Tag Archives: 2K

Train2Game News: Mid-week round up – 21.11.12

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A trailer for the next Borderlands 2 DLC has been released. It is full of explosions, carnage and hilarity. From the looks of the trailer, Tiny Tina is back which is great news, she is a highly amusing character. When I heard about this DLC I was worried it was going to be another “Moxxis Underdome” but luckily it looks like it’s a proper campaign. You can enjoy the trailer here.

Peter Molyneux has announced that up to six new features could be coming soon for the experiment app Curiosity. The new features are currently on the prototype phase. Molyneux hasn’t released what they are yet but did give the clue ‘Badgers’. The new features have been designed by watching how people are using the cube. As of 3pm today 30 layers have been chiselled away.

The company behind The Walking Dead episodic series of games has had to move to a bigger premises. Telltale currently employ about 125 staff, but the new space will provide enough room for 160 employees, and the company is planning a hiring spree for 2013.

Microsoft’s further venture in to entertainment sees a new app coming soon which will turn your Xbox into a Karaoke machine. You’ll able to purchase singing time in blocks of two, six or 24 hours with your Microsoft Points. The app, simply named Karaoke, offers over 8000 tracks. You’ll be able to warble along to pop, rock and country tunes, plus some R&B and hip-hop tunes.

Windows Phone may not have the market share of Apple or Google, but it does appear to be winning in one key area for game developers: monetization. According to data from EEDAR’s 2012 Mobile Syndicated Reports, Windows smartphone users “consistently outspend their peers” with almost 10 percent of Windows gamers classified as “Whales” (those who spend more than $25 a month) compared to just four percent on both iOS and Android.

Sony has released the public version of the PlayStation Mobile SDK, allowing developers to create content for a wide range of devices and sell through the PlayStation Store. As well as PlayStation Certified Android hardware, developers can build apps and games for the PlayStation Vita, PSP and the PlayStation 3 with an annual license fee of just £60.

Artist, Andrew Ryan, has created some gorgeous character art by putting Mass Effect character in to the Dragon Age universe. The Normandy is a high dragon ridden by Joker, Garrus is an awesome crossbow-wielding knight, Jack’s a blood mage elf and EDI is a golem. Each character was designed separately before being combined in the final diorama. You can check out the pictures on his Deviant Art page, here.

Train2Game Interview: Gearbox Software co-founder Brian Martel on starting in the industry and learning from failure

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Gearbox Software co-founder and Executive Vice President Brian Martel has worked in the games industry for over twenty years, making him the most experienced member of the Texas studio. The Train2Game Blog recently start down with Martel at a Borderlands 2 preview event where he discussed how he got started in the industry, the importance of learning from mistakes and advice on getting into game development.

How did you get started in the games industry?

I’ve been in the industry now for about twenty years. I got my first start at Microprose, the first game that I worked on was Civilization and I’m the last name that appears in the credits, so I’m extremely proud of my time at Microprose and I learned a lot of valuable lessons from Sid Meier, how he starts and his approach to gaming and that’s really awesome.

I then went to 3D Realms, leaving to be a texture artist. There I met Randy Pitchford; we were paired up, he was a level designer and I was an artist and we really just hit it off. That’s kind of how it worked back in those days; you would just keep pushing each other. Then after that we decided to start Rebel Boat Rocker, which was one of the best miserable failures of our career, we learned a lot about what not to do in making games.

Then we started Gearbox Software and I think we’re going on thirteen years now and that’s been a fabulous experience. We’ve been working on things that we really love like the Half-Life series, working on some Halo, Tony Hawk, even the James Bond franchise; all of these things have been interesting and now we’ve got Aliens: Colonial Marines which is fantastic, a dream come true. And then owning our own intellectual properties, like working on the Brothers In Arms series and Borderlands.

So, it’s been a pretty cool ride, really love making games, we’re entertainers at heart and this is what we do.

You mentioned learning from mistakes there, how important is it then for young game designers to actually make mistakes and learn from them?

Yeah, you have to fail, you have to learn what works and what doesn’t work, and the only way to really do that is to not be afraid of those failures and kind of push forward and try and do and make new things and do stuff, that’s really what you need to do. I mean everything doesn’t have to be perfect.

Probably the best lesson in all of this, and it’ll sound kind of silly and base if you will, is you have to learn when things are good enough, and that’s sort of the trick. The customer doesn’t know the difference between you’re vision – which is far exceeding your capabilities – and what they get in the box, or on an app, or whatever. So just do it, make it, make something, make something they can feel and experience.

It’s like writers, right? You should just have to write, and that’s the same kind of thing, just make games. If you like programming, do what you love; if you like programming, you like art, just do what you love, do it. Just do it over and over and over again, find people you can work well with – they’re going to feed your passion and drive, that kind of thing.

So, would that be your advice to anymore aspiring to break into the games industry? Do programming, produce art, mod for example.

Yeah, exactly. Mods are a great way to start; because that way you can build a community, figure out what it’s like to work with other people. Its one thing when you’re on your own in your bedroom, garage, whatever, and you’re doing your own thing. But once you start working with people, collaborating and understanding how to make those compromises you have to make, sometimes some of the best things come out of those compromises, they come out of the discussion, because two different people have disparate ideas and you can’t get that on your own.

