Category Archives: Developer

Train2Game News: Assassin’s Creed III gameplay video features game director commentary

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Get an insight into development of Assassin’s Creed III with a gameplay video from Ubisoft, complete with commentary from game director Alexander Hutchinson.

The Frontier walkthrough shows game design elements such as tree navigation, moving through snowy terrain and new controls in action, in addition to Hutchinson telling us a bit about Assassin’s Creed III protagonist Connor who he describes as “‘most robust character in 3D action games today.”

The game director also discusses Ubisoft’s new AnvilNext engine, which you can see in action throughout the demo. Watch it below, here on The Train2Game Blog.

There’s more Assassin’s Creed news here on The Train2Game Blog, while you can also keep reading for more from Ubisoft.

What are your thoughts on Assassin’s Creed III?

Leave your comments here on The Train2Game Blog, or on the Train2Game forum.

Train2Game News: Sleeping Dogs art director on getting into the industry

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http://www.sleepingdogs.net/news/Meet-the-Team-Josh-Lee

Sleeping Dogs art director Josh Lee recently featured in a United Front Games ‘meet the team’ interview and offered his take on getting into the industry, revealing he started in fine art.

“I’m kind of old school. There are a lot of schools now that didn’t exist at the time that offer these opportunities… I was born and raised in Montreal, I studied painting and drawing at Concordia in Fine Arts.”  said Lee.

“From there, I was trying to figure out how to make a living, and I ended up moving into the Film Animation department. Subsequently, I worked in traditional animation for a number of years doing frame-by-frame animation. At the time, over 15 years ago, you could feel a shift in the industry.” he continued, adding that adding 3D skills was an important element in getting into games.

“Things were moving more digitally, so I started taking 3D courses to balance my traditional arts background with more CG tools. After a few years working in traditional animation, I ended up in a CG house in Montreal called 4-elements that was affiliated with Softimage.”

“We did trailers for games, special effects, CG for commercials, any number of things a small startup would do. That was my first exposure to the production side of games. When that company closed temporarily, I had an opportunity at EA.” Lee added.

It’s an interview that’s sure to be interesting to Train2Game students, as Lee discusses what his role as art director involves, life at United Front, and of course, Sleeping Dogs. Read it here.

Be sure to keep reading The Train2Game Blog for advice from professionals about getting into the industry, while we’ll also keep you up to date with the latest Sleeping Dogs news.

What are your thoughts on Lee’s route into the industry?

Leave your comments here on The Train2Game Blog, or on the Train2Game forum.

Train2Game News: First 15 minutes “key” to game design says Civilization creator Sid Meier

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The first fifteen minutes of a video game being enjoyable is one of the key rules of game design. That’s according to veteran game designer Sid Meier, the man behind the Civilization and the founder of Firaxis Games.

“One of the key rules of game design is the first 15 minutes. These introductory minutes have to be fun, satisfying, and exciting. You are letting players know they’re on the right track, you should reward them, and let them know cool stuff will happen later.” Meier told GamesIndustry.biz, before admitting mistakes with this when it came to his early games.

“In early Civilization games, I made Civ real-time, which meant everything happened in real-time: My first mistake was to make it real time.” he said.

“I modelled some elements of the game from SimCity, which was real-time. It was inspiring. But what we found was that in real-time gaming the player becomes the observer. Our mantra is that, “it’s good to be king.”

“When we made Civ a turn-based game, the player became the star, they made things happen.” Meier added.

The full GI.biz interview with Sid Meier on game design, his career and the industry as a whole is here.

As previously reported by Train2Game, the Civilization creator believes there are more opportunities than ever to be a game developer.

Meier’s Firaxis Games are currently working on a reimagining of XCOM: Enemy Unknown, and there’s more about the studio here on The Train2Game Blog.

Do you agree with Sid Meier that the first fifteen minutes are a key part of game design? What games gave you the most memorable first quarter of an hour?

Leave your comments here on The Train2Game Blog, or on the Train2Game forum.

Train2Game News: Splash Damage CEO to give keynote developer session at Rezzed

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Splash Damage CEO and game director Paul Wedgwood will hold the keynote developer session at next month’s Rezzed.

