Waaaaaaaaagh.

As much as I may want to portray myself as some enlightened connoisseur of interactive digital entertainment (like every other geek with a blog on the net), I can still be a sucker for shameless consumerism in the form of HOT DEALS or DELUXE EDITIONS. So when I saw the Collector’s Edition for Warhammer Online, I was overcome with a minor bout of nerd lust.

I’m not a particular fan of the Warhammer universe (I simply don’t know much about it), but man, that’s some swanky packaging. It includes a graphic novel and a miniature (for the Warhammer tabletop game), but the one physical item I’m particularly interested in is the snazzy hardcover art book — if nothing else, Warhammer is an IP with some killer art. In a move that no doubt stirred up copious controversy on fansite message boards, the Collector’s Edition also includes some in-game perks, such as exclusive quests, exclusive character heads, and a consumable item that will give you a temporary experience-gain bonus.

I lack the disposable income to put money down on it right now, but pre-order or not, I mean to check this game out when it goes live. In the public mind, it still seems to suffer from WoW comparisons, but, taking the developers at their word, the two games diverge in that WAR’s focus and endgame is in its competitive, team-based PvP and territorial conquest. It’s funny, because I generally don’t consider myself a competitive, aggressive player, but there’s something very compelling about casually dropping into a big, epic battle between two player armies.

The ideal I have in my mind is that WAR will be a blend of the strengths of WoW and TF2. The quick gratification and ad-hoc strategizing of TF2, rolled into the persistent RPG systems and communal metagame of WoW. I have no idea if my little dream will be delivered upon (I’m not in beta!), but I certainly look forward to finding out.

Yeah, but don’t gaming PCs cost $8000?!

Wow. Check out this ridiculously exhaustive list of 2008 PC games.

I’ve not heard of the majority of these; many of them are clearly smaller indie titles, which is itself very exciting. Are we quickly approaching the point where indie studios can really cultivate an audience, stay profitable, and become a significant, entrenched force in the industry?

Look at all of those Adventure games. My love for the adventure genre has tapered off over the years, but still, it’s somehow very comforting to know that somewhere out there, somebody is still making adventure games, and there is an audience that pays for them. God bless you, you creative weirdos. . . probably all a bunch of Scandinavians, I bet.

Anyway. I want to know more about Eduardo the Samurai Toaster.

Content, assets, and the infinite hole at the center of the universe

I saw this article on Game Career Guide yesterday: “Which Artists Will Game Companies Hire?” Quite relevant to my interests.

To give the quick run-down, games are damn expensive to make, so outsourcing art assets is becoming increasingly common. To stay in-demand then, the article subject, Carey Chico, executive art director at Pandemic Studios, recommends being versatile and multi-disciplined, meaning anything from being competent with both character and environment art, to knowing scripting or programming, or even having experience in management.

It sounds good to me. I mean, the outsourcing bit is never good to hear, but the part about versatility is encouraging. As much as I love the process of art creation, my interest in game development has always been fairly holistic, and expanding my skillset laterally is something I mean to focus on in the future. I may never quite be able to quite grok programming, and may never progress past the stage of making a cheap little Tetris clone, but I mean to try, at any rate. It’s one of my 2008 resolutions, in fact: at least start to learn some programming.

I wanted to come back to the outsourcing thing too though — or at least the root problem of assets and content. It’s sort of the giant, looming issue du jour, for the entire industry, the main reason for ballooning development costs. I don’t want to dig into that entire can of worms though, so I’ll just cut to my little complaint: disposable content. What I mean by “disposable content” is game assets that the player will be exposed to for perhaps 2 seconds and never see again. Completely forgettable, arguably unnecessary, but an artist may have spent hours or days producing it. I’m very sensitive to this when I play through games, keeping my eye out for underutilized or superfluous art assets. In fact, I’ve probably worked on projects that were guilty of this offense.

To offer up a concrete example from a game I’m currently playing through, in Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines (which I’ll talk more about in a future post), there’s a side-quest in which you venture into a prosthetic limb workshop. There are crates of the guy’s handiwork (haha, punny) sitting around on shelves, and as intended, it’s pretty creepy. Unfortunately, you’re in and out of there in only a few minutes, barely a speed bump in the game experience as a whole. I imagine a handful of artists spent at least a few days producing the necessary assets, not to mention the designer time in laying the area out, so one can’t help but think there might have been a better use of those resources.

Portal and Team Fortress 2, on the other hand, are fine examples of effective use of art assets. Granted, it may be unfair to compare these to big, epic, AAA adventurey games, but there are lessons to be learned nonetheless. Both games take a pretty lean set of art assets — textures, props, etc — and manage to make them work, largely through focused, consistent art direction. Portal’s sterile, uncluttered environments obviously made a lot of sense for the game, and TF2 managed to use unique map layouts and centerpiece props/features to differentiate environments. For example, the radar tower in Gravelpit, the train station in Well, and the bridge area of 2fort all serve as memorable focal points, to make maps that otherwise share the same art assets distinctive.

I’ll leave it there. I of course don’t mean to say that it’s easy work, ensuring that art assets will have the content and gameplay to make them worthwhile (and vice versa). It’s merely something I notice a lot, and it sticks out more than ever in this age of skyrocketing costs and outsourcing.

Mantis dude COMPLETION MIRACLE SUCCESS

My Dark Sun / Mantis dude portfolio page is now updated, and barring any further issues, it’s done. Now I can proceed with Operation J.O.B. G.E.T. (an acronym, incidentally, for “Jerome, Outlook Bleak? Gain Employment Terrific!”).

Some links to share:

Feet of Clay
Once upon a time, I very much enjoyed the blog of game designer Dave Rickey, until I went to visit one day and found it mysteriously VANISHED. Now he’s back though, and I would not hesitate for a second to recommend his blog to anybody interested in MMO theory. He is a VERY SMART MAN.

Not Addicted.com
Also returned from the nether, after a long period of having no front page. It’s sort of a comedic digest for the MMO space, from a Flowers of Happiness pedigree. Glad to see them back up and around.

Lots of Valve stuff on the latest episode of Game Trailers TV
I don’t know if any of it is new and exclusive, but I suspect a great many of us are interested in hearing all we can from these developers who can currently do no wrong. There’s good footage of Left 4 Dead, as well as a very brief fly-through of Gold Rush, the next official Team Fortress 2 map.

Warning though: there are some Portal spoilers in Part 2.

Speaking of TF2, I’ve barely played it at all for the past couple weeks, and I really ought to rectify that.