Category Archives: Rant

Lately Congress have proposed two bills that are extremely harmful to the internet as we know it, SOPA and PIPA. If you don’t know what these are here’s a great one pager explaining it all from the EFF.

A lot of the internet has decided to go on strike against these ill conceived measures, and so we at Fire Hose have decided to express our support of this protest. We’re the people this bill is supposed to protect (after all we’re IP owners) and even we don’t want this… so why is Congress trying to pass it?

Hello Fire Hose friends.

Perhaps on Halloween you stumbled across an article on Kotaku about how you, yes you, can play BioShock Monopoly for free. If you did not see it there you might have seen it on GamesRadar, GamePro, or The Escapist . There are other sites that it is appearing on as well….

As it turns out this board game was not made by a 20 something art student in Canada, as some sources are reporting, but was actually created by your’s truly.

It may be hard to believe but I like BioShock.

This is me, dressed as a Little Sister, holding onto Songbird while standing next to Delta across from Elizabeth.

Before coming to work at Fire Hose I taught at a charter school called The Renaissance School for the Arts. There I taught a class about the art of video games. We studied video games and their place in Ludology. As an assignment I asked students to create their own board game versions of video games. The board circulating around the internet was my example to them.

The board was made both for the purposes of my class and in conjunction with a challenge issued by some members of the 2K Forums.

To make the board I spent a lot of time playing BioShock. I wanted to make sure that this was not just Monopoly with art plastered over it, but an experience that would remind players of Rapture. I started by looking at how Monopoly was set up, with the least desirable properties at the start of the game board and the prized tracts of land situated at the end; I sought to mimic this.

People that look at the board will notice that the first properties are BioShock 2′s Limbo Room and Sinclair Deluxe both of which are found within Rapture’s skid row; “Pauper’s Drop.” As you travel the board the properties become more valuable based on their fictional in game location or fan popularity. Some concessions were made, (I wanted Monopoly’s Marvin Gardens to be replaced with Arcadia due to the garden theme), but for the most part the game board mimics the original as far as property values are concerned.

The railroads have been replaced by various scientific ventures. Now you can buy Fontaine Futuristics, Ryan Industries, Sinclair Solutions, or Tennenbaum’s Safehouse.

Waterworks and Electric Company have also been replaced by Raptures two favorite vending machines: Circus of Values and El Ammo Bandito.

No more Chance or Community Chest– now it is Power to the People and Swami. The sites that featured the game board on Halloween mention that there are no cards to go with these spaces….

But I beg to differ. 

The jail space features the officer splicer Ducky, and free parking sports a Bathysphere.

I may have been very thorough with my game board.

Even the money was given a BioShock treatment.

And that is how the BioShock Monopoly was made. It was made by a chick that works here at Fire Hose games.

It took me several hours to make (I would rather not admit how long) and I am very pleased to see that after being on the internet for quite some time people are still enjoying it. ^_^

**Getting back to those Swami and Power to the People cards… The cards clearly do exist and we are going to be posting them on the Fire Hose blog in the very near future!**

In his June 12 Op-Ed in the Globe, Jeff Jacoby (@jeff_jacoby) writes that “the video game industry wants to be bribed to do business in Massachusetts.”

He goes on to describe how the state shouldn’t pick winners when it comes to businesses.  That tax benefits have not worked in the past for the green industry, movie industry, or for mutual funds.  Each of these industries is completely different, and the attempt to apply a single rule to all markets is a fallacy.  In fact, there have been incentive programs in Massachusetts that have worked extraordinarily well, bringing in jobs and revenue into the state.  A fine example of this is illustrated in the success of the biotech industry in Massachusetts.

As State Rep. Vincent Pedone (Worchester Dem.) has pointed out in the past, “Twenty-five or 30 years ago, no one in the commonwealth knew what biotechnology was, and it has now become a critical part of our Massachusetts economy. We think the video game design industry has equal potential.”  Rep. Pedone has been a key figure in introducing the legislation that would support video game companies.

Some argue that MA should be more business-friendly in general.  While it’s true that MA taxes are some of the highest around, there are other benefits which help to balance this challenge.  According to CNBC’s 2010 report, Massachusetts is ranked #5 in America’s Top States for Business.  This score is mostly due to the fact that Massachusetts is #1 in Education.  We have some of the greatest minds coming out of the greatest schools in the country.  In the games industry especially, we end up sending that talent away to greener pastures for game development because the jobs are in California, Washington, or Texas.

Here at Fire Hose Games, we are constantly getting inquiries from eager, qualified applicants that could be contributing to the MA economy, if only there were a position for them.  Tax incentives would allow companies like ours to retain our capital for longer so we could employ more people, over longer periods of time.  Jacoby claims that MA games companies want to hire more senior-level people, but it is much more than that.  We want to hire more senior-level, junior-level, and entry-level people.  We want to create jobs here and grow the already flourishing community into one of the strongest in the United States.  We want to keep our talent here in Massachusetts instead of shipping our grads off to California.

The video game industry is traditionally highly project-based.  Development cycles are long, and when capital runs low, layoffs are made.  Again, tax incentives from the State would allow us to smooth the bumps during ups and downs of project cycles so that we would not lose people during downturns.  Furthermore, this model is changing, as the industry increasingly trends toward less project-based cycles and more sustainable, long term revenue cycles.

