In a recent interview with Game Informer, Sony Senior Vice President of Product Development Shuhei Yoshida talked about a number of things.  One of these topics pertained to the fact that God of War II, a best-selling and critically acclaimed title considered by many to be one of the last great PS2 games, almost ended up on the PS3.

According to Yoshida, certain departments within the team believed it to be a good idea to put Kratos’ second adventure on their new platform, while others wanted to make one final splash on the PS2.

“We had a lot of debates about it, actually. I always firmly stood by keeping it on PS2. Many people, including marketing, suggested that maybe it should be moved to PS3. What I believed was that God of War II would be the best-selling and best game of the year. We had always seen that, at the launch of a platform, the developer has to spend a lot of time becoming familiar with the platform and software tools. Technical issues take up a lot of the development, perhaps leaving less time for really polishing the game. Towards the end of a platform is when you see really great games, after developers really begin to understand the hardware.”

It’s tough to argue that logic.  After all, God of War II featured something like four times as much content as the original, and executed it all with incredible presentation, epic scale and heaps of gore.  Had the team been forced to work with the relatively new tech associated with the PS3, things might not have turned out so well.  As Yoshida points out, it was only fair to the team that they get to finish what they started on the platform they started on.

“In the God of War franchise,” he continued, “I saw an opportunity for the Santa Monica team to complete their vision for the second game on a platform they totally understood. That was my argument and the company and team supported it. I’m very happy with the result. So to your question, I have never regretted the fact that we released God of War II on PS2.”

Seems like things worked out in the end, as God of War II is considered by many to be one of the best action games ever made, and I believe that’s largely due to the fact that it was made with very familiar technology, and not as a semi-tech demo for a new console.  Good call Sony.

Source: Game Informer

With Mass Effect 2 in its final stages of production, BioWare is hard at work applying the finishing touches that we’ve come to love and expect. Gamer Limit was fortunate enough to sit in on a roundtable interview with Project Director Casey Hudson, where many details pertaining to the combat system, dialogue options, and many other important aspects were revealed.

In addition to serving as Project Director to both installments of Mass Effect and the original Knights of the Old Republic, Casey has also worked on BioWare hits such as MDK2, Baldur’s Gate II: Shadow of Amn, and Neverwinter Nights. Come join us as we sit down with Casey Hudson and delve deeper into the inner workings of Mass Effect 2.

In what ways has combat substantially changed since Mass Effect?

We probably improved every single aspect of combat. To go through some of them, it really starts with the feel of combat, the way weapons feel in your hand and the way aiming feels. We really did a lot of work in the area, and fundamental to that is frame rate. On the first game we were trying to create a really ambitious universe and a non linear play style, which made it very difficult for us to find a final texture and memory budget and everything, but now that we have the first game that served as to what our final budget was, we were able to be a lot more strict about performance so that we could make sure we were always running at a smooth, fast frame rate, and that probably is one of the biggest things you will feel as a difference in combat.

Now it’s so much smoother, it’s easier to control the characters, it’s easier to aim: it just feels really good because the frame rate is a lot faster. But we’ve also done a lot of work to the camera and the aiming system. It’s a lot easier, it feels a lot better as you’re zooming in and targeting enemies.

Related to that is the weapons, we still have a very much RPG style approach to weapons and items. You’re buying things, you’re selling them at the stores, you’re upgrading and modding. The thing that I think people will find, you choose your weapons by feel because they each feel very different. We have more weapon classess in this game, and you start to choose your weapons just by how good they feel and what your preference is.

With the pistol category, we have a hand canon, a heavier pistol, we have a sub machine gun, and you might really like the feel of a Desert Eagle-style heavy caliber pistol if you like one shot weapons. You might also like the feel of the sub machine gun where you can do a spray of many rounds and but less accuracy, with more area damage. You feel these things, and that’s one of the big things that people find when they’re playing, they’ll switch to a weapon, and they’ll fire it, and they’ll love the weapon. It’s nothing we can put on a bullet point, but I think it’s probably the biggest thing people will notice, it feels really good.

In Mass Effect 1, part of the problem with it, because the weapon was a skill, your character might have a low skill in a given weapon, and that means you as a player might be able to get the reticule on an enemy, but your character would be unable to hit them because a character has a low skill or the weapon is a poor weapon. We’ve moved those things onto different kinds of powers, and so now the character is able to fire as well as you can, and just really adds to the precision of the combat. But at the same time, all the same depth is there in terms of your character progression. We put those things more into powers that really get to the fantasy fulfillment of each class, so each class feels deeper and more varied.

One of the favorites is Vanguard. As a Vanguard, you are good at shotguns and you have some biotic powers. One of them is “Charge,” it’s a new power where you can launch yourself across the level, you launch yourself using Biotic powers at a tremendous speed so you can physically hit another enemy, and when you do that, the higher end version of the power actually slows down time when you hit them, so they get launched into the air and then, in slow motion, you’re right there with your shotgun. It creates this really high risk, high reward type of combat. Its a unique type of play style.

But then you have other kinds of classes like the Adept, which can essentially remotely command the battle field. You’re looking around at all the different enemies, and you’re able to do Pull and Throw and all these amazing abilities, but, beyond that, we’ve advanced those powers so that when you do a power like Pull, it’s not just some that pulls the enemies towards you. It’s an actual projectile that you throw into the world, and it guides towards the enemy. Depending on which angle you throw it, it’ll yank that enemy in that direction. So, if you’re on a bridge, you won’t just pull the enemy towards you, you can yank them left or right on either side of the bridge. You can really control what you’re doing and where people are going.

Soldiers, for example, you’re able to have skill in all the weapons and unlike other characters, you’ve got the heavy weapons system, which basically replaces grenades from the first game, for some extra firepower. The Soldier can also do all the different weapon mods too, so you’re feezing people solid, you’re incinerating them, it’s very much about the weapon experience.

So that’s one thing we’ve done, in terms of just really deepening the classes and making them different from one another. We’ve made a lot of improvements to the AI. There’s mounting objects and if you command your squad up ahead, and there’s an object in the way, they’ll leap over it on their way to the enemy. There’s a lot better use of cover between your squad, and the enemy, as well.

There’s been some talk about whether or not we’ve added ammo to Mass Effect 2. Because we had essentially unlimited ammo in Mass Effect 1, it kind of took away some of the tension that there is in combat, that makes you consider your weapon use a little bit more. Without abandoning the idea of ammo, or of overheat, we had to create the concept of overheat into an ammo-style system. Your weapons overheat like they do in Mass Effect 1, but they overheat into cells that are part of an overall clip, and you can find these universal clips of thermal heat sinks. It’s similar to an ammo system; it kind of limits the number of shots you an do before you rund out of thermal heat sinks. There difference is, it’s something that can add tension to combat without you actually having bullets that can be expended.

As you run around the environment, you’re picking up these thermal clips. It kind of ties into the location system of damage that we’ve added. Now, headshots matter, you can shoot the limbs off of androids and mechs. Because these things really matter and weapons are much better, like the sniper rifle is a lot better, it’s very smooth and very precise. So, now, if you draw your sniper rifle, you’ve got a limited number of rounds before you’re gonna need to reload or get a new clip. Now you’re starting to really think, because headshots matter and ammo is relatively limited, I’m really think about getting this headshot. It just makes you consider combat a bit more, and get a bit more of the overall feel of it.

There’s a lot of change, there’s a lot of improvements, and each one of them is relatively minor. Much of the way you play combat in Mass Effect 2 is the same way you played in Mass Effect 1, but it just adds up to a revolution in the way that it feels and how much better it plays.

The inclusion of characters from Mass Effect to Mass Effect 2 was done as previously mentioned both to continue the story and because of the fans liking some of these characters. Which of these characters were your favorite and least favorite?

The great thing about the way we do our cast of characters is that we try to make sure that they’re all different from one another, and, to us, a success is if a character is loved and hated. Then, it presents a choice. If there are people that love a certain character, and other people hate that character, then we know that have a pretty unique character and it’s kind of inspiring some controversy, or at least decision making as a player you decide whether you like a certain character.

I think the ones that were more universally liked were characters like Wrex, Garrus was kind of a surprise. He’s a fairly laid back and cool, by the book guy. He wasn’t necessarily someone we expected to be a standout, but he’s pretty universally liked. Liara was well liked. Probably the most debated character, as to whether people like him or not, was Kaiden. I think a lot of people left Kaiden to die on the nuke decision on Virmire. I think that was an easy decision for a lot of people, between Kaiden and Ashley. As a character, there are a lot of people who loved Kaiden, andnas a love interest, I know there are a lot of people who have expressed a real interest in having Kaiden back, they really want to see Kaiden come back and be a part of the story.

The other one that was interesting was Tali. Tali is kind of an alternative character, she’s an alien, she’s mysterious, you can’t really see what she looks like. At one point I think we were considering whether she should be a love interest in Mass Effect 1, and I remember people saying, “no, people aren’t gonna wanna have a romance with a girl with chicken feet.” But, chicken feet didn’t really bother anyone.

Does Mass Effect 2 allow you to pick which play through you want as a reference point, or does it just default to the most recent playthrough data?

Every time you finish Mass Effect 1, it makes a special save game that is the end-state for that playthrough. Then, when you have Mass Effect 2 and you run the import utility, it will look at all your ending save games from Mass Effect 2. Then, it lists them out and it lists some of the relevant data, so you can remember which one was which, like when you made the save game and some of the key decisions, and when you import that save game, it gives you a full rundown of what happened in that, so that you can do a final double check, like a paragon playthrough, Ashley survived, and Wrex died, and all these things. Then you can make that final confirmation that is the save game that you remember and that you want to continue from into Mass Effect 2.

Also, you can import that game and play Mass Effect 2, but you could also import that same game and then play Mass Effect 2 a different way. So, you could have multiple playsthroughs of Mass Effect 2 coming off of one import from an end-game of Mass Effect 1.

What sort of improvements have been made to the planets? Will there be more variation in the terrain and the layout this time?

In regards to the vehicle, the Mako, we’re doing some cool things with the vehicle, though we’re not ready to announce them just yet. In another month or so we’ll probably be talking about the vehicle.

