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EGDC Day Two
One thing clear from the cumbersomely titled discussion panel “Preparing for the Transition to, What Issues Will Arise and How Does The Paradigm Shift as PS3, Xbox 2 and Gamecube 2 Come to Market?” is that the PSP is on everyone’s mind in a big way.
It’s actually a masterstroke of marketing for Sony to have released so little in the way of meaningful information and have created such a storm of discussion. What will the hardware capabilities mean, and how will it affect the next generation?
It’s really just a rehash of the original PS2 hype as a spoiler for the Dreamcast, and as the N-Gage comes closer that becomes clearer. Especially now you note the PSP is now going to offer phone capabilities too, something that was never mentioned before. The amount of discussion makes it clear that it’s working. No one is discussing the N-Gage’s place in the next generation.
Naughty Dog founder/possible Gap model Jason Rubin hosted a talk called “Great Game Graphics: Who Cares?” The guy had really put some effort into his slides – to the point where on a slide where he charted the evolution of graphics through the ages using Daxter, I felt an odd kind of false nostalgia for the 16bit era version… He looked wonderfully Amiga.
I can’t fault him on the style and effort. He tried really hard. He made a lot of good points. Including, amusingly, zinging his own company by stating of the original Jak and Daxter – “Gameplay was something that it was maybe short of.” But in the end, this was still mired by the cack-handed attempts of a game designer to prove that games are just as valid as film, without stopping to take a step back, look at what he is creating or claiming, and try and verify if he’s being honest.
It’s initially a terrible lie to claim that 3D characters are instantly more emotive than 2D characters – In a comparison of the movement of a character created by Richard Williams on paper to the same character created and animated on a computer, it’s likely that the warmth of the pencil lines will be more pleasing.
It’s an even more terrible lie to decide that if gaming has reached a ‘plateau’ where the amount of polygons that can be pushed are no longer an issue to the buying public, that unique aesthetic styles could not become a replacement for the drive for realism. This is a particularly terrible lie when your company has changed it’s aesthetic style for the sequel, and performs a lecture on it too (“Jak’s Makeover for Jak II: Why the Dramatic New Look for a Sequel? ”).
It’s a horrible thing to claim that with Jak and Daxter 2, the cutscene you will show us is the first use of the emotion ‘Jealousy’ in a game. It’s even more horrible when that cutscene includes the sultry ‘bad but really good’ character turning her back to the camera only to breathily pout – “I’m not like my father…”
Metal Gear Solid, apparently, is a “movie experience without a story.”
Jak and Daxter 2 is the first videogame with the emotion ‘Jealousy’ displayed.
One thing I did learn was that only 13 out of the 100 top games in the US 2002 were ‘unattached’ (i.e. not part of an existing IP). One of those games was State of Emergency. I’m not entirely sure what that says about the games industry.
ATI Party
We didn’t get invites for the Nvdia party of the night before. I’m not sure why, we just didn’t. We did get invites for this, which was conveniently on at the same time as the Develop Awards, which were hundreds of pounds a plate and didn’t have free drink. Rockstar industry type Simon Byron was quoted as claiming to have spent £180 on the night merely on booze – while anyone at the ATI party could quite happily fill up without worries.
Though, considering everyone who was anyone was at the Develop awards, there’s not very much to say. Many of the game communities' top academics were there, getting tanked up and complaining about the lack of interest much of the games industry has in them. And while I was enjoying a drink, a certain Belgian games website took my photo and placed it on the internet without my permission. I shouldn’t reward them with a link…
The Develop Award Winners
Grand Prix Award, Technology Award – Climax
Climax are a favourite of games journalists, not because they’re particularly great or anything, but because it’s funny to tell people you’re ‘going to climax’ when you have to visit the company. Their new satellite company, ‘Ejaculate’ is expected to sweep the boards next year.
Creativity Award, Best In-House Development Studio – Rockstar North
Rockstar North were originally based in Dundee as DMA Design, creator of Lemmings.
Innovation Award – Team Soho
Team Soho winning the Innovation Award for ‘The Getaway’ is a bit like Guy Ritchie winning an Oscar for ‘Snatch’ or something.
Business Development Award – Sports Interactive
Sports Interactive do quite a lot of work with charities and have tirelessly worked towards developers taking more control over their own marketing. It must work for them, what with them selling a glorified spreadsheet to millions of people. Despite this, Miles Jacobson was easily the cruellest panellist at the EIGF football panel to Clive Downie of EA.
Best Tools Provider – Criterion Software
Everyone loves Renderware.
Best New Studio – Pivotal Games
Who? You may be asking. They’ve made ‘The Great Escape’ (featuring a scary undead Steve McQueen) and ‘Conflict: Desert Storm’ and it’s sequel, the brilliantly subtitled ‘Back to Baghdad’. That’s probably worthy of an award, yeah.
Best Mobile Development Studio – IOMO
Oh dear, it’s a bit like those boring awards during the Oscars, where suddenly all the famous people are replaced by seat fillers. I don’t think that was a luxury bestowed upon the members of the Develop Awards audience (hence drink bills of £180, I guess). Anyway – IOMO are making a Tomb Raider game for mobile phones that looks much more fun than the orignal on the N-Gage.
Best Online Development Studio – Digital Illusions
The creators of Battlefield 1942, and I believe not the creators of ‘Sim Aquarium 2’. The deluxe version costs $2.50 more than the lite version and contains nearly double the amount of fish! I'm talking about Sim Aquarium there, not Battlefield 1942, natch.
Best Emerging Platform Development Studio – Denki
Christ. I bet they struggled to come up with that award title. Won by industry staltwart Gary Penn’s company, who bill themselves as a ‘Digital Toy’ company, creating games for digital television. Denki means ‘Electric light’ in Japanese.
Best Independent Development Studio – Free Radical Design
Free Radical Design’s website is like the internet in 1994.
Best Development Outsourcing Company – Babel Media
Babel Media’s ‘elite testing squads’ worked on Enter the Matrix. I’m not saying anything.
Best New Intellectual Property – Battlefield 1942 (Digital Illusions)
A very poor choice of new IP this year. The finalists were Primal, The Getaway, Conflict Desert Storm, or Ghostmaster. I really couldn’t choose. I think they probably just got it out of a hat, frankly. No wonder ‘State of Emergency’ was one of the few top selling new intellectual properties last year.
Publishing Hero – Activision
Activision’s publishing must be heroic in some way, I guess.
[next: Day Three]
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