This week in TPoI, we covered several important industry news stories outside of E3, including Gawker’s bankruptcy, Overwatch’s first major tournament, and Michael Bay’s journey into VR gaming. Additionally, if you’d like to hear about some of the top announcements at E3 this year, please check out our roundup on the TriplePoint blog, here. Continue reading TriplePoints of Interest – Week of June 13
Two weeks ago, hundreds of game industry professionals and industry hopefuls gathered for the fourth installment of East Coast Game Conference in Raleigh, North Carolina. While the southeast doesn’t quite have the bustling industry reputation of San Francisco or Los Angeles, attendees didn’t seem to mind in the least. That a show planned almost entirely by a board that has separate full-time jobs, competing with giant expos that bring in 30 to 70 thousand people, continues to thrive says a lot about the industry today.
The expo hall, much like the show’s attendees, featured a unique split of well-established companies (Insomniac, Funcom, Red Storm), growing independent developers (Spark Plug Games, Mighty Rabbit), and industry-focused businesses, all rubbing elbows as they showed off their work and wares. Panels and presentation topics ranged from business to mobile and social gaming, along with a standalone track led by the region’s most recognizable name: Epic Games.
Of these varied panels, one in particular provided some helpful insights into the continually evolving relationship between consumers, journalists, and public relations in the gaming industry. Within trappings of bourbon cupcakes and actual bourbon, covered to great effect by Kotaku’s esteemed Mike Fahey here, editors from Polygon, The Escapist, Kotaku, and IGN spent an hour going over some of the tougher ethical questions they face in their work.
At the end of the final day, as the expo hall closed and the last panels wrapped up, the unique spirit of the NC Triangle’s gaming industry became a bit more apparent. Attendees lingered and chatted as they broke down their booths, some helping others as they packed up to head home and very few seeming in a huge rush to leave.
While it’s true that hubs like SF and LA lead the industry in size, there’s a lesson to be learned in the continued success of the ECGC. No matter how competitive the space gets, or how much worry goes into predicting the future landscape, we’re all in this together in the end.
Oh, and one more extremely important takeaway from the show: bourbon before noon can be dangerous. Drink responsibly, and preferably a bit later in the day. Cupcakes optional.
In part two of today’s LEGO MMO media buzz blitz, we take a peek at chatter around the web and beyond, as journalists enter LEGO Universe and report back for the first time…
Check out part one for more fun – behind-the-scenes, in the spotlight and on the brick road along the way. The LEGO Group and developer NetDevil are anxiously counting down the days to LEGO Universe launch in mass retail, nationwide on October 26th!
Long burnt out on playing massively multiplayer online games, I was a bit surprised how much fun I was having checking out LEGO Universe. Its whimsical mix of LEGO elements, humor and collecting is a powerful combination. More surprising, though, is that my 9-year-old son has just as much fun playing the game as I do. Creating a game that is equally fun for children and adults could help NetDevil find some piece of World of Warcraft’s immense, though elusive success. – Kotaku
All in all, I think NetDevil has done an amazing job with Lego Universe… I think it’s a game that kids will enjoy, but adult fans of Lego will really love — particularly because NetDevil has permission to introduce Lego pieces that aren’t available in the real world. 
The combination of Lego platforming, online multiplayer gaming, collecting bricks and building has enormous potential. – Wired GeekDad
Following an impressive take-home of E3 awards earlier this year, LEGO Universe is already proving to be a holiday 2010 favorite too. The game was recently featured in FUN! Online Games, IEEE Spectrum and EDGE magazines, and has also been selected for the “Video Game Hot Dozen” in the Holiday 2010 issue of FunFare Magazine.
