Seriously though, the idea of going back to journalism is appealing. But, I know I’ve found my home in the games industry. It’s more fun to make ‘em than write about ‘em. At least for me – I think a few people get hooked on the freebies and junkets and lose sight of what being a journo (let alone a games journo) is all about.

It’s great when you accept that you want to move on; it’s even better when you actually do. That’s the hard part.

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Mind you, if the undead do start bashing down our doors, downloads of Zafehouse 2 will be the least of my concerns!

How much do indie PC devs make, anyways? [Gamasutra]

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:P

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This sad situation arises because:

1) Gaming magazines have all but abandoned original covers for high-res publisher art. Why spend $1000 on a photo shoot when you can slap on whatever images the publisher has on their media FTP? During my tenure on Atomic, we strived to do neat fronts every month. It’s a shame the mag’s recent desertion to gaming-only covers has forsaken this edict… now it just blends into the newsstand like everything else.

2) Publishers promise exclusives… that aren’t exclusives. You only find this out after the mag goes onsale. This happened more than a few times while I was in the magazine biz. Fortunately Atomic was burned only once or twice. After that, we learnt our lesson. It was hilarious watching the bigger mainstream mags getting caught again and again. Going by the above display, it looks like nothing’s changed.

Using precanned art for covers is nothing new and it does work (that is it sells), otherwise we’d have stopped doing it years ago. Does it matter that it makes a mag look like a marketing brochure instead of a serious industry journal? Or that if another mag runs the same art both products look ridiculous (not to mention creatively phoned-in)?

Apparently not.

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If you’re a Monkey Island fan, you might want to check out Jolly Rover. It’s a new point-and-click adventure from Aussie developer Brawsome, and it’s coming to Steam early next month.

Expected an interview from Andrew Goulding, left disappointed.

Screenplay
Developing for the iPhone

Demand for Australian programmers who can create applications for the iPhone is far exceeding supply, making it difficult and expensive for many companies who want to turn a great idea into a popular app.

Jason Hill continues to reinforce Screenplay’s Oz pedigree with a great interview with Conor O’Kane (formerly of Tantalus) and comments from Klicktock’s Matthew Hall. Setting the standard, and setting it high.

On the interview itself – why no questions about the iPhone 4.0 OS agreement? No good learning to use Torque or Unity for the express purpose of iPhone development if you can’t use them for… iPhone development! Worst case scenario, of course.

News.com.au
Brisbane Studio Behind Popular App Fruit Ninja

Since its release on April 21, the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch application — a game which involves slicing fruit like a ninja — has been downloaded by more than 400,000 people worldwide.

Cashing in on the iPad wave, but still good to see the local focus, especially on Fruit Ninja, which has only just started rolling its recognition snowball. Includes a couple of catchy, but info-light comments from the developer.

The Age
iPad games put Oz on the map
Video covering Firemint’s titles. Prefer my news in written form, but I’m sure this will be more digestible to the wordphobics.

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Or, to put it another way: Too many.

I was going to find the time to editorialise my views on piracy and how it’s soured the attitudes of developers towards the PC as a platform – including my own. Before I could, the excellent David Wong over at Cracked has done it for me, using the Humble Indie Bundle as a launchpad.

From the last part of his article:

That [the Humble Indie Bundle] was a bundle of DRM-free independent games that, combined, would normally sell for $80. The makers offered the bundle as a direct download to the consumer – no corporate middle men – and let customers pay whatever they wanted… If ever there was a measure of the gaming community’s sense of entitlement, this was it.

US$9.18 turned out to be the average amount people were willing to part with for to own the bundle’s five games. Not a great return on investment for the pack’s US$80 RRP, but it’s been shown before that the income produced from a “pay-what-you-want-model” is mediated by what people can afford rather than perceived value.

This isn’t why too many gamers are spoiled idiots. No, it’s the next nugget that drives the point home:

More than a quarter of the downloaders stole it outright. That’s right. More than a quarter believed that even one penny was too much to offer in return for the hundreds of hours of labor it took to create the games.

Are we talking about P2P? No, no we are not:

…This is just the people who pirated the games directly off of the game maker’s server. In other words, they intentionally used the game developers’ resources so, in addition to paying nothing, they would actually cost them additional money on bandwidth.

