“The Oculus Rift has come a long way from a Kickstarter concept piece to billion dollar acquisition by Facebook.”

Oculus VR are not breaking new ground for the integration of VR technology and innovative motion controls into video games.  It has been attempt before in various different guises, from Nintendo’s Power Glove to Victormaxx’s ridiculously expensive Cybermaxx headset. Peripherals for video games have never really improved on the overall gaming experience, at least not enough to make gamers shell out cash on the high priced products. The Oculus Rift is really a refinement of the technology laid down by Jaron Lanier, Thomas G. Zimmerman and others alike. The wide field of view, HD display and head tracking the key selling points of the new device and may well be the final piece of the puzzle that was missing previously. The other issue that held back many devices prior to the current day equivalents was a simple matter of size. One of the first virtual reality head mounted displays was so heavy and cumbersome it had to be suspended from the ceiling, users nicknaming the device the “The Sword of Damocles”. Even Nintendo’s Virtual Boy seems bulky and unwieldy by today’s standards. There is no doubting that Oculus VR have put their work in trying to make their device slip seamlessly into the gaming experience and make the interactivity as intuitive as possible.

“Virtual Reality has come and gone in the past can the current trend maintain prolonged interest and more importantly sell in sustainable numbers.”

However it is not as if the company has a monopoly on the VR market as both Sony and Valve are looking to enter the arena with their own interpretations. At this year’s Games Developers Conference in San Francisco Sony came out swinging with their own version of a VR headset dubbed Project Morpheus. The Japanese tech giants have been working on VR prototype headsets for a number of years, integrating their own Move controllers into the system. Sony has the slight advantage of having a long history in the tech industry and all the experience that comes with it. However the Oculus team can boost about the veteran developers that have joined the company, with id Software founder John Carmack the chief technology officer at Oculus VR. Even Valve’s own VR specialist Michael Abrash has switched sides and joined the Oculus Rift team. It would seem that at any rate gamers will be spoilt for choice when these devices make it market, when that will be is still up in the air. Some hints point towards a late 2014 early 2015 launch for the Oculus Rift, but another important question arises in response to that is the devices proposed price point. Again no official pricing structure has been announced only guesstimates can be made at this time, the most recent Dev kit version of the device going for $350 (€254). $250(€180) to $300(€220) the price range been floated around by some market analysts. Oculus VR founder Palmer Luckey has stated that he may adopt a similar model used by the console manufactures, dropping the price and making up the money on licencing deals with game publishers. This is integral to the success of any of the current VR headsets in development, the support of the video game developers to integrate the technology into their games. At the end of the day if there isn’t an extensive catalogue of titles that will support VR then the Rift, Morpheus, Gameface or any of the other VR headsets will ultimately fail.

“The Oculus Team have had VR market all to themselves the last two years but now competition is heating up with others jumping on the VR bandwagon.”

The decision by “Notch” to pull his official support for Oculus Rift integration with Minecraft doesn’t help with publicity for the VR company. Not that ‘Minecrafters’ desperate to see their blocky creations up close and personal are out of luck, as there are mods that support Oculus Rift input. However an official release of a VR compatible version of Minecraft could have been a big boon for the Oculus Rift over it soon to be competitors. The Rift is definitely carving itself out as a PC peripheral as opposed to Sony’s VR which obviously will be supported by their PlayStation console. Sony already demonstrating their eye tracking technology working with the current PS4 release Infamous: Second Son. So just like the console wars that take place between Sony and Microsoft it is the exclusive titles that can often sway customers moreover than hardware specs. There is even now a host of tech companies that want to take VR even further, not happy with just tracking movement of the player’s vision they want get them on the move. Companies like Virtuix with their Omni motion tracking device want to have Oculus Rift users get of their seats and start moving. The demonstration of Valves new VR headset at Steam Dev Days also incorporated spatial awareness and the capturing of full body movement. This entire aside the current generation of VR is still in its infancy with projects still in development and release dates still TBA. It would seem that there is enough momentum behind the VR push this time that it is unlikely to be a flash in the pan. Whether or not it will be a revolution in video game interaction is still out to tender. A quick review of interactive peripherals of video games past doesn’t paint a great picture. Even the evolution of the video game controller has been fairly stagnant for the last decade, although Valve might have something to say about that. The coming years and eventual product launches will offer a clearer idea for the future of Virtual Reality.

By Colm O’Sullivan

The post The State of the Industry: Virtual Reality The Future or Fad? appeared first on Game Design Ireland.

