Category Archives: Rant

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!