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!**

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]

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!

Where do you feel most like yourself?

The best version of yourself. The one where every moment of the day is
a smile because in that place there is no-one else you would rather
be?

Is it strange I feel this way volunteering for a conference?

For the last eleven years, the Conference Associate (CA) program at
the annual Game Developer’s Conference in San Francisco has not only
been the source of all my best opportunities to find contacts and work
in the game industry, it has been where I renew my spirit and love for
this industry and its people.

As a CA volunteer, I have badged session lines, run errands for show
management, managed hordes of t-shirt hungry attendees, and served in
many support capacities for other volunteers. None of this is what
you might call glamorous stuff. At any other show it would be grunt
work–the most boring and uncreative labor this side of leaning on a
wall.

But the leadership of the CA program, Tim Brengle and Ian Mckenzie,
make it amazing. They call it an experiment in management; to start by
choosing an exceptionally trustworthy team (of 400!) and then to
explicitly entrust that team with the power to think and act
independently, employing numerous systems to make that trust and
support evident. As a member of the CA team, I feel as creative
supporting a speaker’s talk experience as I would making my own concept art
or animation.

Last week was the 2011 GDC in San Francisco. It was also the 25th
anniversary of the conference. Tim Brengle is one of only two people
who have attended all twenty-five. As one of the founders of the
conference, he initiated the spirit of all future CAs by seeing a need
and diving in, volunteering to create a system to manage attendee
needs. For over twenty years he and then Ian McKenzie have grown this
system with the support and input of their many hands and eyes, the
Conference Associates.

The selection process is famously mysterious. The people chosen to
serve are exceptionally varied in age, background, and physical
ability, with a gender balance and ethnic diversity that is a far, far
better approximation of game player culture than the industry normally
displays. Students work beside industry veterans. After 11 years, I
have seen an extraordinary number of those students become industry
veterans. The selection process is only mysterious to the CAs. Those
around them quickly see why they were chosen in the energy,
inventiveness, and joy they bring to the job.

Many of us at Fire Hose Games has served as CAs. Programmer Jeff Ward
was a CA in 2004, programmers Sharat Bhat and Ethan Fenn in 2009 and 2010, and
Marketer Alec Shobin joined this year. It was our pleasure to supply
evening entertainment to the CAs last Thursday by bringing a PS3 dev
kit and big screen to the CA lounge for them to play Slam Bolt Scrappers.
It was a particular pleasure for me to be able to share our game with
people who have meant so much to me for so many years.

Much thanks to the more than sixty CAs who played SBS last week and to
the many more CAs who said they are looking forward to our release
next week. Special thanks to Jennie who loaned us her TV screen.
Heartfelt thanks to Tim and Ian for supporting our studio by having so
many of us on their team.

See you all next year, CAs!

One of the first things people talk about after playing Slam Bolt Scrappers is that, above all else, it’s a mash-up of building and brawling.  Players have to fight their opponents while building magnificently destructive towers – the best players I’ve seen make sure to balance their play style among both mechanics, not spending too much time on either single element, but managing to do both at once.  Mash-ups aren’t a new thing, though, and while the game is unique because of the genres it combines, people have been doing mash-ups SINCE THE DAWN OF TIME.

Here are some of my favorite mash-ups:

Transmetropolitan – Gonzo Journalism x Sci-Fi

Transmetropolitan, possibly Warren Ellis’s best known comic, is a crazy mash-up of genres, and to a lesser extent, mediums.  The plot revolves around the Hunter S Thompson clone, Spider Jerusalem, committing wild acts of gonzo journalism in a dystopian megacity sometime in the far future.  Think Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, but dirtier, and in the future.  Seeing Ellis’s take on gonzo journalism in a technophilic setting is awesome enough, but the mere fact that he’s invoked Hunter S Thompson’s narrative ramblings so precisely through images and speech bubbles is really impressive.  And Spider’s obsessive muckraking that repeatedly levels the corrupt politicians he covers is just icing on the cake.

The Grey Album – The Beatles x Jay-Z

Listening to the Grey Album when it first came out was like a time warp to the past that repaved the road to the future.  Danger Mouse mixed up the Beatles’ White Album with Jay-Z’s Black Album in a way that no one had imagined, revamping music lovers’ expectations of what DJs and producers could do.  This album opened the door to wild mash-up focused DJs like Girl Talk, while pushing Danger Mouse into old school hip-hop, with DangerDoom, chart topping pop/R&B with Gnarls Barkley, and modern bluesy rock with the Black Keys.  Yeah, he’s a pretty prolific producer.  Now that Girl Talk has a strangle hold on eclectic music combinations, you don’t hear much about the Gray Album, so I’m here to remind you where it all began.  Maybe if he chose Reasonable Doubt instead of the Black Album, people would still be talking about it… nah.  Nice work, Danger Mouse.

