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ECTS
Other than being the position of the only demo unit of RE4, there wasn’t much to be said for ECTS this year. I went on the first afternoon, and it was so empty it was almost sad – crammed into a space half the size of the year before, the show still managed to have literally nothing there. I had to note, that with most of the games to play and the people to meet in Excel, ECTS felt like E3’s Kentia Hall if you had to get on a train to get there, instead of just walking to get there. However, at least, the Koreans were there, as they are every year, with a Korean Pavilion detailing their hip and crazy new games.
Or usually it does. Korea is always on the brink of being the ‘new Japan’, but I think even they have been disillusioned with the fact that they never are, as on show this year were mainly mobile phone games, which weren’t even particularly wacky.
Web EnG Korea’s centrepiece was ‘Field of Tactics 1950’ a war simulation RPG based on the Korean War, which is like a tiny, handheld Final Fantasy Tactics… Set in the 1950’s, I guess. What I mostly remember is the look of sheer longing in the PR person’s face as I picked up their brochure to peruse it, the look you’d give a girl you want to talk to but you never get up the courage. Poor guy.
Choice quote: “In the dawn of June 25th, 1950, sudden siren woke up people of South Korea. Broadcasting was pushing soldiers, who were off duty, to go back to their bases and trying to calm people, who were busy packing their goods in scare.”
Entelligent were showing off their huge hit, Heroes of Three Kingdoms: Endless Battle (1.4 million players in Korea) that is (apparently) the first ever mobile network RPG game in the world.
Choice quote: “In this game, the land of china is shown in an eye-catching map defying the limitation of the mobile game.”
OnNet showed off ‘Shot Online’ an online RPG based golf game, with some quite derivative looking manga artwork.
Choice quote: “There is no excuse for losers because there are palpable reasons for winning and loosing.”
Buruxo’s ‘Spell Mage’: “Chess, Hangman, Snake, and aspects of RPG – All in One!”
Mirinae Entertainment’s ‘Kahn: The Absolute Power’: “Once upon a time in Eurasia, human beings faced the historical moment.”
Naon Tech’s “Herrcot”: Some of the best fantasy artwork I’ve seen in a while, with a large breasted elf who is so out of proportion her neck is longer than her face, and her legs are at least 6 foot long.
“Herrcot begins with various adventures of it’s own uniqueness in the land of rog continent where true 12th century European background and atmosphere lie within.”
Nbuster – The most massive disappointment, as they were the only Korean company to be showing off an arcade machine and it was ‘Queen’s Cup Classic’ – a 3d networked horse racing game. Korean Arcade games have, in previous ECTS’s, included such classics as diet shooter ‘Cutey Fatty’, from Wecom (creator’s of ‘Her Knights’ for GP32). But even the Nbuster’s staff looked disinterested in their creation.
Other than the Korean stand, the absolute most exciting thing about the show was the World Cyber Games Championship. Actually, no, that’s not exciting at all, but do feel free to check out the image of athletes at work. To tell the truth, the point of ECTS I most enjoyed was sitting in a shmangle beanbag, which appeared to have absolutely nothing to do with gaming, other than, you know, some people like to sit in a beanbag when gaming. And these are the most comfortable beanbags possible – how did they never invent a beanbag with back before? At a hefty £95 for the cheapest bag they’re… Well I hesitate to say overpriced, but… Too expensive for my tastes. Coming in a variety of colours, if you were to stick some big anime eyes on one, it would look just like a Dragon Quest Slime.
Which you could sit on.
GDCE
The Game Developer’s Conference Europe was on the floor above ECTS. Surprisingly, despite the fact that ECTS was dead on it’s feet, it seems that developers still trust the GDC name enough that the conference was well attended. Not that well attended by me, however. I only managed to make it along for the end of the first afternoon, and even then that was only because I’d covered the show floor of ECTS in about half an hour. So I managed to catch a couple of sessions.
Catwoman: Creating Sexy Game Characters
Chaired by John Miles from EA, I attended this one with the questions – Did anyone actually play this game? I mean… Was it maybe even… Good? (Why else would there be a talk on it?) Did the fact that the movie Catwoman sucked damage the game’s chances?
Of course, none of those questions were answered. John Miles was at least gracious enough to destroy everyone’s expectations for the talk as soon as possible. “I was talking to someone just before coming to do this talk,”, he began, “And they said to me, ’Sexy game characters? That’s easy. Big tits, nice smile.’ Well, that’s of course, just not true.”
Everyone was, frankly, relieved they hadn’t just booked themselves into a talk about creating gigantic breasts in 3D Studio Max. What they had booked themselves into was a talk misguided enough to be charming, I think. Interesting technical notes (that animation is clearly more important than realistic looks, and that film noir rim lighting is a great effect) were sadly overshadowed in my mind by the fact that I was watching a talk about creating a game with a female protagonist that at no point paid any attention to the fact that, you know… Women might want to play it. A very clear example of this is the ‘idling’ animations for Catwoman, in which she breaks the fourth wall by beckoning to the player in several sexy ways. This, of course, infers the player is controlling the character, not ‘being’ the character, something alienating in a game that (nominally) features a strong female protagonist. This theme is well explored in Game Girl Advance’s ‘Gender Play’ article from a while back – check it out.
Fable: The Art of Combat
The combat is one of the most maligned parts of Big Blue Box’s Fable, so I thought that this talk would perhaps clear up for me why they made the decisions they did and offer some conclusions if it was the correct path to take. However it was a technical lecture with more of a bent to the ‘hows’ than the ‘whys’. Though, it seems the combat became what it was because they just made it up as they went along. A kinder thing to say would be that it ‘evolved’, I guess. Personally, the high point of the lecture was realising that staff that worked on the game still stole their movies of it from IGN.
[Next: EGN/EDF]
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