Vulkan API promises significant graphical improvements for Android gaming and 3D graphics
3D graphics have been moving very quickly in the mobile space, getting increasingly competitive with traditional home video game consoles and the like. That trend will continue now that Vulkan, a 3D rendering API, is coming to Android to improve the graphics experience on mobile devices.
Vulkan is a much more efficient API than Open GL ES that Android currently uses, offering a significantly lower CPU overhead and better tools for developers. A video showcasing a horde of gnomes was created to really show off the difference between the two APIs, and it’s incredibly apparent how much better Vulkan should be for mobile gaming.
The video shows tons and tons of gnomes on screen, and while both video stay pretty close in FPS at first, once the camera starts panning around and scrolling, Open GL fails to keep a decent framerate. On top of that, not only does Vulkan offer a drastically smoother experience, but CPU usage is much lower, too. That gives more room for game developers to squeeze some extra processing power out of an app, but it also means that energy consumption should be vastly improved.
The Vulkan API isn’t publicly available just yet, but once it is we should start to see some pretty quick improvements on gaming on Android devices, including things like Android TV consoles. Something like Razer’s Forge TV and NVIDIA’s Shield TV stand to gain the most from a more efficient API, since they’re competing more directly with home consoles like the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
source: Android Developers Blog
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Nick and Aaron on Gamescom: a conversation
Last week, two Engadget editors braved the sweltering Gamescom floor in Cologne, Germany, to bring you all the news. Now that the show is finally over, Aaron Souppouris and Nick Summers look back on a week at the world’s largest public games conference, breaking down their highs and lows from Gamescom 2015.
Microsoft wins on merit, not attendance
Aaron Souppouris
I came to Gamescom expecting to be able to write two things about Microsoft: First, that it won just by turning up, and second, that the dream of Xbox as the entertainment center of your home is over. Turns out, neither one of those things is true. Yes, Sony didn’t hold a press conference this year, but Microsoft did more than just show up. It brought a ton of new game demos, and also announced a DVR feature for recording live TV, which kills the premise that it’s given up on the Xbox as an entertainment hub. It’s just making it an option, rather than a requirement.
Nick Summers
DVR functionality is huge for the Xbox One, even if it’s only compatible with over-the-air channels at launch. Some people will argue that this is proof Microsoft is still supporting its TV vision for the Xbox One, but I’m not sure that’s the case. Many of these features will have been in the pipeline both before and after the console’s launch, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this was the last of those scheduled updates. Under Phil Spencer, the messaging for Xbox has been focused specifically on games. The TV features are a nice bonus, but they’re not the company’s core concern anymore.
Regardless, I was pleasantly surprised by Microsoft’s showing at Gamescom this year. Scalebound is shaping up to be Platinum’s most ambitious game to date, and Quantum Break continues to intrigue with its mixture of traditional gameplay and live-action episodes. I was also pleased by the new Rise of the Tomb Raider footage, which seems to be bringing back the series’ iconic tombs in a big way.
Aaron Souppouris
I did the math and Kudo Tsunoda said “gamers” more than once per minute during our interview, so you’re definitely spot-on about Microsoft’s messaging in recent months.
So we both liked Microsoft’s lineup a lot. I already know the answer to this, but what was your standout game?
Favorite Games
Nick Summers
Scalebound is probably the one that I’m most looking forward to. PlatinumGames is a tremendously talented studio and this Xbox exclusive seems to be pushing the team in new, interesting directions. The protagonist fights in classic Bayonetta style, but this time he’ll be joined by a dragon called Thuban who acts independently. Throughout the game, you’ll be able to give him suggestions and customize his appearance with different skin tones and armor. There’s also an intriguing system whereby you’ll earn more gems for using Thuban with restraint in combat. Did I mention it looks absolutely beautiful?
Aaron Souppouris
I don’t think I can disagree there. Customizable dragon buddies and a PlatinumGames combat system sound like heaven. For me, though, the surprise of the show was a little game called Renowned Explorers: International Society. I hadn’t heard a lot about it before the show, but I’m now super excited for its release next month. It’s similar to XCOM, but adds in the nodal system of FTL: Faster Than Light for navigation and transforms the emotional aspects of The Sims 4 into a combat system. It’s a tough one to explain, but I’m super amped. The fact that I’ve put over 100 hours into both FTL and XCOM should give you an idea as to why.
Nick Summers
One game that surprised me was Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, and for all the wrong reasons. For years, I’ve wanted the franchise to explore either Victorian London or feudal Japan. I should be over the moon now that Ubisoft has chosen the former, but everything about Syndicate feels drab and lifeless. I played a demo this year with protagonist Evie in the Tower of London, but nothing about my assassination felt particularly novel. You can now use a grappling hook to scale buildings and pretend to be arrested with the help of an allied guard. They’re new additions, sure, but they don’t really change the core gameplay loop. I thought the new setting would win me over, but what I played this year left me feeling pretty disappointed. Was there anything that crushed your spirits?
Challenging games
Aaron Souppouris
So… a slightly embarrassing question: Did you struggle with any of the demos? I heard a lot of people talking about how hard Dark Souls III is, but I actually suffered a lot with some rather basic platforming in the Rise of the Tomb Raider demo, falling off a ledge several times. My gaming life began with the NES, SNES and Saturn, so I didn’t really grasp the whole third-person camera thing until it was too late. Gamescom served as a harsh reminder of how bad I am at most video games.
Nick Summers
It’s been a while since I’ve played the original Mirror’s Edge, so jumping into the new Catalyst demo was challenging. Within the first five minutes (of a time-restricted 15-minute demo) I had sent Faith falling to her doom a grand total of seven times. The booth was set up like a football stadium too, so I suspect plenty of fellow attendees were watching my pitiful leaps and silently judging me. Parkour is hard folks, both physically and digitally.
Aaron Souppouris
I really can’t wait for Catalyst. I’m also legitimately looking forward to Star Wars Battlefront after playing through a level with you.
Shooty bang bang games
Nick Summers
Yeah, I had almost forgotten how much I love Star Wars. When I first launched my X-wing fighter, I felt like a little boy again. The sound of the lasers, the various knobs and dials inside your cockpit — everything has been perfectly recreated from the films. Fighting for either the Rebel Alliance or Galactic Empire is a blast too. You’re never too far from the action and it’s easy to lock onto an enemy and trail them through the night sky, waiting for the perfect moment to fire your proton torpedoes. The force is strong with this one.
Aaron Souppouris
Loving Star Wars was never going to be an issue for me, and I think the authenticity is enough to put my Battlefront phobia to one side. Trying to stay with positivity, what was your best moment of the show?
Best moment
Nick Summers
I’m a little obsessed with the band Chvrches at the moment, so I flipped out when I heard they had been playing Rock Band 4 on the show floor. As you might expect, their performance of Paramore’s “Ignorance” was pretty solid, especially with Lauren Mayberry’s gorgeous vocals. I was on the fence about whether to buy Rock Band 4 or Guitar Hero Live this year, but this might have just made up my mind. After all, I want to play the game with a few beers and my friends — Rock Band still looks like the superior social experience.
Aaron Souppouris
So it wasn’t when you rode that Metal Gear Solid hog? I still can’t decide which photo I like best.
Nick Summers
I was going for the “blue steel” look here. Ben Stiller, if you need any extras for Zoolander 2, just give me a call.