In terms of the overall exploration, one of the things that we had feedback on, people really loved the idea of a larger galaxy and being able to go out and explore stuff. What they really wanted us to improve was the variety and the different things that you got to do when you were out on these missions. So we did two things. First of all, we improved the galaxy map experience. It’s very much the same kind of galaxy map, but this time there are a few differences. You’re actually moving the position of the Normandy versus a target crosshair. And when you arrive at a planet, you have an actual minigame for scanning the planet. It’s really cool, you actually see the planet spinning below you, you turn it around, and you can scan for resources and the controller will rumble, and hear different sounds. You can kind of close in on resources. This part basically replaces the less interesting aspects of resource gather from Mass Effect 1 and puts it into a minigame thats really cool and a lot more interactive. This is how you pull up a lot of the resources that then tie into the economy of the game for getting upgrades and stuff like that.

The other thing that happens is, when you’re scanning planets, in addition to finding resources than you can pull out of using space probes, you can also find signals and radio anomalies that you can close in on, and through the minigames, actually find the location on the planet where something is going on. We call these N7 Missions. You can send a probe down to come back and do basic stuff like getting resources, but sometimes you find something that only Commander Shepard can do in person, and that’s an N7 Mission. For those, you find these locations on a planet and then you drop down to the surface. Those missions are kind of designed to be the opposite approach to the missions from Mass Effect 1, where you’re in the uncharted worlds. The only reason why they exist is because each one of them offers something unique and different than you’ve done before. Every level, either the gameplay or the story, or something about it is really unique and special

Each one that you do is different. You’ll want to go back out and find the next one and the next one, because you know that each one is going to offer you something weird and wonderful, just like you’d expect out in space. Those are some of the improvements we’ve made to exploration, it suits the game a lot better and it’s a lot more interesting. Because, again, all of the rewards that you find out there tie back into the main story; either they’re part of the key storyline, or the resources that you find out there tie back into the goal of equipping your team, building up your ship, and getting ready for a suicide mission.

With Mass Effect, I was constantly impressed with the depth of the fiction. For example, while the Elcor received considerable exposition, the Keepers seemed to be left intentionally ambiguous. How or where do you all decide what’s going to be explained, and what’s left up to the mind of the player?

I think its fun for players and it’s certainly fun for us too, because now that we have a universe established, we can think about which parts we want to develop. I don’t know if there’s any method to it, necessarily, but we work from the top down. We know the basic idea of where we want to go with the story, and what we want to make sure the players have the opportunity to do, as far as the story. Then we work down from there; if it’s a Dirty Dozen-style suicide mission, then you need missions where you’re going out the recruit characters, and you need to do things where you’re making them loyal to you, finding what’s important to them and what’s going to be meaningful enough that they’ll become loyal, and those become missions.

Once we get into the missions themselves and the locations we want to go to, then we can start bringing in things like characters from the first game, or different creatures and storylines. If you’re talking to a character, maybe this character knows something about the Rachni decision that you made. Or, if somebody is causing trouble in a bar, maybe that character who’s causing trouble is that Commander Verner, your super fan from Mass Effect 1, and will remember you when you interrupt him. It’s kind of a fun process. Once we get down to the details of the story, figuring out how we want to develop things in a way that’s going to be interesting to the players.

What contemporary games has the team looked to for inspiration?

I think, with the first game, we were looking at what some of the top shooters were doing, what some of the Xbox RPG’s were doing. Mass Effect ended up being unlike any game in particular, but it did combine elements of the better third person shooters and RPGs of the time. I guess our inspiration mostly came from games that came well before us, the main one being Star Wars Knights of the old Republic. A lot of us worked on Knights of the old Republic, and a lot of the core team worked on that game as well. To some degree, that really became the basis for what we were going to do with Mass Effect. The main idea being that we knew that we wanted to work on our own science fiction property, and trying to build something new there.

We also wanted to be able to incorporate more different kinds of players into the experience. A lot of people still have trouble with pause and play style gameplay like we had in KOTOR, but we wanted to have a more accessible gameplay interface, being that of a third person shooter. Otherwise, the overall experience was meant to capture that same sense of huge story and non-linear decisions making where you can go where you want in the universe, but with a little bit more freedom for exploration. The same kind of really intimate character stories, but then a story on a really high level of scope. That was probably the game most responsible for what Mass Effect became.

The other one is from even further back, which is a game called Star Flight for the PC. It was an incredible game in the sense that it offered space combat, and you’re driving a vehicle on distant planets, and you’re getting resources. At the same time, there’s an epic story brewing under the surface that evolves over time, and as you explore deeper into spact, it kind of magically evolves on its own. That was really fascinating to me, and I’ve always wondered how far can you go with present day techonology to try and achieve that kind of experience. That was kind of one of the more spiritual inspirations; what would that look like, that kind of non-linear and very open ended experience.

Are there any changes or improvements lined up for the inventory system as well as the character upgrade system?

We’ve made a bunch of improvements there, all in the spirit of preserving the original depth that we had, but just making it more intuitive in what you’re actually doing. The main thing, in the first game, the inventory system was all in one screen, so you were trying to equip your team with weapons and armor and whatever other gear you had. You’re also trying to then mod each of those types of equipment, and then you’re also kind of going through lists of inventory and trying to juggle your inventory. All of that was in one screen, so, even though it had a lot of depth, I think a lot of people weren’t able to access that full potential of what it was offering.

What we’ve done is taken all of the functionality that was there, and we’ve moved it into separate activities. For example, we’ve got an armor locker, and in your armor locker, you can actually create a modular N7 armor out of pieces, so you go and buy these pieces in the store as you’re exploring the galaxy, there are a variety of ways that you can get them, and then you bring them back and, in your armor locker, you actually build them piece by piece and each piece kind of does a different behavior in terms of gameplay or combat. Whether it’s enhancing your shields, armor, health, and accuracy, all of that kind of stuff. You can adjust every aspect of it, like how shiny the material is to all the different colors, your helmets, visors, all that stuff way deeper than we had before. Because it’s in its own location, you actually have much greater control over what’s going on.

Similarly for upgrades and modding your weapons and armor, that’s done through research terminals. The research terminal, because it’s actually about going out and getting research projects, come back and either spending money or different kinds of resources on it, it becomes a whole activity chain, but it also means that potentially anything can be upgraded. There’s a whole variety, whether it’s different kinds of ammo mod or modifications to weapons for accuracy or things that you can do to improve your armor, or even the ship itself has research projects that you can enhance the ship so, when you see it performing in certain key moments in the story, different things will happen as an outcome. It’s a very open ended system.

Likewise, the character progression system is very similar. We’ve added some new powers. You spend points in a very similar way to develop your character, you still have levels, you still have the paragon and renegade system. But there’s been some more subtle changes in there than in the other systems, its more similar to Mass Effect 1. But the changes we’ve made there are to draw out more impact on your gameplay. Most of these things that you have as powers or skills that you’re developing are active powers that you fire, either during combat or as part of interrupts in conversations, persuasion, things like that.

Are there any densely populated locations besides the Citadel, or is every place you visit a neatly established colony or an outpost?

We have a whole bunch of different kind of locations. I think Mass Effect is still very much about this idealistic, futuristic universe where everything is beautiful and sleek and clean, except for this underbelly that exists. It’s a part of the universe; symbolic of that is this larger threat of the Reapers, and the fact that a really idealist civilization would not easily accept the idea of such a threat. That’s kind of the role of humanity and Commander Shepard, to be tough enough and pragmatic enough to be able to see these things and dig into them, and in Mass Effect 2 you end up digging into that darker underbelly of the Mass Effect universe.

Two examples of different populated locations would be the Citadel, which you all have seen before, but you get to new locations there. It’s kind of idealist and beautiful and populated. Then there’s the other side, which is Omega. It’s also densely populated with huge space stations, but it is the opposite. It is completely lawless, it’s run by gangs and there’s a lot of crime. What you find there is just all of that other darker side of the galaxy.

And you also have other places like Illium, which is an Asari home world. It’s just a beautiful location, very sleek and clean like the Citadel, but it’s got its own style. Lots of Asari characters, it’s a very worldly place, it has a stock market, space ports, and that kind of really cool stuff to be able to visit. There’s a bunch of different populated locations. Even places like Tuchanka, which is the Krogan home world you get to visit.

Have enhancements been made to some of the minor, more technical aspects of the game, including long-ish elevator load times?

That’s part of the feedback that we accumulated together. We just set out to make sure we hit every one of these points. One is the elevator, or the way we transition from once place to the other. In Mass Effect 1, I think we missed an opportunity in telling and showing people what’s actually happening when you’re in one of these elevators. You’re actually in this kind of tube that goes throughout a huge location like the Citadel and, even though it seems like you’re going up three or four floors and though it seems like it takes a long time. What’s actually happening there is you’re going from, essentially the equivalent of, you’re going from one end of Manhattan to the other.

In Mass Effect 2, we have a different system for transitioning from one location to another, and it actually shows you a schematic of where you are, where you’re going, and how you’re getting there. Quite often these are spectacular, like the ones on the Citadel you actually see now, for the first time, where you are, and what an amazing location it is in 3D, and how you move from one place to the other. The other side effect is, by doing this way, the actual load times ends up being much faster. It makes a seamless continuity to the narrative because you can see yourself moving from one place to the other, but, at the same time, it’s faster. On the Normandy it’s even better. You get schematics of the Normandy in each deck as you pass through it, but it’s so much faster.

A slow transition time seems like a minor thing, but it’s actually beyond that because it actually became a barrier for people to develop relationships with the characters who are too many floors away. Now, because it’s very fast and interesting to watch, it’s just a ton of fun to move all around the Normandy and go between decks and go up and down from your quarters at the top to engineering at the bottom.

Texture loading and texture resolution, memory, frame rate, all of that stuff is much improved.

The dialogue plays a large role in BioWare games, what other changes are in store for Mass Effect 2? Will we see more conversations, more natural and final closure, forcing a player to choose their words even more wisely than before? Where will the dialogue system fall in relation to the first Mass Effect and Dragon Age?

I think it’s an improvement over the first Mass Effect for a few reasons. One of them is that the technology was improved for how we portray the conversations. You’re able to see characters moving around a lot more. The actual situations are more dramatic, they can walk and talk at the same time, and you’re in quite a variety of different situations when you’re having a conversation.

