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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 cactaursitting 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 thosegames. 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!