Aaron Souppouris
You’ve got a big Ben Stiller cosplay career ahead of you. Talking of, I saw a couple cosplaying as Ashitaka and San from Princess Mononoke. They looked so adorable, so authentic… I was legitimately upset when I realized my camera was back in the press room.
One of the great things about conferences is, after the dust settles, you don’t remember fighting your way through the ridiculously busy show floor; you just remember the awesome, the quirky and the fun.
Lifehacks and sad food
Nick Summers
Yeah, I love seeing all the ingenuity of the attendees, especially at public shows. Loads of people carried cheap, foldable camping stools this year. You know, the simple kind made from two metal squares and a sheet of thin fabric. They’re light and fold down flat, so many people were tucking them in between their back and rucksack. When you’re queueing for hours on end, a comfortable perch can be an absolute lifesaver. I want one for next year.
Aaron Souppouris
Because you definitely need one more thing to carry all day. I suppose it would make a nice change from sitting on the floor hunched over my laptop and an overpriced bottle of water. One stall was selling 250ml bottles at €0.01 per ml. And that wasn’t even the worst. I had 30 minutes to eat on Thursday and the only food within reach was from a sushi place. Despite my rule against eating seafood at trade shows, I paid the equivalent of $20 for a few pieces of dry salmon and a prawn uramaki. It was dreadful, but I’m still alive, so small mercies.
Slideshow-311401
Nick Summers
Everything I ate at Gamescom was bad. I stomached half-cooked hot dogs, cold chicken pasta and a sandwich that looked like it had been prepared six months ago. I shudder just thinking about them. The larger problem was that the event just didn’t have enough places where you could buy food. Attendees want to be queuing to play games, not for overpriced burgers that taste like cardboard. For shame, Gamescom overlords.
Aaron Souppouris
I still enjoyed this year’s show, though, even if the food literally left a bad taste in my mouth. It’s easy to get caught up in the negativity when you’ve been working 16-hour days all week. I keep on forgetting games that I’ve seen when people ask. Just so many games.
Nick Summers
Yeah, it was a great show. Can I go to bed now? Gamescom is a blast, but it’s also incredibly tiring. I just want to lie down, grab my 3DS and play — wait, no. No more video games. No. More. Video games. At least for the next few days, anyway…
We’ve had a busy week full of stories — far too many to mention in a single article. You can catch up on them all at our Gamescom 2015 page, from now until the end of time.
Filed under:
Gaming, Microsoft
Tags: Gamescom, Gamescom-2015, Gamescom2015, microsoft, mirrors-edge, Scalebound, Star Wars, Tomb Raider, Xbox
Virgin-Tesla takes you to space in Gone Home studio’s ‘Tacoma’
Fullbright struck a nerve with 2013’s Gone Home, its emotionally haunting tale of a 20-something who returns from Europe in 1995 to find her family home deserted. That indie game darling not only became a critical success for the small Portland, Oregon-based studio, but also won a BAFTA in 2014 for best game debut, and two VGX awards — one for best PC game, the other for best independent game.
For Fullbright’s follow-up, the near-future, set-in-space sci-fi tale Tacoma, the studio has some undoubtedly high expectations to meet. It’s a good thing then that Microsoft, which has partnered with Fullbright to make the game an Xbox One exclusive, is there to lend a deep-pocketed helping hand. Tacoma is very much still in development and won’t be out until mid-2016. But that didn’t stop Fullbright co-founder Steve Gaynor and level designer Tynan Wales from trotting out a short 30-minute demo that gives a glimpse of the augmented reality and artificial intelligence that pervades Tacoma‘s world. I recently had a chance to chat with both Gaynor and Wales about avoiding the sophomore slump, their sci-fi inspirations, a possible HoloLens demo, killer AIs and why space could be a very gay place.
What was it like having to follow up Gone Home with all that critical acclaim? Were you afraid of a sophomore slump at all?
Steve Gaynor: For me, the biggest challenge is just making sure we don’t repeat ourselves. Because I think the biggest danger of the disappointing follow-up is when the creators have tried to recapture: “Oh, we need to do that again. We need to make sure that we do this and this and this [thing] that worked last time.” And I think if you feel like, okay, I remember playing this, but it was better the first time, then that’s when you’re in a danger zone… of feeling like, okay, I don’t have anything new to say.
What was so exciting about the first one was that it was new and I didn’t know what to expect. … That’s why we’ve done everything we can to push ourselves to say this doesn’t take place in a real time and place in the past. It has to take place in a fictional universe, a near future that we have to completely imagine instead of trying to authentically recreate. And it can’t be about a family or a love story. It has to be about: Who is this group of people? It’s a very different situation, a very different set of relationships — a different way of understanding the environment.
I’ve played Gone Home and this seems very similar. I hope you would agree with that. It’s sort of that quiet, haunting first-person exploration. So in what ways did you seek to differentiate it from Gone Home?
SG: Well, we wanted to push more outside of what we felt like was familiar. So much of Gone Home was about the familiarity, the recognizability of what you’re finding: the analog, the handwritten notes and tape cassettes. So I think what we wanted to say, for one, is the player’s discovering the bounds of this fictional world kind of at the same time as we are because it takes place outside of our own experience.
“What does it mean when Gone Home is in zero gravity a hundred percent of the time?”
— Steve Gaynor
The thing that you’re pointing to is definitely correct because we’re starting from a similar place. And so our hope is to take one interesting step forward along multiple vectors to say: In Gone Home, you never saw another human figure. In Tacoma, you aren’t coming face-to-face with other living people, but you’re understanding, getting to encounter and kind of relive these moments in these characters’ lives in a way that’s more present in the environment than what we could do in Gone Home. But it still is relying on that isolated, kind of I’m here by myself, but I can kind of involve my experience in these moments that these people lived through. And kind of feel like I’m inside of them in a way that you were always outside of the audio diaries describing events in Gone Home.
And also, we really wanted to say something that is kind of inherent to a game like Gone Home; that’s inherent to gravity. If you’re not giving the player a grappling hook or you can’t glide like Batman or something like that, you’re very much glued to the floor. In a lot of ways, you’re kind of playing a 3D game in 2D. And we wanted to push one step past what players are used to with, “I just navigate a first-person environment like this,” and say, actually, we just want to challenge people to think of this space in a fully three-dimensional way.
Tynan Wales: The game, at one point, was actually a lot more similar to Gone Home — it was in a house.
Having come on from not doing Gone Home, very early in development, not only was the idea of a space station suggested, but also the mechanics Steve just outlined with the AR scenes and using gravity and moving from surface to surface. Now that I’ve been seeing them all up and working, I feel like the tone may be similar, but the experience is pretty different when I play it.
I noticed that instead of retreading the same things — experiencing narrative through audio playback — you use holograms to replace these story cues. And the fact that now you have this space where it can wind up being a little bit too overwhelming, but it gives you more areas to search through. Does that all tie into coming up with the near-future space theme? How did all of that evolve?
SG: The project started in a much more familiar, mundane location and we went down that road for a little while. I’d had this concern in the back of my head that I hadn’t really been paying that much attention to. But I went last summer on an anniversary trip with my wife. And, being on the trip, we were away from stuff long enough to get some perspective. And I’m just telling my wife, “We’re doing another fucking house game. Now that we’ve started developing it further, I can feel how close it is and I don’t want to do that again.” We needed another place that’s like an isolated place where a small group of people could live. It’s not an apartment building or an arctic base or an oil platform. It’s something like that; it could be a space station. And my wife was like, “Yeah, a space station’s cool.”
