State of Play 2012 Round-Up

Growth in the Irish games industry is creating opportunities for artist, designers and programmers. Last night’s State of Play conference heard that the Irish industry has almost quadrupled in size in the last three years.

• The 'Hackett Out' live blog captured the evening: Read along with State of Play here. 
• Get the data: Jamie McCormick’s report on the state of the industry can be found here. 
• Who’s funding indie development in Ireland? See Wayra Ireland and NDRC
• Got some free time? @seriousgamesIRL live-streamed the whole event. Find it here.

Ku from Bit Smith Games
Source: Bit Smith Games

The call for new talent came again and again from speakers at the 2012 State of Play indie-game showcase in Dublin last night.

From artists to coders, new blood is in short supply in this growing industry. The number of companies working in video-games here has jumped from 21 in 2009 to over 83 this year.

Jamie McCormick, Marketing Systems Manager at Gala Networks Europe, published his report on the state of the industry in Ireland last week. He said video-games are now worth €210m to the Irish economy every year.

His study, “Games Industry Ireland 2012”, is available online on gamedevelopers.ie. McCormick said that the study highlighted skills shortages in in Ireland, especially in the area of animation.

And he proposed solutions. He’s trying to bring together the Irish Film Board and the game’s industry to pool their talents.

State of Play 2012 Live Blog

Live blogging from tonight's DIT indiegame event in Dublin.

Minerva's Den

The team behind Minerva’s Den have done the impossible – building on a masterpiece and managing to improve on it.

Bioshock 2 box-art. Source: Kotaku/
2Kgames

Minerva’s Den was a stand-alone piece of down-loadable content released for the 2010 videogame Bioshock 2. But it wasn’t just more of the same – it had very big shoes to fill. Bioshock 2 scored ok but wasn't generally well regarded. It was itself a sequel to one of the most significant videogames of the generation.

Released in 2007 on Xbox 360 and PC, and a year later on PS3, Bioshock will be remembered for its story and setting as much as its gameplay. It wasn’t your typical first-person shooter.

If the combat was fun, it was in spite of sluggish controls and overly twitchy artificial intelligence of its enemies. A great shooter this was not, at least on console. Bioshock combined traditional gun-play with a series of powers that could be elegantly combined with environmental tools to great effect.

Bioshock’s real success came from the atmosphere of its setting – the underwater city of Rapture. This city was a dystopian art-deco ruin inspired by the writings of Ayn Rand – a place where the world’s greatest had gone to escape the tyranny of the masses.

Supergiant Disappointment

Bastion’s most distinguishing feature is also its weak point. The game’s narrative style conspires with bite-sized level design to undermine an otherwise excellent experience.

Image: supergiantgames.com

Bastion was the debut release from Supergiant Games. But it was also their second, third and fourth title. Since its launch on XBox Live Arcade in July 2011 the game has surfaced multiple times, first on Chrome, then through Steam and most recently on iPad. 

Becasue of this protracted release schedule, the game has generated quite a bit of buzz.

And not without good reason. Bastion may seem like a straight-forward brawler, but it hides a few surprises.

Image: supergiantgames.com

It’s stunningly beautiful for a start, with strong vibrant colours and detailed (if slightly sluggish) animations. The game’s art-style is impeccable, at times reminiscent of 16-bit Japanese work at its best. Think Chrono Trigger but with a distinctly modern style.

The game-world responds dynamically to player action, emerging out of the void and building up brick by brick as you progress. It's visually striking and masks the linear nature of the levels.

And it's all in service of the game's story. Bastion is set in a world destroyed. It's up to the protagonist to make that world whole again. He’s literally pulling the environment back together again around him. And piecing together the history of the land and the calamity that destroyed it.

Image: supergiantgames.com

So far so archetypal-hero-on-a-quest-to-save-the-world. What sets Bastion apart is its storytelling. This isn't gameplay book-ended with a few lines of dialogue. An unreliable narrator in a one-sided conversation with an unknown individual describes your every action as you progress.

And occasionally it works. One scene revels the hero’s background; a series of combat scenarios crafted to represent the nightmares he has about his past. The short section is compelling, both in gameplay terms and in the ideas it communicates. It’s a rare moment of concentrated storytelling from the developer.

When extended across the seven or so hours you’ll spend with Bastion the conceit breaks down. Games are most often played in fits and starts; in the stolen hours a person finds where they can. Bastion's short levels lend themselves to that style of play but the complexities of the story are at odds with the design.

