Intelligent Artifice

Three hundred mechanics, with comics on the side November 22, 2007

Surprisingly, Three Hundred Mechanics has nothing to do with Seven Hundred Hoboes, although I see no good reason why not.

It is a web site by Sean Howard listing 300 game mechanics (well, currently about 60). I like them. It’s like the ideas one occasionally has about game design, only with a neat formal twist, not to mention nice old school pixel graphics to illustrate them. I think it’s a really good method for writing down ideas - it beats letting them moulder in notebooks or never writing them down in the first place. Making it a flat list of 300 and not claiming any kind of usefulness means you can judge the ideas in a different way than if someone said “Look look I have this cool idea that will make a million seller”. Many of the ideas are interesting or thought-provoking.

(I feel tempted to steal the meta-idea… with credit of course.)

I also highly recommend reading Mr. Howard’s webcomics. Especially IF Only…, a not-really-a-comic about interactive fiction (again). It has a running joke that had me in stitches. The other comics are fun too.

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A little story about Animal Crossing November 20, 2007

Here is a little story about Animal Crossing. Only read this when you feel emotionally stable. You may need a tissue.

(Thanks, Tobe!)

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Pac-Man as interactive fiction November 19, 2007

This is probably really old but I am not really keeping up to date with the Interactive Fiction world: Pac-Man as a text adventure.

Pac-Man was a junkie, eyes oozing pus, haunted by the ghosts of those he’d killed.

They called him Pac-Man because he was always packing heat, lightning-quick on the draw with a personal arsenal second to none. But today he woke up in an alley, all weapons missing but his mouth, an animal, starving hysterical naked, trapped in an unfamiliar maze of mean streets. Needing a fix. Needing a fix like nothing else.

And the ghosts are coming.

You can guess the rest, but it’s well done.

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On Team Fortress 2 and Portal November 18, 2007

Let’s get the most important fact out of the way first: I don’t have the Orange Box yet. Regardless, here are some Team Fortress 2- and Portal-related items you might find interesting.

Rock Paper Shotgun has an interview with Erik Wolpaw, who is currently working at Valve and who was the writer of Portal. I think one reason why Portal resonates with a lot of people (with me, at least) is the surreal setting, and the writing is an important part of that. I knew Mr. Wolpaw was one of the people behind the amazing Old Man Murray, but I didn’t know he was also the co-author of Psychonauts. (Psychonauts didn’t spring fully-formed from the brow of Tim Schafer? I am shocked.)

Anyway, the interview is highly amusing but low on actionable intelligence. For that, I recommend Rock Paper Shotgun’s interview with Robin Walker and Charlie Brown (in two parts). They seem remarkably sane despite having worked on a game for, what, 10 years or so? Although it wasn’t all TF2:
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Game development areas November 12, 2007

Clint Hocking wrote a blog post about the number of developers in Montreal, and several people have commented with info about other geographical areas.

My guess is there’s between 100 and 200 professional game developers in Vienna, if not all of Austria - I only know of a handful of companies outside of Vienna.

In Germany, I expect the biggest areas to be Frankfurt, Berlin and the Ruhrgebiet. Maybe Hannover, Hamburg (which has a surprising amount of publisher offices though) and Munich. But I have not kept a close eye on the German industry for a long time, so I may be off.

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Career advice from Shuna Fish Lydon November 11, 2007

I realized yesterday that I am currently spending more time on cooking than on making games. Reading blogs, researching recipes and techniques, lusting over equipment, finding out what is in season, scouting for good ingredients, planning dinner parties, digging through magazines and cookbooks. It’s weird. Perhaps it would be different if I could make multiple games a day, all on my own?

During my reading I came across
this post on careers and mentoring over at Shuna Fish Lydon’s Eggbeater blog. She worked in the kitchens of Thomas Keller so I bet she knows what she’s doing. A lot of it is not at all specific to kitchen careers, but can easily be applied to the games industry:

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Next Generation article on video game credits November 8, 2007

There’s a nice article on Next Generation about video game credits and the IGDA standard, which includes a couple of comments from myself. I sound a bit more anti-Rockstar than I really feel. I don’t really lie awake seething with hate or anything. Serves me right for choosing the word ‘outraged’ - it sounded better than ‘indignant’…

Alexander “The Garbage Man” Hager, one of the awesome people I worked with at Rockstar Vienna, has reported his feelings on his blog (in German). Great post!

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Phase, a music game for the iPod November 7, 2007

Phase is a music-based game from Harmonix for the iPod (to be precise: any iPod that plays video).

The gameplay video shows a limited selection of songs, but apparently you can use any song on your iPod. Which means they must be analyzing the song in real-time… Well, if Vib Ribbon could do it on a PlayStation 1, why not do it on an iPod. Although my guess is that the songs that come with the game will be better balanced.

(Via Chris Foster, who was the designer and one of the programmers on Phase.)

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More on Manhunt 2 and Rockstar Vienna November 5, 2007

Gareth White, a programmer who worked on Manhunt 2 at Rockstar Vienna, also has something to say on the situation. Among other things, he points out that some files on the disk contain the names of people from Rockstar Vienna.

I haven’t played the released version myself, but it sounds like it’s virtually identical to the PS2 & Xbox version we finished back in summer 2006, apart from the edits needed to comply with the ESRB, obviously.

From what I hear the people at Rockstar London worked very hard, and I know that they did more than just censor the game. I am sure they deserve their credits. My point is: so did we.

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Rockstar Vienna’s missing credits for Manhunt 2 November 1, 2007

Yesterday, Rockstar Games released Manhunt 2 for Sony PlayStation 2, Sony PSP and Nintendo Wii. This blog post is not about the difficulties Take Two had getting this game on the market. I merely intend to correct an inaccuracy in the game’s credits, namely the over 55 missing Rockstar Vienna employees who worked on the game from January 2004 until the studio was closed down on May 11th 2006.

To the best of my knowledge, apart from the people who briefly went to Rockstar London to assist with development there, nobody from Rockstar Vienna is mentioned in the credits of Manhunt 2.

I have assembled the missing Rockstar Vienna credits to the best of my abilities. Over the course of 2.5 years various people joined and left the project. I have tried to list everyone under their primary position. One person asked during development that his name not appear in the credits: this request has been honored here.

People from other Rockstar Games studios also worked on this title. Their names and positions can be found in the credits of the released game.

Here are the missing credits:
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