Archive for July, 2008
24.07.08 Bobby’s Bru
Jock’s son passed away today. I’ve never met Jock, or his son Bobby, but his videos on youtube have kept a Scotsman in Canada entertained for the last year, not least because they feature a net-savvy over-seventy-year-old in a country only now discovering Facebook.
I imagine most people waching this here in North America won’t have a clue what he’s saying, but sometimes words are unimportant. Farewell Bobby, your father is a poet.
21.07.08 Jade Empire Now Available On Xbox Originals
It was a nice treat today to find another of my previous projects, Jade Empire, has been deemed by Microsoft to be worthy of another go - this one being added to the list of games available for download on the Xbox 360’s Xbox Originals service - pick it up now for just around $10 without having to leave the comfort of your sofa.
Most people who haven’t played it wrongly assume it sports the same basic good/evil choices found in KOTOR, but one of my favourite elements of the project was that decisions made in the game surrounded the altogether more mature philosophies of ruling with compassion or force - an altogether less black and white affair.
Oh, and kung fu…
14.07.08 Final Fantasy Face-Driven Technology
This, the final talk I’ll post from GDC’08, centred on the development of the first company-wide technology platform (or engine) for Square Enix. Despite the heavy tech-focus, this was the largest lineup I attended at the conference due to the chance of gleaning any information from these Japanese RPG masters.
Square Enix: The Technology of FINAL FANTASY
Taku Murata - General Manager, Technical Research Division
Traditionally, a new platform was created for each title, with the game first made in Japanese and translations following much later. This looks set to change with the latest upcoming releases which will be very exciting to many western fans, and the target platforms (for the engine) are PS3, PC and XBOX360.
Murata’s history reads like something of a chronology of technological breakthroughs in Japanese game development, with much of his work driven by animation - in particular facial animation. Of interest most of all was the admission that several of the driving forces for this new engine centred on displaying characters’ faces to a very high fidelity in close-up.
10.07.08 Smash Bros Character Conformity
Right from the off, this GDC ‘08 talk was notable for the novel, (to the West anyway), approach to staffing up for this sequel. Charting the production of SSBB, the incredibly young-looking director Masahiro Sakurai began with his own hiring onto the project on March 9th, 2005 - placing the entire development time around the three year mark.
Sora Ltd: Development - SUPER SMASH BROS. BRAWL
Masahiro Sakurai -Director
Despite directing the original SSB games under the Nintendo/HAL Laboratory collaboration, Sakurai has been working as a freelance game designer since 2004 under his own company Sora Ltd. - (the company comprises just him and his assistant). After sub-contracing creative direction to Sora, Nintendo rented offices in Tokyo and employed the bulk of staff from long-time development house Game Arts. In addition, they temporarily contracted many of the original Smash Bros team for this project as HAL were not officially involved.
This is the way I’d like to see the game development process go in the future so we can move away from the restrictive full-time studio model towards a more talent based one where individual creatives and full development teams can be married, before disbanding once the pipelines and initial creative visions are established.
02.07.08 Lost Odyssey’s Cutscene Consistency
Next up, in the first of three animation-related GDC ‘08 presentations giving us an insight into modern-day Japanese game development, here are my notes from the Postmortem of Feelplus’s Lost Odyssey, one of two Japanese RPGs created exclusively for the XBOX360 under the watchful eye of Microsoft Game Studios and Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi.
Feelplus: Looking Back at LOST ODYSSEY - The Challenge of Cross Cultural Development
Ray Nakazato - President, Feelplus Inc.
As with each of the Japanese presentations, Nakazato began by detailing the hierarchy of the companies involved in the project. Feelplus Inc. was established in 2005, with the team quickly growing in size to the final headcount of around 100 developers, many of which came from Microsoft and SEGA. Feelplus is 1 of 3 companies under the AQ Interactive Group, (including Artoon and Cavia), and the project was a collaborative effort with Sakaguchi’s team at Mistwalker who formed the core desgin team.