Image: supergiantgames.com

It isn't always possible to make time for a game. Bastion’s form of storytelling places too much responsibility on the player to engage with it.

Important plot points are buried in frantic combat scenarios, or in moments while the player is otherwise distracted by the environment or the art.

This form of embedded story isn't always suited to the medium of videogames. It works best where the player is actively engaged with it; exploring abandoned homes on Halflife 2’s Highway 17 for example. Rather than communicating with you, Bastion is talking at you. The narrator speaks whether you care to listen to him or not.

Image: supergiantgames.com

Worse yet Supergiant Games change Bastion’s rules on occasion to cater to the story. In a scene towards the end of the game, the protagonist effectively becomes invincible in service of an idea intended to be impactful, but which comes across as annoying drudgery.

It would be unfair to knock Bastion for trying something new in a medium dominated by mindless shooters but Supergiant may have bitten off more than they could chew with this novel approach to story-telling. The quality achieved in every other aspect of this debut title only makes the failure of the story to hit home that bit more unfortunate.

New Laptop - New Gaming

Laptop review - HT Spectre XT
September 2012 

That first experience with a new piece of hardware is a rare pleasure. But it's all too easily ruined by unintuitive or unnecessary software. Booting up a new Windows 7 PC can be harrowing. 

First Impressions

The XT's chamfered rear gives it a distinctive appearance
Photograph: Peadar Grogan

The design of HP's sleek new Ultrabook is something of a revelation for Windows hardware. Lest you confuse it with one of the company's range of new ultra-thin 'Sleekbook' laptops, here’s a brief introduction: 

The Spectre XT is 18mm thick at its deepest point. The brushed aluminium lid and palm-rest are cool to the touch. The notebook’s underside is coated with a pleasing rubberized finish. At just under 1.5kg, it’s a notebook light enough to carry and reassuringly easy to hold. 

The laptop has a subtle wedge shape, tapering from its distinctive chamfered rear to its chrome-finished front. Unfortunately weight distribution is off. The laptop can’t be opened one-handed, but the neatly recessed touchpad provides a natural gripping point for your fingers on the front of the device.

Super Hexagon article on ThePlayer.ie

Niamh Houston wasn't even born when the Game Boy launched in 1989. But that hasn't stopped her creating music with the aging hardware. Using the stage-name Chipzel her work recently featured in the iOS hit, Super Hexagon. The game sold over 10,000 copies in its first three days.

Read more over on theplayer.ie or listen to her awesome music below:
Super Boy of Little Powers by chipzel

Singapore - Now we are cosmic friends forever.

Sometimes things don't go according to plan. This blog was supposed to catalogue a year of intense retro gaming. This was meant to be my opportunity to catch up on all those classics I've missed. Instead I'm living out of a hotel in Singapore. A plesent experience no doubt, but not conducive to gaming. Now on my third weekend here I find myself slightly under the weather. I'm cooped up inside rather than out seeing the sites. So I've dipped into my Steam account and tested the waters with a couple of gems. One old, one new, both thoroughly enchanting.

Pretty Sweet, no?

Singapore is a city of contrasts. It's population is diverse. Its streets hide hindu temples, British colonial facades and modern towers of glass and steel. The rich are rich and the poor are poor, but the same could be said of anywhere. The people are obsessed with technology - Samsung and Apple branded tablets and phones are everywhere, but oddly gaming has almost no visible presence. Except, of course, for that guy in my office with the plushy cactaur sitting on his desk.

None of this bothers me of course.  I'm not in the market for new releases. The lack of Gamestops littering shopping centres is no concern of mine. I've got Steam loaded up with classics from the Hackett Out pile of shame. But where do I begin? 

Two Player Productions are documenting the making of Double Fine Adventure. It's Tim Shafer's latest (Monkey Island, Grim Fandango) and it's being funded through Kickstarter. The passion of the Double Fine team is something else and while watching it, I've been thinking about their 2006 release, Psychonauts. I bought Sands of Time, Beyond Good and Evil and Shadow of the Colossus all on day one. I take nerd-pride in having sought out these much loved but under-played classics. Psychonauts is another one of those games. Of course, I didn't own an original XBox. That's my excuse, but it's been six years. Never having played Psychnauts is damaging my street cred.