I think that’s where small teams are really great to do that, and even in large teams, having really great experienced leaders can help that, and the only way to get there is by doing it and getting through it and learning what to do.

Thanks for your time.

There’s more from Gearbox Software here on The Train2Game Blog, while there’s also plenty more advice from industry experts.

As usual, leave your comments on The Train2Game Blog, or here on The Train2Game forum.  

Train2Game news: XCOM: Enemy Unknown developer diary on making strategy ‘sexy’

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Train2Game students can get a first look at XCOM: Enemy Unknown, the reimagining of one of the most loved strategy titles out there that’s being developed by Firaxis, the studio famous for Civilization series.

XCOM gives you the task of commanding a special paramilitary force to defend the earth from an alien invasion.

The developer diary sees the Firaxis team discuss their reimagining of XCOM: Enemy Unknown, explain some of their game design choices and talk about how they’re making a turn based strategy game ‘sexy’

Watch the XCOM: Enemy Unknown developer diary below for an insight into life at Firaxis.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown from Firaxis and 2K Games is scheduled for release in Autumn this year.

So Train2Game, what are your thoughts on XCOM: Enemy Unknown? What insights have you gained from the behind the scenes video?

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

Train2Game student insight behind the scenes of Borderland 2’s art direction

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Train2Game forum users, at least a significant number of them loved Borderlands. Train2Game Art & Animation students enjoyed its cell shaded art style in particular.

Now, with sequel confirmed last month, Borderlands 2 Art Director Jeramy Cooke has been discussing… art direction with Gamasutra. In particular, he’s keen to point out that Borderlands 2 will not only be a lot more colourful, but how the art style will be an integral part of the game.

“I wanted it to have a richer, larger world” said Cooke. “I felt like we were stuck in the desert a lot, and it got monotonous. It felt like you were seeing the same enemies too often. I mean, that’s my personal experience. And we really wanted to just widen that and give you this sense of a huge space, which is why you can see the other maps from the maps you’re in.

The Borderlands 2 Art Director then described how if the player could see something in the distance, they should be able to travel across the map and see it up close.

“You look over there, and you see this dam off in the distance, and you know “Oh, that’s where I was,” and vice-versa when you’re on top of the dam and you look down into zone 1 and see all of the ice spread out. It’s about that sort of large-scale, large-scope experience” Cooke said.

It’s a view echoed by Far Cry 3 Narrative Director Jason Vandenberghe in last month’s interview with the Train2Game blog.

“Borderlands is not a rail shooter, it’s not a corridor shooter” the Borderlands 2 Art Director continued.

“We want you to explore and have fun and go where you want and do what you want. The world’s job is to be enticing, to convince you to go out there and find cool stuff, to dig around in the corner and find cool loot or a miniboss you didn’t know who was there or whatever.”

So Train2Game, how important do you believe art style can be in making a game fun to play? What are your thoughts on Borderlands 2? Can it improve on the original?

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

[Source: Gamasutra]

2K reveal Bioshock Infinite

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Bioshock Infinite

2K have revealed the next instalment of the Bioshock series, Bioshock Infinite, which sees us leaving the underwater city of Rapture and heading to the skies.

The art-deco utopian setting of Bioshock and Bioshock 2 has been replaced with the sky city of Columbia for Bioshock Infinite, while this latest episode in the Bioshock series moves back in time to 1912. That means the events of Bioshock Infinite take place almost half a century before Bioshock.

Bioshock: Infinite will see the player assuming the role of Booker DeWitt who is sent to the ‘lost’ city of Columbia to rescue a prisoner named Elizabeth. The trailer actually seems to show people in the city, so perhaps unlike Bioshock there will be more character interaction in Bioshock: Infinite? Unfortunately, we’ll be waiting until 2012 to before we can play the game to find out for sure.

Bioshock: Infinite is being developed by Irrational Games, the team behind the original Bioshock, and is once again being led by Ken Levine – who didn’t work on Bioshock 2. Of course, this is Bioshock we’re talking about so enough with the text – here’s a very pretty looking Bioshock Infinite trailer:


How impressive does that look?

The press release from 2K fills us in with the rest of the details about Bioshock Infinite:

“Set in 1912, BioShock Infinite introduces an entirely new narrative experience that lifts players out of the familiar confines of Rapture and rockets them to Columbia, an immense city in the sky. BioShock Infinite is currently planned for release during calendar 2012.

Originally conceived as a floating symbol of American ideals at a time when the United States was emerging as a world power, Columbia is dispatched to distant shores with great fanfare by a captivated public. What begins as a brand new endeavour of hope turns drastically wrong as the city soon disappears into the clouds to whereabouts unknown.

The player assumes the role of former Pinkerton agent Booker DeWitt, sent to the lost city to rescue Elizabeth, a young woman imprisoned there since childhood. He develops a relationship with Elizabeth, augmenting his abilities with hers so the pair may escape from a city that is literally falling from the sky. DeWitt must learn to fight foes in high-speed Sky-Line battles, engage in combat both indoors and amongst the clouds, and harness the power of dozens of new weapons and abilities.”

So Train2Game what do you think of the Bioshock Infinite trailer? Are you a fan of the Bioshock series? If so, what are your thoughts on the setting? And of course, how visually impressive does the game look?

You can leave your thoughts on Bioshock Infinite here or on the Train2Game forum.