“When Microsoft started looking at the game and talking to us about it, they were immediately like, ‘You know, we can do this with HoloLens.’”
— Steve Gaynor
And so it started from there, in saying it’s on a space station, so what does that mean? When is the space station? Where is the space station? Why does it exist? And, like you were saying, how do we play that off? Well, you could make a space station that’s ring-shaped and you could use centrifugal force or you could have one that has artificial gravity. But, in a lot of ways, then you’re just making Gone Home, but the house just looks like a space station. So from the beginning, I was like, it should just all be in zero G because then we can’t say, “Oh yeah, you open a drawer and you put a pen on the desk and it rolls off.” What does it mean when Gone Home is in zero gravity a hundred percent of the time? We don’t know.
TW: In the early version, when it was a house, some of the plans were to have an actual AI that moved around with you and responded to your actions or asked you questions, etc. And this was, I think, a really interesting — not exactly solution — but evolution of that idea with multiple characters and these [holographic] recordings instead of a live, active character. And the way you can, hopefully, interact with them by not being a static observer all the time and trying to move between voices and conversations and different locations and follow characters.
SG: In Gone Home, there were no other characters in the game. So, we thought, what if in our next game there was a character in the space with you following you around? Okay, well that’s a super-literal solution to, “We want to have another human presence in the space.” So okay, let’s start working on that.
And then there are all these other problems that come up when the AI has to react to what you’re doing and be interesting when they don’t have anything to do. What it makes you do is start asking yourself, “What are we actually trying to get out of this? Are we trying to get a feeling of an AI companion following you around? Is that what we care about?” No, what we care about is you feeling like you can observe these people in the place where they live, where these moments happen. And so that’s a way the near-future, sci-fi, high-tech setting gave us the ability to say, “Well, I think augmented reality could be a pervasive technology in a facility like this two generations from now.” So what if you were seeing these live, positional, Kinect-like skeleton recordings of what happened to these people and that gives you that ability to share the space with them without us having to say, “Yeah, there’s somebody who has to have a good reaction when you just start throwing stuff at the wall.”
Did you do any actual research on AR technologies and what’s to come? Or was it more: Since this is sci-fi, we’re going to take liberties based on what we know?
TW: So just timeline-wise, as far as I’m concerned, the idea came up before I ever heard anything about HoloLens.
I don’t think it came from understanding modern tech or where modern tech was headed or who was researching that. I mean, it’s kind of interesting to see HoloLens coming online as we’re developing the game because it’s super relevant and super possible.
It seems to me that Fullbright-style games like Gone Home and Tacoma would lend themselves very well to being displayed through HoloLens. Is that something you thought about? Have you talked to Microsoft about that?
SG: Well, it’s funny because we’re putting the game on Xbox One, so we have a relationship with Microsoft. And when they started coming and looking at the game and talking to us about it, they were immediately just like, “You know, we can do this with HoloLens.” They could put an AR scene or they could put the info panels in HoloLens and you could do that.
But the thing that I think is a lot more relevant to that is something that’s more of a focused experience. I think there’s still not a good solution to the idea of freely walking around in three-dimensional space while also being in one of these AR/VR experiences. They are great if the entire experience takes place in the size of the room that you’re in. With Oculus, the experience is more about sitting at a desk or sitting in a cockpit. They have things that they’re more natively geared towards. So on the one hand, we’re not planning to do Oculus support. We didn’t for Gone Home. We’re not planning to do it for Tacoma. I’m not sold on this kind of game just being able to… okay, just put it in a headset.
But I do think there could be a very interesting focused demo. Like you could have a HoloLens recreation of the orbital lounge in the game where there are info panels so you can look out and see the moon and the Earth. And you can see this scene play out and be inside of it. I think that would be fascinating to see a version of. I don’t know if that’s in Microsoft’s promotional budget or whatever. But I think that it would be really cool to basically be able to step into that experience in a controlled way that would be a good fit for what I’m aware [of] the technology to be good at.
“Virgin-Tesla is a fictional extrapolation of our present where these two prominent companies merged and now are providing this [space tourism] service.”
— Steve Gaynor
The thing that definitely cracked me up when I noticed it was when I was examining objects [in Tacoma] and saw the Virgin-Tesla logo. Did you have to get special permission for that?
SG: It’s like mentioning a brand name in a novel. We aren’t using any of their copyrighted logotypes or anything. Something like Virgin-Tesla is clearly a fictional extrapolation of our present to say that the game takes place in a fictional universe where these two prominent companies merged and now are providing this [space tourism] service. And so, it’s a way for us to ground what we’re doing hopefully in the present that we live in and talk about it directly. As opposed to just having to make up Aerospace Tourism Corp. because I feel like when you don’t have any direct connections to where we are now, everything just feels a lot more abstract. That’s what we love about [the film] 2001. Because it’s like oh, there’s Pan Am and Howard Johnson. … If you look at this in 30 years, it’ll be very much a 2016 imagining of 2088, like Blade Runner was a 1982 [imagining of] 2019. Having those hooks into our present is really valuable.
With ODIN [the station’s AI], it seems as though there’s the potential you could be drawing on what’s happening now in technology. That you’re going after some of the fears around the possibility of semiconscious AIs, like how Stephen Hawking or Bill Gates is saying: “Everyone be careful because that day is coming.”
SG: Now, that’s legit! When those guys are writing letters about: Can we stop making killer robots, please?! It’s not just jokes anymore.
So is ODIN a killer AI?
TW: That’s the question…
SG: Is ODIN murdering you?
TW: I don’t want to spoil anything…
SG: That’s something I became conscious of during Gone Home. We can say to you — the download link can say nothing’s going to jump out at you in this game. And it doesn’t matter because we can say seriously there’s no enemies; nobody’s gonna get you; nothing’s gonna jump out at you. It’s just an empty house. There’s literally no way if somebody’s predisposed to thinking, “Yeah, but what if?” I can say right now and I will say the ending of this game is not that the whole crew was killed. ODIN is not going to try to murder you. This is true.
“I’m happy to say [Tacoma’s] not about a murderous, killer AI.”
— Steve Gaynor
TW: Oh, he let it loose.
SG: As a creator, you’re like, if we tell people too much, it’ll ruin the experience. I’m happy to say it’s not about a murderous, killer AI. But it is going to be in a lot of ways about discovering what the capabilities and what the consciousness of this thing actually are. Because you start out and clearly it’s keeping things from you. And so hopefully, some of the questions are like: Why? Who has given it these directives? Or has anyone? Does it have its own reasons for keeping this information from you?
Is that theme of AI and what it could become something you wanted to make a commentary on with this game? Or is it just that you came up with the space setting and decided to include an AI?
SG: I’ve never really started from a point of wanting to state a message with what I’m working on. I’ve never worked on something where I’m like, “I want to say this about what I believe about what AI is or what the dangers of this technology are or anything.” Honestly, it always comes from really practical perspectives.
Maybe I misinterpreted this, but the two holographic messages I first encountered were about two different gay relationships. I think that’s a really interesting choice to start the game. So is it a gay space station?
