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GDC, or the Game Developer's Conference, is an annual convention for game developers, publishers, journalists, and players to meet and share opinions on the future of the industry.
Of course, it is also a chance for up-and-coming developers to gain insight from industry veterans on how to better use their creative talents.
Groundbreaking games and gaming concepts often come out of GDC, along with important announcements by major companies.
Ani-Gamers will be adding news articles involving GDC into this sub-page so as not to clutter the main page.
Keep your finger over that F5 button; things move real fast in the gaming industry.
3/9/07
--Nintendo has made a somewhat vague announcement telling gamers that they'll be playing The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass this coming summer.
The people over at GameDaily are taking a guess that the date will be around Mid-June, and that seems like a reasonable estimate.
This should be enough to appease Nintendo fanboys whining about a summer drought in AAA Nintendo Wii titles.
(via GameDaily)
3/8/07
--Peter Molyneux, the man behind such hits as Fable and Black and White, spoke at a lecture about Fable 2, the much anticipated sequel to the popular real-time RPG.
The British developer explained that in Fable 2, he really wanted to achieve "wow" moments with about three new features.
He would only explain a single one of these to the audience: emotions.
The game will utilize a much more in-depth emotional system than its predecessor, allowing you to marry, have children, and of course, have a dog.
Yep, just as previews and rumors have been hinting at, Fable 2 gives you the ability to own a dog.
It will follow you around everywhere, help with puzzles and fights, and even become a gateway to new quests.
The goal of new features like this is to immerse the player in the emotion of the game, so that they can really feel like they are playing out this virtual life, though it may only be a "Fable."
Other innovative features include unspecified online functionality involving the dog, new sale mechanics, and adaptive terrain.
Nearly everything in the game, from street stalls to castles, will be sellable.
Finally, the geography of the world will change depending on your actions throughout the game.
(via GameSpot)
--At a special "Experimental Gameplay Session" at GDC, indie developers showed off the newest and one of the most innovative input methods in video games: Audio. The games shown in the session showed amazing new game mechanics based on the player literally making music. Joystiq reports some of the games at the panel:
- The selected music will create falling enemies from the top of the screen (Though it was written with pop in mind, classical music was used to a rather disappointing effect). As a ball tethered to both sides of the screen, you move it with the mouse to capture the enemies. Capture radius too small? Talk (or yell) into the microphone and the radius increases accordingly). We rank this one impressive.
- Designer Sean Barret created a Tempest style game, where the player has two shooters representing the bass and treble. As enemies come down the field, your shoots created the notes according to the row you were at (the bass blaster had five or so lines reserved, while treble had eight or nine). In this scenario, the game was forcing you to play the song. To prove this point, we witness the horrible sounds made when shots are fired randomly or targets missed.
- In another game, blips appeared on the screen and you had to avoid them with your mouse cursor. Each near-hit would register a sound, starting with a simple bass beat. As the game progressed, more obstacles and lighting effects would appear. Eventually, we lost track of what the point of the game was, though the flashing lights, reminiscent of a rave, enjoyed us enough not to care. The audience agreed, cheering wildly at the demo's conclusion.
- Casey Miratori's entry certainly wins style points. Starting with a disclaimer, "this game has been editid to comply with ESRB ratings guidelines," Ears of War had to parts: censorship training and the standard mission. We aren't sure if censorship training was interactive; from our perspective, it just played a profanity-laden phrase and counted, rated and censored each of potty mouth words. Mission mode was a first person shooter that looked like a hackneyed version of Gears of War. You hum the theme song of the game (we're not sure what it is) to move forward along a track, continuing to stay hidden behind barriers. Making a machine gun sound caused the player to fire at the enemies.
Developer Kokoromi also held an open design contest for smaller developers. The following games were the winners of the contest. They were required to use some form of audio input for the gameplay.
- I have big balls. The name of the game, quite predictably, drew giggles from the audience. The title is a 2-player sumo match where you can have -- and we quote -- "blowing and sucking forces" as you try to push the other character off the screen. The floor of the level rippled in conjunction with the audio input, which adding a physical challenge.