Another subtle change is that, thinking back to when we were designing the first game, a lot of the dialogue was written before we could really prove to ourselves how good the game would look and how cinematic it would be. Coming from game’s like Knights of the Old Republic or even Baldur’s Gate or Neverwinter Nights, where you’re essentially writing dialogue for sprites, if you don’t write the dialogue, if you didn’t write the words then, to some degree, it didn’t happen. You had to write everything. We were trying to go for a more movie-like or TV-like quality where an actor can give a response that is unspoken, with just a look that can tell you everything about how they feel.

We had that as a goal, but we hadn’t proved to ourselves that we could do it. In Mass Effect 1, there were moments like that; when Ashley apologizes for ruining the first mission, and getting you hurt, you can say, “No it’s okay,” or you can reprimand her. If you reprimand her, her response is just a look, and she looks hurt, like you’ve hurt her feelings, and you feel that as a player. Until we really saw those things in the first game, we didn’t know if we could pull that off. But now that we have, now we can go ahead and write it much more like a it’s a movie with more concise dialogue and with more reliance on the acting performance.

The bigger, functional difference is we’ve added a new kind of dialogue response which we call Interrupts. Basically, it’s a way to seize physical control during a conversation, depending on what’s going on. You’ll either have Paragon Interrupts or Renegade Interrupts at certain times. And you can let them pass, if you’re a Paragon-style player and you see an opportunity to do a Renegade Interrupt, you can let it pass and it’s okay to keep playing. It’s more a part of role playing, as opposed to being a quicktime-event where you have to do something or you died. It’s not that at all, it’s more about, do you want to physically do something special at that moment as part of role playing that character.

If somebody that is hostile to you wanders near a ledge over a steep drop off, you might see a Renegade Interrupt and know whether your character would be able to shove them off at that point. As a Paragon player you might see that and think, “No, I’m not going to push them off the building.” Likewise, you might be talking to a character who’s dying right there in front of you from an illness, and you have the cure with you, and just as they start sputtering their last breathe, you could do a Paragon Interrupt and inject them with the cure right at that moment and save them.

Again, if you don’t like that character you can let that pass, and then that character will die. It’s a way to instantly seize control, versus just a dialogue option that you choose and let it play out. Knowing that the conversations are peppered with these kind of Interrupts, it makes the whole experience just a more active experience. You’re more aware of what’s going on and ready to take action at a certain point.

Look for Mass Effect 2 on January 26th, 2010 and be sure to check back here at Gamer Limit for the full review coming at the end of January.

Released a few days ago, Edmund, an entry in the Adult/Educational Compo at TIGSource. While at first glance, Edmund appears to be a game created just for ’shock value’, but with a little digging I’ve found it does go a lot deeper then expected.

Paul Greasley, the creator of Edmund, recently let us pick his brain on the ‘demon’ he has unleashed.

Gamer Limit: For those who haven’t heard of you, can you give us a brief history or your game development career?

Paul Greasley: I’ve made lots of rubbish indie and commercial games, this would be my first attempt at a somewhat serious subject matter, and hopefully a halfway decent game.

To jump straight into it, what made you decide to make a game involving rape?

Inspiration was mostly personal, I’ve known a few girls who have been through similar situations, which sparked the concept. As far as the experience, I wanted to inspire emotion in the player, even if its vile and disgusting.

The discussion on various forums around your game has brought up an interesting debate; Why do you think people don’t mind stabbing, torturing or shooting people in video games, but take a moral high ground when it comes to rape?

Double standards… Maybe because people are desensitized to violence in games, sexual violence not so much. That being said, I think the reaction for the most part is perfectly natural.

What would you call Edmund; Expression, Art or a Game?

I would call it a experience, but others might not, I think that question is best left to the individual player.

With Edmund’s subject matter, was it a hard choice to release the game under your own name, and not a pseudonym?

I’ve made this game as genuine as I can possibly make it. In Australia, the country where I live, it has shown it can and will censor indie games with dangerous content. It has happened before and no doubt it will happen again. But end of the day I’ve got nothing to hide, I’m not promoting rape here, to anyone, ever. Hopefully people will play the game before judging it, and judging me as a person, that’s all I ask.

I know making this game will effect my livelihood, maybe my job prospects, I know some of my family and friends will think I’ve lost my mind (Hi Mum!), but that’s just how it goes.

How long did it take to get Edmund from concept to finished project?

The game took 4 weeks of work outside of a 9-5 grind, developed for the adult/educational competition at www.tigsource.com.

How much hate mail have you received so far regarding Edmund, any death threats?

You would be surprised…

The TigSource community appears really supportive towards your game, while the IndieGamer community is quite… venomous… why do you think this is?

Because TIGSource is awesome, thumbs up to Derek Yu and Melly for creating the competition, and all the other editors over there that work really hard to build a strong indie community where competitions like this are possible, and most importantly, all the people at TIGSource who keep building indie games, and those playing them.

And now to answer your question, I think Indiegamer forum is mostly focused on the business side of Independent Game development, while TIGSource is a hub for game design and experimentation, so they are a little more accepting of these sorts of games.

Currently there are four known endings for Edmund, are there still any secrets left to find?

Look harder…

And now that you have got a controversial game under your belt, what do you have planned next?

Two months ago I was going to quit game development, I think it’s a bit early to figure that one out, maybe take a break and build a muscle car?

Thanks for taking the time to talk to us.

No problem, a massive thank you to Compound, who not only did a amazing job on the audio, but was there to assist with the game design and making the project possible in 4 weeks.

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You can snag a copy of Edmund here, but be warned… it’s not for the faint of heart.

Blur may have been pushed back into 2010, but that is no reason to dismay, Gamer Limit are here with an interview with the developers, Bizarre Creations, to brighten up your day as September draws to a dreary close.

We spoke to Ami Langton, Studio Communications for Bizarre, so hit the jump to find out what those lovely people from Liverpool are up to.

Gamer Limit: To start off, the standard into question, can you offer the readers a brief background on Bizarre Creations, how it came to be and who is involved?

Ami Langton: Bizarre Creations is a Liverpool-based developer in the North West of England. We currently stand at a whopping population of 200 employees (and a mini superlambanana – who sends his regards by the way!).

Bizarre’s been about (officially) since 1994, we’ve been making racing games since then (F1, F1’97, MSR). We’re probably better known for the creation of the Project Gotham Racing series, which kicked off in 2001 and continued to grow until the end of 2007 when we released PGR4.

Whilst developing our racing titles, we also dabbled in other genres (from Amiga classics right up to Xbox 360 releases) developing the likes of Disney’s Treasure Planet, Fur Fighters, The Club as well as starting the Geometry Wars revolution! We’ve definitely had a very interesting 15 years to say the least, and we wouldn’t be the Bizarre Creations of today without every staff member who’s contributed along the way.

GL: Before Blur was announced, there was a lot of talk of comparisons; “Mario Kart meets Forza” being one of the most prominent.  Did a lot of research go into other games of the genre or did you try to stay away from that to keep the game more innovative?

AL: We really looked at the racing genre on the whole and found that there were many gameplay related frustrations that we wanted to address. These frustrations ranged from crashing on the first (or worse, the last) lap and having to restart, to falling behind in a race and never being able to catch up. As a studio that’s made racing games for 13 years, we felt that we needed to bring something fresh and exciting to the dry racing genre.

So when we set out to work on Blur, innovation was definitely in mind, and thinking up ways to combat these frustrations is what inspired new design ideas. This, plus the fact that we had the chance to start from scratch, of course; which is immensely exciting! So with Blur we’ve included many features with the hope of combating these racer frustrations, such as ‘hand of God’ – which places the player back on-track if they stray too far off the course; driving assists for those that require it, and most importantly Power-ups – which gives special racing abilities to the player.

GL: One of the things you say about Blur is that the development was focused on making racing ‘fun’ again, what was it about the genre that you believe had steered into ‘not fun’?

AL: We noticed that the racing genre had become more concentrated at the simulation end of the market. So while sim racers are undeniably great, it’s probably not going to be much fun for you if technical precision isn’t your thing. The simulation style has also been done time and time again – and for us at Bizarre, our next franchise had to be something different. We want to bring real racing to people who love to play racing games, as well as to those who play casually or even those who may never have played before!

It’s a shame to have all of these great racing titles with only a few that are actually accessible by the majority of the market. Everyone should be able to enjoy racing games – regardless of their skill level, especially since more and more people are playing games every day. Aside from this, we wanted to eliminate some of the racer frustrations for those who are more hardcore racing fans.

Let’s face it, there’s nothing worse than spinning out on your last lap and falling into last place! We’ve all been there and the only way to rectify a situation like that is to restart – we wanted to get rid of this. Racing shouldn’t be about restarts, memorising a track apex by apex, or modifying cars.  It should purely be about racing and having a blast on-track!

GL: Being the developers of the hugely successful PGR franchise, now moving onto another racing game, are you concerned as being pigeon-holed as a “racing studio”?

AL: As a studio with a strong heritage in racing games, being pigeon-holed as a racing studio is not really a great concern of ours! We love making racing games – we’ve been doing it since the Formula 1 day’s, so we know the genre inside-out.

Of course, racing is Bizarre’s first love. But we like to dip our toes into other genres too – we’ve done rhythm, arcade, platform, and 3^rd person shooter games, and will continue to broaden our horizons, no doubt!

Ultimately, developing games for a variety of genres keeps the neurons and imaginative juices flowing and the passion alive! We have a lot of creative people here at Bizarre, so it’s nice to give them the freedom to work on games in other genres, besides racing.

GL: It seems that Activision have been very accommodating to you, whereas I’ve read things about Sega chiming in, changing things in The Club, for example. Has this been the case? And how are things under such a large publisher?

AL: Activision has really looked after us. They operate what’s known as an “independent studio model.” This basically means that Bizarre is pretty much left to our own device, which allows us the time to focus on what we do best – making games. The studio is run exactly as it was before; the only noticeable difference being the opportunities and resources we now have on offer from Activision.

GL: You have quite an active community on your website, has feedback from places like this affected how you’ve developed your games?

AL: Our community has always been very important to us, as is their feedback, but forums tend to consist of mainly hardcore gamers. While this portion of the market is obviously very important, we think it’s essential to get feedback from all sorts of gamers, which is why we have regular usability testing – to gauge players opinions, irrespective of their abilities.

