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June 11, 2009

Back from E3: Quickie wrap-up

Highlights:

Zephyr attention: Tremendous turnout to check out our project. Met and chatted with a lot of people, from studio devs wandering the show, other indie devs, media outlets large and small, digital distribution portals, and senior/executive staff from mega-publishers.  Interestingly, we received a notable amount of interest from composers.  I’m sure most of them were just looking for a project to work on, but I asked a few of the more exciteable ones what drew them to our project in particular.  Our aesthetic had a lot of fans.  People love steam-punk and/or pirates.  They also noticed our Skies of Arcadia influences.  Unfortunately while we were out at lunch on the third day, a trio of Japanese SEGA folk demoed our game, each taking one of my cards.  Boy, that would have been a stellar group to talk with.

Forza Motorsport III: There were a trio of cockpit setups with three-screen panorama, 5.1 audio, and force-feedback wheel. One of them even had a full motion base that MS custom-rigged.  I spoke with one representative and he said he wasn’t familiar with the consumer-standard D-Box that’s already being used for Blu-Ray and PC; I directed him toward their booth.  One of my biggest peeves with FM2 was the sort of lackluster graphics.  That is no longer a concern, and I’m sure everything else will be great as always.

Great eats: The show allowed for a sort of FIEAn mini-reunion, and we were escorted to a slew of great dining spots.  There was heavenly Italian at C&O’s Trattoria, melt-in-your-mouth lamb french dips and spicy garlic fries at Cole’s, and a table-filling assortment of dim sum at Empress Pavilion.  Lastly, we made a pit stop at In & Out burger before catching our flights out.

Disappointments:

Being clueless: We spent the vast majority of our time demonstrating our game at the IndieCade booth, and we’re absolutely flattered and grateful for the attention.  However, that duty and the lack of a fast, reliable internet connection meant I couldn’t really read/watch what was announced, and we couldn’t spend too much time going hands-on with what was on display.  People at home knew a lot more about E3 goings-on than I did.

Activision booth: Where were all the games?  It was an impressive booth thanks to the massive screens running a loop of trailers plus the stage for celebrity appearances and DJs, but the only noticable play stations were Tony Hawk: Ride and Blur at the front.  I was really looking forward to getting hands-on with DJ Hero.  Most stuff was being show behind closed doors.  However, it was funny to see the Ghostbusters standing in line to meet Stan Lee.

God of War 3: It wasn’t that it sucked, it’s that I didn’t see anything new or noteworthy after spending a combined hour or so of my limited “goof-off” time budget standing in line and playing the demo.  The presentation continues to be fantastic, now using a lot more depth-related effects.  However, it failed to showcase any of the sense of scale that was teased by the early trailers.  (For that, Bayonetta‘s bridge battle helped make it Best of Show for me.)

Carl @ 1:21 am
Filed under: Games,Personal — Tags: , , , , , , , , , —

May 26, 2009

Bundles vs. price-drop: value is in the eye of the beholder

Joystiq posted a leak that Sony’s sending out a new 80GB PS3 bundle exclusively to Best Buy, priced at the same $399.99 and scheduled for availability on June 9, the week following E3. Two years ago, the news of a $100 price drop made waves, but–assuming two relatively recent, non-Greatest Hits games–this bundle effectively the same savings: $100 or so.

The problem why this isn’t gaining any excitement (at least from the snarky, jaded gaming forum-goers) is that, while adding value to the current box, the actual out of pocket cost isn’t decreasing.

Is a penny saved, in this case, a penny earned?

The obvious argument against a bundle strategy is that it won’t be universally appealing because not everyone likes the same kinds of games.

It makes sense for Sony.  Though they’ve been able to streamline manufacturing and drive down costs, they’re still losing money on every box of hardware that leaves the factory.  However, software (especially if it’s Sony-published) is more or less “free.  They’ll “not make” money instead of “lose more” by using the software bundle strategy.

However, all Joe Consumer wants is that leading digit of the price to tick down to a 2. The first digit of an item’s price is a very powerful psychological force and why $299.99 is irrationally more attractive than $300.00, despite a penny’s difference.  Say it out loud. Two-hundred, ninety-nine dollars and ninety-nine cents. Three-hundred dollars.  All you can hear is “two-hundred” versus “three-hundred.”