SG: It’s a bit of a “gaystation” — you could say. We have the two women that are in a relationship on the station; and Andrew, who has a husband that’s off the station. Evie and Clive are straight and then Sarah’s really kind of undefined. Her orientation has not been really … she’s involved with looking into AR dating, but we haven’t really talked about where she lands.
I think what we’re saying about the state of society that the crew of Tacoma’s living in is that it’s continued to some point where if these people are gay, there wouldn’t be any reason that they wouldn’t not just be open about it. People happen to be gay on the station and are not trying to hide it and that’s just how it is. That’s just an implicit statement about where we think this part of the society is headed, I guess. It’s a decision that you make when you’re doing speculative fiction. You can either say, we’re in the present; we’ve got this trajectory and we basically feel like it’s going to continue. Or you can say, society’s here now and we’re going to make our fiction about it taking a hard right turn.
There’ve been tons of very disruptive changes to technology and society and how we live our lives. And as far as that goes, cellphones have totally changed everyday life for people, So hopefully, we get to talk about that kind of stuff with AR and with saying commercial space tourism is a thing, but only for the very high-end of society still. So what does that mean? Hopefully, the identity of the crew and who they are and what kind of relationships they’re in and so forth is just part of that fabric.
Tynan Wales (at left) and Steve Gaynor
How far along in development is the game at this point?
SG: We’re aiming for mid-2016, but I don’t want to say a date because we don’t know what it is.
Why go with Xbox One when PS4 has the largest install base and PlayStation’s been the friendliest to indies, arguably?
SG: I think it is always shifting tides with that part of the industry and with companies that size. I think that Sony did get a head start reaching out to indies and making it part of their identity when PS4 was first getting off the ground. It’s obviously worked out well for them. We’re at a point now where I think Microsoft is working really hard to reach out to people that are doing small projects and get them to align themselves with their platform. So, after we put Tacoma out there, Microsoft reached out to us and started talking to us and got the conversation going. And they’ve been a really great partner so far. Microsoft, at this point, is doing the work, getting out there and trying to get this kind of stuff onto Xbox.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Images: Fullbright (game screens)
Filed under:
Gaming, HD, Microsoft
Tags: AI, AR, ArtificialIntelligence, AugmentedReality, fullbright, GoneHome, hdpostcross, HoloLens, interview, microsoft, SpaceTourism, stevegaynor, tacoma, uk-feature, virgintesla, xboxone
Your Android games are getting a software speed boost
iPhone users have low-level Metal code to speed up games and other visually intensive apps, but what if you’re an Android fan? Don’t worry, you’ll get your boost soon. Google has announced that Android will soon support Vulkan, an open graphics standard that cuts a lot of the computing overhead and gives apps more direct control over video hardware. It’s not as easy to work with as OpenGL, but it should let developers wring more performance out of your phone’s processor. That could prove very important when you’d otherwise struggle to run a game on a lower-end phone, or want to get pretty, high-detail graphics on a shiny new flagship. It’ll be a while before Vulkan for Android is ready — the standard itself isn’t available, let alone Google’s implementation of it — but it should be worth the wait if your Android devices double as game consoles.
Filed under:
Cellphones, Gaming, Tablets, Mobile, Google
Source:
Android Developers Blog, Imagination Technologies
Tags: android, gaming, google, graphics, khronosgroup, mobilepostcross, opengl, smartphone, video, vulkan
‘Mirror’s Edge Catalyst’ is make or break for Faith
Even now, after seven years, Mirror’s Edge is a unique and exhilarating parkour thriller. It’s littered with flaws — a paper-thin story, some frustrating level design and unnecessary gunplay — but the clean, dystopian world and fluid motion still impress. The game didn’t sell particularly well, so it was a surprise when EA first announced that it was giving developer DICE another roll at the franchise. Mirror’s Edge Catalyst is a complete reboot for Faith, but it could also be the team’s last chance to prove the series has a future. If the game can’t find a larger audience this time around, it’s unlikely that EA will green-light another.
“We have big plans on what we want to do after this and moving ahead,” Sara Jansson, senior producer for Mirror’s Edge Catalyst says. “But I really do think that if this doesn’t fly — if people don’t like this game — there’s really no reason to keep building on it.”
All or nothing
Catalyst is a gamble for EA. When the team at DICE started to think about a follow-up, they quickly realised that it couldn’t be half-assed. To make a worthwhile successor, they needed the publisher’s full support, which meant a “AAA” budget and a lot of development time. They didn’t want Catalyst to be a small downloadable title, or even Mirror’s Edge 2. To do Faith justice and broaden the game’s appeal, DICE was committed to a grander vision that retold the character’s origin story. What’s been shown so far feels like a complete do-over — the game that the original Mirror’s Edge aspired to be.
“We wanted to make sure that we had a game that could appeal to our core fans and also appeal to a broader audience of action-adventure fans,” Jansson says. Part of that vision involves a richer narrative and giving Faith some proper character development. She has an iconic look and a pretty badass attitude, but in the original game little was revealed about her past or how she was recruited into the rebellious world of freerunning. In Catalyst, there’s a larger and more meaningful storyline that weaves through the missions, as well as CG cutscenes and expanded dialogue while you’re jumping around as Faith.
“Even if it’s a very personal story, and it’s personal elements that trigger her, we wanted to put her in the middle of a national conflict,” Jansson says. “So what she does has an effect on the people around her, and that’s something that’s very important in Catalyst.”
A new playground
Even the world and overarching structure of Catalyst is more ambitious than its predecessor. Whereas the original Mirror’s Edge took you through linear, tightly choreographed levels, Catalyst offers a seamless open world. DICE says there are no load screens and as you take on more missions, new rooftop districts in the city of Glass will open up. For a game like Mirror’s Edge, which relies so heavily on traversal and the feeling of momentum, this poses a number of challenges. Every object has to link into a possible route for the player and also compliment the sparse, geometric aesthetic the game is known for. To do this, DICE has formed pairs of level designers and artists who work in tandem on every building in the game. Each pair physically sits beside one another, and an area can’t be finalized until both team members have given their blessing.
DICE has formed pairs of level designers and artists who work in tandem on every building in the game
Designing an open world is tricky, but Jansson says it should help players to learn the mechanics and improve their freerunning skills. “Traversing is actually most fun around the fifth time,” she says. “Because you’re starting to know the space and that’s when you can find all of the ultimate paths. When you have this open structure and you’re navigating across the city between different buildings and missions, you’re learning the city — it’s starting to become yours. Then you know it and that’s when it becomes the most fun.”
EA has faith
Catalyst is unashamedly different. Even firearms, which were difficult to control and largely out of place in the original, have been ripped out to focus on Faith’s hand-to-hand takedowns. The extraction will be welcome news to fans, but for DICE it’s another risky move that positions the game further from established first-person shooter franchises.
“To be completely honest, when we pitched this we were not at all sure that EA was going to want to do it and take that risk,” Jansson says. “Because it is a risk. It’s more high risk than doing a Battlefront or a FIFA.” But the team’s pitch paid off. And while the game is a financial risk, it does seem to support EA’s changing public image. Two years ago it was named “the worst company in America,” and since then the publisher has tried to show that it’s putting gamers first. For instance, it’s funding Unravel, a whimsical 2D platformer that won the hearts of gamers at E3 this year. Both Unravel and Catalyst had huge booths at Gamecom too, rivalling EA’s tentpole franchises such as Need for Speed and FIFA 16.