Rezzed is a new PC and indie gaming show that takes place in Brighton on Friday 6th and Saturday 7th July. Wedgwood will deliver the keynote developer session “Independent, or Bust!’ at 12pm on the Saturday.

Subjects the session is set to cover include Splash Damage’s 2011 release Brink, the studio’s new direction and their upcoming mobile game Rad Soldiers.

Train2Game spoke in-depth about Brink, game design and getting into the industry in our interview with Splash Damage lead writer Ed Stern in November last year.

Tickets for Rezzed are available on the official website, and it’s looking to be an interesting event for Train2Game students to attend, with a variety of developer sessions including those from Introversion Software and The Creative Assembly.

We’ll be sure to keep you up to date with the latest news as the show approaches.

What would you be most interested to find out about in the keynote from Splash Damage?

Leave your comments here on The Train2Game Blog, or on the Train2Game forum.

Train2Game News: “There’s never been a better time to run your own gig” – Ian Livingstone

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Now is a better time than ever been before for an aspiring game developer to run their own business. That’s according to Eidos life president and games industry veteran Ian Livingstone who was speaking at BAFTA’s Games Question Time.

“There’s never been a better time to run your own gig” said Livingstone, after praising the introduction of games tax relief earlier this year. The Fighting Fantasy co-author added that the rise of digital downloads and trends such as monetisation through free-to-play have all contributed to making it easier than ever to set up an independent games studio.

Ian Livingstone was one of a number of industry figures who aided in mentoring Train2Game students taking part in Make Something Unreal Live last April. The Games Workshop co-founder said he was “delighted” to be part of the initiative.

There’s more from Ian Livingstone here on The Train2Game Blog.

Do you agree with Ian Livingstone in believing that now’s a better time than there’s ever been to do your own thing?

Leave your comments here on The Train2Game Blog, or on the Train2Game forum.

Train2Game News: United Front on the vast research behind Sleeping Dogs

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Game designers researching Sleeping Dogs at United Front Games have done so by taking newspaper cuttings, looking at films and taking 40,000 reference photos of Hong Kong.

“We took 35,000 to 40,000 reference photos and hour upon hour of video footage, but it’s not a street for street depiction. It was important for us to capture the essence of city. Lots of the landmarks are there, many of the names are similar yet, first and foremost, we wanted to make that space fun to navigate around.”  Executive producer Stephen van der Mescht told PlayStation Blog.

The United Front Games man went on to discuss how important it is for them to show the life of an undercover cop to Sleeping Dogs players.

“Well, the plot was built from scratch but we were heavily influenced by a lot of references. Look at movies like The Departed and Donnie Brasco – they both had an element of truth in them, which came from the stories they discovered by talking to people who were actually in those situations.” he continued.

“The important thing for us to get across was that dual world of a cop pretending to be a gangster, and the stresses that come with that, of having to live this lie.” van der Mescht continued, adding that while the plot of Sleeping Dogs, it’s influenced by a lot of their research.

“In terms of specifics, we referenced a lot of Triad crimes using newspaper cuttings. The game follows this guy becoming more intertwined with this world and we see his morality line get blurred. So yes, there are direct references to stories we discovered from the research we did.” said the executive producer.

Read the full interview, Sleeping Dogs And Telling Stories Through Games over at the PlayStation Blog. It’s likely to be interesting reading for anyone on a Train2Game course, especially game designers.

There’s more about Sleeping Dogs here on The Train2Game Blog, while you can also keep reading for the latest news from its publisher, Square Enix, here.

What are your thoughts on the research United Front are putting into Sleeping Dogs?

Leave your comments here on The Train2Game Blog, or on the Train2Game forum.

Train2Game News: Frozen Synapse dev blogs about ‘How to Be an Indie Game Developer’

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Frozen Synapse by Mode 7 Games is published through Steam

‘How do I become an indie game developer?’ is a question that’s often asked to industry professionals, so Mode 7’s Paul Taylor has attempted to answer that very query in a in a lengthy, but very interesting blog post.

Mode 7 Games is the Oxford indie game development studio behind PC tactical strategy title Frozen Synapse.

The ‘How to be an indie game developer’ blog post should make fascinating reading for any Train2Game student, as it discusses almost all areas of development and marketing. Subjects covered by Taylor include game design, concept, code, art and animation, music and audio, writing, business and marketing, free-to-play vs. pay once and even using videos.  Be sure to give it a read.

