Rudi Will is studying to become a Game Designer with Train2Game. Train2Game Radio caught up with Rudi to find out why he chose to study with Train2Game, how he’s finding the course and what we wants to achieve in future. Listen to the interview at www.audioboo.fm/train2game or read it below!
As usual, leave your comments here on the Train2Game blog, or on the Train2Game forum.
L.A. Noire is one of the most anticipated games of the year and one that the Train2Game blog has been paying close attention to. It’ll have some of the most sophisticated Art & Animation seen in a game, as you can see for yourself on the Train2Game blog.
With only a week to go until release now, L.A. Noire is getting a lot of publicity, and recently game director Brendan McNamara and VP of development Jeronimo Barrera gave a fascinating interview to The Guardian about the game. It’s an interesting read for Train2Game students.
MacNamara told the newspaper that Game Designers are now realising that games can be about human drama
“There’s no reason why you can’t have the same sorts of relationships – whether they’re about fear, hate or love – with a game character that you can with a film character. That’s one of the freedoms that technology gives you” he said.
Barrea agrees and says L.A. Noire goes someway to crossing the line between video games and television
“Even though the structure of the game is revolutionary for this industry, it’s based on the tried and true formula of cop shows that have been around for years on television,” he said
“There’s an element people will be familiar with, whether you’re a hardcore gamer or not: you show up at a crime scene, you find evidence and then you go talk to suspects.”
As reported by the Train2Game blog, Macnamara has previously said in future realism will be hard to differentiate between video games, films and television.
The Rockstar pair believes that an emerging interesting in human drama in video games will change game development.
When you’re making games this big and so frigging complicated you have to have a good director and good writers, you have to have designers who are willing to take chances on creating new gameplay mechanics.” said Barrera
“Something has to change, that’s the only way of raising the bar. We’re taking lessons from Red Dead, which took lessons from GTA, we’re obviously evolving how these games are made.”
Barrera added that when it comes to Game Design, L.A. Noire is taking as big a step forward as Grand Theft Auto III.
“We’re taking the same risks with LA Noire as we did when we published GTA 3” he said “At that time, I remember trying to explain to people that there aren’t really any levels, you can go where you want, you activate missions when you want. It was going over people’s heads. They thought it was absurd”
“Well, this game is a bit more cerebral, you have to talk to people, you have to figure out if they’re telling you the truth, but it’s taking that same sort of step that GTA took. We’re going from having a cinematic experience that you can control to a human experience that you can control.”
For more information on the Game Design elements behind L.A. Noire, see the Train2Game blog.
L.A. Noire is released for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on 20th May, and as reported by the Train2Game blog, the Art & Animation is so sophisticated that the Xbox 360 version needs three discs.
So Train2Game, is it a positive thing that some games are becoming more like dramas? How do you think this changes Game Design? And would you like to work on this type of game in future?
Leave your comments here on the Train2Game blog, or on the Train2Game forum.
[Source: The Guardian]
The Train2Game blog has previously hailed the PC as the ideal platform for Train2Game students, but the future of the system is in free to play games. That’s according to Gas Powered Games, the game development studio behind the Dungeon Siege and Supreme Commander series.
“When I have this experience, where I can get a ‘freemium’ game that’s incredible, huge with arguably hundreds of hours of free gameplay, why would I go to the store and spend $50 in the old model?” Gas Powered Games boss Chris Taylor told Eurogamer.
“I’m so done with that. It’s fair to say I’m done dropping that kind of money. I want this in everything. Take any favourite game of mine”
“To me it’s the future. Absolutely it’s the future. If I had to make any prognostications about the gaming industry, that’s the easiest one I will have made in 10 years. This model is coming. It’s here to stay. It’s good on every level.”
Gas Powered Games are currently developing Age of Empire Online, which will be released both digitally and at retail later this year. Players will be able buy extra content in the form of civilizations, boosters and empire extras with the former including premium content.
Of course, Train2Game students may recognise the title as a change in direction for the classic Age of Empires series.
“This is what RTS gaming has become: Age of Empires Online,” said Taylor “It is online, it has community, friends, but that is the beginning. It means when the game goes out, you don’t get a hump and you go down. When the game comes out it goes up infinitely.
“It means every month or so you see cool new things, rather than six months, a year, or maybe never. It’s a continuous rhythm.” He added
Earlier this week, the Train2Game blog reported that Valve also see the benefits of a continuous development cycle, with Team Fortress 2 having received over 200 updates since its release in 2007.
“We have turned a very important corner for the way we think about and develop software and the value proposition we give our customers. It’s way up from where we were before.” Taylor concluded.