This is one of the many perks of working for a publisher like Activision – before we joined their extended family, we’d never really had to opportunity to test our games so extensively with the public before release.  This whole process really helps us highlight what people like and dislike about our games, which can be a very useful tool in development, as I’m sure you can imagine.

GL: You seemed to have a bigger showing at E3 than you have other years, how did that go and how was the fan feedback?

AL: This year’s E3 was by far the biggest showing Bizarre has ever had before, and the response that Blur got at the show was wonderful too. We had ten stations hooked-up on the show floor for multiplayer, and were showing the game behind closed doors too, and people were having a great time!  We even got nominated for Best Racing Game of the show.

Now, granted, at E3 the game build was still fairly early (pre-Alpha) so as you can imagine some of the harder core gamers had comments about a few things here and there.  But again, that all leads back to us really listening and evaluating fan feedback throughout the game’s development and making adjustments along the way.

GL: With motion control sweeping the industry right now, have you considered the technology as a viable future for your racing games?

AL: It’s really interesting to see how motion control is developing. At the moment we are still quite satisfied with gamepad controller configurations, and at the end of the day it all comes down to player preference.

So we’ll stick to what we know best for the time being while people are still buying Xbox 360 and PLAYSTATION 3, etc, but we will certainly be keeping a watchful eye on things. And as you know, we’re always open to new ideas, so never say never!

Thanks to Ami and Bizarre for their time, and we wish them all the luck and success with Blur! Be sure that we will have a scorchingly hot review on release.

The Madden franchise, over 21 years and running, has been the most successful football sim to date. With the recent release of Madden NFL 10, gamers have been sucked in, once again, to the most addicting Madden yet.

Gamer Limit was given the opportunity to interview one of the many reasons behind Madden’s continued success. EA Tiburon’s Creative Director, Ian Cummings, recently took time out of his busy schedule to answer a few questions for us.

Read on for some enlightening information behind Ian and the past, present, and future installments of Madden.

GL: Tell us a little about yourself.  How did you get to the position you are in today?

Ian: I, like many others in the gaming industry today, started at the ground floor as a game tester. I moved from Tennessee to Orlando to test Madden NFL 2001 for the PC. I stayed in Quality Assurance until Madden NFL 2003, and got my first shot in a design role for Madden NFL 2004 for PS2/Xbox/GameCube. I’ve been burning the midnight oil ever since to get myself where I am today.

GL: Does having no competition in the pro football video game genre bring you more or less pressure?

Ian: For me personally, it is actually a lot more pressure. When the main comparison that reviewers or fans use against your game is “real life”, that’s a lot of pressure to live up to.

GL: Was there anything that was planned to be in Madden 10 that didn’t make it?

Ian: Each year, there are always a ton of ideas that don’t make the cut – that is the nature of game development.  Due to the aggressive dev schedule, some things get tabled.  That said, we always revisit the great ideas and consider them for future versions.  We never want to release a feature without it meeting our high quality bar.

GL: What are your thoughts on the micro-transactions in Madden 10? Is this something Madden fans should begin to get used to?

Ian: I feel that if you can add something that’s worth the value, then you’re doing something right, regardless of whether it’s free or if you have to pay for it.  Microtransactions are totally optional – if you don’t want to buy them, you  don’t have to.  I wouldn’t say it’s something Madden fans should begin to get used to, I think every single gamer in the world should expect these offerings to continue across every genre.

GL: On your personal blog, you had noted that you haven’t been “addicted” to Madden for five years. Why do you think that is? Since this year has changed things for you, can you speak to those older Madden fans or even 2K fans as to why this year would be the year to return?

Ian: There are a lot of reasons that I think Madden NFL 10 “hooked” me again, but the main reason has just really been the overall “feel” of gameplay. I am EXTREMELY critical of our gameplay, animations, and AI in general (that’s my job in essence), but this year really was the year that I could play a game and have a really great time. I think, before this year, the game was just too fast, and I wasn’t able to get into a good rhythm.  As a “sim” or old-school Madden gamer, this year really gives me that feeling of the glory days.

GL: You recently tweeted that some people are saying that the core of Madden has remained unchanged. Do you feel this is a misrepresentation or simply a sign that Madden has hit its peak in terms of gameplay where this is something we will hear each year?

Ian: Obviously it’s frustrating when you pour all your effort into the game and make a ton of key changes to the core game itself (game speed, momentum, player control, etc) and see someone say it’s unchanged.  I think we’ve realized that this sentiment probably won’t go away…the game is still football and our goal is still to create a realistic and fun representation of the sport. If our game played exactly like a real life broadcast I think people would still say “the gameplay is largely unchanged” because it’s still 22 players, there are still passing and running plays, there are still tackles and touchdowns, etc.

GL: When you play Madden, do you play smart football or smart Madden football?

Ian: I think it’s a combination of both. Having played Madden over each and every version for the past 20+ years, I’ve learned what plays and styles work better than others, but I definitely center my play around real life strategies – like trying to eat up clock with a balanced offense and mixing up my play calling.  I hate exploits and money plays – even if I knew of one I wouldn’t use it.

GL: If you were given unlimited resources and budget to do one thing to improve Madden what would it be?

Ian: Though it doesn’t really classify as one thing, I would continue to focus on gameplay. Our goal is an authentic and realistic representation of the sport, so we always have room to improve in animation, authenticity, and AI.

GL: Any hints into what we can expect from Madden 11?

Ian: Other than you can expect it being totally awesome? Nope, not really.

Thank you again to Ian for taking the time to answer our questions. Best of luck burning the midnight oil for many successful Madden years to come!

Following our interview from yesterday we are back with the second part of our hefty look into an Australian development icon. Hit the jump to find out Krome Studios’ take on the Australian game development scene and even some information for budding developers looking to get into the industry.

GL: What made you decide to base your studio in Brisbane, as opposed to the larger cities of Sydney or Melbourne?

Lindsay: <smiles> Haha, okay, so this is going to be me recalling facts before I was here. Krome was formed as an entity in 1999, so this is actually our 10th year of operation this year, and this was based off a group of guys who had been around before that, in this building, albeit just on one floor. They originally made games under a few different names, GeeWhiz and a couple like that, developing titles like Flight of the Amazon Queen and such. So I think really where that came from, was that Brisbane was the first because it’s where the guys lived. That’s where Steve and John started the partnership.

GL: So your steady path to growth from there involved a “takeover” of other studios, in Adelaide and Melbourne?

Lindsay: Well, I wouldn’t call it a takeover.

GL: <laughs> Well, probably bad wording.

Lindsay: <smiles> I would put it more as, well, “opportunities”. From Midway shutting down Ratbag Studios, from Atari shutting down Melbourne House, there were opportunities there and we were in the position financially, and well, with new games coming up and so forth, to take advantage of that and form studios with some guys with a *lot* of experience and great skills.

GL: Would you say your sub-studios provided you with resources that you didn’t currently have up in Brisbane?

Lindsay: Definitely. The Ratbag guys have a fantastic history with making great racing games, like we touched on earlier. But also, something else you need to consider with that also is, as well, is before Adelaide’s office started up, talent was coming up here to work not just with us, but with other studios. So definitely, there are some strengths there. Just because of the core groups that were still left, but similarly there are guys up here that have done surfing games <grins> and 3rd person action that the guys hadn’t done down there.

GL: What are your thoughts on the state of the local industry? Is it healthy, or does there need to be more support by government?

Lindsay: I don’t think you’d find a studio in Australia that wouldn’t be hoping for more government support! <laughs>

Fergus: <laughs> Yeah, it’s not going to break the front page is it.

GL: <laughs> Touche!

Lindsay: Definitely, we’re being hit by the same forces as everywhere else. It’s the economic downturn that is out there, so far, I think we’ve been a little bit more insulated then other industries. But I think it’s starting to get a bit more rough now that everyone’s spent their $600! <laughs>

Melissa: It was $900! <smiles>

GL: Gamers have deep pockets!

Fergus: There was a bonus? <laughs>

Lindsay: But yeah, definitely, you need to look and see what’s happened in Brisbane recently with Pandemic (Studios, closing down) recently. I think it’s a sign of resilience that most of those guys have found jobs, whether here or at other development studios. I definitely think that you are not seeing publishers set up new studios all over the place, like you did five or so years ago.

GR: There are calls for an R rating for games in Australia. Do you agree that the classification system for games needs to be reformed?

Lindsay: So, I think there’s two different arguments. One is an argument about free speech, and one is about whether all games should just be released. Personally, I haven’t really cared about any games that have been refused classification and subsequently not been released or modified for the market.  Whether or not it makes much of a difference that Fallout 3 uses morphine or medkits, I’m not sure, but I *do* think there should be an R rating for games to be on par with the movie industry. I do think that if it was established and people selling the items stuck to it, which is always going to be key anyway, but the way the world is if a game is banned, anyone who wants it will get a hold of it.

GR: Develop Magazine ranks you as one of the top 50 developers in the world, beating out huge industry stalworts like Codemasters, Atlus, Rare and Crytek. Can you divulge on the key to Krome’s amazing success?

Lindsay: (To Fergus) Err, you wanna get that one? <laughs>

Fergus: <laughing> Sure! Well in many ways we got there without me being here.

Lindsay: Just a lot of hard work, a lot of hard work from a lot of people.  There’s your stock standard response from me! <laughs>

Fergus: One of the things, I think, that differentiates Krome from many other studios is that, and many other studios claim this and it gets banded around a lot, is that there is a strong bond. It’s like a family run business, like Steve and Walshy are on first name relations with all the staff in Brisbane, along with half the staff in Melbourne and Adelaide as well. I mean, you ask what’s going on with “Project X/Y/Z” and either of them would know. His influence and his passion kind of gets reflected back in the people working on the projects as well. I’ve worked at several big publishers, as well as the development arm of one of them, and its been close knit as well. So it’s not totally unique, but I guess you’d be hard pressed to find larger studios where there still is a very strong passion to make great games, rather then just another job.

GR: So you find, I guess you find your independence, as a studio, allows you to have more of a casual feel to your organisation?