Psychonauts's clunky camera and overwraught opening hour did drive me towards a more carefully designed modern release however and I'm now playing them both. Superbrothers: Swords and Sworcery EP is something of a revelation on PC. I played the original iOS release but it bored me. I lately took to lsitening to Jim Guthrie's simply outstanding soundtrack and it drew me back to the game. The control implimentation for mouse is lacking, most notably in combat where I would have tweaked the configuration somewhat, but seeing the Superbrothers artwork on a 13" rather than a 4.3" screen has made all the difference. The care and love that exudes from every aspect of the game is tangible.

I'll be back to outline my thoughts on Psychonauts. I'm here for another five weeks, rattling around this hotel suite. In between swimming in the roof-top pool, sipping beers in street-side bars and eating delectable €2 meals from the hawker centres, I'm sure I'll fit in the time to complete Double Fine's platformer. And maybe work through Deus Ex too. 

That is, of course, if the outstanding 10000000 on iOS doesn't eat up my every waking second. Get it!

"Juvenile, Silly and Intellectually Lazy" - Jonathan Blow (Designer of Braid)

I don't know much about hip-hop, but I know what I like...and hip-hop isn't it. I've given rap music a fair shot over the years. I've listened to American artists from both coasts, everything from NWA to Kanye and a little of what came in between - Dre and Snoop's solo work, Wu-Tang, Cypress Hill. I've dabbled in punk derivatives The Beastie Boys, the reggae-influenced Fugees and UK trip-hop acts like Tricky. 

Some I've loved, but when it comes to hip-hop - rap's main-stream arm - I just hit a wall. I can't get passed the posturing and misogyny that permeate the culture. So what's this got to do with videogames, right?

Well there are parallels. Hip-hop and gaming are both marketed squarely at a young, adult (often male) demographic. Much like rap, games’ mainstream arm overshadows its more thought provoking offerings. Apart from a few notable indie exceptions, gaming’s best titles struggle to provide context for their violent mechanics. 

I recently read The Atlantic's article 'American Mozart' (David Samuels May 2012). It challenged me to rethink my take on hip-hop. And that's a good thing, right? That’s good writing. Hell, I was tempted to pick up tickets for last week's 'Watch the Throne' gig at The O2 right there on the spot. The article profiled Kanye West - his past, his successes and failures, his strengths and weaknesses. Samuels understands his subject. He wrote convincingly, spinning a narrative interwoven with impressions of West's ongoing tour with Jay-Z. It's worth reading for the sense of perspective alone - it's a window into another world.

Watch Taylor Clark's thoughts on modern gaming, and Jonathan Blow's work, here.

Something else popped up in The Atlantic last month – a piece on another self-made, independently wealthy, social pariah. 'The Most Dangerous Gamer' (Taylor Clark May 2012) is a scathing attack on mainstream gaming from the perspective of indie-game developer Jonathan Blow. Clarke's take is overly simplistic perhaps. To paraphrase - modern mainstream games are 'dumb', no one is doing anything about it and Jonathan Blow will single-handedly change the world's opinion of the medium. But at its core, there's more than a grain of truth to the article. 

If good writing challenges perceptions and provokes responses then Clarke’s article is just as successful as the Kanye West piece. He received an icy reception from many gamers. It’s the same reaction we saw from the fighting game community when the misogyny rife in that scene came to light earlier this year. For me, Clarke's writing was a shot in the arm. It’s OK to call bullshit if that’s what you see – to point out puerile art direction or a lowest-common-denominator marketing approach. But it’s just as important to highlight gaming’s strengths. Clarke may have failed in that regard but he is a gamer and it’s encouraging to see his writing in the mainstream media. I'd recommend reading his response to his detractors on Kotaku.

Why is that I'm willing to give gaming a pass, one that I won’t extend to hip-hop? Games are greater than the sum of their parts, but in a way I can't yet quantify. Ultimately it has something to do with the design process - a good designer’s intent is expressed in the mechanics and will shine through an uninspired art style or weak story. 


While it can be difficult to focus on gaming’s strengths, it’s even more difficult to explain those strengths to others. There's something to games that even the most ill-conceived marketing message can’t touch. It's up to writers in the field to find that 'something' and to focus on it while not being afraid to call out the "juvenile, sill and intellectually lazy" aspects that so often dominate. And then maybe someday we wont have people cheering every violent death during stage presentations at E3.


Sources:
theatlantic.com
giantbomb.com
image via Steam

Don't Cheer for Murder

For a long time I've wanted developers to contextualise videogame violence. Now along comes Naughty Dog (one of the worst offenders when it comes to casual in-game murder) with a title heavily influenced by Cormac McCarthy's The Road. It's kill or be killed in the post-apocalyptic world of 'The Last of Us'. The game's scenario demands violence and the developers don't hold back from representing it graphically.