In March, the Train2Game blog examined how developing free-to-play game featuring microtransactions could potentially bring success to a Train2Game student.
So Train2Game, do you think free-to-play games are the future of PC gaming? Or are Taylor’s claims complete rubbish? What do you think the future of PC gaming is?
Leave your comments here on the Train2Game blog, or on the Train2Game forum.
[Source: Eurogamer]
Regular Train2Game blog readers may remember Epic’s extremely impressive Unreal Engine 3 tech demo from earlier this year.
Now Epic Founder and CEO Tim Sweeney has spoken about ‘The Samaritan’ and the work behind it may be of interest to Train2Game students.
“Samaritan is the result of three months’ work by a small team of artists and programmers within Epic, as well as NVIDIA engineers who contributed to the advanced DirectX 11 and physics features we demonstrated.” Sweeney told Games TM.
“This was a pioneering effort, simultaneously figuring out what our development pipeline should be, creating content within that pipeline, and optimizing the visual quality and performance of the end product. We aimed very high, seeking a true movie quality of character lighting (via subsurface scattering and advanced shadowing techniques), reflections, filmic camera effects, cloth, and particle effects.”
“Enabling these features to run with full quality in real time on DirectX 11 hardware required substantial original research by the development team, as well as major code and content optimization efforts.”
The impressive tech shown in the demo is certainly something Train2Game students would love an opportunity to work with in future.
And as previously reported by the Train2Game blog, while Art & Animation is one way of creating realistic characters, Sweeny believes Game Designers need to more to create a truly realistic experience.
“[They] have much further to go in delivering truly dramatic interpersonal experiences,” he said. “Alyx in Half-Life 2 offered a glimpse into this possibility; I think increasingly lifelike characters are key to further progress.”
While the Samaritan tech demo offers a glimpse at the future of triple-A titles, the Epic CEO he also told Games TM what he thinks is to come from indie and social games.
“The game industry has stratified amazingly well in recent years, enabling great games to be developed across two orders of magnitude of budgets. Fifteen-person teams are shipping great Xbox Live Arcade titles, and two-person teams are doing great things on iOS and Android. Web games and social games are doing well with modest budgets. We at Epic expect this trend to continue.”
So Train2Game, what are your thoughts on the work behind the Samaritan? Can you see yourself working on that sort of tech in future?
Leave your comments here on the Train2Game blog, or here on the Train2Game forum.
[Source: Games TM]
Call of Duty is popular among the Train2Game community, so many are keen to hear about any news about the franchise.
If you’re one of those Train2Game students then you’re in luck, because according to Kotaku ‘sources’ suggest the as of yet unannounced Modern Warfare 3 will feature some key Game Design changes. These reportedly include bigger maps, destructible environments and a bigger story which follows on from that of Modern Warfare 3.
“We’re told that Modern Warfare 3will take place on a much larger, epic scale” say Kotaku “It appears the game will explore the lead up to a blossoming set of engagements that could pull in other countries, creating a potential World War III scenario. The game will also feature large, urban destructible environments.”
It’d appear that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 may be looking to use similar Game Design features to another popular game series among Train2Game students; the Battlefield franchise made a name for itself with large scale, destructible environments.
EA has already targeted beating Activision’s Call of Duty with the upcoming Battlefield 3. As reported by the Train2Game blog, EA believe their title will be game of year and ‘superior’ to what’s likely to be Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.
Kotaku’s source also suggests established characters Captain John Price and Captain John ‘Soap’ McTavish will return in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.
Earlier this year, the Train2Game blog reported that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is being developed by three separate studios. A formal reveal of the title is expected at E3 next month.
So Train2Game, what are your thoughts on the reports? Would you welcome Modern Warfare 3 moving in the direction of Battlefield 3? Is it a sign Activision are intimidated by EA? And what would you like to see in the next Call of Duty title?
Leave your comments here on the Train2Game blog, or on the Train2Game forum.
[Source: Kotaku]
Any Train2Game students still expecting there to be a Half Life 2: Episode 3 may about to be disappointed, as Valve CEO Gabe Newell has said the developer is done with its episodic gaming experiment.
“We went through the episodes phase, and now we’re going towards shorter and even shorter cycles,” Newll told games industry magazine Develop. “For me, ‘entertainment as a service’ is a clear distillation of the episodic content model.”
The Valve CEO cited Team Fortress 2 as a successful example of a new model for game development. The multiplayer shooter released in 2007 has received over 200 free updates, some of which have introduced new items developed by fans. (Train2Game students take note!)
“If you look at Team Fortress 2, that’s what we now think is the best model for what we’ve been doing,” Newell said.
“Our updates and release model on [Team Fortress 2] keeps on getting shorter and shorter
Newell suggests that the development cycle for Portal 2 could evolve into a similar sustem.
