Will Bungie make Halo 4? I'm certain of it. Why? Because Halo 3 made Microsoft enough money to flat-out buy Beyonce, so another sequel is probably guaranteed. How is this news? It's not. But I thought it was worth addressing. ;)
It finally happened. MGS4 is here now. I know because my co-worker just took his copy home. Righteous bastard. I unfortunately do not have a PS3. I bought a PS1 for MGS1, and a PS2 for MGS2, but I'm at a different point in life now, and I'm not about to purchase a PS3 just to play one game. I therefore won't play the game for some days, possibly weeks.
This marks the first MGS game that I'll not have purchased and started playing on its release date. I'm not really bothered by that -- I've waited this long, I can keep waiting a while. What I am worried about are spoilers. Not just from my co-worker, but potential spoilers on websites and podcasts that I frequent. I hope that now even though the embargos are lifted that the enthusiast press will remain aware that not everyone has the luxury to drop everything and play through the game immediately, and they'll be mindful of spoilers for a few more weeks at least. Is that too much to ask?
Plucky Pixels gets my stamp of approval, and has been sitting in my RSS reader ever since I discovered it. I can only recommend you check it out for yourself.
Forget casual, hardcore, and social networking games. The next big thing? Bathroom games.
It's really a genius idea if you think about it. Everyone has to pee sometime. Why not let them virtually pee on aliens? I mean they were going to pee anyway, so what's the big deal?
My favorite part?
"A specially designed paper cone allows women to play too, the inventors say."
You know, because women have been clamoring for equal rights in the area of biological urine control for decades. Seriously though, as cool as it is for the designers to go out of their way to include women in a male-dominated activity, think of the logistical problems that go along with this. Urinals don't exist in women's bathrooms. Are they going to start installing them just for these silly games? Would women even want to use them? I'm sure the novelty would wear off pretty quickly.
Think about it, guys. If you had to sit on the toilet to piss just so you could drop water balloons on a virtual crowd of passer-bys, how many times would you do it before it becomes too inconvenient to bother?
I must admit though, I can think of some pretty rad game ideas using this controller. Position, angle, velocity, frequency, these are just some of the input variables that could be utilized for the optimal urine-based gaming experience. And then we get into the really creative stuff. Blood-alcohol level. Presence of illicit substances. Color. The possibilities are endless and disgusting.
Viewiful Joe was fantastic. Okami was brilliant. God Hand at least had its own campy charm. Now, with Clover Studios gone forever, all we have left are the remnants at Platinum games. I've been greatly looking forward to seeing their new projects. But now that they've been revealed, all I want to do is puke my guts out.
MadWorld looks stupid. Bayonetta looks stupid. They both look violent, but mostly just really really stupid.
Why are these the games that have been greenlit? These teams created some of the most fun and artistic games I've played in the last few years. Why would they degenerate into producing this useless drivel? It's tragic, and it makes me want to cry oily tears of sadness.
I can fathom these games are moving forward because they are anticipated to be commercial successes. I'm sure the footage of big burly monochrome (but bloodstained) men shoving traffic signs through each other's throats and a skanky gun girl shooting armies of generic-looking creatures in their various organs will adequately stimulate the medula oblongatas of the gamer crowd. Lord knows the 14 year-old medula oblongata really gets the dollars flowing in. At least in this industry, it does.
Now all I have to do is decide whether I'll simply ignore these games altogether, or actively boycott them. I guess I don't have any problems with Infinite Line, but I'm just soured at this point to be honest.
A Take-Two bigwig who will be referred to only as "Zelnick" has made a claim to a major news outlet that the number of "glitches" in GTA IV is "none whatsoever". I call bullshit.
For a second let's put aside the fact that Rockstar customer support has already acknowledged severity 1 crash bugs included in both shipping versions of the game. Every game has bugs. Bugs are the result of user experience combined with user expectations. A bug to me might not be a bug to Zelnick. Doesn't mean it's not a bug. It means the game will ship with the behavior anyway.
Logically, it wouldn't make sense for a media owning super mongul like Zelnick to come onto a nationally broadcasted interview about his new game -- the biggest sales week of any media launch ever -- and reveal that the game is crashing all over the place. If I were in his position, any bugs that I did actually know about, I wouldn't talk with pride about the problems. I probably wouldn't outright lie like he did. Maybe he can claim plausible deniability, and that's fine. But in that case, these words coming from his mouth probably aren't the most reliable indicators of game quality from a QA perspective. So you know, don't believe everything you hear or read, even if it is plastered on the front page of Next-Generation's website.
Critical thinking. It makes the world go 'round.