“That’s how you should use the fact that you have some really established franchises,” Jansson argues. “You have Battlefield and that’s great — people love it, they want it and they want it often. But having that strong portfolio — I think you should use that. There’s almost an obligation to use that to create something else that might be more risky.” Ultimately, it’s those creative risks that could give both EA and DICE another Battlefield-level success. The critical acclaim that followed the first Mirror’s Edge suggests that the team has stumbled onto something rather special. The hope now is that a well-funded sequel can unlock the concept’s true potential and produce a game that is both artistically and commercially successful. For Jansson and her team, it’s just another leap of faith.
Image Credits: Xbox Wire
We’re live all week from Cologne, Germany for Gamescom 2015. Click here to catch up on all the news from the show.
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Tags: dice, ea, faith, freerunning, gamescom-2015, gamescom2015, impressions, mirrorsedge, mirrorsedge2, mirrorsedgecatalyst, parkour, preview
Two indie pretenders to the ‘XCOM’ crown
2012’s XCOM: Enemy Unknown was a revelation. I’d never played the ’90s original or its successors, but I was immediately drawn in by the reboot’s story, world and, most of all, combat mechanics. At its heart, XCOM is a turn-based strategy game that pits your team of four soldiers against an alien invasion. As anyone who has played it at all will tell you, though, it’s so much more than that. A sequel is coming this November, but in the meantime, a pair of independent developers are readying their own takes on the genre, and they both have the potential to be truly special games in their own right.
A Fistful of XCOM
Hard West is set in the “Weird West” — an occult version of the Wild West. That means that while you’ll see the typical six-shooters, saloons and heists, there are also demons, witches and all manner of supernatural goings on. Originally funded on Kickstarter, it’s since been picked up by publisher Devolver Digital‘s sister label Gambitious. It’s coming to PC, Mac and Linux this fall.
The game takes the basic combat mechanics of XCOM — strategically planning an assault, using the environment for cover, maintaining line of sight, etc. — and throws some insane things on top. The most interesting addition is a perks system based on poker hands. There’s a whole deck of cards to be unlocked, and each card comes with a unique ability. One allows you to ricochet bullets Wild West-style off any curved surface, letting you shoot around corners or — with careful planing — hit multiple enemies with one shot. The cards are all “overpowered,” and your characters have five slots each for combining perks together. For an example of how effective this can be: there’s a card that reduces everyone’s health to one, meaning you could potentially kill every enemy with a single ricocheted shot. The drawback? It reduces everyone’s health, i.e. yours and your party members’ too.
http://gfycat.com/ifr/MilkyPoshHellbender
Ricocheting bullets using one of the perk cards.
The perks system gets more complex when you start viewing it from a poker player’s perspective. When combining cards, you’re not just looking at what the individual perks are, but also the rest of your hand. You get bonuses for hands with pairs in them, and those bonuses get better as your combinations get better. Three of a kind is stronger than a pair, and a straight is even more desirable. Kacper Szymczak, Lead Designer at developer CreativeForge Games, won’t tell me what a royal flush will yield, but says the bonus will be “awesome.” Of course, giving all the best cards to one character is likely to leave the rest of your team underpowered. Weighing potential bonuses against keeping your team balanced promises to keep players busy for hours.
While — in case you hadn’t noticed — the perks fill me with glee, the game would be nothing without the combat. Although I was only able to watch a developer play through some missions, it seems solid. It’s very XCOM-y, of course, but there are some interesting touches. You can manipulate your environment by, say, flipping open a cellar door or a table to create cover. If an opponent’s shadow is visible, then you will be able to keep tabs on where they are, even if line-of-sight isn’t there (this is especially useful when you have the ricochet ability). There are also a wide range of abilities for individual weapons, such as cone shots for shotguns, which are handy against congested groups of enemies. You can also neuter opponents, and control crowds “stick ’em up” style. Using this tactic, some missions (such as the one in the video below can be completed “without a single bullet being fired,” Szymczak explains.
The other thing that sets Hard West apart from XCOM is its narrative. Although XCOM‘s world is engaging and interesting, the personal narratives are really left for you to fill in. It’s one of the things I love about the game: creating a vivid backstory for a character, only to see them die and never return. Hard West “is heavily story-driven, and character-driven,” says Szymczak. Events are wonderfully narrated by a grizzly voice, à la Bastion, and in-between combat you’ll be traversing a map, learning about the characters, meeting new faces, making decisions that will impact the story, and trading resources.
To be fair, CreativeForge had me at “weird west XCOM,” but I came away from the demo way more enthused than I’d thought I would. For fans of the genre, Hard West looks set to provide a healthy dose of the familiar, but with more than enough innovation to keep things fresh.
XCOM and the Temple of Doom
Renowned Explorers: International Society is a very different beast. Abbey Games — known for the 2D god game Reus — has injected a lot of personality into the genre. “Our initial pitch for the game was ‘XCOM meets Indiana Jones,” says studio co-founder Manuel Kerssemakers. “We’re approaching the same topics as Tomb Raider and Uncharted, but from a management perspective. It’s a really cool theme, but if you like games that make you think, you can’t really access the fantasy of being an explorer.”
You play as a 19th century explorer trying to make a name for yourself. You do this by increasing your “Renown” score through uncovering treasures, charting new lands, and outwitting your foes. There are many explorers to choose from, each with their own strengths that come into play both during exploration and combat. I went with Yvonne Lefevre, a brilliant public speaker that’s able to talk her way out of difficulties in a pinch. Before launching an expedition, you’re able to equip yourself appropriately, and complete tasks that will increase your gold, level, or Renown. You can then pick other classes to join you on your travels. There are three main types — speaker, scientist and fighter — and then many sub-classes within each.
Expeditions themselves borrow a little from perhaps my most-played game in recent years: FTL: Faster Than Light. Kerssemakers explains that “to facilitate the exploration … we knew that we had to look at FTL, because it’s a favorite game for many of us.” The way this works is by adding the space sim’s “node-based” navigation, which sees you taking whichever route you please between various points in order reach a goal, all while managing fuel (or in Renowned‘s case, supplies). Like FTL, most of the nodes feature events of some description, which can either be combat instances, opportunities to acquire supplies, increase your Renown or gather gold.
Once you get into a combat situation, you’ll find that it’s far simpler — map-wise , at least — than XCOM, as there are no elevation or cover mechanics to speak of. You can, of course, use the environment to physically put space between you and an opponent, and carefully planning your assaults is still vital, but the complexity of Renowned’s combat system lies in its attack types. For this, Abbey Games takes inspiration from an unlikely source: The Sims 4. “We wanted to make a tactical game, but also offer the option of non-violence, so you can approach the natives and wildlife in whichever way you want, and we added the option to act friendly in a combat encounter.”
Friendly in combat? Yup. Everyone (your characters included) essentially have two “health” stats that are affected by different types of attacks. One is more of a traditional vitality gauge, while the other looks like a Sims-style happiness meter. A native may be extremely capable of defending against physical attacks, but have the emotional resilience of a teenager going through a break-up. In one encounter, I essentially hid behind a rock and used an area-of-effect attack to call the enemy names. He ran away crying.
The system is extremely complex, as your actions in both individual encounters and expeditions as a whole will affect the way enemies see you further down the line. If you stab someone and then attempt to charm their friend, it’s not going to be effective, and if you get a reputation as a conquerer of foreign lands, you’ll have trouble ingratiating yourself to the natives in your next expedition.