Fergus: I think that feeling is definitely there, but I don’t think it’s because we’re independent. I think if we were bought by a large publisher, there would be a bit of a culture shock. I’ve noticed there’s been some discussions over the last couple of weeks, both positively and negatively, about the bigger companies like EA, buying and selling smaller studios  and culture changing and all. I mean, Microsoft as well, is another one.  As well, both of them actively trying to preserve the thing they’ve bought. There’s no point buying a (studio) and changing it, that’s not what you paid for.

But, on the flip side, we are the masters of our own destiny right now. So we are able to maintain the spirit that’s been here for 10 years.

GR: This year marks 10 years since Krome was founded. What is next for the studio?

Fergus: I don’t foresee Krome growing any more, or much more, in 10 years. I think we’re at around, 400? I can see Krome moving to strengthen its reputation, I mean, we do focus on 3-rd person action and a few others, so maybe going into something more specifically. So really, taking things to the next level. The digital space is interesting, and like I mentioned, we do have a toe in those waters. But without forsaking the more traditional triple A blockbuster games.

Lindsay: Like Fergus, I don’t foresee us growing exponentially over the next 10 years. We’ve got a lot of things established now. Things we didn’t have when we were three, four, five, six guys. So it will just be refining what we’ve got and making everything bigger, better and -

Fergus: Yeah, doing those things we do well and doing them even better still.

GL: And finally, do you have any suggestions for budding game designers on how they should get started?

Fergus: Designers, or Artists or.. -

GL: Designers, Artists, Programmers… all parts of the industry.

Fergus: I get asked this a lot, <laughs> by parents, friends, and heh, I always disappoint the children. <laughs> Because, “how did I get in?”, it was a complete accident, you’ll never get in that way, forget it. When I mention engineers, specifically, you always see their faces fall, I say, “You want to be a Games engineer?”, you can earn a fortune, you’ll never be out of work, go and get yourself a first class Maths and Physics degree.

GL: I can imagine people thinking, “Well that’s not fun!”

Fergus: Exactly. So go and get a M&P degree because, you know, they are always looking for that. Artists – go and do a fine art degree. I mean, because anyone can use Max or Maya (graphic design software), you can learn that, but you couldn’t teach me how to sculpt. Either I can sculpt or I can’t. So you can refine that ability, like if you can animate, go to animation school; games studios would much rather hire somebody who is three years older with a fine arts degree and a module of 3D graphics in it. Or somebody who has been to one of the big animation schools. As opposed to someone who has sat at home, played lots of games, and learnt a bit of Max or Maya. I mean, I can do both, but I’ll never be an expert.

Again, I think people forget that Artists here, should be Artists first, then people who do art for games second. Whereas if I said “Look, if you want to be animator for Pixar”, go to animation school. You’d accept that without question. Game Design, though, is always the hard one. It really is. There are courses out there, I can’t say if they are good or bad, I haven’t had much experience with them. You could take the Q&A route, or the Associate Producer route.

Lindsay: And that does come down a lot to, well, playing. Lots of games. <laughs> I mean, yeah, as Fergus mentioned, there are plenty of courses at places like QANTM or AIE -

Melissa: Or QUT.

Lindsay: Or QUT. It’s not saying those aren’t good routes to go down either, it really is that the passion needs to be about art, not just the games, its all about the art. That sort of driving passion that gets you though and realising that the medium isn’t everything you think it… is. <smiles>

I’d like to extend my many thanks to Lindsay, Fergus and Melissa for taking an hour of their very busy schedules and wish them the very best on Krome and congratulations for a fantastic 10 years and the subsequent top award from Develop.

Right on the virtual heels of my feature on Regional Game Developers, I went out and into the trenches (or cubicles) to find out what went on behind the scenes of game development in my own backyard. I’m lucky, as my city of Brisbane is host to over 40% of the developers in Oz.

Krome Studios, developers of Viva Pinata: Party Animals and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, are the largest and most successful studio in Australia. Consisting of three separate studios stretched over three cities, over 400 staff and over 19 commercially released games, they are the control standard for games development down under.

They are also a standup bunch of guys who sat down with me to dig deep inside their flagship Brisbane studio to find out a little bit more about their success, as well as what really happens behind the glamour of making games.

James @ Gamer Limit: Thank you for letting me interview you today, could you please introduce yourselves and let us know what your positions are?

Fergus Carroll (On the Left): My name is is Fergus Carroll and I’m an executive producer at Krome.

Lindsay Palmer (On the Right): My name is Lindsay Palmer and I’m producer of our technology team at Krome.

GL: So how long have you both worked for Krome?

Fergus: Oooh, all of about seven and a half months.

GL: <Laughs> so you’re a newbie then?

Fergus: <Laughs> yes, I am. I wish I was a newbie to everything, but unfortunately not, I’m very old. Yes, I’m a newbie to Krome, but I’ve worked with them for about two and a half years.

GL: Where did you work before Krome?

Fergus: Well I was in Singapore running the games team at Lucas Animation, before that I was in the UK working for EA, Infogrammes and Psygnosis.

GL: So you go way back in the Industry then?

Fergus: Yes, Yes. <smiles>

Lindsay: I’ve been with Krome since 2001, so just over eight years.

GL: Your titles vary from new IP, such as TY the Tasmanian Tiger, to established brands like Spyro, Star Wars, and Transformers. How do you choose your projects?

Fergus: I think all developers would like to be in a position where they could say, “This is our strategy for the next four years, we’re gonna do two or three original IPs, then a few licensed games,” but I think the real world is a little bit different. The key is to play to your strengths, so you know, if I was gonna put my hand up for an action game, particularly a 3rd person action game, since we have experience and background, in particular now with our studios in Melbourne and Adelaide, we have a driving (genre) background. Or something like an original or new IP. So yeah, we aren’t just going to put up our hand up for an huge RTS or an RPG.

But as to “Yes”, we’re going to do this game or that game, you very much try to work to your strengths, but at the same time you are at the mercy of what’s available.

GL: Do you have a preference on which console you prefer developing on; for example, you have only done one PS3 release, is there a reason for this? Are you limited to a certain number you can or will develop for?

Fergus: Ah.. I’ll revert back to Lindsay in a sec. <laughs>. But, yeah, there are three major consoles out there. And we do have a proprietary engine that deals with all three, but on that point, over the last couple of years, we have done games that are specifically designed from the ground up with the Wii, like Lightsaber Duels and also the Transformers titles. I would argue that Krome is developing a specialty in delivering top rated Wii titles, but I wouldn’t say that we’re only going to develop for the 360, we’re only going to develop for the PS3. There’s no need to do that. And we have an engine that allows us to go further, don’t we Lindsay. <smiles>

Lindsay: <laughs> That we do!  So our Mercury engine, that’s PS2, PSP, PS3, PC, 360, Wii – if you want to include the original Xbox and Gamecube, it supports them too. The strength of it is that you write once, it works on all consoles. So it comes down to either what we want for our own IP or whatever the publisher wants it on, in terms of tools and support and that sort of thing its all across it.

GL: Ok, so does money or budget come into it, I mean, the PS3 is said to be more expensive to develop for, is this something you have come across?

Fergus: Well, there’s an advantage to developing specifically for a console, I mean, you see that when you play some of our Wii titles. But there’s different advantages to doing it cross platform, because you can leverage the work done. So, for example, you can have a character artist who will build a character model, so it can works across all six, well, not instantly, but through a process, it will work on PS3 or 360, and with some reduction it will work on the others. So one piece of work gets translated across six consoles, rather then having to do six separate ones. So there’s an economy of scale, but yes, the PS3 and 360 both have their challenges, and yes, the PS3 has proved to be a powerful console, but its forced developers to work hard to harness that power. I don’t think you will necessarily chose to stop doing it because of that.

I think the bottom line is that we have an engine that will cover all those, so we can make games for all those, but the choice of platform comes down to the deal with the publisher and what they want us to do. Do they want all those versions? Or just a few? Some publishers will choose just to do 360 and PS3 in house, so they can have total control over that element of the franchise, and then outsource the other consoles to someone else. Again, it ultimately comes down to what the publisher wants.

Lindsay: From a technology perspective, where the engine (Mercury) is right now, I don’t think you can say one costs more to develop then other from a purely technological perspective. I think really it just comes down to the publisher.

GL: So, they’ll say to you, “I want that version for PS3, maybe not for 360″, so you say “Ok, we’ll do that” and work on that limitation.

Fergus: They could, but they wouldn’t be likely to because we have a strong engine that does, you know, as Lindsay said, you write it once it goes to both. I think there are other developers who are capable of doing that.  They are generally more likely to say, “We’ll do Gen one consoles, then you or Team X can do Gen two consoles,” and we’ll more then likely split them up that way.

GL: Have you thought about making downloadable games for XBLA, WiiWare or PSN? Have you dabbled in the arena at all so far?

Fergus: Yeah, it all happened before my time so I don’t know much about it. I’m pretty sure we’ve have had experience via Microsoft with Scene it?

Lindsay: Yeah, there was a downloadable content pack for Scene it? done by the guys down in the Melbourne studio for the Xbox 360. So there’s been a little bit of work done with the tools and that sort of stuff.

Fergus: <looking to Melissa, the lovely PR representative sitting next to him> Have we announced it yet… are we allowed to mention this…

Melissa: Ah, we know we’re doing it, we just don’t know what console it will be on yet.

<Fergus and Lindsay quickly discuss around the topic, we all have a laugh>

Melissa: <smiles> I *has* been announced that it will be a downloadable game.

Fergus: So we are doing it, we just can’t really… – <laughs>

<more laughter>

Fergus: <smiles> So yes, we are doing our own original IP, and it will be downloadable content. Now, whether it will be for one or all it will be for, has yet to be determined. So yeah, we are aware of…well. The game’s industry is in a strange place. Because in one hand, you’ve got this rich environment, when you have these two powerful consoles, 360/PS3, then you have the Wii, which is halfway there, and half way not which is picking up a different kind of audience entirely. Then you have this digital downloads revolution going on as well, which in many ways has empowered small developers to just go straight to market and see what happens.

So on the one hand you have all of this, and on the other hand there is a global downturn going on and money just isn’t being spent quite the same as it was. You then have this fertile breeding ground for all these games to get made, and people who perhaps are just not spending as much money as they were. So, I’ll be interested to see what the games industry looks like in two years time when it all emerges, I think there will be some big hard Darwinian principles taking place.

