Speaking to us yesterday, Molyneux explained that the game’s planned summer release slipped for a number of reasons, the first of which was simple reality. “In my mind it was a simple black cube in the corner of a white room,” he said. “How long could that take?”
Delivering the keynote address at ExPlay 2012 in Bath today, environmental artist Robert Briscoe talked attendees through the evolutionary process Dear Esther went through from its original state as a Half-Life 2 mod to full-blown standalone release – and how he turned down a job offer from Valve to make it happen.
“Plan ahead,” he warned attendees. “Take whatever estimate you have in your head, then double it. Then add an extra six months for good measure. It will never go as planned.”
Finish the fight. Five years on, the misguided marketing hook for Halo 3 still irks those who stuck with Bungie’s strung-out storytelling and cryptic iambic prophesying only to find that the climax didn’t deliver. The war might have been won (honestly, it was hard to tell) but our hero was left drifting in distant space.…
The ExPlay festival in Bath this morning played host to a panel that explored the role videogames can play in science and society, looking specifically at how gameplay – whether full game mechanics or simply gamification – can help players learn about, and understand, difficult or obscure topics. A spoonful of sugar, as it were.
“I’m excited to be able to share my passion for virtual reality at such an influential and innovative conference,” Luckey said in a press release. “Virtual reality has finally arrived and as it matures, it’s going to change games forever. As gamers and developers, we have a lot to look forward to.”
York University picked up an Athena SWAN award in recognition of itssupport of women in science. The male dominance of the discipline has been cited as one of the reasons for the woeful number of women in game jobs. Just six per cent of industry employees are female; in York’s computer science department, the figure is currently 15 per cent.
Speaking at the ExPlay Festival in Bath today, Alex Trowers, designer at CSR Racing developer Boss Alien, said he believed too few modern games offered enough challenge, and that designers shouldn’t be afraid to make players’ experiences more difficult.
The question here is whether Liberation is – as suggested – a true Assassin’s Creed experience on a handheld. From DS to smartphone, the series’ portable spin-offs to date have failed to capture the essence of the console games, but as new protagonist Aveline de Grandpré shimmies up to the top of a spire and gazes out over a hazy New Orleans sunrise, that familiar eagle cry the backing to her first descent into a hay bale, it’s evident this is the closest the small screen has got to matching the widescreen scope for which the franchise is famed.
There’s no questioning Okami’s credentials as one of the most strikingly beautiful games to have emerged this, or indeed last, century. Its unique look, based on classical Japanese watercolours and wood carvings, remains as appealing now as it was in 2006, so the HD version released today on PSN makes perfect sense.
The figure was revealed in the run-up to release of the latest game in the series, Halo 4, which launches next week. 343 Industries, the Washington studio which was handed development of Halo 4 after Activision acquired Bungie, has its work cut out if its first Halo game is to be the most successful in the series. Halo 3 brought in $170 million in day-one sales; Halo Reach, released in 2010, brought in more than $200 million.
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