You know? I’m damn impressed by NetDevil… All in all I am getting a really good vibe from Lego Universe. There’s been serious work put into it and more importantly, more than just a little love. This is more than just a game. – OnRPG
When I first logged into the LEGO Universe closed beta, I immediately felt like the game was built using physical LEGO bricks. That’s the best way to describe it. From creating a mini-figure to running through the zones, it honestly seemed like every piece was pulled from a huge box of assorted LEGO pieces. The level of detail in the game is perfect… it certainly succeeds in offering a fun LEGO world that fosters creativity in players of all ages. – ZAM
It’s pure user-generated creativity, the kind of in-game feature that might seem at home amongst other pseudo-level design games but stands out in full force inside an MMO. – VideoGamer
The LEGO Universe story is simply brilliant… It summarizes a conflict and provides a reason for the game world to exist, while at the same time offering players the opportunity to overcome the enemy NOT with direct conflict and combat (though plenty of that exists), but rather by creating things and using their imagination. If that’s not the perfect set-up for a LEGO-based story, then I don’t know what is. With such a simple premise, NetDevil has simultaneously reinforced the best aspects of a toy created to inspire with a reason to seek out and embrace that inspiration. I’d like to offer my personal kudos to the team for this marvelous bit of writing… I have, on the whole, had an extremely enjoyable time adventuring and creating in LEGO Universe. – TenTonHammer
The game features more than three million options for character selection, including trousers, shirts and hair pieces that can all be decorated with brightly colored patterns and stickers. The character creation is also where the “huge commitment to child safety” starts. By using a “really cool programming language” and a simple User Interface (UI), Lego Universe also enables players to make their creations come to life. Any items that have been built can be made to move, such as a lift being programmed to go up and down or the wonky sheep being made to hop around. – Digital Spy
The Gnarled Forest is my perfect world–pirates have been marooned in a forest (a pirate’s least favorite place), cornered by cursed treasure, angry gorillas, and a first mate monkey with a trigger finger… I sincerely enjoyed all of my time in the LEGO Universe beta. The achievements and pet systems offer a lot of “carrots” to chase after. – PC Gamer
The LEGO Universe Beta has been a blast. We truly can’t wait for this came to come out because not only is it a very easy game to pick up for anyone with an imagination, but also super kid safe. – Pixelated Geek
In some games it might seem like major overkill to have wide-ranging gameplay elements together in such a tight space — and indeed often together in the same quests. However, in LEGO Universe, they make sense. As opposed to just giving you the quests and expecting you to run five feet to talk to an NPC, the quests incorporate obstacle courses, requiring you to stop and think about how you’ll accomplish the task. – Massively
I honestly love how this game looks, and The Forbidden Valley mixes it up with dark colors that contrast much of the rest of the game to create a great looking area for players to explore and quest in. I think that developer NetDevil has done a great job at capturing what makes Legos great…which of course is that they are fun to play with, and Lego Universe is certainly a fun experience. – Games Are Evil
I wanted to know if the game could match my memories of that castle from my childhood. So far, it seems to be doing a pretty good job… I’m impressed by the level of detail that NetDevil, the developer, was able to pack into the game, giving each zone a distinct feel through its quests and setting. Gnarled Forest is full of trees, apes and pirates while the Forbidden Valley is dark and brooding, creating the perfect mood for a world full of ninjas. The zones contain a lot of replay value, and you’ll be constantly revisiting them as you obtain new gear and begin new quests. – ZAM
In terms of respect in the gaming industry, sports videogames sometimes get, for lack of a better term, “the shaft.” Despite the massive annual sales and worldwide appeal of perennial juggernauts such as EA Sports’ Madden and FIFA series, sports videogames arguably do not receive the proper attention in terms of critical analysis and recognition that they deserve from the gaming community.
One person who has made recent breakthroughs in the way sports videogames are received and covered is Kotaku’s Owen Good. Owen is the voice behind Kotaku’s sports coverage, satiating readers’ appetites for in-depth coverage and discussion of issues within sports gaming through daily updates and his Saturday sports column, “Stick Jockey.” To further explore the latest issues in sports gaming, Owen was able to sit down with us and share some of his thoughts.
TP: How did you find yourself in your current role as the leading voice behind sports coverage at Kotaku?
OG: Somewhat by happenstance, really. Brian Crecente (the site’s editor in chief) and I were both reporters at the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, starting within about a week of each other in 2001, come to think of it. We kept in touch after I left in 2004, and in April of last year, he needed a weekend editor and asked somewhat out of the blue if I’d consider it. The role was more part-time then than now. In July of this year Brian expanded my duties to make the job more of a full-time position. Shortly after, both he and the deputy editor, Stephen Totilo, saw that I was writing consistently about sports games, having a great deal of interest in the subject both as a gamer and as a former sports writer. Recognizing that it’s a potential growth topic, we three quickly agreed on creating a Saturday sports column for me. Others at Kotaku will write about sports — Luke Plunkett, especially — but since the column’s debut in August, “Stick Jockey” means I’m the de facto face of sports gaming for Kotaku.
TP: Sports videogames seem to be frowned upon by other gaming journalists. Do you agree that there is a certain bias against sports videogames in the journalism community and if so, why?
OG: I wouldn’t say there’s a demonstrated, overt bias in the specialty press as much as there is a passive, albeit strong neglect. Sports games are a lower priority in general interest games publications and sites, that’s fair to point out. And, speaking for Kotaku, were we to consider only our readers’ reactions, we probably wouldn’t make much of an effort on the subject either. If you were to take these as your only measures, there’s a definite chilling effect seen both in reader comments and the pageviews for sports topics compared to other subjects, and that’s because the typical hardcore gamers who comprise our readership came to gaming for shooters, role-playing games, action/adventure titles — something other than sports. I view this as more of an opportunity; and so does Kotaku’s editorial leadership. We should present sports gaming in a useful and accessible way to all readers, but I think if you’re looking to make a hardcore gaming audience interested in sports games, you’re going to be frustrated. Instead I’m trying to grow our site’s reputation with and exposure among sports gamers, who maybe aren’t as inclined to visit general-purpose gaming blogs. But there’s no question it is an underserved readership. A game like Madden isn’t successful because 10 teenagers buy a million copies each year.
TP: How do you combat such a bias?