“Portal 2? We’ll have to see how much our customers want us to push in that direction,” said the Valve CEO. “In general, our approach is to come into work and ask ‘what can we do for our customers today’?”
As reported by the Train2Game blog, Valve has hailed Portal 2 as its best single player game.
Train2Game blog readers can find out much, much more about Valve and their approach to game development in an extensive feature on Develop Online.
So Train2Game, what are your thoughts on Valve giving up on episodic games? Does episodic content have a future? Or is a constantly rolling method of game development a la Team Fortress 2 the way forward?
Leave your comments here on the Train2Game blog, or on the Train2Game forum.
[Source: Develop Online]
Brink is released this Friday – with many Train2Game students looking forward to it – so a lot of publicity for the Splash Damage game is doing the rounds online.
Last week the Train2Game blog brought you an in depth look behind the Art & Animation of the upcoming shooter.
Another article that Train2Game students may find interesting is an interview with Brink writer Ed Stern in The New Statesman. He begins by discussing why Splash Damage decided to make Brink in the first place.
“We started off by saying; “We want to make this sort of a game, for this sort of a budget, that will allow the player to do this sort of thing – so where is it set and what is it about?” I can only answer the last two of those.
One of the struggles of game writing in general is coming up with ideas that are the right size and shape. Quite often the bits that don’t work are perfectly good solutions to the problems, but they don’t work in the context of the game. That often means cutting all your favourite bits.”
Stern also gives an insight into how game development can be be a fluid, ever changing role for everyone involved in producing a game.
“People talk about development as if we know what we’re doing, and of course we don’t: if we did, we could stamp these things out in weeks. And remember that while the roles on a film haven’t changed for decades, with games, there are job titles which didn’t exist two, five, let alone ten years ago.” He said
“The old joke that a month after the game ships, you find out what it’s about, is one I no longer find funny. It’s a bit like bad acting. You think: “Don’t they know how stupid that looks?” And of course they don’t, because they’re stood in a room with a camera pointed at them, possibly a long way away.”
“And that’s exactly how every element of games work: you don’t know how the whole package will be. When it goes wrong, it’s often because one element seems to be in a completely different game. When it goes right, everything is mutually reinforcing.” He added.
Stern also speaks about the use of humour in games – or lack of it – and that he’s waiting to see who will make the first “Monty Python-ish game”
“In one of the films there’s a Gilliam still image of someone reading a story to a child, and he describes this incredible scene of a thousand knights in sparkling armour — and says “it’s far too expensive to be animated in a film like this”. Which is brilliant as a joke about the limitations of film-making.
“But games don’t get to do that. They don’t make jokes about their narrators, or the weird plight of their non-player characters generally — OK, a few do; Valve are fantastic at it.” He added.
Yesterday the Train2Game blog reported on why Valve made protagonist Chell a silent character and that helped the humour.
Splash Damage have high expectations of Brink, and as reported by the Train2Game blog, they’ve previously claimed it’ll ‘end the FPS genre as we know it.’ The game is released on Friday for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC.
So Train2Game, what are your thoughts on Stern’s comments about game development? And what about what he has to say about humour in games? Would you attempt to develop a funny game? And are you looking forward to Brink?
Leave your comments here on the Train2Game blog, or on the Train2Game forum.
With over 650 Pokémon now in existence, Train2Game students may be forgiven for thinking that the Artist & Animators at Game Freak may be running out of ideas for new ones. However, it seems that is far from the case.
Pokémon’s Chief Art Director Ken Sugimori says his Art & Animation team could easily design many more new creatures.
“It’s not only myself designing new Pokémon,” he told Official Nintendo Magazine “We have about 20 people in our team at Game Freak who design Pokémon so if every one of them came up with ten Pokémon ideas, it’s going to be 200. And that will make a lot of Pokémon designs.”
Sugimori added: “Also, there are people still coming in new to Game Freak and that’s where we get fresh ideas from.”
Some of the stranger looking new Pokémon include Vanillish – which resembles an ice cream – the chandelier lookalike Chandelure.
As reported by the Train2Game blog, Pokémon Black re-entered the UK charts top ten this week at No.9. Pokémon Black originally debuted at No.2, one place behind Pokémon White which beat it to the top spot.
So Train2Game, what are your favourite Pokémon designs? Do you think the designs will need to get stranger to stay original? And if you had to design a Pokémon, what would you base it on?
Leave your comments here on the Train2Game blog, or on the Train2Game forum.
[Source: Official Nintendo Magazine]
As many Train2Game students will be aware, dialogue can be a very important factor in the success of a game, but a game doesn’t need a character that says anything at all in order to be successful.