- Goatscape from Garage Games. The gameplay was inspired by Smash TV, where enemies came out of four entrances positioned at the top, bottom, left and right of screen. The enemy propagation rate and speed was affected by the bass beat. Each enemy leaves a colorful, paintball-esque stain once vanquished. Shown off was a favorite mode where you had to save the VIP, a quivering kitten with big eyes.
- Cosmo Crash. This game was rather simple and the audio control was minimal. You dodge asteroids, whose source rotate around the screen that gave it a somewhat more interesting environment (as opposed to the stoic, right-to-left nature of R-Type, for example). From what we gather, the audio input only controlled the background color, though the frequency of asteroids seem to be relative. Multiplayer is where this title shines.
- Cylvans (pictured). Somewhat akin to a real-time variant of Go, with a few twists. The game board responds to the frequencies of a song. As you place pieces on the board against your opponent, every time the corresponding frequency is triggered your piece overlaying that square will grow. Pieces can be destroy by having your chips surround the opponent's piece. That's the kind of game we'd love to spend time developing strategies and playing with friends.
- Glee, which Kokomori made themselves. Your mission was to attempt to catch as many pulsers (vectorized skeletons of emoticons). Low, medium and high frequencies produce different colored pulsers. Bonus points for capture pulsers in their corresponding colored nest. To defeat enemies, you have to push pulsers into them simlar to Pikmin. (Again, Kokoromi talks about the "sucking and blowing" forces, and again there are laughs.)
- Mr. Hands, a puzzle game using XNA development tools. Take your goofy arms and move them to grab orbs and avoid bombs. Music incorporation is minimal, control the aesthetic wiggle of arms and the timer speed.
- Rainbow Surfer was our second favorite next to Cylvans. You play a leprechaun riding a trout on a rainbow. The rainbows hills and valleys controlled via the music frequencies. The gameplay had a very Excite Bike-esque feel to it.
This is a great step towards innovation in games.
I can't wait to see how ideas like these are implemented in the big-budget games we all know and love.
And let's not forget about the possiblities of indie games on Virtual Console/XBLA/Playstaytion Store that use audio input.
(via Joystiq)
--Joystiq has a blog entry up about Kim Swift's lecture at the Experimental Gameplay Session.
In the session, she detailed the game mechanics and showed off a puzzle in Portal, Valve's first person puzzler packaged with Half-Life 2: Episode 2.
The game hands you a strange Portal gun and leaves you the task of getting past a variety of puzzles.
These holes in space-time can transport objects and yourself by pulling you towards them.
Click here to read the very interesting and informative article.
(via Joystiq)
3/7/07
--Sony is finally joining the other gaming platforms with the obligatory social networking feature.
Playstation Home will be a free, downloadable "game" for Playstation 3 that allows users to create an avatar and live in their own virtual apartment.
They can furnish this with furniture, real digital photos, and even achievements from their PS3 games.
If this sounds suspiciously to you like some life which is separate and in addition to your first one, you're not alone.
Like Second Life, the popular virtual world for PC, you will be able to interact in real time with other users. (using both text and voice!)
And of course, there will be extra clothing for a currently unspecified price, and "dynamic advertising."
Oh Burger King of in-game advertising, why must you go by so many names?
(via Joystiq)
--Oh yeah, he said it.
Chris Hecker, a developer working for Maxis on the development of Spore (a game being designed for almost all consoles, mind you) gave a searing rant in GDC's "Burning Mad - Game Publishers Rant" session.
In it, he claimed that "the Wii is a piece of sh*t," and that it was just two Gamecubes duct taped together.
Ouch.
His reasons for the console being "severely underpowered" revolved mostly around the Wii's processing power.
Not only is it not powerful enough for next-gen graphics, but he found that the console doesn't have enough processing power for things like advanced AI.
In addition, Hecker was angry that Nintendo did not give "a sh*t about games as an art form."
The dev cited multiple times when Microsoft and Sony have claimed their games as art while Nintendo just wants people to "have fun."
(via IGN)
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