OG: I’m happy to write about sports games any day of the week. But as my column shows, there has to be buy-in from the editorial leadership of a magazine or site. They have to see the value or at least the potential in sports game coverage, and then give that copy mainstream play within the rest of their report. Kotaku’s taken a progressive stance on both counts.
TP: In your opinion, what is the single greatest innovation in sports gaming in the last 10 years?
OG: This probably goes back even further than 10 years, but I think it’s 3D gameplay. Seems a little basic but it completely remade our expectations of the genre. The means to create an accurate league, game, or season simulation, in the math anyway, has been around since Microleague Baseball on the PC in the 1980s. Full 3D motion-captured animation finally brought the gameplay up to TV-like realism and created what we now know as the modern sports simulation — which marries statistical accuracy with on-field verisimilitude, both under control of the player. Prior to this, even a title like the beloved NHL ’94 was more arcade than lifelike in its gameplay. Other than 3D animation, the core components of a sports title — single game, season mode, player creation and roster management, full league licensing — have been around for most of the past two decades.
TP: Recently, microtransactions have worked their way into the sports gaming scene. EA Sports introduced the ability to purchase stat upgrades in Madden 10. Furthermore, EA Sports will offer Tiger Woods PGA Tour soon in a free-to-play, browser-based version, encouraging players to purchase in-game objects. Do you see this trend continuing, and will it be healthy for sports gaming?
OG: To directly answer the question: yes, it will continue. While I don’t think they do a whole lot to invigorate sports gaming from a consumer’s perspective, microtransactions certainly don’t harm it. In games like Madden and NCAA Football, we’re not talking about paying to access major features or expectations of a game that should be in the retail code, and the performance boosts are for singleplayer only. I bought all the upgrades for my dynasty in NCAA Football 10, and justified it as a role-playing decision — elite programs make hard-cash investments in attracting and developing their personnel, don’t they? Opening up an extra recruiting pipeline is not even the kind of core game feature where you say, well, if the game was $70 it would be included. At the same time, it’s an extra revenue stream and if that helps keep the price fixed at $60, as a gamer I can tolerate it.
TP: You recently mention NFL 2K5 as an overlooked game of the year possibility in 2005. Through EA’s purchase of the NFL license for use in videogames, this franchise has taken on an entirely different form since. Through eliminating direct competition, do you feel that financial strategies such as EA’s acquisition of the exclusive NFL license inhibit progress and innovation for sports gaming in general?
OG: There are two things at work here. One is that EA’s exclusive deal showed up at the same time as the Xbox 360; Madden was rushed to that console and its underperformance on the current generation correlates to that deal, and so everyone blames the deal. Which, to be honest, has its own shady history, as the retired NFLers’ lawsuit drew out in litigation. Without defending Madden 06 to 08, I think this is mostly a knee-jerk reaction, because the same people who rip EA for being lazy in that franchise turn right around and rip MLB 2K, and pine for MVP Baseball the same way they do for NFL 2K5. It has a lot to do with the hypercritical and anti-overdog sentiments native to a lot of hardcore gamers. But the truth is you can’t reasonably expect to transform a sports video game — with much more rigid gameplay boundaries — on a one-year development cycle the way you can something like BioShock or Grand Theft Auto on a two or three-year cycle. It’s easy to say direct competition assures a better overall product for the general gaming public, but it seems to be an expectation only of sports games, and I’m not sure that its absence means someone’s holding back bona fide game-changing features. I think they’re just harder to execute in this genre once every three years, let alone every year.
TP: Which sports games currently take up most of your time? Do you prefer taking the battle online, or playing locally against friends?
OG: I grew up in North Carolina before we had major sports teams, and I’m a proud alumnus of N.C. State, so the Atlantic Coast Conference is the big league of my youth, and I love both NCAA Football 10 and NCAA Basketball 10. But I’m more of a singleplayer guy. The game you play online is much more mercenary and I don’t have the skills to beat anyone other than a few friends I already know. I also strive to build accurate season simulations — with a few exceptions. In hoops, I love creating myself as a deadeye 99 shooter, automatic even from 25 feet.
TP: What do you see as the next true step/revolution in videogame sports?
OG: I think it’d be easy to say motion controls. But honestly, I think most sports gamers gravitate to these sims because the feats of athleticism are so difficult to replicate in real life. Performing some approximation of hitting, pitching or tossing a touchdown pass, either in Natal or with Sony’s motion control, actually holds little appeal for me as a gamer. That’s not to say sports games won’t or shouldn’t develop for that capability. But I think the next step, and the more achievable one, will be full broadcast integration. I can easily see this happening in other sports titles, and EA Sports just sent out a survey about NCAA Football 11 that indicates it’s at least considering such a thing for that title. We’re midway through the current console generation’s lifespan, roughly, so we aren’t going to get increased processing power or memory and the visuals or content that come with it. But as sports gamers increasingly expect to play the kind of game they see on the television, a way to deliver that immersion will be in the use of actual networks’ graphics and sound packages. NCAA Basketball 10 is not a perfect game but, in using two networks’ presentation assets, it is to me this year’s most visible innovator, and at least one major sports title should emulate its proof of concept in the coming year.