Just look at Portal 2 for example, which as the Train2Game blog reported, held No.1 in the UK charts for two weeks. Valve writer Robert Wolpaw spoke about why protagonist Chell is silent during a talk at NYU’s Game Centre, and revealed that it’s because she “could be anyone”
“It could be you. There’s the silent protagonist, which I don’t know is specifically a Valve thing, but it’s a thing” he said “It’s probably a little bit tougher in Half-Life, because it’s slightly more realistic and there’s conversations that are happening and you kind of have to write around why Gordon isn’t saying anything.
“I don’t think people are super invested in the character of Chell…obviously because we haven’t given her much character. But they’re invested in the relationship they have as the player. We always assumed she could talk, she just chooses not to, what with robots all being dicks, why give them the satisfaction?”
Wolpaw also discussed how Chell is used to emphasise the comedy in Portal 2.
“There’s this thing with comedy…there’s sort of two different patterns,” he said “One is, you’re the straight man in a world gone mad, and the other one is you’re a crazy person in a straight world. Portal is definitely the world gone mad straight man, and the straight man is you. Because you have to write in the margins in a game, time is at a premium, so the fact that there’s already this established thing where you have a silent protagonist, that saves us a lot of time.
“You may want to know Chell’s backstory, you may want to hear her say things, but I guarantee, if she had to say her straight man lines at the expense of half of the other dialog, it would suck.” he concluded.
As reported by the Train2Game blog, Valve claim that Portal 2 is their best single player game.
Of course, many Train2Game students will also be familiar with Valve’s other prominent silent protagonist – Gordon Freeman of the Half-Life series.
So Train2Game, why do you think Valve have had so much success with silent protagonists? Would you consider putting one in your games? Or do you believe the industry is moving towards more dialogue in games?
Leave your comments here on the Train2Game blog, or on the Train2Game forum.
Participating in game jams – such as the one held by Train2Game in March – are a good way to make Game Developers happier. That’s according to a Gamasutra blog post by Game Developer Andrew Grapsas.
In an in-depth post many aspects of game jamming are covered, with the particular section repeated below detailing why they’re a good idea for Game Developers, no matter where they are working.
“Breaking from the normal routine of development, the high risk environment of professional game creation, provides a “low cost” “low barrier to entry” means of following Dan Pink’s cycle of Challenge –> Mastery –> Recognition.
When a theme is released for the competition, the challenges are several. First, one must adhere a Game Design to the unique and often odd theme.”
Grapsas emphasises how Game Jam’s really allow Game Developers creative duties to flow.
“Jams offer little time for “how will we monetize this?” “will users understand this?” etc. and allow, instead, a creative flow. There are few, if any, meetings to break up the thought process. Additionally, the tight time-frame precludes over-design of the game, technology, and art and, typically, leaves the “must haves” instead of chrome.”
“These stripped-down games are understood to have time constraints in development. Art quality, code re-usability, etc. (all good things for a production product) are allowed to lax.”
Grapsas adds that one simple reason game jams provide a benefit to the Game Developer is that come the end of the Jam, they have a finished project to show for it.
“When a developer finishes the game, there is a sense of mastery. The developer has mastered the technology, design, art, etc. of the creative process. They have given birth to something “new” that wasn’t there before, overcome obstacles, and generated an end result that is visible, tangible, and playable.”
“This may happen every 2-4 years for traditional triple-A developers. For developers in casual/social, game development as a service has a way of tarnishing the game’s shipping. Having a game jam and a “micro game shipped” provides the same stimulation that shipping a larger product has without the time delay, and without the need to continually support it. It’s quick, clean, and not costly.”
“Then there are the awards. That same visibility allows others to comment, to see the creation, to experience it for themselves and speak to the creator. This is a very fulfilling act that, in and of itself, recharges the batteries.”
“It’s also just damn fun.” He adds, and many Train2Game students who attended the Train2Game Game Jam probably agree! The entire post by Grapsas is available on Gamasutra.
You can see for yourself what those who attended the Game Jam thought by watching the official documentary of the event on the Train2Game Youtube page. Every game from the event is also available to download from the Train2Game Game Jam website.
For more about the benefits of taking part in a game jam, see the Train2Game blog interview with Mediatonic Director of Games Paul Croft. In It he discusses how game jams are used by the company to come up with ideas for new games for the company to build.
So Train2Game, what are your thoughts on the use of Game Jams? Do you believe participating in them is a benefit, not matter how experienced the developer? And for those of you to attended the Train2Game Game Jam, are they as fun as Grapsas claims?
Leave your comments here on the Train2Game blog, or on the Train2Game forum.
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