In grand editorial style, Jacoby goes as far as insulting the game companies that want to help Massachusetts, as well as our own businesses, grow, quoting Pushkin to call us pigs.  He also makes comparisons to rich Hollywood actors and Fidelity Investments.  Those kinds of comparisons are not only completely inaccurate, but they speak to a basic lack of understanding or research about the games industry whatsoever.  According to the 2010 IBISWorld Report on the Video Games industry, the average wage in the games industry was $47k, and the wages/revenue ratio was about 25%.  Not exactly the fatcats you were expecting?  We aren’t asking for Massachusetts to bribe us, we simply want to aid our businesses so we can stay here, instead of having to leave like 38 Studios did.  Already, 17 other states have tax incentives of some form for video games.  Massachusetts is behind the curve. 

Our Fire Chief, Eitan Glinert, had this to say, “If Fire Hose was offered a deal like the one that 38 Studios got with Rhode Island we would leave Massachusetts. To some degree we feel like we’re the only ones missing out; we see the federal government giving out billions of dollars in bailout money to huge business (usually to financial companies that create nothing of value but profit for themselves) while small businesses get the handout shaft. We see other states giving tax incentives or loan guarantees to incoming high tech and media companies. We see foreign governments investing in small businesses with grants designed to help them get off the ground. Here in Massachusetts we get none of these things, and to be frank it feels like we get no government support. A tax break, even a small one, would go a long way to help us make ends meet in an expensive city and keep us rooted in a state we love.”

Video games are a fast moving, technologically intensive industry that is expecting growth rates upwards of 8% in total U.S. Revenues over the 2011-2016 period, as well as increased profitability due to digital distribution.  This is a burgeoning industry in its growth phase with increasing globalization; in other words, a huge opportunity.  Why shouldn’t Massachusetts want to invest in an industry like ours, and enjoy some of that GDP?

This weekend, Boston Game Jams ran Cardboard Jam, a game jam where everyone made board or card games instead of making digital games. I have to say, I think I had way more fun at this game jam than at almost any other digital jam I’ve been a part of for a few reasons.

First, there’s no tech choices or learning curve. At digital Game Jams, the first thing you have to do (once you have a game you want to create) is decide what technology you want to work in. This can be tough when you have multiple people who all come with different tech backgrounds and make them try to work together. Either you end up choosing teams based on tech that people know, or a few people end up working in tech they are unfamiliar with. This can make many digital game jam more about overcoming technical challenges, rather than overcoming design challenges in the game.

Second, other than the theme of the materials, there was no theme for this Jam. Though originally I thought this was a detriment, I am beginning to think that the lack of theme contributed to making this Jam awesome. In every game jam I’ve participated in, the themes have been aesthetic. They’re themes like “immigration,” “extinction,” or “deception,” and although they offer a good constraint on the Jam (and place everyone on equal footing for implementing an idea), they force most Jammers to think in terms of aesthetic first, mechanic last. This is why most Jammers can’t “finish,” because they’re actually pushing for an aesthetic, rather than mechanical goal.

Last, jamming in board games meant that iteration cycles were really, really fast, which meant that you could focus on and tune the game and the mechanics quickly, which resulted in better games across the board. The game I worked on took about 10 minutes to play, and after initial discussion, we did nothing but play it, with short discussions in between. We probably play tested the game 50 times, each time with slightly tweaked rules to attempt to address problems we were seeing in the previous play through. Iteration times like this not only let you learn more about the game you’re creating, but more about game design in general, since you see the results of you actions quickly. This speed of iteration and learning would have been impossible in a digital game jam, since implementing rule changes requires too many cycles. In digital game jams, if you get two to three full playtests in before time is up you’re lucky, and that’s including for teams that use prebuilt engines like Unity.

So in closing, if you get a chance to participate in a board game jam, you absolutely should. There’s less stress, more learning, and way more collaboration. That, and you end up with an actually complete board game at the end, which is super awesome.

[For more insights from Jeff, stop by his blog at JeffOnGames.com and follow him on Twitter at @FuzzyBinary]

Hello True Believers,

As Alec noted last week, Issue #1 of the new FF series (the successor to Fantastic Four, now that Johnny Storm has been killed, penciled by Steve Epting) shows Franklin Richards (son of Reed and Sue) playing a video game he has just lost, and that game is Slam Bolt Scrappers!

The shot is from SBS circa Fall 2010 (after PAX Prime, when the health bars were vertical instead of horizontal, many months before release).

Here is the actual image they found on the web and used!:

And here is a side-by-side of the comic art and the original:

As far as we can tell, they set the Hue (in Hue/Saturation) to 180 and then the Cutout filter was applied (before the non-SBS text was overlayed).

In the process of unraveling this, I started playing with the Cutout filter and the Hue/Saturation of other shots from the game. Here were some of my favorites. What do you think? Any of these worth a spot in the Modern Museum of Art?

And the ultimate question: Are the results as cool when this is tried in other games, or is it only in the splendid chaos of Slam Bolt Scrappers?

–Jason

P.S. Hey Steve Epting: next time you are in Boston, come visit us!