There will be some little guys who have genuine talent and can do things with a more economic model, because they go straight to market. Thus, may well emerge out as players in the next stage of the market. Then there will be companies not as really as nimble on the feet, who don’t focus on outgoings, well, who have to make AAA titles all the time and may find themselves under pressure.

Lindsay: I think it’s going to be interesting as well, since PSN hasn’t had as many restrictions to their downloadable content, while XBL has, even though they’ve recently opened up their system to full length games. So yeah, will be interesting to see how it branches out.

GL: When you are commissioned a game, are you assigned a fixed budget by your publisher or do you have an internal budget?

Fergus: Without running into too many details, there’s an amount of money that it costs us to make a game, be it for you and ourselves. Similarly, publishers will always have a figure in mind of how much they are prepared to spend, and how much they need to spend. And, you know, the classic effort that all developers have to do is get those numbers to match as much as possible. There will always be publishers who are perhaps, you know, that have a figure that doesn’t match up with the amount we know we need to make the game. That is just what happens, and if need be, they’ll find someone else to make it.

Lindsay: And the other thing is that Krome has always been big on our own technology since day one, and that Steve and Walshy (Steve Stamatiadas and Robert Walsh, the founders of Krome) always put their money where their mouth is; they invest heavily in our technologies.

Krome Studios Interview: Part 2

Earlier last week, we had the opportunity to speak with the Senior Games Designer at A2M, Avi Winkler. Other than the bits of answers we gave away, Avi also discussed why WET will wall run, load its guns, do a Ninja backflip and shoot you right on the head once it’s released on September 15.

Want to know why multiplayer was scrapped? Dive inside. Want to know what you get for chaining combos? Shoot inside. Want to know just how sexy Eliza Dushku is? Google is your friend. Good thing the rest of our answers aren’t on Google.

Head inside and learn the latest on Bethesda’s upcoming WET.

Gamer Limit: First things first, thanks for taking the time to speak with us Avi.

With all the talk regarding online play being the ‘future of gaming’, why did A2M decide to scrap the idea of multiplayer? Do you think WET’s single player can co-exist with an online component like 2K Games have done with Bioshock 2 or Naughty Dogs with Uncharted 2?

Avi: Actually, I really feel “variety” is the future of gaming with many new outlets allowing more and more genres to reach an audience and by giving people lots of choices.  In that sense, I don’t see “online play” as a must for every game.  There are still some great single player games out there and I think players still enjoy sitting down by themselves to take on the challenge of a fun single player adventure.

In the case of WET, multiplayer simply didn’t make much sense to us as slow-motion is such an integral part of the game and ultimately, we didn’t want to divide our production effort to create multiplayer content just for the sake of being able to write 2-4 players on the back of the box.  There are some great multiplayer games out there and it felt pointless to try to compete with them as online play was never going to be the essence of what we were looking to create.

Can you explain how all the fancy acrobatics work in the game? Does stringing combos seamlessly have its benefits or are they merely there to serve the purpose of high scores?

The acrobatics in the game were built in a way that they actually serve “efficiency” more than style.  Since the dual-targeting system and the slow-motion are only activated through acrobatics, players get a massive gameplay benefit from stringing combos.

By staying in the air, players inflict a lot more damage on the enemies (2 guns instead of 1, shooting in real-time even while the action is in slow-mo), they get more time to line up headshots or double targets and the also get a bit more time to visually read the environment and strategize on the best navigational “line” to take across a room (sort of like in a skate game when you are trying to keep a combo alive).

Overall, players are much deadlier while doing acrobatics.  In fact, there’s no real way to survive the game on the higher difficulty levels.  If you’re not moving and not stringing chains of attack, you are simply overwhelmed by the enemies.

I personally prefer a well-crafted single player experience, though many consumers tend to decide whether a game’s worth a purchase based on its longevity. How confident are you to say that gamers will play it a second time through? What are some of the game’s achievements and trophies that provide such allure?

Action games tend to be a bit shorter than other games cause they burn quickly through lots of real-estate.  It’s easier to make a 40 hour game if you make your players hide in the shadows all the time or if you make them cross the game world from one end to the other to get to the next mission.

For WET, we did not try to “artificially” make the game longer than the 8-10 hours we expect average players to spend completing Story Mode (normal difficulty), but we really do feel the different difficulty levels add a lot of replay value to the game.

I know that can sound clichéd, but the ‘arcadey’ nature of the game, the combo system and the enjoyment you get from having Rubi blend from one move to another means it’s a lot of fun to take your skills to the next level by taking on tougher enemies and having to play more precisely. It’s not one of those cases where you suddenly have to play differently and relearn everything you’ve mastered up to that point, you simply have to embrace the philosophy of the gameplay even more if you want to get to the end.

We’ve heard that WET’s price point during launch will be at $50 USD; did the length of the game influence this decision? Do you think the remaining $10 could possibly be invested in future expansions or downloadable contents (DLC)?

I’m not involved with setting the price for the game, but $50 seems like the right price for a game like ours.  There’s no DLC planned at this stage, all the content is already in the box.  You unlock new play modes by finishing the storyline on any difficulty level.

So we know WET’s all about stylish action coupled with a Tarantino-esque narrative; how significant is the story told in the game? Do you think games have the ability to tell memorable tales just as well as other mediums such as films?

I think story is important in giving context to the situations in the game.  It’s more fun taking on enemies and working your way through levels if you understand why your protagonist is there and if you’re given a lot of flavour to your bad guys.  I think that’s something we do quite well in WET.

In terms of making things memorable, I think the most memorable tales in games are the ones you create for yourself while you play. For example, “I was so low on life and out comes this big dude with a machine gun but I just managed to slide under his gunfire”, or “I blended the slide into a vertical ‘angel dive’ wallrun, then managed to kill him with the last bolt in my mini-crossbow while I was landing.  It was awesome!”

In an age where the number of weaponry eclipses the usefulness of a selective few, what made you decide to cut down the types of guns? Are there certain weapon and acrobatic upgrades players can ‘buy’ as they progress through the game?

Keeping things simple and intuitive was something very important to us.  We didn’t want to make the controls complicated and we wanted players to be able to quickly go from one weapon to another one on the fly while they are playing (no menu or sub-menu selections to bog things down).

We developed weapons which were markedly different from one another and ones that players would identify with and memorize easily.  New weapons are introduced gradually through the storyline, but players can upgrade them in a variety of ways throughout the adventure by spending the points they earned from killing the bad guys.

One last question before we wrap up. Usually, with great hype comes great expectation. WET’s arguably A2M’s largest project yet, what’s the toughest part about trying to impress such a large crowd with the usually-‘shallow’ action genre?

I think probably the hardest part for us is to get people to give the game a chance and not shrug it off simply because the company is better known for family-friendly games and movie licenses.  Obviously, family titles are a big part of what A2M is, but WET really does break some new grounds both for us as a company and for the action genre in general.

I think people will have a lot of fun with it if they take it for what it is; an action-packed rollercoaster ride that puts a whole new spin on familiar mechanics, to create an adrenaline-filled gaming experience!

Thank you for taking the time to speak with us Avi, always appreciated. All the best for WET’s impending release and A2M’s future endeavours.

WET is scheduled for release later this month on September 15.

Gamer Limit was recently able to procure a phone interview with the legendary developer Tim Schafer. Tim has definitely had his share of ups, with only one recent down (Psychonauts), and it looks like he has a real winner on his hands with Brütal Legend ; one of the most anticipated games of the year.

So join us as we jump right into our conversation with Tim and learn some interesting information on his latest work!

GL: It seems like you have a knack for creating picture-perfect villains. Are there any artistic mediums that influenced you in this regard?

Tim: “Well, Doviculus [Brütal Legend's main villain] had a gold mask at first, and he was really weird. We ended up looking at Vincent D’Onofrio from the movie The Cell, and eventually, Tim Curry’s Legend performance as the Lord of Darkness. In fact, this is one of the reasons we chose Tim Curry to do his voice!”

GL: What can you tell us about the controversial decision to axe Dio from voicing the main villain and replacing him with Tim Curry?

Tim: “To be honest, no one else could play him. You’ll even notice while playing the game that he’s a little “kinky;” sometimes he’ll enjoy pain when you hit him. Curry was great for this!”

GL: What is your favorite band outside the genre of metal?

Tim: “I suppose I listen to a bit of grunge, and rock, and pretty much everything, but metal is my real passion. I think of Brütal Legend as a ‘heavy metal trojan horse’ for non metal fans: watch out [laughs]! Metal really had to be ‘it’ for this game, because the lore that metal has really fits, and really impacts the game.”

GL: What are your plans for post game content? Do you have any extra modes or difficulties ready?

Tim: “We’re tossing around ideas for DLC, fun stuff. Or, we’ll work on new stuff. Nothing’s concrete yet.”

GL: Do you have dreams of making Brütal Legend a trilogy, or even a series?

Tim: “There’s an epic story for Brütal Legend that could span more than one game…definitely more stories to tell. We’ll see!”

GL: Do you have any plans to court the casual gamer?

Tim: “There are three difficulty modes: Gentle, Normal, Brutal. Multiplayer has a lot of different mechanics as well. You can really choose to play your way in the multiplayer. For instance, you don’t have to fight. You can use guitar solos to change weather, order dudes around, and if you want, hack n slash.

There are also video tutorials, and single player really is a step by step tutorial for the multiplayer.”

GL: Metal is known for over the top scenes and imagery. Are we going to see any of that in the game?

Tim: “Well, definitely with the giant leathery demonic wings Eddie sprouts [laughs]. Jack Black also shouts hilariously during the power slide attack, where you slide on your knees while playing a power chord.”

GL: You’ve done a host of adventure games, but only two full action games – are you adapting this medium because of the lowered interest in adventure titles, or are you becoming partial to action?

Tim: “I always follow what I’m inspired to do. In order to bring the world of album covers and epic music to life, you have to give the guy a broad axe [in reference to Brütal Legend], which requires an action game. As for Psychonauts, that was inspired by my experiences playing Ocarina of Time/Mario 64.”

GL: Finally, I know as a designer it must be hard to get exactly what you want. Were there times when you told the team what you envisioned, and when they actually finished it, were you disappointed?