Now that I'm finally getting what I wanted, I'm not sure how I feel about it. And I definitely don't know how to feel about the cheers and hoots of joy that accompanied every violent act on E3 stages this year. Am I the only one who found this gameplay walk-through a little disturbing?

Feeling disturbed is better than feeling nothing though right? If that's the case the above demo has already achieved more than most games. If Naughty Dog can sustain that discomfort throughout the game - can string together hours of consistently tense encounters that I'd rather avoid than get drawn into - then they may just be on to something with The Last of Us.

I Love it When a Plan Comes Together

With Mass Effect 3 behind me, it's time to get down to business here at Hackett Out - I've started to chart a route through that backlog. A post every couple of weeks should do it. I won't have much time in front of the TV but 14 days should be long enough to get stuck into any game. And, hopefully, there'll be something interesting to say at the end of it.

I'm beset by reminders of the triple-A releases I'm missing out on - Max Payne 3 is calling to me. There's nothing for it but to launch into some old-school action to cleanse my pallet. 


I grew up without videogames. The PlayStation had launched by the time I convinced my parents to invest. I got my hands on a heavily discounted Sega Mega Drive when I was 11 or 12. I moved on to Sony's console a couple of years later. As a result, Nintendo's golden era passed me by. My first Mario game was Mario 64 and my first Zelda - Ocarina of Time. I've never played Super Metroid, A Link to the Past or Yoshi's Island. I have lots of homework to do on the Nintendo front - if only to figure out why the American press seems so obsessed with those games.

It's all rainbows and chip-tunes in Bit.Trip: Runner

The past few weeks, I've been playing a little Bit Trip: Runner on Steam. A subtle blend of euphoric platforming perfection and teeth-grinding, rage-inducing horror. It's got me pumped for yet more 2D challenge. So I'm going right back to the source. My first task here on Hackett Out will be to complete Super Mario Brothers. 

Only 27 years late!

The Mass Effect Effect

How can the loss of a Mass Effect game-save lead to so much strife? Well, there are two reasons. And the first is simple, I love my Shepard. I didn't want to lose him. The second has to do with the appallingly small world of videogame journalism. And it's highlighted one unsettling problem that a 'year off gaming' might present.


Now that the old PS3 has received a new lease of life (thanks to my trusty hair dryer), I’m back in business with Mass Effect 3. Catastrophe averted. 

Losing a game save shouldn't be such a problem, right? The gameplay in ME3 is unrelentingly satisfying. I’d have been only too happy to play through those opening 12 hours again. Combat has real heft - although things can still get hairy, it's only too easy to dominate each encounter. It's crowd-control and it's fun.

Controlled chaos in Mass Effect 3

The game also benefits from a serious presentational facelift. Looking just as good as ever, it seems that developers Bioware finally hired a foley artist and/or sound engineer to bring the quality of their audio up to match their visuals. Weapons pop and the iconic sounds of the mass relays and reapers are pitch perfect. And those bizarre moments of silence that peppered previous games? Few and far between.

Most importantly, the game feels like a sequel to the original, rather than to its 2010 follow-up. I've been known to ramble on about how much I love (and hate) the first game so I won't labor the point here. With this third release in the series, Bioware have struck a careful balance between the original’s storytelling and its sequel's focus on combat. Shepard’s back in the thick of the action in this one. 

So if the experience of Mass Effect is all good, what exactly is my problem? And no, it's not the obvious one.

Hair Dryer FTW

If blowing a hot hair dryer into the back of an expensive piece of broken consumer electronics sounds like a bad idea, that’s because it is. But hey, it works. 

I followed the instructions of this well spoken gentleman - an unlikely find on the internet. He set out to test the validity of the hair dryer repair method. Still, I couldn't believe that it would work for me. I had other plans waiting in the wings.

I made sure to remove the hard drive before I started. I went for 20 minutes of hot air, followed by 20 minutes of cold. Then I let it stand for an hour before turning it on. And... success.

The whole thing cost €15. Three months PlayStation Plus let me back-up my saves to the cloud. It also netted me a free copy of Shank 2 to add to the ever expanding list. The Mass Effect 3 disc survived the process unscathed so I'm back in business this weekend.

Wohoo!

