This generation’s long life-cycle has been a mixed blessing. On the one hand, so many years without new hardware has allowed us to push the limits of our current engines and learn so much about finesse and polish without the need to relearn or start from scratch.  The challenge this time around has been more about [...]

I am forever confused by the duality of games players (and developers) on the opposing subjects of art and censorship in games. The former gives rise to claims of higher meaning in their creations or past-times, while the latter all too frequently finds defence in being “only a game”, and therefore absolved of the same [...]

With two weeks to go from today, I thought I should plug that I’ll be speaking at the Montreal International Game Summit, with the talk entitled Cinematics Sans Cutscenes. Here is the abstract: Cutscenes are a divisive subject amongst videogame developers. We rely on them as a relatively production-safe solution for imparting exposition and story [...]

Your videogame developer association is at a crossroads. The senior board staff are leaving left, right and centre and member apathy is at an all-time high. You’re looking for something, anything, to drum up passion once more in 13,000+ strong community where the vast majority of members are signed up automatically by employers often without [...]

By some strange paradox, E3′s lack of announcements regarding the next “next generation” of hardware has prompted many news sites (and publishers) so speculate as to when the next cycle will begin. When I first began animating games at home in my highschool years and was invited up to the local game studio, DMA Design, [...]

This is awesome, and so close to home it hurts. I often say that the lowest and most indefensible point of working in games is that many of them consist of nothing more that shooting people in the face. [via lightspeedchick]

In a follow-up to the recent post on the AIAS Awards relating to animation, I must congratulate Dave (and his team) on winning the Outstanding Achievement in Animation category. If any of you out there would like to work with “The Academy Award Winning Animation Director”, sign up here as he recently rejoined our team, [...]

It’s Oscar season. More importantly for this space however, the nominations for the 2008 Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences awards are in. Why is this relevant? Because unlike most end-of-year videogame awards these are peer-based, not to mention having two awards devoted to animation and character performance. Additionally, after missing out on Console Game [...]

The latest issue of IdN magazine features an interview with motion graphics studio Logan’s Alexei Tylevich on his collaboration with Hideo Kojima to create the ten tv-spot-style intros for Metal Gear Solid 4, revealing a fair assessment of game development through the eyes of a design studio. While what we’re doing is very segmented – [...]

Just watching the Golden Globes awards there, and the Best Animated Feature award was announced with the preface that the nominees’, (Wall-E, Bolt and Kung Fu Panda), collective box-office income amounted to the impressive half-billion dollars. That’s the same sum GTA4 took in just its first week – I guess kids just don’t have that [...]

The other week the industry awoke to the shocking news that the last bastion of competition to Autodesk’s domination of the CG market, Softimage, was finally consumed alongside the earlier aquisition of Maya. What this kind of monopoly over the CG Industry will bring to artists in the long-term is still unclear, but the minimal [...]

Three years ago, when I first began this site, I posted this about voice actors complaining over the videogame industry’s position of not providing the same financial rewards as other more traditional media given their percieved profits – most notably residuals, (an ongoing stream of payments for the completion of past achievements). Since then, I’ve [...]

Read at Mayerson on Animation: “If you make a half hour TV show and a million people watch it, you’ve used up 500,000 hours of human life. If you make a feature and a million people watch it, you’ve used up two million hours of human life. There are only 8,760 hours in a year, [...]

On Tuesday I fly to San Francisco for this year’s Game Developer’s Conference so have drawn up a schedule below, (despite not being 100% fixed on many talks due to the amount of overlap on my topics of interest). Decisions are in bold, while same-time alternatives remain should I change my mind. Hope to see [...]

A lot has been said over the past few weeks concerning the sexual content of Mass Effect, most notably the controversially unresearched Fox TV spot below. As a former member of the dev team responsible, (who directed a portion of the motion-capture actors involved – though full cutscenes weren’t my gig), I can perhaps speak [...]

I finally concede defeat – I’ve played a Wii game that isn’t shit. Despite being a huge fan of the Zelda series, I found even the Wii launch title Zelda to fall flat on its face after just an hour’s play and has never been touched since. I did, however, receive a copy of Mario [...]

A name like a bad guy from a Van Damme flick hasn’t stopped Johnny Lee from creating some incredibe 3D apps using a Wii remote connected to a PC, most recently this fantastic DIY Desktop Virtual Reality Display. I recently saw Beowulf in full Imax 3D and came out wondering two things. Why did they [...]

Taking a break from regurgitating press releases, Gamespot has an informative article on the art of pitching your game concept to prospective publishers. Brendan Sinclair’s insightful piece talks to several industry vets about how the videogame pitch has changed over the years, as well as highlighting alternative methods to get marketing onboard. I’m sure my [...]

The Orange Box has now been sitting in my XBOX360 for most of the week now, essentially taking the place of an operating system. It’s all I really need to fire up first, then decide what I want to play depending upon how I’m feeling. Is it a full single-player story experience? An online fragfest [...]

