Games Fleadh 2014 video round-up

Games Fleadh 2014 took place at LIT Thurles in County Tipperary on Wednesday. This year's event wasn't without it's problems as it conincided this year with GDC which runs over the weekend.

 Many of the Irish development teams who were expected to speak couldn't make it as they prepared to fly to San Francisco.

 The annual Games Fleadh awards, in conjunction with Engineers Ireland, was posponed as a result but the student competition and industry talks went ahead as planned. And some of what was on offer was impressive.

Last year's Game Studio Ireland Challenge College Cup Champions Joseph Bentley & Ger Stone, or Alt Tab, won this year's Imagine Cup in Dublin last week. They were on site to show off their game CavernNauts. Other established developers like Exgamers Studio, with Source Control, and Atom Split Games with The Power Game were on site.

 Here's what else I saw on my travels.

Games Fleadh 2014

 

2012 Review - The Playlist

What did I play in 2013?

Super Crate Box (iOS)
MGS 3 HD (PS3)
Dear Esther (PC) review
Mass Effect 2 (PS3)
Mass Effect 3 (PS3) comment
Waking Mars (iOS)
Bit Trip Runner (PC)
Braid (PC) comment
Journey (PS3)
Limbo (PC)
Psychonauts (PC)
10000000 (iOS)
Super Hexagon (iOS) article/interview
Bastion (PC) comment
Dyad (PS3)
Minerva's Den (PS3) comment
P3 Biotic(PC)
Bulletstorm (PS3) comment
Batman Arkham City (PS3) comment
To the Moon (PC)
Thirty Flights of Loving (PC)
Cart Life (PC)

"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

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.

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. 

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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.