“For a seasoned developer with a half decent Kickstarter pitch, money does grow on trees.”

Broken Age is a perfect example of this where Tim Schaffer a developer with a long illustrious career in the video game industry made a pitch for peoples support. His pitch involved creating an old school point and click adventure like the ones his known for such as Grim Fandango and The Secret of Monkey Island. Not really pushing the boat out in terms of innovation. Not to say that Kickstarter is alone in this regard to this practice, the major publishers work on the very same principle and not just in regards to video games but the movie industry as well. The point is that Kickstarter and crowd funding are not a new revolution in video game funding, in fact they are more akin to traditional publishing then most people realise. Just like traditional publishing agreement a lump sum of money will be given to get the project of the ground. The project then remains relatively closed off only open to those who invested in the project. Those investors or backers will often put pressure on the developer to complete the game and are reticent to give more money until they see a finished product. The one major difference between the two methods of funding is that a traditional publishers will receive royalties on the games sales whereas backers are left with a t-shirt, poster, signed print, etc.

“Chris Roberts crowd funded game Star Citizen has a lot to live up to with a $38 million budget sourced so far.”

Crowd funding is a good idea it will just take a number of years to work out the kinks in the system. One issues is the budgeting and clarity in the use of the finances received. In a traditional publishing deal the games budget will be worked out before hand and agreed upon between the two parties. If the budget goes over which many games do, it is accounted for in the original contact or the developer is forced to release early. Tim Schafer set an initial budget of $400,000 for Broken Age, he received over $3 million. Yet this still wasn’t enough and he was forced to spilt the game into two parts, using the sales of part one to fund development on part two. Last week’s article discussed The Banner Saga which was also a Kickstarter project. They asked for an initial amount of $100,000 and received over $700,000. A comparison of the two games that share a very similar gameplay length and an equally high level of hand drawn animations, make you wonder how Stoic achieved what they did with a budget four time less than that of Double Fine. What did Tim Schaffer spend all that money on? This is the sort of question a traditional publisher with legitimate financial control would be asking. Some have looked to help backers understand the production process such as VFX wizard Freddie Wong with his Kickstarter for the second season of Video Game High School. In his Kickstarter pitch he include a breakdown of what costs go into a major production like his. Honesty and clarity is the one thing sorely missing from many Kickstarter projects. Traditional publishers always have a contract with the developers to keep things in check, but what can a backer do if the product isn’t what they had been promised or where simple swindled out of their hard earned cash?

By Colm O’Sullivan

The post Gaming Sidenote: Kickstarter Good or Bad? appeared first on Game Design Ireland.

“The games art style and visual appeal can’t be in doubt with the vocal talents of Elijah Wood, Jennifer Hale and Will Wheaton all featuring in this dialogue driven game.”

The game is a traditional 2D point and click adventure with no effort spared on the art direction. Broken Age features a hand drawn aesthetic that is very appealing in an industry that has become obsessed with graphical power. The Xbox One and PS4 vying for consumers by trying to pack as many polygons as they can onto gamers televisions. Adventure games by their nature have never really focused on pushing new advancements in graphical technology maybe aside from Myst. Broken Age like many of Tim Schaffer’s other games is more concerned about delivering a gripping narrative and establishing an engaging atmosphere. This game offers two dissecting storylines, one featuring a girl in a village tormented by a great beast that is only appeased by a sacrificial maiden. The other features a young man confined on a spaceship with an overbearing computer system, which has the personal traits of HAL crossed with loving mother. Personally I haven’t been able to complete the game yet not because the puzzles are too difficult on the contrary their far to one dimensional. I’m sure if you leave a group of monkeys in a room with the game one of them would beat it just by randomly clicking on the screen. The main reason I’m having difficulty playing the game is that it is not as engaging as I had hoped, I have no real personal feeling towards either character. In a game that is heavily based on narrative with any sort of gameplay mechanics few and far between aside from the few puzzle like mini-games, the story and character must be engaging. The main problem is there is a set path that must be followed and no chance for divergence. There are plenty of things to interact with but most just result in a short piece of dialogue with no real consequence. The player has no say in how things play out which means they can’t really connect with characters that only want to do things in a certain way.

“I have to wonder what the game would have resembled if Schaffer had only reached his initial $400,000 goal and not the $3 million he received.”