Mass Effect 2 – Shooter x RPG

Mass Effect 2, by BioWare, was the realization of my Shooter/RPG mash-up fantasies.  Other games have come close, but that visceral feel of riddling your opponents with bullets frequently gets lost in translation – I’m looking at you, V.A.T.S.!  In fact, the Mass Effect team arguably topped traditional shooter firefights by… giving players bullets that LIGHT THEIR ENEMIES ON FIRE.  Yes, it was awesome.  All standard modern shooter mechanics were present (cover system, squad commands, etc.), AND BioWare still had time to craft a storyline of biblical proportions, including tons of side quests and character development.  Now, you might say, “But Alec, Mass Effect 1 did all those things, too!”  My response is simple: ME2 greatly refined all the cool elements of ME1, and is the pinnacle of what BioWare originally set out to do.  All of this wraps up into a wildly epic romp throughout the solar system.  So epic, in fact, that people have claimed that this is the Star Wars of a new generation.  I can’t say I entirely agree, but it certainly does satiate my space opera needs, while exceeding my shooter and RPG expectations.

Firefly – Sci-Fi x The Wild West

Firefly is a truly awesome mash-up of smugglers acting like cowboys while cruising through space and visiting locales that feel ripped straight out of Unforgiven.  In fact, Joss Whedon so thoroughly ingrained the cowboy mentality in the TV show that it could easily stand on its own as a modern western tale.  Adding in gritty space travel, futuristic weaponry with an old school feel, and an American-Chinese alliance that results in characters frequently cursing in Mandarin, is all just icing on the cake.  At only a dozen some odd episodes, the world of Firefly was barely explored, but it still stirred up enough interest to become a cult classic and make my list of favorite mash-ups.

And now, allow me to present my least favorite mash-up:

Twitter – Blogging x IM’ing = FML

And that’s all folks!  Don’t forgot to check out our fan page on Facebook and follow us on… erm, Twitter @FireHoseGames.

Hey scrappers, allow me to introduce you to Chuck Bittner, a quadriplegic stand-up comedian and the mind behind AskACapper.com.  Chuck has a problem with games that many gamers and developers may have not considered: custom button remapping is critical for handicapped folk to be able to play games, but this “feature” is non-existent in many modern titles.  Different controller presets have become more common, but these can’t meet the unique needs of every avid gamer.

With PAX East right around the corner, Chuck will have an opportunity to present his case to developers from around the globe.  He’s started a petition to show developers just how much support he has (over 35,000 signatures so far!), so sign up and help out a good cause!

In case you don’t know (or if you haven’t read Eitan’s thesis), we’re all strong supporters of accessible gaming.  As such, it seemed like a no brainer for us to include completely customizable controls in Slam Bolt Scrappers.  We even went a step further and created “beverage mode,” allowing people to play SBS with only one hand.  To be honest, adding these control modifications with the limited resources of a small team wasn’t a trivial task.  But we did it. And if we can make it happen, so can all the big name developers out there. Video games have reached a tipping point where they’ve spilled into mainstream entertainment, so developers should work hard to make sure that everyone who wants to enjoy their game, can.

And now, for something completely different.

If you don’t care about the industry in MA, then feel free to skip right on to our other content, but if you are a game developer, designer, artist, producer, etc. or know someone who is, then I encourage you to take a minute to read up on why tax incentives are becoming such an important issue.

Last night, I attended the Massachusetts, Evolved event put on by the New England Games Special Interest Group of the MIT Enterprise Forum (NE Games SIG).  I want to talk about why I feel that it was such an important event, and what I feel needs to happen to continue moving this conversation forward.

As a bit of background, this conversation really got rolling when Curt Schilling and his gaming company, 38 Studios, up and left Massachusetts for greener pastures in Rhode Island- $75 million in loan guarantees greener, to be precise.  With the exodus of an estimated 200 high-tech jobs, MA legislators started to take notice.

There are two sides in this issue, of course.  On the one hand, you have a burgeoning industry with a lot of potential to become hugely profitable for the state, and on the other hand the state has limited resources and doesn’t want to play favorites among specific industries when offering broader, but smaller, incentives to all businesses might prove favorable (and politically safe). Incentives have been offered to a few industries in MA in the past (biotech, green, movies), with varied results.  But the movement of 38 Studios has prompted lawmakers to ask, can we afford to lose these companies?

Last night’s event was moderated by Rodney Brown of Mass High Tech, and consisted of a panel comprised of Rep. Vincent Pedone, as well as Eric Nakajima from the state’s office of economic development, Dr. Ian Davis from Rockstar New England, Ken Surdan from Turbine, and Mike Tinney from CCP North America.