Options

There are a couple of possibilities for rescuing my data. All but one require that I spend yet more money. The internet tells me that the most likely reason for the failure of a system as old as mine is due to over-heating - the solder points on the CPU are no longer connecting to the motherboard. Another reason for the Yellow Light of Death, as it’s known, is a faulty power supply. So here are my options:


1. The hair dryer home repair method - Blow into the rear vent on the PS3 with a hot hair dryer for 15 minutes in the hopes that the solder will re-flow, connection will be reestablished and the unit will operate long enough to back up one’s saves.

        Pros:  Cheap.

        Cons:  It’s ridiculous!

                  I’ll have to pay for PS+ to do a quick backup.

2. The tear-down/heat gun home repair method - Void the warranty, open the sucker up and go at the motherboard with a heat gun available from hardware stores. This repair is said to last for weeks, it should easily allow me time to do a full hard drive content transfer via ethernet cable.
        Pros:  I get to buy a heat gun.
        Cons:  Costs a lot: heat gun, screw drivers, thermal paste, etc.

                  Not guaranteed to work.

3. If both of the above fail, it’s still possible that I have a faulty power supply. I could buy a used, broken PS3 on adverts.ie and switch one power supply unit out for the other.            
        Pros:   I get to dig around inside.
        Cons:  No guarantee new power supply works
                  Sony could have repaired the power supply for €160

I’ll report on each of these in turn over the coming weeks. The hair dryer test is happening today. In reality I’m unlikely to get past stage 2. How much does thermal gel cost?

An Embarrassment of Riches

Progress. I’ve gotten my hands on a new console, and this weekend I’ll try rescuing the old one. I’ve also had a look at my shelves to see where I should begin working through the backlog.

Here’s a list of the titles I’ll be digging into over the next few months. I've at least started the vast majority but a few have never been touched. Some, I invested quite some time into before getting bored or distracted. I abandoned others because they were too difficult. It’s been 17 years and I still haven’t finished The Revenge of Shinobi. A few simply outstayed their welcome - good ideas strained through repetition.

Some of the games on this list are a source of embarrassment. I haven’t finished Super Mario Brothers, for example. I’ve never played Super Metriod or Deus Ex or Psychonauts. I consider myself a well rounded gamer and these are blatant gaps in my knowledge that I look forward to filling.

But they’re not all gems. There are games on this list that I don’t want to go back to. Final Fantasy XII and Prince of Persia (2008) were both unique takes on their respective series’ but were largely largely uninspired. I sunk hours into both in good faith but they just never clicked.

Any suggestions? There are over 40 games listed below. Even if they aren’t all classics, I certainly won’t run out of things to do:

Super Mario Brothers (1985) NES

Legend of Zelda (1986) NES

Decision Time

I’ve reached a crossroads. My PlayStation 3 died unceremoniously over the weekend. I can afford to replace it (just about) but at the cost of giving up new games for the rest of the year. This presents an opportunity – to play through the ridiculous volume of unfinished and even untouched games in my collection. I intend for this blog to chart my progress through over 20 years of videogame design. 

-------------------

Gaming is an expensive pursuit. It costs both time and money. I have little of either to spend, but I do have a passion for videogames - for their mechanics and for the brief and beautiful glimpses of interactive storytelling that they provide. I love the art, the design and the music of games past and present. I read a lot, and listen to hours of coverage each week, on the wider industry as well as the creative individuals that make it up.

Now my PS3 has died. The soulless blinking of a single red light tells me I can no longer access the five years of data saved on the hard drive, or eject the disc inside. My last back-up is two years old – that's my own fault. I can always buy a new system, but a new system costs money and I don’t have money to spare. Something has to give.

The console will cost me at least €250. That equates to about five new games – the bulk of my budget for the rest of the year. So to keep myself entertained I'm turning to my embarrassing collection of unfinished games. Everything from NES platformers, to late nineties PC classics, to sprawling 2011 RPGs litter my home and my hard drives. And this is the perfect opportunity to clear the decks.

So why replace the PS3? I have to play Bioshock Infinite later this year and I won't be doing that on this six year old laptop. I also have unfinished business with my dead console. Mass Effect 3 and Dark Souls - games into which I've sunk unacceptable amounts of time and personal strife - are my main reasons for wanting to rescue my lost saves. In fact, Mass Effect is a problem for a whole other reason too but I'll come back to that.

There is hope. I can get creative with hair dryers and credit cards covered in reversible packing tape. I can try to save the old PlayStation, at least for long enough to back up my data to the cloud. I'll chart my progress with the hardware, as well as with games of yore here at Hackett Out over the coming months. 

Now I just need to decide where to start. And to think about some sort of design for this crisp white page.