Articles
Posted September 12, 2011.
Modified September 14, 2011.
On June 19, 2010, I had released my first title for Xbox Live Indie Games, Around the World. AtW was a geography-based quiz game that I'd sunk six months of development time into. I've always been fond of educational games, and I wanted an easy concept that I could bring to market quickly while also learning how to properly design a game in XNA. AtW fit all those criteria. But as I watched the day-to-day sales rapidly diminish immediately following its release, I realized that there was an important objective that creating AtW did not fulfill: the creation and marketing of a game that people would actually give a damn about.
Thus began a 14-month excursion into game design that would prove to be a thoughtful, relentless affair that ultimately gave me a sense of deep yet incomplete satisfaction. The fact that the whole process took 14 months caught me completely by surprise, but each and every moment seemed to demonstrate some sort of lesson. So, hey... if you don't care how the story began but only how it ended, feel free to skip down to the bottom where I share some of the lessons learned during the immediate release of Cute Things Dying Violently. Otherwise, dig in, fortify your position, and be prepared to learn how my twisted little brain works.
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Posted August 23, 2011.
Modified August 24, 2011.
You may have noticed that your copy of Cute Things Dying Violently has a level editor. Do not be afraid! I trust your creativity and wish to empathize with your desire to violently murder little Critters. Let me help you in your task:
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Posted August 23, 2011.
Modified August 23, 2011.
I'm frequently an idiot about noticing things in games, often going to GameFAQs to read a Walkthrough on Generic Shooter #34 just to learn that I walked right by a door that I should've noticed and taken. In that spirit, here are a bunch of blatant hints (read: explanations) for Cute Things Dying Violently that will get you through each puzzle level, from the mundane to the toughies.
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Posted April 19, 2011.
I find myself bedeviled by critical darlings that bore the shit out of me or find some other way to turn me off. One would think that I would've shared my opinions on Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood by now, seeing as how I've had the game since Christmas. Alas, the game's everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach to sandbox gameplay (I counted 20 different minigames that the game wanted me to play) seriously shortchanged the dense plotting and great characters I'd come to enjoy in the previous game. So, I turned it off, and looked elsewhere.
"Elsewhere" brought me to Dragon Age: Origins, the highly-regarded heir apparent to Dungeons & Dragons style epic RPGs that everyone else had raved about. However, I found the minutiae of the game world and its "gritty" take on standard fantasy tropes to be exasperating. How smart and creative do I expect a game to be if it contains the usual alliances of humans, elves, and dwarves fighting against a world-threatening evil, but with a perfunctory gloss of minor reinterpretations. (The elves are former slaves! The dwarves are agnostics! Oooooh.) Moving on.
I kept turning my back on these supposedly great games until, last week, it looked like Uncle Sam would shut down and I'd be without a job. I decided to pad the forthcoming mandatory vacation with a game that I'd been meaning to play for awhile but had consistently put off: The Saboteur, a World War II sandbox game by a now-defunct developer I liked that got decent but not great reviews.
After the first day of playing the game, I was considering returning to GameStop. Three days later, I thought it was the best game I'd played in years.
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Posted October 22, 2010.
Modified October 22, 2010.
I've previously talked about just how niche Xbox Live Indie Games is, and I've also stated that to have a successful game on XBLIG, it needs to be simple, funny, and quirky. Well, that's not 100% correct. A lot of developers have achieved some modicum of success - even if we're just talking a couple thou, and not enough to quit your day job - by capitalizing on certain "me too!" trends in the market that lend a certain popularity. In particular, there's:
- Avatar games, or games starring the Xbox equivalent of Mii's that you can play as
- Zombie games
- "Massage" game, or games that take advantage of Xbox controllers' rumble/vibration features to do all sorts of massage-related things, ranging from the innocuous to the explicit
Avatars are big. Zombies are big. Massage games are big. So how long was it gonna be before someone combined all three?
Enter: Avatar Zombie Massage Online 2, pictured above. (There is no 1.)
Aaaaaaaaaand things quickly spiraled out of control.
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Posted July 9, 2010.
Modified July 9, 2010.
Background
Around The World was conceived as a fairly easy way for me to learn XNA, hone my C# skills, and make a game (and hopefully a bit of money) at the same time. I chose the ATW concept after having to curtail development of a physics-based platformer that I'd been working on during the summer and early fall of 2009. (I was programming from scratch and couldn't figure out some of the more advanced physical interactions my game needed to work.) An ATW-style game was literally the first concept I looked at when I started learning XNA in March 2009, but I abandoned it at the time due to being intimidated by all the 3D programming that was required. As the concept was still sound, I decided to return to the project and resolve all my 3D issues prior to working on the game itself.
