Yes, those are the mascots for the London 2012 Summer Olympics. Yes, they do look like something that erupted from the back-end of a well-known Lovecraftian horror. You know, if it was into dudes.
No, they’re nowhere near as lovable as Quatchi. Then again, what is?
London gets chance to eyeball its 2012 Olympics mascots [The Age]
Despite having worked for a year as its editor, as a reader, Kotaku Australia (nor its mothership) rarely finds itself open in my browser. Currently, local news and articles appear a distant second to competitions and daily features that rely on user contributions. The mixture, as it stands, doesn’t tempt me to stick around.
The blog format doesn’t lend itself to theses, of course; 150-word can generate as much traffic as a 1500-word. Still, the odd full-bodied local piece would be appreciated.
The US site, on the other hand, does sporadically come up with some great content… even if it’s not produced by its staff writers. An example of such content? This article by Laura Michet.
Ever found a minigame in a title that’s as (or even more) enjoyable than it’s parent? Wished said minigame was its own product? Welcome to the crux of Michet’s post.
The most intriguing idea to come from the exercise is “Herbalist Adventure”, based on the potion-crafting aspects of Bethesda’s Oblivion. To quote Michet:
Herbalist Adventure would be my favourite game of all time. You’d be practically helpless: a weakling lost in a VAST world (let’s make it much bigger than Oblivion; make this a Just Cause-sized world, a huge thing with a million different kinds of plants). Your only skill: the ability to turn flowers into juices. All combat – what little of it there’d actually be – would be enabled by the crazy cocktail of stimulants and steroids you’d chug before every encounter. See a kobold? DRINK THAT POTION OF STRENGTH! DRINK TWELVE!
While the open-world bit makes me ill to my toes, the rest is golden.
Distilled To A Purer Substance [Kotaku Australia]
Good news: Two Aussie developers, Krome and Transmission, are #52 and #65 on the list respectively.
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.
Found on IGN, penned by Patrick Kolan. The link is courtesy of Tsumea.
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.
Found this in my inbox today. No doubt it’s up in many places online, but no harm replicating the information here.
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.
Continue reading ‘EA’s open letter to the R18+ debate, some unrelated ranting by me’
Ah… nothing like a zombie march to get the blood pumping. Does it really matter if it’s flowing from an exposed wound? I don’t think so.
Zombie marches are held everywhere, but Melbourne’s own undead shuffle is taking place this weekend on May 1. The horde will start at the Carlton Gardens north of the city at 1PM, and shamble its way to the metro core, bringing all the fake corpulent skin you could ever want with it. Even if the only shooting will be done with cameras, I’m sure it’ll be fun for everyone who doesn’t instantly drop a potato in their underdaks. If the photos from previous years are anything to go by, it should be a blast.
And, despite being an amateur affair, some of the makeup and effects are quite good… more than good enough to find their way into a certain zombie survival simulator…
Melbourne Zombie Shuffle 2010 [that’s melbourne]
Zafehouse 2 adopted the supply model of Zafehouse because, well, it works. Where Z2 diverged was by allowing each survivor to carry their own cache of supplies. You can also make definitive decisions about which supplies you’ll get – barricades can be made from furniture, found in almost every building type, and each building type favours one or more supply types (the hospital and medicine, for example).
But, I’ve been thinking over the last few days that the supply model could be folded into the item system. The result would be that supplies would no longer be counters with maximums, but discrete items, just like guns and furniture. In this way, a survivor could load themselves up with barricades, at the expensive of ammo, medicine and alcohol.
What makes me strongly in favour of this system is that it opens up more choices for a stronghold. If you think the hospital is your best chance at survival, you can now literally drop everything and cart barricades over from other buildings to fortify it, rather than a couple at a time.
The main interface would still keep track of how many of each supply type you have so the information is available at a glance, but the trade window would recognise them as singular items. The system would probably necessitate a weight system, and items like bullets and medicine would need a stacking mechanism… because I can’t see anyone staying sane with the prospect of moving 50 bullets from one inventory to another.
The risk is that trading and collecting supplies might end up with a Diablo-like inventory mini-game, but I believe this can be avoided.
It’s been over a month since I last posted about either Zafehouse 2 or the 4e Power Toolkit, so I was due. I don’t have a great deal to say, but I’m feeling a little disconnected from you guys and it’s making me sad.
Zafehouse 2: Development has been… slow. At work, we’re getting extremely close to the business end of development and I’m spending a lot of time doing the designer thing. It hasn’t left me with a lot of brain space or time for Zafehouse 2. This has compounded my aforementioned sadness.
Compounding the compounded sadness, I’ve hit a few roadblocks with the game, which I am methodically resolving. The biggest one was enemy/player placement in combat. Originally I was using pixel positioning, which seemed decent on the surface, but caused havoc with movement, path-finding and a bunch of other tiny things that grew into a series of big things with teeth, bad breath and mad, mad eyes. I’ve now switched to a grid system, and much of the pain has faded. I’m now refactoring the drawing code and logic so I can finish combat completely.
Continue reading ‘April update: Zafehouse 2, 4e Power Toolkit’
Last year I spoke at indie game festival Freeplay on the topic of fanboys (or people, depending on your touchiness to political correctness), game criticism and, apparently, danger. And by “spoke” I mean “sat on a panel”, so there were other people talking too.
A recent update to the Freeplay website included MP3s from some of the talks, mine being one of them. I haven’t listened to it, so I don’t know if I sound like utter balls, but I’m hoping at least some of the content that spurted from my mouth was decent. I believe it was, because I managed to mention Salvador Dali who, as we all know, has been long associated with video games.
Ha.
Freeplay will again be held this year at the State Library in Melbourne, Australia. Not sure whether I’ll be speaking, but I’d happily welcome an invitation. In the meantime, click the link below to listen to my ramblings.
Games Criticism and the Danger of the Fanboy (or Fangirl) [Freeplay]
Update: Turns out the drivers have a bug in the fan control code that causes them to overheat. As such, I’ve removed the link for now (thanks Voideka).
I’m not normally one to post about a graphics driver update, even if they do excite my eyebrows from time to time, but the WHQL-certified 196.75s for NVIDIA’s GeForce cards includes a fix that allows users to override the AA settings for Mass Effect 2. I believe this renders the executable rename feature of MassAffinity obsolete… but not the program itself. You’ll still need it to get around the silly dual-core slow down bug the game seems adamant on keeping, even after a patch.
NVIDIA DRIVERS 196.75 WHQL [NVIDIA]
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