I only played through a couple of expeditions, but that was enough to get me hooked. Each campaign lasts around ten hours, but, with procedurally generated maps, and an enormous roster of characters and items, that doesn’t have to be a big deal. I get the feeling that there’s so much depth waiting to be discovered, so many different ways to approach the game, that I could end up replaying it hundreds of times, just as I have FTL and XCOM. The game releases September 2nd on PC, Mac and Linux, and I can’t wait.
[Image credits: Abbey Games / CreativeForge Games / Firaxis Games]
We’re live all week from Cologne, Germany for Gamescom 2015. Click here to catch up on all the news from the show.
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Tags: AbbeyGames, CreativeForgeGames, FiraxisGames, gamescom, gamescom-2015, gamescom2015
JXE Streams: #TeamEngadget’s own Splatfest
Later tonight, Nintendo will celebrate Splatoon’s latest update with an official Splatfest event, but forget that noise. Here at Engadget, we’re having our own. Welcome to the Engadget Splatfest, a two hour squidtastic stream celebrating everything that makes the game’s new update great. You’ll see tweaked maps, new outfits, updated weapons and the feature that makes today’s game possible — enhanced matchmaking. It’s everything the game needed in one fantastic package. Join us at 5PM ET (2PM PT) on Twitch.tv/Joystiq, right in this post or on the Engadget Gaming homepage, or right here in this post to watch a gaggle of Engadget editors tear each other apart as adorable squid-people.
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Tags: gaming, multiplayer, nintendo, splatfest, splatoon, streaming, twitch
‘Star Wars Battlefront’: a fine line between authenticity and fun
The Star Wars Battlefront franchise has a simple goal: to put players in the middle of huge, sprawling battles ripped straight from the films and wider fiction. Whether that’s battling the AT-AT walkers on Hoth or an X-Wing squadron above Sullust, you’re made to feel small — just one of many soldiers fighting for the Rebel Alliance or Galactic Empire.
The latest installment, which arrives just before The Force Awakens, has to walk a difficult tightrope. Fans want an accurate portrayal of their favorite scenes, but developer Dice also needs to make changes to ensure it’s fun to play. Often, that means twisting and manipulating the original source material. “Yes, I want to pilot that walker, or I want to fly that vehicle, or I want to be in that trench and stop that onslaught of Stormtroopers,” Niklas Fegraeus, design director for Star Wars Battlefront says. “It’s about identifying key fantasies and bringing them together in a sandbox. And then trying to figure out — okay, how do we make these things work in a fair way, so that people don’t have a bad experience?”
Directing the action
The new Star Wars Battlefront game is multiplayer-focused. Although there are missions that you can play offline, there’s no traditional campaign mode. Up to 40 players can be fighting simultaneously, so it’s imperative that Dice is able to shepherd them into filling certain roles and completing specific objectives. Otherwise, the authenticity of the experience begins to break down — living out your ultimate battle fantasy on Endor is pretty difficult if everyone else is messing around on speeder bikes.
“It’s really tricky,” Fegraeus explains. “On the one hand, you want players to feel completely free, like they’re masters of their own fate and have agency in this world. But you also need them to perform a role, because the other players on the server are looking forward to a certain scenario to try to win, or battle or experience.” Dice is tackling this problem with a methodical paper trail of objectives, obstacles and unlocks. Here’s an example: while I was playing the new “fighter squadron” demo, I was tasked periodically with defending a Rebel transport ship. On the flip side, the team playing the Empire was being commanded to take down the craft in their nimble TIE Fighters. Some crucial points were on the line, so everyone was obliged to race toward the ship and take part in a dogfight.
“It’s like a story told through game systems in sequence,” Fegraeus says. “Just having players take part in those, in that sequence, creates the game.”
Making small missions epic
Everyone wants to be the hero, but not everyone can take control of the Millennium Falcon or slash through Stormtroopers as Luke Skywalker. Battlefront has always focused on the less famous soldiers that took part in these spectacular battles, and the series’ greatest achievement is making these small roles feel exciting and meaningful. On Endor, one of your missions could be to take out a deadly AT-ST walker. While this happened in the films, it was only a brief moment that conveyed the large conflict and plight of our heroes. To make Battlefront authentic, Dice needs players to revel in these smaller challenges — together, they form Star Wars‘ iconic and multi-dimensional war zones.
“We call them micro-rewards,” Fegraeus explains. “You need all of the systems to support the narrative and say, ‘There’s always a little reward for you.’ It can be an experience like taking down a walker, or it can be something like a very powerful gun. You litter the path of players with these micro-rewards that keep them engaged so they’re always saying, ‘Yes, I’m a part of this and I’m doing well. I’m a soldier in this struggle and it’s all up to me.’”
Adding to Star Wars
Creating such diverse missions and rewards is challenging. Only so much was shown in the original films, so the Dice team has to delve into the deeper Star Wars universe to find new ideas and concepts that fit. Occasionally, that means coming up with ideas from scratch too. Defending an escape pod or satellite dish might sound obvious, but the designers have to be meticulous about how they build upon such a cherished franchise.
Luckily, Lucasfilm is more than happy to lend a helping hand. “They’re the stewards of this universe and know everything,” Fegraeus says. “So the fact that we can work with them so openly, and that they help us so willingly when it comes to coming up with what these solutions can be and do — it makes it really easy for us to find an idea that fits.”
Internally, the team at Dice uses a development term called a “camera left moment.” The premise is ridiculously simple: Consider your favorite shot in the Star Wars movies, and then imagine what would happen if you turned the camera slightly to one side. What would you be able to see? What would actually be happening? Visualizing these make-believe scenes allows the team to quickly prototype and flesh out their modes and maps. However, sometimes there are no shots at all to draw from. Dice was given permission to use Sullust — a planet mentioned in Return of the Jedi — for one of its Battlefront maps. The world had never been visualized before, so the studio was able to work with Lucasfilm to bring it to life. That alone could make the game an integral piece of the Star Wars saga.
The success of Star Wars Battlefront hinges on Dice’s ability to balance authenticity and playability. Again, it’s a difficult tightrope — lean too far in one direction and you’ll make a game that’s visually immersive, but boring or frustrating to play. Swing too far the other way and it’ll feel like a betrayal of the Star Wars franchise, filled with alien or inconsistent additions. “It’s something that goes on basically from day zero to launch, and you just try to find that perfect balance,” Fegraeus says with a wolfish grin. “It’s also part of the fun.”
Images credit: EA
We’re live from Cologne, Germany, for Gamescom 2015. Click here to catch up with all the news from the show.
Tags: dice, ea, gamescom-2015, gamescom2015, hdpostcross, starwars, StarWarsBattlefront
‘Rare Replay’: gaming classics at their best-worst
It wasn’t until after I’d repeatedly pummeled an oversized rat’s testicles that I realized why preserving video game history is so important. Were it not for Rare Replay, an anthology of 30 games spanning 32 years, I’d never have played Battletoads Arcade and would’ve missed one of the finest moments from one of gaming’s most storied developers.