However, the existence of this new bundle doesn’t preclude the announcement of a price-drop of a non-bundle package.  But if that existed, wouldn’t it have been uploaded to Best Buy’s computers at the same time?  Was it held back to prevent the same leaks that happened at Circuit City? If that’s the case, again, why wasn’t this listing held back as well?

(image credit: AP)

Carl @ 10:03 pm
Filed under: Games,Techniques — Tags: , , , , , —

April 29, 2009

Free Realms beta impressions

The other week I lucked into a Free Realms beta key and was eager to try it after Penny Arcade’s enthusiasm over the “freemium” MMO for kids.  When I logged into my Station account, I learned that I’d registered it when I still had my old Crosswinds.net email address way back during the internet’s adolescence.  

The client is very small (and/or my FiOS very fast) and downloaded while I was creating my character.  The default physiology was strangely right on the money as an approximation of myself.  I named my character Max Zephyrvale, after my last big project.  Then I realized the name had an impossible amount of exotic letters.

The tutorial uses enormous, hard to misunderstand icons to represent the mouse and keys, which should make things easy for newcomers to grasp.  The art style is crisp and smooth with more rounded characters than usual for an MMO.

freerealms_tutorial

My personal MMO experience is for the most part limited to a lapsed Warhammer Age of Reckoning subscription.  That, combined with my Production professor at FIEA being the live team Executive Producer of Ultima Online has given me an appreciation of the changes Sony has made to the MMO formula by going for a free-to-play model.  The core design in a pay MMO is to find ways to waste people’s time to artificially extend playtime, be it endless wandering between points of interest or forcing you to start an alt. character if you want to try out a different job/class w/o resetting your existing character’s progress.

After first entering an area in Free Realms you can teleport freely between them.  No 1-hour recharge times.  And you’re encouraged to try out all sorts of jobs and their respective mini-games.  Jobs include chef, postman, warrior, pet trainer, kart driver (racing or destruction derby!), explorer, and a few others.  At any point you can switch jobs and costumes and still retain any levels/experience gained.  To alleviate aimless wandering due to a worthless map, you can easily switch between active quests and are pointed in the proper direction by helpful floating arrows and a Fable 2-esque hologram path.  Thanks, Sony, for making something end-user friendly for once!

Theoretically, the game should have launched to the public this Tuesday, but it seems there were some issues.  Whenever it does come back up, I recommend checking it out for an easy-to-get-into MMO.  Remember, the basic experience is free!

Carl @ 12:33 am
Filed under: Games — Tags: , , , , , , —

April 7, 2009

Reason #102 why the PS3 is so damn unenticing

For some odd reason, I decided to finally upgrade my Playstation 3′s hard drive this past weekend.  It was the 80gb (w/ software backwards compatibility), and like everything else, I’ve consumed all the hard drive space.  Wanting to continue downloading–and hoarding–high-definition videos, I juggled some of my extra laptop hard drives and settled on giving it a 250gb 5400rpm drive rather than the old 160gb 7200rpm drive that’s currently in my laptop.  The 320gb 5400rpm (but Samsung fast) drive I bought who knows how long ago will eventually go into my laptop.

In all fairness, some of the issues I encountered during this torturous procedure weren’t Sony’s fault and instead problems with my own ambition.  But most of them were. (more…)

Carl @ 1:24 am
Filed under: Games,Personal,Reviews,Techniques — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , —

December 5, 2008

Carl’s Movie Mini-Review: Hancock

When I saw the number of production logos leading into the movie, I had a bad feeling. All the reviews say it’s like two different movies duct taped together. To me, it felt like three (though the middle one was only about 15 minutes). The tone of the movie shifted so many times. I almost had the sense it was one of those vignette anthologies that allow different artists/filmmakers/etc. to explore their own unique takes on a character, ala Animatrix/Gotham Knight or different story archs with comic book characters. I don’t think the number of writers and producers listed could be accurate. It felt like there was a lack of consistent direction.

Now, it’s not a total mess, but it has too many unfortunate where’d-that-come-from? moments.

Dear Sony. Why do your big summer blockbusters have horrible special effects? Spider-man, even if crowds got tired after a couple sequels, would still pull in the big bucks. With Hancock, Will Smith is Mr. 4th of July. You’re guaranteed to make the money back; please invest more money in the effects budget so my eyes don’t bleed!

While I’m not going to tell you to avoid the movie, neither will I tell you it’s something worth seeing. It’s awkward, but it’s a fair way to spend an hour and a half.

Carl @ 10:10 pm
Filed under: Film,Reviews — Tags: , , —