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Posted March 30, 2010.
Modified March 30, 2010.
Games these days are sprawling affairs. With multi-million dollar budgets, hundreds of developers scattered across various studios, tons of subcontractors, and the overwhelming quest for polish and mass appeal, it's no wonder that many blockbusters have that design-by-committee feel. Big developers tend to play it safe, and gamers can tell. So when a big game like Assassin's Creed 2 comes along that shines brightly as a labor of love, gamers should sit up and take notice.
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Posted December 11, 2009.
Modified March 30, 2010.
Once upon a time, I wrote a review for a game called Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. My opening paragraph went like this:
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare proves to be one hell of a game. The latest entry in the franchise is yet another over-the-top, glossy, semi-tactical first-person shooter. As a genre piece, the game aggressively revels in what it does right, but it also wallows in some notable areas. A degree of nitpicking is necessary, lest further “refinements” of the tac-shooter genre (e.g. Call of Duty 5, 6, 7, and 8. Thanks, Activision!) keep re-treading the same mistakes. But, overall, Call of Duty 4 is everything it should be and more.
For one thing, I accurately noted Activision's ability to whore out their products over and over and over again. I also noted that the first entry in the Modern Warfare franchise did a lot of things right and a lot of things wrong, but whether right or wrong, it did those things loudly. And someone decided not to mess with this formula. Yes, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is awesome, the sequel being just as aggressive as the original iteration. Developer Infinity Ward learned from some of the lessons of CoD4, but their overriding motto of "Go big or go home!" has proven to be a rubric that still makes the series excel in some areas and fail in others.
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Posted September 28, 2009.
Modified January 30, 2010.
For the past few years, Activision has been busy getting their grubby paws on juicy intellectual properties and sequalizing them until each series becomes a withered husk. Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2, the latest in a series that began in 2004 with Raven Software's X-Men Legends, is still a few iterations away from reaching that point. With some time to kill before the series' decent into cut-and-paste mediocrity, developer Vicarious Visions managed to pull a fast one on their publisher and created an entertaining, robust brawler. Color me surprised!
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Posted September 8, 2009.
Modified September 8, 2009.
NOTE: This article was originally written in March 2008 for Another Castle.com
Artificial Intelligence. Remember how every game preview ever written used to tout advanced and challenging A.I.? And remember how, once released and reviewed, the game's A.I. would generally be a point of derision? How did we get there, and where do we go from here?
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Posted September 4, 2009.
Modified September 8, 2009.
NOTE: This article was originally written in January 2008 for Another Castle.com
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare proves to be one hell of a game. The latest entry in the franchise is yet another over-the-top, glossy, semi-tactical first-person shooter. As a genre piece, the game aggressively revels in what it does right, but it also wallows in some notable areas. A degree of nitpicking is necessary, lest further 'refinements' of the tac-shooter genre (e.g. Call of Duty 5, 6, 7, and 8. Thanks, Activision!) keep re-treading the same mistakes. But, overall, Call of Duty 4 is everything it should be and more.
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Posted September 3, 2009.
Modified March 3, 2010.
NOTE: This article was originally written in January 2008 for Another Castle.com
Suddenly it’s 2008, and here I am, late to the party with my Assassin’s Creed review. The game’s been talked about ceaselessly, with polarized opinions across the board. Here’s why Ubisoft’s new intellectual property is worth a second or third look.
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Posted August 24, 2009.
Modified January 30, 2010.
NOTE: This article first appeared on the now-defunct website Another Castle in February 2008. Obviously, a lot's been accomplished since then, but the article still serves as an interesting snapshot of a mod in development.
Mod-making is evolving. The job, hobby, and art of putting together a total conversion has changed significantly since the practice began. What once started as custom Doom and Duke Nukem 3D maps quickly transitioned into the likes of Counter-Strike and Team Fortress Classic. Today, gamers can flex their trigger-fingers on entries such as Insurgency for Half-Life 2 and Point of Existence for Battlefield 2. And the arena is still changing on a moment-by-moment basis, with brand new games, engines, and platforms becoming available to indy developers. In short, it’s a significantly advanced, crowded arena, with endless design choices and potentially endless competition from both professionals and other amateurs. So, how does a mod go about standing out in this rapidly-changing field?
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