One of the most critical points that was made in the evening was brought up by Davis, who pointed out that video games are a project-based industry in which the largest costs are salaries.  When a studio takes on a large project, they can hire a large team, but when the project ends, the funds dry up unless there is another project waiting.  Creating tax incentives would help to smooth out the cash flow issues that game companies face in between projects, and allow them to employ more people for longer.

Surdan and Pedone pointed to the fact that Massachusetts has some of the greatest universities incubating some of the most talented minds in the industry, just to ship them off to other states.  With all this talent in the area, why not make the ground more fertile to plant some seeds?

Tinney had a unique perspective, as CCP is located in Atlanta, GA, which offers tax incentives for video game companies.  Tinney said that the incentives have allowed CCP North America to bring jobs in to the studio that might have otherwise been given to CCP’s other studios outside the US.  And Georgia isn’t alone– seventeen other states offer financial incentives to video game companies.

Most importantly, State Representative Vincent Pedone (Worchester, Dem.) has drafted a bill that will create significant tax incentives for gaming companies. The details of the legislation are still in progress, but I called Rep. Pedone’s office and they kindly sent us an outline of the current draft (subject to change), which you can download and read here.

I personally encourage you to get involved with this issue in whatever way you can.  Call or write to your local Rep., and let them know that this issue is important to you.  Go to the Boston Globe editorial article from this past Monday and leave a comment in support.  Blog about it, tweet about it, facebook it, whatever– just get the word out there that this issue is important and you want your voice heard.

It’s currently 2 degrees out in Boston and looking around, all I can see are piles of snow that stretch up above my head.  I reach into the nearest mound of snow, grab a handful, and start gobbling down the sweet melty goodness.  Hey, look at that, my health bar went up!

Besides the flying construction workers, the single most realistic part of our game is that eating snow gives you health.  It’s an awesome, pseudo-easter egg that we discovered the other day during testing (you didn’t think we’d inject our game with realism on purpose, did you?!), and I’ll be damned if we aren’t leaving it in.  It just sounds right: “Eat the snow to gain health.” Of course you do!

Rock you like a… Avalanche

Snow only shows up in a few levels of SBS, but when it does, it instantly changes the game.  The core mechanic for environmental snow was taken from a weapon that we had in earlier builds – it was one of the block types that we showed off at PAX Prime 2010, so a few of you may have even used it before.  I’ll call it the “snow thrower” here to eliminate confusion.  Building a square out of snow thrower blocks created a weapon that launched snow on top of your enemy’s tower, blanketing the tops of their blocks with snow and making it more difficult for them to build.  When a snow ball fell on your tower, you could build on top of it and wait for it to melt away, but the much more satisfying approach was to punch it out, sending snow particles flying all over the screen.

It sounds cool, but we noticed some problems with the “snow thrower” during playtesting.  SBS is generally more fun with fewer block types in play at a time – 3 seems to be the sweet spot for most weapon types.  So, with the non-damaging snow thrower taking up one of those slots, it caused games to last much longer – players didn’t have enough offensive options to help them take down their opponent quickly.  Which wasn’t to say that players didn’t like the snow falling mechanic, they just didn’t want to have to use up one of their precious block type slots on a weapon that didn’t directly lead to them winning a match.  We began messing around with using the snow as an environmental hazard in a couple levels, essentially a random avalanche that evenly blanketed all platforms with snow, and the complaints just… melted away.  Now, players still get to dash through the snow with the comet attack (very fun), but don’t have to worry about sacrificing weaponry for a non-offensive block type.

The Robot Boss in Mountaintop 1 causes an avalanche to hit the player's tower

The Mighty Re-Arranger

Transparent blocks spawn in the center of the level in Downtown 1

After playing a round of SBS, it becomes clear that players need a way to rearrange their tower.  Cut to the transparent block – a wire frame block shape that acts as a cookie cutter for your blocks.  Line the transparent block up with blocks you want to move and press circle to pull those blocks from your tower.  The blocks you removed get added to your queue and you can go about building with them like normal.  Besides building with them, you can also press triangle to “discard” or eat them, removing the blocks from your queue and giving your character more health.

The player is lining up the transparent block to pull the highlighted blocks from their tower

The player is now carrying the blocks they picked up with the transparent block. Internally, we refer to this as a "hot mess".

Things got a little wonky when we considered that there were now two types of blocks in play: colored blocks that you build with, and snow blocks that prevent you from building in places until they are destroyed.  How should the transparent block effect snow blocks?  Easy answer: transparent blocks treat snow blocks the same as all other blocks.  And because of that magical concept, players can eat snow to gain health.  Just like real life…

The player now has snow in their "hot mess," ready for eating!