Replay is an invaluable record of developer Rare’s legacy, but it’s neither complete nor perfect. Before Microsoft purchased the studio for $375 million in 2002, Rare made games almost exclusively for Nintendo. GoldenEye and the Donkey Kong Country series (arguably its biggest hits) are absent here thanks to publishing and licensing deals, while other games have been scrubbed free of Nintendo references entirely. While Replay‘s remastered contents are the best they’ll likely ever look, games aren’t movies, and visuals are only one part of the equation here. So can a slick, modern package make up for any shortcomings that result from playing decades-old games? The answer isn’t so simple and it fluctuates wildly from one classic Rare title to the next.
More than anything, Rare Replay absolutely nails it in the presentation department. The gallery-styled menu system treats games with the reverence they deserve, for one. And for any title released prior to the Nintendo 64, the 4:3 image is surrounded by an arcade-style screen border with art inspired by the game you’re playing, instead of stretching the pixelated graphics to fit a widescreen display.
But perhaps the biggest visual trick on tap is a filter that takes the pristine pixels from games like R.C. Pro-Am and Jetpac and gives them some analog fuzz. It’s meant to emulate the look of an old CRT television and the effect is convincing as all get-out. The edges of the screen “warp” into the bubble shape so instantly recognizable to anyone who grew up in the ’80s and ’90s, and there’s a faint jump in brightness around its edges. Most impressively, the action looks just soft enough to trick my brain into thinking I was playing on my parents’ tube TV.
Part of what made classic games so difficult was the lack of a save system. Rare Replay smartly sidesteps this by giving you unlimited continues (in the case of Battletoads and its Arcade follow-up), a save-anywhere option for other titles and a rewind feature to help undo any mistimed jumps or other mistakes made. It’s the same thing the Forza racing series has offered for a while. Is it convenient? Yes. Does it present the games as they originally played? No, which makes Replay less of an archival record for the history buffs and more of a novelty to appeal to modern players.
More than anything, Rare Replay absolutely nails it in the presentation department.
But even those modern conveniences can’t save a fog of nostalgia from the harsh sunlight of reality: A majority of the 30 games here really don’t hold up all that well for a number of reasons. Much of our tolerance for sloppy, imprecise and lethargic controls from gaming’s past has dissipated. It isn’t necessarily the games’ fault, though — they weren’t designed to play on a flat-screen. For all their shortcomings, CRT TVs didn’t suffer from processing lag the way modern displays do. As such, making precise jumps in gothic platformer Underwurlde while ghosts and goblins threatened to bounce me across the screen was a gigantic pain in the ass. Sluggish controls have amped the difficulty of the already tough Battletoads and, thus, moving my favorite war-amphibian around felt like I was pushing him through wet concrete.
Where the biggest issues lie, however, are with the more recent offerings. It took a while for me (and I presume most everyone else) to get used to controlling shooters with dual analog sticks, but now replaying 3D games from the N64 is an exercise in frustration. Banjo-Kazooie, its sequel and Perfect Dark fare pretty well (and look rather sharp) considering those games were released in some fashion on Xbox Live Arcade. But playing the N64’s Jet Force Gemini is a nightmare.
Modern games use the left analog stick for moving backward, forward, left and right, and aiming is tied to the right stick. Default controls for JFG don’t offer that, but a post-launch patch adds something similar. The problem is, the N64 controller’s single-stick legacy lives on, regardless. Unless you’re constantly pulling the left trigger on the Xbox One gamepad, you’re stuck with legacy controls and extremely aggressive auto-aim. It looks quite good, however, with widescreen support and slightly touched-up character models.
Conker: Live and Reloaded
What’s puzzling is why Rare opted to use an N64 port of Conker’s Bad Fur Day here rather than Conker: Live and Reloaded, which appeared on the first Xbox with progressive scan and a 16:9 widescreen presentation. Bad Fur Day instead runs in a 4:3 pane like the 8- and-16-bit games do, but doesn’t offer the fuzzy CRT filter or any control customization options.
There are bright spots in Rare Replay‘s game collection, although they’re just few and far between. I gushed earlier about Battletoads Arcade and, along with the boat-based action of Cobra Triangle, it’s really the only old-school title worth sinking time into. Remember how I said that this collection was incomplete? Well, Rare created the avatar system for the Xbox 360 and, with that, the avatar-centric Kinect Sports games. Since those aren’t compatible with the Xbox One’s Kinect, they aren’t included here. And, oddly enough, neither is 2014’s Kinect Sports Rivals.
The other peculiarity is that rather than including Rare’s modern games (Perfect Dark Zero, Kameo: Elements of Power, both Viva Pinata releases, Jetpac Refuelled and Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts) on the disc, I had to download and play them through the software-based backward compatibility. I’d missed Viva Pinata the first time ’round and was disheartened to learn that I couldn’t play it immediately after popping the disc in. Granted, the likelihood of someone owning an Xbox One and it not being connected to the internet is incredibly slim, but a $30 purchase does not include everything packed into one disc. And depending on your connection speed, it could be quite a while before you get to play with papier-mache animals.
The adorable Viva Pinata
That wait is worth it though as Viva Pinata is easily Rare’s best game, period. It holds up incredibly well thanks to its charming stylized art, vibrant color palette and carefree gameplay. It’s quickly risen through the ranks as my chill-out game of choice, too.
Throughout Rare Replay there’s a tangible sense of love and care for the entire package. And while the games themselves might not all stand the test of time, nothing about Replay feels like a cash-grab or like Microsoft is simply exploiting nostalgia here. Instead, what we have is an anthology that wears its warts like an awkward badge of honor. For a company with a history like Rare that’s celebrated weirdness and going against the grain, that’s probably the best we could hope for.
Image credits: Rare/Microsoft Game Studios
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Tags: banjokazooie, battletoads, gaming, hdpostcross, jetforcegemini, microsoft, nes, nintendo64, perfectdark, Rare, rarereplay, rcproam, review, supernes, vivapinata, xbox, xboxone
‘Mighty No. 9’ producer: ‘We feel bad. Really, really bad.’
Mighty No. 9 is one of the most successful video game Kickstarters of all time. It’s also been delayed. First until September, and then, earlier this week, it was pushed all the way to 2016. In the months between the two delays, the studio announced it’s working with Armature and Microsoft on the Xbox-exclusive ReCore, and its developer Comcept launched two more crowdfunding campaigns for other projects. Backers are upset. So upset that the campaign for the new game failed to reach its goal. We sat down with Mighty No. 9 producer Nick Yu to ask why the game has been delayed, what Kickstarter is for and whether he feels bad. (He does.)
How has Mighty No. 9 been progressing over the past few months?
It’s good, however, we just announced that we’re delaying the release of the game until Q1 2016. The game is pretty much done. We were doing bug fixes and we found some bugs in the network system that will affect the multiplayer. It’s not like a “showstopper” bug, but it’ll make players really frustrated. We don’t want that to be the experience for our players, so that’s why we decided to delay and polish the game a little bit more.
What’s the experience of funding a game through Kickstarter been like for the studio?
The simplest way to put it is a crazy, crazy ride. We started to prepare for the Kickstarter with about three, four months to go, and the campaign was about one month. I was working from 10 in the morning until 10 at night, going home, having a shower, eating some dinner, having an hour-long nap, and then waking up, checking updates for the US timezone, and going back to bed around 4:30-5, sleep for two more hours, then go back to work. A lot of people did that for a full month. That was crazy, but it was totally worth it. That’s how the game was born, and now we’re here at Gamescom, showing the game; it’s almost finished, and we’re receiving a lot of good comments about the gameplay and the experience, so it was totally worth it.