Tim: “Back in the graphic adventure days, I could program it exactly the way I want it. But, when games [be]come more complicated, it’s tough…it’s not “exactly what I’ve done”. I have to work with really great people; it’s a collaborative effort. So yeah, sometimes I don’t get what I want, but they go right back and work on it again. I have 60 really talented people working together on Brütal Legend. It’s really an experience.”

GL: Thanks for your time! It was a real pleasure, most definitely because I grew up playing your games; Day of the Tentacle was my first real adventure experience.

Tim: “Why thank you, I’m glad you liked it [laughs]! And no problem.”

It’s common knowledge that videogames are predominantly a male pastime, backed up by many studies. Hell, even videogame characters are mostly male. Females are marginalised, yet their voice is growing stronger every day.

I recently sat down with self confessed casual gamer Amy Balloch, aspiring developer Kimberly Dawson, digitallyblonde.com’s Carol Zara and Gamer Limit’s very own Jessica Famularo. I asked our eclectic mix of ladies about how they started gaming, their position on Ubisoft’s Frag Dolls, how they feel they’re treated online and more.

Read on for some answers you may find surprising.

How did you first get into video games?

Amy: It was around the young age of eight, my Uncle who owned a Sega Saturn and Atari 2600 consoles gave these to me to play away the holidays one summer. I fell head over heels for Sonic the Hedgehog’s character and charm.

Kim: I got my first console game, Tomb Raider when I was seven. At that time I had a Sega Saturn, then soon after I got a Playstation. I love the fact that it is a female character who plays the lead as you don’t get that often. It’s completely different from most other games where you have to play a male character.

Carol: Our 1st system was the NES.  I first got into games because of my younger brother and my cousin. We would get together during summer. No school, just games all day, was the time of our lives. After leaving my first Super Nintendo in Brazil, I bought my second at a flea market here in Canada, but it didn’t last long. Playstation was introduced to me years ago by an ex-boyfriend.

Jess: I’ve been playing games as far back as I can remember. My dad is a big tech geek, so we had an Atari 2600 and a Commodore 64, both of which he encouraged me to play. There are pictures of me on the computer with my dad, and I couldn’t be more than 3 years old at the time. I loved the kiddie Sesame Street and Mickey Mouse games they had for the Commodore, but I also loved playing games like Pacman and Forbidden Forest.

So what type of games do you enjoy playing now?

Carol: Fighting games of course! Right now, I have an eighty gigabyte Playstation 3. I own Streetfighter 4, Transformers, Watchmen and Soul Calibur. I have rented/borrowed others, and honestly if I had more money, I’d own a lot more games.

Amy: I honestly have no preference when it comes to games. I’m up for trying anything new that’s out in the market as long as it’s action-packed and stimulating.  I’ve always loved the Grand Theft Auto games as even when you’ve completed the storyline missions, there’s so much to do! Other favorites include Crash Bandicoot, the Tekken series and my all-time, ultimate favourite: Guitar Hero!

Kim: I love cute games like Spyro the Dragon, but also the more brutal games like Resident Evil and GTA – I have a huge collection! I usually play MMORPG’s as I like that they are very open and you can interact with the other players. I also design online games and am currently re-designing the MuOnline RPG.

Jess: I don’t know if I can pick just one type! As an English major, I am quite partial to the RPG genre. I love the rich storylines that come with a solid RPG, something that’s hard to find in other types of games.  I also enjoy a good FPS like Half Life, I also love action games and fighting games.Plus racing games. Okay, so that sounds like almost every brand of game you could think of. Basically, if it’s a good game with sturdy gameplay and a sturdier story I’ll probably like it, although if I had to choose just one I would definitely side with the RPG.

Catering to a specific market or a disrespectful stereotype?

What do you think of games that are marketed specifically at girls? Such as fashion and dress up games?

Amy: I go by the opinion ‘each to their own’ so it doesn’t particularly bother me either way if games are designed with a female personality in mind or not. I think even if games are marketed to a stereotype, then there is going to be a buyer out there belonging to that stereotype. I doubt I know anyone above the age of twelve that plays the likes of the Barbie or Bratz games and if I do, I will surely disown them.

Kim: Games are games! I can’t say I agree with the girly games being created specifically for girls, they’re not really my thing, and I don’t think they’re that interesting if I’m completely honest! I don’t think there should be a divide and games shouldn’t be created specifically for each gender. It makes it sound like: “girls are only allowed to play Bratz Rock Angelz and boys must play GTA!” I don’t know any girls my age who have girly games, most of them like Resident Evil.

Jess: This is a tricky question because there isn’t a truly black or white answer when it comes to these games. It’s true, they do market toward female stereotypes, some of them towards negative ones that could possibly be harmful to the young girls they generally are targeted toward, yet some of them appeal to what girls like. When I was a little girl I loved Barbie dolls, so yes, some of the games marketed towards girls are successful because they appeal to what girls like.

I, for one, love Cooking Mama. I’m kind of ashamed to admit it, but it’s fun!  Of course, some of these games do promote negative stereotypes towards females. Games like Majesco’s Drama Queens, where the ultimate goal is to attain popularity by scheming against your “best friends” and hooking up with as many of their boyfriends as you possibly can, in my opinion, be more harmful than the standard video game violence. They promote ideas, perceptions that go back hundreds of years.

Carol: If I was 8 years old, I would probably be interested in dressing up virtual dolls. Because I’m a big girl now, I’d love to see the game version of “playing doctor”.

When you play games online, how are you treated?

Jess: I’m mostly a solitary gamer unless I’m playing with my friends. However, I have played Final Fantasy XI extensively, including through end game. There are loads of horror stories out there of girls getting all kinds of grief when it becomes apparent that they really are female via Team Speak. I’ve never used a voice chat client for games though, so I don’t really have much experience regarding that.

However, some funny things have happened to me during my time on FFXI. I’ve had people flat out refuse to believe me when it somehow comes up in conversation that I’m a girl. I’ve gotten creepy messages and friend requests from party members, who upon gathering at our camp site realized that my character was female. Overall though, most people may be a bit surprised, but they’re very cool about it. I was respected because I was knowledgeable of the game and kept my parties and alliances alive without causing any down time.

Carol: It’s actually funny, when I play Street Fighter 4 [online] for my UStream show, the guys like to cheer for me to beat the other guys.

Amy: I’ve played a few games online, but I can truthfully say I have never felt singled out or treated differently purely because of my gender

Kim: Sometimes you get the occasional nutter asking you: “why are you playing games when you’re a girl? Don’t you have a life? Don’t you have a boyfriend?” etc, but I just ignore it. I’ve turned my hobby for games in to my job now, so I’ve learnt to rise above it. I’m like one of the boys anyway, I’m really laid back and I love a beer, so I always blend in and if someone finds it hard to accept me I just PWN them!

What do you think of the Frag Dolls, and the image they portray?

Amy: I had never before heard of the Frag Dolls before. I checked out their website and after reading about what they do I think they definitely promote a good sense and image for girl gamers. Everything is about equality nowadays, so promoting awareness that girls do involve themselves in games isn’t a bad thing.

Carol: I like them and to be honest, I’d love to be part of the team. They represent gamer girls very well.

Jess: I’m conflicted over the Frag Dolls. They say they speak at game conferences on girl gaming and work towards encouraging girls to pick up video games. Yet at the same time, they are ultimately funded by UbiSoft, conveniently enough they all look pretty decent in those teeny Frag Doll t-shirts they have to wear.  When you look at them, do you see them as a group that would inspire girls to try a video game, or do they look like a group of hot chicks UbiSoft shows around to sell games to the male majority of video gamers?

Kim: I’d never heard of them until now. Honestly, I’m not really in to the “girls for gaming” thing, because to me it is only emphasising the subject more, and creating an even bigger divide between genders. It’s also quite sexist. To me there only exists a “gaming community” – there is no such thing as a “girls gaming community” or a “boys gaming community”. It’s quite a cheesy website too! Sorry!

So there we have it, publishers, developers and the media cannot simply lump every games playing female into a box named “girl gamers” and expect it to fit. With such varying opinions, doing so would seem idiotic, yet some media outlets still do. Like Kim surmised perfectly “there is only a gaming community”, within that community there exists so many cultures, races and creeds. The person you play against or with is a gamer, the rest is irrelevant.

(Header image courtesy of derekprospero.com.)

Sometimes writers rebel against the norm, throw caution to the wind, break the mold, and make their own unique gaming blogs. Over the next year we will be interviewing, and featuring, people who have done just that.

First up: Ever felt like bitching about a game? Ever wanted to read, listen or watch other gamers call out the industry’s shit? Then meet the target of the first ‘Alternative Opinions’ series, the head honcho of Negative Gamer, John “wardrox” Kershaw.

Gamer Limit: Firstly: Why so negative?

John “wardrox” Kershaw: Because videogames can be really damn annoying sometimes and I think it’s important to not just pretend everything is fine and happy all the time.

Does it get depressing dealing with negativity every day?

Not so much surprisingly. Everybody at Negative Gamer is on the same page, so we can all have a collective bitch and a moan. If anything I’m actually a much happier person now than when I started. I have an outlet for my anger, and people respond constructively.

Is Negative Gamer your first website, and did you start writing elsewhere before creating it?

Negative Gamer is the most successful site I have ever run, but it’s certainly not my first. I had, for the longest time, a crappy personal home page with some terribly made javascript games on. It was hosted on freeserve, the free webspace you got with a dial up account (this was in the late 90s). As I learned to program I started making what turned out to be wardrox.com (the name was the randomly generated log-in of my Dad’s freeserve account and has since become my internet pseudonym). If you go there you’ll find a fairly deserted but once popular browser based MMO. Interestingly (for me) that site has zero graphics, this was less a style decision and more just practicality. When I made it I was still on a 28.8 bps modem, graphics were a luxury.

With gaming I think I started writing when I joined the Destructoid.com community. They let you have personal blogs and I just started one. Then, one summer when I was living in London, I met Jim Sterling (their reviews editor) and by November was co-hosting the European podcast and had also gotten myself writing for a site called Ripten. I learned a hell of a lot at Ripten, and left there after about a year to concentrate on NG.

Did anyone/any sites inspire you to start writing?