You know you’ve hit the big time when your cutscene gets a Penny Arcade strip all of its own, so congratulations to Brad on making headlines with his bi alien sex scene – reportedly the lone element that pushed the game into the Mature ratings bracket in North America. I seem to recall him spending [...]

I’ve bought the game twice already, and I’m gonna do it again. Hot on the heels of the Streetfighter 2 HD remix, the recently announced Rez HD makes its way to the top of my list of most anticipated games. Now for the acronyms. I’m currently playing PQ2 on the PSP, a sequel to a [...]

With the upcoming rebirth of E3 tomorrow, I thought I’d throw an old video of E3 2005 I made following the event onto YouTube, summarising the experience for one of the Mass Effect weekly team meetings. A lot of press has been circulating regarding a supposed relief shared throughout the industry that the event has [...]

Just scanned this old copy of the Canadian edition of Time magazine showing Bill Gates comically holding up a broken XBOX360 for all the world to see, a premonition of the hardware issues that have dogged the console throughout its life-cycle thus far. Thankfully mine has yet to ever display the red rings that signal [...]

Recently found this listed on Amazon. You would be surprised to learn that this is not in fact a 1980 Sinclair Spectrum do-it-yourself coding book but actually a relatively recent release. Is this really where the games industry still learns it’s trade? The cover alone harks back to pre Tin-Toy rendering and character design, causing [...]

Today the industry awoke to the leaked REVELATIONS that Ubisoft plans to release sequels to all its popular brands!. While none of this may be terribly interesting, it does once again highlight the difficultiy in keeping secrets within our industry – brought on in part due to the large quotient of industry insiders coming from [...]

No Weekly Bad Walkcycle update this week or next, as the hard-drive failed and the alsoran is away to E3 until next week. Just seeing the initial press conferences from the major 3 today though, it looks like Nintendo are surprising with the quality of their console, Microsoft are pushing back the boundaries of online [...]

An interesting event that occured this month was the recent ban on the airing of the UK television spot for Call Of Duty 2 by the UK Advertising Standards Agency, on the grounds of misleading consumers with pre-rendered graphics. This case is important in light of the controversy surrounding last year’s E3 pre-rendered screenings of [...]

The alsoran is currently playing through the XBOX/PS2/PC interactive movie Fahrenheit, (curiously renamed Indigo Prophecy for the non-imperial US), and feels moved to point out this game as notable not for its content, but what it means for the videogame as a medium for storytelling. Visually, this is a contradictory mixed bag. The game features [...]

Just who is this prominent videogame developer sporting the (presumably golden) loafers that would make Ronald McDonald green with envy? The mysterious boatman keeps his own blog, featuring this post exclaiming ” I lost my shoes in last night’s dream. I exited a plane and realized: “I am barefoot! My shoes aren’t here?GI must have [...]

Have we all seen this advert for “Generic Urban Gang Shooter No. 25″? Just a few years ago, we would have taken it for granted that the player assumes the role of the cops depicted in the image, but owing to the foreground prominence of the gangmember, the viewer rightly gets the impression they will [...]

Have we all seen this site hawking promo-shots of female videogame characters entitled Girls of Gaming? And we wonder why girls don’t buy games. Now the alsoran likes the ladies as much as the next guy, but this is Old Videogames at it’s worst, and it needs to be stamped out if we wish to [...]

Thinking back to a question raised by Ed Hooks in his recent workshop: “Are videogames art?”, at the time the alsoran answered him “games can be art, but most are crap”, immediately following up with reference to Ico. For example, film is considered an art-form, yet still the vast majority of the medium is, like [...]

Another interesting aspect of the SAG greed issue is that besides monetary compensation, SAG members also want greater recognition for their contribution. This is an extension of the misappropriation of credit that somehow still pervades in this industry, as in the film industry, to this day. Publishers, not developers are often wrongly credited for making [...]

One item that’s been getting a lot of press recently is the reluctance of the Screen Actors’ Guild to accept the already-generous pay-rise proposal regarding actors’ hourly voice-over wage. Put simply, for those that have not been following this, Hollywood has seen the large revenues generated by some of the recent blockbuster videogames, and wants [...]

The alsoran arrives back from E3 2005 having picked up a virus using the public transport in LA. Still reeling from the sights, sounds and T&A overload, he is most confused of all by the journlistic hyperbole surrounding the pre-rendered videos shown at the Sony Press Conference and E3 booth. Don’t they realise that pre-rendered [...]

Attended the pre-E3 IGDA party last night. Was concerned by the lack of developers attending, mostly rabid Mobile Phone salesmen. At one point the alsoran had to walk away from some idiot claiming to be an Evangelist (his business card title), who was spouting crap about his game engine that could create “absolutely anything” – [...]