At least going the P2P method you’re getting it via the path of least resistance. From a purely psychological perspective, it makes sense. But to grab it from the developer’s own hardware? As Wong puts it, you’re not only depriving the creators of well-deserved income, you’re reaching into their pockets and taking what they already have.

In short: You’ve gone from idiot to full-bird dickhead.

We need to kill the mentality of developers being “The Man”; a duplicitous and intangible entity you need to boycott or steal from to convince it of the evil of its ways. Developers are people. They have families and homes. And they need to make a living, just like anyone else.

If you want to make a statement, sure, don’t buy a game. But stealing and then playing it? Can you think of anything more hypocritical?

5 Reasons It’s Still Not Cool to Admit You’re a Gamer [Cracked]

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Bad news: One of them doesn’t exist any more (hint: it’s Transmission!). Jason Hill over at Screenplay picked up on the fact in a recent blog post.

Okay, so the list isn’t technically wrong – it’s put together based on UK sales numbers, and even if a studio is defunct, its games can still sell. Obviously.

Even so, any positives you could take from the list are overshadowed by the bad.

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From the piece:

Is it possible that, while we’ve been sitting on our couches delving into the latest and greatest games from the world’s biggest developers, the Australian games industry is on the brink of collapse? A slow, secret death that is not only affecting the lives of games industry employees, but completely undermining the long-term health of the Australian game design community?

I think “game design community” is a little specific – producers, programmers and artists are losing their jobs too – and the lack of comment from any of the companies mentioned (apart from the GDAA) makes it as hard-hitting as a wet cake. But it’s a start.

To be fair to Pat, when you’re working for a pulp site like IGN, finding a reason to scribe something that isn’t a game review or needlessly estatic preview can be difficult. If it isn’t R18+, the audience is apathetic at best.

All we need now is for a few more Aussie journos to take a closer look at the local industry. Why has no one interviewed Rob Murray over at Firemint about the iPhone OS 4.0 license agreement? And in the wake of the GFC, we have studios such as Halfbrick putting out quality morsels like Fruit Ninja. Surely it’s worth a bit of coverage? It broke into the USA app store’s Top 10 after all.

Honestly, the stories almost write themselves.

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The letter is apparently written by EA president Frank Gibeau. It summarises the company’s position on the lack of an R18+ rating for video games in Australia.

At one point I was a staunch supporter of a revised classification system. And, while I would still like reform, I’m tired of the Australian games media using it as its go-to “serious business” story. Where are the articles about the GFC and the games industy, and how it’s affected the local environment? Maybe I’m not reading enough print.

Warning: I’m about to go completely off topic. Don’t ask me why.

It appears Jason Hill’s Screenplay is probably the best source of news in this regard, his latest story on the slashing of Victoria’s Digital Media Fund is testament to this. But, Hill’s style of writing lacks passion; it’s dry without being truly analytical. That’s great for reporting news, but I expect more flavour from a gaming blog. Not that there’s anything bad about that. If there’s a blog I trust and respect, it’s Screenplay, and to me it’s a fortress of serious games reporting that, locally, is nigh untouchable.

On a more general note – Never been a fan of reader-scribed articles. I feel it dilutes your voice and if the articles are good enough to be published, you should be providing compensation, especially if said reader contributes regularly. The novelty of appearing on your favourite site wears off quickly, and after that, well, you’re just doing someone else’s job for them free. Heck, why not start your own blog?

I also understand what it’s like to write blog posts day after day – there’s not always something interesting to write about. But the stories are there… people just have to be passionate enough to go looking for them.

Anyway, enough tangents from me. Read EA’s release after the jump.

Media Statement: Electronic Arts’ Position on the R18+ Rating

Australian legislation should introduce an R18+ rating for video games
By Frank Gibeau, President, EA Games

As the Australian government evaluates the introduction of an 18+ category for video games within the OFLC age rating system, it’s important to remind ourselves that in today’s global video gaming audience, the average age of a gamer is 28.