Taylor has previously written about what he thinks made Frozen Synapse a success, and there’s more about the indie title here on The Train2Game Blog.

Be sure to keep reading for advice from games industry professionals on how you can break into development.

What are your thoughts on the blog post from Mode 7? Do you have aspirations to be an indie developer and if so, what steps have you made towards it?

Leave your comments here on The Train2Game Blog, or on the Train2Game forum.

Train2Game News: Introversion Software developer session confirmed for Rezzed

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Introversion Software, developer of games including Uplink, Defcon and Darwinia will be hosting a developer session at Rezzed, the PC and indie gaming show in which takes place in Brighton next month.

It’ll take place at 1pm on Saturday 7th July and will see Inversion Software discussing their upcoming title Prison Architect, in a session which is sure to be interesting to Train2Game students. Prison Architect will also be available to play on the show floor for the whole two days.

“We’re really looking forward to showing off Prison Architect to a wide audience – it’s at a time when feedback from gamers will be really helpful,” said Introversion director and co-founder Mark Morris.

“We also think they’ll be a lot of questions about what happened to Subversion and we want to clear it up once and for all!”

Get a taste of Prison Architect in the preview video below, here on The Train2Game Blog.

There are plenty of other developer sessions taking place at Rezzed, including one from The Creative Assembly where they’ll be taking an exclusive first look at the future of Total War.

Rezzed takes place in Brighton on Friday 6th and Saturday 7th July with tickets available here. Keep reading The Train2Game Blog for the latest news as Rezzed approaches.

Are you a fan of Introversion Software? What would you like to find out from their developer session?

Leave your comments here on The Train2Game Blog, or on the Train2Game forum.

Train2Game News: Hideo Kojima on why he can’t walk away from Metal Gear Solid

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Metal Gear mastermind Hideo Kojima keeps coming back to it because he isn’t convinced his true vision for the games can be achieved without his involvement.

Kojima has attempted to walk away from the stealth action series since each game after Metal Gear Solid 2, but keeps returning to work on them in order to ensure his ideals are followed.

“It’s very hard to come up with the concept of a game and hand it off to other people, as of course they can’t see what’s in my head.” Kojima told CVG when asked why he keeps coming back to Metal Gear.

“They may not be able to understand the concept completely or the messages that I want to convey and that’s where things went awry in the past as people couldn’t really understand what I wanted.”

I decided at that point that if I was going to make a game based around these ideals that I would do it myself, which is why I keep getting involved.” he added.

The full interview with Hideo Kojima is here, and should make interesting reading for Train2Game students. Metal Gear Rising: Revenge is scheduled to be released next year.

There’s more from Hideo Kojima here on the Train2Game Blog.

What are your thoughts on Kojima’s reluctance to walk away from Metal Gear Solid? When you have ideas in game development, do you find you’d rather work on them yourself than delegate your vision to others?

Leave your comments here on The Train2Game Blog, or on the Train2Game forum.

Train2Game News: BAFTA offering prizes for best Games Question Time questions

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BAFTA want your questions for industry professionals including Peter Molyneux and Ian Livingstone when they take part in BAFTA Games Question Time next Tuesday 12th June. It’s the perfect opportunity for Train2Game students to quiz some of the most respected figures in gaming.

Submitting a question to be used at the event is now the only way you can attend Games Question Time which has now sold out. If that isn’t enough incentive for you, BAFTA are offering prizes for what the panel judge as the three best questions of the night. Send your questions to events@bafta.org or #BAFTAgamesQT, or leave them here for us to forward on your behalf.

If you’re unable to attend BAFTA Games Question Time, the full event will be streamed live  from 7p.m. on Tuesday here.

The full panel will involve Peter Molyneux OBE, Ian Livingstone OBE, Alice Taylor and David Bailey, with more information about all of them here.

There’s more BAFTA news here on The Train2Game Blog.

Are you going to BAFTA Games Question Time next week? What would you live to ask the panel?

Leave your comments here on the Train2Game Blog, or on the Train2Game forum.

BAFTA’s public events and online resources bring you closer to the creative talent behind your favourite games, films, and TV shows. Find out more at www.bafta.org/newsletter,www.facebook.com/bafta or twitter.com/baftagames