A comparison to another company that has recently established themselves as the new darlings of the adventure game genre. Telltale Games have very quickly become the go to studio for new adventure titles. Many of its developers coming from LucasArts where Tim Schaffer and his team cut their teeth. The one title that really put Telltale on the map was of course The Walking Dead, an adventure game based on the popular zombie graphic novel by Robert Kirkman. Although not original IP with most Telltale game featuring licenced content, they still managed to create an entirely unique narrative within the Walking Dead universe. The game is based around two protagonist trying to survive during a zombie apocalypse. Clementine a young girl trying to discover the faith of her parents and Lee her inadvertent guardian on their journey through the zombie filled American south. The game allows the player to make decisions that have a real effect on how the other characters interact with you and how certain events unfold. The game has been meet by universal critical acclaim, picking up over 90 “Game of the Year” awards in the process. The game has led to a resurgence in interest in adventure games.

“Never has the in game relationship of two characters had such a profound effect on the gaming community, The Last Us a close contender.” 

The most interesting thing about the game and others Telltale have produced is that they were self-published. Tim Schaffer and others at Double Fine have stated that crowd funding was the only way to go with major publishers unwilling to entertain the idea of producing an adventure game. However for well-established studios such as Telltale and Double Fine do they need publishers at all in this age of digital distribution? In the past publishers would also act as distributers making sure the game was printed to CD or cartridge. However with the growth in digital distribution services like Steam, there is no real need for publishers. Other companies like Mojang have demonstrated that they are more than capable of producing a game with no need of a publisher. In some ways Kickstarter is just another version of a traditional publisher just instead of all the money coming from one source it comes from multiple sources.

“Telltale is going all out with four new series in the works for 2014. The communities’ appetite for graphic adventure games unabated”

Crowd funding still operates in the same manner as other publishers, with Schaffer stating that the game would not be possible without a certain amount of capital. The development process touted as been open and inclusive to the gaming community, like many other video game titles stayed relatively behind closed doors. When the project ran out of money they had to come asking for more, eventually deciding to split the game into two parts to ensure it made it to market. I don’t see how Broken Age was supposed to break the mould for video game production when indie game developers have proved that they don’t need a big lump sum of cash up front before they will write a line of code or start manipulate polygons. Titles such as Don’t Starve, Retro City Rampage and of course Minecraft proving that if the idea and concept is strong enough then development should not be halter due to financial constraints. There is nothing inherently wrong with Schaffer using crowd funding to make his game, however it is the concept that a games scope and breath is limited by how much money is in the bank account. It goes against the creative nature of what video games are supposed to embody but then again voice acting from Elijah Wood obviously doesn’t come cheap.

By Colm O’Sullivan

The post Broken Age Review appeared first on Game Design Ireland.

Since its launch in 2009 Kickstarter has raised over $500 million dollars through the donations of over 90,000 different projects, from films & gadgets to music and most importantly video games. It has seen the release of multiple films that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and has seen a number of projects break the $1 million mark and beyond.To any casual observer it would seem like publishers and investors days are numbered with their customers looking towards crowd sourcing as the way they want to industry to be funded. However if you look at the stats available on the Kickstarter website it is clear to see that the number of failed projects outweigh the number of successful projects with 50,000 unsuccessful to 39,000 that have reached their target amount or more. What isn’t clear from these stats is what measure is a project deemed successful, it may have reached its target amount of money but there’s no guarantee that what was promised is ever delivered or if the project itself was commercial viable beyond its initial crowd sourcing phase. Video games rank sixth in the number of projects funded with over 1,500 reaching their target goal and that number is surely set to rise in the next few years. Is crowd funding going to change how video games are made and should big time publishers be worried with last week’s article showing that publishers are vulnerable to fail and the industry itself is going through some financially tumultuous times at the moment which has given Kickstarter and others a gap in the market to exploit.