Is there anything the team would’ve done differently with Kickstarter, and how things have been handled after the campaign ended?
There are always things that you regret, things that you wish that you could do again. For example, we have been communicating with the backers pretty regularly. We did three updates per month. Maybe it’s a bit too much for the development team. Because on top of their normal development work, they have to think about updates; they have to prepare the content. It’s a lot of work. Maybe we could’ve done less updates, but focusing on more communication with the backers. Focus on the game a little bit more, so there could be no delay, or we could find the bug earlier.
So you’re saying that because you’ve been trying to “do right” with the Kickstarter backers, and trying to communicate, it’s divided the development team’s attention and made things slower there?
You could say that. But that’s one side. Because we keep constantly updating backers, the kind of feedback we get is very instant. Whenever an update goes out, we get feedback within one or two days. So we know if there’s something that we should change, or at least look into changing. There’s definitely that reward there, for the three updates per month. Like I said, though, there is more work involved in building more updates. So we can’t really say which is better. We chose the updates, but it could be the other way around was better.
Okay. So Kickstarter: Is it a pre-order platform? Is it promotional? Is it just about investment? Is it about fan feedback? What is Kickstarter to you?
Kickstarter to me, and to most indie creators, not just video game makers, is a chance to make your dream come true. It lets you start your project. Nowadays, you can’t just bring an idea to someone and say, “Give me your money; let me make it.” It’s really hard. Maybe not impossible, but super, super hard. Kickstarter can make that happen rather easier. It’s not easy, but easier than normal. It’s a great way to “kickstart” your project, and to bring a project to life. What you do from there, is up to the creators, up to the project managers. They can just do what they promised in the campaign, and be done with it, or take the opportunity to make it even better. There’s no way to say what’s better, but it’s a great, great system to start something from scratch.
In the case of game creating, normally speaking, when you’re making a video game, you cannot announce the game until a certain stage in the process. Let’s say after the alpha, or after the beta, or whatever. From the start of the project until that stage, no one can say a thing. And it’s really scary. You don’t even know if people will like the idea of the game you’re making, that you’re putting so much work into making. So there’s that constant fear in the mind of creators: “What if people don’t like it? What if people hate my game?” In that sense, when you do a Kickstarter project, you don’t have that; you throw the very core of your idea out there first, and people judge based on that. And it’s only one month. Fail or success, it’s one month. If the project’s successfully funded, you will know for sure that people love your idea enough to give you money one, two, three years before it’s going to be ready. You feel more confident, and it’s very healthy for the mental state of the creators; they don’t have the constant fear or worry about whether people will like the game.
As a creator going to Kickstarter, what do you feel like you owe the backers that give you money? You gave out estimated delivery dates when you did the campaign. What’s the feeling like when you miss that estimate?
I’m sure a lot of people, almost everyone, is upset about delays, and things that can’t be done. But, and this is my personal view, the creators announcing the bad news feel worse than the backers. You know that you have to tell the people, and it’ll make them sad; it’ll make them upset. And you’re the reason for that happening. You’re the one making it. Even if it was accidental, or you had no control over it, you’re the reason the delay happened. We feel bad. Really, really bad.
People are saying that we didn’t announce the delay fast enough. But although we saw the possibility of the delay, we weren’t sure. You’ll never be sure until the moment when you say, “This is not going to make it anymore.” Even if there are rumors or possibilities for delay, we can’t say anything until we are sure. In the end, that might cause some bad PR, people calling you liars, but there’s nothi– there’s maybe some things we could’ve done better, but, at that point, we couldn’t say anything for sure, so. … We are upset as well, just as much as the backers.
The studio has a few different projects going on at the same time. [Keiji] Inafune-san is working on ReCore with Armature, and you had two further crowdfunding campaigns recently. If the team working on Mighty No. 9 is still working on that project, do you think the studio could’ve had given out a clearer message? Because the public perception, and the reaction to these campaigns, has not been good.
The reality is, we said all that stuff in the updates, in the interviews, we did say [that Mighty No. 9 is not affected]. But it wasn’t communicated nicely enough. I’m not in that team, but I see that from the side, that communication wasn’t done right, at all. Timing-wise, it was bad, but for a small company like us, we need to have projects constantly to be working on, or we have people just sitting there doing nothing. For a small company, even a month of sitting there doing nothing will hurt us a lot.
People say, “Why are you overlapping these two projects together?” The answer to that is, “We have to.” Or people lose their jobs, or — this is a little bit exaggerated — the company can go bankrupt. For us, we can explain the reason behind it, but I know it’s hard for everyone to understand. There’s just no way the level of understanding will become the same.
So you’re saying that some people are working on Mighty No. 9, but others are finished with their work?
There are people still working on Mighty No. 9, but other teams are just doing nothing, so we need to move those teams onto new projects. Something that can generate payments, generate their salaries. We had this idea for a while, about Red Ash, and we just thought, ‘why not do another Kickstarter?’
I understand what you’re saying but–
Once you explain to people they typically understand, but the initial message wasn’t clear enough, the timing was bad, it’s just — everything went in a bad, bad direction.
So you said at the start of the interview that your single-player campaign is in a very good place, it’s basically completed?
Yes. It’s 100-percent complete.
Is there no way that you could’ve given that to the people that backed you? And maybe released the multi-player aspect at a later date?
In order for us to just give out the single-player… It’s difficult to explain this in short terms. When you’re submitting a game to the platforms, there’s a testing, an approval process for PlayStation, Xbox, all that stuff. The way it is, you have to submit the product. If we were to give out the game to backers, they have to choose their platform. Either way, we have to go through that approval process for us to give that to the backers.
If we were to just give out the single-player, that means we have to make the whole package as a single-player game. Once that’s out, we can no longer say this game is single-player and multi-player, we can only say this is single-player. When that goes to the retailer, you can no longer sell the product as a single-player / multi-player game. Because it’s not, even if you add a patch later on. And the price will just break. Because it’s only single-player. It’s not that we don’t want to give that to the backers — we can’t.
For us to make that change — only single-player, then patch multi-player later — simply put, the approval process would be doubled, and we would have to spend even more time to break those two aspects of the game apart into separate packages. Submit the single-player first, get approval, fix the multi-player campaign, get approval again.. And there’ll be even more quality assurance because we’re taking stuff out. All that together, I think the game will be out with them together before we could’ve pulled them apart, even with the delay. That’s the reality, however, I know we should think about something to show that we are really sorry to the backers. We’re looking to see if there’s something we can do for the backers. But, we’re looking into that, and we’re looking to get a proper release date, seeing how bad the bug is. How fast we can fix it. Once we know that, we’ll announce the release date properly. For now it’s just Q1 2016.
For what it’s worth, I really enjoyed the game, and I just hope you can get it finished so everyone that backed it can enjoy it too.
It’s good to hear that. Everyone that’s played it has been saying it’s really fun, and they can see it’s not just a traditional 2D platformer, it’s something new. There are new elements in the game. It’s a relief to hear that people like it, and it’s just that they don’t like the delay. No one likes the delay. We don’t like the delay. So hopefully we can resolve that as soon as possible.
[Image credit: Comcept]
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Tags: comcept, gamescom, gamescom-2015, gamescom2015, hdpostcross, interview, kickstarter, mightyno.9, MightyNo9
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