At EA we are committed to the belief that adult consumers can have responsibility for their entertainment choices. Just as a grown ups can decide to see a film or read a book with mature themes, so should he or she be entitled to choose the same in interactive entertainment.

Government policies that don’t allow for the rating of mature content in video games effectively censor entertainment choices for adults. These policies show a poor understanding of today’s video gaming audience. Existing legislation in Australia that limits age ratings of games to 16, demonstrates a distance between those policies and the reality of the video game industry and the people that play interactive games in Australia today.

The spectrum of gamers is as wide as the viewership of television, movies, theatre, and the readers of books. Governments don’t insist that all books be written for children, or that all television shows be cartoons. Adult gamers want their governments to treat them with the same respect they get as movie goers and book readers. Adult Australians should be allowed to choose the games they play, including those with mature themes.

Around the world, our industry takes very seriously the responsibility we have to protect children from inappropriate content in games. We are committed to robust, easy- to-understand age rating systems designed to help people make appropriate content choices for the right age groups; the OFLC in Australia, the ESRB in North America, PEGI in Europe, CERO in Japan. These systems have been proven as the most efficient way to protect children from inappropriate content and offer parents the right set of information about a game through a recommended age rating, and on-pack information and icons to illustrate themes present within the content of the game.

A government policy that keeps our mature games out of stores and forces developers to rewrite code is censorship. It also forces lesser quality games into that marketplace, often stripped of their intended content and features. What will be next? Will adults be forced to see edited versions of mature films? Read books with certain chapters removed? As policy measures increase restrictions on available content, so too will consumers increase the practice of parallel imports from neighboring or same-language markets, depriving their home country economy of the associated industry revenue.

As the Australian government moves to participate in the economy of the global gaming market, policy makers should consider the environment they create for game makers. Governments that design policies hostile to game developers and their creative medium will struggle to attract investment from the global industry. The global gaming industry is robust and growing faster than any other entertainment medium. It has already largely surpassed cinema and music. If Australia seeks to benefit from this tremendous creative and economic opportunity, its policies should reflect an understanding of the marketplace and a willingness to participate.

A change in the Australian age rating system is needed. We call on the Attorneys General in their next general session to vote unanimously in favor of the introduction of an 18+ rating for video games to allow adults to make their own choices about the entertainment they choose to enjoy. The implementation of a new 18+ age rating classification is the right step for consumers, and for the industry, in Australia.

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Put simply, you’d have to be high or stupid to buy Modern Warfare 2 off Steam if you live in Australia.

While I was on Kotaku AU I reported a similar pricing disparity with Call of Duty 4. Before you get angry at Steam – don’t. This is Activision Blizzard’s way of playing nice with local retailers so, if you have angst (which you should), be sure to direct it at the publisher.

If you must have the game, buy it from Play-Asia.

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You can’t argue his style of game is ripe for an MMO treatment, though the man himself is reluctant to place Galactic Command Online in the same genre as the likes of World of Warcraft. In his words: “…The game isn’t really an MMO in that sense of the word (it’s not more an MMO than APB, Global Agenda, Crimecraft etc) but unfortunately thats the terminology the industry seems to have stuck with – as are we”.

With the amount of support, updates and expansions MMOs require these days, it’s been stipulated that GCO could be 3000AD’s last game. And it could be. But, judging by the (lack of) success of recent MMO launches, it might not be for the reasons the company has stated.

What Smart has going for him is his unwavering passion and vision, even if these qualities put him on the wrong side of the flame-proof fence in many an Internet forum. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s these very qualities the genre needs to kick it in the dice bag and get out of the exhausting cycle of pumping out endless WoW-clones.

I guess we’ll see how GCO stacks up against EVE and Infinity: Quest for Earth. My guess is, like Smart’s other games, it’ll cater to the exquisitely niche audience of gamers that love Battlecruiser, and perhaps the much larger group stuck on the never-ending geas for an online version of Bell and Braben’s Elite. As long as 3000AD keeps this in mind when it comes to the pricing micro-transactions and server costs, there’s no reason it can’t be sustainable.

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*This is a joke, of course. But the fact I had to write this clarification is in itself depressing.

UPDATE: The Classification Board was kind enough to send through the report. Long story short, dismemberment was the main issue.