Books, authors and journalists have all inspired my writing since I started, but I don’t think it was anything other than just wanting to be read that made me first start. I remember seeing a post on Destructoid’s front page that had originally been written as a community blog, and, going off my dodgy memory, I think it was a combination of that and moving to London (giving me a summer job where I could get away with not doing any work) made me want to start blogging.

How many hours a week do you pump into Negative Gamer? Would you say you treat it as a full-time job?

It’s certainly not a full time job. If it was I would clock in at 9 and fuck off at 5. If anything it’s a hobby that I’m mildly addicted too. When I’m not doing things that my Mum would consider more important (eating, shopping, socialising, writing my dissertation) I’m probably writing or gaming. But I’m enjoying myself, chatting to people, shooting people in ultra graphic gore feasts. It’s not really work.

Are there any gaming sites you respect?

Nope. The ones with enough readers and money to matter are filled with lowest common denominator garbage and the ones that I really like are never successful. Actually, that’s quite harsh. I think I respect lots of sites, just not very much.

Now I’m doubting myself, your use of the term “respect” has me stumped. I really like a lot of sites and their staff; Giant Bomb, Destructoid, Kotaku, Joystiq etc. I’m not sure I respect many. Though that does all depend in what area you’re asking I respect them in. Do I respect their pro-journalism skillz? No. Do I respect their content output and, for the most part, writing skills and knowledge? Probably. I know I most definitely admire them.

(I think I just insulted most of my friends in that answer, oh well.)

What about publishers; you seem to be always on the attack… but are there any you actually “like”?

I don’t think I could ever “like” a publisher. They just fund game developers and sell their games. I can like games, people in a dev team or PR (Capcom’s PR is great), but to like a publisher requires something I don’t think I’m capable of.

Negative Gamer has been running for 1 year, 2 months.. is NG going according to plan? Is it the level you were expecting it to be at?

Although you’re right in when it was first started, I take Day 0 of Negative Gamer being September 1st, 2008. I wrote a couple of things prior, then then I sort of forgot about the site. It was at PAX ‘08, at 2am in a hotel room, laying in bed with the girl who I would later go on to start dating (and still am) when I was inspired to really start Negative Gamer.

And it has fallen far short of my expectations. Disastrously short. I had this great idea about 30% growth every month, about advertising rates paying me a full wage within 9 months and having millions of readers within the year. I failed to reach any of the targets I set myself, but I don’t care because my expectations were for the wrong things. I’m having the most fun I’ve ever had, the site is growing at a phenomenal rate, sometimes breaks even, I’m not dead and what I now have may not be popular, but it’s fucking awesome.

The targets I set myself were all numbers, traffic and bullshit. It turns out those things matter, just not half as much as you think.

Since you have penned yourself as a negative website, how is that effecting your relationship with the industry?

We don’t have one. Ha ha. Most sites butter up to PR companies and get free games. We don’t. We can’t. If a dev, publisher or PR company wants to get in touch then we’re more than welcome to chat, but we don’t go chasing free games. How could anyone hassle a publisher for a free game, get one, then be honest in a review, not least a “Negative Gamer” review? It screws with your subconscious at the very least and generates more hassle that it’s worth.

Have you received hate mail from publishers/developers?

Nope. It turns out if they’re not sending you free games, and you’re not breaking the law or making shit up about them, they really just don’t give a crap. Which is fair enough.

Does a dinosaur eating a controlling somehow metaphorically represent your feelings on the gaming industry?

Oddly, yes. That logo came out of a several hour long conversation between me and a few close friends. I like dinosaurs. They’re strong, powerful, angry, old and extinct. I like to think NG is bold, angry, strong and like the dinosaurs, kind of old and only really spoken about in the past tense. Perhaps it also reflects my general pessimism about everything. The biting of the controller is basically showing us, the dino, trying hard to bite the thing we love, mostly out of anger. How many times have you felt your hands trying to snap a controller out of rage? However, if you notice the controller isn’t broken. Even though we are this powerful beats, we can’t break it. Meta.

Bet you weren’t expecting that, haha.

On your twitter you mentioned about attempting to get featured on MetaCritic, but as it stands your reviews… aren’t scored in a regular manner. Do you think you would sell out a bit of soul and go for a normal rating scheme to get featured on a review aggregator?

Naa, I once worked out some complicated maths that translated our “how bad is a game on 0 to -10” scale into the standard “how good is a game on 6 to 9” scale. If needed I would consider making that equation public, but the one thing I love about NG reviews is the way the score works. You can’t just add ten and think it’ll work. If you do you find a game like Battlefield 1943 got 2/10, which is obviously silly.

To conclude, what has been your biggest highlight of running Negative Gamer?

I’d like to say my occasional arguments with important industry people via twitter, but honestly, it’s the feeling of immense pride and optimism I get occasionally. NG has, for some reason, gathered up some fantastic writers, a great and growing community and meaningful, worthwhile content. Every so often I just take a step back and feel immensely proud of things, as well as very happy to think about my ideas for where the site is going and the impact it has on the gaming industry.

Many thanks to John for speaking to us today. Stay tuned over the coming months as we cover some of the other less (or maybe well) known voices in the media gaming landscape.

Ladies and gentleman, it’s time for an interview with Mr. Jim Sterling, Reviews Editor for Destructoid.com. Jim is widely known as one of the internet’s greatest feather rufflers with articles such as How Microsoft ruined fun for everybody, but is also famous for his hilarious video series The Video Game Show What I’ve Done.

Come with us as we muse on the gaming industry at large, PR firms, the review process, and how he got started in the blogging arena!

So how did you come about blogging, and where did you get your start?
I started writing online about seven or eight years ago, slowly working for sites that no longer exist, like Oratory Opinions or Project Wonderboy. I set up my own Web site, Morphine Nation, which was a social satire site (it’s still going under new leadership, check it out). I’d never thought of writing as a serious career move, instead pursuing a career in comedy. It had promise but I never had the love for it that you need to make that stuff work.

One day I just thought to myself, “I love videogames, I love writing, why not try and make it work?” I emailed a few places and somehow got on the good side of IGN. I wrote a piece for IGN Insider about the failed arcade fighter Tattoo Assassins, since I knew someone who worked on the game. The piece succeeded and it opened a lot of doors for me.

I was looking for a regular gig as a game reviewer and happened to be reading an issue of GAMEStm that had an article on how to make a career in the games industry. Destructoid was featured as an example of a gaming blog that had “made it.” I heard they paid, so I emailed Niero with some samples and the usual patter. He put me through to Nick Chester, and they decided to take a chance on me. It was a bumpy start, but I got there in the end.

No. We’ve always had a diplomatic system at Destructoid. What we do is provide a release list of games and the writers can pick what they want/are able to review. Of course, as reviews editor, I get to sneak in there first and claim dibs on all the hotly contested stuff, like Dynasty Warriors. Ooh, there’s such a fight over those games!

It varies, but I can be working for up to fifteen hours a day if it’s particularly hectic. I do a little of everything — news, reviews, features and now videos. It takes a lot of time to try and balance so much stuff, but it’s very important that I do. It’s what keeps my family fed.

I’d have to say Chris Morris is probably my biggest influence. An absolutely brilliant satirist. I recommend checking out Brass Eye, a superb series he created that absolutely mocked sensationalist media apart before it even got started.

I guess I’d say the Ten Golden Rules of Online Gaming, as it was certainly my biggest and most successful piece. I’d also have to suggest How Prototype is Blatantly Better Than inFAMOUS, as it seemed to be one of the biggest catalysts for the whole bitter debate. I don’t think that argument would have gotten as hilariously ridiculous if my article hadn’t stoked the fanboy fires.

I’d say it’s more to do with the fact that my mind retains useless information for a ridiculously long time. I can’t remember important things like doctor’s appointments or airplane flights, but I can remember the opening sequence to long-forgotten BBC1 children’s drama The Queen’s Nose. Ridiculous.

Not so much professional pressure as personal pressure. It’s hard to be cruel to a publisher you genuinely like and respect, and you worry more about hurting people you’re friendly with rather than having some big publisher try and fight you. In fact, I prefer publishers to get that way with me, as it’s far easier to stick to your guns when you’re dealing with a company that’s simply throwing a tantrum. It’s more difficult to have someone say “aw man, that sucks that you felt that way about our game,” and they’re being really friendly and you feel like you just strangled their dog.

That said, a shit game’s a shit game, and at the end of the day you have to bite a bullet and score it what feels right.

I think fear is the industry’s biggest problem. A fear of new things, a fear of creativity. It’s my belief that anything can be as successful as Halo if it’s marketed as confidently as Halo, but publishers lack confidence in anything but the biggest franchises and most established ideas.

As for what it’s doing right? It’s hard to pin down what is being done collectively as an industry. It’s easier to point at individual companies, like Valve that’s been doing a great job harboring customer loyalty, or Electronic Arts, that is backing some good, original content lately.

I think it’s disgusting if there were any shenanigans afoot, but we of course don’t know. I think Eidos needs to fire its PR department, though, as it’s been unable to keep a lid on any of this bullshit lately. Perhaps it needs to just sit back and let the games do the talking … oh wait, that would probably be worse.

Eurogamer seems to get itself into a lot of these debacles for some reason. I think they handled it decently enough. They offered a re-review, and were completely open when called out. That’s all you can hope to be as a writer, really. Mistakes get made, we sometimes slack off. I’ve done it myself. To be held accountable, however, is all I’d ever expect from a writer.

I write list columns myself, so obviously I think they have merit. I think the trick is to find a good angle, or turn the idea of list columns on their heads. There are so many “top 10 videogame babes” articles out there, which is why I parodied them by describing sexual intercourse with things like Kirby and Tingle. It’s all about having a unique idea that sets a good top 10 apart from a bad top 10.

People who claim that top 10s are lazy tend to be people who just have lazy ideas for them.

Treasure your readers, above all else. They’re the ones that keep you in the job, and the community you build is what keeps you going. Write for your readers, write about what interests both you and them. That’s how you make the transition from having readers to having fans. Also, it never hurts to start a few flamewars!

Hmmm … I’ll say Sonic the Hedgehog 2. It’s one of those games I can just play while my brain’s disengaged these days. It requires no mental effort, yet sucks up so much time. You can hardly ask for more.

Thanks for your time!

My distinct, non-sexual pleasure.