It's 8:54pm in Copenhagen, Denmark. I've got 8 minutes remaining while I wait for the latest Unity beta to finish compiling. When it's done, Joachim will nod at me and I'll begin my regression pass. Tonight, the regression pass consists of verifying fixes for 3 bugs in Unity's terrain engine. If these bugs are fixed, I will send an email notification to the Unity beta testing program members. They'll be thrilled, not only to see the new features in Unity 2.1, but because the beta group has been dormant for a slightly longer time than usual this cycle. People always get ancy if they think nothing is going on with their favorite 3d game tool developer. Nothing could be further from the truth. We're busier than ever these days. We're getting the beta out now as opposed to last month because I've spent the last month doing more internal testing of Unity than has ever been done before.
How did it come to this?
Last November I began to feel like it was time for me to move away from Seattle. I had a few ideas of where I wanted to go, but ultimately I felt Copenhagen was calling to me. For six months, I had been working full time for Unity from my home in Seattle. Telecommuting. It's hard as hell to do every day and still feel connected to your team. It made perfect sense for my spirits and my career to come to work in the UT HQ. Get dev and test in the same room. It's just logical.
On Friday March 28th I arrived at Copenhagen International airport. In tow were two cats (one of them scared shitless), four 50lb boxes, and a backpack. On Monday March 31st I stepped into the new UT office for the first time. The last time I was here, we were still working out of rented space at the IT University of Copenhagen. In short, it is fantastic. The people, the space, the process, the community, the challenge, the variety, the upkeep, the flexibility, the communication, and the satisfaction... all 100x better than they were. Simply because I am now working in the same room as the people who write Unity code. It's amazing how much of a difference a small change like this can make.
Although I suppose moving halfway across the world isn't exactly a small change. At least in this case it's been clear from the beginning that it was the right change to make.
Next-Generation has posted an excellent feature article about how game testers are sucked in and spit out of jobs. The author James Portnow talks about perceived job requirements, retention rates, internal/external opinions of the QA team, and the reasons for everything. Being the rebel that he is, he even goes as far as suggesting some good reasons to keep testing staff employed year 'round. Blasphemy.
By far, my favorite piece from the article is this one:
How many times would it have been useful to have a really qualified tester testing new tools? Many of you may respond, “A tester testing tools!? Preposterous!” But this idea only seems preposterous because of what we think of as “a tester” i.e. unskilled labor with no interest in their craft.
It's sad but true. A skilled tester will be able to test anything. I'm not just talking asset pipelines, scripting engines, and renderers. Did you ever see that old Ikea commercial where two guys in lab coats are jumping on a bed in a very systematic way? It's funny but true. A good tester should be able to test anything from furniture to chemistry sets. Every thing has some kind of requirements, and the final produced thing will be an attempt to satisfy those requirements in the best possible way. From this perspective, testing a game isn't that different from testing a bicycle.
On January 7th, 2002, Rez was released on the Playstation2 in the US retail market. I consider Rez to be one of the most important games ever made, so I'll take this moment to remember its release, and the first time I played it.
It's kind of funny, one might consider the statement "I remember where I was when I heard Pearl Harbor had been attacked.", but it's maybe a bit less impressive to say "I remember the first time I played X game". Perhaps I'm yearning for games to have a more significant impact on our world sometimes.
As part of a bad case of "late to the partyism", I've just recently begun playing the excellent Phoenix Wright games. I started with the first one, unable to resist the mountains of praise the game has been receiving from both my friends and the darkest corners of the internet. When those two demographics collide, I need to either investigate the phenomenon or seriously re-evaulate my life.
This time I chose the former.
I thought the first Phoenix Wright was going to be very short. I blazed through the first two cases in almost one evening. Then the third case took a couple days, the fourth case took a week, and the final case took a couple weeks of my evening game time before I could turn off the DS, satisfied with its completion. The fifth case by itself could have been a complete game, to be honest. That might not work well, because it really does build upon everything you learn how to do in the first four levels. A new player trying to orient themselves in the fifth and hardest case in the game would be easily overwhelming.
I'm just now beginning the second game, and I'm playing the JP version in English mode. The roughness of the translation is not very evident, but it does pop in from time to time. The opening sequence of the second game immediately addressed one of the problems I had with the first one: dissonance of Phoenix himself. In the first game, the only time you ever see Phoenix is when he is talking during the courtroom scenes. That's really only half the game. Most of his characterization happens during the interview/investigation portions of the game. Except you never see him! Thankfully the second game opens with a little graphic of Phoenix in his office. Immediately getting back in tune with his work and the surrounding characters was a great tunnel back into the game world. I honestly hope more characterization of him is presented as the game goes on.
If you haven't played any Phoenix Wright, I would immediately recommend you do so. I started with the first game, and I intend to continue with the rest, all the way up to the new Apollo Justice sequel series. So far I have no reason not to encourage anyone to do the same!