It was Tim Schafer and his company Double Fine with their project Broken Age that brought Kickstarter and the idea of crowd funding to the attention of the video game industry. He certainly wasn’t the first game developer to use the website but was the first of the big time developers to use it instead of getting investment from major publishers which has being the traditional route for developers in the past. The game itself is in the adventure game genre to which Schafer has a healthy pedigree producing titles such as Grim Fandango, Maniac Mansion and The Secret of Monkey Island. The reason for his move to crowd sourcing was a lack of support for adventure games by major publishers as the genre is seen as outdated and unpopular which is slightly contradicted by the fact that in the month that the project was open to backers they managed to raise over $3 million dollars with the initial target only set at $400,000. As with most Kickstarter projects gifts and rewards where offered at different levels of donations ranging from tee-shirts and signed posters right up to lunch with Tim Schafer himself. The backers are also invited to be part of the development process and help guide the art and content of the game.  Double Fine’s success at gaining investment without publisher’s interference made other long time developers look towards Kickstarter as a way to fund their own projects. Peter Molyneux who is best known for his Fable and Populous series of games decided to use Kickstarter as a way to fund his latest project Godus. The project successfully raised its target amount by December of last year although no release date has yet been set. Another long time game designer Richard Garriott also recently used crowd funding to back his newest instalment Shroud of the Avatar in the long running Ultima series again easily raising the money needed in the space of a month. As with many video game project on the website Garriott’s Kickstarter project set out a list of development goals and what could be achieved if a certain amount of money was raised with $2 million raised for this project double the amount that was projected a series of additional development goals where added however not enough was raised to cover them all. This highlights a very important point, if crowd sourcing is a way to circumvent the influence of major publishers then why have these projects set themselves self-restraining goals and without any contractual agreement set for these development aims there is no incentive to deliver on what is promised. The one underlying problem with Kickstarter and the projects created on the website is a lack of accountability and financial responsibility. A perfect example of a project that failed on both accounts is Haunts: The Manse Macabre a project created by Rick Dakan and his development studio Mob Rules Games.

“How much money does one man need when other games have been made for less, Minecraft being the perfect example”

The project set a target of $25,000 which it easily surpassed ending at $28,000 in donations and promised to deliver a turn based horror game by the end of 2012. A few months after the initial Kickstarter campaign Rick Dakan announced that certain elements of the promised game would be scrapped in favour of taking the game in a different direction. Soon after it was announced that the lead programmers were leaving to work for a different company and development on the game had ceased. Dakan himself admitted that prior to the crowd funding phase he knew that the programmers where set to leave but had hoped to finish the game before that. He had also promised to be open with the finance of the company throughout the development process which he failed to do. This is where the problem lies for crowd funding, backers donate money to a project with no guarantee of seen any return in the promised game unlike major publishers who will usually has a contract drawn up for the developer to deliver the game at a certain date our face a cessation in investment. Those who pledge money through Kickstarter have no such agreement and have no way of reclaiming any money invested. Kickstarter and crowd funding is susceptible to manipulation and fraud. That doesn’t mean that crowd sourcing is the wrong way to gain investment for a project but the way Kickstarter operates it business is not the best way to go about it. A new site that was founded by Paul Hanraets Andy Payne, Harry Miller and Mike Wilson called Gambitious looks to refine the idea crowd sourcing by using the model of equity crowd funding. People can donate money to a project just in that same way as they can with Kickstarter but each person who donates money gains a stake in the profits gained by the backed project. This system is a closer to the existing system present in the video game industry where publishers expect to see a return in their investment and possibly an equity stake in development studio or future games in the series. This new way of crowd funding still allows for a certain level of freedom for the developers but still holds them to account on delivering on their promises. So far the site has not seen as much popularity and success as Kickstarter with Train Fever by Swiss developer Urban Game Studios being the first major project to gain attention in the industry. The reason why equity crowd funding is not the preferred method for raising money for most video game projects at the moment is that it is still illegal in the United States and Canada to solicit investments from the general public unless you’re a registered investor. A recent act signed by President Obama in April of last year might change that law however it might be another year before it is officially passed. Gambitious is a Dutch based company and laws regarding crowd funding are different in the EU which is relevant to those in the Irish gaming industry interested in using equity crowd funding as a means of investment.

“Is this the first of many Kickstarter failures or just a rare occurrence?”

Until then Kickstarter projects will continue on the route of putting their hands out and asking for your money with a promise to deliver the final product all the time having their fingers crossed behind their back. In other words a form of virtual begging as illustrated by the web comic The Oatmeal. The next few years will be an interesting time as the video game industry will wait and see if these major developers will release their games as promised and prove the system right or will they fail and leaving many gamers with their fingers burnt and the reputations of beloved game designers in tatters. The most interesting of these project set to release soon is the Ouya console that is set to revolutionize the console market with their cheap android based device but how will it compete in a market already dominated by the likes of Sony and Microsoft. Are we heading towards a glut of consoles flooding the market that bears resemblance to the video game crash of 1983 or are we set for a renaissance in video game development where the dominant competitors are being challenged by the independent upstarts?

 By Colm O’Sullivan

The post The State of the Industry: The Gamers Have Spoken appeared first on Game Design Ireland.