii and DS versions of the game, sadly without a review score. They seem to think quite highly of the Nintendo DS game.

The demise of troubled publisher Brash Entertainment almost kept “The Tale of Despereaux” videogame off shelves, a fate averted through a last-minute deal with Atari. For players, this is a mixed bag. Separate versions for the DS and the Wii share simple, unambitious gameplay, as well as cursory references to the film’s convoluted story. But the handheld’s two-dimensional action is charming and well designed, while the Wii’s 3-D gameplay is frustrating and occasionally broken. Sales will likely be soft following the pic’s weak opening, though the DS game will keep tykes much more satisfied.

The DS version, which was funded by Universal and reps the studio’s first venture into videogames in nearly a decade, is a straightforward platformer with elements as old as the first “Super Mario.” Players jump, scurry up walls, swing on nails and solve simple puzzles. The graphics are surprisingly good for Nintendo’s handheld system, with lovingly illustrated levels including the mazelike chutes from the kitchen to the coalmine-like castle dungeon. The rat’s coliseum, where two rather clever boss battles take place, rewards combatants with a colorful three-dimensional backdrop and silhouetted rodents who jeer from the stands.

The gameplay is well executed, with a gentle learning curve and a number of new challenges interspersed throughout the 30 levels. Each is meant to take five minutes or less, and while lives are unlimited, leaderboards encourage siblings to play and play again until they beat each other’s scores.

The Variety blog has an additional side note:

As for Universal, its new videogame publishing initiative — which reps the studio’s first entry into the space since it sold Universal Interactive to Vivendi nearly a decade ago — is off to a solid start, critically speaking, at least. After the film’s soft opening (due in part to the weather, but oh well), commerical prospects for the game might not be so great.

Emma Watson gives away my game on “The Today Show”

Skip ahead to 1:20 to see Emma Watson showing off our game. An NBC published game based on a NBC movie being given away on a NBC television show. Who would have thunk?

Tale of Despereaux: Common Sense Media

This review is a reprint of the Connected Parent review. However, Common Sense Media took the time to assign it a numerical review score of 4 / 5.

I think that brings our review score average to 77.7% which is incredibly strong for a license kid’s movie game for the Nintendo DS. Go team!

Tale of Despereaux Review: Cheat Code Central

Review number 3 comes from Cheat Code Central. They give is a 3.8 out of 5.0 and the review itself is full of praise.

The Tale of Despereaux has a few things working against it, but fortunately it’s able to overcome the odds.

Overall, The Tale of Despereaux has the hallmarks of a Disney production with good quality visuals, audio, and gameplay variety.

Combing elements of platforming, action/adventure, combat, and puzzle solving, The Tale of Despereaux is interesting in its diversity and challenges. This is a 2D side-scroller at the core, but the environment is rendered in glorious 3D, which creates an illusion of freedom and spaciousness. The move list is impressive. It’s similar in scope to Prince of Persia but considerably lighter.

These puzzle elements are not only challenging, but they fit in nicely within the context of the storyline and the gameplay.

The music is extremely well done and there’s not much you can do to improve on it except to add more color to it.

Speaking of color, Despereaux is definitely a cartoon-come-to-life. Everything from the animation to the static storybook panels exhibits a quality generally lacking in movie-inspired games. The controls work great; they are very responsive and precise.

Tale of Despereaux Review: Connected Parent

The second official review I’ve come across doesn’t assign a score but finds the game to be quite favorable.

Better than the console game, a fun side-scrolling puzzler.

While this is a linear game which doesn’t take very long to complete (under five hours), its gameplay is fun and the 36 levels are inventive.

This game is great for kids because it has frequent save points and a generous number of lives.

The graphics are also quite good, making this mouse-viewed world fascinating to explore.

Tale of Despereaux Review: IGN

The Tale of Despereaux’s (DS) first review comes from IGN. They give it a 7.7 / 10. It’s one of the highest scores Amaze Entertainment and THE highest Fizz Factor has ever received from IGN.

This game combines accessible controls, engaging platforming, and an appealing visual style to make for one more solid title on the DS.

The level design is also one of the games strong points. The side scrolling is done in a “2.5D” style, which is a perfect fit for the DS. The way the levels pan out behind you gives a great sense of perspective and scale.

After I completed the game, I actually went back and collected every single music note, unlocked all the bonus stages, and achieved all the bronze and silver medals for every level. I finished the game with about two and a half hours on the clock – right now the counter stands just shy of seven. If that’s not an endorsement, I don’t know what is.

In the face of looming deadlines and shrinking budgets, it’s easy for companies to phone it in. But that’s not the case here.

Its creative level design, interesting visuals, and simple, yet diverse controls make for a title that’s just right for young gamers. It might even win over a few older ones, too.

The Tale of Despereaux Feature: From Tiny to Human-Sized

Scale differences in games are a really difficult challenge to accommodate. Implementing a camera and art style that felt good and natural for gameplay while making large objects readable was tricky. A large part of The Tale of Despereaux DS takes place in the human world. This is a big deal when a one foot of distance between human shelves becomes a chasm for a tiny mouse.

Our talented tech team implemented a versatile camera system that anticipated where the player wanted to go. Additionally, the art team did a fantastic job in making any part of an object communicate what the object is as a whole. Late in the development we discovered issues with conveying really large enemies. For instance, a particularly large cat put our game to the test. With a few tweaks our camera system was up for the challenge.

There haven’t been a ton of games that properly deal with the differences in scale from the world to character. I feel like we made a good pass at this and got a lot of high flying, breath-taking moments. The unlockable bonus levels exploit our success in this area as those levels were created later in production, when we had a handle on things. They are also outside the scope of the story and Dave Shramek, the Level Designer and Writer on the project, went nuts with launching Despereaux across levels.

In the end, we give an experience fresh to the Nintendo DS. The team and I genuinely hope you have a great time discovering the world on Despereaux’s level. Thanks for reading and hopefully playing when the game is released next week.

The Tale of Despereaux Feature: Stacking the World

When creating The Tale of Despereaux DS, we made it a goal to allow a level of interaction with the world that you don’t typically find in licensed kid games. We wanted to introduce world puzzles and creative problem-solving inspired from games like BioShock, Deus Ex, and Half Life 2. In the end, we created meaningful and fully realized interactions between world objects that you bash, pick up, carry around, stack, throw, attack with, and use to set off traps.

Accommodating the many combinations of things that player does with objects they pick up and carry with them anywhere in the world turned out to be a major undertaking. Our team rose to the task. Lead by our fearless Lead Programmer, they accounted for every strange situation that arose during play testing. What was originally planned simply as stacking puzzle used to reach new areas of the world become a way to attack enemies, set off traps, and block enemy movement. We decided that if the player wants to do something, we should do our best to let them do it. Late in the game we added a weight system that allowed the player to use objects to move platforms on a scale up or down by the added weight of carried objects.

These objects went a long way to adding creative gameplay to the world. The result is highly immersive world interactions unusual for kid titles. I hope that we have raised the bar on the Nintendo DS for licensed games. A great deal of time and polish went into our world interactions among other features. In the end, all our time and effort is a success only if you folks have a great time playing the game. The team and I hope we make you happy with the release of the game in two weeks.