Posts tagged with “fire hose games”

Last year CEO and creator of ByteJacker, Anthony Carboni, hosted the Independent Games Festival. As you know Fire Hose Games is excited to be part of the record breaking number of entries in the 2011 IGF.

Anthony was able to give us a bit of his time and tell us about his experience as a host and as a gamer at last year’s festival.

You were able to host the 2011 IGF awards, what was that experience like?
Awesome. Amazing. Unbelievably great. It was so wonderful to not just meet the people whose games I’d been talking about for years, but also to have some small part in recognizing and celebrating their work.

Why do you think the IGF awards are important to indie game developers?
Well, in a practical sense, there are a cash awards and obviously a lot more visibility. There are fewer marketing opportunities and a lot less money available for indies to get their name out there – something like the IGF awards can really help with that. On another level, one that I think is just as important, after a hugely grueling project, it’s nice to get the recognition and respect of your peers. Plus you can totally meet Tim Schafer there.

What do gamers get out of the IGF awards?
It’s hard to get into indie games – that’s why I started Bytejacker.[Bytejacker is a review show that only reviews games that are available for download only. It often features Indie titles] Having the IGF awards is a highly visible and accessible way for gamers to see what’s out there and get that sort of gateway into what is essentially another entire gaming industry, with just as many choices as the mainstream one they’re used to.

How is the IGF unique from the GDC?
Indies give you less swag but more high fives when they see you.

What are you looking forward to for this year’s IGF awards?
The whole experience was a whirlwind for me last year – it was my first GDC, my first IGF, I had a show to shoot while I was there and a whole other one to host. This year I’m just looking to go and take it slower and have some more fun.

What do you think about Go Home Dinosaurs?
Looks good! Tower Defense can be a crowded place to make your mark, but if I learned anything from Slam Bolt Scrappers, it’s that you guys can weave genres together in some very unexpected ways.

You can read more from Anthony on his site.

Is not a man entitled to his Chance and Community Chest cards?

As reported earlier this week, the BioShock Monopoly board that is floating around the internet was created by someone right here at Fire Hose.

In celebration of its new-found popularity we are happy to announce that the Community Chest and Chance cards missing from the game set linked to by the Kotaku article are now available on the Fire Hose Games Flickr Photo Stream! The Photo Stream includes a larger game board for easier printing, all money and deeds, plus the brand spankin’ new game cards!

Also, we now have a Flickr page!

Let us know if you like the game by commenting here, on our Facebook page, or shooting us a tweet!

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!**

This year at Fire Hose we had Link, Lady and Lord Gaga, a gameboy, Harray Caray, The 10th Doctor, Ninetales, a Lemming, a tuxedo-clad deer, and not one but two Batmans.

Batmen?

Halloween is a time for gathering with friends, dressing in a ridiculous manner, and demanding candy from strangers. Recently a storm swept through Massachusetts that threatened to put Halloween on hiatus; but our party beat the storm by a day! We were able to drink, be merry, dance, and play Rock Band to our heart’s content all before two feet of snow found it’s way to Massachusetts.

We would love to know what you are all up to this Halloween. Did you dress up like a Splicer to frighten your neighbors? Put together your last pieces of battle armor to trick-or-treat Spartan style? Whatever it is that you were up to, send us some pics of you in your costume and you could get featured on an upcoming blog!

Don’t forget to “like” and look at our Facebook page for more up to date information and contests. Twitter is a good place to keep an eye on too. ^_^

“Should this be moving faster?”
“Is this anticipation long enough to be readable?”
“Can it be more awesome?”

For this post I wanted to discuss how the different departments here at Fire Hose influence each other and how we answer some of the above questions when designing a new feature. It will tend to have a bit of an art-focus since animation is the main thing I contribute to the company. In my next post, I’ll go a little more in depth with the art pipeline and walk through a character from design to implementation.

It all starts with a design pitch. This doesn’t necessarily refer to the way the character looks (although we sometimes worked that way too) but it is usually a discussion on how the character will behave in the context of the game.  Here we just try to work out some very broad strokes and create a rough outline of how we want things to take shape.

Of course an actual design document eventually gets into far greater detail than this, but here is the “skeleton” from which we started:

1. The character will be appearing at point X in game.
2. This character will need the following props/weapons/vehicles.
3. The character will move in this certain way and is in environment Y and we’ll have to consider that in its design.
4. Attacking this character will make use of a special ability or a certain technique.

It’s really important to note that nothing in this design pitch is a concrete mandate. That’s really the beauty of being at a smaller studio; the design process is this totally organic and ever-evolving process that makes use of everyone’s talents.

After this pitch, art, code and design will sit down for an initial brainstorm on what kind of character design and motion would best fit our gameplay thus far. These sessions are usually my favorite part of game development (aside from making stuff move of course!). We just sit down together and blurt out whatever we think might look awesome or feel really cool while you’re playing. It’s like this creative stream of consciousness that is crazy fun and surprisingly productive at the same time.  It’s here where we plan out most of what you’ll see a character do in-game.

These sessions have a huge influence over the entire studio as well.  When we discuss a new idea, we’re potentially inviting many more people into the discussion.  Weapons will need concept, behaviors will need animation, animation will need code support. All of these things get passed back and forth through several iterations as we test. It’s important that we stay aware of the fact that decisions you make can greatly affect someone else’s work and also not to get too attached to certain things, as they can be changed or cut for various reasons.

A major driving force behind the company is everyone’s willingness to give and receive feedback on those ideas. Though not everyone will fancy their selves a designer or an artist, opinions are always welcomed and expected throughout the evolution of the project.  We always try to stay aware of the steps being taken by each other while still allowing people enough “heads-down” time to really crank on the features they’re working on.  Catching that stride in game development is an awesome feeling: when it seems like the bunch of you are moving together as this hive mind, buzzing along and complimenting each other’s genius. It certainly is a huge perk of being at a smaller studio.

So in my next post I’m going to show a bit more of the actual art process here at Fire Hose. Stay tuned!