Classification Database – LEFT 4 DEAD 2
[Classification Board]

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The event itself runs from 14-15 August, so if you’re in Victoria and find yourself outside the State Library around these dates, go check it out. Tickets are $20, which isn’t so bad when you consider the price for conferences such as GameConnect are much steeper.

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Incoming Carmack quote:

“We will now be able to grow and extend all of our franchises under one roof, leveraging our capabilities across multiple teams while enabling forward looking research to be done in the service of all of them. We will be bigger and stronger, as we recruit the best talent to help us build the landmark games of the future. As trite as it may be for me to say that I am extremely pleased and excited about this deal, I am.”

It’s the usual stuff from a press release about an acquisition, but it’s weird hearing it from the mouth of the straight-shooting Carmack. I think it’s unlikely ZeniMax will sit on id Tech 5, with titles like Oblivion and Fallout under its belt, gagging for new tech. I’m sure Bethesda’s brand of Gamebryo is nice, but it has its roots in NDL, the same engine that powered Morrowind many moons ago.

In the back of my mind I can’t help but think that id has suffered under the pressure of the financial crisis. But that’s just speculation on my part. Would make a great interview question – if you could wrangle an honest answer.

ZeniMax Media Acquires id Software [ZeniMax]

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The Interactive Entertainment Association of Australia (IEAA) today released figures showing games industry revenue was $1.96 billion in calendar year 2008, an increase of 47 per cent from the previous year.

How did movies fair in ’08?

Box office takings for the same period were up 6 per cent to $946 million, the Motion Picture Distributors Association of Australia said. Total revenue for movies sold on disc grew 5 per cent to $1.4 billion, the Australian Visual Software Distributors Association (AVSDA) said.

When you think about it, you’d have to see around five movies for every one game you purchase.

I like those odds.

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If you want confirmation, you need go no further than Seven Degrees of Freedom, the blog of (now ex) Pandemic coder Tony Albrecht:

Yes. I have been made redundant. But that’s OK, I feel pretty good about it.

All the best to Tony and Pandemic – very unpleasant news so early in the year.

For those of you that are wondering… [Seven Degrees of Freedom]

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I spent what felt like a year’s worth of typing hours on the R18+ debate during my stint at Kotaku Australia, so I really don’t have anything else to add. The arguments have been made, the points refuted and the evidence presented. It looks like the only way an R18+ rating is going to happen is if Atkinson falls from power (unlikely, given his seat) or kicks the bucket.

What a horrible state of affairs.

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I was lucky enough to attend E3 2006, what could be considered the last ‘great’ E3. I have to agree with industry sentiments – it was not the best environment to get work done as a journalist. Securing interviews was tricky, finding a quiet space to think was even harder, and actually getting to publisher stands was hellish.

I’m not of the opinion that this year’s reworked version is a step forward. Perhaps the ESA is testing the waters, but apart from Silent Hill 5 and Resident Evil 5, I’ve been mostly snoring my way through the coverage.

First we have Quake Wars. It’s quickly becoming the new Team Fortress 2. We have a demo, yes, but I’ve been seeing news on it for years now with no game to back it up. I can only hope, for Activision’s sake, that it gets released this year. I want to stay interested, but it’s a struggle.

Killzone 2. I could have sworn we were talking about this when the PS3 was in the prototype stages. Where’s the gameplay?

Gears of War for PC. News of this leaked months ago and despite Mark Rein’s best efforts to deny its existence, we weren’t buying it. Epic would be silly not to port it, unless rolling around in huge piles of money gave them rashes.

Spielberg’s games. EA is currently wrestling Activision for the ‘Most Vacuous Press Release’ award after putting out this doosy: http://www.info.ea.com/news/pr/pr965.pdf. The description for the Wii title reads like a cut-and-paste. It’s just, well, it’s just useless. It tells you nothing.

Oblivion Game of the Year Edition. Not news, sorry. Pretty much a given considering it’s exactly what they did when Morrowind had a few expansions under its belt. Good I suppose if you haven’t got the game, but not worthy of E3.

Argh. I’d rather pistol-whip myself with a howitzer than continue reading what’s coming out of Santa Monica.

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